Don't Date Rosa Santos

by Nina Moreno

  Grateful, I nodded. He cleaned up the dishes and kitchen and then, with his arms around me, he pressed a gentle but firm kiss on the top of my head. He bid me a solemn good night at the door. I couldn’t watch him go.

  I went right to her garden room. I scanned her shelf and found white candles and her treasured saint medallion of Caridad del Cobre, patron saint of Cuba. I grabbed a pin and one of her oils. I found three of her pennies and slipped them into my pocket. I returned to my room and dropped everything on my desk and poured the perfume in my hands and dragged Florida Water through my wet hair. The citrusy scent filled me with a sense of protection. Guiding hands always smelled of this when they gently brushed over my forehead and showed me how to honor and grow my practice. I grabbed matches and lit every candle I could find, and with the pin, I carved Mimi’s whole name into the wax as more flames sparked to life.

  Finally, before my ancestral altar, I fell to my knees. I dropped my forehead to my grandfather’s picture, and like a child, I begged for her life from the man I never got to know, but who loved her as much as I did, and fought an angry sea to ensure her safe passage.

  “Bring her back to me.” My pulse drummed a steady beat and my abuela’s name fell from my lips like a chant.

  There was no answer. Only my stubborn hope.

  Hours or maybe only moments later, I got off the floor. It was like moving through wet sand, the air around me heavy with stirred energy. I was exhausted.

  I fished my journal out of my backpack and fell into bed. I turned to an empty page to start making lists of everything we needed for a prolonged hospital stay and all I needed to learn about the human heart. A small white square slipped out from between the last pages. It was a folded piece of paper, flattened by my book. With a touch of my hand, it opened and became a boat. In small, neat letters, S.S. Rosa was scrawled on the side.

  In those lost hours, Alex had made me a boat.

  I climbed out of bed and went to my open window. The perfumed air was cool as I leaned against the sill and held my paper boat up to the moon, imagining it finding the right winds and reaching home.

  We try with all we have. We fight hands we can’t see. We stomp against the earth and whisper all the right prayers, but sometimes it isn’t meant to be. You believe life will always be as it is, and you make plans, but the next thing you know, you’re climbing into a sinking boat in the dead of night because the land you love is no longer safe. The sun sets, the man you love doesn’t swim above the water again, and time runs out.

  The phone rings to tell you the worst.

  As I lay awake at 3:17 in the morning, my life cracked in two as Milagro Carmen Martín Santos slipped away from this life.

  Mimi was gone and I was too far away to say good-bye.

  For a family so well acquainted with death, we had no idea how to have a funeral.

  The bones of our dead were lost to the sea, not buried in cemeteries. Mimi would be cremated, according to her wishes, and my mother and I returned home from the funeral home with nothing. We had to wait a week to receive her because of paperwork. It had only been two (or was it three?) days since the festival, but it was the strangest void of time and we had no idea what to do next. We stood in the entryway, aimless and lost. Maybe this was what life would be like for us now without Mimi. A knock sounded, and I opened the door to find Mrs. Peña, teary-eyed and bearing Tupperware.

  “I have soup,” she choked out. “It’s tomato, though.” She cried harder. Mom and I got out of her way.

  People just kept coming. Most we knew, but some we didn’t. The door didn’t get a chance to close as more deliveries of food filled our kitchen, and emotional neighbors offered us somber words of mourning I didn’t know what to do with yet. Mrs. Peña kept order in the kitchen as soup containers battled for dominance against the many casseroles. Next came Mimi’s patrons. They were all in tears and offered us beautiful flower arrangements and harvests from the gardens Mimi helped them grow and save. When someone tried to give us a live chicken, we politely declined. Mrs. Peña asked us if it was okay to open some of the food, and we told her yes, of course, there was no way we could eat it all. Conversation drifted around our silence as people found others who needed to share their grief and say my abuela’s name. The smell of coffee reached us like an old memory.

  “Is this a funeral?” Mom asked.

