The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (16 page)

Abuela made the sign of the cross twice and thanked San Cristóbal, the patron saint of safe passage. I spotted them walking down the concourse:
tía
Elisa wrapped in a fur-trimmed stole;
tío
Paquito decked out in a jacket and a tie as black and narrow as his pencil-thin mustache and darker than his hair; Denise clicking her gum, wearing an iron-on T-shirt with a yellow smiley face distorted by her large breasts, and carrying a radio-cassette boom box; Carla in her two-inch platform shoes, wearing a shin-length skirt and carrying a leather handbag. They were so cool,
but I was too nervous to say anything. After the swarm of hello kisses and hugs, Denise bent down to greet me. “Come here, cuz, gimme some sugar,” she said. I didn’t know what she meant by
sugar
, but I walked into her wide-open arms and kissed her cheek. Then Carla noticed me. “Richard—you look so handsome,” she said, holding me by the shoulders. Carla was the only one in the family who called me Richard—and I loved it.

At the baggage claim, I wondered just how much trouble I would get into if I dared to hop onto the luggage carousel. I debated, wanting to unravel the mystery behind the plastic partitions spitting out and swallowing up suitcases like magic. But then my eyes locked on
tía
Elisa’s
neceser,
her vanity case. “Sí, sí, let me take it. It’s not heavy,” I insisted, practically ripping it out of her hand, not because I was that well-mannered, but because it was like carrying a giant purse. Mamá had one just like it in olive green with double stitching in white and the same dainty clasp. I knew what treasures lay inside: a tiny mirror trimmed with ruffles, silk lining, pockets with bottles of French perfume, eye shadow sets, and tweezers I played with secretly for hours in her closet.

I reached for
tía
Elisa’s
neceser
. “Leave that alone,
niño
. Carry a suitcase
como un hombre,
will you?” Abuela said calmly. She wouldn’t dare make a fuss or call me names in front of
tía
Elisa. I knew I could get away with it, this time at least. I flaunted the
neceser
, swinging it from my wrist all the way back to
el Malibú,
where I bodychecked Caco so I could sit between Denise and Carla. “I’m smaller,” I declared, looking innocently at Mamá for backup. “I fit better than him in the backseat.” It worked: Mamá banished Caco to Abuelo’s baby-blue Comet and let me sit nestled between my
primas
. Their arms touched my arms, their skin white and matte as eggshells, as if it wasn’t skin at all but a thin silk under which I could trace their faint veins.

Unaccustomed to the heat and humidity of Miami, they asked Papá to turn on the air-conditioning, though it wasn’t even ninety degrees, yet. I flinched, thinking Mamá was going to embarrass me with one of her ramblings about the gas-guzzling luxury of driving with the
air-condichon
on. But she didn’t; she rolled up the window, cuing Papá to slide the lever on the dash all the way left. The cold air on
MAX
rushed past my ears as I sat between my favorite
primas
. It was going to be the best vacation ever, I thought.

“There it is—
ahí
—on the right,” Mamá said, managing to spot the nearly washed-out letters of the Copa printed in cursive over the tattered green awning above the entrance. Feeling a bit hammy, Papá honked the car horn as he drove up:
pum-dee-dee-pum-pum—pum-pum
, startling the old folks on the veranda out of their daze. “Feh! What’s all that hoopla for? For God’s sake!” one of the old women yelled, fanning herself. Papá must have thought she was insulting him and responded indignantly,
“¡Vete pa’l carajo, vieja!”
betting the woman knew as little Spanish as he knew English, but he was dead wrong.
“¡Tú para el carajo!”
she mouthed off in broken but clearly pronounced Spanish.

How mortifying. That was Denise and Carla’s welcome to the Copa. “Let’s go inside,” I urged them, not wanting them to witness the unloading of our Cuban Noah’s Ark. “Well, this is certainly charming,” Carla said. “Groovy-nice.” Denise followed. They didn’t seem as disappointed as I thought they’d be, after having heard so many of their spectacular stories about their amazing New York. Perhaps because of my excitement, the lobby didn’t seem quite as horrendous as I remembered it. Maybe
reasonable
wasn’t exactly the same as cheap after all.

We walked out to the deserted pool deck. “Look how blue the pool is—how inviting,” Carla said, always needing her older sister to confirm her opinion. “What do you think, Denise? Isn’t it gorgeous?”
Gorgeous
was one of those cool words, like
scrumptious
and
groovy
,
spectacular
and
outrageous,
that my
primas
used all the time, like another language to me. The pool was indeed
gorgeous
: the water perfectly still, reflecting the sky and the palms like a watercolor with a beautified version of the hotel façade, its age rendered unperceivable in the reflection. “Outta sight,” Denise said upon seeing the two-story diving platform, which wasn’t getting much use, I figured, thinking of the old men and women from the veranda.

