So let’s go. “Yeah, man?”
He worked up his courage to speak. Then, squeaking more than speaking, he asked me, “Does Nurse Sotolongo have a boyfriend?”
I couldn’t help it. I busted out laughing. When I heard him laughing, too, I knew I could joke with him about it. “Just you, Yasmango,” I said, flipping onto my back again and gathering the blanket under my chin. “Just you.” And with that, I went to sleep.
Well, actually, I faked being asleep. My mind was still running top-speed. It had been another busy day.
About twenty minutes later—I mean, I think it was twenty minutes? In that darkness, time was unknowable—but let’s say twenty minutes later, Yasmany said one more thing that he didn’t think I’d hear, because I am an expert at fake-sleeping.
“I’m sorry, Sal.” And if he started quietly, carefully crying, I wouldn’t tell you, because he didn’t mean for anyone to hear it. I’ll just say what I heard him whisper over and over: “I’m sorry.”
SATURDAY, 5:30 A.M.: GABI texts me to see if I’m awake.
I think the worst, ask her if Iggy’s okay.
Oh yeah, he’s fine. I just want to get started on the play, she writes back.
I roll my eyes and turn over.
Saturday, still 5:30 a.m.: Gabi texts me again to see if I’m awake. Yasmany makes annoyed piglet sounds from his bed. I silence my phone.
Saturday, 5:39 a.m.: I check my phone. Gabi has texted twelve more times. I text back, Hi did you say something? Sorry WAS SLEEPING
Also 5:39 a.m.: Gabi texts back. We’re to meet in the cafeteria “posthaste.”
5:40 a.m.: I write back, Dont know that word goin to find dictionary might be a while start without me
I know what “posthaste” means. I read a lot of fantasy. I’m just being annoying at this point.
Still 5:40 a.m.: Gabi writes back that I’m annoying.
Mission accomplished.
She also says I’d better come down, or she’s going to send her “people” to come get me.
5:41 a.m.: I write back Do ur worst cant get me outta bed its Saturday sleeping now gnight
5:52 a.m.: Nurse Sotolongo opens the door to our closet. She puts a finger to her lips and gestures for me to come with her.
Also 5:52 a.m.: I roll over.
Also 5:52 a.m.: Nurse Sotolongo drags me out of bed. She enjoys it way too much. Yasmany complains with pig snorts but doesn’t wake up.
5:59 a.m.: Gabi is waiting in the cafeteria. She and Nurse Sotolongo spend a few minutes making fun of my black silk pajamas that look exactly like the outfit Bruce Lee wears in Fists of Fury, which is one of my and American Stepmom’s favorite movies. Gabi and Nurse Sotolongo start fake kung fu fighting all over the cafeteria, which, frankly, is insensitive to Chinese culture.
6:01 a.m.: I get my revenge by telling Nurse Sotolongo that Yasmany wants to know if she has a boyfriend.
Then she and Gabi get their revenge on me by making me repeat everything Yasmany said like twelve times. Lesson learned: Never try to outgossip these two again.
6:34 a.m.: Nurse Sotolongo uses her employee discount to buy us breakfast. She tells us to text her if we need anything and goes back to work. Gabi and I eat like garbage disposals.
6:48 a.m.: We clear our breakfast trays. Gabi takes out her tablet. We’re ready to work on our Everyman play.
Also 6:48 a.m.: Gabi and I realize we’re going to need a lot of help.
Also 6:48 a.m.: I text my parents.
Papi and American Stepmom showed up about an hour later, dressed in weekend shorts and sandals. They looked and smelled showered, but they sounded three coffees short of conscious when they asked Gabi how Iggy was doing.
I had espressos waiting for the padres at our table. They called me a very good son.
American Stepmom also hugged me and told me how proud she was of me, staying at the hospital to support a friend. Papi agreed and joined the hug, crushing American Stepmom and me with his love. Well, with his arms, but his arms were full of love.
“You’re such a darling family!” Gabi explained. “And if you don’t mind my saying, it’s such a pleasure to see a man who is emotionally secure enough to display affection to his son in public. It’s all too rare in machismo-stunted Miami.”