  I hadn’t slept in too many days and the numbness left me a spectator. “Mimi probably figured we’d be terrible at it and did it herself.”

  Mom’s laugh was rough. “Typical.”

  Mr. Gomez and the rest of the viejitos broke through my fog, sounding like my found collection of abuelos. My throat tightened as they wrapped me in their cologne and cigar smoke. They served rum to toast our family, and even I was given a small glass.

  “To Mimi,” Mr. Gomez said solemnly. “Tell our island—” He paused and when he tried to continue, emotion strangled him. He shook his head and tried again but couldn’t.

  “Tell her hello for us,” Mom finished with a gentle hand on his arm.

  I carried so much faith in things I couldn’t see, but now I had to apply it to someone I knew and deeply loved. Someone who was gone but was still as much a part of me as my next breath. Could her spirit already be miles and years away? She was so unreachable to me now.

  I escaped outside and found my friends coming up the walk. Benny had sunflowers and Alex carried bakery boxes. Ana and Mike were trying not to cry, but once they saw me the war was lost. Oscar followed them. He wore dark jeans and a black shirt, which was typical, but they weren’t faded or splattered with paint and sawdust.

  He raised his gaze past me. “I’m sorry about your mom, Liliana.”

  “Thank you,” Mom said, standing beside me now. She took my hand and Oscar glanced at us. Smiling a little, he shared a long look with my mother.

  “I saw it….It’s really good. Looks just like him. It gave me an idea, and”—he paused to check his watch—“I need to show you both something.” Without another word, he turned and headed back down the sidewalk.

  I didn’t understand anything he’d said. I checked Mike, who sighed.

  “He forgot to ask you to follow him.”

  We followed, as did my friends, and after a moment of curiosity, everyone gathered in our house trailed after us. Our small group expanded as we moved down the street.

  “What’s happening?” Dan rushed across the street, still straightening his tie. Malcolm followed behind with the stroller. “We were on our way over.”

  “Oscar’s showing us something,” I told them as they fell into step alongside us. “You both look really nice.” They were in dark formal suits. Dan squeezed my shoulder as Malcolm pulled me into a hug.

  Almost to the square, I sidled up close to Mom. “Was it like this when my dad died?”

  “There was this collective shock and a big search for him, but after they found the boat, they gave up. There was nothing they could do, and I had to stop hoping or I’d have been lost when you needed me.”

  Our group became larger as more neighbors fell in line with us. “You moved forward and kept going. Because of me?”

  “Because of…” The memory of our last conversation with Mimi bloomed between us. “Love,” she finally said, and took my hand again.

  The storm had made an impact. We reached the square where soft pastel snow covered the ground. The vines and garlands of spring flowers had been no match for the battering wind and rain. Our collective steps kicked up the petals as we followed Oscar to the farthest corner of the square where Mimi’s tent had recently stood. It now held the Golden Turtle and a brand-new bench. I didn’t understand until I read the plaque that bore my abuela’s name.

  DEDICATED TO MILAGRO SANTOS.

  OUR MIMI AND HEALER OF PORT CORAL.

  I couldn’t say a word. Mom tensed, and squeezed my hand.

  Oscar stood beside the bench, silent. Mike stepped up and explained, “He’s been working on it since yesterd
ay. It’s wild he got it done, I mean, I wouldn’t sit on it yet because the stain might not be fully dried.” He shot Oscar a proud grin, and his mentor crossed his arms. “But the plan is to build a garden around it. All green and wild. Like Mimi.”

  Oscar shrugged, but the corner of his mouth tipped up in a small smile when he looked at Mom.

  The tent was gone, and with it our perfect night. But this bench would stay.

  This wasn’t Cuba, and it wasn’t her farm, and so much life and family had been taken from her, but despite loss and a raging sea, she reached this shore with my mother and her story hadn’t stopped. She made something real and her life counted here, too.

  “Thank you,” Mom whispered to everyone.

  Flowers would grow freely here. They would bloom and die and rise again beside a bench that invited you to sit and stay. Beyond us was a sea you could watch and imagine you were anywhere else. Or perhaps, you could just be here in Port Coral where the wind sang softly and wildflowers bloomed.

