Cuba 15 (8 page)

Unfortunately, he knew exactly how many doses he’d already given me. “That’s it for tonight,
chiquitica,
” he said sternly, doling out five measly coins. “Your friend is here, by the way.”

“Leda?”

He nodded toward the backyard.

She’d made it. “Hey, Leed!” I called, finding her at one of the smoking tables outside.

She waved for quiet. “
Shhh,
Paz. I’m concentrating.”

Leda, my cousin Marianao, and a heavyset man with a shirt just like Abuelo’s all bent over a long domino chain, each player with two pieces left to go.

Marianao had returned tonight, this time dressed in a white cotton halter dress with a slit skirt. Her blood-red lacquered nails fingered the two dominoes rhythmically. She and the other man had parked a couple of steaming Coronas in the ashtray, one of them smeared with red lipstick. Leda, in a T-shirt that said LOVE YOUR MOTHER over a photo of planet Earth, eyed the board shrewdly. She feinted with one piece, then went to the other, laying it quietly on the end of the chain.

“Caramba,”
growled Marianao, knocking.

The man laid down a low number.

“Caramba,”
said Leda, in a damn good accent. She knocked.

“Se acabó,”
grumbled Marianao, knocking.

But the man couldn’t play either, and they all ended up adding up their points. Leda won by two.

Marianao reached for the mug on the table and handed Leda a cigar.

13

As Sunday dawned, I padded out to the porch in bare feet and pajamas, hoping to find a few forgotten dimes stuck in the edges of a domino board or under some chair cushions. I came across Abuelo asleep on the old couch, party shirt crumpled, snores escaping his lips like blasts of percussion. He was probably dreaming of the hammocks at Padrino’s farm in Cuba. I didn’t have the heart to wake him. And I refrained from going through his pockets.

I got up early because today was C-Day: comedy day. The threat of a deadline might help; hadn’t Mr. Soloman said that fear could be funny? I decided that something funny was going to happen today if it killed me.

I went around front to get the newspaper and discovered I wasn’t the first one up. Mark squatted in the driveway, hosing off a pile of pink golf balls. When I turned to retreat, he spied me.

“You!” He turned the hose on me, but the stream wouldn’t reach.

I stuck my fingers in my mouth, crossed my eyes, and did a little dance. “What’s wrong with your shirt, little brother?” I needled him, noticing the pink splotches and handprints on his white T-shirt.

He picked up a handful of wet golf balls and threw them at me, and I fled.

Abuela entered the kitchen while I was mixing up some frozen orange juice. She looked tired and had neglected to style her hair or iron her bathrobe before breakfast for a change. Her silver hair, creased from sleep, hung down to the middle of her back.

“Sit down, Abuela,” I said, handing her a glass of juice. “I’ll make you some
café.
” I found the ancient stovetop espresso maker in the drainer and the Café Bustelo in the fridge. I measured the coffee and water and set the pot on the stove to boil.

“All that winning really takes it out of you, doesn’t it, Abuela?” I teased.

She flashed me a grin untouched by lipstick this morning. “The ween-ing, it is good,” she said. “I stay up till two-thirty
anoche
.” She closed her eyes and took a long swallow of orange juice. “Ahh!” she sighed.

We divided up the newspaper and read in silence for a while. Then the coffeemaker started to burp, and I pulled a demitasse and my poodle mug from the cupboard and poured us each a cup. I loaded mine down with milk and sugar and began sipping while Abuela performed her ritual: a single shot of
café,
two heaping teaspoons of sugar, and a pinch of salt for good luck—then down the hatch.

“Ahh!” she sighed again.

I figured her throat must look like the inside of a volcano, but it seemed to work for her.

“I’m glad you’re having a good time, Abuela,” I said. “You know, Abuelo was saying this reminds him of the domino parties in Cuba on his godfather’s farm.”

She puckered her lips together and nodded slowly. “For us, was the club.” The light came into her eyes again as she thought back. “We use to love to play domino at El Habano. I was known as a very good player.”

“El Habano? That’s the place with the chandeliers and marble columns and stuff?”

She nodded. “Sí. Is where I make my quince.”

