The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (21 page)

SUMMER ENDED AND I BEGAN EIGHTH GRADE. SISTER
Margaret decided to seat the class in
alphabetical order, which landed me next to Julio Benitez. He was a bit nerdy like me, and alongside me, he was one of the heaviest boys in class—very
hoosky
. But unlike me, he had guts and gusto. For the talent show that year, he dressed up as Jimi Hendrix in a psychedelic shirt and headband. He went onstage with talcum powder that looked like cocaine smeared under his nostrils, lit a cigarette, and began playing a rendition of “Purple Haze.” Sister Margaret’s face flushed beet red; she stomped onstage ten seconds into his performance, slapped him across the face, then pulled him by the ear straight to the principal’s office. He was suspended for a week, but became one of the most popular kids in class—not necessarily a “cool” kid, but a crazy-fun one, a misfit that everyone loved, including me. It was a case of opposites attracting. I was well behaved, shy, and book smart; I’d help him with his homework or let him cheat off me, sometimes. He, on the other hand, was street-smart, fun-loving, and gutsy; he’d dare me to make faces behind Sister Margaret’s back or draft me into all-out spitball wars.

One day he invited me to his house after school and we spent the whole afternoon together goofing around. He played “Hotel California” over and over, trying to teach me a few chords on his electric guitar; then we played “Stairway to Heaven” backward, trying to hear the satanic verses that were allegedly masked into the recording. After that we shaved our faces in his parents’ bathroom; Julio swore that the more we shaved the sooner our beards would come in. We then changed into shorts and cannonballed into his pool until our butts were sore. Just before dinnertime, we rode our bikes over to Jennifer Izquierdo’s house—whom he had a crush on—and threw pebbles at her window. Nothing. Though Julio and I were an odd couple, I felt I could be myself around him in a way I couldn’t be around other boys. He liked me for me—and vice versa. Thankfully, Abuela approved of him; in her own words, he was
un hombrecito
. She’d let him come over anytime, or let me ride my bike to his house whenever I wanted—no questions asked. We spent the rest of the school year hanging out together: me trying to keep him out of trouble; he trying to get me into trouble.

HAVING A BEST FRIEND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY
life, I gained a new sense of confidence. I hoped our friendship would survive the summer apart, when I returned to El Cocuyito to work full-time. Julio’s shaving technique had proven to work: I had sprouted about a dozen whiskers on my chin—and was quite proud of them. I wasn’t quite yet a man, as Don Gustavo reminded me every day, but I wasn’t quite a boy either. My body had begun to change and so had I. I understood Don Gustavo and his lessons, and I began chitchatting with the regular customers like Felipe, who was obsessed with boxes. All week I’d set aside flattened boxes for him—the sturdier ones that had held cooking oils and sixty-four-ounce cans of Hawaiian Punch. Religiously, every Friday afternoon he’d arrive freshly showered, his gray hair slicked back, his neck and chest generously dusted with talc, wearing Bermuda shorts and loafers without socks.

Looking for me, he’d call out through the aisles,
“¡Oye, muchacho!”
a term of endearment, though I suspected he had trouble remembering my name. “You keep some boxes for me?” he’d ask every time, as if I wouldn’t remember what he was there for. Sometimes, just to tease him, I’d say I had given them away to someone else, or that my
tío
Pipo had used them all up to line the floor of the meat locker. Felipe’s wrinkly eyes would stretch open, instantly transforming him from a seventy-something man into a boy, until he figured out I was joking, again. He’d follow me behind the soft drinks into the stockroom and I’d pull out the boxes. He’d inspect each one for tears, stains, bends, choosing only the best ones from the batch: “
Esta sí . . . . Esta no . . . Sí . . . No . . . No . . . Sí . . .”
Then he’d thank me repeatedly as he walked away, the boxes tucked under his arms like giant folded wings.
“Gracias, muchacho,”
he would repeat, as if he could never repay
me for a few dumb boxes that would have ended up filling our Dumpster.
“Gracias, muchacho,”
as if I had just given him a hundred bucks.
“Gracias. Gracias.”