  On the way home, Mom led me toward the boardwalk. I thought she wanted to avoid the crowds in the square, but when we stopped beside the fire station, I understood Oscar’s earlier words.

  “You finished it.”

  Her wall was complete. Calm blue waters met an indigo-blue sky, and there in the middle was a simple boat. The white sail billowed out and blended into a soft cloud. At the helm was a brown-skinned boy with short black hair and a bright smile. He looked happy, healthy, and eternal. And there on the side was the name of his boat: La Rosa.

  “Was that really his boat’s name?”

  Mom nodded, smiling. “Your name was his idea. I thought it was weird to name a baby after a boat, but he said it was perfect and a good omen.” Her laugh was edged with an old, dark humor. “Mom thought it would be terrible luck, but everything was, back then. I wanted to give Ricky at least that.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Turns out I didn’t learn my lessons from Mimi.” She sighed. “I don’t want him to disappear or become some haunted memory we can’t talk about. It’s not fair to you, me, or him.”

  I regretted every question I’d been too scared to ask Mimi. I didn’t want to make that mistake for the rest of my life.

  One week later, Mimi returned home.

  The house was somehow even quieter. Mom and I had spent the last few days eating takeout from the bodega and curled up on the couch watching the fluffiest movies we could find. We sat outside at night to track the stars and imagine what might come after death. We found no answers, but sometimes a lemon-blossom breeze hit us just right and felt like one.

  We stood in the foyer with Mimi’s urn.

  “Now what?” I asked, needing my mother to give me something: direction, purpose, surety we could survive this. She took her mother’s ashes down the hallway. I followed her into my room where she stood, facing my small altar.

  Mom offered me the urn. I shook my head. I couldn’t do this.

  My grandfather looked back at us from his picture. He stood beneath a mango tree, his arms crossed. His gaze was now just beyond the camera. Had it always been that way? He was smiling at what he saw. Or perhaps who he finally saw again.

  With a shaky hand, I took the heavy urn. This spot had always calmed and grounded me, but I now felt faint. For the first time, after years of honoring my family, I was placing someone I knew upon this table. My abuela would look back at me from a picture, because she was somewhere in this dust and not in the kitchen stirring her love into a soup or bottling potions to heal baby gums. She wasn’t in her garden room, tending her plants and finding me again and again. She wasn’t shuffling across the hallway on her way to tell me another day was beginning. She was here in my hands, and soon on my altar, which meant she was forever gone.

  I dropped to my knees. Through my tears, I placed the urn beside my grandfather’s picture. “I hope she found him,” I whispered, my voice small.

  My mother sat beside me. She held a hand over the urn, then reached for my father’s picture and pressed a gentle finger against it. “Me too.”

  The last two Santos women curled into each other and cried for home.

  The next morning, I skated across town in the early morning light to the bodega for a to-go order of breakfast—my new routine. But the window was empty today. No Peña in sight. I leaned up on my toes, and the familiar smell of breakfast greeted me. Bacon, eggs, pan tostado slathered in butter. I went to call out for Mr. Peña, but the low and haunting sound of a lone trumpet stopped me.

  Each note squeezed my heart tighter. I checked the viejitos. They were gathered at their usual table, and Mr. Gomez glanced over and gave me a solemn nod. The song ended on a somber, heartbreaking note, and Mr. Peña appeared a moment later. He looked surprised to see me and checked his watch. Grief had a way of throwing everything off, including time. Without a word, he prepared two breakfast plates, and when I tried to pay him again, he refused. I thanked him, but when I went to leave, he stopped me. “Rosa.”

  I turned, surprised. “Yeah?”

  “She was one of the best people I knew.”

  I wasn’t ready for past tense. I jerked my head in a short nod. “Me too.”

  He returned to work and I rode back home wondering how many people my abuela had made feel like they belonged.

