Latin Moon in Manhattan: A Novel

by Jaime Manrique

  I shuddered. I knew that parrots lived to be a hundred years or more, so in all likelihood he’d outlive my mother and, with my luck, probably me too. “Mother, cut it out,” I begged her. “Put that bird in his cage. You know he hates me and is going to bite me first chance he gets.”

  “Lorito real, lorito real,” the cunning parrot protested, looking like an innocent.

  When the parrot was safely behind bars, I sat down to the table to finish my guanabana juice.

  “It would be nice if you went to the nursing home to see Victor,” Mother said, referring to my stepfather. “I told him you were coming this weekend, and you know he likes you very much. He’d be so happy to see you.”

  “I don’t know. It’s so depressing. The last time I was there he didn’t recognize me at all.”

  “I think the doctors are wrong,” she said. “Just because he can’t talk doesn’t mean he doesn’t know who we are. I see how his eyes light up when I visit him and tell him stories. And you should feel grateful to Victor. It was he who put you through college. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

  “I know that, Mother, and I like him a lot, but what’s the point? He’s a vegetable; I’m going to skip visiting him this time. I have other plans.”

  “Like what?” she asked, displeased.

  “I want to visit Bobby.”

  Mother stared at me. I realized that Bobby too was a vegetable. On my last visit, he hadn’t recognized me either.

  “I visit him at least once a week.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Mother.”

  “It could happen in my own family, too, so I’m getting prepared. But it breaks my heart, Santiago. You know I’ve loved Bobby since the two of you met in Colegio Americano in Barranquilla. He always called me his second mother. By the way, Leticia finally came.”

  “When?”

  “About a week ago. I guess all those letters I wrote her worked. Did you know she refuses to touch him? She won’t even go into his room. She stands by the door, with her hands behind her back, and talks to him as if he were a baby, but she won’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.”

  “What a hideous woman; that’s horrible.”

  “I tried to explain to her that AIDS can’t be caught by casual contact. To show her, I sat on Bobby’s bed and combed his hair and arranged his pillows. Santiago,” Mother said beseechingly, “why don’t you get married? Why don’t you marry Claudia? She’s always been in love with you. I know. Paulina told me so. And she’s rich,” Mother threw in to tempt me.

  Although Mother knows perfectly well what my sexual preference is, ever since Bobby had come down with AIDS she started an insane campaign to try to get me married to my childhood friend Claudia Urrutia, hoping perhaps I’d be spared Bobby’s fate.

  Deciding to ignore the marriage talk, I said, “Sure, I’d be rich like them if I were in the drug trade.”

  Mother made an angry face. “They’re not in the drug business. How can you say that about Paulina? She’s my best friend; she’s practically my sister,” she said, sincerely outraged.

  “Mother, come off it. How can you be so naïve? Okay, so they’re not in the drug trade. Then how did they make all those millions?”

  “Working, of course. How else?”

  “I never heard of anyone in that family working. Besides, nobody makes that kind of dough working. They own mansions all over the world, and planes and yachts and Mercedes Benzes and …”

  “Are you saying Paulina and Claudia are in the mafia? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Maybe they aren’t personally,” I relented. “But all the men in the family sure are. Everyone in Jackson Heights—except you, of course—knows that.”

  “Claudia is an architect, Santiago. She went to jail.”

  “Yale, Mother,” I corrected her for the millionth time. “Anyway, she’s never practiced, and she lives like a queen. …”

  “She loves you, and that ought to be enough for you.”

  “Mother, Claudia is a …” dyke, I was going to add, but I knew this would just make matters worse. “I think she’s nuts.”

  “Well, she’s a little odd.”

  “A little odd, ha! That’s got to be the understatement of the millennium. Is that what you call a girl who rides a motorcycle and wears a helmet all the time? She’d be the perfect wife for Gene,” I chuckled. “He’d love to get a hold of her motorcycles.”

  “You and your sister are going to kill me,” Mother said pathetically. “Maybe God is punishing me for having been such a bad mother. But Santiago, you’re intelligent and you should know better.” She paused, in pain, looking like a Greek tragedienne. “You won’t marry, and your sister goes through men like through a box of Kleenex. And that poor boy, your nephew. What’s going to happen to him after I’m gone?”

