Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) by Rosie Perez Page A

freedom to hang.)
    Tia came into the bedroom holding a brand-new soft, butter-colored summer frock. She slowly rubbed my back. “Rosie. Look. You like?” Loved! I quickly put it on. Just then, my uncle-father knocked on the French doors to Tia’s bedroom. My face dropped. I had not seen my uncle-father, who was still my uncle, in a while, and I still hadn’t gotten over the “I’m your daddy” fiasco. He was wearing his army jacket and tight, tapered khaki slacks. Back then, he used to always wear tight-ass pants, so tight that Tia used to call him
huevos apretados
—which means “tight nuts”—behind his back.
    “Wow,” he said. “You look so beautiful, baby! You ready to go?”
    Huh? I froze. I looked up at Tia. Her eyeballs were throwing daggers at him. I scurried across the bed to her, burying my face into her big breasts.
    “You came early,” she loudly whispered with her thick-ass accent. “
Yo no tuve tiempo de decirle!
[I didn’t have time to tell her!]”
    “
Oh, lo siento
. [I’m sorry.] I was too excited.”
    “Rosie, you remember my brother, your Uncle Ismael?”
    Duh! Of course I remembered. I didn’t respond. I just gave him a stern look.
    He then turned to me and handed me a five-dollar bill. Who the hell gives a four-year-old five dollars?
    “We can go and buy bread for the pigeons. And I’ll buy you a coconut soda!”
    “A coconut soda?” I said. “Whoever heard of a coconut soda?”
    “How ’bout ice cream? Would you like an ice cream?” he pleaded.
    What else was I going to say to ice cream?
    While Tia quickly changed out of her
bata
, I peeked past the French doors at my uncle-father seated in that same wingback chair where he’d been sitting when he informed me in an intoxicated whisper that he was my dad. I wanted to look away, but couldn’t stop staring at him.
    It was about a seven-block walk to Woolworth’s department store. We first stopped by the building next door, where Tia’s friend Doña Susana was hanging out of her window with her humongous titties surgically attached to the windowsill. Of course I had to break out in song and a little tap dance in homage to her name:
“Ooooh!
Hola, Susanna,
oh don’t you cry for meeee!”
My uncle-father looked at me and cracked up, slapping his knee. For some reason it bothered me, and I stopped dancing.
    Next, we headed over to Katz’s pharmacy on Broadway—more hellos and a pat on my head and a gumball from Mr. and Mrs. Katz, a sweet, talkative couple who adored Tia, although Ismael monopolized the conversation. Mr. Katz made me laugh as he kept repeating to his wife, “What does that have to do with the price of eggs?” each time she would contradict him or my uncle-father.
    Next stop was the corner store, owned by Don Quintin (pronounced
keen-deen
) and his brother, Don Àngel. These two brothers were inseparable. Don Quintin died several years later after going to a cheap dentist; his brother Don Àngel died three months afterwards, everyone says from loneliness. As we exited the bodega, a beautiful curvy woman with a bad blond dye job came around thecorner. My uncle-father’s head spun around like Linda Blair’s head in
The Exorcist
. He dramatically gasped, with his hand on his heart.
    “
Perdone me, senorita. Lo siento, pero
. May I please have the pleasure, no, the honor, to have you dine with me tonight, or tomorrow, or the next night? I would wait until eternity to be in the presence of a beauty such as yours.”
    He took her hand and kissed it, just like Pepe Le Pew in the Looney Tunes cartoon. I kid you not! She declined with an annoying giggle. Before she could escape, he quickly stepped in front of her and said, “I know you must be thinking,
How could I go out with such an ugly man?
Well, I may be ugly, but I make beautiful babies!”
    Hold up! Is this man trying to use me to pick up a bimbo? Oh, hell no.
    As the bouncy blonde laughed and sashayed away, my aunt slapped my uncle-father upside his head