Comé Mierda

“You’ve got pineapple picking hands”, he told me.
I was 10. It was summer. We were in Dona Juanita’s apartment.
421 East 102nd St #1-C was my sanctuary even though it was only just across the hall from where the bad things were happening.
There was no bell tower
, no hunchback, and I wasn't a gypsy (although I loved the name Esmeralda and used to don scarves & rings for Halloween before I gave that sort of thing up a couple of Octobers before), but Dona Juanita's door was always unlocked, and her apartment was clean and welcoming.
I looked at my little hands, at my short square palms, at all the many lines that were etched across them. I hated them. I wanted soft smooth palms with long tapered fingers like John’s. John had the hands of someone born to play Schubert piano concertos. My hands looked like the road map to a country in upheaval, like something concocted by a mad cartographer drunk on mavi and rum.
When John shared his impression of my hands, I imagined the Puerto Rico 
I had never lived in. I saw endless fields of pineapple, prickly and golden,
oozing their juicy fruitfulness, ready to be snatched out of existence by
hands expressly designed for that purpose. Hands that John remarked
 about so disdainfully. My hands turned into scythes in my little 
kaleidoscope mind. I sucked on the sour jelly of a quenepa fresh off its 
dead vine as I considered the implication of my pineapple picking hands.
Of course, John’s name was really Juan - until he changed it. He was named after his mother, but declined the honor as soon as learned the difference between a boy named Juan and a man named John from the backwoods of East Harlem. Had he been a man named Juan from Barcelona, he might have reconsidered the name change. Then he would have been a rare form of esoterica, not just another ghetto dweller ashamed of his heritage.
Despite John's cattiness, I enjoyed his company, much as I enjoyed the company of all adults at that age. I liked their chatter. I found conversation with other ten year olds tiresome. Adults lived rich complicated lives, yet all seemed so incapable of dealing with the issues they grappled. They amused me.
John had the glamour of being 6 feet tall, strongly built, 25 years old, singing Puccini operas in a rich baritone, painting mythical figures with a primitive palette in thick geometric dashes and swirls, collecting marsupials, snakes and other forms of reptilian exotica. I smile now as I recall the menagerie. Using Dona Juanita’s bathroom was like entering the petting zoo at Central Park. Frogs and turtles and lizards all co-existed peaceably and swam around in Dona Juanita's bathtub. John's rabbit and ferret were kept in cages that were not much smaller than John's bedroom.
John took this occasion of his inspection of my palms to remind me that I would never amount to anything, that nothing would become of my life, no matter how many grades I was skipped in school (as I had been twice in two years), but I suspected he spent most of that night and many other ones trying to forget all the bows and dresses his mother, Dona Juanita, made him wear the first 10 years of his life, so I forgave him instantly. On days when the mercury on the thermometer is high, and (for whatever reason) my confidence seems to be evaporating at the rate of every bead of my sweat, I look at my hands and hear John's words. Still