Cuba 15 (7 page)

11

Señora Wong impaled us with the vocab test. She made us fill in the blanks in a paragraph with nouns we were supposed to know, and write out complete sentences using forms of suddenly unfamiliar verbs. Howls of anguish erupted when kids saw that memorizing the word list wasn’t going to cut it.

“We are supposed to be learning to
eh
speak
el español
,” said the ruthless Señora Doble-U, who claimed to have learned the language as an exchange student in Mexico. “Do you expect
el presidente de España
to fax you the vocabulary for your interview when you are big
reporteros
for the
Tribune
?” This class was beginning to sound like my house.

Afterward, a solemn Leda low-fived me on the way out the door, wishing me a
bueno jour
.

Things improved later in the day in Ms. Joyner’s class, as usual, when we got to watch a video of Richard Nixon’s famous televised “Checkers” speech. Checkers was this cocker spaniel that some dude in Texas sent Nixon, and Nixon’s kids fell in love with the dog. In answer to rumors of a campaign slush fund and in the interest of full disclosure, “Tricky Dicky” informed the American people that, concerning Checkers, “regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”

I sort of liked the guy for that, until he came to the end of his speech. He said that no matter what people said about him, he was going to keep fighting, “until we drive the crooks and Communists . . . out of Washington.” Like he should talk.

I knew that Cuba had been forced into Communist rule when Fidel Castro took over. Now, it seemed, there was Communism where, before, there had been people. I couldn’t connect the two. To me, Communism was this mean junkyard dog I’d never had any personal quarrel with but that had bitten others one too many times. It was the reason I’d never seen the town in Cuba where my dad was born; that was the only bone I had to pick with it. Say the word at home, though, and I’d get an earful about
socialismo
in Spanish or the Russian occupation of Poland in English, depending on which parent was around. Mom and Dad seemed to share Nixon’s view: all Commies are bad.

But maybe not all of them believed in the government. Probably only some did, and the rest just had to pretend. I bet that’s hard.

The unstable horizontal hold on the video chopped Nixon’s fuzzy outline into a dozen pieces. “Can you believe how crappy TV reception was back then?” Janell whispered.

I nodded soberly, as though I’d been tracking it since. “I don’t think cable would’ve saved him, though.”

Afterward, Ms. Joyner launched into a soliloquy about the power of persuasive speech that was quite convincing in itself. She persuaded me that maybe I could somehow persuade Señora Wong to let me take the vocabulary test over again. I might invite her to the domino party this weekend, let her win a few dimes. Let her take Chucho home, like some Cuban “Checkers” bribe.

But there were pitfalls to persuasion. “Look what happened to Socrates,” Ms. Joyner pointed out. Socrates was forced to drink a cup of poison hemlock when his speeches threatened to put his fellow philosophers out of business.

Hmmm. Perhaps I would leave Señora Wong alone and my Spanish grade up to fate.

Later that day, after classes, I headed for the speech office in C building to keep my appointment with Mr. Soloman. I felt sorry for kids who had lockers in this wing; they were always having to run to class. They hung around leisurely now after the last bell, savoring the moment, chattering and shouting and slamming metal doors. My eyes brushed over them like a minesweeper, searching for The Ax so he couldn’t sneak up on me. But neither he nor Mr. Soloman was at large in the halls or the speech office, which was empty, the door invitingly ajar.

I walked in. The only chair-desks had been pushed down the corridor, so I sat at Mr. Axelrod’s desk and let my pack slide to the floor at my feet. I also let my guard down a hair.

The Ax kept a tidy desk, everything arranged carefully on one of those big square blotter things for writing. He could’ve made it through the express lane at the supermarket with eight items or less: one half-empty plastic bottle of springwater, capped; stack of permission slips for some speech-related trip, signed; felt pen, capped; magnetic paper-clip holder, full; stapler, probably ditto; calendar set made of plastic cubes you had to turn to the right date, today showing; and a five-by-seven photograph of a dark-haired, alabaster-skinned woman, laughing, in a simple, chrome-plate frame: the mysterious Mrs. Ax, killed, so they say, in a car accident the night after their wedding.

She looked so alive in the photo.

The bottom desk drawer was open a crack, so I pushed it closed, then, curious, opened it again. A stack of yellowed
Variety
newspapers. A beat-up
Our Town
script. I pushed these aside and spied an envelope marked LETTERS in a strong, gruff hand.

Letters? From his wife?

Then a strong, gruff voice shook me. “Ms. Paz!”

