Ingrid Falconi's Page

I am a survivor of my mad existence. The long conflicted nights set my imagination aflame and feverish stream of days sustained me as it pulled me along.  I was raised in the city of concrete and inhaled the black dense fumes daily. I slept fitfully through the noise and learned how to keep up with the frantic pace of the claustrophobic crowds. It’s a restless city, but I found peace on the enormous and lush Great Lawn of Central Park and  have felt cradled by the looming skyscrapers and the historic brownstones that lined the avenues.  It was hard for me to believe that lives could come together  in this  erratic  metropolis and still be torn apart.  My parents met in high school during the late 1960‘s. Even years later, the intensity of the thrill that charged through him affected him still whenever he spoke of meeting my mother for the first time.

                                                                                        "The first time I saw her, it hit me like a shot. I told my friend that I was going to marry her. He didn’t believe me, but I was right." His handsome face reflected powerful emotions that made his eyes soft with care.

                                                                                        "She grew up rough, you know?  I mean, that‘s why she‘s the way she is." he shook his head sadly. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. It was the same old excuse that I’d heard too many times to really believe. Secretly, I have kept a beloved memory of my parents embracing and dancing to a deep throbbing rhythm. He loved to make her laugh and when she did, she laughed loud and hearty. She would throw her head back and open her mouth wide and let out a sound that came from low in her throat. I take that moment as evidence that a great love had existed.

They were married on a hot summer day in July 1971 at Our Lady Queen of Angel’s church. The iron steeple building sat on 113th street in Spanish Harlem flanked the dark brick of the Projects.

Their wedding photos showed them staring into the lens with a mixture of happiness and hope. 

My mother, Lorna Garcia looked lovely in her handmade satin and lace gown  with a cathedral train. A tiara of pearls perched elegantly on her carefully done curls and it gleamed in the light. She had a delicate oval face with tawny skin that had a spray of freckles across her pert nose. She had wide chocolate brown eyes, high cheekbones and slim lips. Her true beauty laid in her smile. She didn’t do it often, but it lit up her eyes and made her look vulnerable, hinting a need for protection. Don’t be fooled.

My father, Tomas Manuel Diaz Jr. was a shade darker than his bride. He looked every day of his eighteen years with his chestnut brown hair parted on the side, his hooded brown eyes, a slightly wide nose, defined lips that curled up with a smirk, and a strong jaw. His slender build fit the tuxedo well and he held his new wife with a confident strength. They made a stunning couple.

While he didn’t hesitate to marry the love of his life so young, my mother would often display her reservations  for years afterward. She gave the impression that marriage sucked you in with false promises and sweet dreams only to find it being a lot of work to maintain, that eventually it changed you and threatened to snuff out your light.                            

                                                                                           "I wanted more time to be me. I was in no rush to be somebody’s wife and mother."  She said looking away. I had to wonder if the family had suspected that she was having sex and getting married was more of a precaution. If she ended up pregnant, they wouldn’t have a bastard running around mucking things up. Thin lines appeared between her brows and her words stank of regret for choosing to please others instead of herself. Or maybe she was caught in a loop of the day I was born. The day her innocence ended.

                       Metropolitan Hospital was beaten by heavy rains and strong winds when I screamed by first breath on April in 1972. The unusual weather was unexpected and the fallen bodies of street signs, thick branches and glass coffin phone booths went on for blocks. The hospital was a gothic monstrosity tucked into the eastside. It had elaborate arches over the main entrance and marble swirled floors. It distracted the eyes from the glare of the fluorescent lights, but provided no protection from the sting of disinfectant.

The corridors saw a lot of me as I wandered while my parents worked.                           

My parents’ marriage was volatile. Yelling, screaming, cursing, slamming, hitting, bleeding and crying became normal and dreadful. It’s not an easy sight to see your mother trying to pull out every hair on your father’s head or your father hitting your mother so hard in the kidneys, she peed blood and could barely walk. These things are branded on my brain and seared my heart.

They handled these times differently.

My father would meet his friends in clubs and stay out all night leaving my mother home to pace, smoke and bitch. Most days she was impatient, but the silences between them would grate on her nerves and she’d become a shrieking banshee on acid. I had learned early that comfort was not what she needed.

                                                                                          "Not now." she'd say after pushing away my hug. I used to get angry at him for making her that way, but I already knew it in the back of my heart that she couldn‘t feel me much less love me. I knew it, but I refused to believe it. Denial is a powerful tool; it provides blind spots of various sizes to block the unpleasant truths.

                         The one person I saw with 20/20 vision was my paternal grandmother, Maria. My abuela was an unfailing lighthouse in my chaos. She somehow knew that the way to my heart in allowing me all the space I needed to express myself, even if that meant sliding across the floor in her clean sheets. She took it all in stride and gave me a motherly love that can never be replaced. Her one bedroom apartment in the Bronx was my palace and she made me feel like a princess that would someday inherit a kingdom. It gave me pride that I had knowledge and experienced in our customs, in our foods and music and in understanding our language. She spoke to me in Spanish and I responded in English, that’s how we taught each other. She wasn't always aware of what went on at home, mostly because of the Golden Rule: What happens in the house stays in the house. I had more than one beating for forgetting. My father was usually the first one to break that rule and shamelessly pour out a few troubles.