After weeks of the same routine, I finally asked Felipe, “
Carajo,
what do you use all these boxes for?” “For beauty,” he answered vaguely, and then added, “
Ven
, help me carry these home and I’ll show you.” We walked down the block to his 1940s-era house with its stucco walls like icing and jalousie windows he kept open, letting in the breeze that moved through the tamarind trees bathing the house in shade. Following him inside, I stepped into another world. “
Mira
, this is what I do with the boxes,” he said casually, gesturing at the dozens of cardboard models spread out on the sofa, sitting on top of the TV set, stored in the china cabinet, and covering the dining table. Building by building, Felipe had reconstructed
La Habana Vieja
—the old colonial section of Havana—out of cardboard.

“
Coño
—this is amazing! How long did it take you to make all these?” I asked. “Oh,
más o menos
six years, so far. I pass the time all by myself here
todos los días
. But I still need more buildings to finish,” he explained, and then showed me the model he was working on: “This is La Bodeguita del Medio, the famous restaurant in Havana on Calle Empedrado, where the mojito drink was invented. All the Cuban writers used to go there—even Hemingway. My wife and I saved up our
kilitos
for dinner there
de vez en cuando
. It’s still there, I think. I need to finish painting in the windows and cutting out the roof,
pero
I’m starting to forget what it looked like. I have to find an old photograph somewhere in a book or a magazine.
Ay, muchacho,
it’s getting harder and harder to remember
La Habana
. I think I’ve forgotten more than I remember.”

The following Friday, I volunteered to help him carry a load of boxes home; he returned the favor by making
un cafecito
for me and spreading out snacks for
merienda
. Munching chorizo and Manchego cheese, I asked him about one of his models. “Oh, that one?” he said. “You don’t recognize it,
muchacho
—the famous Catedral de La Habana? My
papá
and I used to sell flowers there
en la plaza
where all the
enamorados
would meet at night, holding hands and sneaking
besitos
behind the lampposts.
Imagínate,
all horny right in front of
la Virgen
and
Jesús
!” His favorite was the model of El Floridita, a corner building with long windows crowned with lunettes of stained glass that he made out of colored tissue paper, and balconies he propped up with toothpicks, hanging above the make-believe street. “That’s the nightclub where they invented
el
daiquiri,” he said. “They never let me in. I was too poor.” Felipe explained that he had been born into a family of street vendors in Havana. “But me and
mi amigo
Sergio peeked in the windows all the time.
A veces
across the street drunk and flirting with
las mujeres
walking out. The women as beautiful as the place—full of chandeliers, marble, and velvet. You should see it,
muchacho
.”

In truth, the models were somewhat crude. Felipe was never able to go to college, much less study architecture. But his knowledge of the city he had roamed every day of his childhood had kindled in him a lasting fascination with the city and its architecture. The places he named and stories he told echoed with the same enthusiasm I’d hear in my parents’ and grandparents’ voices whenever they’d speak of Cuba. Even though I wouldn’t actually
see
Havana for years, Felipe brought the city to three-dimensional life. Every Friday, spread out before me, right there on his dinner table, was a Havana I could touch, a Cuba I could hold in my hands.

ERNESTO NUÑEZ, KNOWN BY EVERYONE SIMPLY AS
Nuñez, was living proof of Cubans’ well-deserved reputation for
hablando mierda,
talking a lot of bullshit. Every afternoon that same summer, I noticed him lingering at the cafeteria counter, pestering Migdalia, as if she would ever be interested in an old man like him; and I could hear him too, blurting out Cuban
piropos
at her while she waited on customers.
“Oye, si cocinas como caminas me como hasta la raspa,”
he would say:
If you cook
the way you walk, I’ll even eat your table scraps
. Indeed, she was a knockout: her hazelnut-brown skin perfectly offset her blue-green eyes, which caught the light like gemstones. Young enough to be his granddaughter, she usually brushed him off with a pursing of her lips, but one day she gave him an ironic wink and told him to go soak his dentures, then take his afternoon nap before he fell asleep standing up.

Even that dismissal didn’t deter him from coming around again and again to flirt with Migdalia or, if that failed, strike up a conversation with anyone who would pretend to listen. Unfortunately, I was one of those people. Though I usually managed to dodge him, one day he came over to me with a whole
colada
of
café
as a bribe for a few minutes of conversation. But I didn’t have to say much—I couldn’t; he talked enough for both of us, carrying on about almost anything. I mostly nodded and pretended to be amused by his wisecracks. This became a ritual; he’d come find me every afternoon for a few minutes of chitchat, offering a shot of Cuban coffee from his
colada
. I soon learned he was a master of
dichos,
Cuban sayings. Practically everything that came out of his mouth was idiomatic; he didn’t speak Spanish, he spoke
Cubichi
.