I froze in horror—The Ax himself loomed over me, dressed for a funeral.

He gazed from my stunned face to the open drawer, dark eyes full of thunder and lightning. “How dare you go through my personal things! Do I need to call security?”

I shook my head mutely.

He frowned, hands on hips. “I don’t want to see you in this office alone again.” When I didn’t respond, he whispered with finality, “Go on! Get out of my sight!”

I slunk to the floor, grabbed my pack, and oozed out the door, the lowest slime on the face of the earth.

“Violet!” Mr. Soloman hurried down the hall, recognizing me despite my ectoplasmic state. “Sorry I’m late. Musical classrooms. Let’s see if Room 206 is free.”

My life—from tragedy to comedy, like the Janus masks. Was there nothing in between?

There was. Mr. Soloman showed me a videotape of some very unfunny original comedy, several losing routines from a few years back.

“The performers shall remain nameless,” he announced with tact, settling into the student desk next to me. “I just want you to learn from their mistakes. Now, forget about the delivery and concentrate on how the sketches are written.”

Onscreen, a tall boy in a suit and tie droned on about a marine expedition to find the elusive “sea ostrich.” I giggled once, when he first gave an odd rooster-sounding call to summon the bird, but by the fifteenth bellow I felt nauseated.

“Pretty awful, huh?” said Mr. Soloman, nodding. He stopped the tape with the remote. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

We both agreed that the repetitive crowing overshadowed anything that might have been funny about the piece.

“Which parts do you think
could
have been funny?” he pressed.

“Well, maybe if he had used the characters’ own words, instead of just narrating, telling us blah blah blah, here’s how we caught the sea ostrich. Who cares?”

Mr. Soloman threw me a grin and said, “Exactly! You have just asked the fundamental question of all great writing: Who cares?” He plugged in another video. “That is your job—to make the audience care. Once they care, you’ve got them in the palm of your hand. You can make them laugh, cry, or wet themselves.”

“Or all three at once?”

“If you so choose.”

“So how do I make them care?”

He nodded at the monitor.

Another boy in a suit and tie began his routine from his seat. When the coach said “Begin,” he hesitated a moment, then jumped up from his chair with a loud baby cry and ran to the stage like someone was chasing him.

Once at his mark, he looked both ways and sighed with relief. “If you have a brother or sister—or just know someone who does—be on the lookout.” Again, he checked both ways. “Be on the lookout for Superbaby: faster than a speeding tricycle . . . stronger than the family dog . . . able to leap tall playpens in a single bound . . . it’s Superbaby!”

The routine had both Mr. Soloman and me cracking up by the end. Superbaby did terrible things to bedrooms, computers, Walkmans. Mark was eleven and still like that. I could totally relate.

“Got you right here”—Mr. Soloman mimed a punch to his gut—“didn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

I shrugged.

“Two words.” Mr. Soloman squinted and leaned over conspiratorially. “Universal humor,” he said, settling back. “Everybody has experienced a willful baby—or knows someone who has.
That’s
what you’re going for. That common denominator.”

I particularly liked this boy’s style. “What about that entrance, screaming and running?” I said.

“Never mind that for now,” my coach said. “You have an instinct for performing or you wouldn’t be here. That will take care of itself. In O.C., writing comes first, theater comes second.”

He got up and began putting videos in boxes. “I’m giving you until next Tuesday to come up with a draft. It doesn’t have to be complete, but at least get a concept on paper.”

“Like what kind of concept?”

He wagged a finger at me. “
Original
comedy. Not your speech coach’s idea of a joke.”

I pouted.

“Ah, ah, chin up. Give it a try. You’ll be surprised what you come up with.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said, sticking the information sheets he’d given me into my folder.

“Fear can be funny,” Mr. Soloman insisted. “Make me laugh.”

“I’ll try.”

“If you don’t, I’ll just get the hook.”

Or The Ax, I thought. He’d probably be glad to get rid of me. “Okay, okay. See you next Tuesday, Mr. Soloman.”

12

I figured I’d spend the rest of the school week waiting for ideas to hit, then write the speech on the weekend. The fact sheet said I had to fill eight minutes, tops. No “inappropriate” subject matter. No swearing.

It would never make an HBO special, but I was sure I could come up with something better than that sea ostrich sketch. I kept my ears peeled for comedy all week. On Wednesday, my piano teacher’s dog started howling during my lesson, which was funny, just not funny enough to laugh about for eight minutes.

