Amor and Summer Secrets

by Diana Rodriguez Wallach

  “Hold on. I think I got it,” I said, staring up toward the ceiling as I thought. “If Miguel is Dad’s uncle, then his daughter—your mother—is Dad’s first cousin. So you’re my dad’s second cousin, which I’m pretty sure makes you our third cousin.”

  I smiled triumphantly. Lilly and Vince glared back at me cross-eyed.

  “Whatever,” Vince said. “So are we related to everyone here?”

  “Well, I pretty much am. So, I guess in some way or another you must be too. Third, fourth, fifth cousin’s uncle’s sister’s nephews,” she joked.

  Vince laughed. They were already getting along.

  Finally, Lilly turned and addressed the crowd of relatives who were still openly gaping at us. She jabbered off something in Spanish and when she finished, they all immediately began conversing amongst themselves.

  Lilly flipped back around. “Wanna see your room?”

  I noticed she said “room,” not “rooms,” and my heart froze. That couldn’t have meant what I thought it meant.Vince and I both grabbed our carry-ons from Alonzo, who had been standing in the doorway (I noticed my jumbo suitcase wasn’t with him and guessed it might take a team of engineers to hoist it from the car), and followed Lilly down the long, yellow hallway.

  “What did you say to them?”Vince asked. “To your relatives. Back there.”

  “I told them they looked like idiots and to stop gawking at you guys.”

  “You know, your English is awesome,” he added.

  “Well, it should be. I go to an English-language school about an hour from here. My mom’s the secretary, that’s how I got in. Practically every American-born kid on the island goes there. I speak English all day, every day surrounded by Americans.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”Vince asked, sensing the tone in her voice.

  “I prefer to hang out with the locals,” she said flatly.

  “So, you’re in high school?” he asked, letting her comment drop.

  “Sort of. It’s a kindergarten through twelfth grade school. I’m fourteen. Well, I’ll be fifteen in a few weeks. There’s a big party. My mom’s obsessing about it.”

  “Hey, Mariana, a party! A birthday party! Looks like you won’t be missing so much after all.” Vince grinned.

  I was listening to them talk but couldn’t think of anything to say. It was like my mind wasn’t only blank, it was no longer working. I was on shutdown. It had been a long day, and I doubted it would end anytime soon.

  Chapter 14

  Even though I braced myself for less than pleasant accommodations, even I didn’t expect to be bunking with my eighteen-year-old brother for two months. We’d had our own rooms since birth and those bedroom doors were a necessity. The Ruízes weren’t a “naked family”—one of those families where the mom walks around in her bra and the dad in his boxers, and the kids wear nothing but towels to get from the shower to their bedrooms. That wasn’t us.

  We wore robes over our pajamas, even in the summer. We would never open the bathroom door while someone was in the shower, despite the two opaque curtains. We didn’t go into a bedroom without knocking.We had boundaries.

  But now, it seemed I was expected to not only sleep in a cement room without air-conditioning on a twin bed with a rock-hard mattress and a moldy-scented sheet, but I was also expected to sleep right across from my brother’s similar sub-par twin bed. I was going to have to change my clothes in front of him, every day. I was going to have to smell his rank breath and boy odor while I slept. I was going to have to let my laundry touch his. And our only bathroom was shared with the entire household—seven people, including us. I might as well have been camping.

  Not that I had time to focus on this much.As soon as Lilly showed us to our room and we plunked our carry-ons onto our beds (the mattresses made a sound similar to wood when hit with the luggage), we were called back into the family room for dinner. I was exhausted and wanted to nap (or tap my heels and be transported back to Spring Mills), but I reluctantly followed my brother toward the scent of food.

  “Hola.” Vince smiled and waved his hand in a giant semicircle. “Me llamo Vince.”

  The entire crowd of strangers chuckled slightly. I merely flicked my hand in their direction.

  “Uh, they want you to sit at the table. To eat,” Lilly explained, pointing to a long wood table covered with dishes of food from one end to the other.

  I looked at Vince and he shrugged with ease. It came so naturally to him—the ability to adapt to any situation or, even better, make it more enjoyable. He could have fun at a funeral, if it were socially acceptable. At that moment, as he pulled out a chair, relaxed in his seat and shouted “Let’s eat,” I actually wanted to be him.

