by Mara White
At night sometimes I go out with co-workers. There is nightlife, despite what people probably think. There are some strip clubs. Although you won’t see Muslim women taking their clothes off, it’s more like a smoky room filled with hookah and wall to wall men and the occasional Russian prostitute trying to hook up with johns. I don’t have a habit like I used to when I was younger, back in the Heights where temptation was everywhere. No monkey on my back making all the decisions. Drugs and girls, girls and drugs, liquor from the age of twelve or so. Why not, when they were selling us mixed drinks straight out of the bodega? Cuba libre in a Styrofoam cup right after school let out. Watching the local viejos play domino and doing nothing but stand around, argue, curse out my friends. Feel like your life isn’t going anywhere? Buy a dime bag, una piedra—get fucked up with your homies. It’s like a free vacation in your head. Get high, do what you can to not get caught, stay one step ahead of the poli.
For this job I am the man, but at least I’m not stressed out to the brink. And I ain’t chasing juvenile delinquents. Bad guys out here are either politicians, religious nuts, or rebel fighters with IEDs and machine guns. I’m not trigger-happy or paranoid like I was in the Marines. But I am as fucking aimless as I was on hot summer days uptown in the Heights. And I have no idea what comes next. Staying away from Belén forever is going to prove tougher than I thought. My mind plays a loop of memories of her, no matter how far or how long we’re apart. The need gets stronger instead of cooling off. Love is a fucking vampire and sucks the life out of your heart, all that’s left behind is a dried out shriveled husk. The only thing that can make it red and beat again is filling it up with Belén’s blood.
Access to females is slim to none here. There are the kind you can pay and they get the job done. But it’s weird ’cause even back when I was getting tail left and right, you still have a conversation, you still kiss—at least pretend to be interested in each other. I miss that, and I’m an asshole for saying it now. It’s karma for all the girls who wanted more and I would have nothing to do with them. I’d even settle for Yari’s bossy ass at this point. Tell her to shut up. Suck my dick and quit complaining. I can’t help but laugh when I think of the times we argued—how we never really liked each other but we sure used each other’s bodies. Then my laugh stops short because I remember how much it hurt Bey. Yari and I deserved each other. Holy shit we fucked hard and then hated each other’s guts.
A white, unmarked van is stopped in the valet drop-off of the hotel. There are four of us on the security team, and one guy, Eddie, is from Green Point, Brooklyn. We laugh it up and talk shit about the Yankees, about the music we listened to coming up and the concerts we went to. We even talked about being in the Boys and Girls Club in the city, the snacks they would give you, the orange drink for days, the doodles and Utz ripple chips, oatmeal cookies that tasted like they were made out of cardboard. Trips to the public pools in Harlem that had more pee than water; you had to swim between the hairballs, holding up your shitty hand-me-down trunks with one hand. Or getting bussed out to the suburbs in hordes for free events with the Fresh Air Fund, those were the days. Cookouts on some farmer’s homestead with twenty-five delinquents from the neighborhood slapping at mosquitos and licking on ice cream cones. I’m glad I met him and he’s fun to have around, a little piece of home when I couldn’t be farther from it or miss it any more than I already do. Eddie is nearsighted as fuck and that’s why he couldn’t get into the army. But he was determined to carry a gun without having to become a cop—so here he is in Amman next to me with a semi-automatic and a huge smile on his face. He’s singing an old Tribe Called Quest song when I climb into the vehicle.
“Lucky Luciano is in the mix!”
We shake hands and bump fists and settle in for a twenty-minute ride to the base.
“Luciano, tell me about the girl you love, what’s her name? And how she thinks you’re dead. I was trying to tell the story on the way over.”
“Thanks, Eddie,” I say. “Appreciate you telling every asshole this side of the Euphrates my business.”
I take a cigarette that Sameer offers me out of a soft pack. He’s new to our group, only ever worked one day with him.
“It’s a great story!” Eddie yelps and I can’t help but shake my head at him. Sameer tells us he was born in Yemen, but went to Queen’s College and has tons of family in Jackson Heights. Fucking small world, I swear. Eddie exhales a long draft of bluish smoke out the cracked-open window.
