American History

Eugene is a Georgia-born white boy whose family has just moved into a house next to Elena’s tenement. Eugene’s house, Elena notes, is “the only [one] on the block that [has] a yard and trees” (20). Like Elena, he is an only child, reads incessantly, and feels like an outsider in Paterson. The fact that Elena and Eugene share the same first initial further illustrates their commonality, despite their differences in race, ethnicity, geographical origins, and class. Eugene is “tall and blond” and wears glasses (20). He is shy. Elena describes his Southern accent, which makes him an object of taunts in Paterson and earns him the nickname “the Hick,” as “beautiful” and notices the way that his voice rises and falls over his words “in a strange, lilting way” (23). While Eugene attends honors classes, Elena cannot, due to English not being her first language. Nevertheless, they spend time together at the library, walk home together, and trade notes on books. Unlike both Elena’s parents and the old Jewish couple, Eugene’s family never sits at the kitchen table together, but Elena fantasizes about sitting there with him like a husband and wife.

Mr. DePalma is the physical education and science teacher at P.S. 13. He is “a short, muscular man with slicked-down black hair” (23). He acts as the school’s disciplinarian, breaking up fights and calling conferences with the parents of troubled children. Mr. DePalma also manages the homeroom for students with reputations as “troublemakers.” On the day that President Kennedy is shot, Mr. DePalma sobs uncontrollably; when his students recoil from and then laugh at his blubbering, he angrily calls the students “idiots” and “losers” before sending them home an hour early. Mr. DePalma’s inarticulate and mean response to the students is a reminder of the limitations of adults—even those tasked with caring for children—when they experience grief. Mr. DePalma’s reaction may also reflect his personal prejudices. Cofer refrains from identifying the race of characters who do not have an identity that places them outside of the mainstream (e.g., the elderly Jewish couple). Thus, the reader can infer that Mr. DePalma is white, but he teaches in the predominantly Black and Puerto Rican P.S. 13.

Elena’s mother lives with her husband and daughter in their apartment in El Building. Like Elena’s father, she is a native of Puerto Rico. She and her husband want to move out of the tenement and into a suburban house. They also dream of buying a beach house in Puerto Rico, where they hope to retire. Elena notes that her mother is unhappy in Paterson. Since Elena began menstruating, her mother has also become preoccupied with her daughter’s sexuality, growing particularly worried when she observes Elena’s interest in Eugene. She lectures Elena about “virtue, morality, and other subjects” that are of no interest to her daughter (22), who has absorbed the era’s changing sexual mores. Elena and her mother’s respective connections to Puerto Rico likewise create distance between them, since Elena only knows her ancestral homeland through her limited memory and imagination.