  Everyone followed his lead and rushed to the food. There clearly wasn’t enough room for each person to sit, but it seemed to have been predetermined who would get a chair. The one next to Vince was glaringly left vacant, waiting for me. I stared past it and out the front window and saw Alonzo standing behind the trunk of his car, with another man, yanking on my suitcase. He had a foot on the bumper to brace himself as he pulled, and I felt mildly guilty for causing such a problem. I would have gone out to help if I thought I could do some good, but I was lucky I was even able to wheel it through the airport. Unless they wanted me to do pirouettes around the vehicle, I didn’t think I’d be much use.

  “Aren’t you gonna eat anything?” asked Lilly, as she heaped some rice on her plate.

  I looked at the spread and didn’t recognize a single edible item aside from the yellow rice with meat that my grandmother used to make, though I had never eaten it before. I wasn’t big on rice that wasn’t white. Not Spanish rice, not Chinese fried rice, not even whole grain rice. And now, that same rice I’d snubbed hundreds of times before was looking like the most appealing food on the table.

  “Mariana, sit down and eat,” Vince said, widening his eyes for emphasis.

  I could tell he knew what I was thinking. I came out of the womb a picky eater. My mom still told stories of me refusing to drink a bottle as a baby. She was so concerned that I was allergic to the formula that she rushed me to the hospital for emergency tests. According to the physicians, I had no physical reaction to the formula at all. I apparently just didn’t want to drink it. And when I got to solid food, my mother ended up pureeing her own peas, carrots and apples because I spit out anything that came in a jar. I, of course, don’t remember any of this, but it sure sounded like something I would do.

  I pulled out a chair that clearly didn’t match the one Vince was sitting on. Mine was light maple and had a blue-patterned cushion and a low back, and his was a dark mahogany wood with a white cushion and a high back. I realized all the chairs were different and wondered if it was an intentional design element, or if they just couldn’t afford a set of matching chairs. I sat down and glared at my empty yellow plate.

  “Just eat something. It’s good,” he whispered, covering his mouth so Lilly wouldn’t overhear.

  “What is all this?” I asked, staring at the heaping piles of food.

  “This is like grandma’s rice, only it has sausage and chicken,” he explained, pointing to a large mound on his dish before moving on to the rest. “This is some sort of fried fish, but be careful, it has bones. I think that’s ham.These are fried bananas. You’ll like these. They’re sweet. This is some sort of soup with meat in it.”

  “Asopao,” Lilly corrected. “It’s chicken with mashed plantains. It’s huge here.”

  I forced a smile before turning back to my brother with wide-eyed concern. I hated anything mashed. In all my life I hadn’t eaten even a teaspoon of garlic mashed potatoes or sweet potato puff. I also refused to eat any meat still attached to a bone—I felt like a cavewoman picking up and gnawing hunks of flesh. I didn’t even eat ribs or chicken wings back home. So that ruled out the assorted pig parts and fish. Fish bones were the worst—small, sneaky and deadly. I always felt like it was the fish’s way of getting back at us for the hook in
its mouth. It was only fair.

  I surveyed my options and decided on a small pile of Spanish rice with a tiny bit of yellow-colored chicken and a large mound of fried bananas.Vince was right, the bananas were my favorite thing on the table.

  “Do not make a face while you’re eating,” Vince whispered sternly.

  He sounded like Dad, though I would never tell him that. It would only make him angry.

  I pushed my food around the plate, spreading it out in the hopes of making it look like I ate more than I did.

  “You don’t like it?” Lilly asked suddenly from across the table.

  I looked up from my plate and caught her staring at my uneaten meal.

  “No, no. It’s great.” Dozens of eyes snapped toward me, including my Aunt Carmen’s. “Really, it’s good.”

  I smiled for effect and took another bite of my bananas. Thankfully, the crowd was satisfied and looked away.

  “Well, you’re not eating much,” Lilly stated.

  She seemed a bit offended, and I wondered if she helped cook the meal. The last thing I wanted was to make the one person who actually spoke English dislike me, or worse, think that I was rude. I had never been accused of being rude in my life.