“Queens, huh? Fuck,” I say, raking my fingers against my temples. “Cool. It’s nice to see people from home. Makes this job feel less weird.”
“Tell him your story, bro. I tried, but I can’t do like you.”
I flick my cig out the window and take a deep breath.
“Her name is Belén, and she’s my first cousin. I grew up with her and know her better than anyone. But we’re related so it’s too fucked up to just go with it. It makes our moms cry and our friends think we’re sick. So I pretended I was dead so she could get a crack at a normal life. Or some shit like that, I don’t even remember,” I mumble, as lackluster as can be.
“Even I can tell it better than that,” Eddie says, looking disappointed.
“Not in the mood today, dude.”
“I was excited for a reason, don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Eddie says. He’s pushing my buttons this morning. Eddie is great, but he can be a fucking punk.
“I came back to Yemen to get married.”
“Oh yeah?” I say. Not interested, buddy.
“To my cousin,” Sameer says with a twinkle in his eye and a slight grin rising on either side of his mouth.
“No shit?” I say, turning my full attention to him. We’re cruising down the freshly-tarred highway, passing giant palm after giant palm that were planted by the government to provide shade and prevent erosion. This city is pristine; the wealthy parts look like they spent millions on the gardens alone.
“Yeah, man. It’s like totally acceptable where I’m from. We do it to keep the paternal lineage going. To preserve the bloodline and, you know, to keep the family fortune intact. It’s pretty common, I’ve got at least a dozen friends who married their cousins.”
He has my full attention and I’m slack-jawed by his story.
“But I bet you didn’t grow up with her—what, you like met her for the first time on your wedding day, right?”
“Naw, man! I knew her my whole life!” Sameer says, nodding his head. “I tell you, it’s not stigmatized at all like it is in the US. We had everyone’s blessing.”
“Do you fuck her?” I ask him without thinking at all. It just slips out, a sign of what I feel the most guilty about.
Eddie clears his throat and says “Awkward,” with his white-girl impersonation.
“Sorry, man. I just—never mind,” I say to Sameer.
“She’s my wife,” Sameer says. “I mean, come on.”
“Can’t believe you took it there, I mean like–” Eddie says, again in his white-girl voice. The kid can imitate Valley girls all day and he couldn’t be any darker skinned than he is. It creeped me out at first, how truly convincing he is, but, it makes for endless entertainment. He told me he used to do videos on YouTube and that he was internet famous for his impersonations.
Sameer yanks his wallet out of the back pocket of his fatigues.
“Got two kids. Faizan and Zahar,” He flashes me school pictures of two cute kids smiling with their front teeth missing.
“And they’re okay?” I ask, dumbfounded. “Shit. Dude, I’m sorry.” I can’t talk to this guy without messing up, without my heartrate taking off out of my chest like a fucking rocket.
“Yeah, man. They’re great. They’re good. I miss them so much.”
I smile at the guy and nod, then quickly look out the window before the both of us start crying.
Después
Adam has had a rough week. His birthday is always so hard for him to get through. I sometimes wish we could
erase it off of the calendar and skip it altogether—neither of us is good at facing demons, and I think we both wish we could slip back in time before our personal tragedies ever happened. So much for healing one another. Maybe it was a mistake to pair up with a man whose cavernous grief matched my own.
“This is the letters for the cake?” the woman in a hairnet asks. Her accent is thick and she looks me up and down, not knowing whether to address me in English or Spanish. She holds up the receipt that I’ve written “Happy Birthday Adam!” on in pencil. Just that sentence is depressing and to have it rendered in sweets seems perverse, a grotesque gesture.
I nod to her and inhale the sugar-spun sweetness of frosting, butter and vanilla that overwhelm this whole bakery. Not everyone knows the secret of Dominican birthday cake, that once you try it, you’ll never settle for boxed mixes or grocery store sheet cakes ever again. It’s the best in the world and nothing compares. One time is all it takes. Dominican cake and birthdays mate for life.