“You talk just like your texts,” said American Stepmom.
“Thank you,” said Gabi.
We sat down. After coffee, I explained the Everyman play assignment to the padres. “Gabi says she’ll write the script if I do the costumes and staging. But we need a story first. And we want it to be funny.”
“Funny?” asked American Stepmom. “Aren’t you worried that that will upset your family? I mean, your little brother…” She trailed off meaningfully.
“Iggy’s doing better,” said Gabi. “And anyway, I want to make something that will cheer them up. I want them to laugh at death. I want to laugh at death.”
Papi, who always worried way too much about the rules, said, “But if it doesn’t fit with the assignment, you won’t get a good grade.”
“I’d rather get a bad grade than make my family any sadder in this dark period in Reál history,” said Gabi. She could be pretty scary when she wanted to be. The way she said “There’s no way I can let Death win” would make me run the other way. If I was Death, I mean.
“And anyway,” I added, “Mrs. Waked loves creativity. We can make it scary and funny. With great costumes and magic tricks. And for Gabi’s parents, a happy ending. Everybody wins.”
“That’s a lot of work for a weekend,” said Papi. “Is there enough time?”
“Of course there is,” said American Stepmom. Gabi’s speech had gripped her by the heart. Now she was fully on board. “We just need to think imaginatively.”
American Stepmom has been my homework secret weapon ever since she and Papi started dating. And she didn’t let me down today. With her leading the charge, Gabi asking all the right questions and taking furious notes on the tablet, and Papi and me sharing ideas as fast as we could think of them, we had a plan within half an hour.
Now we needed more stuff: tent poles, bungee cords, a ton of black fabric, and my jumping stilts. Our Death was going to jump around. Because the only thing scarier than Death is Death jumping around all over the place.
Papi drove back to the Coral Castle to gather the supplies. In the meantime, Ms. Reál walked into the cafeteria. She had on the same clothes she’d worn yesterday. She looked puffed and swollen, like a basketball someone had drawn a face on.
But she lit up when she saw us. She smiled as she hustled over to our table, gave us all our good-morning kisses, and took a seat.
“¡Buenas noticias!” she said. Iggy was doing even better. The doctors said he was in “stable” condition now, instead of “critical and we have no idea what’s going on” condition.
American Stepmom got up and hugged the sitting Ms. Reál from behind. “That is good news!”
In American Stepmom’s arms, while simultaneously weeping and smiling, Ms. Reál told us how she had spent most of the night awake, her body draped over the incubator as she prayed. Gabi’s dads had taken turns bringing her food, trying to convince her to sleep, comforting her as much as they could. And she had cried, and cried and laughed, and cried and talked, and cried herself to sleep. But she’d woken up every few minutes to put her hands on the incubator and watch her son fight for his life.
Gabi went over and joined the hug. “He’s going to make it, Mama. Iggy’s going to beat this.”
Ms. Reál used both hands to squeeze Gabi’s arm. “We’ll see, mija. That may not be Iggy’s path. If it isn’t, we’re here to ease his passing, and to love him.”
Gabi looked at the ceiling. The line of her bottom lip trembled like a sound wave. “But you’ve been praying. You pray all the time. Isn’t this what prayer is for?”
Ms. Reál kissed her daughter’s arm. “God isn’t a genie, mija. He doesn’t grant wishes. I pray to know Him better. To partake o
f divinity.”
Gabi hugged her mami even more fiercely. But she aimed angry eyes at heaven.
“So,” said Ms. Reál, taking a deep, tear-clearing breath, “what’s going on here?”
American Stepmom released Ms. Reál so she could use her hands to help describe our idea for the Everyman play. American Stepmom talks with her hands when she gets excited. Sometimes she looks like two windmills fighting each other.
Gabi and I were excited, too. The three of us took turns spelling out our plan—Gabi right in her mama’s ear, since she was still hugging her, and me from my seat. Explaining it to Ms. Reál made our idea even clearer and better.
