Why Am I Still Here?: The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth, So Help Me God

By Jeannette Davila

About the Book
Why Am I Still Here? is the gripping memoir of a Puerto Rican immigrant navigating the chaos and turmoil of life both inside and outside of her home. As a young child, Jeannette Davila lost her father due to his underground criminal activities, turning her world upside-down and forcing her to face life’s hardships far too early. Growing into a headstrong teenager, Jeannette found herself in the height of New York’s nightlife in the 1970s, where everyone around her was experimenting with drugs, music, and love. Looking back on life’s ups and downs, Jeannette realizes it was only resilience and a stubborn sense of self-worth that got her out of the chaos and to where she is today.

About the Author
Jeannette Davila had a career as a passport specialist in the State Fraud Department for over thirty years before retiring. She is the mother of one son and one daughter. In her free time, she enjoys reading, dancing, photography, and going to art museums. She resides with her daughter in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888126936

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The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2023 by Jeannette Davila

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

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CHAPTER ONE

It’s 2:00 o’clock in the morning and a dark colored car waited patiently for a man to cross the street, then like a locomotive train went straight to him, knocking him down onto the pavement, turning around and around making sure body parts were scattered everywhere. What was that noise! alarmed patrons from Caries’s corner social club asked themselves. All rushed to see what had happened and to their horror they saw the most shocking shit anyone ever could imagine nor forget; all got sober immediately!

December 19, 1966: my sister Wilma was seven years old, Wanda was four years old, and I was six years old when our father was murdered at the tender age of 28 and my mother 32. My father, like so many young Puerto Rican men of his time, left the island in pursuit of employment and perhaps the American dream. He arrived to the States in the early 1940s and was dropped off at his cousin’s apartment in the South Bronx called Banana Kelly, because the entire block was shaped like one. The block was full with new arrivals like himself so he felt safe within the community, after all the whole place was littered with Puerto Ricans from every parts of the island. And smells of home cooked dishes with salsa music blaring across the street from Julio’s gas station and the Catholic church nearby was everything. His cousins rammed throughout his head as the big day arrived for him to leave the island. There were rows and rows of tenement buildings occupied with lots of children, stray dogs and the likes, called the ghetto. Today it’s called the hood.

Cousin Armando already secured a job for him as a steamer in downtown Manhattan on Bleecker Street where factory bosses hired new arrivals at very low wages and long ass hours. But this was only a front so the wives and the IRS could shut the fuck up. Cousin Papito dealt large quantities of cocaine, his brother Wilfredo dealt heroin, yet the third, Miguelita, dealt pot. My father went in the opposite direction and became involved with off-track betting at the Belmont Aqueduct Raceway somewhere in the upper Bronx.

The extra monies were reserved for mistresses, jewelry, rented cars, night clubs and the likes. They were the Puerto Rican Rat Pack of the early ‘60s with all the trimmings. Cousin Papito as Frank Sinatra, Wilfredo as Dean Martin, Miguelita as Joey Bishop and my father as Sammy Davis Jr., a bit taller with both eyeballs intact. Extra cash applied also to my father’s oldest sister Titi Carmen, who years earlier left the island as well; however, she, like her brother, chose to live secret lifestyles for themselves. My aunt was involved with low-level mobsters from Staten Island and preferred to stay away from the family in the Bronx. She was a very pretty woman, with short cropped hair, caramel color skin and hazel eyes. Moreover, a self-centered bitch with the soul of a snake. All signed a contract with the devil himself.

My mother on the other hand was completely the opposite and graduated from the same high school in Carolina as the famous baseball player Roberto Clemente and would tell us stories of how he’d pester her for dates every time they bumped into each other in the hallways during the changing of classes. One day she relented and accepted a date which didn’t go well; his fixation with becoming a baseball player in the States was getting boring to her and she vowed never to go on a second date to hear the same old shit about baseball. My sisters and I would scold my mother in a playful way to explain how we may have become rich and treated like royalty back in the island. She would look at us and roll her eyes. Sigh!

And so, back to my father... Everything was set, he was planning to kidnapped us period and take us back to Puerto Rico, because he wasn’t too pleased with how the educational system allowed kids to dress however; they wanted us instead to wear uniforms, and the language we were using at the home was English—a no-no for him. Moreover, it didn’t matter that my mother was working hard to save up for a house in the Pelham Bay Area. Her opinion didn’t matter too much for him; he was the man of the house.

The plan was to wait until my mother went to work so his sister would arrive around 1:00 in the morning with her mobster boyfriend to get us ready for when he returned from the social club, and so, the time arrived. My aunt the slut tapped each one of us on our heads to wake us up; as we did, she instructed us to wash our faces, brush our teeth and get dressed (Wilma was to help with Wandy, because she was handicapped). Wilma began asking all sorts of questions until Mr. Boyfriend had had enough and told her to Shut the fuck. Shut up, and just do what our aunt was instructing us to do. And so that is exactly what we did, and we quietly went to the living room to watch anything that was on at the time waiting for my father to hurry back home with confusion, fear and wonderment as they hurried up to do whatever they were planning on do.

My aunt waited for my father to make a left turn toward the toward the social club then tapped her boyfriend to begin the search of the monies they knew were inside my parents’ bedroom as we sat motionless looking straight at the television set without actually watching the shit. They found the monies and laughter poured from within the room. She told us to stay there while they headed to the social club to look for our father and return him back to us. They never returned and we fell asleep with our coats on and our little luggage waiting near the doorway.

You see, my father embezzled $10,000.00 dollars from his cronies at the race track (a large sum in 1966). The excuse about the school system, its attire, and all that jazz was just a front that somehow he’d rationalized and thought he could pull it off. Sadly, his intention to save us only backfired. Had he not gone to the social club to bid farewell to his mistress/bartender, male