My Cousins in Puerto Rico Call me Gringa
Episode 5 of Model Ricans: Desiree meets another student who reflects her questions about identity and gender.
Welcome back to the Latinas in Tech TV series on Substack! I’m Chakra Girl, a beam of light and your superhero hostess while Dr. Nutmeg rests in a coma. Scroll down to see her latest JavaScript dreams for masking credit card numbers and invoking functions that will NEVER run again. If this chic doesn’t wake up soon, we’re gonna have to change the branding, the domain, the trademark — the entire identity of this show, verdad???
Ayyyyy….it’s a lot to think about so tonight we got another episode of “Model Ricans” that continues to explore and unpack the identity of mainland kids whose parents were born in Puerto Rico. In last week’s episode, Desiree Sanchez was trying to figure out who she is in her new environment of snOrlando Borelando. Is she still a Nuyorican? Was she ever a Puerto Rican? Or has she unofficially joined the Mickey Mouse club? Lucky for us, her bodily functions interrupt the pubescent existential crisis.
In this week’s episode, Desiree meets another student who reflects her questions about identity and gender. Check out the JavaScript sponsorship, then let us know in the comments if you can relate to Desiree’s identity crisis!
Dr. Nutmeg’s JavaScript Dreams
While Dr. Nutmeg is in a coma, her subconscious is working out the original code that caused her grief. The following were the only function expressions that looked remotely useful in the data visualizations we've been observing while she sleeps at The FACTory:
const maskCreditCard = function(number) {
const str = number + " ;
const last = str.slice(-4);
return last.padStart(str.length, '*');
};
console.log(maskCreditCard(4337843967894); --> ****7894
maskCreditCard('3348596799784');
----------------------------------------------------------------
// Immediately Invoked Function Expressions (IIFE)
const runOnce = function () {
console.log('This will never run again');
};
runOnce();
// IIFE
(function () {
console.log('This will never run again');
const isPrivate = 23;
})();
// console.log(isPrivate);
(() => console.log('This will ALSO never run again'))();
{
const isPrivate = 23;
var notPrivate = 46;
}
// console.log(isPrivate);
console.log(notPrivate);
Episode 5: My Cousins in Puerto Rico Call me Gringa
1988
Monotone voice in my head drones on and on like the hurricane chainsaws, period all over my white shorts, who wears white shorts, why am I wearing white shorts, why are the hallways halfway outside, why is it warm in January?
This school is so weird.
Don't want to be here.
Want to go home.
Dad says this is home now.
New York is not home anymore.
Dad doesn't understand anything about kids.
He says he was a kid once, but I don't think he really remembers.
He is 47! So old, there's no way he can remember what it's like to be 13!
I am freaking out. I can't breathe.
While I'm sitting on the toilet sniffling and rolling up paper into my underwear, I see a pair of white sneakers and hear a knock on the stall door.
"Mira, I have a long-sleeved shirt you can wrap around your waist," says a voice with a slight sing-song Spanish accent, just like Mom's.
A black-and-white checkered shirt hurls over the door. When I slide the latch, I see it's the boy with the saxophone case. Except he is not a boy. He is a girl with a short haircut. "Where’s that accent from?"
"I used to live in Puerto Rico...in Vieques," she says without the accent, then turns toward the mirror to pop a pimple on her chin. Her eyes are bright blue. Hair shaved so close to her head, she looks like one of those military guys. Skin so mocha my cousins would call her morena, negrita, prieta.
"My cousins in Puerto Rico call me gringa," is all I can manage in a monotone because there is nothing that intimidates me more than another Puerto Rican girl.
She looks me up and down as I tie the black and white checkered shirt around my waist. "You're Puerto Rican? You don't look Puerto Rican," she says with the accent again. "And you don't talk like a Puerto Rican, either."
The way she flips her accent on and off like a switch pisses me off, so I flip on my New York switch. "You don't look Porto Rican eetha. And why is your hair so shawt? You look like a boy." When I say the word “hair” the “r” is practically silent.
Not fazed by my accent or my sudden aggression, she pats her head while looking in the mirror. "My mom — I call her Valeria — made me cut it. She wishes I was a boy."
I look at her reflection in the mirror. "Why does she want you to be a boy?"
Then she spins to look at me. "Porque tu sabes — one day she comes home from work and says, ‘Mira, Marga, being a girl in the world is really hard.’ Then she made me cut my hair and started calling me Mars. Pero my real name is Margarita. Marga for short."
"Is Mars the boy version for the name Marga?"
"Ay, no…Valeria lives on planet Mars while the rest of us earthlings have to deal with reality. But she might get her wish, who knows? Unlike you, I haven't gotten my period yet."
"Ooieee. Periods are the worst thing about being a girl." I turn around to see if my butt is covered in the mirror but I'm too short. "When my cousin got hers, she was nine. That’s like…a child. She gets cramps and pukes from the pain every month."
Marga smiles. "That sucks for your prima…but I seriously can't wait for it to happen so Valeria gets off my back."
