The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria (19 page)

Another pull from the bottle, then: “I want to know, more than anything, if she’s okay with how I turned out. I grew up in the States and lived an American life. I became a meatpacker like my father,
then a lectór at the meatpacking plant. I read to the workers day in and day out, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes English, stories of valor and triumph that had nothing to do with the small life I led. I read them the news, too, all the different ways the world is going to hell, and I never did a thing about it except laugh at the terribleness of it all and then turn to the Sports page. I retired early, and all I do now is watch baseball. I don’t think I’m doing any harm, but I’m not doing any good, either. If my mother is ashamed of me, I want to know now, while I still have the power to change.”

I had no idea all that was in me. ¿Had I always been this broken?

Sophie came up behind me and slipped her arms around my chest and squeezed. “You’re okay, mi vida,” she whispered. I put a hand on the two she had fastened around me.

Jesús shook his head. “We’d have to put her inside someone for questions that complex. And I won’t do that. It’s too dangerous. I’m sorry, my friend.”

Gustavito came around front and said, sheepishly, “I’m the one who’s sorry. I brought you here. I thought this was a good idea.”

“You meant well,” I said. With this much love coming in from all sides, I couldn’t help but feel better.

“Maybe there’s a way,” Sophie said. She removed her arms from my chest and a few seconds later placed something in Jesús’s palm. “Can we use this?”

Jesús’s eyes bugged. “¿Is it meaningful to Pedrito as well?” he asked.

“Even more than it is to me.”

“¿Is what meaningful?” I asked.

Jesús showed me what Sophie had placed in his hand. It was her fake front tooth.

She’d lost the real one a few years back when we were walking in Miami Beach, both of us dolled up after having seen a terrific production of
Man of La Mancha
. As we headed for the car, some puto ran up and punched her in the face and tried to steal her purse. I grabbed him by the belt before he could get away, and some of the other theater-goers came over, and together we kicked the everliving shit out of him. That hijo de la gran puta was in his twenties and we were a bunch of gray-headed men, but one of the best things about having Cuban blood is that no matter how old you are, you always think you’re the baddest motherfucker alive. We had no trouble at all throwing him to the ground and booting him to pieces. We stomped on his balls like we were making wine.

Police came; they took my side; they hauled that knee-knocked loser off to jail, bleeding and crying. But the damage to Sophie was done. Not only had he knocked out her tooth, but we couldn’t find it to have it put back in. So she had to get a fake one.

I had failed her as her husband. I know that’s old-fashioned to say, but that’s how I felt. ¿How could I have let that punk do that to her? But she saw things differently. She called me her hero. Mind you, this is a woman who’s worked as a freelance journalist all over the world. She didn’t need a man to play gallant; she knew how to take care of herself. But she told me many times afterward that in her hour of
need, I didn’t hesitate. I turned into a wild animal to protect her. In fact, it was she who had to pull me off the guy so I wouldn’t kill him and get charged with murder. She literally had to wrap herself around my leg so I’d stop kicking him in the huevos.

There she was, frightened, bleeding from the mouth, awash in adrenaline, and now clinging to my leg to save me from my own temporary insanity. She had never felt more loved than at that moment, she told me. That’s what her fake incisor represented for her. And, over time, she taught me to think of it that way, too. It became the most important thing we owned together.

I turned around to face her. She was 5’2”, and her bushy gray-white hair burned like a star’s corona. She thought she was overweight, but I thought she had acquired the exact shape of the Forbidden Fruit over the years, and had become exactly that irresistible. “Sophie,” I said in English, “you saw Jesús change; we both did. We’re not in Kansas. And Jesús said it was dangerous to put another soul inside you. You can’t do this.”

She smiled that gorgeous, scary-ass gap-toothed smile. “This is your mother we’re talking about. The great Milhuevos! She died to save you, Pedrito. She wouldn’t hurt me. And anyway, I’m doing it. I decided, and you can’t stop—whoa, Pedrito!”

I embraced her, kissed her, licked the socket of her missing tooth until she laughed and pulled away. Then I turned to Jesús and, straightening my shirt, said to him, “That tooth is the most important thing we own.”

