In Puerto Rico, dogs run around the streets like they own the place. Come to think of it, so do the chickens. My grandma, whom we always called Fita (grandpa was Flaca, but I never knew him), had a big beautiful dog of unknown origin that made himself at home under the mango tree in her back yard. She called him Pujo. She was sure he'd been beaten because he was so timid. We would go out to feed him leftovers and she would wait patiently while he tiptoed up, head hanging low, eyes peering up from furrowed brow. She loved him. She went outside to visit several times a day, always with bits of food.
On my first visit, I wanted to bring some flowers to her. We had never met before and I was nervous. I went to the town center. There was one florist. They had some funeral wreaths and two kinds of flowers, neither very pretty. The lady bundled all of them together, maroon, gold, and white, into a bouquet that would be "the thought that counts."
I had trouble finding her house, because not all the streets have signs, and the houses don't have numbers! I had to start asking random people, "Do you know Fita?" The second person I asked gave me directions to her house. She was waiting for me on the porch. She made coffee for me using a cloth bag as a drip mechanism. It was really good. She served it in her special 50th anniversary china cups with gold trim. In the background, Betty La Fea was playing. She filled me in on the plot.
Everyone in my family is fluent in English. They all moved to New York City in the late 60's (14 people in a one bedroom apartment). My grandma worked as a seamstress for 25 years, and then moved back to Rincon and bought a house. She had three kids, my dad was the youngest, and of course, "the crazy one."
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