Papi

by Rita Indiana

  All of a sudden a blond kid who’s been jumping off the diving board a while gets sick of hearing me scream SÓBATE QUE NO HAY BENGUÉ and gives me the finger. Back in my country, back in my school, I had already found out what that means. Raúl and Julio César told me that if I showed them my panties, they’d explain it. We went behind a bus to make the deal but I can barely form the gesture with my own hand and sometimes I leave too many fingers out, so what I can’t say with my fingers I say with my mouth: YO MOTHAFUCKA SONOFABITCH GO FUCK YO OWN SELF. The blond kid motions to another kid, this one in a green bathing suit, who tells him: She says you’re an SOB. The blond kid, who’s sitting on the diving board dangling his legs, starts to get red in the face and the drops of pool water on his body evaporate and his freckles get real daaaaaaark and his veins (there are veins) engorge just like this one friend of Manuel Moretta’s.

  The blond kid is throwing paralyzing daggers at me. He’s gonna jump from the diving board onto my neck and drown me. Next to the fence, my babysitter is fixing her G-string while she talks to the lifeguard. They don’t know they’re gonna kill me, that I’m gonna wind up choking on water and chemicals (they taste so bad). But a muscular arm pops up out of the pool (under the diving board, under the blond kid), an arm with a hard bicep (which we could see from afar) comes out of the water like the dead in that Michael Jackson video where they stick their arms out of their graves. The arm grabs one of the blond kid’s legs and pulls and pulls and pulls and drags him to the deep blue where there’s a little sign that says 18 Feet.

  From up here we see a writhing black mass as the grisly sun lights the surface of the water. The rest of the kids run home but a few stay quiet like me, just looking down. Still next to the fence, the lifeguard fixes the G-string on my babysitter.

  The blond kid comes up, pops his head out of the water, and we can see his tears, his boogers disappearing into the pool water. He wails loudly and gets out of the pool and hugs his belly all the way home. I feel a bit sorry for him. The owner of the arm remains below, like a brown stain, like a toad. The babysitter comes up carrying a towel and makes me start walking away. Turning toward the pool the whole time, I ask her if she noticed what was going on and she says, Yeah, kiddo, that lifeguard was drooling all over me.

  That night the Cubans come to play Monopoly with Papi. The Cubans play with real money. There are three of them, a young man and two old guys who smoke cigars and spit on Papi’s rug. They wear bracelets and gold chains that are thicker than Papi’s. When I go give them some snacks María Cristina has prepared for them, the oldest guy tells me I have a star. I look for it on my clothes as if it was a stain, and he laughs. Ha ha ha. He twists the thickest ring on his finger. Papi laughs and tells a lot of jokes as he plays and the Cubans practically pee in their pants from laughing so hard. Later, I sit on Papi’s lap when he throws the dice and they fall on Paseo Tablado, so he very quickly buys a chain of condos and hotels. Each building Papi puts up is named after someone in his family—Leysi I, Leysi II, and Leysi III, after his younger sister, Apartment Hotel Cilí, after his mother, and in one of China’s hotels, a restaurant called Cristi’s, after his other sister. There’s a street named after me and an avenue and an airport named after Papi.

  I feel optimistic, Papi tells the eldest Cuban as he shoves a snack in his mouth. I ask Papi what optimistic means, and as he licks the sweet-and-sour sauce from his finger, he tells me it means being an SOB.

  One afternoon, María Cristina asks me to go with her to the supermarket, and as I run after her I pass the pool and see the dark toad down in the deep end. When we come back with the grocery bags (I help with the one that has the bananas), the stain is still down there. That night, Papi throws a barbecue at the pool and as we’re preparing everything (I help with the tablecloth), the pool lights come on and the stain slowly rises, like a siren. The stain nears the pool ladder, the arm emerges and holds on; it’s the muscular arm of a boy with very strong arms. He’s very wet and has black hair that’s a little too long. María Cristina greets him, Hi, Kiki. Kiki holds himself up with both hands on the ladder and then jumps and jumps and jumps with his single leg until he reaches María Cristina, who smiles and hands him a can of Coke. I was born this way, Kiki tells me as Papi’s friends start arriving at the pool accompanied by women in bikinis. They’re young and old and hold their beer cans with their little fingers up in the air like an antenna, and they dance merengue without letting go of those cans. Even I dance. Kiki dances with his crutches. The music is very loud and everyone is very happy, drinking and eating bits of meat from Papi’s barbecue. He is wearing a green apron with yellow letters that say #1 Master as he stokes the fire. A few of Papi’s friends are playing a game in which they throw their Bulova watches into the deepest part of the pool to see who gets to them first.

