Mambó and "Pelofino"

This is the first part of an unfinished short story I started last fall, obviously semi-autobiographical. If nothing else it depicts one of my favorite students, Mambó, better than I could do summarizing her in a couple paragraphs.

Mambó was six years old. Seis, she decided, and she liked how that sounded, short and rounded both in dominicano and haitiano, the language of her country and the language she spoke to her mother. Seis. Sis. To make six fingers she had to hold one hand out flat and stick the short finger out like a little stump from the other, like the Americana had showed her. It looked like a lot, and it made her laugh.
She didn’t know when her birthday was. Her birthday meant the day she was born, and that had a number too, like uno dos tres cuatro cinco. When the Americana asked Mambó what day she was born, she went home and asked her mama, and Pelo said it was a Tuesday in the evening and cold and raining and she was about to boil bananas when she realized Mambó was about to come out of her bouboun, so then instead of making dinner she just laid down on a wooden bunk, and when Mambó came out a woman called Natacha caught her and said she was long and thin just like Pelo, and then when her papa came back he was hungry but instead of giving him dinner Pelo gave him Mambó, and he was happy. But Mambó didn’t tell that to the Americana because it wasn’t a number like seis and she had a feeling it wasn’t what the Americana wanted to know.
But one day she heard the Americana say to someone else that Mambó was probably five or six, and then another day she heard her saying that she was probably six or maybe even seven, and Mambó liked the number seis and she liked how it looked on her fingers, so from then on she told all the other kids she was seis. And after awhile they forgot about when Mambó used to say she didn’t know her age, and they all knew that Mambó had six years.
It was still early, and the fog was slowly burning off the mountaintops as the sun gained strength. Mambó felt the hot sun on her back as she walked down the hill, but it felt good after her chilly early morning bath. She was holding both her elbows in her hands and looking down at the movement of her feet when she heard her aunt call out to her.
“Mambó, kikote ale?”
“I’m going down to Miguel’s,” said Mambó.
“Pou ki sa?”
“To buy something for my mama.”
“Wait, take these cuartos and buy me a quarter pound of sugar,” said her tía, switching to Spanish. She scurried into her house and came out with two coins in her hand.
Mambó took the change from her tía and continued down the hill. On her left was the Ramirez farm, where her mama and most of her family picked coffee. On the right was the other farm of the family that was called Vasquez. Today there was some ripe coffee to be picked, but not as much as other days. All of the men were working but most of the women weren’t, including her mama, who had stayed just outside the workers’ quarters, washing her and Mambó’s clothes with a bucket of water.
A little farther down Mambó came to the Dominican part of town. Yaqui was hanging clothes out to dry on the barbed wire fence. “Mambó, adónde vas?”
“To Miguel’s,” answered Mambó. “To buy something for my mamá.”
“For Pelofino?”
“Yes.”
Yaqui paused and kept her eyes on Mambó, holding a wet, bright blue blouse that she had been about to hang on the fence. “Mambó, why do they call your mama Pelofino?”
People always asked Mambó that question, and one day she went home and asked: “Pelo, how did you get your name?” Pelofino told her that when she met Mambó’s papa he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, so he called her Fine Hair because to him her hair seemed as fine as any white girl’s. But once Mambó told that story to Miguel at the colmado, and he laughed.
“I don’t know,” said Mambó, and kept walking, twirling one of the twists in her hair. She did this whenever she felt nervous or tired. It made her think of her mama.
“Ay, hombre.” Yaqui was shaking her head now, almost as if she were sorry for Mambó, except she had a grin on her face. “Has your mamá ever looked in a mirror? She don’t got no pelo fino. She’s a prieta like all the rest of ‘em and she’s got pelo malo.”
Mambó kept walking and twisting her hair, her own pelo malo. Yaqui’s words brushed by her like the wind. Mambó knew what they meant and didn’t need to let them enter her again: she was a prieta. Her mama was a prieta. Some Dominicans were dark too, like the young woman she saw now who was always sitting out on her front porch with her baby. She almost looked like a haitiana, but her baby boy was more white than she, so everyone said he was precioso. Mambó never got too close to the baby because she knew that if she touched it some of her dark tint might rub off and the boy could become a prieta like Mambó or her mama. Then Mambó’s best friend, Denís, would probably be angry with her and might not want to play with her anymore.
Mambó stopped when she got to the house where the Americana lived. She stood still facing the door and listened to see if the Americana was awake. Her mama had not instructed her to go see the Americana, only to make a purchase down the hill at Miguel’s colmado. But maybe today Mambó could convince the Americana to give her veinte pesos, or the pairs of jeans her mama wanted for going out. Or maybe the Americana would walk with her down the hill and sing her the alphabet song again. But putting her ear to the door, she heard no sound inside the Americana’s little casita.