Thursday, I dropped by the Rise & Walk to see Mom after school. Somebody had donated six naked mannequins for the tax write-off, and Mom had to dress them before she could sell them; it
was
a church basement, after all, and naked doesn’t belong in church. Unfortunately, naked was probably “inappropriate” for speech team too, or that would’ve been a hoot. I was laughing so hard by the time Mom put together an ensemble for Mannequin Number Three (ski parka, fishnet stockings, wing tips, and sombrero) that I had to go home.

Nothing was funny about Friday. From the moment I woke up, Abuela and Abuelo loaded me down with chores, preparations for the big domino party that would start at sundown. They ran the games on island time.

“
Ay,
Violeta,
por favor
load the dish
eh
washer for me,” Abuela begged as I was trying to get out the door to the bus. She had been up long before Mark and me, starting a batch of
congrís
and stirring up pastry for the homemade éclairs. I couldn’t complain when the eats were this good.

That afternoon, I helped Abuelo find an extension cord and move the stereo out to the porch. He pawed excitedly through a large CD case that he’d brought with him from Miami. “
Mira,
Violeta,
Fifty Years of Tito Puente
. This one is my favorite.
¿Cómo se dice
disc jockey
en inglés?
”

“In English? It’s
disc jockey,
Abuelo.”

“Ah, the same. ¡
Yo soy el rey de los
Disc Jockeys!”

I kissed the top of his bald head. “You are king of the
disc jockeys,
Abuelo.” My Spanish was really improving, thanks to those cognates.

The guests started to arrive as salmony-colored clouds arched toward sunset, netting the sky. Mom and I were standing door duty.

“¡Hola!
Diane.
¿Qué pasa?”

“Welcome, it’s been ages!” They volleyed hugs and kisses, shot them my way.

“
¡Qué
linda!
Violet. How you’ve grown!” Lies, but good ones.

“Where is Lupita? Y Teodoro?”

Abuela was manning the kitchen, Abuelo was asleep. Yes, asleep. Guests would come and go all weekend, and somebody had to take the late hosting shift.

We sent everyone past the buffet in the living room, where many lingered, and on out to the porch, where Dad was holding court in his domino kingdom. You could hear “The Sky Is Crying” or “Baby Please Don’t Go” blasting from the porch and Chucho barking up a fuss from behind my bedroom door, where he’d been safely stashed. The house smelled of garlicky
frijoles negros
and frying
plátanos
— green plantain chips, the kind I liked; they’d be salty-sweet and too hot to eat, but in no time they would disappear, leaving just an oil-spotted paper towel and spilled salt on the plate.

The little kids who’d come ran through the house like their hair was on fire, and my brother, Mark, suddenly five years old again, ran after them. It was beyond me how Abuelo could nap. I cruised through the living room and over to the designated drivers’ table for one of Abuelo’s nonalcoholic concoctions, Piña No-Nada, a piña colada whose secret ingredient was a shot of cold
café
. If I started drinking these now, I’d be wide awake for driver’s ed by summer school.

I hung a left at the hallway and proceeded toward the players’ porch. Thankfully, the smoking section—two card tables sporting ashtrays and beer mugs full of Corona y Coronas—had been moved outside.

“¡Hola! Violeta.” A grown cousin, Marianao, grabbed me in a hug, exhaling cigar smoke in my ear. Apparently she hadn’t read the NO FUMAR signs. Marianao wore a skintight pink and green floral print dress, low in the neck and high in the skirt, and her dark hair was pinned up in an elaborate ’do. The cigar added a bizarre twist to her costume, but at least it was in character.

“Marianao, long time no see,” I said, squeezing back. I smoothly guided her out the screen door into the tikitorched yard, where she squealed at another long-lost somebody. Like I said, we hadn’t seen much of these folks from the old neighborhood since Abuela and Abuelo flew south. They were an exotic foreign species to me.

Mark, in his ball cap and shorts as usual, ran around the corner of the house, followed by a chain of yelling kids dressed in Sunday clothes. “Vi, Mom says come to the kitchen right now!” he called over the noise, and kept on going. They zigzagged between tables, guests, and tiki torches, miraculously hitting none of them, and disappeared around the other side of the house.

The whole weekend was like that, like stepping onto a carousel ride gone berserk. Friday night, I fell asleep to the alternate clacking of dominoes and Tito Puente’s
timbales
. The only time I could get a dime in edgewise on one of the packed porch tables was when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and found Abuelo and two friends still playing. The stereo had been switched low, and an empty, grease-dotted
plátanos
plate sat on the floor beside them. I picked it up and ran a wet finger around it, finishing off the last of the salt.

