The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (19 page)

As I continued daydreaming, the Copa came to life—a real place with a history years before me, not just some dumpy hotel with air-conditioning. As I kept writing . . .
I shall never disappear again as I did today . . . I shall never disappear again as I did today
. . . I kept disappearing into the past, into Yetta’s stories, into another Miami Beach, the way I had seen my parents and grandparents disappear into the Cuba of their past.

I CASUALLY SLIPPED ON MY SHORTS AND SANDALS
the next morning, testing whether or not Mamá had reconsidered my punishment, but she hadn’t: “
¡Eh!
Where you going? No-no-no. You stay in the room till it’s time for
almuerzo
.” I could live with that, I thought; at least it was only half the day and I could still sneak up to Yetta’s in the afternoon. There was no way Mamá was going to give me permission to go see Yetta—
esa judía vieja—
after the fuss she made the night before. Mamá would never understand. Like most of my family, she seemed scared of anyone who was different,
meaning anyone who wasn’t Cuban.

I spent the morning flipping through TV channels, again, and looking out over the pool, again, watching Caco and the
primas
. I opened the window and called out to them, but they couldn’t (or pretended not to) hear me above their jibber-jabber and the music blaring from Denise’s boom box. Mamá returned at noon and prepared lunch for everyone: a mountain of fried plantains and a pallet of
pan con lechón
sandwiches on Cuban bread, wrapped in wax paper and packed into boxes. I stole two sandwiches and hid them in the refrigerator to take with me to Yetta’s as backup in case I didn’t like what she had made for lunch. After helping Mamá carry the boxes down to the beach, I stalled for a few minutes and then excused myself, telling her I had to go to the bathroom and that I’d be at the pool afterward. “
Está bien,
but don’t disappear
otra vez,
” she warned, giving me the key to the room, where I picked up the stolen sandwiches and then went up to Yetta’s efficiency.

The door was a dark brown, but it must have been painted over a dozen times. It was chipping, and each chip exposed a color from another time: lime green, sky blue, peach. “You’re late,” she said, only a slice of her face showing in the gap between the door and the jamb, before unhooking the chain and opening the door. She was all done up: lips painted vivid red, cheeks rouged, hair perfectly teased, and dressed in a light-brown dress and a yellow scarf coordinated with the gem-du-jour: a cat’s eye brooch staring at me. “What? You brought lunch? What’s that in your hands?” she asked. I explained they were pork sandwiches. “
Bubbeleh,
you really don’t know
nada;
Jews can’t eat pork—it’s not kosher—it’s against our faith,” she said. That made no sense to me. How on earth could eating pork be wrong—a sin? “What about if you are Cuban? Can Jewbans eat pork?” I wanted to ask.

She pulled out a chair for me at a square table between the open kitchen and the living room, set with souvenir placemats from Niagara Falls, a paper napkin folded into a triangle beside each plastic plate, small glasses that looked like old jelly jars, and a half-frozen bottle of Coca-Cola as a centerpiece. While she finished cooking the pierogi, I panned my eyes around her apartment, which felt familiar. Just like at our house, the dining chairs and the sofa in the living room were upholstered in protective clear vinyl, the lampshades were still wrapped in clear cellophane, and centered on the coffee table was a glass bowl full of plastic grapes. The walls were decorated with faux oil paintings, one of them from a faraway village with blankets of snow and high-pitched roofs with chimneys; a place that seemed as far away and unreachable as the vintage photos of Havana in the complimentary calendar from El Gallo de Oro that hung in my house.

Setting down a platter, Yetta seemed just as proud and coy about her cooking as Mamá and Abuela were about their own. “Eat. Eat. I made these myself from scratch, though they’re not my best,” she said, piling a few on my plate. They looked like Mamá’s empanadas: toasty brown half-moons of fried dough. But would they taste the same? I looked at them cautiously, hoping they weren’t filled with something even grosser than borscht. Luckily, they tasted as good as they smelled, I discovered, as the warm gooey filling oozed through my mouth. “They’re delicious—really,” I said, “even better than grilled cheese.” “Good, good. Eat, eat. Even if you don’t I’ll say you did,” she said. Yetta smiled and then unsmiled: “Pierogi. I remember my
mamele
every time. The two of us back at our house in Kraków, in the kitchen gossiping as we cooked. Who knew so much would happen so soon.
Gott in himmel!
How wonderful and terrible it is to remember.”

