by Rita Indiana
Then Papi sends word that he’s not gonna buy a TV for the good-for-nothings Mami keeps around. So we call on the phone and I tell Papi I wanna watch Bugs Bunny in color and he cries on the other end. I know this cuz he whimpers when he cries and then the doorbell rings and I open the door and there’s Corporán de los Santos, the champion of Dominican TV, with his Afro, flanked by his seven Corporettes blowing confetti and streamers out their noses. He’s come to deliver the TV Papi sent, and it comes in a box so big I can make a little house out of it as Mami and her boyfriend watch the seven-thirty telenovela.
I like TV a lot and I like playing a game I made up in which you point to things that come on the screen and say, Mine, so that the first person who says, Mine, is the owner of whatever that thing is. And since I’m almost always alone, I get to keep everything for myself, cuz I’m sure that wherever Papi is, he’s already bought it all for me. Someday Papi will come back and things will be like before, better than before. We’ll go shopping at dusk and get to the store just as it’s about to close, and cuz we’re in a big hurry cuz the clerks wanna leave, Papi will say, Just point to what you want with your finger, and then Papi tells whichever girlfriend he’s brought along to get one in each color, and so we fill up carts with socks in every color, long ones and short ones, in every color, one in every style, with little pom-poms on the ankle. Later Papi drops me off at Mami’s and she watches from the balcony as we unload everything from the trunk of the car. When night falls, I put on all my new socks, one on top of the other, and I make a corral on the bed with my new shoes. I lie down in the very center and try to sleep while breathing in that smell of newness, but I’m trembling from a fear of dying without having been able to try out all my new things.
And it’s just that Papi has so much music you’re always afraid he’s gonna stop the song that’s playing before it’s over. He has a record player and a cassette player in each room and there’s a record or a cassette ready to play in each one. Whenever people come over, Papi spends all his time running from one music machine to the other pressing Stop or Play or Rewind or Fast-Forward. Or Pause. Papi has a piece of furniture, actually a bunch, where he keeps his records; in fact, the walls are covered with shelves on which Papi’s records gather dust and the servant—actually a whole bunch of servants—take care of them by dusting them off with a blue-velvet dust cloth.
There’s a room full of merengue records in which the shelves reach the ceiling. And there’s a room for American music and a little room for classical music, or as Papi says, dead people’s music, and that room is really the bathroom.
Saturday mornings Papi gets up early and makes me breakfast himself so he has to run from the blender to the record player and from the stove to the toaster and from there to the cassette player. I get up wondering what all the racket’s about. I walk slowly to the living room and spy Papi dancing, moving his little butt while wearing a red apron that says #1 Pimp, with Cuco Valoy’s LP in one hand and a tray of waffles or mangú with fried cheese in the other.
Papi likes Cuco Valoy very much, though he’s not one of my faves, especially when Cuco pulls out his little bell and says, And now we’re gonna practice some brujería! I like Johnny Ventura and his Combo Show better, all of them wearing very tight pants. My tía Leysi says they all stick socks down their pants so they’ll look bigger when they dance. They wear color-coordinated shirts unbuttoned down to their navels, leaving all that chest hair and all those gold chains out in the open. It’s the same with Wilfrido Vargas. I think the chains send some kind of signal, like when you send messages from one rooftop to another with mirrors. Wilfrido plays the trumpet, which also reflects light, just like the trumpets and trombones and saxophones Conjunto Quisqueya and Fernandito Villalona play, except that when Fernandito’s brass section plays they send signals that reflect Channel 9’s spotlights, and then all the servants come down to suck up to Fernandito. The same thing happens with Bonny Cepeda and Los Kentons, except that Los Kentons wear karate uniforms, and they perform katas as they dance and kick the servants. But although Wilfrido kicks the mic stand, Cuco employs witchcraft, and Bonny’s shiny hair-sprayed bun reflects back the light, nobody dances like Papi on Saturdays when we’re alone and we practice in front of the wall-sized mirror in his apartment. He teaches me how to do a two-three, one-two-three-four, and dresses me up in his suits. We gel up our hair and use combs like mics and Papi drops the mic and runs to the record player or the phone and comes back so fast he’s picked the comb back up before it even hits the floor and then he’s teaching me another song.