“Your
quince
?”

Wow. I’d been that close to the information before? Abuela guarded her secrets like gold. I shook my head in aggravation and pressed my luck. “In a pink dress, Abuela?” I wanted to hear her say it.

A brief smile crossed her lips. “In the pink dress,” she let herself recall. “
Por
supuesto,
such a dress! And such a day. Was
una fiesta grande,
with the court of twenty-eight, and
flores
everywhere . . . And Papi . . .
ay,
so handsome in his white suit.”

“And what about you?”

“Me? I am
como una princesa
in a fairy book.” She paused. “But is no the dress and the flowers or the friends watching that are important to me.”

“No?”

I’d thought they were the point.

“Sí,” Abuela said, the faraway light still glowing softly in her eyes. “Not those things. Was the
momento
after the waltz, when Papi and I make
el paseo
together. He says to me, ‘Guadalupe Inez,
m’ija,
I am always here for you. If ever you have hard times, remember today and know that your
papá
is here to give you strength.’ ” She shook her head, her long hair falling about her shoulders. “I never forget this.”

“And your dad . . .”

“He die in Coo-ba. Is a long time ago. But always he is with me.” She flashed a true grin. “Was a great domino player, Papi.
¡El mejor!
I think I inherit some-sing from him.”

I smiled. “I know you did!”

She sighed low and long.

After a pause, she said, “Violeta,
óyeme
. I have
una idea
for today. Is a beeg day, many people.”

Abuelo was to re-create Padrino’s pig roast, only on a smaller scale involving a marinated fresh ham and the Weber. Everyone my grandparents knew from the city would show up for that.

“My
idea
is this: to put a table for to sign up the
eh
sponsors for your
quince
party. We can put right by the front door,
¿no?
You can sit there
con un
sign: ‘Violeta Paz,
La
Quinceañera
.’ ”

I put my mug down. “Trying to get me off the domino tables, Abuela? Very sneaky.”

She gave me a light
cocotazo
—a domino knock to the noggin.
“¡Ay, Dios, esta muchacha . . . !”
Then she grinned again. I liked her lips this color. “So, how do you think?”

Hmmm. A reception table might be just the vantage point I needed. I’d see everyone who came in or went out, and I could plumb them for humor. It just might be worth a giggle. “Not bad, Abuela. Should I wear my dress?”

“¡Ay, no, chica!”

“Just kidding, just kidding. A sign’s a good idea, though. I’ll go make one after breakfast.”

Abuela smiled, and the wrinkles seemed to fall from her robe and under her eyes at the same time.
“Gracias pa’
el
café,”
she said.

All our card tables were in use, but Mom’s African-violet table had wheels and was just about the right height. I made my sign and went downstairs to get the plant stand. Mom’s seven pots of African violets greeted me from the tiled floor beneath the purple-blue grow light—and the table was gone. But a telltale trail of tiny pink droplets led back up the steps.

Further investigation drew me out the front door to the open garage, where I found the plant stand parked, a tackle box full of dimes open on top, and my brother in his Cubs hat behind it. At his feet sat a bushel basket of golf balls and a pile of plastic kitchen bags. Propped against the table, a huge poster in Mark’s handwriting announced: SALE—GOLF BALLS, 1 BUCK.

“God, Vi,” Mark said, scowling, “d’you know how long it took me to get these clean? I could’ve killed you.”

“You’re
selling
these?”

“Sure, I’ve made six bucks already.”

It wasn’t even ten o’clock on a Sunday morning. Yet here came another group of customers, stopping their cars by the refrigerator-box sign in our driveway: QUALITY USED GOLF BALLS. I grimaced and went back into the house.

A little later Mom gave me an old tin TV tray with a faded picture of a deer on it and told me to set it up out back, and take Chucho with me. He was eating the frills off the party toothpicks.

I chose a spot under the maple tree, midway between the domino tables and the barbecue grill, and staked Chucho next to me. He went into a little snit fit in the grass, rolling and snuffling; then he stretched, yawned, and gave a little squeak at the end. I scratched him under his pointy chin. “I have got to do some math homework, boy,” I told him, pulling out a notebook, and he immediately curled up at my feet and went to sleep. My sentiments exactly.