“Mono de seda, mono se queda”
—
a monkey dressed in silk is still a monkey
—he’d say under his breath every time Erundina—one of the regulars—would come waddling into the store in high-heel shoes, all dressed up for nothing, her face streaked with rouge, wearing panty hose that didn’t match her skin tone and which rustled as she walked down the aisle.
“Llegó el bobo con fiebre”—here comes the retard with a fever
—he’d scoff when Esperanza’s nerdy son, Alberto, would come in flapping his size thirteen shoes, his pants hiked six inches above his belly button. Nuñez had also mastered the fine art of
nombrete,
Cuban nicknaming, dubbing the gossipy Michelle
El Cura
—the Priest—because she could make anyone confess their secrets. One day, Tamara, the part-time cashier, who was about a hundred pounds overweight and never used a girdle, made the unfortunate choice to wear a bright red muumuu to work; from that day on, thanks to Nuñez, she was known to all at El Cocuyito as
Chambelona—
Lollipop—or
Chambi
for short.

After so many afternoons
hablando mierda
with Nuñez, and buzzed on thimble-size swigs of
café,
his talents rubbed off on me. Watching my
tía
Carmencita at a family gathering pile three pounds of pork on her paper plate, I dubbed her
La Nevera
—the Ice Box. With no curves and shoulders as wide as her hips, she damn well looked as square and heavy as a refrigerator too. I wasn’t exactly proud of my new talent, but at last I was able to take revenge on my
primo
Rafi for naming me Lardo. At six feet two and 130 pounds, he looked like
una tripa,
and that’s exactly what I called him—the Intestine—right in front of my cousins, who roared with laughter as we waited in line to ride the Tidal Wave at the St. Brendan’s Carnival. He stomped away without a comeback, never to bother me again. Not even Nuñez was safe. One afternoon, watching him walk down the aisle toward me, I noticed he had dyed his eyebrows and hair jet-black and was wearing the latter slicked back like Béla Lugosi in
Count Dracula
.
“¡Oye! ¡Qué pasa, Vampiro!”
I shouted, and it stuck. He was the Vampire of the bodega from then on.

Thanks to Nuñez, I became fluent in
Cubichi,
one Cubanism at a time:
Juega con la cadena y no con el mono—
play with the chain, but not with the monkey;
No te ahogues en un vaso de agua—
don’t drown in a glass of water;
No te cojas el culo con la puerta—
don’t close the door on your ass. I greeted Nuñez every afternoon with the same saying:
Dímelo cantando—
tell it to me singing, and he would reply:
Dime algo aunque sea mentira—
tell me something even if it’s a lie. In
Cubichi
I could understand what it meant to sing what I needed to say, to tell lies when the truth just wasn’t enough. In
Cubichi
I could think like a Cuban, be a
cubano
without translating words or myself into English.

RAQUEL WAS A TRUE BODEGA GROUPIE, A MIDDLE-AGED
woman who popped into the store three or four times a day for a can of this or a bag of that, or to pick up her daily just-out-of-the-oven loaf of Cuban bread for dinner. At first we shared nothing more than the usual pleasantries—
Buenos días, ¿cómo andas?—
as she passed me in the aisles, clutching her sequined coin purse stuffed with crumpled bills and food stamps, zeroing in on her staples for the day. She knew where everything was, never needing my help. In fact, sometimes it seemed she knew more about the store than I did.

“
Mira
, these black beans have the wrong price.
Yo no soy
cheap, but these should be one sixty-nine, not one ninety-nine,” she brought to my attention one day, and she was right. “Okay,
está bien
. I’ll fix it,” I said, a bit peeved, taking out my pricing gun as she continued: “If you ask me, they should give these away, they’re terrible, nothing like my
frijoles, pero
I don’t have time to cook today. Work, work, work—that’s all we do in this country.
Ay, Cuba,
how I miss you! What is your name,
mi’jo
?” she asked. I answered, “Ricky,” before she began again: “Riqui?
Ay
, that was my son’s name too. Let me see,” she said taking hold of my chin and moving my face from side to side, catching the light at different angles. “You know . . . you look like him
un poquito
. He would be about your age now.
Bueno,
enough talk—
hasta mañana
.”