Even more than the records, I like the record covers. The photos and drawings of the singers posing on wicker thrones or holding a mic as if it were a chicken leg. Black-and-white and color photos so you can see clearly who sings and who plays what. Some even include the lyrics to the merengues for those who can’t figure them out by listening. Fernandito “El Mayimbe” wears a cowboy hat and sits on a rock, Cuco Valoy is beaten by a cop, and a kitten walks on Fausto Rey’s shoulders, while Los Vecinos, with identical haircuts, stand around in white booties. Los Kenton are splitting up, Papi concludes as he stares at a record cover in which they join Bonny Cepeda for a concert with karate uniforms and Afros that grow smaller each year.
One day, on the Show del Mediodía, after they’d dragged Pololo off the set with a stroke, the news anchor appeared and looked up from some papers to say, We interrupt this program to inform you that Fernandito Villalona, alias “El Mayimbe,” has been detained for possession of oregano and cilantro. The well-known interpreter of “La jamaquita” and “Tabaco y ron” was stopped near Calle 42 by a unit whose officers searched the glove compartment and found oregano and cilantro, as indicated by the tests used in these cases. Fernandito admitted in principle that the aromatic herbs found in the vehicle were his but now says the sale and use of same were actually his tía Bolivia’s, who was making a sancocho in honor of her sister, the singer’s mother.
There were voices coming from down the street, voices outside the TV: they got him with grass, they got him with grass. Returning to Studio A at Color Visión on Channel 9, Doña Zaida Lovatón, director of the Commission for Public Performances, whose gray streak looked exactly like Cruella De Vil’s, discussed the facts on live TV, rocking in a rocking chair from the comfort of her home: I said it once and I’ll say it again, this poison has to be cut off at the roots . . .
Later, changing over to Channel 7, Julie Carlo (with a blond poodle perm), former star of the Show del Mediodía and now contracted to Sabroshow, covered her ear with two fingers cuz the brown mob was railing and pushing while waving El Mayimbe record covers in their hands. Before a lady hitting her own chest could grab the mic from her, Julie informed us: Fernandito Villalona was just set free. The attorney general of the republic has waived the charges against him. Repeat, El Mayimbe has been set free. And the mobs, which had taken to the streets in outrage cuz they’d locked up the spoiled star, jumped and shouted and El Mayimbe came out, handcuffs still on, next to that union guy José Francisco Peña Gómez, who showed off the silver key in his very black hand to the crowds and grinned with those teeth so white they reflected the scorching tropical sun as he released El Mayimbe, lifting his hands in the air like a boxer. All the while Peña hopped up and down, shaking them both. That’s when Fernandito stepped back to get a running start and then launched himself from the top of the stairs into the multitudes waiting for him. We saw him floating above that black, red, blue, and white mob, and sometimes the only thing we could see were his Adidas and his flowered shirt and his little hat and his gold ring swimming above all that curly hair toward Rahintel’s Studio B at Channel 7, where the recently launched Sabroshow was waiting for him. Wilfrido, Johnny, Bonny Cepeda, Rasputín, Cuco, Dioni Fernández, Belkis Concepción, Aramis Camilo, La Santini, Feli Cumbé, and Julie Carlo were also waiting for him. The orchestras and all the Channel 7 cameras were waiting with a contract that would free him from whatever responsibilities he ha
d to any other variety show.
Fernandito, alias “El Mayimbe,” who the crowd just dropped on the floor, signed and hugged Julie and, bringing his succulent white mulatto lips to the mic, began to tear up, and then I began to tear up, and then we all began to tear up. He said, Excuse me for coming here to sing like this, wearing tennis shoes, but I just got released from jail and I came right over so I didn’t have time to change.
Then all the orchestras started playing (just think about how many trumpets, trombones, and saxes that means) the beginning of “Baila en la calle” at the same time, and Fernandito, just before he started singing, trying to get on top of the music, proclaimed: I dedicate this song to its composer, maestro Luis “Terror” Díaz.
Papi also has American music, and sometimes I’m the one who plays those records. I’m dancing the most complicated steps when the phone rings and Papi screams at me to turn it down down down and so I turn down the volume. When Papi hangs up, he orders me to turn it up up up and so I just dance with my hand glued to the volume control so I can turn it up or down when he tells me to.