The hard-core players, Marianao included, began to arrive around noon, and more guests trickled in throughout the day. The baby-blue sky and Abuelo’s coals burning down in the grill lured most people out back for a while. Many of them carried old bread bags full of golf balls. But my TV-tray business was booming too. As was Dad’s
Best
of Buddy
Guy
on the stereo.

Buddy tweaked his guitar hard in the background as a cousin a few years older than me approached my
quince
stand.

“Eva, long time no see!” At least I remembered her name.

Eva had come straight from Mass at St. Ignacio’s. She wore a navy blue tie-back dress, stockings, heels, and pearl earrings and carried a clutch purse. She wrote her family down for the party flowers.

“
Muchas
gracias,
Eva. That’s awful generous.”

“I didn’t make my
quince
when I was fifteen,” she said ruefully. “My sister Cristina’s wedding broke the bank that year. I think Mami and Papi are feeling guilty.”

“Guilty’s as good as generous,” I said.

She leaned over to exchange air kisses before saying good-bye.

The blues on the stereo switched to salsa, and Abuelo brought the pork roast out to the grill. The yard had filled with relatives and friends, and, I suspected, a few of Mark’s customers who’d hung around for a freebie. Cigar plumes from the domino tables mingled with briquette smoke, forming a mushroom cloud that drifted slowly toward the Vespucci yard. A gang of little kids played a dangerous, high-speed game of horseshoes on one corner of the lawn, all shrieking at once. Someone turned up the music.

I jogged around the house, past Mark wrestling a golf ball from a stubborn cousin, and through the front door. Harsh laughter rattled from the kitchen. I walked in to find one of Dad’s relatives wearing the toaster cozy on his head and singing into a spatula in a booming voice, in Spanish.

“HA!”
yelled my mother, followed by three imaginary beats. She dropped her garlic press on the counter and fell into line behind him. Abuela’s sister, Tía Sara, took a swig from a pitcher she was stirring and grabbed Mom by the hips, chanting, “Cha-cha-
cha,
cha-cha-
cha.
”

I might have missed the punch line, but this looked like fun! I latched on behind Mom, and we snaked out of the kitchen and past the buffet, picking up Dad’s friend Rudi, Eva’s mom and dad, and a bewildered-looking stranger carrying a bag of golf balls, and we all congaed down the hallway to the back porch.

Our cries were swallowed by trumpets and drumbeats and a singer’s voice; then we pushed through the porch and out to the backyard. Marianao shimmied over in a tight black minidress. “Cha-cha-
cha,
cha-cha-
cha
!” repeated Tía Sara as more joined the line.

Abuelo, manning the Weber, saw us coming and started clacking his barbecue tongs like castanets. Unable to resist, he tossed his squirt bottle to an innocent bystander and joined the dance.

“Cha-cha-
cha,
cha-cha-
cha
!” we cried, chugging around the house. I motioned to Mark out front, but he crossed his arms and pointed to his inventory. Dad’s cousin at the head of the line spun into a tight spiral, which made everybody dizzy, then whipped us back out into a straight line and around the corner of the house. A siren down the street mingled with blazing conga drums from the stereo as we returned to the backyard, to the sight of—flames on the grill.

The roast was on fire.

I’ve never seen Abuelo move so fast. He catapulted past the horseshoe players, grabbed a two-pronged fork from the grill, and speared the roast in one motion. The marinade on the meat burned merrily as Abuelo hopped in a circle, swearing in Spanish and trying not to trip over Chucho’s taut leash. Inside, someone cranked the music even louder.

Chucho began to howl. One of the little kids yelled “Fire! Fire!” until the rest took it up. Some of the grown-ups chimed in, half of them howling, as Abuelo whipped the flaming meat into a bonfire by dancing madly through the backyard. He ran for the metal tub of ice full of Old Style and Cokes. Then, looking for all the world like the Cuban Statue of Liberty, he raised the burning roast high, swearing, and with a great hissing and steaming, he doused the thing in the ice.