The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (29 page)

Ariel chuckled and patted my back: “That’s what
madres
are for. Come on, let’s go.” We went out to
el Malibú
and carried in all ten bags at once—three on each of his superman shoulders, two on each of mine. I didn’t trust Ariel at first, but his chumminess slowly disarmed me. As we filled the bathtub with ice, he went on and on about his dog, a pug named Yakson, whose picture he kept on his acrylic photo key chain. With pride, he explained how he was working a full-time job at Burger King that summer so he could pay for the rest of the paint job on the car. He boasted that he had souped up the engine himself, but wanted to be an architect. “Really? Me too,” I said, surprised we had that in common. He liked baseball—
Los Yanquis
—and New Wave music. He asked me if I liked Alphaville. I said yes. When we returned to the Honda, he cranked up their song “Forever Young” on the car stereo as we eased the roasting pan with the pig out of the trunk, which vibrated with the music. “
Qué lindo, eh?
Twenty-five pounds. I helped kill it myself,” he bragged. “Wow—nice,” I feigned, thankful it was already gutted. New Wave music and slaughtered pigs—something about Ariel didn’t quite add up.

With Mamá guiding the way, we carried the piglet inside and laid it to rest atop the bed of ice.
“¡Vengan! ¡Vengan!”
she called throughout the house. Abuela, Abuelo, and Papá crammed into my beach-themed bathroom. Mamá parted the seashell-print shower curtain, unveiling the piglet in the baby-blue bathtub.
“Ahora sí
—what a feast,” she proclaimed as everyone eyed and complimented the piglet’s buttery pink skin, its fleshy rump, and its ears, which, according to my
abuela,
were the best part—nice and crispy. “But the most important thing is
el mojo
. If not, it will taste like straw,” Ariel said with authority. Mamá agreed and said the pig was going to marinate all night long in her special
mojo
that she was going to prepare. “I’ll help you,” Ariel offered. “I’m known for my
mojo
.” I questioned why I didn’t know how to make
mojo,
surprised that I even cared, not wanting to admit to myself that I was jealous of my mother’s fussing over Ariel. Nevertheless I followed them to the kitchen. I had to figure out how a guy who listened to Alphaville and wanted to be an architect could also know how to make perfect
mojo
.

Mamá served herself and Ariel some Coke without offering me any, then poured the rest of the two-liter bottle into a pitcher. Using a funnel, she filled the empty bottle with the juice of the bitter oranges and limes as Ariel squeezed them. Next they added cumin and minced garlic, pepper and olive oil. They didn’t use measuring cups or spoons; instead they shook the marinade vigorously every few minutes, then tasted it. Between debates over whether to add a little more of this or that, Ariel thanked my mother for helping him and his family since they had arrived from Cuba. “
Gracias a ti,
we’ve been able to get ahead.
Eres un ángel,
” he confessed, choking up before giving her a kiss on the cheek.
“Ay, mi’jo,”
Mamá said humbly, “God is the only one you have to thank—
gracias a Dios
you made it here alive. I wish
mi familia
would have gotten out when they had the chance. Now it’s too late.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Ariel gently stroked her back. Was Mamá really
that
special? I wondered. For a moment, it felt as if I were watching a movie in which my mother was not my mother, but simply a
her,
full of loss and fear, love and charity—a complex woman, not just the family overlord. I wanted to kiss her too, and thank her—but I didn’t.

Adding one last pinch of salt, Ariel declared,
“Perfecto.”
Mamá took a taste before agreeing,
“Sí, perfecto.”
Shaking the
mojo
bottle as if it were a maraca, she did a rumba step down the hall, leading the way into my bathroom. She doused the piglet with the
mojo
, working it into the skin as if she were giving it a massage. “Let me help,” I said, reaching for the bottle in her hand.
“Tú no sabes, mi’jo,”
she protested. “Let
el gringo
try it,” Ariel said, laughing as he turned the pig on its back. “
Arriba,
pour some out—like this—
mira,
” he instructed. Our hands touched and slid over one another as we rubbed the last of
el mojo
through the piglet’s ribs. The smell of garlic and cumin rose into the air, carried on notes of citrus that blended with his orange-blossom cologne. I recognized the scent. It was Colonia No. 4711, the same cologne my father dabbed every morning on his freshly shaven face and the handkerchief he carried in his back pocket.