Gustavito was exultant; his scheme was going to work out after all. But Jesús looked uneasy. “Sophie, this is risky. Too risky. I don’t think I can agree to this.”

“But I can always take out the tooth,” she argued, “just like you can take out your knife. Whenever I feel Milhuevos getting too grabby, I’ll pull the tooth. But while she’s in my mouth—”

“—she can speak through you,” Jesús completed. He smiled at Sophie. “¿Are you sure you aren’t a spiritualist yourself?”

“Why? Do you have a job opening?”

We all laughed, Gustavito most of all. He went around me and slapped Sophie on the back. “¡What a woman! You don’t deserve her, Pedrito.”

“You’re right about that,” I said.

“Bueno,” said Jesús. Without another word, he took the aguardiente from me, swigged some, then slipped the tooth under his tongue and walked to the wall.

Even though by this point I was pretty sure he wasn’t a babalawo, I was still expecting some Santeria-like elements to the ceremony. But there was no ceremony to speak of. Jesús just approached each bullet-hole, poured some aguardiente over it (I think just to sanitize it a little), sealed the hole with his mouth, and sucked, hard. He started with Helms’s eyeball, then moved to the several holes in his chest, then finished by giving Helms a happy ending. Sophie snuck a picture of that.

He backed away from the wall, slowly turned toward us. He drank
more aguardiente, swished it around in his mouth. He sucked on Sophie’s tooth like it was candy. After thoroughly churning it in his mouth, he spit the tooth into his palm and bathed it in more alcohol. He held it up to the sun like a prospector assessing a nugget. Then, pleased with his work, he rejoined our little group.

“¿Did you get her?” asked Gustavito.

He nodded, dropped the tooth into Sophie’s hand. “Once you put it in your mouth, there’s no going back,” he said to her.

Sophie jammed the tooth back into place with her thumb. It always took an unsettling amount of force, but now her smile was perfect again.

We watched her.

Watched her.

Watched.

Her.

She shrugged. “I don’t feel anything.”

“A good sign,” said Jesús. “With luck, Milhuevos will always ask your permission before she speaks.”

“And I’ll be sure to say yes.”

“¡And now we’ll have a pig-roast for dinner!” said Gustavito, grabbing the pig by her forelegs and dancing with her. “¡Everything is working out perfectly!”

The pig, smiling but put-out, looked at us as if to say, “¿Isn’t Gustavito incorrigible?”

We arrived too late at Santa Clara to prepare a full-on puerco asado, the kind you cook underground for half a day, so we butchered our sweet pig into chops and chicharones. In fact, I did the butchering, with Gustavito as my sous-butcher and my extended family in attendance. They like to tease me about being a soft overfed American, so expertly deconstructing a pig was one of the quickest ways I could remind them that I was Cubano to the marrow. They were pleased with how good I was at it, and a little stunned. Good. It was nice to stun them for a change.

And thus Sophie and I and my extended family—there must have been thirty of us, spontaneously-generating aunts and uncles and cousins and nietos—began our feast of Cuban pleasures. Because of the farm, my family always had food, but this was the kind of spread these days you only saw at weddings: the aforementioned pork chops and chicharones, but also ropa vieja and Tía Prieta’s boliche, complete with a juicy chorizo running through its center; yucca and boñato and other viands, all studded with sea-green garlic; enough rice and black beans and garbanzos to feed all the devils in Hell; and fruit for dessert, guava and mango and mamey and papaya and my favorite, mamoncillos. They look like mini limes but have a peach-orange pome inside with the consistency of lychee. They’re sour and sweet and a little hard to eat because of their large seed; we sucked the fruit off the seeds with our legs spread so the juice wouldn’t stain our pant legs, and spit the seeds into a bucket we passed around. We’d roast the seeds tomorrow, and were already looking forward to them.

Then I broke out the suitcase full of Cafe Bustelo so we could have coffee to finish the meal. ¡What a cheer went up from my family! Tía Prieta, who was always wonderful and a bit exagerada, actually wept. “¡Café!” she said over and over.

