The last time I got my hair cut, I went to a cheap place I found on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, right across the street from a nightclub where Beyoncé has been known to frequent. Could I find her there? Would she compliment my haircut? New York is a bastion of possibility.
The hair salon was in a basement, soliciting for recognition with fluorescent lights that called out to the street from a narrow staircase. Inside, it smelled like chemical hair products and some kind of food that had been stewed for many hours with lots of spices. Every surface was white—the floors, the walls, the countertops, the sinks, the cabinets, the ceiling. Every woman was colorful—Puerto Rican, Costa Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Mexican. Most of them seemed to be in their mid-40’s, and the official look was chunky highlights, lots of lipstick, tight jeans, sleeveless tops with chipping rhinestones. They were all inconceivably kind; no exaggeration is possible when describing the culture of Hispanic hospitality. I can’t tell you how special I feel when a Latina woman calls me mama or mami with equal parts sweet authority and gentle possession.
I have pale skin and green eyes and hair that is naturally brown that I recently dyed blonde. I love Kate Spade and I listen to Americana folk sometimes I enjoy a Pumpkin Spice Latte in the fall. I am much more than that girl, but that girl is still a part of me. But even if I didn’t look the way I do or enjoy any of those culturally white things, it’d still be impossible to tell that I am, in fact, only part white. My other half is Dominican, from my father—a half that is largely invisible, but just as present in my love for Bachata and heavy use of cilantro.
Nellie, the salon owner, is cutting my hair and we’re talking. I mention I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. A smaller, older woman in the corner (I don’t know if she worked there or was just hanging out) asks Nellie in Spanish, gesturing to the metal tin of stew she was eating from: “Maybe she wants some of this…ask her.”
I responded in English: “Oh, I’m fine, thank you.”
“Ahhh, habla Español!” Nellie grips my shoulders with the fingers and smiles at me through the mirror.
I’m sheepish, and immediately make excuses for myself. “I’m not good. It’s not that great. I understand more than I speak.”
If the women in the salon were kind before, I now felt like David Duke vacationing at a Trump property. The tin of stew is pushed onto my lap, amused laughter echoes off the walls, and they begin an enthusiastic interrogation about my heritage. I’ve transformed in their eyes, and my haircut isn’t even finished.
***
When I was growing up, I didn’t look at my dad as a Dominican, in the way that kids don’t really recognize race or ethnicity, or even in the way that we don’t really recognize anything unfamiliar about something or someone with whom we share personality quirks, hair color, a household, a lifetime. I didn’t understand him to be an immigrant, or understand him to be dark skinned or Hispanic or foreign in any way. He was just dad to me, and that was all I needed to know.
Nowadays, to say your upbringing is a mosaic of cultures is completely un-noteworthy in the best possible way. Time has allowed America to become the kind of place where a Chinese, Puerto Rican, and Italian restaurant can all exist on the same block, the kind of place I wonder if a bunch of dudes with powdered hair would have ever conceived of, the kind of place I’m grateful to wake up in each morning, even if it’s the only kind of culture I’ve ever known. When my parents brought their litter of five to Sarasota, Florida in 2004, a city that was 87% white at the time, I was part of a multi-cultural household. The food we made and ate together was the dialect of our tribe (made up of my four siblings, my parents, various animals, and me), as inherent as English, the only language my siblings and I spoke.
But in every aesthetic sense, I was white. I was part of the 87%. Because my dad worked long hours during those precious years of language acquisition, I never became fluent in Spanish beyond classes in middle school and high school, and then later the slang and curse words I’d pick up in the kitchens of his restaurants. But in food language, I spoke and still speak with a Hispanic accent. I grew up eating traditional ceviche, mondongo, sancocho, pasteles, ayacas, yuca, arroz con gandules, platanos, tostones. For the most part, these were dishes whose names I didn’t learn until I was older, because back when I was younger, it was all just dinner. Quartered limes were a condiment on our table like ketchup is for the rest of America. We roast a whole pig for Christmas every year, marinated in mojo and sour orange juice, his charred head on an ancient, giant sheet pan resting atop a beach towel on our dining room table. Sometimes when I visit home, I find random jarred or canned ingredients in the cabinet — everything from “cashew in heavy syrup” to Goya black beans and Badia spices.
I moved to New York a little over two years ago; first to an NYU dorm, then to the middle of Herald Square, and now I’m in Bushwick, in the second of three apartments in a little gray building on Menahan and Knickerbocker. My current neighborhood is 69.9% Hispanic, 16.8% Black, 8% White, 1.8% Asian, and 3.4% “other.” The majority of families are middle to low-income, and the majority of families know each other and stop to talk on the sidewalk when they cross paths on Sundays. Streets are unpaved but populated with kids on their scooters, tables covered in handmade rosaries, cages with small birds for sale, a woman cutting mangoes and portioning them up in ziplock bags to serve with hot sauce.
It’s the kind of neighborhood that makes you forget there is a Manhattan or Times Square, and all of the Latin markets there feel like home to me. There isn’t just a part of one shelf in one aisle for Goya products—it’s the most prominent brand they carry. The price labels are handwritten and their lights are also fluorescent. Just like Nellie’s salon, there’s no pretension or produce displays, just the ingredients I’m looking for, dirt cheap. Families come in packs because this is the time they spend together, shopping and cooking and eating, maybe a stew that has been cooked for many hours with lots of spices. Maybe they’ll even share it later with the aesthetically white girls that come into their salons, too. They all look at me as I walk through with my basket on arm, clearly not just visiting for the novelty. I am a minority in my own neighborhood for the first time in my life, but I still need groceries, and I’m shopping, too. We both shop here.
When I approach the butcher counter to get a steak or some chicken, I’m not acknowledged until I speak. I request in my version of Spanish: ” can I have una libra de pollo, por favor? ”
I’m pretty self conscious, but my accent is authentic enough, and more than anything else—I try. This butcher is probably in his mid-30’s, he probably grew up a few blocks away; his mom probably works in the same store or another one like it, because yes, his mom is probably still working. We both kind of laugh at my attempt; he points to the breasts and the leg quarters without words, silently asking what cut of chicken I would like a pound of, exactly. Just like at Nellie’s salon, I’ve become a new person to him, and his steely demeanor seems to melt away. Once, he lifted my bag of chicken slightly to take some pressure off the scale. When he handed me my discounted poultry, he smiled warmly in a way that said, “thanks for coming in,” that neither English nor Spanish ever could.
My hair looked beautiful when I left Nellie’s that night. “Besitos, mama. Hasta la próxima,” she said with a peck on my cheek. I called my dad on the walk to the train. We talked about what delightful content Fox News had been spewing lately, he asked about the weather in New York. I told him how much I miss his cooking and asked if he can make a few specific dishes next time I’m home: this creamy red pepper seafood soup with scallops and shrimp and jasmine rice, snapper ceviche that’s ice cold but incredibly spicy. Watercress salad with lots of onion, arroz con pollo with lots of cilantro, roasted pork shoulder made with lots of time and love and garlic.
“Yes, punk,” he said. “We’ll make it all.”
Both my Dominican half and my white half rode home on the M together, kicked off our leopard print flats and watched Legally Blonde with a 99-cent tube of Goya Maria cookies in bed.
