Taína Read online

  “Before Mami yanked me out of school, I remember sitting on a bench in the schoolyard all by myself because no one would sit next to me. Not even you—”

  “I was scared of you,” I whispered. “You’re right, I was scared, you were so pretty.”

  “What? Speak up, bitch. I was what?”

  “Nothing.” But I think she had heard me.

  “Fine.” She studied my face for a second and continued. “He came over and sat right next to me. I will not lie to you, I liked that he sat next to me.”

  “Oh, gaaad.” I was like puking.

  “No, really. I sensed that he wanted to talk to me. To be nice to me, he just didn’t fucking know how to do it. You know, the way that I can’t help but to curse. And then he saw his boys coming out of the school doors. I know how you boys get when your boys show up, it’s like now you have to put on a show because if—”

  “What happened?”

  “Fuck you. Fine. Nothing happened. Didn’t say a fucking word, he left a cannoli on the bench and went over to his boys, lighting a cigarette, like I never existed. From that day on, he’d always leave them for me.”

  “Always?”

  “Yeah. He knew where I sat and my schedule and leave fresh cannoli in a plastic bag inside my desk.”

  “And what you do?”

  “I fucking ate them. What you think? Those shits are good.”

  Taína got really close to me and held my hands.

  “Nothing ever happened.”

  “Nothing?”

  “On my baby’s life, okay?” When she said that, I believed her. “We good?” she said. I stayed quiet because half of me didn’t blame Mario, Taína was lovely, but the other half wanted to get back at him, though I didn’t know how.

  “We good? Or what? The fuck?”

  I nodded. I could never stay mad at Taína.

  “Good. I want to show you something,” Taína whispered. She rarely whispered. “I love my iPod. I listen to it, but only at night,” she said, and we got up from the couch. I helped bring her pregnant body up only weeks before the arrival. She guided me to the living room closet door.

  “Don’t tell my mother ever or I’ll fucking kill you till you’re dead.” She opened the closet door. The shelves and the closet floor were overflowing with children’s musical instruments. There was a baby maraca, a baby trumpet, small bongos and a drum, a ukulele, a little kid’s piano, and a small keyboard whose batteries were long dead.

  “You can play all these?” I asked, but she didn’t answer me.

  There were musical awards and certificates from P.S. 72 that Taína had won and tons of pictures of her singing as a little kid. I picked one up. A seven-year-old Taína in jeans and a Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt, standing in front of a microphone bigger than her whole face.

  “Shit, give me that.” She snatched it away from me.

  “Can I see it?”

  “No,” she said defensively. “My mother never bought me toys. What little money she had was spent on instruments, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Can you play them?”

  “Yeah, I can play them, okay? Jeez. It’s not what I want to show you, okay.” She pointed at the top shelf. “Bring those down,” she ordered me, because she couldn’t reach that high.

  The top shelf was loaded with piles and piles of records in all three speeds: 78, 33⅓, and 45 rpm. Ray Barretto’s Señor 007, Willie Colón’s Cosa Nuestra and Lo Mato, Celia Cruz’s Homenaje a los Santos and Azucar Negra, Ismael “el Sonero Mayor” Rivera’s Fiesta Boricua, El Gran Combo, Rubén Blades, and older albums of stars like Los Panchos, Xavier Cugat, Israel Fajardo, Tito Puente, Miguelito Valdéz, Ramón “el Jamón” Ortiz, Machito, La Lupe, and Iris Chacón, and Cesar and Nestor Castillo’s award-winning album The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. And with some effort, as it was at the bottom of a heavy pile that I had brought down, Taína showed me Héctor Lavoe’s little-known album, La Plancha.

  “That’s your mom, right?”

  I held an old LP, a 33⅓. This absurdly gorgeous, smiling, teenage bottle blonde with violet-colored contact lenses and olive skin lay on an ironing board in her bra and tiny panties. Behind her, Héctor Lavoe and the band were going to make her wrinkle free as they held red-hot irons in their hands.