When we’d finished, I was worried that Ms. Reál would be offended that we were treating Death so lightly, just like American Stepmom had said. And it looked for a second like my fear was becoming reality. Ms. Reál crossed her arms and stared at us like she was one second away from texting Satan with ideas about how we should be punished.
“What’s wrong?” American Stepmom asked her.
With straight-backed dignity, Ms. Reál asked us, “And why, en el nombre de Dios, didn’t you wake me?”
“Wake you?” I asked. “To help us do homework?”
Ms. Reál sniffed. “I love helping with homework. I always help you with your homework, Gabi. It’s my duty to help you with your homework.”
“But you hardly slept all night, Mama,” said Gabi, intensifying her hug. “We wanted you to get a little rest.”
In response, Ms. Reál bit Gabi’s hand. Well, now I knew where Gabi got it from.
“Okay, okay!” said Gabi, giggling and pulling her hand away. “You can help. Geez. You left teeth marks, you know.”
Ms. Reál smiled like she had just eaten Gabi’s grandmother. “Maybe next time you’ll remember to call your mami when you need help.”
And after Ms. Reál came the Gabi dads. She texted them in Spanglish to come down to help. Less than ten minutes later, they pushed the cafeteria’s double doors open and strolled in like a slo-mo movie shot of Navy SEALs getting ready for action.
Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman! swaggered front and center of the Gabi-dad formation, wearing cop sunglasses, a blue T-shirt with the collar ripped out of it, so that it kind of swam over his brolic chest, and gray drawstring sweatshorts with ragged leg holes, like the Hulk’s.
On his left walked Dada-ist, wearing a barely buttoned linen guayabera, Hawaii-sunset swim trunks from fifty years ago, and flip-flops that he might have found on the street earlier today and just put on. He looked like a shorter, slimmer, blacker version of Papi, right down to the mismatched fashion, but instead of a scientific calculator, he carried a pad of artist paper in one hand and a box of colors in the other.
On Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman!’s right came Daditarian, dressed like a telenovela actor trying not to be recognized: sunglasses; shoulder-length, product-perfect hair; blue T-shirt and white shorts, both expensive and brandless, and cut to show off biceps and glutes; a sailor-knot necklace; and wild dress shoes made of red-and-yellow fake rattlesnake skin, with no socks.
Two dads brought up the rear. Grizzly Dad’ums, his wild hair sprawling like an eagle’s nest on his head, was dressed in serial-killer flannel, abused-to-death carpenter pants, and boots with crushed-in steel toes. Dad: The Final Frontier wore a dark blue version of the suit she’d had on when I’d last seen her. I imagined her opening her closet in the morning trying to decide which of her forty suits—all just slightly different shades of black, gray, and blue—she would wear that day.
“Our family has to work on making our entrance,” American Stepmom said to me, sounding competitive.
“Daddies!” yelled Gabi, and threw herself at her dads. They hugged her and kissed her and passed her around, and she crawled all over their shoulders. Together, they walked over to us and said good morning, then lined up for their morning kisses from Ms. Reál, who told them each in turn how beautiful and special they were.
It turned out Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman!, as Florida’s favorite traveling-theme-park-superhero-slash-stuntman-for-hire, had worn, repaired, and helped to make costumes a hundred times more complicated than the one we were planning. He was voted lead costume designer for our production and couldn’t have been happier.
“Okay,” he said, looking around. “First, we need to see what we have to work with. Where’s the sewing machine?”
Everybody looked at everyone else for the answer.
Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman!’s face dropped. “No sewing machine?”
“I think I might have one,” Ms. Reál volunteered. “At home, in the basement. Somewhere. Maybe.”
“Can we just use needle and thread?” asked American Stepmom.
“Hand-stitching is really hard,” said Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman!
“How about we staple it?” asked Grizzly Dad’ums. “A hospital’s got to have a…few…staples…lying around….”
He trailed off because he realized what a dumb idea that was. Everyone sat quietly trying to figure out what to do next.
I got a text. It was from Aventura. It said:
Hey Sal I was gonna text Gabi but I thought maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea
You know in case her brother isn’t doing so hot
So do you think it’s okay for me ask her how she’s doing?
