He woke up with a start. He looked at the Camaro’s keys hanging from the ignition in the ON position and felt the cool breeze of the air conditioner. He had fallen asleep with the motor running… He lowered the windows, to let maximum fresh air in… Christ, that fresh air was hot! The sun was right overhead… it was killer bright… What time was it? He looked at his jumbo watch. It was 10:45! He had been asleep for three hours… stretched out in the Land of the Sandman with the engine running and the air conditioner chundering out electro-breeze.
He retrieved his cell phone from the bucket seat and sighed… Whatever messages its innards contained, they would be toxic. Yet once again he couldn’t resist. He punched up the new-messages display. There was one after another after another… until one made him do a double take. The number jumped up at him—a text from Manena!
“coming to yeya party c u later”
He stared at the thing. He tried to detect a sign of love in there… any at all… seven words. He couldn’t. Nevertheless, he texted back: “my manena dying to c u”
His spirits turned manic. It would be at least four hours before the party started, but he was going home… now. ::::::I’ll just ignore you Camagüey guajiros, Papa and Yeya and Yeyo. I’ll make damn sure I’m right there when Manena arrives.::::::
By now, 11:00 a.m., the streets of Hialeah were walls of parked cars. He had to park the Camaro more than a block away. Halfway down his own block, a couple of casitas ahead, Señor Ramos was walking out of his front door. From behind his big cop shades Nestor could see Señor Ramos staring at him. The next thing he knew, Señor Ramos was turning toward his front door and snapping his fingers in an exaggerated display of having forgotten something—shoooop—he’s back inside his casita. Señor Ramos is nothing but a baggage handler at Miami Airport. A baggage handler! A little speck of humanity! But this morning, on these streets, he doesn’t want to exchange so much as a buenos días with Officer Nestor Camacho. But so what? Magdalena is coming.
Wouldn’t you know it? From four or five casitas away he can hear his own casita… the power spray exacting friction from hot Hialeah concrete. Oh, yeah. There’s Mami, wearing a pair of long baggy shorts, a baggier too-big white T-shirt, and flip-flops… taming the concrete wilderness for the whateverteenth time this morning… and… Oh, yeah… he gets his first whiff of the pig, which has been roasting for a few hours probably… tended by those two macho masters of the big things in life, I, Camilo, and El Pepe Yeyo…
As soon as she sees her son coming, Mami turns off the hose and cries out, “Nestorcito! Where did you go? We were worried!”
Nestor wanted to say ::::::Worried? Why? I thought “we” would be happy for me to disappear.:::::: But he never spoke sarcastically to his parents and couldn’t make himself start now. After all, Magdalena was coming.
“I went out to get breakfast—”
“We had food here, Nestorcito!”
“—to get breakfast, and I ran into some friends from Hialeah High.”
“Who?”
“Cristy, Nicky, and Vicky.”
“I don’t remember them… Where?”
“At Ricky’s.”
Nestor could see the rhymes rickycheting, as it were, in his mother’s brain, but she either didn’t get it or didn’t care to be distracted by it.
“So early in the morning…” his mother said. Then she dropped that subject. “I have some good news for you, Nestor. Magdalena is coming.” She gave him the sort of look that gets down on its knees and begs for an animated reaction.
He tried, he tried… He arched his eyebrows and dropped his jaw for a couple of beats before saying, “How do you know?”
“I called her and invited her, and she’s coming!” said his mother. “I told her to be sure to come before you had to leave for your shift.” She hesitated. “I thought she might lift your spirits a little.”
“You think they need a lift?” said Nestor. “Well, you’re right. When I was out, I could tell… everybody in Hialeah thinks about me the same way as Dad and Yeya and Yeyo. What did I do, Mami? There was an emergency, and I was ordered to put an end to it without anybody getting hurt, and that’s what I did!” He realized his voice was rising, but he couldn’t stop himself. “At the Police Academy they kept talking about ‘the uncritical willingness to face danger.’ That means you’re willing to do dangerous things without stopping to analyze everything and decide whether you approve of the risk they want you to take. You can’t sit around having a debate. That’s what ‘uncritical’ means. You can’t sit around arguing about everything and… and, I mean, you know—”
He forced himself to slow down and lower his voice. Why lay all this stuff on his mother? All she wanted was peace and harmony. So he stopped talking altogether and gave her a sad smile.
She moved closer, and from her own sad smile he knew what was going to happen. She wanted to put her arms around him and assure him that Mother still loved him. He just couldn’t go through that.
He raised his hands up before his chest, palms outward ::::::Hold it:::::: at the same time he gave her a smile and said, “It’s okay, Mami. I can handle it. All it takes is a little ‘uncritical willingness to face danger.’ ”
“Your father and Yeya and Yeyo didn’t really mean… all those things they said, Nestorocito. They were just—”
“Oh, they meant it,” said Nestor. He made sure to keep his smile spread across his face.
With that, he went inside and left Mami outside to further chasten the concrete slab with the power spray.
