At the end of that school year I became the youngest winner ever of the school's science fair for my project “How the Dinosaurs Really Died,” where I explained, based on the exciting new research of this wicked-smart Latino named Walter Alvarez, that the dinosaurs had actually been killed by a huge chondritic asteroid with the cool name of Chicxulub that had blasted the Yucatan Peninsula about sixty-five million years ago. The judges must've known Papi wrote it, gathered the research, made the graphs—this was stuff even the science teachers hadn't heard about yet. But, in my defense, I memorized every last bit of it. I won because it's cute to hear an eight-year-old say phrases like “unusually high concentrations of iridium” and “nemesis parabolic impactors."
* * * *
To celebrate, Dad bought us tickets to go see locally famous prestidigitator Gary Starr make a giraffe disappear. But Papi was unimpressed by Gary Starr; he told me after the show, “That guy couldn't even fool his own giraffe.” But after seeing with my own eyes a full-grown camelopard disappear off the stage and reappear in the theater's parking lot, where it was waiting for us, next to a Gary Starr flunky selling Gary Starr T-shirts and Gary Starr prepackaged magic tricks, I was hooked. Papi wouldn't buy me any Gary Starr tchotchkes, of course, but he would gladly take me to the library. I checked out the fattest magic books they had.
By the time I was nine, I had become a not-too-shabby magician and could even fool adults right in front of their faces. You know the trick where you cut the rope into pieces, only to pull on both ends and—tada!—it's back together again? I did that one for show-and-tell and pissed off my fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Liss, when he couldn't figure out how I did it. And, of course, I wouldn't tell him. Magician's code.
But my best trick of all was a bit I did with the help of Roadkill the Magic Dead Cat. Roadkill wasn't a stuffed animal. Roadkill was a dead black cat, stuffed and mounted and made—why?—into a piggybank. The taxidermist had done a good, if cliched, job with her: she had a permanent arch in her back, an eternal horripilation of the hair along her spine, and a look in her glass eyes that said, “I am three-quarters demon.” I got her for ten bucks from Mr. Strauss at the magic shop I frequented after school because he was getting remarried and his wife hated it, had threatened to call off the wedding if he didn't get rid of it. I think he made up that story just to get a sale, but who cares. A dead-cat bank for ten bucks?
Here's how the trick went down, as per the performance I gave to Mr. Liss's class. I went to the front of the room and put Roadkill on Mr. Liss's desk. Everyone said, “Ooh!” One girl, Jenny Chalder, said, “That's gross."
I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Roadkill the Magic Dead Cat!” I pulled out a phone book and handed it to Mr. Liss. Then I turned back to the class. “My dad's a math teacher, and he's always saying that math lets you do magic, but I didn't believe him until I got Roadkill. Roadkill's going to predict what name we pick out of a phone book, using math."
Jenny Chalder said, “Cats can't do math."
I pulled a slip of paper and a new, sharpened pencil out of my bag. “First, we have to give Roadkill stuff so she can write her answer down.” I stuck the piece of paper in Roadkill's mouth, then used the eraser end of the pencil like a ramrod to jam it down her throat.
Jenny Chalder said “Don't hurt her!"
And I said, “You think that hurts, watch this!” Then I took the pencil and strugglingly pushed it all the way in Roadkill's mouth. Kids squealed and laughed, in that order.
"Okay,” I said, “Roadkill has paper and pencil. She's ready to predict which name we pick out of the phonebook. So now we have to pick the name. Mr. Liss, call on someone."
"Why?” asked Mr. Liss. His brain was working overtime, trying with all its might to figure out the trick.
"So everyone will know I'm not cheating. Everyone knows you would never help me."
"You got that right.” He scanned the room, then villainously smiled. “Okay. Jenny Chalder."
Everyone oohed. Perfect choice.
"Okay. Jenny, say a three-digit number."
She scrunched her face at me. “What's a three-whatever number?"
"Pick a number between 100 and 999, Jenny,” Mr. Liss explained.
She scrunched her face again and said, “I don't know. 1-2-3."
I said, “Okay, one-hundred and twenty-three. Mr. Liss, can you go to the board to do some math for us?"
Still suspicious, he asked, “Why don't you have a student do it?"
"Because kids are always messing up math, and the trick won't work if the math is wrong."