Caco and Papá met us outside, but Papá gave Denise the room key since she was the oldest, he said, and then announced: “We have three rooms, and they connect, so we all stay together.” It was too good to be true, but it was.
Tío
Paquito had splurged and gotten an extra hotel room, Papá explained, so that all the cousins—Caco, Denise, Carla, and I—could stay together in one room, and the adults would be more comfortable. This could turn out even better than staying at the Seacomber, I thought, a whole week with AC and my
primas
in the same room. Without Abuela patrolling me, I could blow-dry Carla’s hair, put lipstick and eye shadow on Denise, maybe even paint my fingernails with clear polish, I dared to daydream.

We met up with the rest of the family by the elevator, the men struggling to push the luggage cart loaded with all our Cuban must-haves. As soon as the doors closed, Denise reached over my shoulder and tore off a piece of bread from one of the dozen loaves Mamá had brought. “Cuban bread—far out,” she mumbled while chewing, the crumbs falling inside her smiley-face shirt. “We haven’t enjoyed
pan cubano
in months,” Carla followed, tearing a piece off for herself. “How divine. You’re lucky, we can’t get Cuban food unless we go all the way to Union City in Jersey, right, Denise?” How weird. Why should my
primas
crave anything Cuban? They were practically 100 percent American. “I’m glad you like.” Mamá smiled. “Wait till you taste
el flan
I made.”

By the time we reached our floor, there was a feeding frenzy; everyone—except me—munching and talking with their mouths full, leaving a trail of bread crumbs from the elevator all the way down the hall. The room looked more or less how I had imagined it: a rickety dresser missing a couple drawer pulls; a mirror tarnished in spots so that I had to bob around to see myself in it; and a beige rotary phone on a night table stained with water rings. The shabby paint job had left visible brushstrokes on the walls, and the light switches were crusted over with paint. The polyester bedspreads matched the pattern on the curtains: a collage of faded birds-of-paradise that had bled out most of their colors. But surprisingly, right in the middle of the room was a new twenty-six-inch color TV with an extra tuning antenna.

Carla placed her suitcase down on the bed and stood by the window, looking out at the ocean. “This is stunning,” she said, taking in a deep breath of ocean air. “Can you see Cuba from here?” she asked, turning to me. “I dunno. I guess so,” I answered. It was a silly question—Cuba was way too far away—but I didn’t want to make her feel dumb. Caco immediately darted for the air conditioner and started turning the knobs until it sputtered on and a cool stream of air began pushing through the room. Denise plopped her boom box up on the dresser and tuned in to “Shake Your Booty” by KC and the Sunshine Band. “Come on, Carla, let’s show our
primos
how to do the Bump,” she said, turning up the volume.

They both bumped each other and me all around the room with their hips, snapping their fingers perfectly in time with the beat. “Come on. Get your butt over here and dance,” Denise said to Caco, trying to rouse him. “Naw—that’s for girls,” he protested, but I knew the truth: he was a terrible dancer. Instead of dancing, Caco pulled out a pillow and yelled, “Pillow fight!” leaping back and forth between the two beds, showing off in front of my
primas
. “Come on—fight!” he egged me on, throwing the other pillow at me. “Come, let’s get him!” Carla yelled, then armed herself and jumped onto the bed, followed by Denise.

Thinking I could edge out a victory over Caco with the help of my
primas
, I jumped into the ring
of pillow thwacks and giggles. Then one of them—I didn’t know who—smacked me in the face; the zipper on the pillow cover struck me right under my eye. It hurt, but I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to get either of my
primas
in trouble, just in case it was one of them who hit me. Instead, I moved to the floor, safely out of reach of their cross fire, to quietly get over the pain. As if she knew, within seconds Mamá rapped on the connecting door between the rooms, “
Qué pasa
in there?”

After a few suspicious seconds too many, Caco opened the door. “Nothing,” he lied, but his heavy breathing and the sweat above his lip gave him away. Mamá scanned the room, trying to figure out what we had been up to, and then she saw the welt on my cheek.
“¿Qué te pasó?”
she asked me, turning my face to the light so she could get a good look at my war wound. I remained silent as she scolded us: “
Caramba,
we only here an hour and already trouble. Look at this—you almost broke his eye! What happened?
¡Dime!
” In a panic I squealed, blaming it all on Caco.

