How I Helped Our Family When the Heat Was Turned Off

When we moved from Williamsburg to Fort Greene, another neighborhood in Brooklyn, that was a poor neighborhood at the time, the day that we got there, there was a sign on the front wall that said, "This building will be demolished in two years." So imagine learning that as soon as we are moving in. This was not a fifth-floor walk-up. We only had to walk up two flights of stairs and it was a smaller building, so it was easier on the family in that sense. But after two years, people had to move out and we were, I believe, the very last family to move out because in the meantime, my father had the bodega and he was determined that we would buy a house, and so we were looking for a house.

We were still living there, and the landlords took off the heat to try to force us out. I can honestly say I have never felt such cold in my life and I've lived in New England for 50 years now, but it's the kind of cold that just gets into your bones. My mother had us sleeping under piles of clothes, plus wearing coats and layers under the coats and then blankets on top of us and the oven opened to keep us warm.

So I was usually the one who she took to different, I don't know, appointments or when she needed somebody to translate. Now, like I said, my mother spoke English pretty well. She had all American teachers in Puerto Rico and they spoke English. So unlike my father, who had to leave school in fourth grade, the teachers in Puerto Rico who taught in English started at around fifth grade. So that's why her English was quite a bit better than his. But I think she just wanted me as a security blanket because she knew I felt much more comfortable in English by that point.

So we went and she said, "We have to go to Borofels, Borofels." I had never heard of that. I had no idea what it was. She knew how to get there with a train, the subway station to get off at, but she didn't know exactly where it was. So we got off and we went up to the street and she said, "Sonia, ask the letter carrier who's there if he can tell us where Borofels is. " So I went over and I said, "Excuse me, can you tell me where Borofels is? " And he looked around, he looked very confused. He said, "I have no ... Oh, you must mean the Board of Health." And at that moment, I was so ashamed. Here's that shame coming in again. I was so ashamed that she had put me in that predicament and that I had said it wrong and so on. And as it turned out, it worked. We did get heat and were able to move out soon afterwards into our first and only home in East Flatbush.

But it was a story that I told years later when we were at a friend's house and Martín Espada happened to be there. He had not yet moved to Massachusetts. He's a very well-known Puerto Rican poet and he and our friends, Bob and Maddie Marcus, we were having brunch with them and they had invited Martín and his family to come for brunch to stay over actually at their home. And so they had invited us too and we were all sitting around telling stories and I told that story and Martín and Bob turned to one another and said, "That's a poem." So that poem is in this book called City of Coughing and Dead Radiators. And Martín had started as a, I think he was probably always a poet, but he had started out as a lawyer representing poor families in the Boston area. And I'll just read the first stanza.

It's called  “Borofels: For Sonia Nieto.”

“In Brooklyn, the mice were crazy with courage,

Bony gray pick pockets, snatching crumbs from plates at the table.

The roaches panicked and spirals on the floor,

Or weaved down walls for the sanctuary of cracked paint, no heat.

So the oven door drooped open like an immigrant's surprise.

Sonia's mother was mute in English, mouth tapped and coughing without words to yell for heat.”

And I'll leave it at that and people who are interested should buy Martín's book actually, City of Coughing and Dead Radiators, that memorialized that moment and let me know that there was no reason to feel shame. I should have been so proud of my mother at that moment who trusted in my translating skills so that we could get some relief.