New York - The Novel

retained, he’d taken time off from college so that he could work non-stop and put some extra savings by. It had been tough, but they’d managed.
    Then, in his final year at City College, she had died. He knew very well that she’d wanted to go; she was in pain and had little energy—but she also wanted him to be free.
    Until his mother’s sickness, Juan had never paid much attention to his surroundings. He knew the rooms they lived in needed painting, and that the light in the hallway didn’t work, and that the landlord said he’d fix things and never did. But his mother had always insisted that the household was her affair, and he should concentrate on his studies. Sometimes he’d dreamed of having a fine house one day—he didn’t know where—and of marrying and having a big family, and looking after his mother. This was a dream that his hard work at school might one day realize. The present, in his mind, was only a temporary state.
    But as Maria grew weaker, and he had to take charge, the harsh realities of the present had become very real indeed. There was the rent to be paid, and food to be bought. Some weeks, there wasn’t enough money, and on more than one occasion, Juan had to ask the owner of the nearby corner store to let him have food on credit. The man was friendly with Maria, and he was kind. When Juan came in one afternoon with a few dollars he owed him, the man just said, “That’s okay, kid. Pay me back when you get rich.”
    More difficult were his dealings with the landlord. Mr. Bonati was a small, bald, middle-aged man who’d owned the building for a long time, and who collected the rents himself. When Juan had to pay him late, he was understanding. “I know your mother a long time, now,” he said. “She gives me no trouble.” But when Juan tackled him about the dangerous broken stair, or the blocked drain, or any of the other things that made daily life a trial, Bonati always gave him some excuse, and did nothing. Finally, seeing the young man’s exasperation, Bonati had taken Juan by the arm.
    “Listen, I can see you’re a smart kid. You’re polite, you’re going to college.Think about it—do you know any other kids on this block going to college? Most of them never finished high school. So listen to what I’m telling you. Your mother pays me a low rent. You know why? Because this building is rent-controlled. That’s why I can’t make any money out of it either. It’s why I can’t afford to do many repairs. But this is a good building, by comparison. Some of the buildings around here are falling apart. You know that.” Mr. Bonati waved his hand toward the north-west. “Do you remember that building a few blocks away which burned down eighteen months ago?” That had been a huge fire, and Juan remembered it well. “The owner of that place couldn’t make a thing out of it. So he stripped out most of the wiring and after the building burned down, he collected the insurance. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
    “You mean he burned it down?” Juan had heard a rumor.
    “I didn’t say that. Okay?” Bonati gave him a quick, hard look. “It’s like that all over El Barrio, all over Harlem. There used to be decent neighborhoods up here. Germans, Italians, Irish. But now it’s all changed. The place is falling apart, and nobody cares. The kids up here live in terrible housing, they don’t have jobs or education. They haven’t a hope, and they know it. It’s the same in Chicago and other big cities. I’m telling you, the whole of Harlem is a ticking time bomb.”
    A few days later, some men came to fix the drain. But Bonati never did anything else. So Juan made inquiries about getting his mother a better place to live in one of the housing projects, but got nowhere.
    “Don’t you know, kid?” the man at the corner store said. “The housing projects favor whites and blacks, but Puerto Ricans, they don’t want to know about. In some areas, they just want to push the Puerto Ricans out.”
    He went to some of the white welfare organizations, and found the people there treated him with ill-concealed contempt. He wasn’t surprised, but he nonetheless felt rage, not just for himself and his mother, but that Puerto Ricans in general should be treated like this. And now he began to understand that his mother’s vision was not only that he, her son, should escape from poverty and make a good life for himself in the world, but that he should accomplish