  And don’t forget Simón Bolívar, I was going to say but refrained myself. I started to shake, so I got up. I had to get away from that kitchen as soon as possible.

  Mother got up and approached me. “Where are you going? Isn’t it too early to leave now?”

  I backed away. “I want to go for a walk; I want to see the roses in bloom,” I lied.

  “Make sure you go by Romelda’s house. Her yellow roses this year are divine.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  “Don’t be too late for dinner. Don’t have any snacks after lunch and spoil your appetite. I’m making your favorite tonight.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pigs feet and chick peas.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Sammy,” mother began sweetly, “if you don’t have plans for tonight, why don’t you take Claudia to the Saigon Rose to hear Wilbrajan.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, think about it. I would love to go too; that is, if you don’t mind.”

  “I got to go, Mother. I’ll see you later,” I said, and left the kitchen.

  It was a lovely summer day. I put on my sunglasses and stood still, taking a whiff of the crisp, balmy air. Suddenly, in a flash, I saw myself as a child, walking with my mother along the beach at Puerto Colombia, digging for coquinas. Even here in Queens, the air smelled strongly of that ocean, because it wasn’t New York’s Atlantic I smelled, but Barranquilla’s Caribean: salty, dry, scorching, charged with the scent of honeysuckle. I descended the steps to the driveway and started walking toward the street. Feeling ornery yet amused, I said to myself, “I can’t believe my luck. Here I am, on my way to becoming an immortal.”

  3 Colombian Queens

  I had known Carmen Elvira and Olga since our immigration to Jackson Heights; but Irma, the other member of the Colombian Parnassus, was a more recent acquaintance. They published Colombian Queens, a monthly magazine that my mother always saved for me. It was distributed free, financed through ads taken out by Colombian restaurants, travel agencies, and grocery stores in the Jackson Heights area. Carmen Elvira wrote the gossip column; Olga was in charge of the horoscope and the Colombian recipes, and Irma, who worked as a teller in a Wall Street bank, wrote the business column. The rest of the articles were reprints, exclusively about Colombia. The middle section of the magazine—which was the bulk of it—was packed with photographs of Colombian show biz personalities in the New York area (the women usually in bathing suits), and pictures of people recently deceased and girls in their quinces, etc.

  On more than one occasion, Carmen Elvira had invited me to submit a section of my Columbus poem for consideration, but I had repeatedly turned down her request. Without consulting me, five poems of my book Lirio del Alba had been reprinted with many typographical mistakes. For a long time after that, I forbade Mother to mention Carmen Elvira’s name in my presence.

  I was about to ring the bell of Olga’s home when the door opened and the hostess greeted me with kisses on both cheeks. The pleasant smell of burnt eucalyptus hit my nostrils. Walking down the wide-planked hall carpeted with cowhides, I experienced déjà vu: I felt as if I were in a house
in Bogotá. Every detail was Colombian—the furniture, the pictures on the walls, even the plastic flowers.

  I greeted Carmen Elvira and Irma, who were sitting on a couch drinking tinto, the espresso-like demitasse that Colombians swill nonstop. The air-conditioning was on and the curtains drawn, so that the room was in semidarkness, giving the scene a vaguely conspiratorial atmosphere. The three women, who ranged in age from their late forties to midfifties, differed sharply in appearance: Carmen Elvira, who was from the Cauca Valley, was tall and her complexion and features Mediterranean in color and shape; Irma, who was from Pasto, was on the short side, stocky, and her features were Incan. She wore her hair in a crew cut and was dressed in bermudas and sandals.

  Olga, who was from Bogotá, was extremely petite and a natural blond. She was dressed in a sleeveless white cotton dress and wore high heels. It was spooky how, because of their close association, they seemed, at least in spirit, three weird sisters.

  I was offered, and accepted, a tinto. Without asking for my preference, the hostess put two heaping spoonfuls of sugar in the inch-and-a-half cup. I decided to be gracious and drink it this way for fear of being labeled a gringo. The three women looked at me with curious but benign expressions.

