The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (7 page)

One by one I chased the clucking hens into their new home while Abuelo sat in the shade of his
aguacate
tree, fanning himself with his hat. He pulled out two
tabacos
to celebrate, offering one to Pedrito. “
Coje
. These aren’t that bad, they’re from La República Dominicana, but grown from Cuban seeds.”
“Oh, gracias, compadre,”
Pedrito said. “
Quizás
we’ll have a real Cuban
tabaco
in Cuba next year. Remember the taste of those Cohibas we’d smoked at
el club de yates
in Cienfuegos?” “Of course,
compai,
” Abuelo responded, grimacing as he rolled the cigar in his mouth. “Of course. Who could forget?” But before Pedrito could light his cigar, we heard the unmistakable voice of his wife, Caridad, calling from their living room window, which faced our backyard. “Pedrito! Pedrito!” Are you done playing
guajiro
farm boy yet?” she bellowed, and then beseeched him, “
Por favor,
you’ve been gone since the morning.
Dios mío
, it’s time to eat
almuerzo
—get in here now!” “
¡Ya voy! ¡Ya voy! Cojones,
can’t I have a day without you
jodiéndome
?” Pedrito belted back. Angry and embarrassed, he tucked his unlit cigar in his shirt pocket.
“Hasta mañana, señores,”
he said to us, then jumped over the chain-link fence into his yard.

As far as I knew, no one in all of Güecheste had a chicken coop. That was something I could really brag about—it was even cooler than a tree house. The
Brady Bunch
kids never had chickens. Abuelo flung open the kitchen door and called everyone out to the backyard. My cat, Misu, was the first to dart out; finally able to roam the backyard again, he snooped his way to the chicken coop. Papá and my brother, Caco, were at their Saturday baseball game; and as usual, Abuela was on the phone gossiping with one of her sisters. No one seemed to care about our chicken coop, except Misu and Mamá. She came out right away in the rubber shoes and yellow
rubber gloves she wore every Saturday while doing her housework.
“Mira,”
Abuelo told her proudly, “no more chickens on the terrace.” She rolled her eyes, but had no choice but to concede: “
Bueno,
okay for now, but that’s it—not one more chicken in this house—
¡ni uno!
” she warned, waving an index finger sheathed in yellow rubber before marching inside.

But Abuelo didn’t heed her warning; over the following weeks, he brought home five or six more fully grown hens, one at a time, so Mamá wouldn’t notice the brood increasing. Within a month, they all started laying eggs. Abuelo and I gathered them in the morning, carrying them in our shirttails and setting them on the kitchen counter for Mamá. At first, this delighted her, and the entire family as well. Abuela made fresh eggs—scrambled, fried, poached—every weekend morning and sometimes even on school days; she calculated how much money she was saving by not having to buy eggs. “These are no everyday eggs,” Abuelo would point out to Mamá whenever we sat down to breakfast together. “These are
huevos criollos
.
Mira,
look at that beautiful yolk—orange like a sunset, not yellow like the old eggs from the store that taste like
pura mierda
. Riqui and me feed
las gallinas sobras
of real food, like in Cuba—that’s why they are so
deliciosos
.” Then he would dunk his toast in the yolk and chew it slowly and deliberately in his mouth, letting his palate take in all its subtleties, as if he were tasting a fine wine or a gourmet cheese; as if he were tasting Cuba itself.

Soon, however, an overabundance of eggs crowded the refrigerator. Mamá unloaded eggs onto visiting relatives, insisting they leave with at least half a dozen in their hands, unable to wave good-bye. She cooked potfuls of
natilla
custard that she bartered for free manicures and pedicures from our beautician neighbor Teresa. She even instructed Abuela to make omelets every other night for dinner. But Mamá still couldn’t make a dent in the surplus of thirty-something eggs a week. I was afraid she would complain and again sentence the chickens to death. I had to do something.
FREE EGGS
|
HUEVOS CRIOLLOS
|
GRATIS
, I wrote with my Crayola Markers across the back of an old poster board from a science fair project, each word in a different color and outlined with glitter. Every afternoon I did my homework sitting on our front lawn next to a bucketful of eggs and my sign. It was my Cuban version of a lemonade stand, though I gave away the eggs for free. I was just glad it worked. Within days, there was a frenzy for our
criollo
eggs that most Güechestians hadn’t tasted since leaving Cuba; some of them even returned twice in one day.

