by Nina Moreno
Frankie stepped up to the register with a basket. His short hair was bright purple this week. “See what day?”
“Rosa asking about guys,” she told him.
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t ask about guys.”
Paula scanned the steaks and cereals, and Frankie turned to look at me. “What guy?”
“Oh my god, there’s no guy,” I said. “Also, I’m not ten anymore. I could talk to a guy.” It was true that I didn’t date. I didn’t have the time. There had been kisses at parties and group movie things, but nothing to write home about.
“Does Mimi know about this?”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Paula said. “Rosa met him at the harbor.” She said it like a dirty secret, and Frankie looked shocked.
“I saw you on that bike. I thought you had a delivery, not a date.”
I leaned over my register and looked toward the store aisles, desperately calling out, “Is anyone ready to check out?”
“Don’t listen to us,” Paula said, laughing. “Date whomever you want.”
Frankie half-heartedly nodded. I could tell it totally pained him to agree. “Just, to be safe, maybe not boys with boats.”
Sometimes it felt like the idea of being cursed was all in my head. Like it was a fabled warning to remind me to work hard and focus on my goals. The women before me had lost too much for me to be anything but firmly focused on the future. I was meant to achieve and make all of the loss, heartache, and sacrifices mean something.
But the curse looked back at me from their worried gazes. It turned an entire town into an anxious parent who feared I might fall into the water at any moment. Even the idea of me being near the sea frightened old fishermen and stressed my friends. Maybe going to the sea tempted something older and wilder than me. Something that collected bones like seashells and birthed hurricanes. I was bound to find my own heartache out there, too, like my mother and abuela before me.
And yet, after being there, I was filled with an edgy sort of wonder. I knew where my father had last set off from. No one ever talked about him without pain, but out there he was remembered fondly. I envied their ease with ghosts.
It was still raining when my shift ended. The wind picked up as I got closer to home. I grabbed my board and ran the last block, a crash of lightning startling a yelp from me just before I reached the front steps.
When I looked up, my mother was waiting for me by the door.
My mother was here, but she wasn’t home. She didn’t have one. She might have given birth to me in the small hospital on the other side of town, and once upon a time she might have sung me to sleep in the rocking chair on the front porch with songs of magical seashells, but this wasn’t home to her. I never doubted she loved us, but whether she was a cursed mermaid or a falling star we couldn’t keep, I didn’t know.
“Hey, you,” she said, waiting beneath the glow of the porch light.
I nodded my acknowledgment and headed past, unlocking the door with my key. She didn’t carry one anymore. She didn’t call either. Phones always dropped her calls home. She and the house were like warring siblings, and it always knew when she returned, because it stopped working. Food burned, candles wouldn’t stay lit, and worst of all, my laptop always struggled to find the Wi-Fi signal. Mom coming home was as troublesome as Mercury going retrograde.
“I finished that mural in Arizona. They wanted these awful sunflowers in their dining room, so awful sunflowers is what they got.” She shook the rain from her yellow coat in the entryway as I continued inside, turning on lights as I went. She gathered her long dark hair into a topknot. “When did you cut your hair?” she asked me, curious.
I dropped my bag on the kitchen table and exhaled sharply. “I didn’t.”
She slipped her bag off her shoulder and onto the couch. “Oh,” she said, her voice small.
Yeah, oh. I opened my laptop and clicked my mouse pad. I needed the internet for class and as a portal out of this kitchen. And yet, at the same time, I wanted to be here. I wanted it to be as simple as throwing my arms around my mother and burrowing into the smell of violets and sunshine. She would ask me a hundred questions about my day and listen to every single wandering answer with rapt attention. Because that was my mother.
I had spent the first seven years of my life following her in her search for home. We tried cities and mountains, but always avoided the sea. I missed Port Coral every time we left after a short trip to visit Mimi. Mom finally decided we could stay here for good after I turned seven. We shared a room like always. She walked me to my first day of third grade.
She was gone by middle school.