“¿Quieres de piña, guava o tres leches?” she shouts, finally deciding that a Spanish speaker I must be. Dark hair, dark eyes, light mocha skin and I live in this neighborhood. Or maybe reading the menu to the myopic man with the bolero tie clued her in.
“De guava, por favor.”
Cake is the only thing worth celebrating. And Luke, who will be thrilled to no end. We can’t skip the candles or the balloons with Luke in the picture. He loves birthdays as much as he loves life, no matter whose it is.
Mami is at the vegetable stand feeling up cantaloupes. She’s got a long sweater on that cinches in the middle like a bathrobe and curlers in her hair under the satiny scarf she’s pinned to her head. I’m sure she’s fretting over what to cook for Adam. She thinks it’s a shame that he doesn’t like to celebrate more and I’ve tried explaining to her that not everyone loves holidays or the memories that come with them. Mami doesn’t think there are problems in existence that can’t be solved with some cake and friends, a smile a few drinks, and bachata pouring out of the sound system. Her optimism borders on lunacy.
Sometimes I think she believes that Adam is sullen. That he should buck up and move on and that his grief isn’t very manly of him. And I tell myself that I disagree, that I have more robustly feminist and modern opinions about men and emotional sensitivity than my mother who was raised to cook and clean. She learned to nod her head and obey what any man said, as if gender simply gave him the authority. But she grew up on the island and I grew up in the Heights.
But there’s still another side to me that thinks exactly like she does. A girl who wants to be taken care of and babied and even told what to do on occasion. I confuse myself; I’m a walking contradiction. Sometimes machismo turns me on and other times it makes me so furious I have to bite my tongue to keep from confronting every single cat-caller head on in the street.
“Is Irma expecting us? Aren’t we going to be late?”
Luke is with his father. I’d like to keep this discreet, but it’s a lost cause because Mami is taking her sweet time.
“I told her this afternoon, we didn’t set an exact time, mi hija.”
“Well, let’s go and get it over with because if Adam finds out that I’m at the witch doctor on his birthday, I’m never going to hear the end of it.”
“Es un chamán. Don’t say witch, Belén, it will attract bad energy.”
“Oh sorry, Mami. If Adam finds out I’m going to the shaman on his birthday, he’s going to be a little more than pissed.”
I’m dripping in sarcasm and if there is one thing Mami doesn’t get, it’s sarcasm; that, and my sense of humor. She takes everything at face value and always thinks I’m serious, no matter how ridiculous.
She counts out coins to pay for the melon even though I’m shoving bills in her face. Stuck in her ways is an understatement. But God, I love her and I would have died many times over if it hadn’t been for her stubbornness, her perseverance, her undying belief that everything will get better. My mother is my hero. I may not have had a father, but my mother’s conviction is stronger than a league of ten dads.
I’m both dreading and highly anticipating what concoctions these two women will cook up to cure me. The warmer temps have brought more people out from being holed up in their winter dens. Mami has to stop and say hello to everyone we pass on the street, telling them all about Adam’s birthday, Luke’s new pajamas, the latest diet craze she saw on TV, even the price of plantains comes up and must be immediately discussed. At this rate, we’ll never get back before Adam gets home. His party will start two hours late, a normal cultural occurrence for me, but which confuses the hell out of him.
“How do people just know to show up later than the time you gave them? What if they came on time and no one was there? Do you just go back and try again? I honestly don’t get how it works!” Adam asked me.
“I don’t know how to explain it to you, but it all works out in the end.”
“Why even set a start and end time? Just give them the date and who cares when they show up—the party will happen eventually!” he said.
I would laugh at his exasperation, at his genuine attempt to understand. But I think on some level it annoyed me. Either that, or it hurt. Parties start when they start and end when they end—so what if we don’t adhere to the words on the invitation?
