Night of the Jaguar (16 page)

After listening to her niece for some time, she said, “Come down to Eskibel’s and I’ll buy you a drink. Three drinks. Then we’ll go to the fronton and make piles of cash, and then maybe we’ll both get lucky with a
pelotero
.”

Victoria giggled. “Oh, God, I should! It’d drive him crazy.”

“It’d serve him right, the bastard. Oh, come! You can be here in half an hour. We can grab a bite and be in our seats by seven. Yes?”

Victoria actually thought about it for a long moment. Aunt Eugenia, the younger of the two sisters, was a jolly, fleshy woman, as unlike her sib as nature and temperament could arrange. She was unmarried, screwed around with low, beautiful, worthless men, drank copiously, kept an antique Jaguar saloon with a chauffeur to drive it, and made, to the dismay of her family, an excellent living as a professional jai alai gambler. She was tolerated at the larger family gatherings, but Yoiyo Calderón did not approve of her, and so his daughter was strongly discouraged from her society.

Victoria answered, “I don’t know…I’d have to lie to him, and to my mom, and he’d find out and then I’d be in the doghouse for weeks…”

“What, he’s going to
ground
you? Vicki, I have news for you: you’re an adult. You’re twenty-eight. Let him kick you out. You’ll move in with me, I’ll teach you to bet jai alai. You’ve got a good head for figures, you’d be a natural at it.”

A laugh caught Victoria by surprise, the suggestion was so outrageous, so not her. She changed the subject and they talked on, of family and Eugenia’s louche life, and when they ended the conversation, Victoria felt herself again. Which was? She didn’t quite know, but it was not as an escapee like Eugenia, she decided as she turned again to the close-ranked numbers, not escape, but victory. Her father’s daughter, after all.

There was a plaque at the base of the tree, placed by the South Florida Horticultural Society. This plaque proclaimed it the largest tree in Florida, and informed the interested that it was a
FICUS MACROPHYLLA
,
a banyan fig, and had been planted around 1890 by a minister to provide shade for his church. It still provided shade to the large brick-built steepled building that had replaced the tin-roofed original, and also, in the late afternoon, to the low, modern structure that housed the Providence Day School, K through six. The tree covered an area the size of a big-league baseball diamond, a vast ball of dark green
elongate shiny leaves suspended over dozens of trunks and subtrunks, smooth and gray as elephants, and in the spooky cloud-stopped light of this afternoon, like elephants these seemed to march with infinite slowness across the lawn that surrounded it. There was a wooden bench established under one of its boughs, slung cleverly between two living buttresses. Upon this sat Miss Milliken, the first-grade teacher, who read to her class from
Tik-Tok of Oz,
a special treat at the end of the day. The parents knew to collect their children there on paradisiacal afternoons such as this, and there was a small circle of adults, almost all well-turned-out local matrons or young nannies, standing around the clump of sitting children, listening while the chapter was read out. The sole listener who was neither matron nor nanny was Jimmy Paz.

The book closed, the children sprang up and began to chatter, the parents moved in. Some grabbed their youngsters and moved off in a determined manner, to tightly scheduled activities meant to build up résumés. The students at Providence Day came from a social stratum that did not believe in wasting the unforgiving minute, whose members believed that it was never too early to sacrifice to the gods of success. Jimmy Paz was not one of these either, nor were several others, who demonstrated by their costumes and vehicles that they were the heirs of the former indigenes of Coconut Grove—the laid-back, the artistic—even if wealthy enough to afford Providence’s stiff fees. These gathered around Miss Milliken to chat, to discuss their children briefly, to hang out with one another in the welcome shade of the great tree.

Unconvivial Paz, no former hippie, no artist, followed his daughter’s lead into the green center of the ficus. Here he observed a demonstration of tree climbing and was forced to admit that he could not swing upside down from a low limb by his knees. He could, however, still tickle her so that, giggling, she lost her grip and fell into his arms.

“Daddy, do you know there’s a monster in this tree?”

“I didn’t know that. Is it scary?”

She considered this briefly. “A little scary. Not
very
scary, like
arrrrrgh!
” She demonstrated what scary would be like by physical gestures and a snarling face. “He talks to me,” she added. “In Spanish.”

“Really. What about?”

“Oh, stuff. He’s from a real jungle, and he can talk to animals. I showed him to Britney Riley, but she couldn’t see him. She said I was
stupid.
I hate her now.”

