My Voice: A Memoir Read Free Page A

take pictures wherever he went. Uelo was known on the block. He’d walk into the Dominican restaurant and they’d say: “
El Viejo Miguel, arroz blanco, habichuela y un bistec
?” Yes, they knew his order before he told them. He was that type of guy.
    Uelo also taught me something about the reality of the neighborhood. Despite the fact that he was known on the block, he admitted that he had to be careful because he was also getting robbed . . . regularly!
    “I don’t mind if it’s with a gun, but it’s the knives that scare me.” He explained his robbery preference.
    As a kid this was terrifying shit. Plus, it made me really angry. He was an old man! What kind of animal would rob an old man?! Especially my Uelo! Oh my God, it makes me mad remembering it today. Probably more mad than he ever was about it.
    Uelo lived so long that when he did finally pass away at the age of 105, I couldn’t believe he was really gone. That was more than eight years ago and I still miss him.
    My mother and I lived with Uelo briefly, in between apartments of our own in Washington Heights and the Bronx. Between our stays with Uelo and those with my grandmother Livia and her husband, Tommy,I felt lucky to get to know the older members of our family and to hear their stories.
    As a kid I didn’t know the details of Livia’s divorce from my biological grandfather Victor. But as time went on I heard of his struggles with alcohol and gambling addiction and how drinking sometimes made him mean and often verbally abusive. His kids had different perspectives, but I think my mother, being the eldest, saw the most and the worst of it. What I’ve come to learn is that children of alcoholics have different MOs for coping. They either remove themselves or they learn how to lie or even turn to alcohol in some cases. Some cope better than others, but what I
do
know is that my family to this day has remnants of his addiction.
    We all have family histories that are not perfect. Or at least I like to think that one of the reasons I’m sympathetic to people’s flaws and struggles is because I really believe everybody’s bullshit is often not even about you—it’s about all the bits and pieces of where and what you come from.
    •   •   •
    A s best I can remember, my father, Julio (or Nat, as most of the family called him) Martinez, would have qualified as tall, dark, and handsome. The time I got to spend with him was at my grandmother Petra’s apartment on 193rd in Washington Heights. My father would hoist me up onto his shoulders as soon as I arrived.
    I only remember him as fun, throwing me up in the air like that and making me laugh like crazy. I didn’t get to see my dad a lot, so like with most kids, the parent that you see the least, you’re the most excited when you do see them. I’m sure that had to get on my mother’s nerves.
    What got on
my
nerves whenever I visited my dad was that there always seemed to be different women around who were alwaysover-the-top nice to me. But I never fell for it. Even as a child, I had a good sense of when people were full of shit.
    Aside from that, I loved everything about visiting my grandmother Petra—who adored and pampered me to no end. As the super of the building where they lived, she had this whole big basement floor, so there was plenty of room for both my father and my uncle Raymond to live there with her. My grandma Petra was old-school Puerto Rican and, in my memory, looked a lot like Celia Cruz. She had the same nails, that same complexion. She was a good woman with a big heart. She rented one of the rooms in the basement to this guy she referred to as the “Blind Man,” which I know sounds rude, but she’d feed him and take care of him like he was a member of the family. She and the Blind Man would drink Schaefer beers together in front of the TV and watch telenovelas till someone fell asleep.
    One of my earliest memories of being at my grandma Petra’s took place when I