The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (23 page)

You’d think she’d had vineyards in Cuba, or that she went to France every summer, but she didn’t. In fact, once she settled in Miami, she never left, never took a vacation or traveled. Every morning at dawn, she’d mop the entire store spotless before opening the front doors at 7
A.M.
Like for her father, El Cocuyito wasn’t just her livelihood, it had become her life, a way to replace her losses, or at least not think about them.
Tía
Gloria wasn’t a fifties Cuban princess
anymore—but she was a
queen
in polyester pants and sneakers, proudly and benevolently dedicated to her people in exile. She knew all the regulars by name and let them buy on credit by simply signing the back of the register receipt. No one ever went hungry. She always had enough time to ask about the children and grandchildren she had watched grow up inch by inch; she had me deliver groceries to anyone who was too sick to shop or recovering from an operation.

On her birthday that summer,
tía
Gloria pulled off the shelf a bottle of Merlot that had a torn label and uncorked it in the back stockroom. On the same pockmarked table where Don Gustavo and I gutted papayas and melons, she served
dos deditos
—two fingers’ worth of wine in Styrofoam cups to all the employees and any customer who happened to be around. Among boxes of toilet paper, canned peaches, and laundry detergent, her people raised their cups in a toast:
¡Salud! ¡Qué viva Gloria!

SUMMER ENDED AND I STARTED FRESHMAN YEAR
at Christopher Columbus, an all-boys Catholic high school in Güecheste, along with many of my eighth-grade classmates. Alberto, the suavest and handsomest boy of the class, who seemed to never go through an ugly phase. Little Ralph, who earned a black belt in karate to compensate for his puniness—no one ever messed with him. And there was Eric, the class daredevil, who always had a scrape, a sprain, or a broken bone. All together we were about a dozen boys who stuck together as we navigated our new lives in high school. We sat together in the cafeteria every day. They were a familiar bunch and I felt comfortable around them, but I couldn’t quite relate to them the way I did to Julio. Not surprisingly, Julio hadn’t been accepted to Christopher Columbus because of his poor grades and horrible conduct. We managed to get together almost every weekend and maintained our friendship. Still, I missed seeing him every day like I had in grade school.

I also missed working at El Cocuyito and being with
mi gente
. One day, on a visit to the store after school with Abuelo and Abuela, I caught up with
tía
Gloria in the storeroom and asked if she needed any extra help. “
Pues claro,
Riqui, it’s always busy here,” she said, “You would be a big help. Maybe you can come in on Saturdays? But you need to ask your
padres
for permission first.” “Yes, of course,” I said. On the way back home, I told Abuela, knowing she would be all for it and be my ally. Together, we approached Mamá that evening and I asked for her permission. She was concerned that working would affect my studies, but I promised her it wouldn’t, and that I would make up study time on Sundays. Abuela also chimed in: “
Mira
how much weight he’s lost. Do you want him to turn back into
Lardito
?” Mamá agreed to a trial period until my first quarter report card, and Papá agreed he’d drive me.

On that first Saturday back to El Cocuyito,
tía
Gloria explained that I’d be in charge of setting up displays for the weekly specials. Some weeks she chose canned goods: cling peaches or garbanzo beans or soups. I’d start with a square base, then add layer upon layer of can atop can, slowly building a pyramid with a single can crowning the top, as easy as playing with Legos. Some weeks she chose bags of rice and toilet paper, which were a bigger challenge. I’d have to stack boxes in the middle and then build around the pile like a fortress to keep them from collapsing. The displays were usually nice enough, but always seemed to be missing that extra something, just like Miss DeVarona’s bulletin boards.

One Saturday, I took a few sheets of onion-skin paper that my mother kept in her night table for writing letters to Cuba. On one of the thin sheets I traced the word
Campbell’s
from a can of soup and perfectly reproduced the fancy script onto a placard. I used my Crayola markers to color in the background bright red, and then drew thick, stylized numbers all slanted to the left:
2 × $1.00
.

“
Qué curioso
. That looks beautiful.” Sonia commented. Even Don Gustavo complimented my work, sort of. “Well, what about the other displays?” he said, meaning he approved of what I had done. And
tía
Gloria was impressed too: “That’s perfect. Who taught you that?” She had me make signs for all the weekly specials. I traced the big heart-shaped
O
of the Del Monte peaches, the Cuban flag for the cans of Ancel guava marmalade, the toucan from the Froot Loops cereal, and the owl from the Wise potato chips.

