Papi

by Rita Indiana

  Papi’s making his list but it’s never ending. He shows it to China or Leysi and they say, Remember Don Chichí and Sergeant Alegría, or, Aren’t you gonna add the late Evarista’s orphans to that list? Papi keeps making the list. One hundred dollars for you, one hundred for you, one hundred for you, and one hundred for you. He writes all the names and asks that we each make him a list of the people we think should be included. And then everybody on that list will be asked for their own list. Papi doesn’t wanna forget anybody.

  I’m gonna go to a hotel, Papi tells Cilí. Papi needs more room to receive all these people. I’m gonna buy a house, Papi tells Cilí. So Papi buys a house and an apartment and a vacant lot where he parks all the cars he brought back to sell. By the next day they’re already airing a commercial and that day Papi’s on TV shaking hands with another satisfied customer and their grip is so tight it looks like their hands might break. Papi already has a secretary, two secretaries who answer the phone and arrange lists in alphabetical order or by importance or they don’t arrange squat and go out with Puchy to buy cashew sweets they eat in the car, high heels off as they wiggle their toes in front of the AC vent.

  Now, for greater efficiency, they’ve installed an answering machine in which Papi’s voice says he’s not there, to leave a message after the beep. The first thing Papi does when he gets to his office at about eleven is take two Rapidita hangover-helper pills with a glass of milk and punch the button to hear the long list of messages in which the stinky people, his business associates, his kin, his intimates, the media, his clients, and his girlfriends get shriller and shriller. Papi sits down at his desk, takes the remote, and turns the TV to any old channel. Later, with both elbows on the desk, he puts an index finger to each temple and twirls them around. The twins fly about behind his chair like angels over a Christmas manger.

  When Papi moves his fingers like that, he’s actually making money. It doesn’t work for me. I put my fingers on my temples and nothing happens. But it does for Papi. It’s really something to see: how when Papi puts his fingers on his temples somebody comes in right away and they meet, and then, when Papi and I are alone again, he says, I’m turning you into a millionaire. Then we go out to eat with one of Papi’s girlfriends at some fine restaurant and I order pizza and he asks me why he should bother to bring me to such a place if I’m gonna order pizza. The girlfriend, who’s a total brownnoser, takes my side and the two of us hit the table with our forks and knives and yell, Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!

  The pizza arrives and we start eating it, first burning our tongues on the cheese, then leaving the crust on the plate cuz neither Papi nor I eat it and his girlfriend is such an asskisser that she doesn’t either. During dessert, Papi grabs his girlfriend’s finger and shows me her ring, which boasts a diamond the size of a wad of gum. We’re getting married, the girlfriend announces, next Saturday.

  Papi puts his fingers on his temples (the people in the restaurant think it’s cuz he has a headache) and begins generating money and houses and decorators dragging fabric samples, paint samples, tile samples. Papi’s girlfriend tells the black guys to bring this, take that. If you break something, you’ll pay for it, she tells them, and then she closes her fist and the wad-of-gum-sized diamond shoots out a deafening ray that checks the chosen color or fabric or tile at a distance, striking the painters, construction workers, and decorators if she doesn’t aim right. Papi’s fingers on his temples produce suits and dresses, pedicures and manicures for all the guests, and the costs of six buses with waitstaff to transfer the guests to the farm that Papi, with his fingers on his skull right this minute, is generating to take the architect who designed the house by the river, and the wood and cement and the farmworkers (each with a family). We are still at the fine restaurant when Papi (his fingers now making such tight circles that it looks like he’s boring holes into his red temples) conjures the last three horses of the twenty-five he’s gonna keep on the farm.

  The wedding day arrives and Papi and his girlfriend get married. But before they can sign and the bride’s makeup can run cuz of her tears, the photographer takes pictures of the couple at the pool, coming down the stairs, petting a horse, holding a glass of champagne, with the groom’s family, with the bride’s family, with both families surrounding the seven-layer cake, with the couple’s mothers, one of the bride with the twins, of the groom’s daughter, of the seven-layer cake. Later, they make wallet-sized copies of the best photo for everyone. Papi’s bride writes an affectionate message on the back. I put a number on it and arrange it with the other photos of Papi’s other weddings, held together like baseball cards with a green rubber band.