Irma’s botánica is a family-run business. She’s been in the same location my whole life, and her mother before her had owned a well-known shop in Santo Domingo. She comes from a long line of Santería priests. Her grandfather, people said, was one of the most respected and sought-after shamans on the island. The chain of command was then passed down to her mother and eventually to Irma, who spent her early life running around barefoot and naked, in and out of sweat lodges, cleansings and sacred ceremonies. Healing was, to her, as natural as breathing.
Her mother or grandpa would call her into their home apothecary whenever an acute case came in so that Irma might learn the precise steps and measures to cure a failing heart or eyes destined for blindness, to reverse a cursed pregnancy, or save someone who had been vexed with the evil eye, maldeojo, by a nosey neighbor or an upset co-worker. But Irma said her greatest specialty, and the malady dearest to her, were love spells, hechizos de amarre, and other afflictions of the heart. Irma knew love magic. In fact, she was an expert.
She could conjure the fluttering butterflies and slow-winking fireflies in the dark. She could make you forget to breathe from obsession or from the tight boa constrictor she placed around your heart. Irma could make sickly-sweet honey seep through your veins and color your entire perception of another. Make you see your lover through a lens warped by devotion. Hers was a world where intoxication bled from a kiss and paradise existed within a single touch.
“Te veo flaca, Belén,” Irma says, adding a tsk, tsk to her admonishment. Skinny means unhealthy in the language of my forefathers. To be round, voluptuous, curvy and thick are the benchmarks of health to a Dominican mother. Or godmother. Or neighborhood witch doctor.
“Pero come bien,” Mami pipes up defensively. She won’t let Irma pin this one on her. Mami cooks Spanish food with fervor and feeds it to Luke or anyone the minute they step into her kitchen. She prepares enough for a family of five when it’s only just her. She’s got soup for the neighbors and pastelitos for the UPS delivery guy. God forbid Adam or I give Luke sushi or Indian food and ruin him forever. I never leave her house without a Tupperware teeming with steaming yellow rice or a roast chicken in a disposable tin pan surrounded with steamed yucca and fried plátanos, all tucked in with a thick layer of tinfoil. Enough for me and all my co-workers. Adam won’t touch it.
“It’s pure starch,” he says, aggressively spearing his salad.
“Yeah, but it’s divino,” I say with my mouthful. I wave a forkful in front of his mouth and he frowns. Adam knows he’ll get a fork-stab to the hand if he tries to take my mom’s cooking away from me.
Mami and Irma are gossiping, leaning in conspiratoriall
y.
A statue of St John of the Cross calls to me. I pick it up and blow the dust off of his head.
A dark night of the soul. I’ve been there too. A journey from desolation to enlightenment and back again—all behind the mask I wear every day without him. When the need is so dire it slices right into your reality. Real life becomes a bad dream and the realm of the imagined is the consolation. Because when I dream, I can see him.
I would still be in that space without Luke. It was his life that saved mine. I put away my grief for the urgency of his needs; the immediacy of his cries pulled me back into my body.
I couldn’t stop my pain, but I could stop his cries with my breast or a bottle. I couldn’t stop my tears, but I could rock him to sleep and rub his tiny back so that his would stop.
St. John fits easily in my hands; I wonder if I could hide him. Adam isn’t a fan of icons or altars or jars of spells hanging around the apartment. Putting him down, I tell myself that poor San Juan shouldn’t spend any more time locked away in a closet.
“Tengo algo que te pueda ayudar, niña,” my doctor beckons.
“Of course you do, Irma.” I give her a friendly smile.
Irma’s confident she can take me from thin to fat, from sad to joyful. She can do just about anything, according to the card behind her head that reads Servicios. Including prayers to help me win the lottery if I wanted to. But some things are never meant to be cured. Some afflictions run so deep that they become too much a part of us. Curing means forgetting and I know I don’t want that.
She lights a smudge stick along with two little cones of incense. She whispers some African sounding words, Orishas maybe. Then hers and Mami’s voices sync in a rhythmic cant of Hail Marys.
I feel dizzy. I feel sick. Maybe even a little crazy. The last time I was here I thought I’d reached the depth of how much this could hurt. I was wrong. Lovesickness didn’t even come close to complete loss.