At the end of November,
tía
Gloria cleared a space in front of the store to display the holiday items. I spent part of my pay on an arsenal of decorations from Diamond’s: tinsel and garlands I used to trim the tables stacked with pyramids of Spanish almond
turrones
and fancy
panetelas;
velvet bows and twinkle lights I used to create a centerpiece with a
FELIZ NAVIDAD
sign in gold glitter. Customers oohed and ahhed, complimenting
tía
Gloria, who gave me all the credit. But my arts and crafts proved to be too girly for Don Gustavo. The day after I finished my Christmas masterpiece he told me, “Enough playing around—there’s real work to do around here. Go help your
tío
Pipo with
los lechones
.” El Cocuyito was
the
place in Miami to get the best
lechón asado
—a whole roasted pig that was a must for a
real
Cuban
Nochebuena
. Starting in early November, customers began placing their orders with
tío
Pipo,
tía
Gloria’s husband, who ran
la carnicería,
the meat and deli counter. As instructed by Don Gustavo, I reported to
tío
Pipo, who was in over his head. I helped him devise a foolproof tracking system using a spiral notebook in which we recorded the customer’s name, telephone number, approximate number of pounds, and a “pig number” copied onto a piece of white butcher paper for each customer to keep as a receipt.

Slicing bloody steaks and gutting chickens all day long didn’t fit
tío
Pipo’s disposition. He was like a Cuban laughing Buddha, with a paunch that stretched out his smock and a sparkle in his eyes that gave him away as a flirt. His weakness: middle-aged women with dyed blond hair, like Elsa Gomez. Though I’m sure he never cheated on my
tía
Gloria, there were rumors for days after Elsa would come in clicking her open-toe heels, sashaying her Rubenesque figure up and down the aisles in plain view of
tío
Pipo, and shamelessly addressing him by his given name: “
Hola,
Gilberto.”
Tío
Pipo’s currency was meat: he gave Elsa deep discounts on filet mignon, an occasional free string of sausages, or an extra pound of ham; he scribbled black hearts and smiley faces with his wax pencil on the packages he’d hand to her with a wink of his sleepy eye and a soft tug on her earlobe. It was
tío
Pipo’s most distinct, if not bizarre, trademark, one I couldn’t quite explain and never questioned. Since I’d been a child, he’d greet me with a pull on my earlobe, his thumb and index finger always cold from the meat locker and tinted pink from the blood that never quite washed off his hands.

Impressed with the pig-tracking system I created,
tío
Pipo asked me to join his crew of friends and help out with roasting the pigs the day before Christmas Eve. Right after the store closed, we set up an assembly line starting with Regino (aka
Enano,
the Midget), who was in charge of marinating the carcasses with
tío
Pipo’s special blend of cumin and bitter orange, which he prepared secretly in empty two-liter Coke bottles. Then came Rafael (aka
Narisón,
Big Nose), who cracked the carcasses open and laid them flat, snout up, on an aluminum roasting pan. Alberto and I followed, tagging each pig in the ear with its own PIN (Pig Identification Number) following the list from my notebook. It was a bit repulsive, though I pretended it wasn’t; a real
hombre
wasn’t supposed to feel sorry for the poor animals, their faces frozen in the expression they’d worn at the very moment of their death. One by one,
tío
Pipo slid each clammy-white pig into the oven.

While the pigs roasted, the crew got toasted on all the free beer they could drink, right out of
the refrigerator case in the store. It was their only compensation for “volunteering” to help
tío
Pipo with the all-night roast-a-thon, which soon turned into a drink-a-thon. “
Coje,
take one. It’s okay tonight,”
tío
Pipo said, twisting off the cap from a frosty Heineken and handing it to me. I took the bottle and a swig: “
Ay,
I needed that,” I said, like it wasn’t a big deal, like I drank beer all the time. Just then, Enano walked up to us with a
Playboy
magazine opened to the centerfold. The mood changed instantly. “Look at that—what a
mujerona,
” he said and passed the magazine around. Cautiously but greedily, each one of the men made comments about breasts and asses under their breaths as if their wives were listening, watching. When the magazine was passed to me, I pretended to be swept away, though I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more lascivious than “Wow!
¡Coño!
” and quickly passed it on. The magazine was then retired to the bathroom, visited by each of the men, one by one. “Don’t you need to go to
el baño?
”
tío
Pipo asked me with a wink of his eye. “The magazine is under the sink.” “No, no,
tío
,” I said nervously.