Her visits were once as steady as the tides. But the older I got, the less the calendar and moon were able to track her. A storm on the horizon, my mother on the front porch. She always knocked, and I hated that. She returned, bursting with affection and stories, bringing gifts that grew up with me as she explained birth control or helped me buy a bigger bra, before disappearing yet again.
Love and mothers weren’t simple. So I stayed at the kitchen table while Mom lingered in the other room.
The door opened and Mimi strolled inside. She didn’t appear to be surprised by Mom’s arrival. Maybe the rain had clued her in. Perhaps she could tell the difference between typical precipitation and the foreshadowing kind, in the same way her wind chimes knew the difference between a strong breeze and looming danger.
“Hola,” she said and brought her errand bags to the kitchen. She paused and lifted her cheek for a kiss from Mom. “¿Tienes hambre?”
“Yeah, I’m starving.” Mom sat at the counter as Mimi began to cook. This was our normal routine whenever Mom returned to Port Coral between jobs. Her career had taken off after she painted a mural of a starlit Parisian café inside the Philadelphia coffeehouse where she worked as a barista when I was five. She had a simple website where people bought her artwork, and she traveled the country to do commissioned work. Knowing her, she did graffiti in between. Being in constant motion was the rhythm of my mother’s life.
“Mimi, what does this mean?” I imitated the older fisherman’s gesture from earlier. It was hard to google a gesture.
My abuela gasped, offended. My mother laughed.
“What?” I demanded.
“It’s an old warding sign,” Mom explained. “To keep evil away.”
“An old man did it to me.”
With an almost audible click, both their gazes narrowed at once. “Which old man?” Mom asked, sounding like she was a single name away from sharpening a knife or brewing a hex.
“Over by the boardwalk,” I said.
Mom’s expression turned curious. “Where on the boardwalk?”
I squinted. “Like, the end of it?”
“You mean, the marina?” Mom asked.
Mimi’s thunderous gaze snapped to Mom. “Did you go, too?”
Mom muttered a curse under her breath. “I just got here, and for the record, I am not seventeen anymore.”
Mimi looked at me again. “Why were you there?”
“I did a delivery.” I went to the fridge and grabbed a can of pineapple soda. “For the bodega.” I watched her as I took a sip.
Mimi and Mom shared a loaded look. I frowned, feeling like baby Rosa all over again. “I might have to go back for festival planning,” I blurted.
Mom’s brows shot up. “You’re planning Spring Fest?”
“Mrs. Peña is pretty much in charge, but the whole town is pitching in. We’re turning it into a fund-raiser to raise money to save the harbor from being bought by some developer.”
“Wow.” Mom looked surprised. “So things can change in Port Coral.”
Mimi began pounding a steak on the counter with a mallet. The steaks had been marinating all day. Onions sizzled with crushed garlic in olive oil. My stomach grumbled.
Mom leveled a look at Mimi. “If everyone’s helping, what are you doing for the festival? Some secret bruja stuff?”
Mom used the word purposely to ruffle M
imi, who didn’t take the bait, instead dropping the first breaded steak in the sizzling hot oil. Mimi was a curandera. She grew her own medicine in her garden and created teas, tinctures, and tonics, but she never called herself a bruja. The term was still used negatively by older generations, if it was uttered at all. But I’d heard them whisper it about Mom. Sometimes there was a knock at the door, late at night when she was home, and a sad-eyed soul waiting on the other side. Mom would sit with them, cards spread across the old wood table. My mother was a storyteller fluent in spells and heartache.
“Was there anything you wanted to do in particular?” I asked Mimi. “I was thinking about setting up a stand with some sage bundles and tinctures.”
“No sé, mi amor. We will see.”
“It’s, like, three weeks away, Mimi.”
Mimi smacked Mom’s hand, which had been wandering toward the first fried steak. “Oye, but don’t rush me.”
Mom slipped the small piece of steak she’d stolen into her mouth. “And what’s your pet project for it?” she asked me.
“Not sure yet. Everyone keeps reminding me to do my homework, like I haven’t been on top of that since kindergarten.”
“My honor-roll Rosa,” Mom said affectionately. I tried not to let it bother me.
