Papi

by Rita Indiana

  ALSO BY RITA INDIANA

  Ruminantes (1998)

  La estrategia de Chochueca (1999)

  Ciencia succión (2002)

  Nombres y animals (2014)

  Papi

  Rita Indiana

  Translated by Achy Obejas

  The University of Chicago Press

  CHICAGO & LONDON

  RITA INDIANA—also known as La Montra, the monster, in her role as the lead singer of Rita Indiana y los Misterios—is a pop artist, queer activist, and rising star of contemporary Caribbean literature. She is the author of two short story collections and three novels. Born in Santo Domingo, she lives in Puerto Rico. ACHY OBEJAS is a Cuban American journalist, writer, and translator. She lives in Oakland, CA, and Chicago.

  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

  The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

  Papi © 2005, 2011 by Rita Indiana

  English translation © 2016 by The University of Chicago

  All rights reserved. Published 2016.

  Printed in the United States of America

  25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-24489-1 (paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-24492-1 (e-book)

  DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226244921.001.0001

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hernández, Rita Indiana, 1977– author.

  [Papi. English]

  Papi / Rita Indiana ; translated by Achy Obejas.

  pages ; cm

  Summany: Papi tells a story in the voice of an eight year old girl waiting in Santo Domingo for her father to return from New York to lavish her with gifts and the glory of his fame. Things don’t go according to plan.

  ISBN 978-0-226-24489-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-24492-1 (ebook)

  I. Obejas, Achy, 1956– translator. II. Title.

  pq7409.2.h355p3613 2016

  863'.7—dc23

  ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  MICHAEL: “You know, you’re about as much fun as a divorce . . . which is not a bad idea.”

  KITT: “I want custody of me.”

  —Knight Rider

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  ONE

  Papi is like Jason, the guy from Friday the 13th. Or like Freddy Krueger. But more like Jason than Freddy Krueger. He shows up when you least expect him. Sometimes when I hear that scary music, I get really happy cuz I know he might be coming this way. That scary music is sometimes just Mami telling me Papi called and said he’s picking me up to take me to the beach or shopping. I pretend I don’t care, like I’m sure he’s not coming cuz you don’t get told ahead of time if you’re about to get your head slashed by a machete; that’s why those dummies go straight up to the bushes or the closet, where there’s a mysterious light spilling out, and say, Helen? Or better yet: David? Even though everybody knows it’s not Helen or David behind the bushes but Papi, raising his aluminum softball bat or an ax or a pick.

  Papi’s there, around any corner. But you can’t sit down and wait for him cuz that’s a longer and more painful death. It’s better to make other plans, to just stay in your PJs and watch cartoons from six in the morning until midnight, or even go out for a stroll, which is a game Mami made up for herself called if-Papi-wants-you-he-can-come-find-you. But Jason knows better than that and he disappears for months and even years, until I forget he exists, and then the scary music turns into Papi himself honking his car horn, and I go down the stairs four at a time so he can make mincemeat out of me just as soon as possible.

  But what makes Papi most like Jason isn’t that he shows up when you least expect him but that he always comes back. Even when they kill him off. When Papi left for the United States the first time with some Cuban woman who didn’t want him sending anybody money, my abuela Cilí said, He’s dead to me. And when Papi told Mami he was gonna get married again but not to her, she said, As far as I’m concerned, you’re dead. And I think one time, when Papi stood me up, I called him on the phone and told him, I hope you die. I imagine there are so many other people who wanted him dead, like Jason, that it wouldn’t take a detective to figure out that when it was our turn with the knife, we stuck it in not just once but a bunch of times (and since there were so many of us, and it was so dark, who was gonna count?). Anyway, nobody ever goes to jail for killing Jason.

  That’s why when they told me he was coming back, I’d already stopped waiting for him a long time ago and had imagined his return a million times: the clothes Papi would wear, how he’d step off the plane sniffing at the salty air, kneeling to kiss the ground.

