Part One End of the beginning NEWRICANE © 2001 Ballad of the Spic Chic Luis Chaluisan E-book Text,Videos, Music Produced by: Luis Chaluisan @ 2007 WEPAwebTV [1] INNOCENCE I never meet a drug dealer until I go away to Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1975. Funny isn't it? You think I’d be dodging them left and right the way some Latino writers paint first and second-generation experiences in the city. They revel in the victim-to-riches Hollywood screen treatment, "Oh noooooo, I have to climb those long project stairs again today. They smell like pee and ammonia. I walk all the way up to the eighteenth floor because the electricity is out for the third time in a week and the elevators are not working. The Shingalings don't let the electricians in to work because they're selling dope out of the project basement. Titi Pinchi ate some bad fish from "la marketa" and drops dead "de repente" at the Intervale train station where somebody takes her shoes before the paramedics come. Now none of us have shoes to go get our food stamps with because they’re the only pair of going out shoes we had for fifteen people. We crowd into that one bedroom apartment in the projects. Ayudame San Anton. Then that big fat envelope from Harvard arrives in the mail and I’m saved." Yo, this stuff still happens and goes on a lot in the past but enough already. I here you, Bro. I feel you Babe. I feel your pain. Damn, that stuff is rough. Cono. But, can you write beyond that? The United States is a Wild West show I’ll give you that. But now that you tell your Pity Projects story for the umpteenth time can we move on to some other things? Like instead of the things we don’t have how about the things we do - integrity, panache and nerve. Welcome to Newricane © 2001 - a bit of Bronx Spic Chic. First up: I apologize for nothing in my life. Walk in my shoes if you want get on my case. Besides, I’m safe – God guides me so bring on the noise. Second: no mainland institution ever saves me. Places like Amherst College overwhelm me but none are a panacea to write home about. A couple of good things do happen during my college years. I discover a little book by a Harlem Renaissance writer named Jean Toomer titled Cane © 1923 and see my desire, fulfillment and regret in its style. Toomer is a light skinned brother coming to grips with his universality in a segregated world. He writes as he thinks in metaphors, portraits and lyricism. It’s a curious mix of things. Like himself. I understand. Some Puerto Rican cats I meet along the way help me comprehend Our own universality. My man Dizzy Izzy Sanabria thumbs his nose at the world and creates his own place in it as a painter, publisher and Salsa’s original MC. I see him in January of 1977 on a small stage in Manhattan though I first hear about Izzy in 1973. “I personally have never been part of the establishment and I probably never will be part of the establishment although I hope to become part of the establishment. Because the establishment is what's happening. You know what the word establishment means? That your established! Isn't that interesting. That's the power. Everyone that's anti- establishment is somebody trying to topple what is. But, I've been on the outside for so long as a Latino and as an artist - not being part of the mainstream -- because an artist is never really part of the establishment, an artist is always anti-establishment.” My father Freddie Chaluisan y Morales works for the establishment. He labors hard, drinks too hard and provides extra hard as a shipping clerk for thirty-five years bringing in money for my mom Ana Chaluisan y Batlle and his family. This crew consists of my brother Ronnie (Harvard '84), four adopted brothers and sisters (Tito – Cardinal Hayes '84, Chris – Cardinal Hayes '84, Debbie – Cardinal Spellman '86 and Emily (Evander Childs - '83 and UCLA '84/Universty of the Corner at Lexington Avenue, my cousin Miguel -- Lehman '83 who my parents take in at 16 and me (Amherst '86). First born and last graduated. Fame, ain’t it a bitch? Poppy’s family is huge. About 200 of them live in New York. They move en masse during the early fifties from Puerto Rico. The family’s been island hopping and mixing for generations. They originate in Southern France and Spain’s Basque country. Already pain in the asses. Settle in Haiti in the early 1800’s. Two Chaluisant brothers break out of Haiti during the 1815 Slave freedom fight and head for Las Marias in Puerto Rico. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out from the dark copper and brown colors in the family that they’re not intolerant -- at least when it comes to making babies. Along the way they drop the T in their last name and their drawers - even with each other. The main branch of the New York family is descended from two first cousins that marry in Mayaguez. The family goofs that’s why most of us are loony. I see some goofy stuff among ourselves but also some intense brilliance that’s infected with cutting sarcasm. My father can be both funny and irritating when he’s in his cups particularly during family gatherings. All his brothers and sisters are there with at least two dozen kids running around and pops just pops, "OK, that's enough. Just stand right there at the door. I want to forget you just as you are. Party's over. You all have to get out. Do you have to spoil what was a depraved and embarrassing evening by sticking around here? Just get the hell out right now. Can you understand me? The food is finished, the beer is gone and I am tired so please get the hell out of my house right now. You don't have to mambo your way out, cha cha, cho cha, merengue or do some funky chicken shit but you must get the hell out now. Can you understand the delicacy of this situation – me, a man who works six days week I implore you … just ….puleeeese geeeetttttt theeeeee Hellllll Oooouuuuuuttt! Oh, and don’t forget, I’ll see you all July Fourth. We’ll roast a pig in the back yard." My father throws out 90 people that Fourth of