A Cup of Water Under My Bed

Hernández recalls being sent to Holy Family Catholic School for kindergarten, where she was taught by white educators and understood little English. She was soon put into an ESL (English as a Second Language) class. She recalls “kindergarten as the beginning of the end” (4) because this experience marks the point at which she began to lose her grasp on Spanish and, thus, become Americanized and increasingly distanced from her Cuban and Colombian heritages. Her earliest memories, prior to being enrolled in school, are in Spanish. Some of these memories are unhappy, such as her father’s alcoholism and abusiveness. Although she does not travel to Cuba or Colombia in the 1980s, due to the Cold War and the civil war in Colombia, she exists in a world where Spanish is the shared language. Reflecting on her home community and extended family in Florida, she states, “I feel these places and New Jersey are part of the same country. Everyone lives within its borders, speaks Spanish, and eats a lot of fried pork” (7).

As the years pass, Hernández learns more English, and the family moves to Fairview, New Jersey, a mostly white, English-speaking area. She notes the Americanization of the white women who are of Polish or German backgrounds. They do not have identities tied to other parts of the world in the same way that she and her family do. Hernández begins to “resent” the Spanish language as she grows up: “Because I have to leave Spanish, I have to hate it” (12). To be American, she must reject her Latino background, which is deeply rooted in her family’s language. Living between two worlds proves challenging. As time passes, she comes to feel an “affection” for the English language, and she realizes that she wants to become a writer, something her family views as an unreachable dream. However, “white women dream for you” (15). Her teachers encourage her. Eventually, her father purchases a typewriter, and after college, Hernández finds employment in publishing. Although she thought such success would bring happiness, Hernández realizes that “happiness is not going to come from this place or from English” (17).

In young adulthood, she comes to love Spanish, the language she rejected in favor of English. She begins taking courses in Spanish so that she can learn the grammar and syntax. She also begins to read Spanish literature, which is a new and pleasant experience: “Because Spanish has only been an oral language for me, it is a peculiar sensation to read it” (18). Reading Spanish feels like being embraced by a loving but distant relative. Hernández returns to the private school where she attended kindergarten and finds that it is no longer dominated by white educators: “The place where I began to learn English, to become white, has itself grown brown, Spanish, indigenous” (19).

The second chapter opens with Hernández and her sister curled up in bed with their mother telling them stories about her life. These stories often focus on her mother’s life in Colombia and her immigration to the United States in the 1970s. The Colombia of her mother’s youth was war-torn, and she worked in a textile factory away from her home and her mother. She left her mother again for New Jersey after a friend invited her and a sister loaned her the travel funds. She planned to go for only one month, believing that while in the United States she could earn “real money” (22). Hernández waits for the happy ending. Instead, her mother’s recollections “are crowded with monsters” (23).

Money did not abound, and she struggled to repay her sister, taking on multiple jobs. As time passed, her identity evaporated; Hernández’s mother was not a citizen nor a legal resident. Likewise, she could no longer claim to be a tourist. For these reasons, she married Hernández’s father.

Her mother recalls another story from her childhood in Colombia. When she saw a Black child with his mother in church, she asked her grandmother how the child’s mother could love him, because he was ugly. She was shocked by her grandmother’s response that all mothers believe their children are beautiful. Hernández concludes, “She’s young, my mother, and she cannot imagine that it is true, that a mother’s love demands nothing of its beloved, not even whiteness” (26).

Hernández begins trying to teach her mother English, starting with the alphabet, but her family obligations frequently pull her away. Hernández writes, “I am the Statue of Liberty, welcoming my mother to the land of the free, of the saved” (28). As she grows up, the author wonders what drew her mother to leave her family and her home to emigrate. She suggests that a “longing” or “boldness” must exist within someone who leave all she knows.

When she begins studies for her graduate degree at New York University, Hernández meets other women like her. At a writing workshop, she hears another woman read a piece that marks

[…] the first time I have known someone my age writing about loving and hating where you come from, about the terrible things a father does and their awful things the world does to him, and the mother standing by in bitter silence (29-30).

This experience encourages Hernández to write her story, one that must be shared, unlike her mother’s private storytelling. The first time her mother reads a personal piece Hernández publishes in the magazine Ms., she is saddened by it. They do not talk about it again. However, Hernández and her mother share an important experience, that of leaving home and returning. Her mother physically left Colombia, while the author’s heart and mind drifted away from her family when she was younger, to return in adulthood. At a family Christmas celebration in South Florida, Hernández watches her mother dance alone, a woman with her own identity: “Her right hand is not calling anyone to her but is instead announcing her” (33).

Hernández writes about her father’s rituals involving Santería, an Afro-Caribbean religion practiced in Cuba that melds African diaspora practices with Catholicism. As she learns about these practices and their meaning, she begins to better understand the man, with whom she has a tense relationship. Likewise, her family’s Catholic rituals, some of which are connected to Santería practices, also shape her ethnicity and inform her understanding of her loved ones.

