I Don’t Practice Santeria
Some people are crippled by terrible high school experiences in which something so catastrophic happens, they’re reduced to sweat pants and reruns of Friends while eating flavored popcorn for the rest of their lives. My younger years as a schoolgirl surprisingly went by without a hitch. A devoted teacher’s pet who typed her notes and never touched drugs, I somehow managed to be popular. As I look back, I can’t exactly say anything of great significance took place in my high school world other than the mandatory accomplishments every girl must check off their teenage list before adulthood: graduation, loss of virginity, cat fight with a girl in the cafeteria.
All senior year I went steady with a gorgeous boy we’ll call Ricky due to his uncanny resemblance to Ricky Martin, homosexuality excluded, of course. Football player adored by the hoes and admired by the bros, my guy was pretty stellar if I do say so myself. He called when he said he would and picked me up in his Mustang every Friday night for a make-out session at the local drive-in. He bought me a peach corsage for homecoming and lent me his Nautica jacket if I ever mentioned feeling chilly. He looked like he walked off an Italian perfume ad on most days and his smile was made for the wet dreams of Colgate marketing executives everywhere. Why was it, then, I felt absolute nausea every time he mentioned how romantic it’d be to get married and be high school sweethearts for the rest of our lives just like his parents?
Sidenote: It is my belief that women are the most contradicting of creatures and are never happy with the cards they’re dealt. We claim to want a sweet and handsome man who takes care of us and caters to our wishes. Yet it’s guaranteed that as soon as he arrives, we treat him like bird poop at the bottom of our shoes and leave him for a guy with tattoos on his elbows who only calls on Tuesdays when his other girlfriends are busy.
For prom, my guy planned a perfect evening that, like most things in life, went nothing as envisioned. Rumor has it this was the evening my Livin’ La Vida Loca darling intended to propose. This chapter is not about prom or Ricky or his untimely demise right after that night, so I’ll keep the backdrop short and sweet and get to the goods sooner than later.
Ricky rented a room in the hotel where prom was held for us.
My mom refused to let me stay in a room with my boyfriend because, “I didn’t raise you like that,” so she slept in the room with us on a blow-up mattress she placed on the floor.
As a result of the aforementioned, Ricky didn’t get lucky.
He then planned another romantic evening in an attempt to remedy that and it failed more than prom as he couldn’t get it up due to nerves.
We broke up three days later.
And this is where the story begins.
A few weeks into my first semester of college and still very single, I decided I wanted to study abroad the following summer. My parents were on board with this idea as long as I promised to fly to Cuba immediately after because God-forbid-I-go-one-summer-without-going-to-Cuba-and-melting-half-my-face-off-in-hundred-degree-weather-to-visit-family. I reluctantly agreed to this plan since I knew we wouldn’t be able to afford both trips, therefore letting time pass and never bringing up my Spanish getaway and subsequent trip to the motherland right after. Once April rolled around and I could taste the tapas and red wine in the air, my parents began to understand that a trip back home might be a bit heavy on their budget and succumbed to the idea that I wouldn’t be going.
Two months before my departure I contracted bronchitis and was suffering from volcanic fevers as I simultaneously hocked up mini Shreks every time I coughed. Fifteen days of suffering later I began to recover, only to trip on a boot I left lying around my room and twisting my right ankle, which grew to the size of a Thanksgiving ham for a party at the White House in a matter of hours. I was still on crutches by the time my trip rolled around, but that failed to dampen my excitement of visiting Europe for the very first time. Being an only child of the female persuasion with two intense and overly-worried parents is rough. Leaving the continent unsupervised at the age of 18 multiplies the crazy factor of said parents by Mel Gibson to the square root of Courtney Love.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” my mom whined over coffee a few mornings before my departure. “I hear Spain is full of lazy people. Plus, they smell.”
“Of course, mama,” I patted her hand reassuringly and secretly basked in the impending glow of being all alone for two summer months.
