Question

twelve I was an avid consumer of comic books—Super girl being my favourite. I spent my allowance
of a quarter a day on two twelve-cent comic books or a double issue for twenty-five. I had a stack of Legion
of Super Heroes and Super girl comic books in my bedroom closet that was as tall as I. I had a recurring
dream in those days: that I had long blond hair and could fly. In my dream I climbed the stairs to the top of
our apartment building as myself, but as I went up each flight, changes would be taking place. Step by step
I would fill out: my legs would grow long, my arms harden into steel, and my hair would magically go
straight and turn a golden colour. . Super girl had to be aerodynamic. Sleek and hard as a supersonic
missile. Once on the roof, my parents safely asleep in their beds, I would get on tip-toe, arms outstretched
in the position for flight and jump out my fifty-story-high window into the black lake of the sky. From up
there, over the rooftops, I could see everything, even beyond the few blocks of our barrio;1 with my X-ray
vision I could look inside the homes of people who interested me. Once I saw our landlord, whom I knew
my parents feared, sitting in a treasure-room dressed in an ermine coat and a large gold crown. He sat on
the floor counting his dollar bills. I played a trick on him. Going up to his building’s chimney, I blew a little
puff of my super-breath into his fireplace, scattering his stacks of money so that he had to start counting all
over again. I could more or less program my Super girl dreams in those days by focusing on the object of
my current obsession. This way I “saw” into the private lives of my neighbours, my teachers, and in the last
days of my childish fantasy and the beginning of adolescence, into the secret room of the boys I liked. In
the mornings I’d wake up in my tiny bedroom with the incongruous—at least in our tiny apartment—white
“princess” furniture my mother had chosen for me, and find myself back in my body: my tight curls still
clinging to my head, skinny arms and legs . . . unchanged.
2. In the kitchen my mother and father would be talking softly over a café con leche. She would come
“wake me” exactly forty-five minutes after they had gotten up. It was their time together at the beginning
of each day and even at an early age I could feel their disappointment if I interrupted them by getting up
too early. So I would stay in my bed recalling my dreams of flight, perhaps planning my next flight. In the
kitchen they would be discussing events in the barrio. Actually, he would be carrying that part of the
conversation; when it was her turn to speak she would, more often than not, try shifting the topic toward
her desire to see her familia on the Island: How about a vacation in Puerto Rico together this year,
Querido? We could rent a car, go to the beach. We could . . . And he would answer patiently, gently, Mi
amor, do you know how much it would cost for the all of us to fly there? It is not possible for me to take

Answer 1

Answer:

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