Down to the Bone (25 page)

16—Stinking Liar

Beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep! Beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

I hop off the hammock, place my banana oatmeal nut breakfast bowl on the ground, and dash to my mom’s new glue-smelling green Jaguar, leaving Neruda fenced in, in the backyard.

“Mami!” I lean into the passenger seat and press my cheek against hers. She hugs my face hard to hers and kisses it many, many times. She smells familiar, like home. Tears stream down our faces. I look away, trying to control my overwhelming emotions.

“I couldn’t wait to see you and came early to pick you up. Let’s go.” She wipes her tears with the back of her hand. She must love me.

“Get down a minute, there’s no one home.” I want her to see how I live.

“Your neighbor,” she says, still sitting inside the car, “the one with the Santa Barbara tattoo that looks like a criminal, was eyeing my Rolex. I took it off and stuck it in my purse.”

“Babalao Carasco is a nice guy, Mami.” I roll my eyes.

Babalao Carasco is a
Santero.
Although he’s a respectful neighbor, he kills roosters and goats to sacrifice them to the
Orishas
when purifying people of their ailments. I begged him to spare the animals’ lives the other day. “Can’t you use dead animal spirits or maybe animal fur or nails?” He insisted only animal blood works.

He and I sat on rocking chairs on his porch. We rocked back and forth, back and forth, debating religion and gods. I don’t believe in gods, and he worships many
Orishas
and believes spirits of dead ancestors surround us at all times. He told me, “Animal sacrifices are the only way to appease the gods so they can change the course of nature. Your people slowly murder poor bulls in bullfights. The blood we use holds the
aché,
the life force. It’s used for spiritual and physical healing. Everything possesses life energy. My practice is done with utmost respect for the animals and only when
Orishas
permit.”

Even though I still hate the killing, I respected his religion when he explained, “I use animal sacrifice to communicate with the
Orishas
; it’s ingrained in
Santería
, my ancient Afro Cuban religion. People eat chickens, lamb and goats all the time, yet nobody questions
their
slaughter. I’d never disrespect you by asking you to sacrifice something you believe in. I’m a good man. I worship my
Orishas
and cure people’s bad luck and purify them of evil spirits and illnesses. That’s a good thing.”

Mami continues to complain. “Only you, Shai Sofía Lorena, would choose to continue living in this
barrio.
It looks as if the Castro family,
los hijos de putas,
opened the doors to more jailed criminals and they all moved
here
.”

I
love
this
barrio
, and Soli’s duplex, close to my old home. And besides, it’s not as if I had a huge choice of places to go to when she kicked me out. But I don’t say a peep.

I swing the door open. Mami bolts through it speaking Spanglish, words flying around ten miles a minute, rearranging our furniture.

“
This
chair doesn’t match
this
wall.” She shoves the kitchenette table from the middle of the dining area closer to the wall. She takes down my two framed paintings of the Cuban mountainside. “
Uy
, I don’t know why you paint
la jungla cubana
when you can fill your walls with colorful art. All this brown and green will make you depressed.”

As Mami moves everything around, I think about soon wiping Pedri’s runny nose and putting him to sleep at nights reading him storybooks I know he’ll love.

I smile as Mami reminds me of something. A lady from our
barrio
started coming around every Saturday afternoon when Papi was off working and Mami was doing chores. One day, the woman went around our house, moving things around, saying she was an interior designer and wanted to help us.

“Remember when Maylie sat on our sofa and wouldn’t move until after she’d had lunch with us?” I nod. “When she got up to leave with a full stomach, you slapped her butt and told her, ‘Stop coming over. We have very little food to eat and you only come to stuff your face. We like our house just the way it is. Why don’t you invite
us
to eat over at
your
house?’” We laugh, remembering how Maylie never stepped foot in our home again. I recall my mom telling the story to neighbors and laughing at my antics.

“I
like
brown and green, Maylie, er . . . I mean, Mami.” She cracks a smile as I walk behind her, trying to grab my framed paintings from her. She darts and shoves me aside with her super-dooper BIG beach ball butt.