The next day at work was my last, and my coworkers threw me a little going away bash before my leave-of-absence began. I was still reeling from the excitement of a prolonged period of doing nothing as I carefully shuffled out the building with a piece of cake in my hand, when I almost choked as I encountered this by my left crutch:
I’m assuming spending my life surrounded by animals helped me cope with the aftershock, because I wasn’t so much frightened of a dead pigeon lying merely inches from my toes, as to how it got there in the first place. I’m sure pigeons die all the time and birds dropping from the sky is a phenomenon that occurs not only in Hitchcock movies, but the odd part was how it was placed, perfectly still on its back like an angel that happens to feast on insects and human eyeballs for fun. Also, where was the blood? My first instinct after bringing my heartbeat back to a human pace was to take the above picture and show it to my mom as soon as I got home. She examined it closely for a few moments and shook her head, giving me a concerned look as she uttered her simple explanation: brujeria.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, my mother became convinced someone was trying to poison my well-being with black magic, hence the bronchitis and twisted ankle and dead pigeon situations all within the span of weeks. Apparently the only pragmatic way to combat brujeria is with its most potent nemesis, santeria (rhyming names purely coincidental). It was clear at that moment I would be going to Cuba after all, even if my quest there no longer had to do with family and more with personal protection.
I could sit here and talk about Spain all day and how it closely resembles Narnia in its various degrees of perfection. How it’s beautiful, mythical, and so vast three lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to discover all its wonders. How the sound of its guitars seduce me to a place I only allow myself to visit when I’m feeling melancholic and thinking of him (more on that later). And how I still hold some hope that one day I’m wealthy enough to have a summer home there with a cabana boy that’ll fan me on hot days and feed me strawberries dripping in chocolate. But let’s not stray from the subject, this isn’t a public service announcement for the land of bull fighting and why you should totally go there if given the chance. This, is about Cuba, and how batshit crazy its people can be when faced with the possibility of being threatened by the power of black magic.
After eight weeks that whizzed by faster than a skate boarder on crack, I landed in Santiago to the welcoming arms of my aunt and grandparents. Nothing was initially mentioned of my brush with death in the form of a resting pigeon or what exactly they intended to do about it. I mostly spent my days sipping mojitos at the beach and perfecting my tan while eating enough fried food to cause 12 heart attacks with my uncle Tico, who was 10 years older and knew all the cool hang-out spots. Although a bit of a rocker who always wore black and dripped in sarcasm I didn’t appreciate to its full capacity at my tender age, I enjoyed his company and that of his cute weird friends. I told him I was harboring a suspicion my aunts were planning something in collaboration with my mom and he told me to, “Watch your back, because your tias are crazy.”
The day before I returned home, my aunt made me an amazing breakfast consisting of eggs over hard with homemade French fries and a huge steak. As she picked up my plate and wiped my area, she casually inquired if I was ready for the night.
“What’s happening tonight?” I asked while momentarily being snapped out of my food coma.
“Tu despojo,” she replied matter-of-factly and went to do the dishes.
Despojos, or “spiritual cleansings,” are somet
hing you know of straight out of the womb if you’re a person of Caribbean descent. Most people don’t know exactly how they’re performed or what they entail, but I was fairly certain pixie dust and repetitive African chanting were part of the ritual. My apprehensive state of terror must’ve been clearly visible because my aunt returned and placed a hand on my back comfortingly. “Don’t worry, mija,” she said. “It’s nothing extreme. Just a simple cleansing to ensure you’re safe.”
In true Cuban fashion, my aunt’s santera was late that night, forcing my people and I to sit around staring at each other’s faces while my grandmother smoked a tobacco in the living room as she watched her novela. Half an hour in the phone rang, and our santera’s pimp informed my aunt she wouldn’t be able to join us that evening, as she was suffering from a painful bout of arthritis and couldn’t find a ride to our house (spotting a taxi in Cuba is like snagging yourself a straight man during Gay Pride Weekend in South Beach). I smiled internally and let out a sigh as I watched my aunt nod and say, “Yes, I understand. No hay problema.” She promptly hung up the phone and clapped us to attention, “She will do it over the phone so everyone get ready! Grandma Blanca, you’ll be the translator.”