Everyone loved our eggs, except Caridad. “Are you sure those eggs are safe to eat? They look so dirty. I bet the whole
barrio
will get sick,” she said with revulsion, not daring to touch the eggs. Abuela told me Caridad didn’t know any better; she was a snobby city
princesa
from Havana who didn’t like country people from
el campo
like us. Abuela said Teresa told her that Caridad had said that we were nothing but lowly
guajiros
and that we should move to Homestead or go back to Cuba where we belonged. But despite Caridad, within two weeks we were down to zero eggs. I thought about selling them for fifty cents a dozen instead of giving them away, but I didn’t want to get greedy. It was enough that my chickens were saved once again.

After the egg crisis, it seemed that Abuelo, the hens, Misu, and I would live happily ever after. Then came the rabbits. At St. Brendan’s annual Easter Fair, I spent all my tickets on the Musical Roulette Walk. Here’s how it worked: everyone walked around a ring of numbered squares until the music stopped; then the MC would spin a numbered dial and pick the lucky winner. It took me eight tries, but I finally won the best prize of all—a white bunny in a tiny cage filled with fake
Easter grass. For once, I was the envy of all my classmates, especially Jeannette Gutierrez, who was standing next to me in the game. When she lost, she sat down right on her numbered square, buried her head in her crossed legs, and sobbed into her knees.

I brought the bunny over to my brother, Caco, and gloated, “Look what I won!” “Big deal,” he said and turned away from me. I turned to Mamá. “Look how cute. I can keep him right . . . right?” I asked her, kissing its quivering pink nose and whiskers through the pet carrier. “
Alabao sea Dios,
another animal!” she grumbled, and said nothing more, avoiding my stare. “Please . . . ,” I continued, until I caught her eyes and she gave me the look that signaled
okay,
even though she could not bring herself to say it. As soon as I brought the bunny home, Abuelo picked it up without hesitation. He folded back its ears and peered inside, thumbed through its paws, turned it over on its back, and very matter-of-factly announced, “Female. Healthy,
pero
too skinny. They’ve been feeding her
pura mierda
like they do to the chickens. I can see it in her eyes. She needs real food.
Vamos
.”

I assumed we were going to the Tropical Pets store in Güecheste Mall, but instead Abuelo drove to El Milagro—
The Miracle
—where he would buy his
tabacos
. I wondered why we were going to a bodega, but I trusted him. Abuelo pried a shopping cart loose. I stepped onto the bottom rack, where Abuela often placed bags of Goya rice and sacks of kitty litter for Misu, and I held on to the front end as Abuelo pushed me for a ride through the produce aisle. Not surprisingly, he tossed a bag of carrots into the cart, but he also picked up a bunch of watercress and a bunch of cilantro. “
Aprende, mi’jo:
rabbits have to eat three different vegetables every day—and some fruit once a week,” he instructed, inspecting a pint of strawberries.

Then we headed to the back of the store, through a pair of swinging doors and past the
SÓLO EMPLEADOS
sign into the storeroom. Abuelo approached a man in a white smock who was sifting through a box of plantains. They exchanged pleasantries in Spanish that I couldn’t quite make out. The man walked away and returned with a wax-lined box of lettuce—not heads, but loose leaves.
“Gracias,”
Abuelo said, shaking the man’s hand. “
Guárdame
all the leaves you can. I’ll come once a week for more.
Gracias
.” On the way back home, Abuelo explained that grocers plucked the bruised leaves off the lettuce heads and just threw them away—that’s what he fed his rabbits back in Cuba.

I stared at the bunny’s marquise-shaped eyes and twitching whiskers for days, but still couldn’t think of a name for her. I didn’t want a tacky Cuban name like Carmencita, Ileana, or Ofelia—the names of some of my aunts and cousins. I wanted an American name, something uncommon, yet pretty. Then I remembered Bonnie Patterson, my first crush in kindergarten and the only girl in our class who had freckles and blue eyes. But I decided to spell it with a
y
: Bonny—my bunny Bonny—it had a ring to it, I thought. I pleaded with Mamá to let me keep Bonny in my room for the first few weeks until she got bigger. With my ruler, I drew up a chart on construction paper listing the days of the week across the top and marked down the vegetables and fruits I fed her daily after school.