  Every Friday, the school bus drops me off at Papi’s dealership cuz Mami doesn’t have a car. Mami can’t even drive and she sends me to school on the bus. The bus driver’s name is Siboney and he’s a thick-lipped black man with teeth as stubby as fingers. Four-Eyes! he says to me every time I get on the bus and every time he sees me in the rearview mirror. Juan José is in the second seat and he calls me an overgrown mosquito. Three seats back, there’s Damián, who says I’m a mini-witch and later (when we’re closer) they call me Skinny-Whinny, Failure to Thrive, Heron, Biafran Baby, Spaghetti Noodle, María Palito, Old Bat, Giraffe, Palo e Lu, Electric Post, Lucy Leap and Throw, Water Hose, Brittle, Baller. Let me check, says Papi’s secretary when I step into the AC and she lets Papi know I’m here, and I hear Papi’s voice saying how many times does he have to tell her that she doesn’t have to announce me.

  Sometimes Papi is at a business dinner and when I get there the secretary orders me a pizza. I sit in Papi’s office and run through all the cable channels. At about six, Papi calls and tells the secretary to put me in a taxi to my mom’s house cuz the meeting is going long.

  Sometimes Papi takes me with him to his business dinners, which are at restaurants where his business associates order lobster and tear them apart without the aid of pliers. They laugh harder than everybody else in the restaurant and spit pieces of shellfish at my glasses. They guffaw and hit the table with their fists and loosen the belts on their pants when they’re through eating. When a young girl who doesn’t wear a bra yet walks by, they say, Oh what little nips, and Papi says, The Niña, Pinta, and Santa María, so they’ll remember I’m present, so they’ll remember I also have nips. That’s when they cough into their napkins and change the subject and then they talk about their pals’ wives, about their pals’ wives’ daughters, and how much those daughters look like them, and that’s about when a spit-covered chickpea lands on my glasses.

  They’re looking at the dessert menu while I stare at the girl with the nips, who’s about my age and stares back at me from her table. Her mom and dad are arguing, threatening each other with spoons. I get up and go to the bathroom and she follows me. Once there, I tell her that when I was really little, I got a growth on my nipple about the size of a pigeon pea and they cut it off using local anesthesia. I remember how the little growth fell on the stainless steel that made me so cold. Later, I kept losing layers, cuz the doctor had wrapped half of my chest with gauze and Band-Aids and bandages, and the bandages kept falling as if they were leaves from a tree.

  When Papi’s girlfriends find out about my surgical procedure and my convalescence, they order pizzas for me and send photos of their Winnie-the-Pooh rings, which are, hey, diamonds. They send me gifts, invite me to the movies. Mami throws the gifts away without even opening them. The kids from the neighborhood wait around for Mami to throw them out so they can pick them up, but then their moms throw them out cuz the kids aren’t supposed to play in the trash. In the end, the neighborhood kids agree to gather the gifts and bury them rather than take them home, marking the place with a cross. The dirt in the little park on the corner is so loose from the digging that just about anything would sprout: corn, beans, potatoes, cassava, yams so big and hard they’ve twisted and broken the rusty playground swings. Papi’s girlfriends are worthless. They call me, and they write me letters. Mami burns them; Mami
pulls her hair out and tells Papi, You’d better figure out what you’re gonna to do. When Papi leaves them, or when they say he’s dumped them (some don’t even know him), they call me in tears and tell me they spent the wee hours having an abortion to get rid of one of Papi’s babies so that I’ll give them Papi’s private personal phone number, which Papi has told me not to give to anyone. But I give it to them and Papi changes numbers and doesn’t give me the new one cuz I sided with his girlfriends.

  On Fridays Siboney’s bus drops me off at Papi’s dealership. Siboney calls after me: In the shade, Four-Eyes, in the shade. But on the sidewalk on Avenida Abraham Lincoln there’s not even a little smudge of shade (go ahead and try cuz you’re not gonna find it). Damián, Juan José, and all the other shorties, balls of fat, balls of boogers, balls of bait, shitty asses, panty chewers, cocksuckers, suck-what-you-finds, stick their heads out the bus windows like turtles so they can see the BMWs and the Ferraris Papi has in the parking lot. Today is his birthday but Papi doesn’t like to celebrate birthdays (who wants to celebrate the birth of a poor boy on a dirt floor, says Papi). Mami has bought a gift for me to give to Papi, a pair of Hawaiian shorts for the beach, since Papi goes to the beach so much. I already know Papi’s gonna ask me if I picked them out and if I say it was Mami he’s gonna say, Man, they’re so ugly. So I feel a certain joy as the gift box gets bashed around in my backpack all day long.