  And then, I’d already pictured this too: how he wears Nike running shoes and a two-thousand-dollar suit, and while the immigration official asks if he’s just visiting, Papi gets in a runner’s position—his hands on the ground, one leg straight back and the other bent beneath him—and when the stamp falls on his passport, he goes off like a gunshot, running and running and his mind runs too, from Las Américas International Airport to La Feria, to the front of the Lotería Nacional building, to his mother’s house, just like he’d promised Gregorio Hernández (the witch doctor), if only he’d grant him his wish to be rich, and now he’s back and all that money he’s been saving has come back with him.

  We’ve been saving up for him, too; we’ve been waiting for you, Papi.

  I’m waiting for you on the balcony at your mother’s house, at Cilí’s. I’m waiting for you with clenched fists and my mouth up against the balcony’s cold railing, imagining how you’re gonna leap from the car to the balcony (which is on the third floor) and how you’re gonna hoist me up and say I’m so much bigger now you can hardly carry me, but of course, you’re always gonna be able to carry me and so you lift me up and squeeze me and kiss my forehead, and I bury my head in your neck so I can smell your cologne from “over there,” to see if you’ve changed colognes, just to see.

  Everybody already knows you’re back, that you’re coming back, that you’re coming home in triumph, a big shot with more gold chains and more cars than the devil himself. Everybody already knows. They’re already imagining how you’re coming back to them, to every single one of them, and how each one has been waiting for you, fantasizing about it, and telling the whole house, anyone who calls on the phone, the whole neighborhood: He’s back.

  They dream you fill your suitcase with gifts for them, that you work only for them, live only for them; in their dreams you owe them everything. They imagine your reunion. You, in your silver suit, your jet-black shoes, running from the airport or—even better!—paying for a plane to fly you from the airport to their houses, first of all, to knock on their doors and shower them with green bills that taste like confectioners’ sugar.

  The day comes and all of them, each and every one, awaken, drench themselves with a bucket of water, and take a good look at themselves. Today is the day, the day when they will know what’s good, the day when you’ll repay them for all they gave you when you were just a street kid—all those matches they let you borrow, the beer dregs they offered you, the ball bearings from the car engine they let you have. A few have a mental list of each thing you owe them, and in their heads they write down what you’re gonna bring them, the thing they think will best repay them. And when the list gets too long (cuz they’ve jotted down even the times they said hello to you), they start to borrow, to go into debt, to squander that f
ortune they already feel is theirs, that fortune that will inevitably illustrate the perfect trajectory of a radiant shitstorm from your pockets to their faces, their hands, their mouths, all over their chests: your nieces and nephews, cousins, siblings, friends, your siblings’ siblings-in-law, your nearest and dearest, neighbors, classmates, aunts and uncles, godparents, compatriots, the friends of that guy who’s married to the lady whose brother is some dude who graduated from the navy a year after you.

  Now they’re organizing, gathering on both sides of the palm-lined avenue cuz they’ve all had the same idea of going to meet you. They’re prepared, with placards in their hands, flags, little signs, banners that say, Güelcon Güelcon! The ones who weren’t so quick now climb the palm trees on Avenida Las Américas and pluck them bare so they can lay the green fronds at your feet; others lay their own bodies down on the asphalt so you can walk over them; still others come with trucks wired with speaker towers blasting José José’s “El Triste” cuz one night when they offered you some picapollo, that song was playing and they think it might be a good way to refresh your memory. Still others come in pickups with tinted windows, loudspeakers on the roof proclaiming slogans and stories about them and you. Others come disguised as members of the Civil Defense so they can shove people around and say, Let’s move along, let’s move along, waving batons and wearing those little orange vests that you can tell are homemade from a mile away. Then the people finally get organized and sign their names in a book some lady is passing around (she also sells peanut brittle) so you can see who came to welcome you and who didn’t. The plane can be seen descending and women start to go into a trance and froth at the mouth while the men, legs trembling post-orgasm, dance “El Perrito” while holding on to the car bumpers.

