Rose Bushes on the Corner Lot
Part I — Childhood: Espresso and Spray-Paint on a Low Tree Stump
I remember my childhood home, where we lived with my Puerto Rican grandparents: two floors, mauve walls, and plastic-covered sofas. Daytime smelled like dark espresso; the evenings, like sofrito y sazón.
In one section of the living room, a dove named Blanca perched, her body moving among the fanning plants and palms that blurred into the backyard through the sliding glass doors.
The back patio had large, tall rose bushes my grandfather planted to insulate our corner of the lot. The chosen greenery was an homage to the mountains in Aibonito, his family called home, a small emulation of their finca full of crops, poultry, pigs, and horses.
This became a place he carried with him in the soil of our patio. He was among the youngest of twelve, spared some of the rough work of guarding land and cultivating, giving his memories a humid nostalgia.
He was a quiet man for those who weren’t sure of how to listen for more than words. The version of him I’ve always known was an experience of a person; he was not the wind or the sound of coquis during sunset in el campo, but all of it.
The version of him I’ve always known was an experience of a person; he was not the wind or the sound of coquis during sunset in el campo, but all of it.
Next to one of the bushes was a low tree stump tattooed in gradient streaks of spray-paint — new editions from my father’s hobby of designing small race car chassis. Some days it served as a table for his tools, and others, as a stool for guests.
The grey cast of autumn evenings held the particles of exhaled Marlboro smoke over the back patio. I’d quietly watch him in a meditative Asian squat, flip the chassis body over, angling it with his left hand as he swayed his right wrist back and forth in half circles, synchronizing for consistency.
Between sets, he’d take pulls of his cigarette and share his revisions, plans, and second-guesses. Sometimes he’d rub the emerald green jade around his neck before setting his cigarette down for another round of paint.
I was so small in age and stature that the scale of proportions in my memories renders me abstract, where the stump felt enormous, and taller things forced me to lift my chin and tilt my eyes to the sky.
I’m standing in the suspended mist of that same evening now, not ready to go inside just yet. I take in the textures around me: the cement patio inlaid with unpolished black rocks, the scattered leaves and petals, a mixture of sight and scents unburdened by responsibility.
I want to keep it whole — until I’m ready to turn it into something else.