Her voice thinned and her gaze drifted toward something only she could see in the empty space of the room. She looked just like my parents and relatives when they disappeared into talk
of Cuba and how much they missed what they missed of that world that was invisible to me:
their
beach at Varadero,
their
peanut vendors’ calls in
La Habana, their
rain falling over
their
burning sugarcane fields. I felt compelled to ask Yetta more about her life, but before I could figure out how to phrase a question, she changed the subject. “This is no time for schmaltz,” she said. “Eat this last pierogi—don’t let it go to waste.”

“Can I be a Jewban—for real?” I asked—the only thing I could think of saying to console her, though I indeed had begun feeling so comfortable around Yetta that I wondered if I truly belonged where she belonged—wherever that was. “Oh—such a dahling—you’re adorable. I wish I
did
have a grandson like you.” she said, glowing. “When you grow up, sure, you can become Jewish if you want to. But being Jewish is a feeling too, dahling. Like the way your parents probably feel Cuban no matter where they are. Do you feel Cuban?” she asked. I rambled in answering her. “Sometimes I do, but sometimes I hate being Cuban—like when my parents do tacky things or can’t understand what I’m saying in English. Sometimes I feel very American—like when I eat grilled cheese or hear ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’; but sometimes I don’t feel American. Then I feel like nothing.” “Don’t worry about it,
bubbeleh,
” she advised. “Some days I feel Polish, some days American, and some days even a little
cubana
too. So what? So we’re a little from everywhere—not so bad I think. Not so bad.”

“
Ay, caramba,
look at that—it’s almost time for bingo.
Vámonos,
I don’t want to be late. Yetta is never late.” From the counter she took an old mayonnaise jar filled with change and handed it to me, then slung her pocketbook on her wrist. Before I could say anything we were scurrying down the hall. In the elevator mirror she brushed on some rouge and put on a fresh coat of lipstick before the doors opened on
M
for mezzanine, a word as strange to me as any I had heard in Yetta’s Yiddish.

We entered through double doors into a musty banquet hall with dingy carpets and a dusty chandelier pocked with burned-out bulbs. Walking to the front of the room, Yetta fished seventy-five cents from the jar and bought three bingo cards: two for her and one for me. “You’re not old enough to gamble. Let’s just say you’re playing that card for me,” she said, and winked. Amid the elderly people fussing over the best seats, we spotted two empty chairs and sat down. “I feel lucky, I tell you, lucky,” she declared. As the caller began announcing numbers, I gazed at the sunlight streaking into the room through the windows that faced the pool, slipping into my imagination again, until Yetta broke me out of my trance, shouting, “
Bubbeleh
!
Bubbeleh
—the numbers! Watch that card, will you? This is rent money you’re playing with, dahling.”

On the next game, I only needed N-35 and I-18 to win when I heard a familiar voice feigning a whisper behind me, calling me by my full first and middle names, “Ricardo de Jesús!” which always meant I was in serious trouble. Jarred, I turned around and came face-to-face with Mamá in her giant fly glasses, Abuela at her side, both of them wearing Godzilla faces again. “So you were at the pool, eh? That’s not what Caco told to me,
cabrón,
” Mamá said, clenching her jaw, her eyes getting bigger and bigger. She pulled off one of her plastic daisy sandals and raised it in her hand; Abuela followed suit, threatening to thwack me with one of the thick man-sandals she wore because they were cheaper than women’s sandals. “What I tell you last night,
cabrón
? So this is the crazy
judía
you’re sneaking with?” Mamá continued berating me.

Panicked, I shouted, “BINGO!” hoping to cause a distraction and somehow defuse the situation. The announcer stopped calling out numbers and the bevy of bouffants turned around to look at the winner, but instead their eyes met Mamá and Abuela. The room filled with gasps and whispers at the sight of the two of them standing like sergeants with their sandals cocked and aimed, ready to fire on my backside. Yetta, who had said nothing, surprised us all when she
shouted, “
Pégale bien duro
—spank him real hard right in the
tuches
. I don’t blame you.
Qué cabrón,
schlepping around with an old Jewish bag like me—and gambling too! He deserves a good
shmits
—go on, let him have it—
suénalo para que aprenda
.”

Disarmed by Yetta’s brute remarks, in Spanish no less, Mamá and Abuela froze and lowered their weapons. But they were reluctant to admit defeat:
“¡Vámonos entonces!”
Mamá said, demanding we leave at once.
“Adiós,”
Yetta said, and winked at me before Abuela snatched me away by my wrist. Hobbling on one sandal each, Mamá and Abuela retreated from the room with me in tow. I glanced back at Yetta, not knowing if I would see her again. She was looking back at me with a smile, and kept smiling even as the bingo game picked up again:
. . . B-13 . . . 0-71
.