Mambó was a very beautiful, intelligent little girl and motivated student, the only child for whom the Montessori literacy method I was attempting to use (for lack of any other literacy training) actually seemed to be working. She started off not knowing even one letter of the alphabet, and was too timid and/or apprehensive to even to pick up a crayon and express herself. Within a couple months of me working with her in the library, both one-on-one and with groups of other children, she not only knew the sounds of several letters but was creating a series of expressive drawings of human figures in which males and females were distinguished by their genitalia (an "O" shape representing a vagina, an "I" for a penis).

She was my biggest success story, and I loved working with her. But at times I also felt uncomfortable in her presence. Her mother (who was actually universally called "Pelofino"), was very poor and had taught Mambó to be a very effective beggar. Sometimes she would send Mambó down to the library at times of day when I hadn't been planning on opening it, and would instruct her to just hang around for lunch because she knew I or someone else in the farm office would eventually give her food (which we did on several occasions). Mambó sometimes would ask me for money, often for her mother, but giving out cash was where I drew the line. I was only living on a volunteer stipend after all, and even though that stipend was still a lot more than most families in the community earned, I didn't want to be seen as Miss Moneybags.

Once, Mambó told me very matter-of-factly that her mother would like two pairs of pants that she could use for "going out". (I later heard rumors, unconfirmed but believable, that Pelofino's boyfriend was exploiting her as a prostitute.) She didn't want me to buy her clothes, but rather, just give her some out of my supposedly infinite supply. I repeated the request to Mambó just to clarify: "Your mom wants me to give her a pair of pants?"

"Two pairs of pants," Mambó corrected me. I told her I was very sorry but that I only had 3 pairs of jeans total, and I didn't think her mom would want them because they were old and stained and not really any good for going out. Still, it wasn't the last time the request was brought up.

The most strange and vivid memory I have of Mambó and her mother is one day when I went outside of my casita to use the outhouse, only to find Mambó and Pelofino standing right outside my door and kind of staring at it. They hadn't actually knocked and I can't remember if I had any inkling at the time of why they were there. I hardly ever invited people into my house, but put in that position it seemed like the only thing I could do. I offered Mambó and her mother seats at my small kitchen table, feeling self-conscious because even if I'd been able to communicate easily with Pelofino (who spoke hardly any Spanish) I wouldn't have known what to talk to her about.

Generally when you enter the house of any campo Dominican they immediately offer you a cup of coffee. Since I didn't have any coffee in the house, I asked Pelofino, with Mambó serving as a translator, if she would like some hot chocolate. She said yes, but no milk. I heated up some water and served Mambó and her mother a mug of hot chocolate each. But they had each only taken a few sips before Pelofino took both the mugs and brought them to the sink. At first I thought that she hadn't liked it and was pouring it down the sink, but it turned out she had taken an empty water bottle she'd found in my house and was pouring the hot chocolate into the water bottle, presumably to save for later.

I will never forget that moment. Any American and even most Dominicans would have considered her behavior very rude, but when you are poor you do what you have to do, and practicality equals survival. That night, or maybe the next morning, Mambó and her mother, and probably also their friends and extended family in the batey, would be in for a rare treat: a few sips of sweet hot chocolate, reheated in an old dented pot above the fire.

Let's talk about dating!