  As soon as I arrive, Papi’s secretary tells me he’s not there and hasn’t left instructions about ordering me a pizza. In the meantime, the secretary pulls a Tupperware out of a drawer and divvies up some chicken locrio into two plates, one for me and one for her. When we’re finished eating she lets me in to Papi’s office, which is jammed with gifts: floral arrangements, a cake shaped like a machine gun, freezers, jewels. I sit among the gifts and the congratulatory notes, all that expensive chocolate just for me. I turn on the TV and raise my feet to the desk as I lift the top off the first box of bonbons. When the secretary tells me via intercom that someone’s sent a “special” present for Papi, I tell her to send it in and then a bosomy bikini-clad clown comes through Papi’s office door. She climbs on the desk in her heels and gets on all fours to sing “Happy Birthday” to me while rubbing her tits on the remote control in my hand. I’m so scared the bonbons melt in my mouth.

  When the clown leaves, I tell the secretary, I’m not in for anyone, and I stay by myself in the office for a long time. I turn off the TV and go over the place without getting up from the chair, which has wheels. I use my feet to push off, like with oars. I pause in front of the mural behind the desk, a palm-filled landscape with buildings and lights and Mercedes-Benz logos and what looks like a river of tomato sauce coming out of one of the windows of the Mercedes. To the left of the mural, there’s a door that leads to a black-tiled bathroom. I slither in without getting out of the chair. The bathroom is my favorite part of Papi’s office, with its black tub and faucets shaped like dragons. I get up from the chair and turn on the faucet to waste some soap, as Cilí would say, pushing the button so the green liquid falls in my hands like a monster’s mucous. Next to the sink there’s a smaller door that leads to the sauna, where a few weeks ago I covered the walls with Vicksvaporoo cuz Papi asked me to. I went in with a jar of Vicks and smeared the cedar walls with gobs of the mentholated goo. Papi later told me that when he was little they used to rub it on his chest every night so he’d breathe better.

  Although the office, the bathroom, and the sauna are very insulated, you can still hear the noise from the avenue and the impertinent speakers on the cars filing past the dealership to see the silver Porsches, the red Ferraris, and the little black Audis Papi has parked outside. I can hear the motors of each car driving by and the owners of those cars mentally turning on the ignition of Papi’s cars. Tomorrow they’ll go and hock everything so they can buy a car from Papi and then they’ll blast off at a million miles an hour down Avenida Lincoln to the Malecón, to the reefs, to the bottom of the sea, where the sharks will bust their teeth on so much metal.

  According to his business associates, Papi has a bear’s hug when it comes to buying and a tiger’s caress for selling. Papi’s getting ahead, and his associates with him, so far ahead so fast that you can hardly see him anymore. Hardly anybody sees him anymore. He always keeps the fastest car for himself, and there’s a curtain of smoke wherever he goes, turning him into smoke. A cloud of smoke. Next to the bench in the sauna there’s another smaller door, but it’s not visible at first sight. You have to stick your fingers in a cleft in the wood to realize there’s a secret entrance, which I discovered thanks to the Vicksvaporoo. I open it and hear everybody launching their sports cars off the Malecón. You have to get on your knees here. I go inside this little room, in which Papi and me and one other person might fit in a fetal position. At the very bottom there’s the smallest of all doors, and it has a combination lock.

  SIX

  Papi and I are going to hell in a handbag. We’re on the highway! Papi corrects me: The highway! We’re listening to music, reciting the numbers and letters of the license plates on the cars we pass as if they were lines of poetry. Outside Papi’s car, there’s a German shepherd posing in the backseat of a Volvo and one of Papi’s girlfriends hitchhiking with her thumb out. We hasten to run her over and I keep track of all the run-over girlfriends with chalk marks on the glove compartment. Dogs and girlfriends, pedigreed dogs and girlfriends. Chow chows, poodles, and Siberian huskies shake their manes against the wind like the models on those ads for Oriental fans.

  Let me explain something to you, Papi says; he’s always explaining something to me. We’ve been on the run for a while. And it’s been some time since Papi and I have seen anybody other than me and him and him and me. And sometimes those dogs and girlfriends. I make faces at Papi from the backseat through the rearview mirror (when we’re not face to face) as we zoom along in his Mercedes, eating Cheetos, Snickers, and gummy bears that leap from my hand and die under the seat. We also sleep in the Mercedes, which is champagne colored and has electric windows and a little bell that rings to tell us to put on our seat belts. But we never wear them and the bell eventually gives up. I love how the Mercedes smells inside and I poke my fingers into the beige leather to see how it changes under my nails. It’s been a while since I cut them; Papi cleans them with a little knife that has a golden Christ on the handle with emeralds on the crown of thorns.