Thirty minutes later, I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen wearing all white, four ladies donning the same virginal attire around me in a squared circle of trust. Grandma Blanca inhaled from her pipe peacefully as she held on for the call, proving that in life we only hurry while young and patience is a virtue we begin to possess only when we’re dying. The phone sounded promptly at nine and I could feel my stomach doing flip flops in nervous protest as the ringing echoed throughout the house. I hardly had a chance to marvel at the absurdity of it all when Blanca requested everyone to turn off all lights and strike a match. It was reasonable to think maybe a piece of my hair needed to catch fire as the induction to this phenomenal ritual, but my aunt walked past me and lit 12 candles, which she and the rest of the helpers set down in a circle around me. Helper No. 2 grabbed scissors and began to walk in my general direction.
“Cut the cloth and wrap it around her head,” my grandmother commanded. “None of her hair should be visible.” After my head was wrapped like a white burrito, I was ordered to drink a cup of hot tea that tasted like sewer water as quickly as I could. “This will help clean you from the inside out,” my aunt offered. I wondered if drinking shit was a means of cleansing but just nodded and drank while I thought of puppies and cupcakes from my favorite bakery in South Miami.
Tico came in at that moment rocking his usual getup of skinny jeans, black t-shirt, and permanent cigarette stuck to his mouth. The curly long hair and rapist mustache he’d been rocking since the 90s were apparently still a thing, and he pushed a curl back as he sweetly inquired what we were doing. I glared at him with all the dignity I could muster in my state and he winked at me, obviously taking pleasure in torturing me just as he had when I was a child and my parents forced me to eat okra because “it made your hair grow.” Tico would buy bags and bags of the gooey vegetable and cook it with pork chunks every time he babysat me. I’d cry and spit the okra into a napkin after each bite but then he’d be all, “Don’t you want your hair to grow?” and I’d swallow it in silence while he watched and laughed cruelly at my gullible innocence. Years later, I’d learn to love okra and realize that it didn’t make your hair grow but it’s okay because that’s what extensions and weave are for and God-damn-it-I’ve-digressed.
After feathers were brushed against my entire body and thrown in a bag that was later to be disposed of in the ocean, my aunt came back from the refrigerator carrying a bowl of eggs and Grandma Blanca asked her to smash them on me. A total of 12 eggs were violently hurled at my bare feet, one for each month of the upcoming year. By this point I could no longer mask my bewildered disgust and Tico shook with ripples of quiet laughter from the doorway while giving me an, I told you they were crazy look but enjoying the spectacle nonetheless. I imagined the egg smashing to be the boiling point of my despojo and sighed with relief as my aunt reassured me we were almost there. Granted, my relief was short-lived when I saw Tico disappear and return to the kitchen pushing a crate with four live chickens in it.
The tea they’d given me earlier was clearly a hallucinogen because chickens in Cuba are like unicorns in children’s books, something magical people talk about after dark but everyone knows never actually existed. Unless . . .
The rest was a blur I wish I didn’t remember as clearly as I do to this day. My grandma barked quick orders to the ladies and Tico, who quickly decapitated the chickens and threw their heads in the garbage. The blood spouting from their necks was quickly poured into a bowl, which my aunts dipped their hands into and rubbed all over my face and body while chanting, “Adios al mal de ojo, adios al mal de ojo (goodbye to the evil eye).” It goes without saying I was in tears by this point and promised God that I’d be good if he just got me through the whole ordeal without vomiting.
