The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico (8 page)

“Come on, Verdita. Teline.” Papi ushered us through the kitchen door and out to the
parranda
tent. My legs felt heavy, my head light. Teline and I tried to share a plastic chair, but the puff of our skirts made us slide off. So we sat on the large wooden bench that stretched across the far end of the veranda. Our dresses fit perfectly on it, spread wide like peacocks’ tails.

Teline giggled beside me.
“Me gusta coquito, coquito, coquito,”
she sang in a whisper, then broke into titters.

Nobody noticed Teline. She giggled all the time. It was when I started to do it that Mamá stuck out her lips from across the tent. She was watching me. The troubadours strummed their guitar and grated their
guiro
. They got the beat going before they picked a story. We all clapped along; my fingers tickled. I slapped them together and laughed.

“What kind of
bolero
should I sing?” the guitar-strumming troubadour asked.

“Sing about a woman,” said Titi Lola.

“A beautiful woman!” someone shouted from the back of the tent.

“There once was a beautiful woman named Esmeralda,” the troubadour began.

The rhythm continued, but he paused while a few others called out what Esmeralda’s problem was. This was
how the troubadour ballads worked. The crowd called out the hero or heroine and his or her problem, and the troubadour sang the story. Sometimes the crowd would only give a word, a color, a place, and from that he spun a great tale.

“She loses all her teeth,” Señor Lopez laughed.

“She’s a famous dancer,” said Adel.

“She kisses boys in the shed!” Teline called out.

“Teline!” I covered my mouth for hers.

The troubadour continued singing. Nobody else heard or noticed, but Delia did. She locked eyes with me, so dark and shiny that I had to look away. The troubadour sang of a beautiful woman who loved to dance, but fell in love with a one-legged man who could not. And so, all her life, she danced alone with only dreams of being in his arms. It was a funny but sad song.

They continued to sing while we ate
pasteles
and roasted pork. Mamá and Titi Lola brought out the
coquito
in an old wine bottle. Mamá sipped on passionfruit juice, but the rest of the mamás and papás passed around the bottle until it was empty and their eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Then the head troubadour announced it was time to move on to the next house in the
parranda
, so we helped Mamá put away the food in the kitchen before setting down the gravel road to the beat of a bongo drum.

The next stop was the Santiagos’. Their house was on a flat cliff near the edge of the road. From the yard, you could see all the lighted houses on the side of the mountain
and into the dark valley below. The colorful
Navidad
strands and trios of glowing plastic kings made the mountain look bejeweled.

We sang at the Santiagos’ front door until they came out, pretending to be surprised, and led us inside where plates of
arroz con dulce
and fried plantains waited along with more guests joining the progression. There I noticed a face I hadn’t seen before, and there weren’t too many I didn’t know in our
barrio
. Usually, new faces came with births and old faces left in funerals. But this one was different.

“Who’s that?” I asked Teline.

She giggled spit everywhere. “That’s him!” she said. “Delia’s boyfriend, Carlos. He came from San Juan. Got a job on the Santiagos’
finca
.”

He was nice looking. Older than us. Older than Delia, but nowhere near Papi’s age. His skin was dark and smooth, and he had no hair on his arms. His eyes were blue-purple; they seemed to change with the blinking strands of lights. I followed them, fixed on Delia. She sat on the other side of the room, drinking a can of guava juice and talking to the maraca troubadour. Flirting. I could tell by the way she played her fingers over the bones below her neck; the way he leaned in, forehead first, to hear her speak. The men and women on the
telenovelas
did it all the time. Their movements were slow and heavy, like strands of seaweed flowing in invisible currents. Carlos watched. Delia seemed not to notice.

“Mami calls him
Pasita
because of his hair,” Teline laughed. “He runs errands for us at the salon when he’s not busy at the Santiagos’. If Papá knew about Delia and him,” she shook her head, but kept a smile, “he’d kill him.”

The lead troubadour strummed his guitar and, one by one, the other instruments joined in. The maraca man left Delia, giving her a nod and a wink and a shake-shake of his batons. The music began, and it felt like I’d left my body, my spirit hovering somewhere between the notes and the voices, the vibrations and the colors, tasting only spicy coconut, even though I’d since eaten rice and
pasteles
. Delia stood and went toward the kitchen. The troubadour’s high voice cried out. Another song was beginning, another story to tell.

“Verdita.” Teline pulled hard on my arm. “Come!”