Papi loves Billy Ocean.
One Saturday I get up and hear the beginning of “Caribbean Queen” by Billy Ocean but Papi is not making my breakfast. Instead, he’s dropping a bunch of dead shrimp in boiling water, lobsters too. Thousands of ’em. And when I look through the door to the kitchen and see the overflowing stainless-steel pots, Papi says, That’s so you’ll taste some brain food. Papi also makes multicolored sauces and white rice and then he calls the corner store and tells them to deliver two bags of ice cuz his family is coming over today. I’m very happy my tía Leysi and my tía China and my abuela Cilí are coming over, and also my cousin Puchy and my cousin Milly, who are my father’s other sister’s kids, but she died in childbirth cuz they’re twins and each weighed fourteen pounds.
My abuela Cilí raised the twins together with my tía Leysi and my tía China. Neither of them has ever married and they all live together in an apartment across the street from the Lotería Nacional. The apartment is on the third floor. Cilí bought it from Balaguer during his twelve-year presidency, after she sold her little plot of land and came to the city with her children and grandchildren, that is, the twins. Papi enlisted in the navy in order to eat shark meat, and Tía China enrolled at the Universidad Autónoma so she could hook up with black people and throw rocks. And although my tía Leysi is the same age as Milly and Puchy, when Cilí went to visit her people in the countryside, she left Leysi in charge. She took care of ironing their bell-bottomed pants and made sure they had matching orange polyester shirts and shiny strapless blouses. The three of them would then go to disco and salsa shows, sometimes even winning dance contests, money, fake jewelry, tickets to Grease. One day, Milly and Puchy won fifty pesos and used it to buy white fabric so they could each have a suit made exactly like John Travolta’s on Saturday Night Fever. Almost always, they managed to find somebody who would take them home in a Cadillac at five o’clock the next morning. China was on her way back at that hour after putting up posters of Che Guevara all over Ciudad Nueva, though the police would tear them down before sunrise. The four of them would sit down at Junior’s Chimichurri on the corner of the Lotería Nacional, where the sluts and the queens from La Feria would offer each of them half a chimi and a 7 Up. They’d think about Papi (and when they thought about him, they imagined him in his sailor’s suit giving them a military salute), and wondered whether Papi was on land or sea and if he’d been assigned a real rifle yet.
By the time Papi’s family knocks on the door, the shrimp are ready. Papi knocks himself out trying to make them comfortable in the living room and showing them his new gadgets and taking each one aside so he can shove a roll of bills in his shirt pocket. Papi says, Go show Puchy and Milly your new toys, and I have them follow me, but as we walk down the hallway they take a detour into Papi’s closets and begin to try everything on, even the cologne. I’m red with fury and tell them to leave that stuff alone, that it’s Papi’s, and they say Papi told them to take whatever they want, to take everything, so I foam at the mouth and kick but they don’t care, stuffing jackets, pants, shoes, shirts, ties, and hats in a suitcase Papi gave them as well.
I throw a fit.
But what really burns me is that the twins are already sixteen and Papi can take them with him to his friends’ discos. When they have plans, they start getting dressed very early, from the moment they wake up, laying out their clothes and accessories on the bed, dressing and undressing and looking at themselves in the mirror and suggesting things. Sometimes they even cut their hair like those guys from Tears for Fears in the video that goes, Shout shout shout it out loud. They stand in front of the TV with the scissors waiting for the video to come on. Milly puts on a black polka-dot shirt and uses a lot of mousse and Puchy colors a swatch of hair and adjusts the belt with the metal tip. Papi dusts them both off and Tía Leysi—who’s going too, cuz everyone but me is going—takes off her rollers and sprays her hair. Wait ’til you’re big, wait ’til you’re big, they tell me, cuz I’ve been pouting since I found out. They leave me with Cilí, who makes me sleep in her bed with my feet near her head so we both fit, but since I kick in my sleep she ties my heels to the headboard. I think, Damn, since Papi has so much money, you’d think Cilí would have a different lifestyle by now, at least a house with more beds and more TVs. When Cilí turns off the light and starts to whisper Psalm 23, her spit sprays in the dark and I imagine Papi, Tía Leysi, and the twins dancing with their cool clothes and their bracelets and their hairdos.