  “May I smoke a cigarette?” I asked in Spanish.

  “Sí, sí, por supuesto,” Olga said in her tinny voice, pushing an ashtray on the coffee table in my direction. It was made of red clay and had the Colombian flag painted on it.

  “We don’t smoke anymore,” Carmen Elvira said. “The group’s New Year’s resolution was to give up smoking.”

  “Thank God and the Holy Virgin,” Irma said, and crossed herself.

  Feeling like a criminal, I puffed on my Newport.

  “How’s Lucy?” Olga asked.

  “She’s fine, thank you,” I said. Then, remembering I was among Colombians, I asked, “And how’s your husband?”

  For the next five minutes we inquired about each other’s parents, husbands, brothers and sisters, children, and even pets. By then I had finished my cigarette and the sickeningly sweet tinto. It occurred to me that good manners required that I acknowledge the dubious honor of being elected a member of The Colombian Parnassus.

  “Don’t mention it,” beamed Carmen Elvira as the unacknowledged spokesperson of the group. “We have to move with the times, and welcome the new generation.”

  “Personally, I’m not very fond of modern poetry. I prefer the old poets like Carranza. Ah, those sonnets. Do you love Carranza?” Irma asked me.

  “Yes, I do.” Like all Colombian children I had learned Carranza’s poems in school, and did, indeed, favor his exuberant romanticism.

  “The Sonnet to Teresa,” Olga sighed, full of nostalgia for the poetry of the past.

  Olga and Carmen Elvira looked at Irma beseechingly. Her expression becoming devout, Irma began reciting the sonnet:

  Teresa, en cuya frente el cielo empieza,

  como el aroma en la sien de la flor.

  Teresa, la del suave desamor

  y el arroyuelo azul en la cabeza.

  Her eyes closed, her hands resting on her considerable breasts, Irma finished reciting the famous sonnet, which I will not endeavor to translate for you because its beautiful rhymes and music demand a greater translator than I could ever hope to be. When she finished, the women sighed and burst into applause. I joined them.

  “That’s poetry,” Olga pronounced.

  Carmen Elvira pontificated, “That’s what I call great poetry.”

  “That’s what I call love,” elaborated Olga. “It’s not enough to be a great poet. Oh, no. That’s too easy. To write poetry like that, one must love very deeply and be a great lover. Like … like … Petrarch. I hope some day you’ll write a sonnet like that to your girlfriend, Sammy.”

  Unsure of how to respond, I said, “I hope so too.”

  “By the way,” Irma interjected, “do you have a girlfriend?”

  I assumed a blank expression and said nothing. It was one thing to join the Parnassus, but to have my life scrutinized by these ladies was out of the question.

  “Yes, he does,” Carmen Elvira said, to my astonishment. “Lucy told me all about it, Sammy.”

  “All about what?” I said.

  Carmen Elvira flashed a maternal, approving smile. “About you and Claudia.”

  “Claudia!” I exclaimed, for the second time that day.

  “Claudia Urrutia?” asked Irma in disbelief, giving me a long, searching look. “She’s so …”

  “So wealthy,” said Carmen Elvira to settle the issue.

  “Hey, look,” I said, to no one in particular. “I—”

  “I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it,” Carmen Elvira interrupted me, “but Lucy told me you’re practically engaged, that you’re proposing tonight at the Saigon Rose.”

  “Congratulations, honey!” exclaimed Olga, leaping from the couch. “This calls for a celebration. I have an aguardiente bottle I’ve been saving for a special occasion. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll help you with the glasses,” Carmen Elvira offered, getting up too.

  “We might as well have our lunch after the toast,” Irma threw in. “I’ll serve the pasteles. You do like pasteles, don’t you?” And, without waiting for confirmation, she followed the rest of the Parnassus into the kitchen.