After my parents went to sleep, I’d take Bonny from her pet carrier and let her hop around my bed. Or I’d prop the sheets up with wire hangers and we’d eat carrots and strawberries inside our makeshift tent in the dark. One night I forgot to put her back in the cage before I fell asleep. The next morning I woke up to the nightmare of Caco and Mamá standing in my doorway. “You see? I told you,” he whined to her.
“¡No lo creo!”
Mamá exclaimed at the sight of Bonny snuggled under my chin, wiggling her nose at her. “What’s that dirty animal doing in your bed?
¡Ay caramba!
Why
didn’t I stay in Cuba? That thing has to go outside;
mira
how
grande
it is already.” It was true, Bonny had doubled in size, and I knew it was no use begging Mamá to let me keep her in my room anymore. Besides, her pet carrier was getting too small for her.

After school I told Abuelo about the incident and he came to the rescue again, promising Mamá we would build a cage for Bonny and keep her in the backyard. And we did, the very next Saturday, using the leftover two-by-fours and chicken wire. We set the cage under the
aguacate
tree so Bonny would have plenty of shade, and covered the top with an old raincoat. But the cage was just too plain and ugly for my beautiful Bonny. I dolled it up with a string of gold tinsel I took from a box of old Christmas decorations and brightened up the newspaper shreds lining her cage with strips of purple and yellow construction paper. Still, I felt sorry for her, out all day in the scorching heat and torrential thunderstorms that blasted through almost every afternoon. Before Mamá would get home from work, I’d take Bonny into my room for a couple hours and let her hop around the shag rug and all over my textbooks while I did homework. If Mamá came home early, I’d hide Bonny inside my book bag or in the laundry basket, then sneak her back out to her cage while Mamá was busy with housework.

It seemed as if Abuelo, the chickens, Bonny, Misu, and I would live happily ever after, but Abuelo couldn’t leave well enough alone. A few weeks after we finished the cage, he showed up with a cardboard box and signaled me to follow him around the side of the house to the backyard. “Open it,” he said, and I did. Out hopped a big brown rabbit with droopy ears that fell around his face like pigtails; he was so heavy I had to use both hands to pick him up. “Oh, a little
amiguito
for Bonny,” I said, thrilled, not knowing any better. “Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked. “A boy,” Abuelo answered. “
Pero
don’t tell your mother anything,” he cautioned. Of course I wasn’t going to say a word, and since Mamá never petted Bonny, much less fed her, she’d probably never notice her new friend. But just in case, Abuelo and I moved the cage to the rear of the yard, behind the shed, beyond Mamá’s line of sight from the clothesline. At first I wanted to name him Droopy, but I decided on Bernie. Droopy was too obvious, I thought, and besides, Droopy and Bonny didn’t sound as nice to me as Bernie and Bonny.

A few weeks afterward, Abuelo built an addition to Bonny’s cage. He clipped a hole in the chicken wire on the side of the cage and fastened to it a square box made of plywood, which he filled with torn-up rags and more shredded newspaper. At first I thought it was like a hideout or a bedroom for Bernie and Bonny, but I wasn’t sure. “What’s that for?” I asked him. “
Un nido
—a nest for Bonny,” he said, without further explanation. “A nest? Like for birds, Abuelo? Why?” I questioned.
“Sí, sí,”
Abuelo continued, “she going to have little
conejitos;
they need a good nest so they will be safe.” Even though at the time I didn’t know much about the facts of life, I
did
know that neither babies nor bunnies came from storks, and I understood intuitively what had happened: Bonny and Bernie weren’t friends, they were
novios,
husband and wife, in love.

Less than a month later, Abuelo came into my room just as I was falling asleep and shook my shoulder. “Riqui? Riqui?
Despiértate
and follow me,” he whispered, placing his index finger over his lips. We tiptoed through the house and out to the backyard, I barefoot and in my briefs, Abuelo in his boxer shorts and oxfords, holding a flashlight. “You see the
conejitos
?” Abuelo asked, shining the beam into the nest. What I saw were four pink, squiggly worms without eyes or fur, no bigger than my finger. “Ooh, gross!” I blurted out. “
Bueno,
that’s what you looked like once too,
mi’jo,
and you’re not so ugly now,
¿verdad?
” Abuelo joshed. “Don’t worry, they’ll look like real
conejitos
soon. But we have to keep Bernie away or he’ll kill them.” “Kill them! Why?” I was
stunned. “Shh. Shh.
Sí,
he’ll kill them—that’s just the way it is,
mi’jo, así es
” was the only answer he gave me. “
Pero
don’t worry, when the
conejitos
grow, we’ll put Bernie back with Bonny,” he added as he pulled him up by the skin behind his ears and put him in the same box he had arrived in.