                        Maria Rivera was born in  Aguadilla, Puerto Rico in 1933. Her mother died in childbirth and the child soon after. She had an older brother and sister who married young and lived in other parts of Puerto Rico.  They had children of their own and didn't have the means or the space to take in their younger sibling. She was shuffled around through relatives she hardly knew until one of them brought her to New York City. Manhattan was a busy place in 1947. They were able to find a decent apartment on 115th street and Lexington Avenue. She didn't get much schooling, but I am pretty certain that having a factory job sewing buttons on wool coats at fourteen years old was quite an education as well. She wasn't a wild child, she was self controlled and disciplined. She knew how to make the most of a situation. Her emotions were always kept in check except for her family. We saw the tears and the worry on her weary face. As a child, it never occurred to me that she was getting older until  I saw a black and white photo of her at seventeen in a club. She wore a black off the shoulder dress and I imagined her darker than the pasty white of the harsh flash. Her hair was swooped up in the front and into a low bun. Her full defined lips were probably a rosy red. Her earth colored eyes bright and danced with joy of being young. She sat ramrod straight, completely relaxed as she smiled shyly into the camera.

When she was about nineteen, she met Tomas Manuel Diaz Sr. through a mutual friend. He was handsome man of twenty from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. He wasn't a Barrio rat who couldn't put two words together and she was drawn to his intellect and charm.

                                                                                        "Y muy aguilloso de todo de Puerto Rico." she said wistfully. He was proud of his roots. I don't know the story about their relationship, but I know that once my father was born, he was gone. I've only seen a picture of him. In the aged Kodak, he looked about forty with  his gray hair combed back. He wore a button shirt and a pair light colored pants, it was striking contrast to his deep tan. He looked calm, at peace with himself and his life, but a wicked streak showed in his grin. I searched my memory for his face, but I couldn't find any trace of him.

She raised my father like most Puerto Rican women in those days raised their sons, like kings. She gave in to most tantrums and requests. It kept their relationship close, but it didn't stop him from doing tricks off the fire escapes and jumping from roof to roof with his friends, resulting in a broken arm and a scar that went from his wrist to his elbow. Ever since then, whenever he left their small apartment on Grand Concourse, she'd respond to his " Bendicion, Mami" with "Que Dios te companine'" and watch him go, trying not to let him see her worry.

The year I was born, she met a security guard who worked at the hospital named Earl Jonson.  At the time, she worked the manual service elevator and wore her uniform proudly. The charcoal gray skirt, a white button shirt, a deep red blazer with the hospital's insignia on the lapel and black low heels gave her day purpose. She didn’t go out to eat with the housekeeping hens for lunch; instead she preferred to stand outside of her elevator smoking a cigarette and drinking her coffee. He must have been entranced by her. She had dyed her sable locks with Nice and Easy #101, light ash blonde. Her hair curled and swirled down and around her shoulders. It should have looked ridiculous, but instead she looked brighter and younger. She was her own person and expressed herself without fear. Whether she wore her clinging lipstick red dress or a floral patterned bikini, she wore it confidently. She never exercised because she knew the value of her time and didn't waste it by worrying about the sags and bags.

                                                                                    "La vida es para vivir." she'd say.

She lived to work, no one worked harder. She never avoided it, not even when she got hurt on the job. She was fussing with the faulty elevator door and broke her index finger. Still, there she was the next morning in the Woman's lounge, flipping through the latest issue of Avon, half listening to the ladies gossip. They clucked around the large table, pecking at their food. Her broken finger in a bandaged splint looked awkward and stuck out from the pages.

She felt that God had put her in the job and she intended to stay until He said otherwise. She was religious, but didn't attend Mass. She had her own way of praising God and asking for answers to her prayers. She started to go to the Grotto (pronounced groo-ta) during 1977. It was part of a church in the Bronx. The Grotto has a series of connecting caves and each one had a statue or two of saints. At the end, it took you outside with a stone stairway that led you to the top. Christ’s crucifixion was depicted in an enormous painting with flowers and melted candles at the foot of it. People would kneel to pray and gaze at His anguished face.

A line would form near the entrance that had long benches for those especially weary in spirit. People would come to collect water that flowed from under a wondrous statue of the Virgin Mary. Next to it, an alcove of candle stands, some new, some old. Fresh and withered flowers all around from the faithful. The mini waterfall of very cold water that we thought to be holy was worthy of traveling any distance. Abuela would fill up four gallon jugs with the blessed liquid.

                           She and Earl moved into the one bedroom on 174th street and Westchester Avenue. The balcony faced a playground and in honor of finding such a great place, she erected an altar on her tall dresser. She had a number of saints and a framed picture of Jesus on the wall above it. Next to that was a picture of her mother, Carmen. Her largest saint, Santa Barbara stood in the middle then San Lazaro, San Miguel, Santa Lucy and San Antonio. They stared at you kindly from their pristine white cloth and were surrounded by coins, money, and candy and clipped prayers for certain requests. Every week, she would mix and burn herbs in an aluminum pot. Then she'd walk around the apartment shaking the embers so that the fumes covered everything with blessings and luck. It was a religion for abuela that suited her lifestyle, encouraged her faith and kept a peace that instilled itself so deeply that no matter how bad things were, you felt it from the moment you stepped into the apartment.

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