The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (2 page)

A
FTER HAVING LIVED WITH ABUELA’S JABS FOR SEVERAL
years, Mamá grew tired of them and demanded that Abuela do most of the cooking and pay for all the groceries every week. Abuela refused, pointing out all she had done—and was doing—for the family already. Papá eventually had to intervene and negotiate between his mother and his wife, until Abuela compromised, agreeing to help pay for
some
of the groceries. After that, she became more frugal than ever, complaining that her only income was her cut as a bookie and Abuelo’s measly retirement check from the few years he had worked in New York City.

Every day, after she and Abuelo picked me up from school, she’d chase after specials on name brands and daily staples at one of three Cuban bodegas she frequented. Abuelo would pull his lawn chair from the trunk and camp under a palm tree in the bodega parking lot, smoking a cigar and reading a Spanish translation of a dime-store Western in the shade while he waited. Abuela would tuck her beaded coin purse in her brassiere—a tip she had picked up from the New York
puertoriqueñas
who had taught her how to guard her cash against would-be muggers. She’d march into the store du jour, bouncing in her crepe-soled orthopedic shoes, with me in tow.

Some days we went to La Sorpresita—
The Little Surprise
—the smallest of the three bodegas, with only one cash register and four narrow aisles. The linoleum tiles were dingy, the metal shelves were streaked with rusty scratches, and the store reeked of grease from the
chicharrones
frying in the back room. But that didn’t keep Abuela away from the specials on Café Bustelo and El Cochinito–brand lard that La Sorpresita ran every week. She was also friends with Juanito the butcher, whose ghostly white face glowed pink under the fluorescent lights. He was a cousin of Abuela’s former neighbor Carmela, who was still in Cuba and with whom Abuela continued to correspond. Abuela would update Juanito on Carmela’s latest news about the terrible
“situación”
in Cuba, speaking in whispers as if she were still back on the island being watched by the neighborhood defense committees. The conversation always ended with Juanito asking, “
Hasta cuándo
—until when?” and Abuela asking Juanito for a few cents off her
palomilla
steak or pork
pernil
. “See how we
cubanos
help each other—that’s our way,” she would say to me, following it with a variation on her motto: “We give a little, we get a little.”

Some days we went to El Gallo de Oro—
The Golden Cock
—where the Cuban bread was ten cents cheaper than anyplace else, because it was made right in the store. The scent of loaves baking in the back-room ovens permeated the shop, mixing with the aroma of the Cuban coffee they brewed in their in-house
cafetería
. While chatting over shots of
café
(which she often “forgot” to pay for), Abuela became friendly with the owner’s wife, Xiomara. They talked about the usual things: children, the terrible humidity, their hairdos, and how much longer
la Revolución
would last. Xiomara mostly listened and nodded her head while Abuela blabbered. “
Qué boba
—what a dummy she is,” Abuela told me the day Xiomara agreed to let her buy day-old
pastelito
pastries for twenty cents. “
Ahora
I sell these for forty cents.” Abuela started taking more and more advantage of her “friendship” with Xiomara—riffling through the shelves for dented canned goods, then asking for a discount, which Xiomara always gave her; same with the crushed boxes of laundry detergent, and eggs near their expiration date. But when Abuela showed up at the register asking for twenty-five cents off a bruised avocado, Xiomara had had enough. She squeezed the overripe avocado in her fist until it burst open and then threw it in the bag. “There’s your discount,
tacaña
—you cheapskate,” she said sternly, wiping her hand as she rang up the rest of Abuela’s groceries. “Anything else?”

After the incident with Xiomara, we went mostly to La Caridad, named after the patroness of Cuba, Our Lady of Charity. The neon virgin with a flashing halo above the canopy was so lifelike that Abuela would insist I make the sign of the cross with her before going inside. It was the biggest of the three bodegas; they had shopping carts (not just baskets) and brand-new cash registers. At the end of each of the seven aisles there was always a pyramid of something or other tagged with
ESPECIAL
placards neatly written out in red Magic Marker. La Caridad was Abuela’s favorite store, even though she believed all the cashiers were crooked. She’d check her change and receipt every time before leaving the register. The only cashier Abuela trusted was Consuelo, who had been consistently honest. But one day Consuelo charged Abuela $9.90 instead of $0.99 for a bag of plantain chips. Abuela caught the mistake; she made Consuelo void the entire purchase, start all over again, and call out the price on each item as she rang it up. “A crook—like the rest of them,
una sinvergüenza,
” Abuela told me, within earshot of Consuelo, as we grabbed our bags and headed toward the door.