She hangs my Cuba paintings in our bathroom, over the toilet bowl, on two of the four lined-up empty towel hooks.

“Want some yogurt?” I ask, in an attempt to get her to calm down.

“¿Estás loca?
I weigh one hundred ninety-nine pounds. I’m going on a
caldo
diet until I lose fifty pounds.”

“Mami, you’re forty-nine! You can’t live on broth.”

“Forty-five! And if
that
doesn’t work, I’ll need to start eating air to lose weight.”

I chuckle and stuff a spoonful of yogurt in my mouth. “Eat more veggies.” In some ways, I’m glad it’s the same old mom in front of me. She’s hilarious and tons of fun, except for her homophobia. If I could just peel off the phobia, she’d be the greatest mother in the universe to have fun with. I really miss the good old days and can’t wait till things get back to normal.

“Vegetables give me a hernia.”

“Veggies have nothing to do with a hernia, Mami.” She continues to move things around as if it were her own home and as if nothing terrible had ever come between us.

“Your grandfather died of diverticulitis. I can’t eat tomatoes or lettuce or anything with skin on it. I inherited that illness.”

“What you inherited is called gluttony.” I stay serious and she cracks up.

“I just got my cholesterol checked and it’s a perfect two-fifty without my ever having eaten a
single
vegetable.”

“Two-fifty!?”

“
¡Ave María Purísima!
Shai! That’s
normal
for a forty-two year old, my doctor told me.”

“A minute ago you were forty-five.
What
doctor?”

“Dr. Benítez.”

“Mami, Dr. Benítez is three hundred years old!”

“He was the greatest doctor in Cuba. All my friends go to him. He’s giving me a face-lift.”

“A
face
-lift? Him? Mami,
por favor
, don’t get a face-lift from
him
. By now he can’t even hold his ding-dong to pee.”

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. My friend Sylvina just got one from him and now looks
exactly
like a twenty-something Liz Taylor.”

“Damn, Mami! That’s terrible. She used to look like J. Lo.” I wash and throw the empty yogurt container in the recycle bin and sit on top of the kitchen table, swinging my feet. She throws herself on the couch and pooooooof, the air slowly comes out of it. A flash of the day she met Marlena appears before me. Mami told her, “You’d be stunning if it wasn’t for your nose. Have your parents fix the cartilage that got broken.” Marlena turned all shades of red.

“When’s the operation?”

“
El mes que viene
. When I get back from Europe.”

“Next
month
?” My stomach does cartwheels.

“
Uy
, Shai Sofía Lorena, you worry about
every
thing. You’re too sensitive, just like Papi was.”

“Mami, nurses have to tie you up with ropes when they give you shots. I can’t believe you’re allowing someone to give you a face-lift. You’re too young for that. And your face is
beau
tiful.”

And it’s true. My mother has gorgeous dark eyebrows, and large almond-shaped eyes with long lashes. Her teeth are moon white and straight. She’s got a killer smile with two dimples. As a teen, she was a face model for soaps, creams and toothpaste.

“When you get to be forty, and you start sagging, you’ll tell me a different story.”

“Forty? So, who do you want to look like?” I’m intrigued.

“A twenty-five-year-old Sofía Loren.” She pats her face with both hands. “I named you after her, my beloved mother’s favorite movie star.” She spins the subject around. “I’ve been on a high-sugar diet. Sugar eliminates wrinkles.”

“
What?
”

“
Sí
, Shai Sofía Lorena. Your body needs sugar or you go into a coma.”

“That’s outrageous. Where’d you get
that
from,
Hola
magazine? Mami, won’t you
ever
listen to me? Ditch the diabetes-causing sweets, and eat some veggies?”

“I’m
your
mother.
You
have to listen to
me
,” she joked.

Loud bouncy music sweeps into the duplex through the opened windows. She stands abruptly and looks outdoors into the backyard.

Our neighbor, Maribel, is dancing around to salsa music, getting her high heels stuck in the earth as she throws clothes to hang on the line. Her parrot, Chuchito, is flying around the backyard, squawking, “
¡Ay
, Miguel! ¡Miguel!”