“Bueno,
sleep with
los angelitos,
” Ariel joked, bidding the pig a good night. Mamá thanked him over and over again at the doorway and invited him to the family gathering the following day. “You’re coming
mañana
, no? We’ll be at El Farito.
Tú sabes
, at the end of Key Biscayne with all the pine trees.” Ariel fidgeted with his car keys. He seemed nervous, perhaps surprised that he’d been invited. “
Bueno,
okay, if I can get off work.” He hugged Mamá good-bye, then turned his sea-green eyes on me. I stretched out my hand for a handshake, and again he pulled me into a hug, his stubbly chin brushing my ear, sending goose bumps down my neck.
“Bueno,
I’ll see you
mañana, primo,
” he said, then crouched into his homely Honda. He blasted another Alphaville song, then honked his horn, which bleated out the notes to “La Cucaracha” as he drove off, waving good-bye.

Overnight, the piglet marinated in its icy bathtub coffin. I could feel the presence of its body as if I were at a funeral wake. Every time I went to the bathroom, there it was. I tried not to look, but couldn’t help staring back at its wide-open eyes, the same look my chickens had had in their eyes, frozen with life and death, terror and peace, the day years ago when Abuela slaughtered them in the backyard. Thoughts of Ariel haunted and perplexed me as I lay in bed, trying to fall asleep: he slaughtered pigs but loved his pug; painted his car gold but listened to New Wave music; wore a medallion of San Lázaro around his neck but also a puka shell bracelet. Ariel didn’t make sense to me: his skin neither black nor white; his eyes neither blue nor green but a color I couldn’t name. I dozed off to echoes of his voice:
Sleep with
los angelitos, primo.
Sleep with
los angelitos.

On Sunday morning I rolled out of bed into my daily routine: one hundred sit-ups followed by one hundred push-ups—plus a few extra to look good for the day at the beach. Was I as muscular and ripped as Ariel? I flexed my biceps and sweaty abs in front of the bathroom mirror. Contorting my body, I inspected the skinny calves I had inherited from my
abuelo
, and my big Cuban butt, inherited from my mother. I imagined myself a few inches taller and questioned if I had
really
lost all my baby fat like Ariel had said. I wasn’t completely used to the lean body of the
man
I saw before me in the mirror: the whorls of hair below
his
navel, the veins on
his
arms, the slit down
his
chest, and the jut of
his
collarbones. Preoccupied, I had forgotten all about the piglet in the bathtub until I flung open the shower curtain to the sight of it still marinating, still staring at me, still dead.

“¡Apúrate!
I need to check on
el puerco
.” Mamá rapped on the bathroom door. I had to skip my shower, and sat right down to breakfast. Above the crunch of my Corn Flakes, I could hear Mamá in her beach sandals flopping and squeaking as she scuttled frantically through the house making final preparations. She finished up the black beans and rice she had whipped up that morning in a pot the size of a tire. She pulled out the beach chairs from the hall closet, then stuffed her
por si las moscas
tote with items she’d laid out the night before: sunscreen, mosquito repellent, magazines, moist towelettes, an emergency roll of toilet paper. And the not-so-usual: Band-Aids, Mercurochrome, a mini machete, an extra bottle of
mojo,
and the cruet of holy water that
tía
Elisa had brought back for her from Lourdes.

She commanded Papá and Abuelo to load the pig into
el Malibú
without spilling a single drop of
mojo
; she put Abuela in charge of plastic plates, cups, and utensils. Caco was taking summer classes away at college, so I was stuck with double duty: she ordered me to carry out the beach chairs and the bags of charcoal briquettes; fill the ice chest with sodas; cut down as many fronds as I could from the plantain trees in our backyard; and grab the shovel from the shed. “What for?” I asked—another dumb question. “To cook
el lechón,
what else?” she said dismissively, as if I should’ve known. I didn’t. I was embarrassed and defensive and had to stop myself from mouthing off to her:
Why don’t you get your precious Ariel to help you?
But I knew better than to provoke her in the midst of her frenzy.

