I Am the Reasonable One

 

I am the reasonable one. I am the one you can say your spite to, the one you can ask your venomous questions. It's so hard to say your contempt of these loud, dirty, emotional people if you're white, rational, and liberal. Your self-expression is so limited by your self-repression, and what can you do with your bile?

            I am the reasonable one and, best of all, I am your friend. We have sat together, talked together, given and received support, touched hands, touched cheeks. You know me to be kind, to be thoughtful.

            You know me to be reasonable, to be rational. You know me to be almost white, almost middle class, almost acceptable. You can count on me, hopefully, to answer quietly, reasonably, and if I don't, you can say, "Don't take it personally." You can ask, "You're not angry with me?" You can trust me, nearly to answer "No."

            I am the one Puerto Rican you can ask, "Why don't they learn English?" And what I answer is full of love and understanding of all those people, your ancestors included, who were forced by the acculturated jingoist migrants of a previous generation to abandon their languages-yiddish, irish, chinese, japanese, tagalog, spanish, french, russian, polish, italian, german—to give birth to your acculturated jingoist selves.

            I am the one who hears it all. You can speak freely about "them," about the lower classes, about puertoricans, about blacks, about chinese. When you lower your voice to ask about them, to talk about them, you don't lower it to exclude me. You know you can tell me.

            I am the one you can say "people like us" to, meaning white middle class women who are fine, who are right, whose ways are the only ways, whose life is the only life.

            And if I say, "not me" -oh, and I do say, "not me" - you do not need to listen. Surely! You can pooh-pooh my stubborn clinging to being different. You know me better than I know myself. You know I am white like you, english speaking like you, right-thinking like you, middle-class-living like you, no matter what I say.

            And through this all, I have ever been the reasonable one, never wanting to betray myself, to become before your eyes just exactly what you despise: a loud and angry spik, cockroaches creeping out of my ears, spitty spanish curses spilling out of my wet lips, angry crazy eyes shooting hate at you. All victims of all racist outrages look like that in your eyes, like your own evil personified, the evil you participate in, condone, or allow.

            But now I tell you reasonably, for the last time, reasonably, that I am through. That I am not reasonable anymore, that I was always angry, that I am angry now.

            That I am puertorican. That under all that crisp english and extensive american vocabulary, I always say mielda. I say ai mami, ai mami giving birth. That I am not like you in a million ways that I have kept from you but that I will no more.

            That I am working class and always eat at the only table, the kitchen table. That taking things is not always stealing; it's sometimes getting your own back, and walking around in my underwear is being at home.

            And I am angry. I will shout at you if you ask your venomous questions now, I will call you racist pig, I will refuse your friendship.

            I will be loud and vulgar and angry and me. So change your ways or shut your racist mouths. Use your liberal rationality to unlearn your contempt for me and my people, or shut your racist mouths.

            I am not going to eat myself up inside anymore. I am not going to eat myself up inside anymore. I am not going to eat myself up inside anymore.

I am going to eat you.

 

By: Rosario Morales

To purchase the book: Puerto-Rican Writers at Home-in the USA