To pass the time while the pigs roasted, Narisón set up a domino game table in the store’s backyard, under the floodlights and stars.
“¡Oye Riqui, ven pa’ca!”
Narisón called me over. “We need a fourth player.” I spent a good part of the night as one of
los hombres,
playing dominos and drinking, exchanging wisecracks and listening to their memories about the last
Nochebuena
they celebrated in their own country, the homes they missed, the friends they had lost. “May we be in Cuba next year for
las Navidades
!” Narisón shouted a toast, his raised beer spilling onto the table and dominos. “
¡Come mierda!
Now we have to start the game all over!” Alberto yelled, soaking up the spilled beer with a rag. The two exchanged insults, which somehow turned into a fight over who was to blame for the Revolution—Batista or Machado—and what
really
went wrong, the
real
reason for the Revolution that “ruined their lives.”

“We need to take the last of the
lechones
out—they’re ready, I think,” I interrupted to ease the tension. “Okay,
vamos a ver,
”
tío
Pipo said, walked over to the oven, and slid out one of the toasty-brown pigs, the color of burned sugar. He snapped off a tiny piece of the crackly skin and savored it for a few seconds before declaring, “Ready,” and repeated the taste test for the next pig, and the next, and the next, until the last one came out of the oven and the sun broke through the sky.

Tío
Pipo gave me the keys to open up the store. Once again—as I had always remembered—the sunlight shined on the plate-glass doors and set the emerald letters aglow as if they were themselves made of fireflies that had swarmed together to spell out:
EL COCUYITO SUPERMERCADO
|
CARNICERÍA—MEATS
|
CAFETERÍA—CAFÉ CUBANO
. I remembered Don Gustavo’s story of the fireflies that lit up his village in Cuba. El Cocuyito wasn’t just a grocery store anymore, it felt like that village to me, a pueblo where everyone knew each other and where, for a few minutes every day, they could pretend they were still in Cuba, surrounded by their own fruits and vegetables, their own sweets and cuts of meat, their own language and fireflies, as if nothing had ever disrupted their lives. I thought about Raquel’s photos and her sad stories, Felipe’s cardboard Havana, Nuñez’s
Cubichi
lessons, and all that Don Gustavo had lost. I thought about all I may have lost without knowing. Perhaps El Cocuyito was my village, my pueblo too.

A FEW WEEKS AFTER CHRISTMAS BREAK ENDED
, loudmouth Nuñez warned me that the cashier Sonia and her daughter Deycita were shopping around for a partner for Deycita’s
Quinces
debut. But according to Cuban protocol, he explained, it wouldn’t be proper for either of them to simply ask me to be her
Quinces
partner—that would be too forward and unladylike. They had to manipulate me into asking. To many, Deycita was as pretty as her name; they’d compliment her silky mane of
hair, her seductive eyes, and her Amazonian stature. But not me. While I could admit she was attractive, I wasn’t attracted to her. The truth was, I didn’t find any girl
that
attractive. I figured I just hadn’t found the one who could really turn me on.

Sonia was determined and barraged me with snapshots of Deycita in not-so-subtle and suggestive poses: Deycita in a bikini sipping a piña colada on a chaise lounge, Deycita in a little spaghetti-strap dress and stilettos, Deycita with her hair teased out and tossed wild, Deycita with her hair blow-dried straight to her shoulders, Deycita putting on lipstick in front of her dresser mirror or dabbing on perfume behind her ears. Deycita. Deycita. Deycita. I’d smile and play along as Sonia flipped through the photos and drop obvious hints: “
Mira
how pretty she looks in this one? Doesn’t that dress look delicious on her?
Ay, qué pena
—she hasn’t found the right boy yet for her
Quinces
. She’s so picky.” Every Saturday Deycita would casually stop by El Cocuyito in the middle of the afternoon, done up in eyeliner, rouge, perfume, sitting for an hour or two on the stool at the cash register with her agent, Sonia, who would suddenly need me for a price check or to help her bag groceries, as if I was not only dumb but also blind.