I knew I was Mamá’s “little baby,” and would play up to her notion that Caco “should know better” because he was older. But she didn’t quite go for it that time. She spread the blame evenly, separating us into different corners of the room. We were hoping that was the worst of it, but then she made us turn off the radio. “Now sit
tranquilos
till I say. Not a single word out of any of you,” she ordered. “And keep open the door so I can keep
un ojo
on you,
cabrones
. If there is any more trouble, no pool, no beach, no
air-condichon
—
nada
.” Boredom was the cruelest punishment of all, but not knowing how long we’d have to stay quiet and still—for two minutes or two hours—made it torturous.

“Thanks, doofus,” Caco muttered when Mamá turned her back, returning to her room. “But I didn’t do nothing,” I said, thinking my
primas
would defend me again, but instead they sided with Caco. “Yeah, what a tattletale,” Denise said. “That wasn’t nice, Richard,” Carla added. The scorn beaming on me from all six of their eyes was insufferable in our mandatory silence; I broke involuntarily into sobs, turning my face away from them. But they heard my sniffles anyway, and kept shushing and shushing me.

Mamá’s punishments could last hours, but she must have felt somewhat sorry for us since we were on vacation. Only ten minutes later she came back into our room flapping her new sandals covered in plastic daisies and sporting her faux Pierre Cardin sunglasses that made her look like a giant fly. “
Bueno,
are you going all to behave?” she asked as if we were going to answer anything else but yes, yes, yes. “
Bien,
put your bathing suits on,” she said, tossing Caco and me our new swim trunks that she had let us pick out at Kmart. Caco had chosen a pair with the NFL team logos—typical—and I had picked out a bright yellow pair with dozens of floating shamrocks. I just had to have it.

My
primas
rummaged through their suitcases, darted into the bathroom, and then emerged: Denise in a hot pink bikini, and Carla in a more modest blue two-piece. Their breasts were not quite as big or pointy as Mamá’s or Abuela’s torpedo-teats, as Caco called them, and their thighs were even more pale and translucent than their arms. Like
decent
Cuban girls, they were only allowed to shave their legs up to their knees, leaving their thighs full of fine dark hairs matted against their skin. “Shall we go to the pool or the beach?” Carla asked. “The pool—that’s where it’s happening, girl. I’ll bring the boom box,” Denise said. “Why don’t we go to the beach first?” I proposed, but they ignored me.

I went in the bathroom to change, eager to show off my shamrock trunks, but when I popped out, they had all left without me. I expected such shenanigans from Caco, but not from my
primas
. He probably talked them into leaving me behind. I stomped barefoot out of the room, down the hall, through the lobby, and out onto the front veranda, wanting to get as far away from them as
possible. I wanted to be alone, but there was only one empty chair, next to an old woman in a baby-blue dress. I felt as lifeless as she and the rest of the old folks seemed; all of us like seagulls peering out into the ocean at nothing and everything. Why didn’t my
primas
like me anymore? And why was Caco such a jerk?

My self-pitying thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of the old woman next to me, who kept sniffling and dabbing her nose with a linen handkerchief. My eyes were drawn to her fingernails, thick with age but perfectly manicured and painted an icy blue that matched the aquamarine cocktail ring as big as a lollipop that covered half of her middle finger. I turned my head slightly for a moment, catching a glimpse of a diamond pendant on a gold necklace pinched in the folds of skin around her neck, her wrinkled earlobes weighed down by pearl-drop earrings.
She must be rich,
I thought; so what was she doing at the crummy Copa?

“Oy, I must be allergic to you,” she blurted out, pulling off her rhinestone-trimmed glasses and letting them hang from a chain around her neck. I wasn’t sure how to respond to such a weird comment, and wanted to keep to myself. But she continued anyway, “So where you from, dahling?” “Here,” I told her. “What, you live here at the Copa? And so young too. Who knew?” she said in jest, beginning to erase the pout on my face. “No, not in Miami—in Westchester,” I explained, and told her I was here with my parents on vacation. “Oh, you’re the family that schlepped in today in that fancy Chevrolet. What a loud bunch you are,” she said, and began fanning herself. That’s when I recognized her; she was the lady who’d had words with Papá. Embarrassed, I felt obliged to be nice, though I was also curious about her strange accent, which I couldn’t place, and the way she made statements using questions. I’d never heard anyone talk like that before.