The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico

For my Mommacita,
Eleane Norat McCoy

May 1961

F
OR MY ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY
, P
API MADE
PIRAGUAS
. He left balloons of water in the freezer until they were solid, then peeled the plastic off like bright banana skins. On the veranda, he used his machete to shave the globes into ice chips. Hard bits of cold spit out where the ball and blade met, landing on my arms and legs, cheeks and nose. Papi said it was a Puerto Rican snowfall, and laughed long and deep. Mamá and I did, too. She sat beside me under Papi’s snow until we shivered and held each other close to warm back up.

After the balls were chiseled into a pile of white, we poured passionfruit syrup over it and ate right from the bowl. The sweet flakes made my mouth cold and itchy, and I had to suck my lips to warm my tongue. We couldn’t
eat it all, though; it turned to a puddle under the sun. Papi said snow did that, changed into everyday water. I’d never been in a snowfall before. I didn’t know.

That night, the first heat wave of the season swept over the island and nobody could sleep. I lay in bed, the outside fever making my underwear dig into my skin and itch.

“Papi, tell me a story,” I said. Miserable, I wanted the everyday to shift to dreams.

“You’re too old for stories now. Why don’t I read about Jacob and Isaac?” Mama liked it best when he read from the Bible at bedtime. She believed it would help me dream good things. Papi took a seat in my bamboo chair. The ceiling fan clicked around-around. “Or maybe Daniel in the lion’s den?” He winked at me.

When I was little, I had a crush on the brave and mighty Daniel who played with lions. Mama disapproved. She said that it wasn’t right for someone to have romantic feelings for a dead man, never mind a dead holy man. Papi said it was better Daniel of the Bible than Roberto Confresi, the pirate.

“Can’t I hear the story of my name?” I asked.

In Puerto Rico, everybody had two names. One was printed on a birth certificate. Another was the one you were called, the name you answered to, and that name always came with a story Mama’s birth certificate said “Monaique.” Papi’s said “Juan.” But nobody called them that because those names had no story.

They called Papi
Faro
, “Lighthouse,” because as a child
he loved to watch the flashing light on Aguadilla Beach. My
abuela
, Mamá Juanita, said they often went to Aguadilla to visit her brother’s family. On one particular visit, the family stayed up late listening to troubadour songs, and just before bed, Mamá Juanita noticed that Papi wasn’t with the group. Everyone searched the house, but he was gone. Then, from the kitchen window, she saw a small, soft hump sitting outside on the beach rock. It was Papi. He stared out toward the sea, watching the lighthouse beam slice the black again and again. When she asked what he was doing, he said, “Keeping watch.” Mamá Juanita called him Little Faro, and the nickname stuck.

They called my mamá Venusa because as a girl she nearly drowned while surfing the northwest coast of Puerto Rico. Papi told me how a wave rolled over and pulled her down to the coral bottom. The Ocean King saw her there, her black hair streaking the blue, and thought her so lovely that he decided to change her into a mermaid. The seaweed wrapped her legs and the coral caged her. Mamá prayed for a miracle—to return to our island. Then, just when she thought her skin would change to scales, a rush of water pushed her from the King’s prison, up through the blue-green, until her eyes saw the sun and her skin sparkled pink. She’d been gone so long that everyone believed her dead, lost to the ocean world. But she was reborn, like the goddess Venus.

Those were the stories we lived by. Who my parents were, who I was. My birth certificate said “Maria Flores
Ortiz-Santiago,” but they called me Verdita. Papi kept all our certificates on the shelf in his study beside three dead roosters with black marble eyes. The names were as lifeless as the cocks with their sawdust guts. Only our nicknames were alive. Papi told my story best.

He leaned back in the chair. “Venusa, Verdita wants to hear her story again.”

From the kitchen where Mamá scrubbed the scales off codfish, she laughed. “She’s like you. Head in the clouds.” But I was glad to be like Papi. Mamá wasn’t a good storyteller. She forgot parts or added things from the priest’s sermons. Papi always remembered it right and always began the same way.

He closed the Bible. “Your story started long before you left your mamá’s body, before you took your first breath. Your soul spoke to me from heaven.”

I curled up my toes and closed my eyes, concentrating on Papi’s words.

In a dream, Papi stood alone on a strange and colorful beach, unlike any in Puerto Rico. The ocean was unusually calm, and the air was silent except for the lull of the breeze through the coconut palms. No lick of seaweed or burrow of crayfish—the sand sparkled in rainbow pebbles. In the distance was Mamá, her wavy hair caught in the breeze, black against the light. Papi went to her.