Returning to
el Malibú
with my hands full, I found Papá cussing, hopelessly trying to ease the trunk closed. As usual, Mamá had overprepared and overpacked. Dismissing Papá’s rules about
el Malibú,
she made an executive decision: “
El lechón
will have to go in the car. Go on, get in the backseat,” she told my grandparents and me. Papá slid the roasting pan with the pig onto our laps and then Mamá covered it with a towel to keep it cool.
“Qué
cute—looks like a little
bebé,”
she joked before ordering, “
Vámonos,
we can’t be late.” Papá and I both put on our sunglasses and we drove off.

With the windows rolled down, the morning air rushing in was still relatively cool and crisp for a Miami August. The city felt strangely peaceful at that early hour, empty without peddlers trolling the intersections selling one-dollar bags of peeled oranges; without its senate of cigar-smoking men gathered for coffee at La Carreta, debating how Cuba was lost, again; and without its ladies in curlers and old men in straw hats leaning on canes at the lonely bus stops. This empty Miami felt like an unfinished canvas. There was no honking as we sped down U.S. 1. No line at the Rickenbacker tollbooth. No windsurfers gliding on the bay. No cyclists pedaling through the thicket of sea grape trees lining the causeway. No traffic through the business district of Key Biscayne ending at the beach park entrance. The park ranger in his starchy uniform peered into the car and noticed the swaddled pig in the backseat. “No baby—
es un
pig,” my ever-so-frugal Abuela told the ranger, making sure he wouldn’t mistakenly charge us for six people instead of five. “Yes, ma’am—sure is,” the ranger said, cracking a smile under the shadow of his Stetson hat.

As we passed the
WELCOME TO BILL BAGGS STATE PARK
sign, I thought, just who was Bill Baggs: A general? A U.S. president I’d never heard of? Had he owned this land once? I wondered, the way I often wondered about José Martí and Máximo Gómez—and all the other names from Cuban history that were just as vague to me as the American ones. I always seemed lost between the two, Cuba and America, unlike my parents and grandparents, who were grounded in Cuba, their beloved
patria
. To them Bill Baggs was just something else in
Inglish
that had nothing to do with them, two words they could at best only mispronounce.
“Bil-Bá, Bil-Bá, Bil-Bá,”
Abuelo repeated incessantly, just like he did every Sunday as we passed the sign, to amuse himself and us. That summer he had started calling the park
El Farito
—
The Little Lighthouse
—after the not-so-small lighthouse that stood, towering above the Australian pines, at the end of the cape. And the name stuck. El Farito became
our
family’s park. The beach became
our
beach, and the sun,
our
sun, beginning to stream through the tasseled pines flickering shadows over
our
road as we drove into
our
lot, and parked in
our
usual spot by the rusty bicycle rack.

Mamá was the first one out of the car. From her tote, she pulled out several strips of an old yellow towel she had torn up, and tied one of them around the car antenna. That was the rule: Whichever family arrived at El Farito first had to leave a trail of markers to the campsite so that the other families could follow. She tied a few strips on branches as we made our way through the sandy paths in search of a place to set up camp for the day. We schlepped around for twenty minutes, Mamá hacking away stray branches with her mini machete to clear the way. Finally she stopped and declared: “
¡Aquí—perfecto!
You see,
gracias a Dios
I got us here early.” She thanked God and commended herself for finding a clearing that met the other rule: plenty of shade and at least two picnic tables, which she sprinkled with the holy water from her tote, mumbling a few prayerful words.

After blessing the picnic tables, she unpacked the paper plates, cups, and plastic utensils; laid out all the covered dishes; and then ordered us to arrange the beach chairs in a circle and find a good spot for the hammock. I had to slip away. “Ricardo? Ricardo! Ricardo de Jesús!” she called after me. I kept on walking through the labyrinth of sea grape trees, until I reached the beach, still empty and quiet at that hour. As I strolled along the shore, the seconds between the waves felt like the sluggish heartbeats of the sea slowly coming to life. I became conscious of my feet stamping the sand—step, step, step—as I walked around the big bend where the lighthouse came into view—step, step—each step a question: Who was Ariel Jimenez? Would he show up today? Who was Ricardo Blanco? Would I be an architect? Would I be a husband and father, or would I grow up to love men as Abuela feared? I dove into the ocean, swam eyes-open underwater, fast and hard until I had to come up for air. Heart thumping, I floated on my back and stared straight up at the clouds as they changed their shapes, continuously becoming something new.