The men signaled me to throw in a dime, and a new game began.

“This is the life,
eh,
Teo?” asked one of Abuelo’s friends. “This remind me of
las fiestas navideñas
back in Cuba.”

Abuelo nodded. He wore his party shirt, a pastel pink, yellow, and blue striped
guayabera,
over his usual dark trousers. “Sí, claro que sí. Padrino use to hang las hamacas in the
eh
stables,
para las siestas
.”

“Like a sleepover, Abuelo?”

He grinned an ocean of teeth at me in my baby-doll pajamas and sweater. “Sí, como un Sleep Over. People would come and go for many days, and Padrino would roast the
lechón
in the big pit, and there were cards and dominoes, never stopping.”

The four of us at the table sighed.

“Those were the days,” Abuelo said.

Chucho needed a run on Saturday morning after being penned up in my room most of the night before. The hot spell had left town overnight; outside, in my shorts and gym T-shirt, I felt that crisp September bite that said, “
Adiós
, summer!”

Chucho felt it too. He skittered down the blacktop toward the street like a pup, until we reached the spot on the sidewalk in front of the Vespuccis’ house where old Mrs. Vespucci tossed stale bread for the birds. Sparrows and robins squawked in all directions as Chucho found an almost-whole kaiser roll and chunked it down in one lump, like a python.

I scooped him up in my arms before Mrs. V. could spot us through the oversized slats of her skeletal venetian blinds and yell through the screen door.
“Cabrito,”
I scolded Chucho, releasing him a few paces later and jogging off down Woodtree.

We got back and went to the kitchen for a drink, where I found Mom in high gear; today was Abuela’s day to play. Ovals of kielbasa sausage were lined up on the counter, at the ready. Mom checked on some steaming cabbage, stirred a tomato sauce, and drained a pan of browned ground beef, practically at once. I licked my finger and stuck it in a plate of powdered sugar left over from making kolachke cookies. This was better than Christmas. Maybe I’d get a chance to win some simoleons today too.

“Mom, can I have a few bucks for dimes?”

She threw me a harried look from a sinkful of suds and dirty pots. “How about an even exchange?”

“But I just walked the dog!” I sighed. “Oh, all right.” I washed a few pans, and Mom let me lick the brownie bowl and told me to take some singles from her purse.

“Thanks, Mom!”

I put Chucho outside on his tether and hunted down my brother. He sat in the garage surrounded by patio furniture, sorting through a huge box of old golf balls he’d found.

“Mark! I need you to watch Chucho today. Make sure none of the little kids lets him off the leash.”

He dropped a fluorescent yellow ball into a bucket of soapy water as if I weren’t there.

“Okay?” I prompted.

Mark set aside two balls with gashes in them and dropped a scuffed Titleist in the water bucket, saying nothing.

“Okay?”
I said again, giving his Cubs hat brim a tweak.

“Hey!” he yelped. “Why can’t you watch out for Chucho? I’m busy.”

“I just took him for a walk, he’s not my responsibility.”

He bared his gums at me. “Oh yes he is too. You’re the one having the keent-sy party. You’re the one who has to be responsible.”

I opened my mouth to deny it, and my brother jumped up and ran away, leaving his golf balls soaking.

What a baby. I stamped my foot and had turned to leave when a box on a shelf over the washer and dryer caught my eye: RIT. It was a box of red dye Mom had used to make a Santa suit out of a pair of pajamas several years ago. Could dye go bad?

I took out a handful of tabs and dropped them in Mark’s golf ball water. Then I went out to the playing porch to look for some trouble.

In between siestas that afternoon, I lost my shirt to my grandmother. No matter the configuration of players at the table, Abuela and I battled neck and neck, and she rallied to win at the last minute. I was beginning to think she carried around a double-blank tile in the pocket of her silver gaucho skirt or its matching jacket.

“
Lo
siento,
Violeta,
pero
I win again!” she sang cheerfully from pimiento-colored lips, reaching for the pot as the other players commiserated with me, one game after another. Still, I kept coming back for more.

After my dinner break, I had to cadge some more dimes off Dad, who was running the change exchange. He wore one of those canvas coin pouches the volunteers used at the Lincolnville Petunia Festival every year. Blue plaid pants and penny loafers stuck out below the pouch, and above, he’d tucked in his favorite sunshine-yellow long-sleeved shirt with the monkeys on it. Dad roamed the porch, in his element: A guest would hand him a five, and he’d count out fifty dimes like he was filling a prescription. You knew he’d never make a mistake.