The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria (29 page)

Pápi looked at the picture, then at me. “I guess he does, a little. Hey, you’re going to be ten soon. You want me to get you an outfit like his for your birthday?”

“No!” I yelled, and laughed; Pápi laughed too, which made me feel better. That’s when I knew I was on the right track. That I needed to learn everything I could about Santeria.

Pápi was right; Connecticut in the ‘80s was no Santeria Mecca. My library didn’t have a single book on Santeria. They did, however, have lots of books on psychology. I found a book on grief written for the parents of grieving kids called
Child of Mourning
. It featured chapter titles like “The Maze of Grief: The Child’s Journey through Suffering”; “Voicing Pain: Giving Your Child the Words He Needs to Grieve”; and,
my favorite, “Telling Time: How to Align Your Adult Internal Clock with Your Child’s.” You see, adults think of time as linear, a one-way street with a consistent speed-limit. But not children. They think time can go forward, backward, sideways, and loop like a Hot Wheels race-car track. You need to understand how children see time to help them understand that the dead stay dead forever.

Unless the dead show up one day to tell you to get rid of your stuffed black cat.

One chapter toward the end of the book I did find useful. It was called: “Love Again: How to Bring a New Member into the Family without Destroying your Child’s Trust.” Apparently, it’s very natural to fall in love again after your husband or wife has been dead for a long time. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Your departed loved one would want you to be happy, would want your child to grow up in a household with both a mommy and a daddy. But your child—young, ignorant animal that it is—may not understand that it’s okay for you to love again, may feel that you are betraying the memory of the deceased parent. So here are several steps you can take to prepare your child to welcome a new member into the family.

But I didn’t need to read the steps; I got the message. Pápi needed to fall in love again. It was natural. It was good. It would help him find his way.

Now, who would make a good wife for Pápi? A good mom to me?

Ms. Anbow handed me a thin book with a heavy green cover; on the inside flap was stamped “Property of the University of Connecticut Library System.” Printed in gold lettering on the spine was
The Ebos of Santeria
. It was a typewritten manuscript that had been the Master’s thesis of a student named Ines Guanagao. Recently, in a fit of nostalgia, I tried interlibrary-loaning it, but it seems to have gone missing in this timeline. I’m jealous of the Many Worlds that still have a copy. I would’ve loved to have Proustianly perused it again as an adult.

“It’s the only thing I’ve been able to find so far,” Ms. Anbow said back then. “The librarian from my Alma Mater said she’d keep looking for more, but she said ‘Don’t hold your breath.’”

“Thank you,” I said. “Did you read it?”

“I flipped through it.” She studied me for a moment, then asked, “Santeria is a religion?”

“Yes. It’s my dad’s religion.”

“Okay.” She seemed unconvinced. “It’s just that this book looks like … well, like a spellbook.” She smiled. “You’re not going to cast any bad spells on me, are you?”

I smiled back—Pápi would’ve known I was lying—and said, “Magic isn’t real, Mrs. Dravlin.”

“Ms. Anbow, Sweetheart. I’m divorced, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, tucking the book in my bag. “I keep forgetting.”

An Ebo to Remove Evil Spirits from your House. An Ebo to Bind Good Luck to You. An Ebo to Sharpen Your Mind. An Ebo to Bring Ruin Upon Your Enemy. An Ebo to Discover Hidden Money. An Ebo to Ward Against the Evil Eye. An Ebo to Win a Case in Court. An Ebo to Make a Man Infertile. Getting closer. An Ebo to Destroy a Marriage. An Ebo to Stop a Husband from Cheating. An Ebo … there it was. An Ebo to Attract a Lover.

Whoever Ines Guanagao was, she wrote one hell of a thesis. As a Master’s student, her job wasn’t to write an exhaustive book on Santeria, but it was her introduction to the thesis that gave me a functional understanding of my father’s religion. Oh, so that’s why Pápi wore a necklace—sorry, an ileke—of black and red beads: those were the colors of Elegua, whose name can also be spelled Elegguá or Elegba. Oh, that’s why he called himself a cabeza of Elegua—when the spirit “mounted” him he became the “talking head” of the god. Aha! So that’s why Mámi’s picture was dead center in the altar: she was Pápi’s main eggun, the pantheon of protector ancestors who basically hang out all day waiting for you to call and ask for help.

Pápi was trying to commune with Mámi, but he wasn’t doing it right: at least not according to Guanagao. He shouldn’t have a single altar for both Elegua and his eggun. Your eggun should have a dedicated bóveda, with a white runner, and nine glasses of cool water, and flowers, preferably white, and, sitting on the floor in front of the bóveda, a shot glass with a little clear rum and a cigar in it, and next to it a cup of black coffee, in case you poured too much rum and they
get drunk and need to sober up fast.