“I thought she was your best friend.”

“Uh-
uh
. She’s a total dummy. My new best friend is Adriana Steinfels. Can she come to our house?”

“Not today, honey. Can you show me the monster?”

“Okay,” with which she took his hand in hers and led him deeper into the maze of prop-roots. The air there was damp, cool, and filled with the spicy-rotten smell of the leaf and fruit litter below. They came to a gray-green vertical column that looked as big around as a dump truck: the main trunk of the state’s largest tree. Amelia pointed upward. “He lives up there,” she said, and waited for a moment, listening, then shrugged. “I think he’s not there now. Where’s Abuela?”

“Something came up. She had to go to her
ilé
.”

“Could we go, too?”

“We could,” said Paz, somewhat to his own surprise. It would mean a fight with his wife. Did he want that? Maybe it was time to have the whole thing out. Whether Paz believed in Santería or not, the thing was part of his child’s heritage, not to mention his own, and this absolute ban had suddenly become unbearable. Amelia was not a Britney or an Adriana, a white bread…the word
gusano,
a maggot, floated into consciousness, and was shoved down again. The kid was a mutt, and seven was not too early for her to learn where she came from. Okay, now they’d have it out. He loved his wife dearly, in parts, but her materialist self-righteousness he did not love, and he’d come to the end of avoiding the issue. So he told himself, and ran a few little testing arguments through his head, as husbands so often do, as he left the bowels of the fig tree and entered the open air, clutching the little warm hand. The monster in the tree, though—also not a good sign. Amelia had gone through a number of imaginary playmates, and Dr. Mom had explained at length that it was perfectly natural at the appropriate age. Was this the appropriate age? Nearly seven? Paz had thought that real friends took over the social impulse about now, and dumping a real friend because of an imaginary one could not be right. Now he was
about to take the child to a place where nearly every adult had an imaginary friend who emerged unpredictably from the spirit world and took them over completely—would that be
therapeutic
under the circumstances? He knew what her mother would say to that. Paz told this line of thought to stop and it did but promised to come back
real
soon.

The
ilé,
the Santería congregation, was lodged in the unprepossessing home of Pedro Ortiz, located in the largely Cuban-inhabited area southwest of the original Little Havana on SW Eighth Street, which bore therefore the Spanglish name of Souesera. He had to park the Volvo two blocks away, so great was the number of cars—mostly venerable and including a number of well-used pickup trucks—that crowded the streets nearby and also the small former lawns of the houses, now converted into green-painted asphalt parking lots. It was the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, an important day in Santería, for when the African slaves first saw statues of that saint, they had conflated the beads of his rosary with the palm-nut chains used in Yoruba divination and so associated the Italian saint with Ifa-Orunmila, the
orisha,
or spirit, of prophecy. It was considered particularly auspicious to get your fortune told on this day, hence the crowd and hence the presence here of Margarita Paz. Paz explained some of this to his daughter as they walked; she took in the information in the perfectly accepting manner of children, and then asked, “Will they tell a fortune for me?”

“I don’t know,” said Paz honestly. “You could ask Abuela. She knows more about this stuff than me.”

“What’s in that bag?”

Paz hefted the plastic sack. “Yams.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Do we have to eat them?” Not a yam fan, Amelia, despite his best efforts. “No, they’re for the
orisha,
” he said. “Ifa
loves
yams.”

“Yuck,” said Amelia, unimpressed by the tastes of the Lord of Fate.

They went into the house. Paz’s nostrils were immediately full of the typical smell of such places—burning wax from scores of candles, the sweet incense sold in
botánicas
throughout the city, the earth smell of piles of yams, the sweetness of coconut and rum, and beneath all, the acrid odor of live fowl. Despite the murmur of the crowd, these
could be heard clucking from their pens in a room at the back of the house.

He held tight to Amelia’s hand, although the place was full of children running free. Besides these, the people were of all ages, as one would expect at any church, and of all colors, too, although tending to the darker shades indigenous to the Cuban community.

“Look, Abuela!” Amelia cried and tore away to greet her grandmother. Paz liked to see the two of them together, because of the expression that came over his mother’s face when she embraced her
nieta
. It was joy unrestrained, an expression he did not recall seeing there during his own youth. Once he had felt a pang of resentment at such times, but no longer. None of that mattered anymore, whether or not his wife the shrink agreed. Some of the joy even carried over to him. Mrs. Paz embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks, smiled, showing the gold teeth.

