Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Monkey Face...


My grandfather is just too much. When my mom was growing up he was the strict over protective father to her and Uncle Joey. However being a grandfather seems to have mellowed him out, my cousins and I have gotten away with things our folks could have only dreamed of. Even if he doesn’t approve of something we’ve done (my 5 tattoos and various piercings) he says nothing to us instead he waits and lectures our parents.

I thought I was past the age where grandpa still thought of me as a baby. Man was I wrong! I guess the tip off should have been that he still calls me “the baby” despite me being 23 and the eldest of the grandkids. The other day he called my mom and proceeded to give her a gentle lecture regarding me. When my mom hung up the phone she was laughing …

Mom: That was papi on the phone. I’m supposed to talk to you about something so listen up.

Mia: Why what happened?

Mom: It seems papi saw you walking with Jason on the block the other night.

Mia: Oh yeah last week Jason walked me to the bus stop.

Mom: um what time was this again?

Mia: 11:30 at night ma

She tried to stifle her laughter but just couldn’t do it. Finally she let loose and a stream of giggles flew from her lips.

Mom: Ohhhh man well check this out your abuelo said that that is no time for you to be riding the bus home. He says to remember that you’re a young attractive girl and that they are a lot of perverts out at night and something can happen to you on the ride home.

Mia: Ma grandpa lives like what a 15 minute bus ride away from here? Jason didn’t leave until I was on the bus and hello the bus leaves me right across the street from our house!

Mom: Yeah but papi was concerned. He says the streets are dark at that time of the night and that you have to walk up that humongous hill and they aren’t a lot of houses in that area just the school and the church and that area is deserted at that time of night.

At this point I had to laugh along with my mother.

Mia: Ma the police precinct is a block away, it’s a safe area.

Mom: Look I know this, but he worries about you and I promised I would talk to you about it. Unless, you’d prefer him to do it?

Mia: No, no that’s okay woman (laughing) next time I‘ll bounce earlier so he doesn’t worry. Grandpa is a trip, was he always like this?


Mom: You kidding? You guys have it good, too good in fact. When I was a teen once the sun went down I had better be on the front porch sitting with my grandma and my great aunt Eva or there would be hell to pay!!


Mia: Grandpa would beat you?


Mom: Worse than that, he’d give me a lecture! Papi never spanked us when we were growing up. A beating was preferable to a lecture; those suckers could last up to an hour! He’d pace the room up and down sometimes saying nothing for the longest and then when he’d finally open his mouth it was as if he had verbal diarrhea and would not stop until his anger had passed.


Mia: Seriously?

Mom: Yeah. I mean don’t get me wrong he threatened to beat us all the time. He’d say things like “I’m watching you, I’ve got an eye on you and I’m making a list and when I get you I’m going to go through my list and make sure you repay every debt on that list.”
But Joey and I knew damn well papi wasn’t going to hit us no matter how mad we made him, it wasn’t in him. My father used to keep a tight reign on us, me in particular. I wasn’t allowed to do half the things your uncle Joey was allowed to do. I was raised old school Spaniard style girly.

Mia: Awwww mami.


Mom: De verdad mama . That’s nothing baby girl you should have seen what happened this one time when I was about 16 and had my first boyfriend. Ay dios mio!

Mia: Grandpa knew?

Mom: Estas Loca?! Papi would have shipped me out to a convent! The only one that knew was my grandmother’s sister Titi Eva.

Mia: Was he cute? Details ma details!

Mom: His name was Wesley Ventamiglia and he was sublime; he was 6 ft 6 built like a tank, a quarterback if I remember correctly. He was on the same football team as your uncle, a tremendous athlete. He had long jet black hair, pea pod green eyes and the deepest dimples, like your uncle Gil.

Mia: He sounds like he was a hottie.


Mom: Yeah he was actually. He always had girls chasing after him.

Mia: You too?

Mom: Actually no, I never paid him any attention I figured he was just a dumb ass jock. I’d always catch him watching me when I was skateboarding around or when I was playing handball. When he found out I was Joey’s sister he pestered your uncle to introduce him to me.

Mia: Awww que lindo ma! So how did you guys hook up?

Mom: Perseverance on his part. Well you know how they say you can’t judge a book by its’ cover? In his case it was true. He was quite the intellectual and we had a lot of the same interests. He was a really sweet kid, very romantic; he was always dedicating songs to me, reading me poetry, and writing me poems. Oh yeah and picking bouquets of flowers for me from his grandmother’s garden.

Mia: Awwwww que sweet! What else ma?


Mom: What you mean what else? Oh well he was the first boy to ever kiss me.

Mia: He was?! I thought papi was the first!

She arched her eyebrow in her patented “be for real” look, sending me into a fit of laughter

Mom: Nope he was the first.

Mia: Do you remember it ma?

Mom: A derf nena don’t you remember yours?

Mia: Yes m’am Patrick , back of a cab on our way home from the movies. We had just seen Rush Hour, the first one and ” Can I Get a Fuck You” was playing on the car stereo.

Mom: Lovely, nothing screams romance like Jay Z.