Mámi never drank when she was alive. Had she started after death? Nothing left to lose?

There were lots of ebos for making people fall in love with you. Most of them were disgusting—even to a ten-year-old boy. Every single one in Guanagao’s thesis required some mix of pubic hair or urine or poop or blood or head hair or nail clippings or some other body part from the person you wanted, and sometimes you had to throw in your own pubic hair or urine or etc. as well. And since I wouldn’t be performing the ebo for myself, but on behalf of Pápi, that meant I’d have to gather gross stuff from
two
people: him and Ms. Anbow. Wasn’t gonna happen. Plus, most of the ebos required other weird stuff I wasn’t going to be able to find. Pápi had complained about not being able to find aguardiente, but that was nothing. Where was I supposed to get sea turtle eggs, preferably powdered, or whale oil, or smoked jutia, or amasa guapo, whatever the heck that was?

There wasn’t a single love ebo in the thesis I could—or would—follow all the way through. But there were ingredients of different love ebos that I didn’t mind, like cinnamon sticks and wine and hard candies and incense and Borax. So why couldn’t I combine those to make my own ebo? Pápi said that Santeria was born of adaptation; if the orishas wanted to help me, they would. I just had to prove I was serious. Willing to sacrifice for the sake of my desire.

Sacrifice. According to Ines Guanagao, the orishas needed food. Blood. The sacrifice of animals is vital to the rituals of Santeria. As
life leaves the sacrificed animal, it radiates outward, bathing the participants in the mystery of life, carrying them out of the bounds of normal reality and into the realm of the spirit. Minds grow sharper, senses keener. Souls awaken from their quotidian slumber and stand ready to receive the wisdom of the gods.

Guanagao’s rhetoric, fantastic and sincere, utterly convinced me. My soul definitely needed to awaken from its quotidian slumber and hear the wisdom of the gods. I needed a sacrifice.

In several of the love ebos, one consistent sacrifice was the heart of a “paloma.” Guanagao left the word “paloma” untranslated, so I looked it up in our Spanish/English dictionary. I found two main definitions: 1) a dove; 2) a pigeon. At first I thought the ebos probably called for dove hearts. Doves are beautiful and beloved and are symbols of peace and hope. And “dove” rhymes with “love”: game, set, and match, right? But then I read in the thesis that Olodumare, the father/creator of all the orishas, didn’t like animal sacrifices of any kind, and he was symbolized by a dove. You can’t possibly be allowed to symbolically sacrifice the creator of the universe, right? So the paloma hearts in the ebos
must
be referring to pigeons. That made me feel better: there were always a few doves in cages in the magic store, so I had formed a bit of an attachment to them. I didn’t think I could kill one, even in the name of love.

But nobody liked pigeons.

Nobody, that is, except for Handcock’s resident crazy lady, whom we affectionately called Miss Pigeon. And even she only liked to eat them.

Miss Pigeon was the most efficient can-collector in town. Her shopping cart bulged with can-stuffed garbage bags so full, they made that homely cart look like a steampunk flying machine. She had further customized the cart, housing it with what looked like a pantry cupboard that had been ripped out of some country-kitsch kitchen. In it—all the kids in town had been dared at one time or another to sneak a peek—she kept a small electric deep-fryer; some staples, like corn oil and Veg-All and potted meat; extra yellow kitchen gloves (she always wore a pair, which made her look kind of like a superhero); a huge jug of Clorox; a lunchbox, square and gray; and a Cabbage Patch Doll so mangled someone should’ve called Children Services to put it in foster care. For her lunch she always went to the park that surrounded City Hall, where she would douse a park bench with Clorox, take a seat, and, still wearing her kitchen gloves, daintily pick at what looked like deep-fried chicken, but what any local would tell you was deep-fried pigeon.

Everybody in Handcock, CT, had received an involuntary education on how to catch, prepare, and eat a pigeon. Most members of polite society would pretend to avert their eyes, but even the most squeamish among us would pause to watch her nab one. She was a master. Her favorite hunting ground was the park, where stood the remains of a wall where, it is said, Generals Washington and
Rochambeau debated the merits of attacking the English in New York.

Pigeons had since “whitewashed” that wall with their droppings. Miss Pigeon’d sidle up to the wall, where the birds stood packed together like targets at a shooting gallery. They’d hop and flap and caper in pigeony fashion as she approached, delighted to see her. She would lean against the wall, wait for just a second or two and, in one elegant motion, swipe at the wall with her Grendel-like arm, dragging whatever she caught into a sack she kept just for that purpose. Sometimes she’d catch two; most of the time she got one; every once in a while she missed. Whatever the result, afterwards she threw some bits of bread at the pigeons. They exploded into an ecstatic battle for those crusts. Then she slung the rice sack over her shoulder and headed back to her cart.