July after they polish off the lechon (pig) and his tipsy patience. My mom Ana runs a tight ship at home where you can’t get anyway with anything. Mommy gets up at 3:33 in the morning every day and hits the ground running. She drinks gallons of coffee to rev herself up and there’s a period of purging when she feels her world is completely out of control. Hey, let’s see how you do with a hard drinking husband and six smart-ass kids. She's one tough Rican broad; real piece of work -- Jesus Christ. Over the years we've gone toe to toe because we're both lightning rods for all kinds of things. But I got to tell you one thing -- she makes sure we all get an education and never need for food, clothes or shelter. Mommy learns English with me when I enter grammar school. We speak only Spanish with each other until I’m seven years old and totally confounded in school to the point where they tell her early on I’ll be left back. She takes English in high school on the island but struggles as well and suffers her share of embarrassments on the mainland. In Spanish the J is pronounced with and a soft H sound. One day at the Grand Union supermarket on Gun Hill Road she spends five minutes trying to get a manager to tell her where the household cleansers are, "I need some Ah-hax please." "Ah-hax? What's that?" "Ah-hax, you know, Ah-hax. It turns blue. Ah-ax" "I'm sorry lady, I don't know what you're talking about." "Ah-hax, Ah-hax, Ah-hax - scrubbing...” "Oh, Ajax ... Aisle three ... maybe you should learn how to speak right." "I can speak very right mister ... Kiss my ass do you understand that … You just have to listen closer." And eventually she speaks quite well and grows with us. Between 3:30 and 7:00 each day we sit across from each other with a variety of schoolbooks, flash cards and multi slaps when I’m not paying attention. Sometimes her attention is distracted as well while she cooks dinner and I'd end up in a pickle. "Luisito, What's the name of the story for today? "What's The Story?" "The story there in the book, what's the title of the story?" "What's The Story?" "In the book - the story in the book." "What's The Story?" "Te tan luziendo, (are you getting fresh). Tell me now, what's the name of the story?" "Mommy, What's The Story?" Whoosh! Smack! Boom! “Whoa! No Mommy, no, no, no ... Look, mommy, look, look, look the name of the story is What's the Story?” "Oh, I see. Perdoname (forgive me), OK now, what's the story?" The real story is that my mom sizes up this country real fast and figures out the only way to protect her kids is to give us weapons we can use. These two weapons are reading and writing. A lot of reading and writing. Thanks mommy. This one’s for you. She really proves herself with my twin brothers Alberto and Crispin. “Crispin? What kind of name is that? What is he some kind of breakfast cereal? We’ll call him ‘Ping’ and his brother Tito.” They’re five years old when Catholic Charities places them in our home. Ping and Tito are Siamese twins separated at birth. My brothers are only the sixth set of Siamese twins attached at the head in the United States successfully separated. Their natural mother is a troubled woman who gives birth to something like eight sets of twins. When social workers find Ping and Tito they’re a couple of “wild children” speaking their own language and running naked through their mother’s apartment – feeding themselves from old food in the refrigerator. They tell my mom that the boys should be prepared for a handicapped life. But my mom sees something else in them. They’re cagey, smart, creative, “These boys aren’t stupid. They just need some help but you got to keep an eye on them. Do you know they switch classes just to fool their teachers? They’ll try anything if you don’t watch it. Pinnnnnnng y Titooooooooo!” My moms and a group of Catholic nuns tutor Ping and Tito and they put their part into it by completing twelve years of Catholic school and a couple of years at City College. They become early graffiti and hip hop wild stylers tagging everything in sight with ABE and DILLINGER.. Today, Tito is a successful exterminator and electrician with a house and kids in New Jersey. Chris lives in Florida still painting and working the hotel scene the father of a little boy. Who knows what would have happened to them if Mommy hadn’t persisted? We’re raised in a private house in the North Bronx that my Grandfather Don Luis helps my parents buy in 1964. He’s a successful barber following World War II on 117th Street in Harlem where he cuts Malcolm X's hair once or twice at The Spanish American Barbershop a gunshot away from the Harlem Mosque. “Es un Negrito fino – intelligente. He comes in real early in the morning 5:30 – 6:00AM alone. He isn’t reserved around me or the other barbers. I feel he relaxes. We don’t agree on everything – I serve this country in World War II and believe in it -- but we see the changes Harlem goes through and we know he’s honest and dedicated, a funny negrito but sincere. That’s terrible what they do to him and his own people too. That’s terrible.” Grandpa Luis really is my great uncle. He adopts my father when my natural grandfather gives him up during the 1930’s Depression. A bachelor all his life it’s family rumor he’s gay. If that’s the case he never speaks of it. I see a different side. He takes me on special field trips after we move to the Bronx. Gramps makes it a point at the World’s Fair in 1964 to have me see Michaelangelo’s Pieta on loan from the Vatican. With all the technological marvels at the Fair I notice that this exhibit moves him the most. Mary sits with her son at peace in his death bathed in white light behind protective glass The serenity matches Don Luis reputation in life for reserve calm. But within his stillness lies a volcano of mental activity - like the truths Jesus leaves in his wake. I’m moved by Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse exhibition It’s A Small Small World. Go figure. |
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