He went to the board. I said, “Okay, please write 123 on the board.” He did. “Okay, now reverse it and write down that number.” He wrote 321. “Okay, subtract 123 from 321.” That gave us 198. “Okay, reverse that number.” He did; 891. “Okay, what's 198 plus 891?” He did the math: 1089.
"Okay,” I said. “That means we go to page 108 in the phone book and go down to the ninth name. Can you find that, Mr. Liss? Don't tell us what it is. Just find it."
Mr. Liss went to the phone book, opened it to page 108, and dragged his finger until he got to the ninth name. “Got it,” he said.
I picked up Roadkill and said, “Okay. Roadkill's going to give us the answer now.” I put Roadkill over my shoulder like I was burping a baby and patted her on the back. “Okay, she's got it!” I said, and brought her over to Jenny Chalder's desk. “Okay, Jenny, reach in to Roadkill's mouth and pull out the answer she wrote down."
She flared her nostrils. “I ain't putting my finger in no dead cat's mouth."
Instantly the class exploded in yells and boos. Two cannonballs of paper bounced off Jenny's head. Our resident bully, Willie Toomer, got up from his desk and made like he was going to whale on her right there, but Mr. Liss made him sit down again.
Jenny was so intimidated she said “This thing better not bite me” and stuck her finger in Roadkill's mouth and hooked out a slip of paper. “Okay. Read what the paper says to the class, Jenny,” I said.
Jenny was having trouble with the last name; she practiced a few times to herself, mouthing the syllables like a dying fish gasping for air. Finally she said: “Rosa Ber-to-li-ni."
"That's impossible!” said Mr. Liss, charging for Jenny Chalder's desk. When he got there, he said, “Let me see that,” and snatched the piece of paper out of her hands. He read it over several times, flipped it over, rubbed it between his fingers, even smelled it.
The whole class waited for his judgment. One kid fell out of his desk, he was leaning forward so far. Finally, quietly, he said, “It's not even your handwriting, Salvador.” And then he smiled. “The cat got it right, children! The name in the phonebook is Rosa Bertolini!"
Children shot out of their desks and formed two circles: one around Mr. Liss and the phonebook, where he happily showed them Rosa Bertolini's name, and another around me and Roadkill. They asked me over and over if she was really a magic cat. Over and over I said, “Yes."
That moment remains my second best childhood memory. I walked from the bus stop with Roadkill under my arm, thinking that maybe I would be a magician when I grew up. But, as I walked up the driveway to my house, I could feel that something wasn't right. My chest suddenly felt like I had swallowed a beehive. As I got closer, I thought I saw the house ... waver. Like a mirage. And then, like any good mirage, it became solid again, reasserted its reality.
There were voices coming from the house. One was Papi's. He was shouting. Papi never raised his voice about anything anymore. And there was someone else in the house shouting at him. In Spanish. A woman.
I walked in. There was Papi, in the living room. “It's just a stuffed cat...” he was saying.
But Mami interrupted him. "?No te atrevas hablarme en ingles!" she screamed.
Then they both saw me. They went quiet, just like they always used to when I caught them fighting.
I looked from Mami, to Papi, to Mami, to Papi. He shot me a look that said, Sh
e's in one of her moods. Don't say anything to make her angry.
Mami came over to me, knelt so she was at eye level, hugged and kissed me. "Ay, mi hijito," she said. "?Como te fue la escuela?"
Her eyes were less green than I remembered. They were more of a hazel that went green the closer the irises got to the pupils. “Good,” I said. “I did magic today."
She laughed. “Do no’ tal’ to jour Mami en ingles,” she said. “Tal’ to her en español. ?Hiciste magia hoy?"
"Si."
"?Y te fue bien?"
"Si."
"Que bueno," she said, and impressed another kiss on my forehead. "Pero tenemos que hablar seriamente de algo."
I didn't quite follow. My Spanish was rusty. Papi said, “She wants to talk to you."
Mami shot him a look that said I know how to talk to my own son. Papi put his hands up, took a step back. Mami looked at me again, sweetly. "?Sal, por que estes andando con ese gato negro?"
I understood “cat” and “black” and deduced she meant Roadkill. “It's for...” I started, but then, catching the look on her face, tried Spanish: "Es ... por ... magia."
She patted my head. "'Para.’ Es para la magia," she corrected. "?Pero por que tienes que usar un gato negro? ?No sabes que ese es symbolo del Diablo?"
