I

During that time, there was no existence of the Mediterranean. The only world I knew was just the one limited by my city. At the other side, out of my city, there was the one and only place. An unknown place that covered the rest of the planet: New York.

That was the place where all Dominicans that had the lucky privilege of getting on a plane ended up going. They didn’t go anywhere else. Just to New York. Because the planes of the time, the ones I remember, knew only how to fly there. That was the place that covered the rest of the globe the one only seen in pictures, on books, and magazines, or in one of the famous persecutions of Starsky & Hutch. Back then, I though that a plane was the cleanest place in the world.

My aunt, before her travels to New York….because everyone had an aunt in New York, would spend hours cleaning her ears with q-tips and checking her teeth in front of a mirror. You have to be perfect to get on a plane. Just as perfect as my aunt: neat ironed clothes, shiny shoes and a ponytail tighter than a Boy Scout knot. Her nephews kept a certain distance so they wouldn’t mess everything up. Later on, already at the airport, we had to get on line in order for our aunt to leave a red lipstick stain on our cheeks before entering into the zone where only, solely and exclusively the traveler could enter with the wonderful fortune of going to New York. Afterwards, we just go back to el barrio. Most likely, we returned in a taxi, whose driver according to my dad, turned out to be a thief. The only thing left to do was to try and be content at home with the Sunday’s Chacabana and the one dollar sports socks that my aunt brought for us as a present. The left over Tang powder juice that my aunt didn’t like could also do the trick or the Mabi of Santo Domingo because, according to her, they were both made with filthy water. She used to say.

The clean feeling of getting on a plane still hung in our house. Everything was going slowly back to normal; the feeling created from my aunt’s departure was disappearing little by little as days passed by. The rest was just left to the people. They made sure that the smell of the Avon deodorant and Revlon shampoo that my aunt left in the bedroom would go away. They made sure that the illusion that blinded me when the good ones of the TV series, the cops, when they were chasing the bad ones and in their way they would hit a fruit car on the sidewalk for later on trap them in a dead end alley in which surroundings you could see the emergency stairs of the buildings, the garbage bins, some newspapers flying around moved by the wind and the smoke coming out of the sewers.

El barrio was able to retain -until my aunt’s next visit- all the illusion lumped together in a fantasy with the shape of skyscrapers. That’s the way el barrio was: a sort of theater with an open show all year round in which the spectators were part of the play. A small circus of spontaneous shows that helped me to condemn in the pictures of the books, magazines and the TV series that place that covered the rest of the world when there was no existence of the Mediterranean.

II

Many years later i found out that her name was Pricilla. During the time when there was nothing more important than hurling a ball against a wall, since none of us had a bat to use, her name was simply Morena: the girl next to the colmado’s door. The one every guy liked. The widow's daughter. The shy girl. But her mother was not really a widow. Instead of death, her husband actually had left to New York several years earlier; no one had a piece of news concerning him since.

Morena. oh Morena!.. With her big eyes. She used to sit every evening on her porch. Every Saturday morning you could see her helping her mother with the duties of home. What a good daughter Morena was!

One day Morena annouced she was leaving to the place we have only seen in the magazines and movies. Her father had finally given signs that he indeed was alive.

Thats when the romance that my brother secretly had with Morena, was exposed. A "secret love" is what they had and nobody ever knew.

She left, but they remained in touch with letters, and phone calls, I think. There were also pictures. Small pictures, with paler colors and rounded corners: pictures of Morena playing in the snow. Morena standing on a porch wearing gloves and a scarf. Morena in a street with buildings in the back so high, they seemed to touch the sky. Morena standing on a famous corner that repeatedly appeared in movies. Morena here... Morena there... All this pa’que everyone in the neighborhood to know where she was. Yes, right there. Where else can she be, if not in New York.

When Morena returned there were no more teenagers in the neighborhood, or kids playing in the streets, or shy girls. When she came back she was not "Morena" anymore, but Pricilla. She was now the absolute owner of a 4by4. A Cherokee. The first one we had ever been so close to. The power: New York.

A jeep that could take anyone’s breath away un jeepeton. With a shiny little sphere nailed into the dash board, which moved inside a crystal ball and directed course. This was a real machine. The Camaro became obsolete.