  “She’s pretty,” Taína said.

  “Pretty fake,” I said.

  “All girls are fake, you stupid idiot,” she said. “We wear makeup, heels, and all kinds of shit.”

  We heard Doña Flores stir. Talking to herself or the walls about Peta Ponce. Asking her questions.

  Taína took the record away from me. We put everything back as quickly as possible and closed the closet.

  She led me to the door.

  “Peta Ponce, you gonna be there, right?”

  “Of course,” I said, and for a moment I thought she was going to kiss me like the last time. I shifted my body and placed my face in front of hers.

  “Don’t forget to bring soda next time,” she said. “Who eats fucking pizza without soda?” And she closed the door.

  It had not been a good night. Taína had given Mario a chance; she might have even liked him. And she didn’t kiss me good-bye. I thought how cruel the gods are. Here is eternal life, but not eternal youth. Here is the power to predict the future, but no one will believe you. Here is a picture of a hot girl in bra and panties, but it’s your mother. And Taína had not kissed me.

  Verse 12

  “I THINK YOUR mother is mad at me and I want to cook something really good for her,” my father said in Spanish. He asked me if I could lend him a hundred dollars. I thought it a great, great idea.

  “That seco de chivo you made the other day wasn’t that bad, Pa.” I had tried it and liked it, though Mom didn’t take a single bite, and to show how disgusted she was, she left the house and came back with a Big Mac.

  “I want to get some flowers, a pernil to bake, a bottle of Chivas—your mother likes Chivas—an old record, I do not know which one yet, and a new pair of shoes, too.”

  “You know her size?”

  “No, but I will bring a shoe with me to the store.” And as he kept talking I realized he was doing this not because he was apologizing or anything, he was doing this because it was going to be my mother’s birthday. Like all Jehovah’s Witnesses, my mother doesn’t celebrate birthdays. Hers, my father’s, mine, or anybody’s. But this never stopped him from throwing her or me a little party anyway. When he did have a job and it was my birthday, he’d take me to a movie or to the bleachers at Yankee Stadium. For my mother, though, he’d wrap presents on purpose because as a Jehovah’s Witness, Mom wasn’t supposed to receive gifts on that day. But he’d wrap them, knowing that Mom’s curiosity would get the best of her. She always protested. Asking her God for forgiveness. But in the end she always caved.

  “I’ll even serve her,” Pops said.

  “Sí, claro, Pa, I have a hundred dollars for you.” I had just taken a dog back and I was flush. Though most of that money was going to Doña Flores, because Salvador had told me that Peta Ponce was coming from Puerto Rico in a day or two. Taína wanted me to be there, and no matter what, not angels or demons were going to stop me from being near Taína when the espiritista arrived at her house.

  “You know I am proud of you.” My father squeezed my shoulder, and it made me happy. It had nothing to do with money. It had to do with him being able to ask me without any embarrassment. I wished that Mom could be a little bit like that. But Mom was very closed. She would rather hide things behind anger or sarcasm.

  “I will find a job and pay you back.”

  “You know Pa”—because he was my dad and I owed him more than money—“you do have a job, you cook and clean and you always walk my dogs and feed them and stuff.”

  “No, no, no,” he said firmly. “I like walking your
dogs. I only clean and cook to keep my own conscience clear until I get a job.” But he had always been chronically unemployed. As soon as he’d find a job, he’d lose it in no time. Always blaming authority, how bosses should not exist at all. How the camaraderie of the rich is built on the fear that the day will come when the poor will grow so desperate they will knock down the wealthy’s doors and rush uninvited, plundering their wealth and dirtying up their Persian rugs. How things in his native Ecuador were better and how Marxism is the answer. And blah, blah, blah, just like Mom with her Jehovah, Marx’s words were his law. And soon, he’d bore everyone at work until they grew so sick and tired of him, he was fired. I think that was another reason why Mom was angry a lot. She felt pressed. I’m not blaming my father. I’m just trying to better understand Mom. All this responsibility of keeping the refrigerator full falling on her.