I couldn't follow her. I couldn't understand my mother. I said in English, “I don't know.” And I added, sotto voce, “I can't understand you."
She looked at Papi. This time she wasn't angry; she looked worried. "?Que le pasa?"
"Nada mas que necesita un poco de practica con el español, mi vida," said Papi.
"?Practica?" said Mami. She looked more confused than I did. "?Mi hijo necesita practica en español? Yo le habl? esta mañana, y le dije que dejara ese maldito gato aqu” en la casa, y ?l me dijo, ‘Si Mami’ como un niño bueno, y me entendia perfectamente."
She was getting pissed again. She stood up to face Papi, looking glorious and powerful and unmistakably alive. "Pero me desobedecia, por que tu le diste permiso a traer ese gato endiablado para hacer magia negra. ?Y ahora tu me vas a decir en cara que el no me puede entender?"
Papi stumbled out the beginnings of a response, but she cut him off: "?No quiero la magia negra en esta casa!"
She charged for the door to the house, then turned one more time to Papi. "Voy a dar una vuelta por el barrio. ?Cuando yo regreso, si ese gato no este en la basura, se va a formar el titingo!" Then she looked at me. Her face was both soft and stern; she pointed at me and said, tenderly, "El titingo." Then she walked out of the door.
The beehive in my chest stopped buzzing. I turned back to Papi. “Papi?” I asked.
He knelt so we were eye to eye and put a hand on my shoulder. “I don't know, Sal,” he said. Then he looked past me, at the door, and started carpet-bombing the carpet with his tears. “We'll just have to wait and see."
We stood for a long time, hands on each other's shoulders, watching the door. But she never came home.
* * * *
"Salvador, is your father okay?” asked Mrs. Dravlin. I mean, Ms. Anbow. She had gotten divorced last year, much to the delight of the fifth-grade boys who were just coming into their first erections.
Papi wasn't okay. The day Mami came home for a few hours cut a permanent, diner-sized pie slice out of his will to live. It was bad enough that Mami's return was illogical, impossible, and, for all that, irrefutable. It was that they had fought. They had spent that last precious coda of their marriage fighting over a stupid dead cat. My stupid dead cat.
But I wasn't going to tell Ms. Anbow any of that. I just said to her, “He's okay."
She looked at me askance. “I called to tell him that we're awarding you the Science Student of the Year Award. Again. Most parents would've been thrilled. Do you know what your father said to me?"
"No."
"He said, ‘Science is just the lie of the moment. Like religion. Or astrology. Or alchemy. Right now it's science.’”
I just waited for her to continue. “Your dad has a reputation for being one of the smartest teachers in Connecticut, Sal. But this ... well, I don't know him very well, but that didn't ... that's not the sort of thing I would expect him to say.” She gripped her nose, shook her head. “I'm sorry. I'm not making any sense."
I just kicked my legs and looked at her.
She came around her desk and to the chair I was sitting in, kneeling down to look at me eye to eye. Her blouse bagged; she had on a practical tan bra. “Sal, I want you to let me know if you need anything. Sometimes it takes years to work through the grief of losing someone you love, like a mom, or a wife. Hey,” she said kindly, pushing my chin up with a single finger so I would look at her eyes. “You're doing great. Your dad, too. But everyone needs a little help sometimes. I want you to let me know if there's anything you want to talk about. I know I am your principal, but I am also a trained psychologist. I can help you, if you want me to. I just want to help. Okay?"
When I went home that day, I said to Papi, “Ms. Anbow is worried about you."
He sat on the floor, in front of his shrine to Elegua. He had set it up in the living room a few weeks after Mami had come back—had gone—and hadn't much moved from it since. It was decorated with a red-and-black runner and candles and rumshots and hard, brilliant candies and old fruit collapsing in on itself and a big coconut with shells for eyes and mouth. And Mami's wedding picture, dead center.
Papi sat in a half-lotus in front of it, dressed all in white, except for a necklace of red and black beads. He had shaved his head, his beard. He looked thinner and younger. But older, too, because though he had lost weight, he still had all the skin that had bagged his fat for so many years. Now it hung off his skeleton like the wrinkly hide of a shar-pei. Without turning to me, he said, “Let her worry."