  Then here you are, here you are running over. People have lined up on both sides of the avenue; a rope keeps them away from your body but they stretch their arms so you can high-five them without slowing down. You’ve already doffed that two-thousand-dollar suit and are now wearing a seventeen-hundred-dollar, cobalt-blue jogging ensemble. It’s starting to rain and people pull out umbrellas and plastic to cover themselves. Some lackey is just steps behind you with a piece of cardboard so your head won’t get wet, but you’re sweating so much it looks like you got soaked anyway. Behind you there’s a caravan of cars with sirens, semis, trucks, motorcycles, and scooters, people running and others in wheelchairs and on bikes, keeping you in the spotlight with halogen lights while it rains cuz it’s getting dark.

  People begin to make out the caravan of driverless Pontiac Trans Ams, replicas Papi brought back to sell. Dozens of five-thousand-dollar suits brought back for Papi to wear. Thousands of watches, chains, white-gold rings and necklaces that adjust to Papi’s body with a mere thought and that he thinks he’ll wear to the grave. Somebody comes up with a baby in his arms so Papi can baptize him (the priest, the mother, and the altar boy with the baptismal font are running alongside him), and somebody kills a pig in Papi’s name so a woman can catch up to him and bring a fork to Papi’s mouth and he can blow on that roast pork and then, yum, eat it all up without missing a step. And so they slaughter chickens, goats, and guinea fowl all along the way, and running the whole time, Papi takes bites of everything. When a ragged parakeet, who’s also running, sings “Compadre Pedro Juan” so he’ll feel at home, Papi makes like he’s dancing, with a hand on his belly and another in the air, wiggling his butt, all the while picking up the pace.

  But before I can touch him, we see him on TV, slapping high fives from the airport to La Feria, trotting along, turning, trotting, sweating, running. Sometimes, and for just a couple of seconds, he walks and puts two fingers to his neck and looks down at his watch. Every two kilometers, two Civil Defense lackeys hand him a pair of blue Nikes, cuz his soles are wearing out, and the anchor on the six o’clock news—with a photo of Papi over his right shoulder—says, Quisqueya’s darling son has returned, and they replay the images they shot just minutes before: Papi baptizing a baby, an old woman sticking a piece of pork in his mouth, Papi smiling and holding his hands together above his head like a winner. The screen also shows the cars and chains and an overwhelmed pregnant woman swooning.

  I go out to the balcony to see if he’s here yet, but all I see are the TV station’s vans waiting for him, a line of newscasters on the sidewalk, mics in hand, pointing up here. I wave at them from Cilí’s balcony, and when I go back inside to see if the news can tell us where Papi is, I see myself on the screen, waving from Cilí’s balcony.

  TWO

  My Papi has more of everything than your papi, he’s stronger than yours, he has more hair, more muscle, more money, and more girlfriends than yours. My Papi has more cars than yours, more cars than the devil, so many cars he has to sell some cuz they don’t fit under his carport. Papi has cars that talk and tell you to put on your seat belt and shut your mouth in English, French, and other languages. Papi drives a different one each day, cuz there are so many he has to divvy them up, one for the morning, one for the afternoon, and another for the evening, that is, every four hours. Sometimes even a different one at lunch. One to pick me up at school, one for my First Communion, one to visit me on Sundays, one to visit his mother and another to visit his sisters, a Jaguar for Father’s Day, a Camaro for Valentine’s, a Bee Em Double U for grand openings, a Ferrari to take me for ice cream—a different one every four hours. There’s one car he uses to bring Mami child support, one for when he comes to tell Mami he wants to get back with her, and another (usually a little Mercedes convertible) when he comes to tell us he’s gonna marry another woman and invite us to the wedding and leaves Mami’s furniture reeking of his cologne, which is strong, very strong, stronger and more expensive and better than the cologne used by your papi, if in fact your papi has ever even laid eyes on such a thing.

  It all gives Mami a headache.

