MIRIAM’S FLOWERS
For some, the simple circumstance of being Puerto Rican and living in the South Bronx in the mid-70s might be reason enough to despair. Miriam’s family is not atypical, no more dysfunctional than any other. As a matter of fact, her mother’s boyfriend, Nando Morales, is an unusually kind and devoted consort, with a steady job at the Post Office and a sensual appetite guaranteed to please Delfina, a young widow. The potential for competition between Delfina and her daughter and the potential for incest between Nando and Miriam are no more pronounced than in any other family so closely quartered. The banter between Miriam and her six-year-old brother, Puli, is no more precocious than between any other ghetto-raised children. But when Puli is killed–hit by a train after chasing his baseball onto the tracks–the precariously balanced stability of these relationships is upset, never to be righted.
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Miriam’s Flowers is not a well-made play in the way that, say, an Ibsen play is. But through her charismatic narration, Cruz has contrived a tale both familiar and foreign, mundane and mysterious–a tale to haunt our “rational” sensibilities and resonate in our memories for a long time to come.