  “No, it’s all great. I’m just not that hungry. From the plane and all. I’m exhausted.”

  It was only a half lie. I really was tired. And I was also willing to ignore the rumbling in my belly if it meant I didn’t have to consume any more strange foods.

  “You know, I think I’m gonna go to bed. That’s okay, right?” I asked Lilly.

  She looked back at me with one eyebrow raised. “Um, it’s like eight-thirty. But if you want to go to bed, go for it. I won’t stop you.”

  I took that as a green light and stood up from the table. My Aunt Carmen’s head swiveled toward me the minute I rose and her eyes instantly landed on my mostly untouched plate.

  “Um, gracias. Gracias. Fue muy buena,” I stated, before quickly turning away.

  I darted to my room and shut the door without glancing back. I was alone.

  I peeled back my stale sheet, pulled down the dirty white shade covering the lone window (apparently, plastic shades were considered a window treatment in Puerto Rico), and fell on the hard mattress. Tears immediately spilled from my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was crying because I was homesick, lonely or just drained. I guessed it was a combination of all three.

  I stayed in bed, quietly sobbing for almost an hour. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried like that, but it almost felt good, like it needed to come out. Eventually I got up and changed into a pair of gray cotton shorts and an old Eagles T shirt that smelled like home. I collapsed into the bed and by the time I drifted off to sleep, I could hear everyone had moved onto the outside porch. From the echoes of clanking bottles, it sounded like a party.Vince and Lilly were laughing.

  Chapter 15

  I woke up disoriented, covered in sweat. Everything in the room was powder blue: the walls, the ceiling, even the cement floor. A bookcase held three rows of paperbacks, along with stuffed animals, silk flower arrangements, dusty candles and statues of Jesus and Mary. The air was unbearably humid and held a pungent, yet familiar, smell. A loud snore broke through the stench, which I finally recognized as my brother’s sour morning breath. It wasn’t a dream. We were really in Puerto Rico.

  The light creeping through the shade was so soft I knew it was early morning. Part of me wanted to stay in bed and not dare venture through the house alone, but I guessed Vince would be out cold for quite a while and my bladder was ready to pop. I unglued the damp cotton sheet from my skin and retied my sticky red hair in a high knot. The cement floor felt soothingly cool under my feet and I knew this must be why there were no rugs in the house.

  I opened the door to the hallway. It was silent. My chest loosened as I realized that everyone was still asleep. I padded into the bathroom and was hit with the smell of cleaning fluid. Clearly it had been recently scrubbed, not that it helped the appearance much. The whole room looked straight out of the 1970s—minus the disco ball.

  The toilet was olive green with a cracked faux-wood seat and a fuzzy orange cover on the lid (with a matching fuzzy orange tissue box holder). The tub, in a matching shade of olive, had a mosaic of black scratches and permanent mildew circling the drain. The brown-and-white striped shower curtain hung from rusted hooks with a thick layer of mold along the bottom. The tiles on the walls were tan and the grout in between them was spotted black. I flushed the toilet and headed to the kitchen.

  The clock on the wall read a quarter after six in the morning. I didn’t even get up that early for school.

  Immediately my eyes shifted to the dinette set, which looked like a holdover from Happy Days—chrome-framed chairs with yellow vinyl seats and a chrome table with a white Formica top. The retro look was actually back in fashion—Emily’s parents had just purchased a similar dinette for their Jersey shore house. My great aunt and great uncle probably had no idea they could sell it for good money on eBay. They probably didn’t know what eBay was.

  But that wasn’t what caught my eye. On top of the table sat stacks of magazines, dozens of torn glossy pages, and a big three-ring binder. I lifted the pink plastic book from the table and read the cursive penmanship elegantly scrolled on a sheet of paper slipped into the cover’s clear plastic sleeve. It read: Mis Quince Años, Lilly Sanchez.

  I flipped it open; about fifty more plastic sleeves were filled with magazine cutouts of ball gowns, dolls, champagne flutes, pillows, jewelry, and tiaras. It was like a low-budget version of Madison’s party planner. All the details were there, and then some, just without the bling.