Mia: So aren’t you gonna tell me about the kiss?

Mom: Oh okay. Well it was the first day of summer and he had been kicking it to me since the fall. On that day we had taken a really long walk and on the way back home he worked up the nerve to hold my hand. We’d stopped at Cousin Lucy’s house on an errand for my grandmother before heading home. I had climbed the steps to her stoop and was at eye level with Wes. I was about to go in when I turned to look at him that’s when he put his hand on my waist pulled me towards him and kissed me. I remember hearing music. Somewhere in the distance through an open window I heard a song it was “Theme from a Summer Place” playing. The streets were kind of empty so the song seemed to echo off the building walls. It was perfect just as we stopped kissing the song ended and I heard the DJ say “That was Percy Faith on WABC

Mia: Whoa mommy! Sounds like a movie.

Mom: Yeah it does. The setting sun was casting shadows on the houses and I just basically floated on air from there. For the rest of the evening I was in la la land.
The next day he asked me out.


Mia: So how did you get away with it with out grandpa finding out?

Mom: Divine intervention and a kick ass soap opera on channel 47. Papi’s cousin Lucy hated walking her dog during the evening because it interrupted her novela. So she asked my dad if it would be okay if Joey and I walked the dog for her every night, she even offered to pay us. It worked out perfectly we walked the dog and I let Joey keep the 5 bucks she paid us. Wes, Joey and I would meet around the corner from my house in front of Lucy’s house and take the poor mutt on a 2 mile walk every night. We always stopped at “our spot” in front of this beautiful synagogue to rest when we were about a mile away from the house. Wes would give Joey a dollar to go get himself a slice of pizza and that way we were alone for a little while.

Mia: Did you ever get busted?

Mom: Not for nine months not until March … one night the temperature dropped drastically and it began raining heavily. My dad worried about me being out in the rain because I had just gotten over a really bad cold and went out looking for me intending to drive me, Joey and the dog back home. We were almost home when my dad spotted Wes bending down to kiss me good bye. All hell broke loose, my dad jumped out the car and punched him in the face and started kicking his ass in the street. He didn’t realize Wes was just a kid. I had to pull my dad off of Wesley and explain the situation to my father. My dad was pissed, he told Wes I was too young to have a boyfriend and that he was not to see me anymore. When we got home I got the only lecture! I got grounded for three months and Joey got grounded for a month for failing in his brotherly duties.

Mia: Drama, so then what happened?

Mom: Papi apologized to Wes and his family. His family wasn’t too thrilled to find out that I was Puerto Rican. They’d seen me a few times and assumed I was Italian as well. The nicest thing they had to say about me was that it was a shame what had happened because I was such a pretty little spic.


Mia: Are you serious?

Mom: Yeah honey you’ve got to realize the relations between Puerto Ricans and Italians in this city weren’t always the greatest.

Mia: You wouldn’t know it by the amount of Puerto Rican/Italian kids I go to school with now. Once upon a time they dissed us and now they want to kiss us.


Mom: So true.

Mia: What happened after that?

Mom: I didn’t talk to my dad for about a week. Finally Titi Eva stepped in as a mediator. I was given more freedom and allowed to date as long as I had a chaperone. But to tell you the truth for a while I was too embarrassed to face Wesley again. He refused to give up and kept contacting me everyday for about a month. We started dating again after my punishment ended but his family gave him a lot of grief about me. They just couldn’t accept that I was Puerto Rican and I didn’t want to cause any more problems for him with them, so I ended it. A few months later dad brought a bigger house on the other side of the Bronx and we moved and I never saw Wesley again.

Mia: That’s it?

Mom: Yeah.

Mia: Damn ma that’s kind of depressing, you sure know how to tell an uplifting story.

Mom: Hey on a good note I met your dad a few years later and his parents loved me! No you want to hear depressing? You’ve got to be on your way home before 11 pm when you visit your grandfather’s block… ha ha !

Mia: That was cold woman real cold. So when do you think grandpa will see me as a grown up?

Mom: Never. Child please I am 43 years old, the man still calls me “la nena” (little girl) and treats me as if I were a kid. Did you not catch him last week at dinner cutting my steak for me ? When was the last time you ever saw him cut Joey’s food?

Mia: Never.

Mom: and I’d like to point out thank you very much that I am a year older than Joey.

Just then my dad passed by and yelled his two cents in from the kitchen

Dad: Mia ask your mother what’s dad’s pet name for her.

Mom: Shhhhhhh William! Mind your business!

Mia: Well ma what is it?

Mom: I can’t remember.

Dad: It’s MONKEY FACE, he calls her monkey face!

Mom: Yeah he does, now you know my darkest secret, my father calls me Monkey Face . Oh pero wait a minute what is it he calls you nena? Hmmmm?

Mia: I don’t know what you’re talking about lady.

Dad: He calls her Miss Fluffy, hon!


Maybe one day I’ll tell you guys about my grandpa. Like I said he is too much.

Labels: family

Posted by @ 3:32 PM
5 comment from:  Mr. Khurram,  Theresa,  Leah,  Mia,  Leah,