“We can set up a dominos tournament with lessons hosted by the viejitos. Xiomara can teach salsa and bachata. We’ll serve pastelitos and Cubano sandwiches. A spin on Hemingway with a Catch the Biggest Fish contest.”
“This all sounds very…Cuban,” Mom pointed out.
My smile fell away. The urge to defend my idea made me uncomfortable. I cleared my throat. “Well, the bodega is sponsoring it and we have a lot of Latinx people in this town, not just Cuban, and we should celebrate that.”
“Latinx?” Mimi asked, hand on her hip.
“It’s an inclusive term,” Mom explained.
Mimi rolled her eyes. “Eso no es una palabra.”
“It is a word, get over it,” Mom said, then grinned. “You see her hands flying when she gets excited? If she’s not careful, she’ll signal an airplane.”
Mimi laughed. I had to bite back a smile.
We ate our bistec empanizado together. Mom sat across from me, curled into her chair, smiling between bites as Mimi updated her on all our neighbors. The rain eased outside, and I settled into the comfort of being together. I wondered how long she would stay this time.
“Which class do you have tomorrow?” Mom asked me as she got up to make coffee. Mimi took our plates to the sink.
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” I told Mom. “But it doesn’t really matter now because they’re all online.”
“I would be terrible with that. I need the accountability,” she said without a trace of irony in her voice.
Mimi’s harsh laugh tumbled out too fast and loud to stay under her breath.
The easy peace shattered like a thrown plate. Forks and knives clattered sharply together as Mimi washed them in the sink. Mom poured sugar into a metal cup, spilling some onto the counter, a gritty mess to be cleaned later. She splashed the first spit of coffee into the cup and tapped her spoon fast and hard against the metal, agitating the hot espresso and sugar together, creating an angry foam for the rest of the Cuban coffee. Mimi’s lips pressed together in a familiar thin line of displeasure.
The kitchen was about to burst. Home sweet home.
I grabbed my laptop and got to my feet. “I’m going to finish some work.”
In my bedroom, I paced in front of the small nightstand that held my altar. Deeper in the house, my mother and abuela had begun arguing. “She’s back,” I told the photos of my father and abuelo. Nothing. But what did I expect in return from these men on my table?
I knew as much about them as I knew about Cuba.
“Where is that ugly yellow blanket? The one with the daisies?” Mom’s tired voice called from the hallway. The linen closet door squeaked open. “It’s my favorite one.”
“¡No me grites! It’s there!” Mimi shouted from the kitchen. I turned my radio on low.
“No, it’s not,” Mom said, quieter. She knocked against the neighboring wall as she searched the closet, her frustration evident. I pulled open my drawer and grabbed a soft shirt to sleep in. Mom called out, “I don’t see it!”
I cleaned my face with a makeup-remover wipe.
“Oye, pero it’s there. I saw it!” Mimi returned.
“It’s not here.” Mom sighed, the sound of it heavy and tired. “It’s fine, I’ll just use this blue one.” I turned off my bedside lamp and crawled into bed, curling beneath the yellow daisy blanket that always smelled like violets and sunshine.
I woke to salt on my floor. I sat at the edge of my bed, wiping sleep from my eyes, trying to comprehend the coarse mess sprinkled around my bed.
Mom leaned in my doorway. Her dark hair was down around her shoulders and her honey-yellow crop top exposed her tanned midriff. “Be careful. Mimi is mopping.”
I caught the potent scent of lemon and rosemary. Mimi was cleansing. Now I could make out the music that woke me. It had the crackle of an old Cuban song and a beat you could swirl and dance to, even as the lyrics referenced saints, orishas, and salvation. One of Mimi’s records. Her player was so ancient it had to be cranked, but she considered that part of the ritual.
Her cleansing days were calming to me. The fresh smells and sounds grounded me, but looking at my mother’s tense pose, I wondered how it felt to always have your home-coming marked like this.
“It’s my bad juju.” She shrugged and turned away. “I stopped taking it personally when I was, like, twelve. Coffee’s in the kitchen.”