III

Julito used to say her body looked like marriage but her face looked like divorce. That didn't seem to bother the guys in the neighborhood. The truth is that every time Miguelina passed by the corner of the colmado, lots of heads turned to look at her. Usually wearing those lycra pants that transformed her behind into a soccer ball.

The guys in the neighborhood were always hanging out on the corner, reclined on their plastic chairs against the wall of the colmado. On that corner everyday was a weekend. An oasis of drunks in the middle of the neighborhood that recruited every one that looses his job.

Miguelina was the mouth of the neighborhood. When Laurita escaped with her boyfriend, Miguelina debuted as a blabbermouth. Before Morena mutated into Pricilla. Robertico, David and I, used to spy on Miguelina. She wasn't cute, but we didn't actually have any reference to judge a feminine naked body. Miguelina used to look at herself in the mirror. She used to measure her boobs and sometimes she will draw a spot mark with a pen, close to one of her nipples. "Doña Lengua". "Don Culo". Used to day Robertico. Used to say Julito.

Mr. Alejandro came back from New York, Where else was he suposed to come from, to solve the scandal her daughter had created, sicretly scaping in the middle of the night with a man that, according to him, was not worth it.

She was happy with that man, miguelina swear. With that man twenty years older than her. With that stranger who's only merit according to Doña Lengua was to have a tremendous whip between his legs.

For the first time Mr. Alejandro returned in a different time that was not the one of the grapes, the pork and the moscatel wine. Hiding his face from the same. Tired of his daughter Miguelina. He became a shadow behind the windows. Incapable of passing by the colmado, because he fear the oasis: the eternal weekend corner. Coño que vaina!

IV

It was the way of saying it: "maquillao", or with make up. Because even at that the Gringos were good at. That’s how they brought Julito's cousin, Kuki , from New York. His family said it was an accident. Miguelina assured that it was not his real body and that the only real thing they had brought from Kuki was his head. That it wasn't an accident. That a cut barrel shotgun was almost like a grenade.

"Malos pasos", it was usually the original cause of this kind of thinks, acording to my mother. And that city -she affirmed- always corrupts the youth.

It fill their eyes with a bunch of things until they finally get into malos pasos, the bad road.

The life there wasn't worth a penny and the kids dare to raise the hand on their parents. "Mire usted que vaina". My mother… used to say.

Kuki have had left two years ago, and six months after he came back with a Metz’s shirt three sizes bigger than his, lots of chains hanging from his neck and with a belt wich buckle was full of spark that formed the letters: NYC .

A year and a half after that, he came back again and his face was even more resplendence than a porcelain doll.

Miguelina told me that over there the gold chains are sell by seconds. You pay the price of ten seconds. They grab the edge of a big roll and start running. The hopkeeper take a few drags, look at the watch, and after ten seconds has passed, with the blow of an axe, he cuts the chain. The fastest runner gets more chain. Kuki used to be very fast.

V

Nobody ever saw the whip man round the neighborhood. Nobody ever knew how he was except for Miguelina, of course. Mr. Alejandro went back to New York without solving that problem. Without fulfilling his promise of killing the whip man. Promise made in the corner of the colmado when he finally bit the shame and stopped at the oasis to tip up the elbow with the guys of the neighborhood and calm their irony with a few dollars.

Miguelina’s tongue lost some power. There was no more events to talk about. Or couples catch with the hands beyond the decency. Or disguised stories.

That’s when Pricilla came back. With her Cherokee. With her smile and more pictures: more stories and less prejudice. My brother Horacio always refused to talk about his intimacy with her: the old Morena : the new woman. When she left, she did the same thing, same thing all of them used to do: leave a sensation of impotency and exclusion. The ones that knew New York and the ones that did not. It was now the neighborhood who was in charge of squeeze the truth every moment to our faces. The school bus was a donation. A yellow bus. One of those that says "school bus" in the front, and has an ear on each side of the front with the word "stop" written on it. They didn't even erase the sign that said: "Bedford Elementary school". That was the last straw!

The neighborhood became sad and intolerable. it seemed to have another city inside of it. For some people it was an imaginary city. The sensation of my aunt's departure became permanent. A way of life. Everyone took their own path, and the spark of the neighborhood vanished. It disappear. Some how, maybe, it became an out of place New York. Or just a desire of that city. A neighborhood. Most of the guys had one day their own pictures with the building in the back. While for me..... I was never a good runner. After all, I went carefully walking and little by little got to the Mediterranean.