The party features Fernandito Villalona. And that makes me throw a bigger fit.
The next day, trying to get me to forgive him for not taking me, Papi lets me sit on his lap while he drives. I grab the wheel the whole time we’re on a very long drive that always ends up at some girlfriend’s of his, always with a bigger butt than the previous girlfriend, and with even more gold chains. On the way back I want a raspberry Country Club soda and Papi says, Let’s see if they have change at this convenience store and the clerk shakes his head no; the problem is Papi only has thousand-peso bills. Papi just stands there with a roll of pink bills in his hands and I look at him and the clerk looks at me and I look at the bottle of raspberry Country Club on the shelf and Papi looks at his pink roll and the clerk looks at the roll and I look at the bottle of red soda and the pink bills and I think the bills and the Country Club match. I look at a box of straws and at the poster next to the store’s door that says for every ten Country Club bottle caps of any color plus five pesos you can get a yo-yo. Then, in the silence that smells like Cubanelle peppers, the only audible sound is Papi’s finger sliding down the edge of the roll of thousand peso bills: retetetetetetete. Papi starts looking like a businessman while the clerk starts looking like a bullshitter and before Papi’s finger gets to the end of the retetetetetetete the clerk whistles and a little kid about my age runs out with a cart and starts loading up crates of Country Club raspberry and grape and merengue and orange soda right into the open trunk of Papi’s car as Papi caresses my face with his many-ringed hand. Later, the clerk, wearing a grin from ear to ear, will hand me a box with every kind of Country Club yo-yo, and rutututututu we take off in Papi’s car. I hold on to that box of yo-yos and imagine myself doing tricks with them, making circles in the air and trapping them without getting tangled in the string. Later I imagine myself giving the yo-yos away during recess at my school as the teacher says, Get in line. Everybody wants to be my friend, even Julio César and Raúl wanna be my friends, and they’ll teach me all those new swear words in exchange for two, three, or however many yo-yos they want.
FOUR
I fall asleep with my swimsuit on cuz Papi told me he was gonna take me to the beach; I’ve still got my diving mask on, my swim fins, and water wings on my arms. Papi bought me my swimsuit, which is just a little blue turquoise thong that set Mami’s teeth on edge when she saw it. The only thing Papi said was, Didn’t they say I was crazy? Well, w
e’ll see what they say now. I put everything on in a rush cuz Papi would be here any minute, at least that’s what he said on the phone. I get up super early, before the sun has even come out, and stuff a towel in a bag. When I’m done, I sit down in a mini-rocker custom made just for me that my dad bought for me, of course. I just rock and rock and rock until the phone rings.
It’s Papi, who’s on his way.
They bring me breakfast on a little tray, bread with cream cheese and milk. But I don’t actually swallow anything. I just keep rocking with the tray on my lap. At about ten, they bring me a jar of champola ice cream to refresh me, but I don’t actually swallow anything, I just keep rocking with the tray and the jar of champola ice cream. At about noon, they brought some rice with coconut on a plate but I couldn’t swallow any of it and I just kept rocking with the little tray, the jar of champola ice cream, and the little plate. I just keep rocking in front of the turned-off TV and I turn the diving mask over so I can look out at the street and see the sun is really intense and the sidewalk looks like it’s gonna melt and the trees look like they’re gonna melt, and the plate, the jar, and the tray all look like they’re gonna melt on me. Mami is taking a nap; I can hear her from here, snoring like the hiss of a snake, but I just keep rocking and rocking until the phone rings.
It’s Papi, who’s on his way.
When Mami wakes up she brings me a bowl of rice pudding and leaves it at my feet. At five in the afternoon, Mami comes in with a tower of white baby’s breath and silver sugar flowers and puts it on my head, and it rocks with my rocking and the bread, the milk, the champola, the rice pudding, the coconut, and me, but I’m not really rocking that much anymore. At seven o’clock Mami opens my mouth with a hydraulic jack and she and a Haitian worker from the construction site across the street whom she’s brought over to help her introduce a clear tube which they use to feed me a solution of milk pudding and white pumpkin purée.