  “Pa,” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder, which I rarely do, “usted sabe que Mami lo hizo. ¿Verdad?” I said in Spanish, because adding that to touching his shoulder meant I wanted to talk to him about something important.

  “Did what?” he said in Spanish, like I was asking him to buy toothpaste.

  “Mami lo hizo, ¿usted sabe?” And I tried to hold his eyes, but he was more interested in vacuuming soon.

  “No. Tell me, did what? Tell me.” He was more lost than Columbus.

  “La operación,” I said.

  And that word made him freeze and clam up.

  “Just tell me,” I said in a low, respectful voice, “whatever you want to tell me, Pa. It’s okay. And if you don’t want to tell me anything, that is okay, too.”

  He cleared his throat. He shuffled his feet like a boxer. Put his hands in his pocket and then took them back out. Licked his lips and didn’t know where to start.

  “Do not think that I do not love you,” he said, clearing his throat some more.

  “I know, Pa.”

  “Do not think I do not love your mother.”

  “I know.”

  “I did not know the language at all. I did not know anything. I had been here less than a year when that happened.” He shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it. “The doctors talked to me. They told me this was best. I would not have agreed, but, but, but I did not understand. I was new here.”

  “But, Pa,” I said. “Mom knows English. She must have known what they wanted to do to her? She must have translated to you?”

  “Do not blame your mother. She had just given birth to you,” he said, and I had never seen my father this close to crying. “She comes from a culture where this is nothing. So many do it. So many were forced to do it that it becomes nothing. All I know is she never blamed me for anything. And I will not blame her, too.”

  “Okay. I’m fine with that,” I said.

  “All I remember was you. You cried so loud and later I held you. Your mother did not tell me anything till later. She cried a lot and she became closer to her God. And I let her because if that is what it took, then that is what it took to make her not feel guilty,” he said, more composed but still needing to clear his running throat.

  “What about Peta Ponce?”

  “Enough. Enough,” he said, tired. “That crazy woman? Are we not men, Julio?” he said, as if men are not supposed to talk about these issues. “Men. We are men. Right, son?” My father was from a different time, a different country, a communist philosophy. Like him not blaming my mother and like her not blaming him, I could not blame my father for his way of thinking or try to change him. Though he himself had told me that as men, we should never run from anything. That whatever you ran away from would one day come back stronger than you and armed to the teeth. And now, he was not taking his own advice. But he had said enough and there was no point in making him angry. If another time showed itself to talk, then fine. If not, fine, too. But we had discussed it. The secrets between us two were no longer valid.

  “Yeah, Pa,” I said, “we are men.” Because that’s what he wanted to hear. I gave him another hug. He put the money I had given him in his pocket and quickly went to vacuum the living room.

  * * *

  —

  I GAVE SALVADOR the camera. He held it in his hands as if thinking of selling it. But when I told him what was in the envelope he almost snatched it away. “In the daytime?” He didn’t wait for my response. He quickly took the pictures out of the envelope. He began to study them like he was searching for Waldo. His mouth was half-open, and never did the old man smile. It was more like he was in awe of the daylight. I had gone to see him early, like eight thirty, because I wanted him to come and walk with me. Maybe even convince Taína and his sister to come out this early in the nighttime and take a stroll.

  “You know, we can talk by the East River,” I said. “It’s nice there.”

  “Man, I wish I had a magnifying glass,” he said to himself, and continued to study his pictures. He squinted. His eyes became insect slants.

  “We can go buy one,” I said. “I bet the Duane Reade has one.”

  “What?”

  “We can buy one, man. Let’s go get Taína and her mother and go buy one, Sal.”

  “Nah.” He held the picture of the playground up to the light. “Nah, I need to look at this right now, papo.”