I imagined the beach like the photograph I kept in the crack of my mirror. In it, Mamá stood between bright umbrellas and candy-colored towels, a beach carnival. Her
head was thrown back, her mouth open, and I could hear laughter through the glossy paper. On the back was written
Visit to Orlando and Lita Virginia Beach, 1950
. It was taken just before she got pregnant with me, just before Papi had his dream.

He leaned forward in the chair. “And just as I reached her, I heard a burst of water. A sea spout lifted some fifty feet in the air. So high that I had to shield my eyes against the brightness of the sky and the white surf. I was afraid it was the Ocean King come for Venusa at last. But she turned and smiled. She knew what I didn’t. From the top of the spout, a parrot with emerald feathers and two gleaming green eyes flew from the watery perch and landed on my shoulder.”

I took a deep breath and held it.

“That was your spirit,” Papi continued. “I have never seen such a beautiful bird on earth.”

Papi leaned in and kissed my forehead. I could smell the soap and the little bit of Old Spice aftershave that he used so long ago, when the day was first born. I breathed him in.

In my story, Mamá had a handful of sesame seeds, and she fed them to the parrot until it was full. Then it took flight, spreading its emerald wings in the coconut breeze, up, up into the cloudless blue. It left behind a single green feather. Papi tucked it in the front of his shirt for safe-keeping, but when he woke from the dream, it was gone.

“And I was searching the bed looking everywhere for
the feather when your mamá came into the room with a cup of
café con leche
. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her that I had lost something important. That’s when she told me she was going to have a baby. You were inside her. And I knew the parrot in my dream was you.”

At this point in my story, I always got sleepy. My sheets hugged my body; my pillow cupped my head. I closed my eyes but listened still.

“I told your mamá about the dream and she agreed. God must have put me on the shore of heaven so you could come to us.”

I buried my face deeper into the darkness.

“The day you were born, I walked outside our house and noticed the whoosh of the breeze through the palms, just like in my dream. Mamá’s water broke. She was in labor. We thought you were a boy at first—all the troubles she had. I had to take her to the hospital in San Juan because the
barrio
midwife was busy delivering two other children, and I knew she could not deliver alone.

“I sat outside of the operating room, waiting and watching for the doctor. Those were dark hours. But then a nurse came and took me to you. When I held you that first time, you opened your eyes and looked into mine. Big green eyes.
Verde
. Just like the parrot. And I knew we had met before. My Verdita.”

Sleep washed over me like one of the waves on Papi’s dream beach, soft and soundless.

I
WOKE LATER
to the slow hum of our radio singing out a
plena
song of a lovesick
jíbaro
. Papi was gone. It was still night, but a pink-yellow light glowed outside my bedroom like the candlelit halo of the Madonna at church. Pushing myself out of bed, my arms and legs moved slowly, as if I were still swimming in sleepy waters. I made my way from the darkness to the doorway, reaching out to touch the speckles of light, trying to cup the glow in my hands. It trickled through my fingers. I followed the lamplight to the living room. There, on the couch, were Papi and Mamá. I barely recognized them. He was shirtless. She wore only the bottom portion of her slip, her back brown and bare. Papi clasped her one hand against his chest. With his other, he rubbed the small of her back, round and round, to the music’s pulse. They seemed to be dancing, but lying down and slower than I had ever seen before. It reminded me of how the priests looked when they prayed the graces necessary for salvation. These went on so long that old Señora Juarez always fell asleep, dropped her fan, and drooled. Mamá said they were praying themselves into heaven and if I closed my eyes and did as they did, I might be able to do the same. Mamá and Papi’s bodies were there, but their spirits had risen to a place I could not see.

Their hips swayed back and forth to the voice of the
jíbaro
that lost his love, and to the twang of the guitar
strings. Papi’s face was lost beneath the dark waves of Mamá’s mermaid hair. She had stolen him, swept him under her ocean. Their spirits swam to some depth that I could not reach, and I couldn’t speak to bring them back, couldn’t close my eyes to join them; my stare burned in the lamplight. I tried to walk away, but my legs grew roots. I stood silent, alone, and terrified, and I wondered if that was how hell felt.

A thick lock of Mamá’s hair swung from her shoulder. I could see Papi’s eyes, closed at first and then open. He saw me. “Verdita,” he said to Mamá.

She turned, her cheeks pink and shiny with sweat. “Go!” she yelled, and covered her chest. “Leave!”