In the last few weeks of my time in Los Marranitos, I was inspired to make up for lost time and hold some sex, gender, and dating themed info and discussion sessions for the young teen and preteen girls in the community, with whom it had taken me so long to establish a real rapport. It had been one of my goals for the year to start a "girls' group" that would involve discussions on these themes, but I had struggled to find just the right way to go about it.

Two years before I arrived in the community, another volunteer started a girl scout troupe with girls from both Los Marranitos and Los Dajaos. However, after talking to a girl scouts' representative in Santiago and bringing a couple of the girls along to a one-night girl scout sleepover camp there, I was totally turned off by the organization's exclusivity, military origins, and emphasis on getting totally hyped about cheering and screaming all day and night long. I also found that the girl scouts catered more to privileged city girls who wanted to become more "in tune with nature" by learning to start a fire and the like. This was simply ridiculous when applied to girls from Los Marranitos, who would never build a campfire just to roast hot dogs and marshmallows, and could have benefitted more from a lesson on crossing busy streets.

So, the girl scout troupe idea went out the window. I was going to do the girls' group my own way, dammit, and preferably without all the high-pitched screaming and giggling. But I soon realized that 1) it was hard to get a regular group to attend reliably once a week, and 2) it felt kind of inorganic for me to try and start discussions about sensitive issues with these girls I still didn't know that well. So the group began with activities mostly centered around self-esteem and self-image issues, and then, when I still didn't feel completely comfortable delving into the female reproductive system, evolved into a girls' arts and crafts group. I always was nagged by the feeling that I wanted to be doing something more with the women and girls, but could never figured out the best way to approach it.

For some reason, I have never been good at connecting with 12- to 14-year old girls (I think they remind me too much of the mean, cliquey girls in my middle school past). I have always found it much easier to work with younger kids. But near the end of the year, I finally realized that I had developed the rapport I needed with a small group of girls to launch into some "girl talk". So one day, I told five of them to come to the library the next day to talk about dating, and the differences between the Dominican Republic and the United States. Suddenly, the attendance problem was no longer an issue; the girls might have actually showed up to the library early. Beforehand, I prepared a little quiz full of value statements that the girls could either agree or disagree with, such as "Is it OK for a man to have more than one girlfriend? For a woman to have more than one boyfriend? Is a woman a whore if she has sex before marriage? Is a woman who isn't married by the age of 20 an old maid? Is it OK to use condoms or pills? Should a married woman drop her studies and stay at home? Is it OK for a Dominican to marry a Haitian? Is it OK for a man to beat his wife?"

When it came to the way we answered those questions, I was actually in agreement with the girls on most value questions. No one thought that it was OK for a man to be a cheater or beat his wife. Everyone agreed that a woman had the right to use birth control, to continue her studies, to have help in household chores from her husband, etc. In short, the girls supported gender equality in theory, and even agreed that Dominicans and Haitians should be able to marry in theory. But when I reworded the questions in more personal ways, the responses were different: "Well, I wouldn't have sex before I got married. You can do that in the United States, but not here." And more disturbingly: "I wouldn't have a Haitian boyfriend. They smell bad. I like blue eyes and blond hair." Naomi, the most outgoing of the group, insisted that this was just her personal preference and she was definitely not being racist. As disappointed as I was, I realized that my arguing with her wasn't going to do much good.

We also got into an interesting discussion about the other aforementioned issue. It was generally agreed that in their community, a girl who had sex and didn't commit to that person as a lifelong partner would be seen as a slut. However, for a man to have multiple sexual partners, both before and after "marriage", would be considered normal. The girls clearly thought this to be unfair, but when I asked them, "Would you get married to someone who had had sex before?", Naomi chimed in with, "Well, as long as he didn't tell me about it." I countered, "But isn't honesty the most important thing? He would be putting you in danger by not telling you-- what if he had HIV?"

"Well," said Naomi, "I would marry him, but I would make him get checked for HIV first."