Miguel’s friends are standing around him, drinking beers and barbecuing. “
Oye
, Chuchito’s been listening to you and Maribel doing the
fuiqui-fuiqui,
eh?”

Mami pulls me by the arm. “What a
barrio
!
Uy.
To think we used to live like this. Come on! Let’s go to my new house. Pedri is home. Jaime and his sister are in the pool.”

“Take me first to buy Pedri some toys. I promised him.”

“Later! We’ll all go together. That way, he can choose what he wants.”

We climb into her glossy car and in a
heart
beat, we’re in my mother’s new two-story fancy house with an Olympic-sized pool and immaculate landscaping.

***

After Pedri shows me all his new toys, I slide a bathing suit on him and off he goes to the pool. My mom gives me a tour around the all-white spacious house.

I follow her around the stark white, shiny marble floors. The living room is colossal, unlike the cozy, small rooms I loved in my old home where everything was crammed into a tiny space. A high-backed, peach-colored sofa, velvet love seats, marble coffee table, tall floor lamps with handblown glass lampshades, are placed in strategic spots, unlike the jumbled fashion at our old home. Large, colorful, modern paintings dominate the walls.

“I’ve got to pack for my trip,” she says. “Get something to eat, and let’s talk before I show you your new bedroom.” She walks into her room. The thought of my own room here puts a smile on my face.

I open the sliding glass doors. An early September storm zoomed in this morning and cleared the bumpy black sky of clouds. I take a whiff of the salty, green and flowery smells and I almost feel whole again. I look toward the canal to check for the manatees Pedri says look like cuddly baby elephants from afar. I can’t
wait
to go down there and see them up close. Pedri said one almost got hurt by a motorboat yesterday. How can some people just not care?

They are nowhere in sight.

I walk into the huge white tiled and stainless steel kitchen and find my mom here. She sticks her head inside the refrigerator and picks at
flan
leftovers. With my thumb and index finger, I flick her big bootie two times really fast. “
Flan
is excellent for losing weight, Mami.” She lets out a musical laugh that permeates the house. It fills me with happiness she’s back to laughing with me.

I’m not hungry and don’t eat anything she offers.

We climb up the winding marble staircase, go out to the second-floor balcony, and sit on rockers, facing the bay. Mild warm breezes gently sway the Alexandra palms.

Without warning, flashes of Gisela’s face fill my mind. I shut my eyes and push thoughts away to a place from which I hope they never resurface.

I wish I were robotic, indifferent to humanity, feelings, and attraction so nothing affected me. It would be great to not take myself so seriously and approach life with a light heart, or maybe no heart at all. Robots don’t get waves of emotions attacking them with pain and uncontrollable sobs. They don’t have fear, confusion, conflicts, impatience, urgencies to kiss and make love with other girls and get in trouble for it. I shake my thoughts. What the hell am I thinking? I never want to be a robot.

I look downstairs and hear a loud
sploosh-oosh
as Pedri dives into the Olympic-sized pool. I wave at him. “Outstanding, Little Punk!” My heart feels full again.

He waves back, “Shyly, I did it!” He blows me kisses and I give him a thumbs-up. He’s with Zenaida, Jaime’s pretty and round-as-a-truck-tire sister. She doesn’t take her eyes off Pedri for one second. Even though she’s not old, she looks like a funny elderly lady in her one-piece flowered bathing suit and a green rubber shower cap.

Jaime, Mami’s well-built, tall husband, is sipping a drink while sitting on the pool steps with his hairy white legs halfway inside the water. From the stories Mami is telling me, I realize he loves my mother and Pedri a great deal and enjoys spending time with them. I’m thrilled about that.

I sit on my mom’s lap, kiss her cheek, and press my cheek against hers. She kisses me back. “
Uy
, Shai Sofía Lorena.” Just as I think she’s going to be sweet and affectionate, like she used to be before the Incident, she says, “You’ve put me through such hell. I thought of you every second of the day. I never stopped wanting you to call and tell me you’d changed. I prayed for you to finally let me know who the deranged girl was, the one who wanted to turn you into something you aren’t. But you didn’t. You fiercely protect her and love her more than your own family.”