Through the lobby and up the elevator, Mamá and Abuela didn’t say a word. I thought they were so upset with me that they couldn’t even yell at me, but when we got back to the room they acted as if nothing had happened. Abuela asked if I had won any money at bingo, and if there would be another game that night. Before I could answer Abuela, Mamá interrupted. “We’re not going to play bingo—
¿estás loca? Esta noche
we’re all going to watch the Fourth of July fireworks on the beach,” she told Abuela, then turned to me. “
Bueno,
you should look nice. Go take a shower
y péinate el pelo,
” Mamá said, with her Glinda the Good Witch face on. I did as I was told without questioning her, or why she no longer seemed angry at me. I guessed she felt a little guilty, after having seen that I wasn’t doing anything wrong; she had nothing on me. But more so, I sensed she had caught a glimpse of herself in Yetta’s feistiness. Yetta became a real person to her, not just
una judía
.

After sundown, my family gathered on the beach. I sprawled out on my towel next to Caco and the
primas
around a bonfire
tío
Pipo had started, burning driftwood, paper wrappers, and anything else we could find on the beach. The fireworks began and we tilted our heads up to the lights flashing over the dark sea and in our eyes, fixed in silent reverence. “How long we been here?” I heard Papá ask Mamá, who replied immediately and without hesitation, “Eleven years next March, the sixteenth. Eleven years,
mi amor
.” “It’s true,
parece mentira,
” Abuela said, seated next to
tías
Elisa and Gloria, the three of them waving tiny American flags that
tía
Elisa had brought from New York. “I’ve been here twenty-three years,”
tío
Paquito offered, speaking without taking his eyes off the sky, “almost longer than I lived in Cuba. Sometimes I forget where I am from anymore. Can you believe that?”

The fireworks became stars exploding, giant roses blooming right before my eyes. I pictured Harry dancing the cha-cha with Carla and Denise at the top of the Empire State Building; Mamá as a little Polish girl in pigtails, playing hopscotch in the snow; me with Fidel Castro and Ricky Ricardo munching on
pan con lechón
sandwiches at Wolfie’s; and Yetta in her movie-star glasses, cruising along Ocean Drive with Papá in his
Malibú
convertible, wearing a green head scarf to match her emerald bracelet flickering in the sunlight. For a moment I was everywhere at once—Miami Beach, Cuba, Güecheste, the Copa, Poland, New York.

“
WHAT, YOU NOT GOING TO SAY
ADIÓS
TO YOUR
friend?” Mamá questioned me as we walked down the veranda and past Yetta. I couldn’t tell if she was being facetious or genuine, but nevertheless, I turned around and walked back up the steps. “Come here, you little
sheygetz,
” Yetta said as I approached her. She pressed my face between her palms and kissed me on the forehead, leaving a big smudge of lipstick that she wiped off with her handkerchief. “
Zei gezunt, bubbeleh!
See you
mañana,
” she said. “
Hasta mañana,
Yetta,” I returned, then darted to the car. “Who the hell was that?” Caco asked me. “Nobody,” I said with a smirk. “Don’t worry about it.” “She looks far-out,” Denise said, followed by Carla’s “Indeed, where’s she from?” “Oh, she’s a little from everywhere,” I
said, and smiled. I propped myself up in the backseat, looking through the rear windshield and waving good-bye to Yetta, the Queen of the Copa, sitting on her throne on the veranda, waving back at me, becoming smaller and smaller and smaller as we drove off into memory.

M
y
primo
Rafi was twice as tall as me and had three long whiskers he loved to show off, tiny tentacles growing from his chin. I was petrified of him. One afternoon while my family was visiting his, he bullied me into a game of tag football with the rest of my cousins. “Hey Lardo! Catch!” he yelled as I trotted down the street, my belly bouncing up and down. He knew I’d miss the ball, and I did, fueling an unstoppable fit of laughter from my cousins. They laughed until they could barely breathe and had to call for a “do-over.” But there was no do-over for me. After that fateful game, I was known as Lardo instead of Ricardo.
What’s up, Lardo? Get a life, Lardo. Shut up, Lardo
. Soon even my
tíos
and
tías
began calling me
Lardito
.