Anxiety must’ve eventually driven me to fainting because the next clear thought I possess of that fiasco is of me waking up in my old bed with the smell of coffee lingering in the air. I looked around and focused on my surroundings, the sun shining through the wooden blinds and voices drifting in and out of my own consciousness as I struggled to hear what they were saying. My grandma was telling someone over the phone how uncomfortable she felt of beheading “those poor defenseless animals” and my aunt interrupted her saying it was for a good cause. Grandma Blanca continued to tell whomever she was talking to how they had to bag each chicken separately and place each bag on all four corners of our block for “infinite protection when the sun rose” at exactly six in the morning. From what I could deduce, my flight was leaving in four hours and I’d survived the previous evening’s nightmare in one piece, which is more than can be said for those poor chickens.
I snuck up to the rooftop terrace to look at the mountains and smell the dirty air of the place I once called home, dressed down in my grandmother’s mumu and the lovely scent of Eau de Chicken Blood. As I took the steps two at a time, it occurred to me that crazy is a gene that doesn’t magically appear within us, but is instead generated and multiplied with each passing generation down the family tree. I cast a downward glance at the people running around in the first floor of our old mansion and wondered what my great-great-grandpa was like, or what in the world possessed him to leave Spain for a tiny island ridden with poverty to then marry the daughter of a slave and build her this magnificent home I currently planted my feet on. I asked myself what he would think of us and if he’d proud of the woman I was yet to become. A cough in the distance startled me from my existential reverie and I discovered my uncle Marcelo drinking coffee on the other side of the terrace.
“Hola, tio,” I approached him slowly and kissed his cheek. “What are you doing up here away from the party?”
“Hiding and spying,” he said matter-of-factly as he craned his neck.
“Spying on who?” I asked with piqued curiosity.
“The neighbor,” he paused and motioned me to come closer. “You know, I think she’s trying to do brujeria on me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Well, I woke up this morning and there was a dead chicken in a bag right on the corner of my house. I’m sure it was that bitchy neighbor, Angela, who obviously hates me,” he sighed.
“A dead chicken?” I gasped and pretended to be horrified. “Who would do such a thing?”
“Angela,” he growled again. “That’s who. But it’s ok because I had no problem letting her know I was onto her little games.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got the bag and nailed it to her door with a note that read, I don’t appreciate you killing chickens when you know how hungry people are in this country, you puta. Signed, You Know Who.”
I wasn’t sure what was worse, my uncle nailing a chicken onto a neighbor’s door, or the fact that said neighbor would be completely clueless – and ecstatic – as t
o how she got so lucky to receive a whole chicken without having to pay for it.
That afternoon as I packed my belongings into our family’s old Plymouth, I was burdened with a pitiful feeling at the bottom of my stomach that warned me of some impending calamity. The women in my family would probably call it brujeria; I called it the waiting period between getting on an airplane and jumping the puddle between Cuba and Miami on a small charter while suffering from extreme aerophobia. Tico blasted Metallica on the old speakers as he waited impatiently for me to bid my farewells. As the car pulled away and my family waved me off with tears in their eyes, a feeling of melancholy washed over me as I watched them become smaller in the distance. I rested my head on the window and spotted my uncle’s neighbor Angela carrying a big bag into her home down the street.
“That’s Angela’s house, right?” I asked Tico, whose eyes were fixed on the road ahead.
“Yeah,” he gave me a suspicious sideward glance. “Who told you I was dating her?”
“I didn’t know you were dating her, you jerk. I was just asking because Tio Marcelo told me they don’t get along.”
“Marcelo is just jealous that Angela prefers me,” he snorted. “In fact, I’m going to dinner at her place tonight and he is not invited.”
Oh God.
“She’s making chicken stew,” he continued proudly and upped the volume on Metallica’s Master of Puppets.
I wanted to save him from possible death by chicken poisoning, but then a certain vegetable by the name of okra came to mind and I decided against it. “You enjoy that,” I yelled over the music and stealthily turned my smiling face away from him. A few hours later, he’d be sitting on the toilet forsaking the day he accepted Angela’s dinner invitation and I’d be on American soil eating a burrito made of fake meat that would possibly give me the runs as well.
Heartbreak for Dinner: It's Kind of a Long Story Page 2