Inside, the casita was overwhelmed by the odors, good and bad, of the pig roasting in the caja china. Good—bad—the neighbors wouldn’t care either way. They were all Cuban. They all knew what a big thing, what a family ritual, a pig roast was, and besides, most of them had been invited to the party. That was the Cuban way.
Nobody seemed to be in the house. Nestor headed toward the back. Yeya and Yeyo’s door was open, and so he went in there and looked out their back window. Sure enough, the whole macho crew was out in the yard. There was I, Camilo, directing Yeyo, who was bringing a bucket of coals for the caja china. There was Yeya, the muchacha vieja, pointing this way and that way, directing both of them… correcting both of them. Nestor could be sure of that.
So… he could either walk right up to the caja china clergy and force himself upon them in conversation ::::::Gosh, now that’s some pig! How much longer you think it’ll take? Dad, you remember the time the pig was so big—:::::: for the ten or twenty seconds it would take the three self-righteous pharisees to start spitting their vile bile all over him again… or he could turn his back on the whole scene… The birthday girl, Yeya, obviously didn’t care whether a non-person was there or not. It was not a difficult decision.
Back in his room, Nestor lay down to take a nap. The only half-decent sleep he had gotten in the last twenty-four hours were the three hours when the aroma and the flake-fall of pastelitos had put him under as he sat back at a twenty-degree angle in the driver’s seat of the Camaro outside of Ricky’s with the engine running and the air conditioner on. He couldn’t think of any prospect more inviting than going under again ::::::here in my own bed where I’m already horizontal:::::: but the phrase “here in my own bed” made him anxious. He didn’t know exactly why, but it did. What did “my own bed” mean in a house where three people considered you a traitor and the fourth, kindly enough, said she was willing to forgive you for having sinned against her and the three others and their heritage, and all of Mother Cuba’s offspring in Miami and, for that matter, everywhere in the world. So he lay there horizontally in a regular stew of rejection, stigma, and guilt, those three, and the worst of these, as always, was guilt… even though what was he supposed to have done, looked the mere americano Sergeant McCorkle in the eye and said, “No, I will not lay one hand on a Cuban patriot!—even though I haven’t the faintest idea who the fuck he is,” and then just taken his dismissal from the force like a man? Bubble bubble bubble bu
bble went the stew, while the fouler odors of the pig roast wafted over him, the odors and the occasional rude cry, probably of excoriation, from the backyard, and the time passed as slowly as it had ever passed in his life.
After God-only-knows-how-long came the sound of the chosen pig roasters coming back into the casita, bringing their various recriminations with them, although mercifully he couldn’t really understand them. It was about 1:15, and Yeya’s party was to start at 2:00. They must have come in to get dressed. No one had said a word to him about that or anything else. Why was he even staying? He was nothing but an embarrassment to them all. One of our own, or formerly our own, has turned into a snake… but to bug out on Yeya’s party was the equivalent of leaving the family, cutting all ties, and that prospect he couldn’t imagine. Besides, in the short run it was another charge they could bring against him, evidence of just how vile he had become. He was right there in the house, and he couldn’t trouble himself enough to come to her party and pay his respects.
About half an hour later, Nestor heard a high-speed rat-tat-tat of Spanish coming up the hallway from the rear of the casita. All at once he was afraid they were starting the party without even telling him. Now it was obvious. He was invisible. He had disappeared so far as they were concerned. Well, there was one way to find out for sure. He got up off the bed. With an impulsive, heedless rush he opened his door. Barely ten feet away and coming toward him—here they were—what an eyeful!
They had changed into their party clothes. From Yeyo’s wide but bony shoulders hung, as if from a rack, a white guayabera that was now too big for him. It was so old, the trim that ran up and down both sides of his chest was beginning to yellow. The thing made it look like Yeyo was a sail waiting for wind. As for Yeya, she was a vision… of God knew what. She wore a big white shirt, too, a frilly one with voluminous sleeves that ended in narrow cuffs at the wrist. The shirt hung down to her hips, outside of a pair of white pants. The pants—Nestor couldn’t keep from staring. They were white jeans… tight white jeans that clung to her aged legs… but also to her bottom, which was big enough for three women her height… clung to her lower belly, which swelled out beneath the shirt—clung! But above all there was the perfect blue ball of hair, which enclosed her head, save for her face, in a single puff… With that and the jeans and a terribly red gash of lipstick across her mouth and a circle of rouge on each cheekbone… she was a real piece of work.
When they saw Nestor, they went silent. They stared at him in the wary way you might stare at a stray dog… and he stared at them… and his emotions suddenly spun 180 degrees. The sight of these two old people trying to look their very best for a party… the one looking like a sail that just blew into Hialeah from off the bay… the other one, in the low-slung white flesh-huggers, looking like a jean-ager time-shot fifty or sixty years older just like that… it was so sad, so pathetic, Nestor was touched by the sight of them. Here they were… two old people who didn’t want to be here in the first place… in this country… in this city… living at the sufferance of their son and his wife… walled off by a foreign language and maddening alien ways… Once they were young, too—although Nestor couldn’t actually picture it—and they must have grown up never having a dream dark enough to imagine their lives would end up like this… How could he have hated them the way he did this morning—or come to think of it, thirty seconds ago? Now he felt guilty… His heart was filled with pity… He was young, and he could take setbacks… even the pounding he had taken today… for his life was just beginning… and Magdalena was coming.