Every once in a while we went to El Cocuyito, but mostly just to visit. Abuela always complained that
tío
Pipo, her own son, never gave her a big enough discount. But somehow she always managed to come away with a free handful of bruised mangos or a few loaves of day-old Cuban bread. I didn’t care which bodega we shopped at; they all stocked the same Cuban food I ate every day: guava marmalade, chorizos, canned black beans, frozen tamales. They didn’t carry many of the American foods like Pop-Tarts, Ritz Crackers, and Cool Whip, which I got to eat with Jimmy Dawson—one of only a handful of gringos in my class—whenever I went over to his house. You could only get those treats at the gigantic Winn-Dixie on Coral Way, right in the center of Güecheste, where a still plentiful but shrinking number of
americanos
shopped.

Every week I’d beg Abuela to go to the Winn-Dixie instead, but she refused to set foot in the place. “There’s none of
our
food at
el Winn Deezee
. Only
los americanos
shop there,” Abuela sneered. “It’s too expensive anyway,” she’d complain, dismissing my pleas, until the day she spotted a Winn-Dixie circular in the mail advertising a special too tempting for Abuela to ignore: a whole roasted chicken, its drumsticks crowned with fancy paper hats, and a banner beneath trumpeting its not-so-fancy price:
Whole Fryers 29¢ per lb
.

“What does
Whole Fryer
mean?” Abuela asked me.
“Pollo entero,”
I translated.
“¿De verdad?”
she said incredulously, “At La Caridad I pay thirty-four
centavos
—on
especial
.” I played on her piqued curiosity, “
Sí, sí,
Abuela. It’s a great price for chicken.
¡Increíble!
You could sure save a lot of money.” She agreed, “Yes, good
precio,
” and left the circular on the kitchen counter instead of tossing it out with the rest of the junk mail that came in English.

Few things intimidated Abuela; among these were black magic Santería and
americanos
. As for Santería, she once discovered
tía
Irma kept an Eleguá deity with snail shells for eyes behind her bathroom door. We never set foot in her house again. “She’s not your real
tía,
anyway,” she said. As for
americanos,
Abuela wouldn’t go anywhere she perceived to be wholly American, at least not alone. This included the Social Security office downtown, any restaurant with English-only menus (even Kim’s Chinese Palace on Ninety-seventh Avenue), fancy department stores like Burdines, and most definitely Winn-Dixie. But she also couldn’t resist a bargain. “
Mira
how cheap
los pollos,
” she told Mamá when she came home from work that day. “Why don’t we go to
el Winn Deezee
?” she asked, fishing for a partner. Mamá responded unenthusiastically: “
Bueno,
you go
si tú quieres
. You’re doing all the groceries.” What did Mamá care where our food came from or how much it cost, as long as there was enough to eat?

Dejected, Abuela tossed the Winn-Dixie flyer in the trash. But the following week the chicken appeared in the mail at twenty-six cents per pound, three cents cheaper than the week before; and then twenty-four cents the week after that. The fryers haunted Abuela. Her stinginess slowly overcame her fear of
americanos
until finally, she broke. “
Mi’jo,
will you go with me shopping
en el Winn Deezee mañana
?” she half asked, half commanded. “Of course, Abuela.
No te preocupes
. I’ll go with you.” It was the first time Abuela had ever needed me. Or rather, the first time we needed each other. She wouldn’t dare go to Winn-Dixie without me.
Give a little, get a little,
I thought. Soon our pantry would be stocked with Crunch Berries cereal and Oreo cookies; our freezer stuffed with Swanson TV Dinners and Eskimo Pies; our fridge filled with Hawaiian Punch and American cheese.

The next day after school Abuela instructed Abuelo to drive to
el Winn Deezee
instead of La Caridad. “
¿Estás loca?
You’re going there?” he asked, surprised. Abuela hesitated, so I answered for her, “We’re going to buy
pollos
—they’re really cheap.” I didn’t want Abuela to lose her nerve. “
Bueno
, I’ll stay out here,” Abuelo said, turning into the parking lot. A gigantic red neon sign marked its entrance, the letters spelling out
WINN-DIXIE THE BEEF PEOPLE
seeming to glow even in daylight. “What does
The Beef People
mean?” Abuela questioned me. I struggled for a translation that would make sense, but none did.
“La Gente de Carne,”
I finally offered. “
¿Cómo?
How can that be?” Abuela said, perplexed by the thought of
people made of meat,
which is what my literal translation meant in Spanish. “Why not
The Chicken People
? Or
The
Carne Puerco
People
?” she amused herself.

