How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

by Angie Cruz

Does that ever happen to you? When the easy is impossible?

But it’s OK—jealousy. I’m accustomed to it. I know I was born with sugar in my pockets.

Do you have a sister? Oh good, so you understand. Sisters don’t always get along. But even when we fight, we eat dinner together, like a religion. Always we are two apartments but one house. She makes me pudín de pan. I tell her it’s too sweet and then everything is OK. Food, I tell you, fixes things.

But even the moon and the honey go dark and rancid.

I mean, look at me, you think I look good now, but imagine me thirty-eight years younger with brilliant eyes and all my hair. But suddenly you look in the mirror, and time bites off your face.

We step in the shit on purpose so we’re forced to buy new shoes. You know what I’m saying?

Lulú always says that when someone asks me about mangoes I talk about yuca.

Let me give you some advice, fall for the man who loves you more than you love him.

That’s what therapists make you do. They make you spit on your mother. Everything is the mother’s fault.

And now, even if La Escuelita is finished, she still comes to my apartment every morning and we talk about our dreams. No, not the dreams we make for the future, but dreams from when we sleep and get information about our life. Sometimes we don’t know what is happening in us, but the dreams know. So we must listen.

A mother knows when the pineapple is sour.

For sure, selling drugs would send him to jail. But those men from the banks who ruined everybody’s lives and made people lose their houses—nobody is locking them up.

Everything Adonis wanted, Lulú gave to him. She raised him to think the world was going to do the same.

When you need each other to survive, you forgive. That’s the way it is.

To be different is a gift, it said under Walter’s face. And what Walter says is siempre correct but to be raro like el flaco is not a gift—it’s a life of suffering.

What do you enjoy most about housekeeping? Example answer: I enjoy many aspects of housekeeping. I feel immense satisfaction when I have the opportunity to organize a messy room. This includes making the bed and folding the sheets. It is very relaxing to fold sheets. I find it to be quite therapeutic.

Learn this from me: If you try to fix something that somebody do not want to fix they will hate you for it. To offer help is OK. To push, no.

It makes a difference when you cut the vegetables and think, This sopa is going to make you feel better.

If you’re lucky you find a man that you don’t fall in the hole with. Miguelina was married to my brother, a ship with many holes.

She said, This is why men don’t change. When the women try to teach a man a lesson, here come the mothers and the sisters to save them.

Listen to me, it’s good to be reminded we are alive.

My vecina Mariposa told me that the scientists see the monkeys from the jungle creating a big revolú for the others. So they took them away temporarily, to study them so that they could eventually help the paranoid people. They gave them drugs so they were more calm. But you know what happened? When they came back to the community with the monkeys, everybody was dead or disappeared. And you know why? Because the community needs somebody like me to pay attention for the danger. Everybody cannot be calm. To be calm is a luxury!

I learned the difficult way that you have to be gentle with your children, or you can lose them forever.

Sometimes when you can’t change your ánimo you have to have people like Hernán to remind you about the important things in life. Sometimes we need help to not drown in a glass of water.

Yes, I know, I have real problems. But it’s good to have people to remind us that we have survived a lot more than this.

Sometimes life feels very small and other times it feels very rich. And when it feels small I think it’s because I don’t let myself, you know, enjoy the life.

Why talk that now? We can’t change it. Déjalo. But she says, We must talk or else we will get sick. To hold things inside makes us sick. But what am I going to do? I grew up different. If we don’t talk about something, it goes away.

Honestly, applying for the citizenship feels a little bit like treason. It will not be easy to say I am American, because when someone says American they don’t imagine me.

I don’t know, I think to get the papers is like marrying someone who has no feelings for me. But also sometimes getting married has benefits.

The other day when she came to my apartment to eat we saw a documentary about whales, the ones that kill the humans. But what I learned is that everybody believes these whales are killers, but in all of the history that we know, only four humans have been killed by these whales. Four. And all of the humans that have died like this, it was because the whales were in captivity. Wouldn’t you want to kill someone that puts you in a cage when your nature is to be free in the big ocean? Imagine to not have the space to swim. Imagine to be separated from your family.

It’s not a surprise that it is the grandmother that makes sure that every whale in the family eats. That they prove their value after la menopausia. Because not having to make babies makes them focus on taking care of the community. Which tells me that women of a certain age are more valuable to the community.

She said, Don’t worry about me. I’ve done everything I’ve ever wanted to do. Cara, we must not wait to live the life we want. Find a way to be present with the people you love.

14.B. Have you ever been involved in any way with torture? I mean, if you ask my son he say that I tortured him.

14.E. Have you ever been involved in any way with forcing, or trying to force, someone to have any kind of sexual contact or relations? Now how many people answer this question honestly? I see in the news many people in this country—even the priests do bad things and they get the papers.

30.B. Have you ever been a prostitute or procured anyone for prostitution? Like if somebody buy me a present for sex?

48. If the law requires it, are you willing to bear arms on behalf of the United States? Against who?

I asked La Vieja Caridad many times if losing the connection to her family to live a different life valió la pena. She said, Who wants to live in a lie? Freedom is being able to live your truth without having to apologize for it.

You ever heard the expression, When you’re hungry, no bread is too hard to eat?

So, yes, I was a good mother to Fernando, but I can now see that I was also this mother in the dream, young, afraid, alone, falling asleep near the tracks of the train.

In this world all you need is people to give you a chance.

But I understand her jealousy. It is difficult to be happy for others when you have many problems.

Was I happy? I think so. But what is a cake without frosting?