I followed her unsteadily, my legs wobbling beneath my candy-cane skirt.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

We flew through the kitchen, where the heat of the stove and the bodies made the air sticky, hot, and suffocating. Teline pulled me onto the veranda overlooking the jewel-sprinkled mountain, where it was cool and easy to breathe. Outside, the troubadours’ song was no more than a hummed lullaby, a tiny rhythm against the
co-qui-co-qui
of the frogs and the ocean breeze rushing through palm fingers.

“Quiet. This way,” she whispered. I followed her around
the side of the house where an old mango tree stood, its branches low and wide.

There was a hum, a whimper, then a scrape-scrape. We tiptoed under the branches until we saw: Delia against the tree’s trunk, her legs, long and shiny, around an invisible waist; her head separate from her body, thrown back and swallowed by darkness. She moved up and down, floating on the sea air. She was beautiful.

“See!” hissed Teline.

“How is she doing that?”

“Carlos,” said Teline.

Suddenly, Carlos’s form cut out of the black. The mountain lights reflected on his slick skin. Delia was not floating but pushed up by him. He pulled her forward. Her lips disappeared into his blackness and she moaned low and long.

“Is he hurting her?” I asked.

She shook her head. “She likes it. It feels good. Like this.” She leaned in to my neck, pressing her lips, sucking and then releasing. Goosebumps spread over my arms and legs, and I knew what Mamá and Papi felt when they lay together on the couch.

“What else happens?” I asked.

“Nada
. He puts
it
inside her and they sit like that, kissing, until they stop.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“Like the chickens,” I said.

Teline nodded. “I heard Mami tell Delia that if she
doesn’t watch out, God will punish her with baby chicks clucking at her heels.”

“No.” I imagined Delia laying an egg a day until Teline’s house was full of little Pepitos. What a nightmare! Then I remembered Mamá and Papi. My throat closed up and burned hot coals. Was the baby their punishment? I crossed myself.

“Come on.” Teline turned back to the house.

I started to follow, but in the dark, I couldn’t see the thick roots of the mango tree sticking out like giant shoelaces. I tripped and fell forward in the dirt. The root twisted my ankle. I yelped before I could stop myself. I tried to get up, but my ankle was pinched sideways.

“Shhh!” Teline crouched low, hiding beside me.

“Who’s there?” said Carlos. He walked toward us.

The dirt against my face smelled like avocado skin. Carlos’s footsteps crunched the fallen mango leaves.

“Run!” Teline yelled, but Delia caught her by the arm.

Carlos pulled me up and squeezed my shoulders until I was sure they bruised. Teline squirmed and twisted against Delia but couldn’t get free.

“What did you see?” Delia asked. Her voice was clipped.

“I’ll tell Papá if you don’t let us go,” said Teline. She kicked at Delia’s shins.

“You little brat!” Delia slapped her cheek. Teline stopped struggling and began to cry.

“You tell anyone,” Carlos looked at me, his eyes like black holes, “I swear I’ll get you when everyone is asleep. They’ll think the Chupacabra ate you up.”

My knees shook. The air stopped moving. I couldn’t even blink.

Delia pulled Teline close and sniffed her mouth. “You stink of rum. Don’t think I don’t know. You tell Papá, and I’ll tell him you and little Verdi got drunk on
coquito
.”

“We only had a few sips.” Teline’s mouth bubbled through the tears.

“We won’t tell,” I said.

“She’s the smart one,” said Carlos. He squeezed my shoulders again, and I bit my lip to hold back the sob.

“Wipe your face before you go.” Delia let loose. Teline rubbed her arm over her eyes then ran fast, leaving me.

“Smart girl, you remember what I said,” Carlos whispered into my ear. “Or it won’t be Santa Claus visiting. It’ll be the Chupacabra.”

As soon as I felt the pressure release, I followed Teline in a sprint. Inside, the troubadours once again packed their instruments. The
parranda
moved on. I tried my best to brush the dirt stain from the front of my dress. Teline was lost somewhere in the crowd, hidden by song and story and
Navidad
feasting.

“Your dress.” Mamá appeared behind me. She eyed the mud tracks.

I gulped, happy to see her and afraid she knew all I’d seen. “I fell outside on the mango roots,” I said.

Mamá nodded. “Palmolive soap. Those stains will come out.”

But Palmolive soap couldn’t wash everything out, like I wished it could.