  When all my lice have died off, they’re gonna take me to Disney World, I tell Kiki. I’m gonna meet Mickey and Goofy. Are there people inside those Mickey Mouses and Donald Ducks? I don’t know, I don’t think so, says Kiki. Later he recommends that when all my lice are dead I should go to Epcot Center, the center of the universe. Then Papi hurries us back in the house cuz, as he tells us with his mouth on his beer as if he were kissing it, this is no longer kid-friendly. On the TV, Charlie Brown is in a spelling bee, and whenever someone misspells a word their heads explode like balloons and go pop, tauromachy, pop, pop, lugubriously, pop, outlandish.

  Pop.

  Papi wakes me up by jerking the sheet off in a single move, like those people that remove tablecloths without touching the dishes. He drags me over to the pool where the party is still going on. I don’t understand anything. A black woman in a bikini clings to Papi’s hip and sucks on his chest hair. María Cristina makes a face and Papi pulls her back and sticks her on his free hip. María Cristina makes another face and Papi whispers in her ear: We’re gonna have fun, mamita, and then he arranges the G-string on the black woman.

  Later, as he squeezes the two of them by the waist, Papi raises his voice and declares: Now my daughter will sing something for us that she’s prepared.

  You all are the audience and so I take my time. You guys are the audience and when I make like I’m gonna open my mouth, you freeze like a bunch of rocks, just waiting for time to pass, but I’m the time that’s gonna go right by you, like a song, like a miracle of light that’s gonna turn this time back, to before, to a time that can be counted again in seconds and minutes and breaks along with the applause, like a river of gravel and marbles, like a million maracas made from all those watches.

  You guys are like that, a little dumb, a bit sardonic, cynical, paunchy, with puffy cheeks, critical, fanatical, cruel, capable of a love that forgives everything and makes everything greater. With such bad taste, and without it, with so many gold chains and girlfriends that you can’t even see them anymore—you, his girlfriends, and his attire are all the same thing, a dark sea before me. I’m the only one illuminated, the only one receiving this white light from the round point at the back of the space, which signals to me and follows me on the stage. Sometimes a light winks from the black sea like a phosphorescent fish. Sometimes it’s one, two, three lights at the same time.

  I still haven’t left my dressing room. I’m still lit by the little bulbs on the frame of the mirror where I’ve put photos of my Papi, me and my Papi when he was still alive and would carry me like a little purse, with my legs around his waist and my arms crossed on his shoulder. Behind us in one of the photos the dolphins at the Miami Seaquarium jump in the air for a can of salmon. I kiss the photo and cross myself. I pull closer the ice bucket that’s cooling a bottle of champagne I wanna suck on, and get up. I’m surrounded by black silk blouses, seventeen of them, and black gabardine slacks which a black woman with an iron has creased so sharply that they could cut through metal like a Japanese knife.

  I go to touch the crease with my finger but pull back immediately as if I’d just been burned and then say, with a voice that isn’t mine, Impre
ssive.

  I pull the hangers and proceed. First the pants and then the blouse. When I’m all buttoned up someone comes to dust me off and pulls a hair off with pincers.

  I zip up my pants, the zipper stuttering along. Outside, an impatient murmur has degenerated into a million feet hitting the floor and hands clapping on the beat. They want my head. They have one, two fingers, in their mouths to whistle and spray spit and make noise. I imagine faces and hands marking this or that whistle and in the midst of all that gluttonous screaming I see the jowls, hands, rings, fake fingernails, the teeth in the exaggerated smiles of those outside who are screaming, almost as if they’d rehearsed it: IF YOU DON’T COME OUT NOW, THIS PLACE IS GONNA GO UP IN FLAMES, IF YOU DON’T COME OUT NOW, THIS PLACE IS GONNA GO UP IN FLAMES!