I walked along the grout lines between the tiles. Mimi was halfway to the front door, which meant she was almost done. When she saw me she immediately leaned down to check whether I was wearing socks, like this was my first time in a house with an abuela and a mop.
Sandalwood incense burned, and the sweet, earthy scent of sage she always started with still hung in the air. I poured myself a cup of coffee and opened my laptop. It took longer to wake up than I did, and with Mom being home, it would take a few minutes to find Wi-Fi and get my e-mails to sync. I settled in.
“Show me your pictures,” I asked Mom. She was terrible with phones—lost them incessantly—but she always carried a digital camera on her. She turned it on and handed it to me. I scrolled through the most recent images. Among them were paintings and murals she had uploaded to her online photo album, but there were more here. The monstrous sunflowers in someone’s dining room. A field of wildflowers outside of an art studio. Tired, smiling cowboys with their hats in their hands. A dock that invited you out to sea. Lemon trees bursting with fruit, stars shimmering over calm waters, shady sidewalks covered in fallen petals.
I looked up, and Mom was watching me, waiting. She chewed on her thumbnail.
“They’re all beautiful,” I told her. “And the cowboys are pretty cute.”
She laughed, sounding relieved. “That was for a high school in Austin. Their mascot was in desperate need of a makeover. I heard they won their next basketball game.”
Mimi walked into the kitchen, a bushel of sweet-smelling herbs and a knit bag in one hand and a black metal pot in the other. She dropped them onto the counter with a heave. She looked at us and complained, “Nadie me ayuda.”
“I made the coffee,” Mom said.
“I just woke up,” I argued.
Mimi looked unimpressed with our excuses. She lit a charcoal and dropped it into the pot. “The hierba is full of weeds. Go pull them.”
“Do we get an allowance?” Mom teased.
Mimi scoffed, but her lips twitched. She dropped in a few dried leaves, flowers, and roots, and fragrant smoke rose out of the pot. We all took a moment to enjoy the calming scent of her homemade incense blend.
“Are we going to get high in here?” Mom asked.
“Out!” Mimi called, and we slid out of the room, laughing.
Outside, we half-he
artedly began to pull weeds in the front yard, but after five minutes, my stomach growled. “I’m hungry.”
Mom dropped back on her heels. “Me too. Let’s go down to the bodega. She’s fired up her cauldron and won’t even notice we’re gone.”
Ten minutes later, we stopped in front of a display of freshly baked desserts at the bodega. I had never seen them carry desserts. “What is all this?” I asked Junior with my nose nearly pressed against the glass. It was like an episode of my favorite baking show. Triple chocolate with ripe strawberries. Lemon curd sponge cakes with raspberry and rose. Passion fruit with cream. Coffee cake swirled through with cinnamon and mocha. I spotted the pastelitos. “Is all of this from the marina restaurant, too?”
Junior walked over to us and nodded. “Yup.”
I pointed at the remaining pastelitos made with the flakiest dough, sprinkled with sugar, impossibly light with sweet guava and creamy cheese.
“I want all of them.”
“Damn, girl.”
“I wish I could get one of everything,” Mom told him with a warm laugh.
Junior’s gaze turned dreamy—and not from the desserts. He packaged up the rest of the pastelitos and added a coffee cake with a wink. Gross.
“Where’s your tía?” Mom asked.
Junior shrugged. “She’s been out all day.”
Mom looked disappointed as we left.
We ate while we walked, neither of us filling the easy silence, and Port Coral stirred awake as we headed across the town square. The crape myrtles were flowering white and pink while the jacarandas spilled purple blooms onto the grass. Papá El was out with his Popsicles. The flavors rotated every day, but there was always something tropical and sweet. Spring was blossoming and my mother was back, but I only knew how long one of those would last. I took a big bite of my pastelito, sinking my teeth into the guava and cheese.
“Why were you looking for Mrs. Peña?” I asked.
“To see her,” she said, sounding embarrassed and defensive. “If you came back to town, you’d look up Ana-Maria, wouldn’t you?” Sometimes I forgot they grew up together. I hoped Ana and I never became as distant as our mothers.