  When night falls, or when Papi gets tired of driving, we stop at one of the parking lots for people like us on either side of the highway and throw the seats back. Sometimes Papi sleeps, but I can’t sleep and so I push the door open and walk to the edge of the highway and wave at the other cars that go by or mentally count the red ones, blue ones, gray ones. One time I wanted to cross and stood there with one foot on the sidewalk and one on the highway so I could feel the vibrations of the trucks and cars passing so quickly before my eyes, until my own sandaled foot on the asphalt started to look like some other girl’s foot, like a foot in a photo, and I got scared and went back to the car and pretended to sleep.

  Let me explain something to you, Papi says to me. We’re going very fast on the autopsy. The freeway! Papi corrects me: The freeway! Every ten kilometers there’s one of these, Papi says as he sticks his entire arm out the window as if he’s gonna shake the ash from a cigarette, but instead he points to some buildings in the shape of Hershey’s Kisses, like Aladdin’s palaces, or a sultan’s, or a genie’s, or where a flying carpet might come out. That’s so people like us will slow down, Papi explains, cuz the buildings are a sign of those cafeterias we see every so often. They offer breakfast and sodas and quarter liter cartons of milk, which we first give to a kitten or a stray dog to make sure Papi’s girlfriends aren’t trying to poison us. What Papi complains about are the scrambled eggs. He always says what we ate at the previous cafeteria was better and so I imagine that, every ten kilometers or so, the eggs just get worse and worse until infinity in the direction Papi and I are travel
ing, while in the opposite direction they get better and better, win contests, and receive presidential honors. But then Papi interrupts me with a hot dog and a 7 Up, or an ice-cream bar that drips down his hand and we take off again.

  Papi puts on a cassette with a song we both like a lot: a boy says he’s lost his Unicorn brand jeans, to look for them, please, but the boy doesn’t say, I’ve lost my Unicorn brand jeans, but yesterday I lost my blue unicorn, and so you think the boy is talking about a unicorn and not about his jeans. Papi explained this to me. He said: The thing is, some places make scrambled eggs in the microwave, that’s why they’re so bad. Later he explains how the microwave works and how a soldier with a firearm had a corn kernel in his pocket and it turned into popcorn and that’s how the microwave and the bad eggs came about. Let me explain this to you: There are rays you don’t see, but if they hit your hand, they’ll give you cancer.

  Sometimes Papi gets lost and we go into these little towns for hours at a time. Papi gets out of the car and makes calls from telephone booths. I lower the window and rest my elbow on the edge, singing, chewing gum, and cracking my knuckles. Papi tells me to be quiet as he covers his ears like a singer and hits the phone with the receiver in his hand and then spits and kicks the phone saying, Goddammit, goddammit, son of a bitch.

  It’s been a while since the only thing Papi and I see are dead skunks, rocks, landscapes, the lights on the highway, microwaveable breakfasts and dinners, people who serve popcorn directly out of their pockets to people like us who, for the most part, are not tourists but truck drivers. I wonder if they’re all going to the same place we are. Sometimes Papi makes a call or meets somebody in a dark parking lot while I stay in the Mercedes listening to a baseball game in English and the only thing I understand is the applause. Sometimes Papi leaves the highway and we see little stores, little streets, closed barbershops, and not one living soul cuz it is very late, it’s about four in the morning. We stop in a supermarket parking lot and Papi tells me not to worry, but I wasn’t worried. Later, an Impala and a Lincoln go by and a wine-colored Cadillac parks close to us and Papi gets out of our car and walks towards the Cadillac, where there is a fat man with a mustache and a very black shock of hair. He wears a gray Polo shirt with a black neckline and a gold watch. Papi opens the Mercedes’s trunk to show the fat man the things we’ve bought along the way, saying, Let me explain this to you. He demonstrates the Nikon by taking a photo, the tennis racket by fanning a forearm in the air, and the cassette player he bought me by playing a cassette by Billy Idol; he even lets him listen to a little piece of “Dancing with Myself.” It makes me wanna show the fat man the Transformers watch Papi bought me that afternoon and so I open the door and raise my doll to show the fat man my watch, but the fat man is on the ground while Papi tries to wake him up with a kick to the head as he cleans his pistol with a little Donald Duck towel, which was the last thing we bought.