I wouldn’t tell anyone about Delia and Carlos, not because they made me swear, but because I’d never be able to put into words what I’d seen.

T
HE FOLLOWING NIGHT
it rained again.

“How is Santa going to see our
barrio?”
I asked Papi on our way home from
Nochebuena
mass.

“He will.”

“But won’t he get wet?” All the pictures showed Santa in a topless sleigh.

“So, he’ll be a wet Santa,” said Papi. We rode in silence the rest of the way.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I listened to every creaky palm tree and every lizard slithering through the window slats. I’d seen enough on television to know that bells would be the tip-off when Santa came. I wasn’t listening for him, though, but Carlos. I kept my promise not to tell anyone, but what if Teline hadn’t? She never could keep a secret. And she hadn’t sworn under the mango tree, like I had. So I listened for footsteps, for whispers, for moans that came in the darkness.

I wasn’t excited for the
Navidad
, like I thought I’d be. Instead, I worried that Carlos would come. That Santa
wouldn’t. My mind talked on and on, even when I was too tired to listen anymore. I rolled beneath the bedsheets, the wet heat sticking them to my legs. I sang
aguinaldos
from mass. I listened to the rain fall and prayed for it to stop before Santa came, then prayed for it to keep on to protect me from Carlos.

I woke to the sound of cocks crowing. The storm had passed. It was the
Navidad
, and I hadn’t heard bells or footsteps. I got up, woozy from sleep and tired from not enough.

Outside in the living room, Papi sat on the couch, reading the morning paper. Mamá crocheted white and blue balls of yarn in her lap.

“Feliz Navidad,”
she said.

Papi put down the newspaper and stuck out his lips toward the tree. “Looks like Santa made it through the rain.”

Turrón
candies were knotted to the plastic branches of the tree; beneath sat two boxes wrapped in brown paper and tied with red bows. It wasn’t like I expected. Not like the television programs or the pictures of gifts Santa gave the children in the States. To their living rooms he brought live, giant trees strung with lights and popcorn and tinsel, and stuffed endless amounts of shiny presents beneath. I had two brown paper boxes and nougat candy tied with yarn that matched Mamá’s crocheting.

“Go on. Open them,” Mamá said, putting her needle down and kneeling beside me.

I pulled a box into my lap. Papi folded his newspaper and held it under his arm.

“Didn’t Santa bring
you
presents?” I asked.

“He only brings children presents. You know that,” said Papi.

I did know that, but I wondered if Santa would make up for the time he lost skipping over the island when they were kids. I always figured when he found our
barrio
, there’d be a ton of gifts for me and Papi and Mamá—gifts from all the
Navidades
before. Or at least one for each of
mine
he’d missed. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but two?

I undid the bow of the first box and pulled the paper off in strips. It looked like the same brown paper we wrapped the raw fish and chicken thighs in. Underneath was a shoebox, and inside, a pair of white sandals with one-inch heels. My first pair of pumps. Santa
had
to be real—Mamá and Papi had said I couldn’t have pumps until I turned a
señorita
. He’d be the only one to give me what I wished for.

Each shoe was stuffed with paper that smelled like the glue we used in art class at school. After pulling it out so I could try them on, the whole house smelled sour. I slipped my feet into the pumps and instantly felt older. The room shrank a little—Mamá and Papi too. I remembered how Titi Lola had shuffled through our kitchen just two days before, and I tried to imitate her walk, swaying my hips and taking little click-click steps.

“Aren’t those nice.” Mamá didn’t say it like she was
surprised or angry that Santa disobeyed her. “And so white. You can wear them to church and they match all your dresses.”

I squatted and slid my fingers over the slick patent leather. The only thing that perplexed me was the color. I asked Santa for
red
pumps. Either way, I was glad to have them, but obviously something in Santa’s workshop was misunderstood. I picked up the shoebox. Across the lid were the words
MONTGOMERY WARD
. Santa got his gifts at Montgomery Ward? The television showed short men with pointy ears making toys at the North Pole. Before I had a chance to think, Papi handed me the second gift. I tore off the paper. It was a journal with gardenias drawn on a green, swirled background. The cover read
Diario de Meditación
in a loopy-loop script. It was beautiful. The cover creaked a little when I opened it; the pages were whiter than our Dick and Jane’s, the edges as sharp as a knife. In the middle of the first page was an inscription:
Le pertenece a
and then a space. In it,
Maria Flores Ortiz-Santiago
was written in a handwriting I had seen before—Papi’s.