Two life-sized statues will be built of me: one in Newark, New Jersey, and the other in the central plaza of Toa Alta, Puerto Rico. I will insist that the statues remain covered in bird shit. Beautiful hand-woven baskets filled with feed will draw birds from miles away. Their avian intestines will transform the grains into the fragrant, earth-toned splats that will coat the heads of my statues. The statues must be realistic representations of the historic event of June 6, 2016 that granted economic prosperity to all Puerto Ricans.

In the future, that date will be known as Nancy Méndez-Booth Day, and Boricuas worldwide will gather on their estates, their yachts and in their penthouses to re-tell the story of el gran cagazón (or the great defecation, for you non-Spanish speakers).

They will tell how La Nancy (as I will come to be known) was still just a struggling, emerging writer hustling to a summer-time teaching gig at Rutgers-Newark.

I remember it well.

It was midday. The sun was high. It was punishing.

I walked under a series of awnings along Halsey Street. It was in front of the hair braiding salon near Raymond Boulevard that suddenly FWAASH!

I was doused with a quantity and force that sopped my hair, clothes and backpack. As I looked at the globs that dripped from my arms and caught the smell, I knew it was bird shit. And not just one bird turd, but gallons of pungent, runny bird shit. As if weeks’ worth of fowl feces had collected in the awning above and liquefied in the summer sun. Or maybe a flock of birds with terrible gastrointestinal issues had flown overhead and dumped on me. At that moment, the origins of the bird shit didn’t matter as much as the fact that it was all over me, and I had a class to teach in twenty minutes. La Nancy’s perseverance in the face of such adversity will become the stuff of legend.

Every Boricua will know how I hurried to the university gym, braved the communal showers without flip-flops and dried myself with toilet paper. Those same Boricuas will shake their heads, place their hands on their hearts and cry “¡Ay bendito!” when they recall how the door to the locker that held the clean running clothes I would have to wear to class got jammed. I pulled on that locker door until I was as drenched in sweat as I had been in bird shit, got it open, dressed, and sprinted to class—with two minutes prior to spare.

It was in that university classroom that my students reminded me that being pooped upon by birds is a sign of good luck. Surely such a deluge as befell me was a sign of tremendous fortune. Then the fateful words that would change Puerto Rican history rang with the clarity of church bells.

“You should play the numbers today.”

Of course!

Every Boricua knows that any momentous life event—a kindergarten graduation, a sale on pork chops, a torrential downpour of bird shit—must be marked by betting on a number. I returned to Halsey Street immediately after class, stood in front of the hair braiding salon and saw it: One forty-two. I knew what had to be done.

I called my mother. She laughed so hard that I had to repeat, “Mami, write this number
down, give it to Papi and tell him to go play it.”

She did. Then called her sister in Puerto Rico who told her husband to get his fat culo off el sofa and go play the number. He called his son, who texted the number to his friend, who posted it on his Facebook page, which set off a chain reaction of Puerto Ricans forwarding, re-posting and re-tweeting my number, and running to their local boliteros, bodegas and convenience stores worldwide.

Every year, Boricuas will raise a flute of champagne when they remember the moment they learned that number hit, and they will re-tell their own stories of delivering their take-this-job-and-shove-it news, taking that first shopping trip without the discount club savings card and stack of coupons, and the feeling of handing their Mami y Papi keys to their own casita, and saying, “Here, this will be yours forever.”

And every year, Boricuas worldwide will re-watch, as I will, on high definition, plasma, LCD, holographic, three-dimension, theater-sized televisions, those initial interviews with Oprah, Kelly without Michael, and Don Francisco when sabado was still gigante.

I know I will cry every time I watch that first time at the big oak table, Charlie Rose sitting across from me

and saying:

“The second Puerto Rican woman to win the Pulitzer. Honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford … the list goes on. Your actions delivered economic prosperity to all Puerto Ricans and introduced Puerto Rican culture to every corner of the world. Tell me, that summer day, as you stood in front of a, uh, hair braiding salon, could you have imagined any of this?”

And I’ll laugh.

“Ay, Carlos. . . . May I call you Carlos? I feel like we have that confianza, ¿Sabes? Mira Carlos, I always dreamed I would do something big. Not just for me but something big for mi gente. I never thought it would happen like that. My first thought that day was ‘¡Que mierda!’ but I responded the way every Puerto Rican does when confronted with a shitty situation.”

Charlie will lean closer and ask, “And how is that, La Nancy?”

And I’ll just tell him.

“We always go pa’lante, Carlos. There’s just no holding us Puerto Ricans back. We always move pa’lante.”

Nancy Méndez-Booth is a writer/artist/performer and educator of Puerto Rican descent. Winner of the Jersey City Arts Council 2020 Literary Arts award, her work has appeared in print and online, including Poets & Writers and Salon, and she has performed at venues including Cornelia Street Cafe and The Moth. Nancy is an alum of Rutgers-Newark (MFA, MA), Amherst College (BA), as well as the recipient of residencies to Vermont Studio Center, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Blue Mountain Center, and NJ Women Playwrights Program. She is currently completing a fiction manuscript, The Mother Land, and serves as a technical writer and editor for clients including Stevens Institute of Technology. She can be followed on social media for events, performances, publications at @nmenbooth on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and as Nancy Mendez-Booth on her Facebook author page and on her Substack, “Underachiever” (nancymndezbooth.substack.com) for weekly musings on her Boricua life.