  I stick a piece of ice in my mouth and chew. When my teeth finish crunching, an invisible orchestra starts playing string and wind instruments and when the people hear the first note, they begin to bleed from their noses. They shake each other by the shoulders, their eyes blank, they vomit on each other, throw their crutches in the air, get sick, shit, kick, elbow, and then they all stand up at the same time to receive me.

  HERE I COME. HERE I COME. HERE I AM dragging Papi’s pants (which they hemmed with staples but that still cover my rubber sandals), Papi’s silk shirt (which doesn’t do much to keep this wind from going right through me), and blue Magic Marker sideburns and mustache. I keep quiet as the music continues, so you guys shut up as if for all eternity, as if you’d died, and listen to what I have to say.

  I’m the one who follows you each night, who has no life other than pursuing you . . .

  The pool reflects an interstellar light as I lip-synch Raphael’s hit song and hold a hairbrush like a mic. I can make out Papi’s girlfriends’ bodies, which struggle to keep the floats and the inflatable toys all in one corner of the pool to make room so they can improvise a synchronized dance number. No one moves out of the water. Papi’s sitting in a chaise lounge with María Cristina on his lap. Her eyes look at me with a sparkle, those eyes that sparkle like they always do, like fireworks.

  The one who waits for you, who dreams of you, who prays every night for your love . . .

  I make the same moves I’ve made one hundred times in front of the mirror: I close a fist, extend an arm as if carrying a tray, lift my chin, close my eyes, nod with my jaw. I imagine Papi and Mami have died so my eyes will moisten as if I’m about to cry (I always get this right). People just drool, though their faces show panic. And as soon as Spain’s Raphael sings “Yo soy aquel” through me again, I start to come down from the stage, which is actually a Plexiglas patio table with the umbrella removed.

  At first, I come down very slowly so I won’t fall, but I never stop making my gestures, I never stop lip-synching, and it isn’t until I get to the floor that I look at her.

  She returns my gaze. And I look at her some more. In my mind, Papi and Mami’s coffins descend simultaneously and I keep two whole tears right on the edge of my eyelids. I continue staring at María Cristina as I come closer, slowly, and as I get so I could almost touch her nose with mine . . .

  And I’m here, here, to love you.

  And I’m here, here, to adore you,

  And I’m here, here, to ask you for . . .

  Then I grab her hand and put my arm around her waist and with the other I hold on to the ladder that Kiki has dropped down from the silent ship drifting in the air over my show and which we’ve stolen from one of the guests. Kiki maneuvers to get some height and María Cristina and I quickly lift off the ground, away from Papi, while we kiss with our eyes closed. I’m so strong that my eight-year-old arm holds us both while, below, all of Papi’s girlfriends’ legs hover over the luminous water to complete their dance and Raphael’s voice finishes without my lip-synching: Looooooove, looooooove, looooooove.

  FIVE

  This is the only thing that can be heard: Papi and his business associates, divvying everything up, thousand-peso bills, winning lottery tickets, watches, chains, plastic bags filled with gold jewelry, Porsche-brand corkscrews, thousands of millions of five-peso bills, one for you, one for me. The loose change gets thrown to the trees.

  Papi’s friends all have little bellies and mustaches and gold watches just like Papi’s. They talk to you as if they’re using walkie-talkies, even when you’re right next to them. Papi and the guys hug each other a lot and slap each other’s backs with open hands, especially when they’ve sold a car or two to your damn mother and they split the bills on Papi’s desk, one for you, one for me. Almost all of Papi’s friends are older than him, except Puchy, but Puchy isn’t really Papi’s friend. Even though Papi gave him a gold watch as a present, Puchy is more like his assistant.

  It wasn’t that long ago that Puchy was taking my clothes and borrowing my bike, but now he wears suits like Papi, and shoes and chains like Papi, and Papi even lends him cars. Before Puchy had his license, he and I would crawl into a couple of cars parked at Papi’s dealership, Puchy in a black Porsche and me in a brown Jaguar, and we’d pretend we were racing side by side, screeching through our teeth to make like brakes, our fists closed tight on the steering wheels, our arms straight like sticks, our backs pushing the seat back as if we were going really fast, so much faster than anyone else.