  I left him alone and leaned against the old piano. I looked at his vejigante costume hanging by the closet door, bright colors dominating everything in the tiny apartment. I asked him if he’d wear it tonight. But he was transfixed. I didn’t exist. He mumbled little words to himself and then nodded. He was happy, I think, but in a way I could not figure out. When he held the picture of the playground, he took a step backward. He stared at the wall and back at the picture, and then he looked back at me.

  “You sure this is the same place? It don’t look like it.”

  “It’s the same place, Sal.”

  “Damn, see, I’ve never seen it like this. Never seen it with this much light. It looks like a real playground. Let’s go there now, right now, papo.”

  “The playground?”

  “The playground.”

  “You serious!”

  “Yeah, now.” The playground was calling him. The old man put on his shoes and then his cape and grabbed his walking stick. I let everything I wanted to talk about drop; there would be another time. I looked forward to being somewhere other than this basement.

  “You got subway fare for me, right, papo?”

  “I got better,” I said. “Let’s cab it.”

  Salvador brought the pictures, and during the cab ride he didn’t say anything. He kept staring out the window, watching Spanish Harlem flash by. He had lived in many places, on different blocks. He had sung doo-wop on countless street corners, and looking out the cab window was doing things to his memories. We crossed Central Park and drove toward the Upper West Side and then toward Clinton.

  We arrived at West 46th and Ninth Avenue. I paid the driver and Salvador jumped out of the cab like he was on fire. He ran to the fence and took the picture of the playground out of the envelope. He compared the real playground with the picture. Salvador didn’t enter the playground. He walked around the fenced playground and his memories were running backward. He placed his hands on the steel wires and screamed like he wanted to bring the fence down.

  I sensed his embarrassment. His shame at having me witness him yell like that. And then he became a docile old man again.

  “You know, papo, if I could, all I would ask is to start again. That’s all I want, to start again. But you can’t do that, papo.” He had told me this once before. “But if I could start”—I could tell he had had this conversation with himself many times—“where would I start?” He looked at the picture again. “My life was a mess from day one. Where would I start?”

  “You can start now? Today,” I said. “You know, Sal, you shouldn’t punish your
self more than you already have by living in the dark.”

  “I have to.” He put the picture away and began walking toward the precinct.

  “No, you don’t. Listen, man, you don’t have to feel shame, you paid your dues, you were locked up for decades—”

  “Didn’t bring anybody back,” he cut me off in a firm but polite manner. I finally saw a half smile, though it was more out of sadness than anything.

  We walked through Salvador’s Hell’s Kitchen. The rough neighborhood where the Marvel Comics street-savvy Irish superhero Daredevil was from. But gentrification had turned Hell’s Kitchen into Clinton, and the only thing hellish about that neighborhood now was its rents.

  “Mira, papo, you ever heard that story about Destiny coming to play cards with this bum?” I shook my head. “Well, Destiny comes to play cards and the bum thinks he can win and change his future. But see, papo, the bum sees that Destiny cheats. The bum sees all the rotten things Destiny does and so the bum loses. Destiny says to the bum, You’ll always be a bum. The bum says, Because you cheat. And Destiny says, Yeah, but I let you play.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “Means I had a rotten life from the start,” he said, “but at least I was given one. And maybe that’s it. I don’t know? Maybe even with my rotten life I should be happy. Right? But this makes little sense, papo.”

  “You know, Sal, maybe this espiritista can help you, too. Peta Ponce, I mean. She’s coming anyway, can’t hurt.”

  But he kept walking.

  When we reached the precinct, he didn’t go in. Just as with the playground, he compared the real with the picture.

  “Sal,” I said, “I know the daylight does things to you, but what if I come with you to these places in the daylight? You know, so you won’t be alone?”

  “No, papo,” he said, staring at the precinct. “In the daytime I might bump into one of them.”

  “Bump into who?”

  “The mothers.”

  “The mothers? What mothers?”

  “The mother of one of the boys,” he said, as if it were obvious.