  Papi has cars with black windows that filter out even the thinnest ray, and he has little black curtains for them to make sure not even the slightest light can get in. Cars that tell you who left the door open and who’s eating their boogers, long fat cars, cars with doors that lift open, that make people gather around before we’ve even gotten out, that make a bunch of kids and teens and old people—almost all of them black and barefoot—come running to touch them cuz they think Papi and I have landed in a spaceship, almost always right in front of a beer hall or car wash on the Malecón, and they come to touch us and the car and they ask Papi about the car, about me and the car, and Papi answers without looking their way, as if it weren’t important, as if cars have always flown, as if Papi and I touch down every afternoon in a car that seems like a spaceship in front of all the beer halls on the Malecón, which is in fact true.

  Papi gets out of the car and leaves the door open so kids, young and old (almost all black and thin and barefoot), can climb in and turn on the wipers and the lights and open the doors that flip up like the wings of a seagull, like a spaceship. Sometimes Papi even gives them the key so they can turn it on and fly off, but they’re so stupid they circle around about three times and then crash into the sea or the reef off the Malecón, or they get tangled in the electrical wires like a pair of dead shoes.

  Papi doesn’t care. Not if they kill themselves or if they leave the cars impaled on top of a coconut tree, since he has so many. What Papi does is whip out a camera and take a Polaroid photo of the accident so he can give it to the surviving kids, teens, and seniors; as soon as we turn our backs, they beat the heck out of each other for that photo.

  My Papi has so many clothes and so many closets to keep them in that sometimes, when he wants to wear a particular shirt, he has to buy it new cuz he forgets which closet he put it in. And he has so many Polo shirts, with that little guy playing polo on his chest, that he has about fifteen closets just to keep the Polo shirts; if he wanted, one shirt for each day of his life. All those Polo shirts, even after they’re washed, still smell all the time of Papi’s cologne; even after they’re washe
d, it clings to them, and even though Papi sends them out to get cleaned, it won’t go away so that when Papi changes cologne he has to change all his clothes too and buy them all new and start again.

  My Papi has more cars than the devil. My Papi has so many cars, so many pianos, so many boats, submachine guns, boots, jackets, overcoats, heliports, my Papi has so many boots, and then more boots, my Papi has so many girlfriends, my Papi has so many boots, cowboy boots with eagles and snakes etched into the leather, leather boots, rubber boots, black boots, brown ones, red ones, white ones, caramel colored, wine colored, olive green, blue like the blue on the flag. Ugly boots, too. Boots to play polo and cut the grass. Boots for off-roading. My Papi has motorcycles, scooters, ninja bikes, domestic animals, four-wheel drives, and velocipedes. Papi has curly hair, black and curly, cuz when he was a sailor and wore uniforms—white, khaki, boots, a wooden gun, a fake gun just for photos—my Papi’s hair was very short, cuz in the wartime navy they shaved it off with an electric razor that went zoom zoom and cut what was left of his blond hair. Papi was very blond when he was little—his hair was practically white, almost albino, and very straight and very long—cuz one day he’d choked on a piece of plantain, and as he was turning black as an olive his mother promised the Virgin of Altagracia that if he were saved from the plantain, she’d let his hair grow long, which is why in all the photos Papi has very blond, very straight, very long, long hair. They took a lot of pictures but you could almost never see his face, just his very long hair, and when you could see his face, he looked like a girl with a very long and very white braid that went almost to his waist.

  But now his hair is black and thick and short, a mini-Afro. Papi has friends who comb it; they come over to comb it, with blow-dryers and a little round cylindrical brush that makes a kra kra sound in Papi’s hair, which is very black and very curly. Papi’s friends, who comb his hair and shave him and cut his nails and paint them with a bright transparent polish, also do me: they wash my hair in the sink and dry it with a towel and blow-dry it and use a round cylindrical brush, even bigger than the one they use on Papi, cuz my hair is still kind of blond, and not as straight, and not as long, or as albino. Later they use these magic drops on both our hair and they tell us we’re beautiful and very much the same, and I look at myself in the mirror with my almost-blond mane and it’s true that I’m almost the same as Papi.