  But now Puchy races for real and when Papi tells him to take me for a drive, Puchy leans on the accelerator and the car takes off like it’s gonna fly. Puchy has cassettes scattered all over Papi’s car. He puts one in, poking a finger in my chest as he sings, Do you come from the land down under? I get excited and laugh, although inside I’m really annoyed cuz there’s still some time to go before I can drive for real and put in my own cassettes and sing, I’m a backdoor man. I pass Puchy and lower my window to say, Ciiiiiiiiiao, love, and let the last phrase of the song I’m singing fill his car.

  Puchy is gonna be a partner very soon. To be Papi’s partner, all he needs is a girlfriend, and one day he’ll have her and no one will be able to stop him, with his blond girlfriend, his Mercedes, and his ring as fat as a Hershey’s Kiss.

  Milly got a store. Papi got it for her. He sent Milly with one thousand dollars to Miami to get the merchandise to sell in the store, but she spent half in one week with her friends on three-hundred-dollar rehydrating creams and five-hundred-dollar massages. She spent the other half on perfumes. Papi had to send one of his associates to go get her and he told Papi that Milly was camping it up, getting into some real mariconería. I get confused about certain words. I mean, I don’t understand them very well. First of all, associate. I think it’s like saying “pal,” that is, like when Papi baptizes his associates’ babies and then his associates’ kids come and stick their hands in his pocket and pull out two or three bills as a way of greeting him. Papi’s business associates have their own pockets but I never go pull anything out of them cuz I know if it even occurred to me, Papi would smack me something fierce. The other word is mariconería.

  When Milly came back from her trip, Papi shut himself in his office with her and they didn’t let me come in. When Milly emerged, she was wearing a suit just like Papi’s and a ring and spinning a BMW keychain on one finger. The only thing she needed to be one of Papi’s business associates was a girlfriend. Then there’ll be no stopping her.

  Now Puchy and Milly look exactly alike, with their suits, their rings, their chains, their cassettes scattered all over the floor of the car. Music blasting. And cologne so intense that people faint (plop) as if they’d just seen a ghost when they pass by. They have boots, tennis racquets, golf clubs, basketballs, surfboards, skateboards—each one has his and her own rugs and leopard-skin furniture cuz Papi bought both of them their own apartment. The twins flank Papi when he goes out now, and both wear their hair cut this way: bangs and a long, thin braid that drops down from the back of their neck, and a sweep of hair, a little wavy, which covers one eye. Sometimes they add a blond streak. They wear white double-breasted suits with white upholstered buttons. P
api, in the middle, always wears gray, a pearl-gray down to his shoes.

  Papi attracts cars, famous people, people who wanna invest in our country. So people bring him gifts, ask him for advice, buy him cars, give him the keys to one. As soon as Papi came back, people were over to visit, stinky poor people Papi introduced to me as he hugged them: This guy taught me how to drive, this guy how to dance. Papi takes them to his office and hears out these stinky people and their majestic plans that entail Papi lending them money so they can buy a minivan and turn it into a taxi and make enough money in a month to buy another minivan and then another the next month (these stinky people then pull out a napkin on which they’ve scrawled their calculations for gas and fares) so that in a year these stinky people will have a public transportation network and pay Papi back double what he lends them. Papi listens while staring at his impeccable cuticles, and later, a secretary brings them coffee and they give the stinky guy a cap with Papi’s logo on it and they drop the subject of the loan (Papi pats the guy’s back as he sends him off with twenty pesos).

  The day Papi came back the stinky people had already formed a line in the parking lot of my abuela Cilí’s building. Papi dressed like a purse snatcher so he could get through the crowd without being recognized, but they were already building cardboard houses in the parking lot and cutting down jabilla trees for kindling to cook rice with herring. The next morning, Papi went out on the balcony in his underwear and told them to go home, that everybody was gonna get what they deserved and not to despair.

  The first thing Papi did when he got home was open his suitcases. The twins and I were waiting, sitting very calmly like good boys and girls. China, Leysi, and Cilí all hug Papi, kissing him on the mouth every time he pulls out another gift. Cilí whispers to Papi: Don’t forget about yours. So Papi tears a sheet from a yellow pad, licks the tip of a pencil and starts making a list, one hundred for that one, and two hundred for that other one, one hundred for that other one. Cilí looks over his shoulder to make sure everybody’s name is on the list. Money, freezers, cars, even houses for old time’s sake.