“You brought her,” said Mrs. Paz.

“Sure, why not?”—a question that had a real answer, which they both knew.

“Thank you,” she said, and Paz had to keep from gaping. It was the first time his mother had ever thanked him for anything.

The grandmother and the child moved through the crowd, greetings and cooings arising in their wake. Paz followed, bemused, feeling the removal of a weight he had not realized he was carrying. The child was no stranger to praise, but her immediate family was small, and praise was associated with accomplishment. She had not ever received a flood like this, and he saw her shyly blossom. Paz got the feeling that the members of the
ilé
had been prepped for this by grandmotherly boastings. And why not? he thought; she’s had a rough life, this is a small enough pleasure to give her. His mother seemed to have transformed herself into an entirely different woman from the stern field marshal of the restaurant and his childhood home. Not for the first time he wondered why she had not raised him in Santería. Apparently age was no barrier, as the many children here proved. Again he suppressed resentment.

They approached the sanctuary, a tent of yellow and green silk partially enclosing a squat cylinder covered with satin brocade in the same
colors—the
fundamentos,
or sacred ritual symbols, of Ifa-Orunmila. Dozens of candles in glass holders burned around this shrine, and the floor was covered with layers of yams and coconuts. Amelia was allowed to deposit a yam and then taken to see the cake, a huge wedding-style confection of many tiers, on which was inscribed in icing
Maferefun Orunmila
.

“Is that a birthday cake?”

“Yes, in a way,” said Mrs. Paz. “It’s the day we celebrate and give thanks to Orunmila. See here, it says ‘thanks be to Orunmila,’ in Lucumi.”

“Could we eat it?”

“Later, dear. First we have to see our
babalawo.
Now, he’s a very holy man, so when we meet him, we bow and say ‘
iboru iboya ibochiche
.’” They practiced this a few times and then pushed through a thicker crowd to where Pedro Ortiz, the
babalawo,
sat on a simple caned chair. Mrs. Paz and Amelia dropped to their knees and said “may Ifa accept the sacrifice” in the modified Yoruba language called Lucumi by Cubans. Mrs. Paz introduced Amelia to the
santero
. Paz watched from a short distance. Ortiz was a slight cordovan-colored man with a thick head of black hair just starting to go gray and large dark eyes that seemed all pupil. He embraced both Mrs. Paz and Amelia and then looked over the heads of his followers directly at Paz, who understood that the
babalawo
knew pretty much what he was thinking. It interested Paz that he had expected this and was untroubled by it. Yes, weird stuff happened, weird stuff would continue to happen. It was a permanent part of his life, and it looked like it would start to be a part of his daughter’s life, too. His mother was beckoning him. Ortiz rose and shook hands. No bow was apparently expected from the great quasi-agnostic. Mrs. Paz said, “He has agreed to throw Ifa for Amelia. It’s very important, but you’re the father, and so you have to agree.”

“Um, right. What’s going to happen?”

“Just agree, Iago!” she said sharply.

“Okay, Mamí,” he said. “Your show. I trust you.” As the words came out, he found that he actually did.

Ortiz led the way into a smaller room in the back of the house. In
it were vases full of tropical blooms and trays of fruit, and there were depictions of the
orishas
on the walls: Ifa in his guise as St. Francis, Shango as St. Barbara, Babaluaye as St. Lazarus, and the rest. In one corner was a life-size statue of St. Caridad, the patroness of Cuba, and along one wall was a large mahogany cabinet, the
canistillero,
repository of the sacred objects. The only other furnishings were a folding bridge table with a round wooden box in its center, and four straight chairs. Ortiz sat in one of these and waited while the others sat. Ortiz looked into Paz’s eyes and said, “We don’t usually ask Ifa to tell the future of children, you know. Their future is so little formed that it would be disrespectful to ask. In a way, their little spirits are still held in the hands of their ancestors, such as yourself and Yetunde here.” Here Ortiz smiled briefly at Mrs. Paz, who nodded when she heard her name-in-religion. “And of course the child’s mother. So, what I will do is throw Ifa for you yourself, asking if there is anything that needs to be done or not done for the child’s sake. It’s difficult to make such a reading, but I have agreed because of the love and respect I have for Yetunde. So, now I need you to give me five dollars and twenty-five cents.”