  I found Mom in Mimi’s bedroom, her fingers trailing over ceramic figures, opening small, delicate drawers, searching for her mother in memories stirred by a forgotten trinket. Or maybe she wanted to have the last word somehow. I knew them as adversaries, polar opposites, two ends of a magnet destined to forever oppose the other, but now without Mimi’s south to fight her north, would Mom leave? Would this still be home then? I didn’t want Port Coral to become one more home to lose.

  In the garden room, those same herbs dried, waiting for a purpose that wouldn’t come. I opened the window to let in the breeze and listened to the quiet song of the wind chime. The dirt around the lemongrass was dry. I picked up the metal watering can as the ache of missing her crushed me in one sweeping rush. I dropped the can and sobbed into my hands.

  I still had so much to ask her.

  “Tell me what to do,” I whispered to the empty room and pressed my hand against my chest, counting my breaths. Missing her would be agony. Time would only make this worse. The further I got from this terrible moment, the further I would be from her.

  I hated this. I hated it so much. I wanted to bargain with fate. To fall asleep and wake up the morning of the festival. I would find Mimi, and we could save her heart and stop this terrible turn. I could fix this.

  “I can fix it, just let me fix it, just let me…” On the desk in front of me was a small stack of pennies. I counted four. The three I’d found the night she died had been in my pocket since that night. I carried them in a silent, desperate hope for something I couldn’t name. Seven pennies. I had enough for an offering.

  I jumped out of the chair and ran to get my skateboard. It was a race to the boardwalk, and then even farther beyond it. I picked up my board and carried it as, for the first time ever, I walked across the sand.

  A sharp gust almost knocked me sideways. My abuela taught me to listen to the world around me. Sometimes there were answers in a spread of cards or in the tea leaves at the bottom of a worn mug, but sometimes they were in a sudden breeze and waning moon.

  Sometimes they were in the thing you feared most.

  I dropped my board, navigated my way down the empty beach, and slipped out of my shoes. In bare feet, I walked right up to the shore. The warm water rushed over my skin in reply and I gasped.

  I gripped my pennies. The sea. I was in the sea. I walked in a little deeper.

  The next wave crashed and reached for me. Spilling forward, it washed over my ankles. My pulse pounded in my ears as blood rushed beneath my skin. Oxygen, I thought. Water, blood, fire. I waded in to my knees. The water now reached the bottom of my dress. It pulled at the fabric with sure hands. A surprised laugh bubbled up in
my throat.

  My first time in the sea felt like returning to something. I thought of my mother and abuela, the image of them sharp and sudden. I wanted to see what was on the other side. I wanted to find what was lost. I wanted to know how to move forward. I knew the old prayers, but now I stood in the sea, and carried no fruit or honey. My only offering my heart, humility, and these coins. My tongue was heavy with the wrong language.

  The water reached my waist now. I closed my eyes and tossed the pennies into deeper water. There was only me, the never-ending ocean, and the horizon where the sky met it now.

  “Rosa!”

  “Mimi?” I shouted. I searched around but found Ana back at the shore, waving her arms.

  “What?” I called over the riotous ocean.

  “Rip current!”

  “What?”

  Before she could explain, I was consumed—thrown and pulled beneath by forces I couldn’t see. Swallowed whole by a rough sea, I kicked and pushed to find air. When I couldn’t, panic filled my lungs instead. I swung my arms, but direction meant nothing.

  I couldn’t hold my breath any longer.

  Light flickered in front of me. I moved toward it, my chest burning, and in the next wave I was caught and dragged above water. I gasped and came face-to-face with a very wet Ana-Maria.

  “Didn’t you see that red flag?” she yelled in my face as she pulled me back to shore.

  I looked around and spotted it. Had that meant something? I had gotten so much farther out than I thought. “Holy shit.”

  Ana was breathing hard from swimming for us both, but she laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you cuss before.” She grabbed hold of my waist, and we carefully moved with the waves back to shore. Shaking, I fell to the sand, coughing hard as I tried to catch my breath. I rolled onto my back and looked up at Ana.