  I could have killed my mother. I reached for the telephone, but in the middle of dialing her number, I changed my mind. “Maybe I’m dreaming,” I blurted out. I shook my head in an effort to wake myself up. But dreams are odorless and I could smell the pasteles. The situation reminded me of something; I couldn’t, though, tell quite what. Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth, and The Trial all came to mind. I wondered if Claudia had been let into this plot, or whether we were both just random bystanders snarled in the machinations of a bunch of crazed Queens matrons.

  Toasting my induction to the Parnassus, we drank the aguardiente Colombian style—a small glass filled to the top, followed by a quarter of a lime soaked in salt, which I chewed until my teeth felt as if they would fall out. Tears choked my vision. Carmen Elvira proposed another toast to my imminent engagement. I figured it would be better to play along than to go into long explanations about my and Claudia’s sexuality. We drank to love and happiness. I had never seen Colombian women drink aguardiente: it is essentially a man’s drink, but then, I reasoned, I was among intellectuals, not conventional housewives.

  My body temperature had shot up at least ten degrees. The ladies produced their fans and proceeded to cool themselves, their mouths open and blowing air as if to take off the sting of the aguardiente on their gums.

  “How about another aguardientico, Sammy?” Olga said.

  “No, no, thanks. Maybe later.” I felt the insides of my stomach cooking.

  Irma started giggling. Carmen Elvira and Olga joined in, and together they became hysterical.

  “What?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable. “What is it?” They were certainly not being very polite.

  “You should see the color of your face,” Irma cackled. “It looks red like … guava paste.”

  “Like a brick out of the oven,” Carmen Elvira chuckled, pouring herself another aguardiente.

  I realized I had to put an end to the alcohol consumption before they became uncontrollable.

  “I’m hungry,” I said, pointing at the tray of aluminum foil-wrapped pasteles on the coffee table.

  Irma unwrapped a pastel and served it to me on a plate, with a napkin and fork. It looked delicious; a steam cloud heavy with the aroma of vegetables and meats and corn traveled up my nostrils.

  “Dig in, honey,” Carmen Elvira said. “Don’t wait for us; we made them just for you.”

  “I love corn pasteles,” I said, putting a piece of moist chicken in my mouth. “Ummm, it’s wonderful.” Closing my eyes, I chewed slowly. When I opened my eyes, the three women were leaning over the table, serving themselves.

  “Ah,” Olga exclaimed, setting her plat
e on the table and pressing her lips on the napkin. “I forgot the drinks. Now, Sammy, since you’re the guest of honor, what would you like to drink with your lunch?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, wondering what kind of exotic Colombian fruit juice or brew she had to offer. “What do you have?”

  Opening her eyes wide and looking at the ceiling, she counted with her fingers. “Let’s see: Diet Coke … ginger ale, Tab, Perrier, grapefruit juice, and beer.”

  I asked for a Classic Coke.

  Carmen Elvira ordered a Heineken.

  “For me too,” said Irma. “Nothing goes better with a pastel than a Heineken.”

  While the hostess went to get the refreshments, I made small talk, asking, “Who made the pasteles?”

  “I did,” Irma said proudly.

  “I never thought it would be possible to make a pastel taste like they do in Colombia. But they taste just as if you had cooked them in banana leaves,” Carmen Elvira said.

  “This is the best pastel I’ve had in a long time,” I complimented the cook.

  “Thank you, su merced. Have another.”

  “I will, when I finish this one. It’s so big.”

  “Yes, Irma makes the most generous portions,” Carmen Elvira said. “I follow your recipe, my dear, but they just don’t taste the same.”

  “There must be something you’re leaving out.”

  “Obviously. But I wonder what it is. I cook the pork with the chicken in the scallions and tomato sauce.”

  “Do you use fresh or dry coriander? That makes a big difference.”

  “Fresh. And I sprinkle the coriander on the meat just before I wrap the pastel in the aluminum foil.”

  “Maybe you don’t use enough guascas.”

  “That’s it. The guascas! Why didn’t I think of it before? But it’s impossible to get guascas in Jackson Heights.”

  “I bring it from Colombia. But you know they don’t allow fruits or vegetables or spices into the country. I have to hide it in my panties. Once, I had to eat an anón at JFK because they were going to confiscate it. So, I said, ‘Please, let me eat it.’ And I did.”