It turned out the girls knew more about HIV than I'd anticipated; happily because they had some of the knowledge they needed to protect themselves, and sadly because the reason they knew about the disease was because it had affected their community. I learned from this conversation that there was a boy attending the school in Los Dajaos who had been born with HIV. The major misconception they had was that they seemed to think that the boy with HIV had "gotten better" and that he wouldn't ever actually get AIDS. They simply refused to believe me when I said that although he might live for a long time, he would eventually die of AIDS. They were also taken aback when I explained that you could protect yourself from AIDS with a condom, but not with the injection form of the pill that many women get here if they don't want to become pregnant right away. Although the girls thought that using a condom is kind of gross (hardly anyone in the community uses them since the birth control injection is more popular), they seemed gratified to have learned this important piece of information.

That first discussion session, despite some frustrations, went so well that I decided to schedule another one for the next day and do a mini-lesson on the reproductive system. It quickly became evident that the girls had never heard anything about this topic before. They didn't know whether to be weirded out or scandalized by the anatomical drawings I was making on the board. When I asked the group if anyone knew why women have their period, Ariel chimed in, "Because we're women!!" All the girls chuckled when I explained that women produce "eggs" inside their bodies and were both fascinated and disgusted to learn that their period blood was actually a discarded bed for the eggs.

Then Yaneli, always the inquisitive one, began asking me personal questions about sex. This is the same girl who, a few months earlier, had the gall to ask me with a smirk on her face if I staid over Fermín's house when I went to visit him in San Cristobal. After a brief hesitation I decided to give her the straight up truth: "yes." I tried to explain to her that in my culture it is not just that people want to have sex all the time; rather, a couple might wait many years before deciding to get married, so it may not be that important to them to stay celibate until marriage. To this, Yaneli had responded, "I wish here could be more like there!" But I am still not sure which part of the American cultural norm appealed to her: getting married later or having sex without being married. Probably both.

Even though she had a tendency to ask impertinent questions and make the usual smart-ass teenage comments, I had become fond of Yaneli over the course of the year because I recognized that she was very intelligent and much more likely than her peers to think critically about issues rather than clinging steadfastly to the set of (often machista) values she had learned growing up in the campo. She also was an avid reader. When I first started opening the library in September, she (at 13 years old) insisted on reading children's picture books even though I kept encouraging her to try out the young adult novels. I tried to counter this tendency in the pre-teen and teenage girls by reading to them out loud from classic young adult novels translated to Spanish: first Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, then Charlotte's Web. By the time I was halfway through Charlotte's Web, Yaneli got impatient because I was not reading enough for her in one day. So she took home a copy of the book that night and by the next day she had finished the entire thing. Since I had not read the book for awhile, it was she who had to remind me what happened in the end! (When I went back to visit the farm the following March, Yaneli was already halfway through the Harry Potter series.)

Back to my educational session on the reproductive system: I was done with the female and beginning to explain the male reproductive organ when Yaneli, with that familiar smirk on her face, took in her fist a piece of pink sidewalk chalk about 3 1/2 inches long and maybe 3/4 inch in diameter, with a rounded point at the end. "Naomi, is THIS what one looks like?" she asked, giggling. "You know, one of THOSE?"

I laughed and said jokingly, "Well, a little bigger than that."

But Yaneli stopped laughing. She was incredulous. "BIGGER?!"

"Well, yeah, usually, I mean, a little bit," I said nervously.

"But then how in the WORLD do you get it IN??"

The smile returned to my face. "Well, I think when the time comes, you will figure it out," I said. "Don't worry."

When the time comes. When I came back to visit the community a little less than a year later, Naomi, at age 14, had gotten married and was probably on her way to having her first child. In Los Marranitos, the transition from "young girl" to "married woman" happens instantly. I can't judge anyone for that, much less change the minds of these girls in a day. And indeed, some women (though probably a minority) seem truly happy with the child-rearing life. But I admit to finding some consolation in having at least helped prepare Yaneli for her future first encounter with the male organ. Perhaps she won't be as frightened when she finds that it is, indeed, just a bit bigger than a piece of sidewalk chalk.