Hernández’s first encounter with her father’s religion happens when she sneaks into his shed to steal candy from the ritual dish that he keeps on the floor. She also notices another dish that holds a small iron shovel, a machete, a rake, and an anvil, objects that scare her as a child. Her parents also keep a tin rooster atop the kitchen cupboard. These items, her mother tells her, belong to her father.

Her father does not join the family for weekly Mass. His absence leads young Hernández to surmise that her father’s troubles, like his alcoholism, are because of his lack of religion. Thus, she is surprised to learn that he does, in fact, practice a religion called Santería. Her aunt explains to her that he reveres a spirit called Elegguá, who she says is like a Catholic saint. This knowledge explains the offerings in the mysterious candy dish and the iron tools in another. She sees her father in a new way: “My father appears to me as a different man now, not one who drinks too much and works too often, but a man with a life of his own” (40).

The author recalls times when she and her sister were sent away from home during the day, to an aunt’s house, so that her parents might perform a Santería purification ritual. At 15, Hernández rejects her Catholic upbringing, although she will continue to appeal to Elegguá in times of need. A few months later, she is injured in a car accident, which she thinks is divine punishment for her lack of faith. Her father screams at her while she’s hospitalized, as her mother and her aunt watch the scene in silence: “Later on, I will learn that he hates anything that makes him afraid […] Yelling at us, about us, about the world is the way he knows to talk about fear” (43). She learns that her father appealed to Elegguá and held vigil the evening of the crash. Hernández concludes, “The sweetest part of my father is his candy dish” (43).

The Hernández family also venerates St. Lazarus, Elegguá’s counterpart in Catholicism. On his feast day, the author’s mother places him on the kitchen table surrounded by offerings and candles, much like her father leaves offerings in the candy dish for Elegguá. The saint’s suffering appeals to Hernández and her family because he appears to understand their own struggles. She learns more about the traditions of Santería when she reaches graduate school and understands that her parents use Catholic and Afro-Cuban traditions to shield their family “with a divine army” (48). One day, a woman called Ana arrives at the family’s home. Although her father asks Hernández to leave the room, Ana persuades him to let his daughter stay, and she takes part in a healing ritual. She sees her father in a new and more vulnerable light: “Ana tells my father to talk directly with the orishas [spirits]. This is his time to make a request and share his feelings […] My father, as far as I know, has never been told to discuss his feelings” (51). Although she is moved by the ritual, Hernández is not ready to declare her faith in anything.

Hernández’s aunt takes her to visit a tarot card reader who answers questions about the author’s future and finances. It is a stark reminder that her family’s future is tied to her own. These “women who know” are all over New Jersey, where they read fortunes in the form of cards or cups filled with water. This experience during her teenage years is juxtaposed with a memory from her childhood of a card reader who encouraged her to behave after her father beat her with a belt, which resulted in police intervention.

These women, however, do know envidia (envy). Hernández describes envy as “the primary way we have to talk about what we want” (60). Good things come from God or luck or both, and “[…] any little good you have someone else covets” (60). Her mother looks to cups of water for answers because she believes they carry messages between the human and divine worlds. The author remembers her mother practicing a ritual to cleanse her of bad energy when she was a child, following instructions from a “woman who knows” (62). Although she continues to doubt these women, she describes a new faith “blooming” and her relationship with her father improving: “[…] my father did not hit me again, not for another five or six years […]” (62).

Hernández’s father singled her out for his wrath, never striking her sister or her mother, so when she was 10 years old, the author decided to run away from home. Her father stopped her, showing a gentleness that was rare. She compares remaining in an abusive home to being trapped in a cage while these women who know make the imprisonment “tolerable” (63). In her late teens, Hernández begins having regular nightmares; without her knowledge, the author’s mother puts a cup of water under her bed, a practice that brings her some comfort later when she realizes, “I have some power. I can fill a cup with water and slip it underneath my bed” (64). Hernández takes her high school friend Geralen to a diviner named Conchita, who reads a cup of water. Hernández acts as a translator for her friend, explaining what Conchita sees. When they leave Conchita’s apartment, Hernández is reminded, “I can hear myself, that other me, the dark river, say: I do not believe this woman” (66).

After she moves away from home, Hernández expects to leave behind her family’s superstitions. She begins to see a therapist to cope with her anxieties, “but somehow, it is not enough” (67). She returns to the women who know. In San Francisco she consults a woman called Yvette, but it is really the woman’s husband who reads a set of cowrie shells. Before leaving, she notices a handmade ship Yvette made as an offering to one of the spirits. She is reminded of her home and family. Yvette tells her that Elegguá was there looking out for her during her father’s violent and abusive outbursts. Hernández finds the comfort that she sought, and she realizes that her mother likely consulted the women fortunetellers over the years because they brought her similar comfort.