Abuela tore the advertisement for the fryer from the flyer and stuffed it into her coin purse, which she then stuffed in her bra, and kissed Abuelo good-bye as if she might not return. “
Dios nos ampare
—God be with us,” she muttered. She said nothing until we reached the store entrance: “Now take me straight to
los pollos
and no talking to no one. We don’t belong here.” The electric doors yawned open. I reached for a shopping cart, twice as big as the ones at La Caridad, but Abuela tugged me back, saying
Don’t you dare
with her wide-open eyes, too anxious to speak. I could barely speak myself, not from fear but from pure awe. I was finally in Winn-Dixie. The air-conditioned air smelled as crisp and clean as Lysol; each of the ten checkout lines was numbered with an illuminated sign, and the cashiers all wore polyester uniforms. Instead of warped squares of linoleum, polished terrazzo floors gleamed, and soft violin music rained from the speakers in the ceiling. I was finally in America.

Suddenly Abuela froze: “
¿Qué pasó?
What’s that?” she whispered, startled by a price check announced over the PA system. “
Nada,
Abuela,
nada,
” I assured her as we stepped into the produce section. It was full of fruits and vegetables I had never eaten or even heard of:
Brussels sprouts, squash, tangelos, apricots
—I kept pronouncing them in my mind, trying to imagine the taste from the sound of their names. Pretending I was looking for the chicken, I deliberately wove us through every aisle, taking it all in: the cartoon faces on the cereal boxes I’d seen only on TV—Toucan Sam, Cap’n Crunch, the Lucky Charms leprechaun; the frost like snow on the freezer cases; flavors of Jell-O I never knew existed: raspberry, black cherry, lime. Soup made from cheddar cheese? From potatoes? Broccoli? I wanted to buy and taste everything I saw.

But of all the things I had tried at Jimmy Dawson’s house, my absolute favorite was Easy Cheese: we’d squirt cheese smiley faces, cheese stars, and cheese rainbows onto Ritz Crackers. And there, in the snack aisle, I saw it. “Can you buy me this, Abuela?” I asked, grabbing a can off the shelf. “What’s that?” she asked. “It’s
queso,
Abuela.
Queso americano
. Please, it’s my favorite,” I begged. “What?
¿Queso en una lata?
” she questioned, unable to fathom the idea of cheese in a can. But I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was intrigued. “Look,” I said, spraying a dab on my finger and licking it off, “you don’t even have to put it in the ’fridgerator.”

She looked at me, at my finger, at the can, at my finger, at the can, and then back at me.
“Qué cosa. Cómo inventan los americanos,”
she marveled at the ingenuity of Americans. “Let me taste,” she asked, holding out her index finger.
“Ay, qué rico
. . .” She paused and then questioned, “
Pero
how much it is?,” taking the can from my hand to look at the price. “
Un peso
thirty-five!
Bueno,
okay, but only if you promise to eat it all. I don’t want to be wasting food. But let’s get a fresh one,
mi’jo,
” she said, putting the can back on the shelf and taking a new one.

Out of her element, Abuela had become strangely vulnerable, hardly putting up an argument like she usually did whenever I asked her to buy me something. Things were going even better than I’d hoped, but I didn’t want to press my luck. The Ritz Crackers would have to wait until the next trip to Winn-Dixie. “
Bueno, vamos
. Where are
los pollos
? Take me there now,
ándale,
” Abuela ordered. In the back of the supermarket we found the refrigerated cases, a wall of meats with names that sounded like the nicknames of outlaw cowboys:
Ground Chuck, Rib Eye, Flank Steak
. As we walked the aisle, white-gloved hands seemed to magically appear from behind the sliding mirrored doors at the backs of the cases. The hands placed packages of meat already wrapped, priced, and labeled—clean and neat, unlike at La Sorpresita, where Juanito cut slabs of cow into steaks right in front of us, his blood-smeared apron like something from a horror movie.