Me and Mami Down in the Schoolyard

Otherwise known as, El Vanta Koor -- The Second Installment.

After a three-year gestation period, it had to come out of me a week ago. It just had to be the last piece I wrote under the influence of Calle Ocho's proximity.
First I saw "The Lost City" for the third time within a week, all the while striving to hear the comments of older--and wiser--compatriotas as we saw Andy Garcia's beautifully evocative memories flash on the pantalla in front of us. Then I visited El Vanta Koor. And it's a good thing I did, for there have been even more changes, especially next door at Shenandoah Elementary.
At long last, I was ready to write "Me and Mami Down in the Schoolyard":
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And I’m on my way
I don’t know where I’m going
I’m on my way

I’m taking my time
But I don’t know where
Goodbye to Rosie the queen of Corona
See you, me and Julio
Down by the schoolyard

--Paul Simon, Me and Julio down by the Schoolyard.
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My thanks to Kevin Hall, whose use of Paul’s lyrics in his Grammar Test inspired me to come up with the following title, circa August 5, 2003:

ME AND MAMI DOWN IN THE SCHOOLYARD

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

When I was getting ready to move from Aventura to Coral Gables during the fall
of 2002, the same thing kept happening to me every time I passed the Miami city limits sign on I-95: I got a chill.
It got worse every time I entered the vicinity of 19th through 22nd Avenues on my way up Calle Ocho. It didn’t make sense, until I realized that I’d just passed my old neighborhood within La Sauwuesera: el barrio de Shenandoah Elementary School, and the shabby tenement building at the corner of Eleventh Street and Southwest 20th Avenue that we had called home between November of 1960 and July of 1963.
The Vanta Court—or, as we had called it in our very broken English—el Vanta Koor.
Even during Horace’s illness, I was obsessed enough with it to drive by with a high school chum who was visiting me. She took pictures, and mailed them to me. It wasn’t until he had passed, though, that I finally ventured to explore the area by myself, one late winter-early spring afternoon in 2003.
No sooner had I parked the car and approached the building than the chills began in earnest. It felt as if a thousand pins were prickling me up and down my spine.
Ghosts: forty-year-old ghosts were enveloping me.
I began to cry. I couldn’t handle it for long, so I left. I continued to feel the chill every time I drove by the Miami sign on I-95; by the area between 19th and 22nd Avenues when I drove up Calle Ocho.
Later on that summer, Paul Simon’s colloquial usage of the first person singular personal pronoun in one of Kevin Hall’s Grammar Exam practice questions led me to try again. “Me and Julio” quickly became, “Me and Mami.” However, I wasn’t sure about the “down by the schoolyard” part, so I not only had to show up, but to do some sleuthing.
Oh, my.
Braving the chills, I entered the courtyard. In the three or so months since my last attempt, the building had been painted and had been renamed “Shenandoah Square,” a nattily tiled sign informed me.
I can’t quite say that I bounded up the central stairs that anchor the horseshoe-shaped building, but I didn’t drag my feet, either.
First, though, I noted the manager’s apartment tucked into the right wing of the building, on the first floor to the right of the staircase.
The manager—el encargado: Raúl. His name had been Raul. He’d had a little son named Raulito. I’d attended his birthday parties. His family had kept in touch with us even after they’d moved.
Raul had been involved in Playa Giron. As a matter of fact, even as a child I knew that parts of the invasion had been planned in el Vanta Koor’s basement (or, at least, in someone’s apartment).
However, the thing that Mami kept reminding me of was that I used to run up to the poor man, even when he was covered in suds and grime from cleaning the floors, and hug him.
“Señora, no puede parar a la niña? Se va a ensuciar,” he used to say, both chagrined and pleased, to my mother. For some reason, I couldn’t stop myself.
Steering right—for I knew that Mami had kept an eye on me as I played in the courtyard from our apartment’s window—I soon found Apartment Number 14, in its corner. What I felt I still am at a loss to describe.
I had to turn away, yet I felt I had to explore some more. I finally let myself get a good look at the dingy hallway; the worn wooden floor; the chipped paint on the walls; the indefinably red stairs. The side stairs on our side of the building must have been my way of getting pa’rriba y pa’bajo.
It was going up and down the stairs and staring up the airshafts that I realized that, thanks to my longstanding acquaintance with a New York City expert, I could recognize the building for what it was: a fair replica of a dumbbell tenement. I was amazed.
Mustering up my courage, I returned to number 14, and knocked on the door. A woman opened the door, with two little girls peering out from behind her. One of them wore glasses.
Oh, my.
I told them I’d lived in their apartment forty years earlier. They acknowledged me with a polite, yet distant, acceptance. Perhaps I’d thought they’d let me in?
Of course not.
“Down by the schoolyard”? No, it had to be, “down in the schoolyard.” For there’s a picture—the defining picture—of my mother and me, of which she had multiple copies, that definitely places us within the (then expansive) Shenandoah Elementary School grounds.
In November of 1961—while I was in second grade, already a bit chubby, and before I wore glasses—Shenandoah held a school fair. Someone—I suspect, the mother of two little friends of mine who shared another picture taken of me the same day—took this picture of us.
We’re walking. I’m holding a goldfish in a baggie in my right hand (I gather I’d already been turned from a leftie into a rightie). I’m saying something.
Mami’s still fairly trim, with a defined waistline (not that she ever became that fat). She’s sporting her signature green-tinted sunglasses; and is holding some pastry or the other in a napkin in her left hand, as well as my Sylvester book bag. Oh, yes: she’s wearing the alarm watch with which she used to monitor my feedings when I was an infant.
She’s saying something, too. Perhaps Betty and Martica’s mother had caught us by surprise?
We’re walking. Walking side by side, but not touching. Walking, and talking…down in the schoolyard.
Since late summer of 2003, I’ve returned to my old neighborhood on a number of occasions, including as a Career Day speaker at Shenandoah in 2004 and 2005.
On the eve of yet another move, I returned yesterday. The chills have been gone for a while now.
My old elementary school is under construction. It appears as if it’s, once again, to be multi-storied. More and more waves of immigrants coming in means an increasing population of school-aged children.
I couldn’t resist entering Shenandoah Square once again. My side of the building smelled soft and sweet. The first-floor hallway on the left-hand side smelled of urine.
Before I decided to leave well enough alone, I bounded up my stairs; checked the apartment numbers; noted the window facing toward the schoolyard.
No: not our apartment window. I daresay, however, that Mami se asomó bastante de la ventana al lado del apartamento 15 para mantenerse al tanto de mí.
When she and I were not together down in the schoolyard, of course.
For Mami
Happy Mother’s Day
Sunday, May 14, 2006

The best part is that there's plenty left to tell of the Vanta Koor Tale...without the chills.

By the way--Feliz 104 Cumpleanos, Nuestra Querida Republica de Cuba!