I walked up behind him. There was a new addition to the shrine, next to the coconut: a painting of a young boy. Bright colors, almost psychedelic. The boy looked like he came from a couple hundred years ago. He had on a cloak and a hat with a feather in it, and he carried an empty basket and a staff with a gourd hanging off the tip. Putti flew around his head and smiled down on him.
"Who's that?” I asked.
"That's Elegua."
I pointed at the coconut. “I thought that was Elegua."
"That's Elegua, too. See, when the Africans were enslaved and taken from their home countries and brought to the Caribbean to work the fields, they weren't allowed to practice Yoruba, their own religion. But they were allowed to be Christians; they could have all the Christian icons they wanted. So they practiced Yoruba by using Christian saints. All of their gods got assigned one: Chango got Santa Barbara, Oshun got Our Lady of Charity, and Elegua got that little fella: El Santo Niño de Atocha."
"So Elegua is a little boy?"
"Kind of. He is an old man with a little boy's face. That's because he is eternally young and playful. But wise, too; he is the pathfinder god, the guide to travelers. He helps you find your way when you are lost and takes care of you along the journey."
"Really? He can do that?"
Papi looked away from the shrine, at me. Some of the old irony came back into his face and made him seem more himself. “I don't know,” he said finally. “I don't know anything. Before I met your mother, back when we were in Cuba, I was a Santero. A cabeza of Elegua. But I gave it up for her. She was a Catholic and thought Santeria was all black magic. It really scared her. She equated it with witchcraft, and the Bible says witchcraft will get you a one-way ticket to hell, and then she would spend all eternity without me.” He laughed. “That woman. She was so sure she was going to heaven! Well, long story short, she cried and cried until I finally gave up my religion and became a Catholic."
"We used to be Catholic,” I said. I had forgotten.
He stood and went to the shrine and picked up a shot of rum and dumped it down his throat. He looked at the coconut and said, “Don't worry, I'll get you a refill."
Then he turned back to me.
“When your mami died, I thought God was dead, too. But then your mami came back. We both saw her. She kissed us both that day, you on the forehead and me on the lips.” He got on his knees in front of me, locked our eyes. “And that ruined everything. Because it's impossible. Your mami is dead. But there she was, in our living room, kissing and fighting with us like she had never gone. It's like there's a parallel universe out there where she and you and I are still a family, with small arguments and small problems...” he was crying now “...and all the unspoken love. And only God brings people back from the dead. Only God can do magic."
"I do magic,” I said quietly.
Papi didn't hear. He took a second shotglass from the altar, but this time he poured a trickle of rum on the coconut. “Okay?” he said to the squinting Elegua. "?Pare jodiendo entonces!" He drank the rest, and breathed through his teeth for a second, and then, still looking at the coconut, said, “I don't know what to believe anymore. So I'm going back to the start. This is where I started, as a child of Elegua. So this is where I'll begin again."
He laughed without joy. “I've forgotten almost everything I used to know about Santeria. I can't find the things I need to perform the few rituals I remember. Connecticut isn't exactly a Santeria mecca, you know. Where the hell do you get aguardiente in Handcock? But Santeria was born of adaptation. I will do the best I can with the materials at hand. If Elegua wants to hear me, he will hear me."
We stood quietly and together studied the altar for a while. And then, pointing at El Santo Niño de Atocha, I said, “He kind of looks like me."
Papi looked at the picture, then at me. “I guess he does, a little. Hey, you're going to be ten soon. You want me to get you an outfit like his for your birthday?"
"No!” I yelled, and laughed; Papi laughed, too, which made me feel better. That's when I knew I was on the right track. That I needed to learn everything I could about Santeria.
* * * *
Papi was right; Connecticut in the ‘80s was no Santeria mecca. My library didn't have a single book on Santeria. They did, however, have lots of books on psychology. I found a book on grief written for the parents of grieving kids called Child of Mourning. It featured chapter titles like “The Maze of Grief: The Child's Journey through Suffering"; “Voicing Pain: Giving Your Child the Words He Needs to Grieve"; and, my favorite, “Telling Time: How to Align Your Adult Internal Clock with Your Child's.” You see, adults think of time as linear, a one-way street with a consistent speed limit. But not children. They think time can go forwards, backwards, sideways, and loop like a Hot Wheels racecar track. You need to understand how children see time to help them understand that the dead stay dead forever.
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