  I thought back to the blur of last night, and Lilly making a comment about her upcoming birthday. Apparently, it wasn’t just a party she was having, it was a Quinceañera. I had only been to one in my life. I was eight years old.

  My father had lugged us to the Bronx to attend a party for a bunch of relatives I didn’t see again until my grandfather’s funeral. The girl, la Quinceañera, whom I haven’t seen since, wore a white dress poofier than most wedding gowns and sat on a throne holding a jeweled scepter. She was caked in so much makeup that I couldn’t believe she was only fifteen; her hair was frozen a foot above her head in an elaborate up-do, and she was adorned head-to-toe in chunky sparkling jewelry. She had two tiaras (one for the church service and one for the party) and two sets of shoes (again, she changed at the reception). It was a spectacle so elaborate that a stranger would have thought she was a visiting queen being doted on by her royal subjects. More than a hundred people had packed this family’s backyard, including a live ten-piece band.

  The whole ordeal seemed outrageous to an unaccustomed eight-year-old, and for a moment I wondered if that’s exactly how Madison’s party would seem if a stranger happened upon it.

  I returned the book to exactly where I’d found it, knowing it was an invasion of privacy just to have opened it.

  My throat was dry, but I didn’t want to get caught rummaging through the refrigerator (I had already rummaged through their party plans). I stared at the fridge; it looked oddly familiar with its rounded sides and single white door. My grandparents had a similar “ice box” in their house in Camden and it reminded me of stolen sodas. My parents never let us have caffeinated drinks when we were little, so my grandfather used to tiptoe to the fridge, hide two cool cans under his shirt and slip them to us when my mom wasn’t looking. She’d pretend not to notice. Only I didn’t feel comfortable stealing sodas today, not from a bunch of relatives I still considered strangers. So I grabbed a clean glass from the plastic drying rack and filled it with tap water.

  Outside on the porch, dozens of empty beer cans and half-drunk bottles of rum littered the floor. I had never been drunk in my life, yet my middle-aged relatives seemed to have no problem knocking them back.Vince probably had a blast with them last night. I couldn’t believe I was less fun than a bunch of old fogies. I mean, really, how sad is that?
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  I rested my shoulder against a white porch post and tried to spy the nearest house. It had to be at least a football field away, but I could barely see it through the mesh of exotic trees and plants, which looked nothing like the oaks, evergreens and manicured lawns we had back home.

  Suddenly, a giant brush of leaves swished. Wood snapped and I quickly stepped back, clutching the handle of the screen door. I was halfway inside when Uncle Miguel emerged with a machete in one hand and bunch of bananas in the other. He was hacking at the vines so wildly that I couldn’t tell if he was pruning purposefully or just getting plants out of his way. But as soon as he caught a glimpse of me, he halted.

  “Hola,” he shouted.

  “Hola.”

  He flung the machete over his shoulder, wiped the sweat off his wrinkled brow and walked toward me.

  “¿ Quieres comer?”

  It was the offer for food I was waiting for. I quickly nodded.

  “Sí. Gracias.”

  I followed him into the kitchen and sat at the dinette set, pushing some of the magazines and torn pages aside.

  “Una fiesta. Quinceañera,” Uncle Miguel stated, pointing to the stacks of party plans.

  He opened the refrigerator, which was filled with aluminum foil–covered leftover containers.

  “¿Huevos?”

  He lifted a brown egg from the door and held it out for me. I had never eaten a brown egg before, my mom always bought the white ones, but I had seen them at the grocery store. I was pretty sure they came from chickens.

  “Sí. Gracias,” I said again, nodding my head.

  He cracked a half dozen eggs into the black pan on the stove, pulled a fork out of a drawer and gestured to me with his spinning wrist. I assumed he was asking if I wanted the eggs scrambled, so I nodded.

  A few minutes later he set two plates of scrambled eggs on the table and pulled some sliced ham out of the fridge, as well as a large glass bottle of orange juice and a bowl of tropical fruit. I spooned a forkful of eggs into my mouth, and made a mental note that scrambled eggs in Puerto Rico tasted just like they did in Spring Mills.