I distributed gifts from the other three huge suitcases as well. Everybody got something. We spent a long time laughing over all my old-lady tías pressing bras and underwear over their clothes and posing like chulas. When I gave Gustavito the synthroid, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, gravely, “You saved my life, Pedrito.” To Jesús, who was staying the night and I hadn’t known would be there, I gave my own Kindle. He hugged me and called me his brother.

As we embraced, he whispered, “Watch her closely tonight.”

By the time Sophie and I headed to bed we were stuffed and drunk—¿did I forget to mention all the rum?—and overcaffeinated and, most of all, high on family. Every time I came to Cuba I felt the same way. In spite of the poverty and the terrible politics, I never felt more alive, more myself than when I was with my Cuban relatives. Sophie felt it too. We’ve daydreamed together about moving to Cuba, bringing our American savings to our family here. Maybe one day. Maybe once the Castro brothers die.

We fell asleep somehow, but uneasy dreams opened my eyes. 3:23 AM.

Sophie wasn’t next to me anymore. I padded to the bathroom; she wasn’t there. So I went to Gustavito’s room and, careful not to disturb his wife, woke him. Then together we went to find Jesús.

He was sleeping outside on a hammock, shirtless, the knife in his chest rising and falling. Gustavito did the honors. We gave Jesús a few seconds to let his mind rejoin our shared world. Then I asked, “¿Have you seen Sophie?”

He sat with his legs dangling from the hammock, deep in thought. Then he pointed at the barn. “Someone unbarred the door.”

He was right. We walked over and Gustavito pulled one door open.

Sophie sat on a rusted-out kitchen chair. Her hair was streaked with black now, and she had it tied into a bun (a style she abhorred). She faced forward, but her eyes were closed. The horses and chickens were pressed to the barn walls, as far as they could get from her.

Sophie lifted her chin, her eyes still shut. “Mi’jo,” she said.

There was none of Sophie’s American accent in the way she called me son. Her voice was throaty, coarse, as if from disuse. “¿Mámi?” I asked. I took a step toward Sophie.

A hand gripped my shoulder. I turned to Jesús. His other hand clutched the knife. He shook his head no. Then he exposed his teeth and, releasing his grip on me, tapped one of his incisors.

I turned back to Sophie. Still seated, her eyes still closed, she reached out to me. “Come to me,” she said. “Come and embrace your mother, whom you pulled out of time and rescued from death itself.”

This time, as she spoke, I saw what Jesús had seen before. Sophie’s fake tooth was gone.

I was reeling. Mámi’s soul was in the tooth, but the tooth was missing. Yet the woman in front of me was clearly no longer my Sophie.
“Mámi,” I said. My voice cracked. “¿Mámi, where’s the tooth? ¿How did you get inside Sophie? Please don’t hurt her, Mámi. Please give her back.” I felt my knees crumpling under the weight of me.

Gusvativo caught me before I fell, hoisted me erect. I had no idea he was still this strong. Once he had me steadied, he said to me, but loud enough for everyone to hear, “That’s not Milhuevos.”

“¿What?” I asked.

Sophie’s eyes opened. Then came the gap-toothed smile, a laugh Sophie’s throat could never generate. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Felicio Alberto Costas y Fernández.”

“The executed mayor of Brota Flor,” said Gustavito.

Anger grew from the middle of me and reinvigorated my limbs. “¿What did you do to my wife?”

Sophie’s shoulders shrugged. “I killed her. That tooth you stuck me in was much too constraining. So, as she slept, I shook the tooth free of her gums and dropped it down her throat. She choked to death quickly. Once she was dead, I was free to move in.”

He ran Sophie’s hands over her arms and torso, ending on her breasts. “She’s a little old for my taste, but I’m not complaining.”

“Hijo de puta,” Gustavito whispered.

“She’s still in there,” Jesús said to me. “Her hair is black and white. It’s not all black.”

“¿Can she fight him?”

“She needs to learn how. That will take time. But we can help her.”