I wrote her back: Lil bro still ill bro but hes a fighter followed by ya text her shell like that.
She piled on something like twenty different heart emojis, then wrote: How are you?
Gud gud just hanging at the hospital were making a costume
This time the emoji pile was of the shocked-face variety. You’re at the hospital with Gabi? Right now?
Ya her whole familys here were working on a death costume for school
And you were there yesterday too? To drop off my notes for her right?
Ya I spent the night here they put me in a closet lol
More Wow OMG Fireworks emojis. That was so nice of you Sal!
I try not to use emojis. Don’t like ’em. But there’s that weird one that’s a red mask with a long nose and bushy eyebrows that is interesting. I sent that one. Hopefully, Aventura would get it.
I think maybe she did? Lol she wrote back.
And then, lightbulb. Hey A you wouldnt have a sewing machine we could borrow would you
The emojis took over my entire phone screen. I mean, smiley faces spinning and crying for joy, happy cats and clowns, hats and dresses and women in flowing gowns, more multicolored hearts, three full lines of scissors, and, for some reason at the end of it all, a cigarette.
I had no idea what all that meant. Luckily, at the end of the emoji storm, she wrote: I’ll be there in an hour.
I looked up from my phone, smiling like an idiot. “Got us a sewing machine!” I announced.
Things started happening very fast.
I spread the boxes full of props that Papi and American Stepmom had brought last night over three tables. We sorted through them, brainstorming ideas on how we could use them in the show. Then Papi showed up with the cloth and the tent poles and everything, but I especially wanted the jumping stilts, because with them I could really show people what I wanted to do with the Death costume. I put them on and launched myself around the room, striding between tables like a giant, making some people cheer (like Daditarian and Grizzly Dad’ums) and others become a little worried for me (like Ms. Reál and Dada-ist). But American Stepmom assured the worriers that I was an expert on those stilts. Which I was.
Then Aventura arrived, carrying a sewing machine like nothing I’d ever seen before. It looked like R2-D2 and a jackhammer had a baby. Dad: The Final Frontier rushed up to help Aventura with that weird backward-knees walk of hers, and together they set it on a table. Then Aventura went over and hugged Gabi off the floor.
“Now we’re cooking!” said Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman! He rubbed his hands together greedily, looking at that sewing machine from the future.
After Gabi
introduced Aventura around—as “a straight-A student and Culeco’s premier cosplay artist”—we unanimously decided to make Aventura co–lead costume designer.
She and Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman! were instant friends. Just a few minutes after they’d started working together, they’d created a bell-shaped frame for the Death costume out of tent poles and bungee cord. They had me get inside, stilts on, to make it the right height—so I could lift the frame just off the ground with the top of my head. Then they wrapped it in black cloth to measure how much they would need for the costume. A few expert twists and tucks, and they had made rough versions of the costume’s hood and sleeves and hemline, marking the measurements with a piece of chalk.
The measuring was done. Now, it was time to sew.
Aventura, as the master seamstress, got started. The rest of us, under the direction of Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman!, had the job of hand-stitching 160 loops into the robe to hold all the tent poles in place.
He spread the robe-in-the-making out like a huge black flower on the floor and handed each of us black thread and a needle. He showed us how to cut loops out of the extra fabric and where and how to stitch them into the costume. Those loops had to be perfect, not too small and not too big, or else the costume wouldn’t expand and shrink when it needed to.
Not exactly exciting work. But I liked it. When you do a slow, careful job like this one, the whole world seems to shrink and calm down, and suddenly life makes a simple kind of sense.
Gabi hated it. “Ugh!” she said about four million times. She kept stopping her work to complain. “This is going to take forever!”
“Gabi,” said Daditarian, “maybe you’d rather work on the script for a while?”
“Oh my God yes I would good-bye!” said Gabi, running away before anyone could change their mind. She dug in her bookbag, fired up her tablet on a table far away from us, put in her earbuds, and, happy as a pop song, got to work writing.
Sal and Gabi Break the Universe Page 26