He smiled at them. “You know what, Yeya? You look great! I mean like really great!”
Yeya gave him an evil eye. “Where did you go this morning?”
She was starting in again, wasn’t she… By stressing the you rather than the go, she made it clear it was not really a question… merely another little black mark against his name.
Nestor said, “And I really like your guayabera, Yeyo. You must a had that made.”
“You must a not had yours—”
Nestor cut him off, although not intentionally. Guilt and pity made him babble on. “You know what? You and Yeya match!”
Yeyo cocked his head and gave Nestor an evil eye of his own. He was dying to start in again, too, but the kid was busy dousing him with flattery.
Nestor never even thought about it that way. His heart was filled with pity… and goodwill. Magdalena was coming.
The guests began arriving a little after two… No wonder Mami had ordered a hundred-pound pig… My God! They arrived in platoons… battalions… hordes… whole family trees full. Yeya was standing with Mami here in the little living room. The front door opened right into it. Nestor hung back in the rear of the room… all of twelve or fourteen feet from the front door. This wasn’t going to be fun… every single tribesman clucking and fuming and eating up all the delicious gossip… right in our own family!… I can’t believe it was Dad’s cousin Camilo’s son, Nestor, who did that!… and so forth and so on… and on and on…
The first to arrive was his uncle Pedrito, Mami’s oldest brother, and his family. Family? He arrived with a goddamned population!… There’s Uncle Pepe and his wife, Maria Luisa, and Mami’s mother and father, Carmita and Orlando Posada, who live with them, and Uncle Pepe’s and Maria’s three grown sons, Roberto, Eugenio, and Emilio, and their daughter Angelina, and her second husband, Paco Pimentel, and the five children they have between them, and Eugenio’s, Roberto’s, Emilio’s wives and children and… on and on…
The adults hugged and kissed Yeya and otherwise made a big fuss over her… The children mumbled through it and endured wet smacks from Yeya’s scarlet gash of a mouth… and said to themselves, “Urgggh! I’ll never be a slobbering old mess like her”… but mainly they could smell the pig roasting, and they knew what that was!… and the moment they were set free, they began racing through the casita toward the backyard, where, no doubt, I, Camilo, would say to them, “Little children, come unto me—and see how a real man… roasts a pig.”
One of the little boys, one of Aunt Maria Luisa’s grandsons or stepgrandsons, God knew which, seven or eight years old, was off like a rabbit with the rest of them when he came to a sudden stop in front of Nestor and looked up at him with his mouth open and just stared.
“Hi!” said Nestor, in the voice one uses for children. “You know what’s out back?” He smiled the smile one uses for children. “There’s a whole pig! It’s THIS big!” He held his arms out like wings to show just how colossal it was. “It’s bigger than you are, and you’re a big boy!”
The boy didn’t change his expression in any way. He just kept looking at him, gawking with his mouth open. Then he spoke: “Are you really the one who did it?”
That so unnerved Nestor, he found himself stammering out, “Did what?—who said—no, I’m not the one who did it.”
The boy digested this answer for a minute and then said, “You are too!”—and bolted toward the back of the casita.
In came more clans, tribes, hordes, the battalions. Half of them would come in the front door, seek him with their eyes, spot him, whisper to one another—and avert their eyes and never look at him again. But some of the older men, in typical Cuban fashion, deemed it incumbent upon themselves to stick their big noses in and call a spade a spade.
His uncle Andres’s cousin-in-law, Hernán Lugo, a real blowhard, came over with a very stern look on his face and said, “Nestor, you might think it’s none of my business, but it is my business, because I know people who are still trapped in Cuba—know them personally—and I know what they go through, and I’ve tried to help them, and I have helped them, in many different ways, so I’ve got to ask you something face-to-face: Okay, so technically they had the right to do what they did, but I don’t see how you ever—ever—let them use you as their tool. How could you?”
Nestor said, “Look, Señor Lugo, I was sent up that mast to talk the guy down. The guy was up on top—”
“Jesus Christ, Nestor, you don’t know enough Spanish to talk anybody down from anything.”
Nestor saw red, literally saw a film of red before his eyes. “Then I needed you, didn’t I, Señor Lugo. You would have been a big help! You coulda climbed eighty feet of rope, straight up, without using your legs, to get up there faster, and you coulda gotten as close to him as I did and you coulda seen the panic in his face and heard it in his voice and seen the way he was about to slide off a bosun’s chair about this big and fall eighty feet—and explode on that deck like a pumpkin! And you coulda told me that this guy has gone crazy from panic and he’s gonna die if he stays up here a minute longer! You could have seen that face close up—and heard the voice, with your own ears! You ever seen a man who’s lost control of himself, I mean really lost it? A poor sonofabitch who’s opening the lid of his own coffin? If you wanna help Cubans… don’t just sit on your big butt in an air-conditioned building! Try the… the… the real world for the first time in your life! Do something, goddamn it! Do something besides run your mouth!”