LA ÑAPA

Time is how you spend your love.

That first summer after I turned fifteen at boarding school, I came home to find that little suit of clothes that always awaits us, no matter our age, outside our parents' front door. I was supposed to dress up as a child and be their hijita again?! Did they really think that someone who had read Saint-Exupéry (in the original) and could recite any number of poems by heart could not go into the city by herself and come home on the subway after dark?

Mami, of course, countered with stories of recent crimes in the neighborhood, rapes and murders that stirred my fears and made me too scared to carry out my assertion that I was old enough to take care of myself.

Aware that they would have outright rebellion on their hands if all their daughters stayed in Queens for the summer, my parents offered to send us back "home" to our tías and cousins in the Dominican Republic, an offer that two of my sisters accepted. I choose instead to accept my father's offer of working at his office in Brooklyn -- a narrow storefront on Graham Avenue next to a travel agency with posters on the window advertising cheap fares to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. In part, I wanted my own money so I'd be able to finance whatever my parents forbade me to do as long as they were paying for it. My pay was to be twenty-five dollars per day, with an extra bonus of ten dollars more on Saturdays and Sundays. Oh, yes, the office stayed open seven days a week. How else was Papi supposed to pay full tuition at Abbot after a first year of his girls being on partial scholarships?

The hours were brutal. By five-thirty in the morning we were out of the house in order to avoid traffic and be able to see patients who had to be at their factoría jobs by seven-thirty. Grumpy with sleep, I'd climb into the black Mercury, and we'd drive down the deserted streets of Jamaica to the Grand Central, changing over to the Long Island Expressway, then onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I'd stare out the window at miles upon miles of cemeteries on both sides. Our habit was not to talk much; we were both still sleepy, both loners by temperament. One time, no doubt inspired by the landscape, I asked him if he wanted to be buried here or there, and he shrugged as if he didn't really care.

Occasionally, I recited for him -- he liked that, but got annoyed if afterward, I pestered him with English-class type questions in imitation of Miss Stevenson. His favorites were "The Highwayman" and "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" and "In Flanders Fields," which seemed appropriate as we traveled through the land of the dead, and Walt Whitman always made him shake his head and snicker.

We'd work until six, six-thirty at night, until the last patient was seen, the wad of money entrusted by the designated cashier nurse into my father's hands. Depending on emergencies or calls from patients too ill to come to la oficina, we'd make house calls, walking up poorly lit stairways in dilapidated tenement buildings, my heart beating strong with fear, recalling my mother's stories. If the suburbs of Queens were rife with rapists and murderers, what would a bad neighborhood in Brooklyn turn up? But no one ever touched us. The people of el vecindario took care of el doctor, or so I thought, until years later, when I asked Papi about those house calls and why he thought he had never been mugged or threatened. "I paid for the protection service," he told me.

"You paid for it?" I was shocked.

So that's who those slick-looking fellows had been! They always came in pairs, waving off my wanting to fill out a chart for them. They had some business with el doctor. Could I please pass them ahead for un minutico? I'd answer huffily that others were waiting as well, but they were insistent. Finally, I'd go get one of the nurses to back me up, but one glance at these guys, and even the brassy Bigi said it was okay. I'd show them to the teensy, windowless office at the end of the hall where Papi met with drug reps who were also allowed to butt in line. Minutes later, Papi himself would escort the men out, shaking their hands and thanking them for stopping by to saludar.

I lasted all summer at my job, my stash of independence money growing. Papi was proud. He had a daughter who was not afraid of hard work. Even Mami was impressed. But neither she nor my father knew the real education I was getting at el Centro Médico from Bigi and the nurses. . . . No matter how far I traveled down the paths that Abbot might open, I needed to keep coming back to where I had come from, to drink at the springs of my culture, practice my Spanish and my merengue, and feel grateful for the time spent with my father in a world that was neither here nor there -- which was probably why he didn't care where he was buried, why he always seemed homesick no matter where he was.

Time is how you spend your love.