I turn around quickly. "Ooooeiiii. Why would you want a horror movie in your pants every month?"I start washing my hands. Scrubbing underneath my fingernails with hot water and soap can't erase my confusion no matter how hard I try. Who am I now that I have this period? A BloodyRican? Everything keeps changing. My chest starts to burn and the tears begin to form but I push both sensations backwards. Scrubbing my hands harder, I hear myself saying, "You don't want your period, believe me. Menu-strating means now I'm gonna get pregnant."
Marga interrupts. "It's menstruation, not menustrating."
"Who cares how it's pronounced, you freak boy!" I wash my hands harder cuz I'm mad but it's like I am not here. That zombie thing again. And then I shut off the water. The tap drip-drips in between the thick silence of an empty bathroom during classes. Tugging a paper towel from the wall, I wipe my hands, as if I'm done with Marga and all the blood and this stupid school and snOrlando, but I don't move.
Marga breaks the silence with a low, calm voice. "I am not a freak. Calling me a freak...that's not...that's not nice."
I swivel on my feet to look at Marga again. "Don't go all sensitive on me, Marga. In New York, we fight first and then we become friends."
"I was nice to you, I brought you a shirt to cover your shorts!"
"Great, thanks, I appreciate it, whatever, but do you know how disgusting it will be to walk around the rest of the day with blood in my shorts?"
"OK, OK, sorry, tranquila, I know it’s uncomfortable, pero c’mon — it’s not disgusting. It’s natural. It’s something to be celebrated."
"Huh?"
"Your period is cool. Disgusting is...Sky Bowman hocking a loogie in the hallway."
We both laugh and say, "Ooooeiiii!"
After a beat of silence, I look at Marga and say, "Sky Bowman is gross but...he's so. I don't know. Hot?"
"He's all right," says Marga, pulling her collar up to cover her exposed neck, then patting her almost hairless head. "We kinda look alike, I mean, except for the skin, we're both tall and skinny like a giraffe."
"You're way prettier than Sky," I say.
"No. My face is full of zits and my body is all wrong. And forget about wearing a bathing suit."
"Well, ya, duh, every girl hates how she looks in a bathing suit. I have a huge butt. And cottage cheese on my thighs." I turn to the side, trying to push my hips down like my ballet teacher instructed. "My body was all wrong for ballet next to all the skinny girls with no hips and long legs."
Marga scoffs. "A big butt is good. In Puerto Rico, girls have big butts -- Mira, I have nada, and I'm browner than you. I don't even have boobs yet."
"Oh you can get boobs easily, there's a method. When I was in New York, me and my cousins used to flex our arms and chant, 'I must, I must, I must increase my bust!'"
Marga raises her eyebrows and says, "That's from a Judy Blume book, duh," then puts her hands on my shoulders and looks me directly in the eyeballs with her piercing baby blues. "It's better if the boys don't look at you. When they see me, they call me names like...Freak."
I can't keep eye contact. "Dag. Now I feel bad. I'm sorry I called you out like that."
"It's OK. Period Stain Girl."
My mouth drops open. "Oh my gosh, that's so mean!"
"I learned how to be mean from you," says Marga, imitating the "Just Say No" to drugs commercial.
I start to pout a little bit and mimic the whining nasally way my cousins cry in Puerto Rico. "Aeeei, nooo! Now you think I'm mean. I just wanna be invisible for the rest of my liiiiiiiiife."
Marga can't stop laughing to the point she can't breathe and then rushes into one of the bathroom stalls before she pees in her pants. "You sound like La Chilindrina from El Chavo," she says. And then to make her laugh harder, I say, "Ay, que noña!"
Wow. We both watch Spanish TV so we must be Puerto Rican, even though neither of us "looks like it." Her huge blue eyes are so beautiful. They are eyes that laugh with the rest of her face. She has a light where mine has dimmed.
And then I say out loud, "It's like I've forgotten how to joke since I got here."
"Take it from me – I've been new at least seven times, maybe more, I lost count. We've moved around so much. Military families, sabes? Thailand. India. Vieques. It's better to be invisible. Just study, do your work, and no one will mess with you."
"I never thought of it that way. I always want people to notice me."
"Are you afraid you don't exist if they don't acknowledge you?"
I start to shift around, wondering if we should go back to class. Marga talks like an adult. Her questions make me uncomfortable so I go into gossip mode because it's been so long since I've been able to talk shit with someone my age, in the same geography, in the same sing-song way my mom talks to her sisters.
"Last semester, Brandi C's locker was next to mine, and Sky Bowman would always stop between classes to say hi to her, you know, and while she's saying she doesn't want to dissect frogs in science because she feels bad for the frogs I notice he's just staring right at her boobs — like she's not even there! And she didn't even say anything it was so gross it made me feel so icky."
Marga doesn't reply. She just stares at my boobs.
"Oh my God, stop!"
"I can help you in so many ways," says Marga, putting her hand on her hip.