by Nina Moreno
“Before?” He looked startled by my surprise, like he’d been running on the assumption that I remembered something I didn’t, but I couldn’t have known him before the town meeting. “There’s no way. I have a very good memory, and plus, I’m a Santos.” The and you’re a very cute sailor tattooed with the sea was implied.
“Well, I didn’t have a boat back then.”
Back then? My mind raced back years, through my high school hallways, looking for him. “Did we have classes together?”
“No. But you ate lunch near me.”
Sophomore year flashed to mind. I didn’t have the same lunch period as my friends so I sat alone at a bench. The one beneath the live oaks where I could do homework in the shade. In my memory, I glanced to the right of that bench, and there, leaning against the brick wall, he sat, wearing headphones and holding a notebook like me.
He looked at me now, smiling as I found him. Alex, a little older and bearded, molded into the quiet boy who once sat a few feet away from me for an entire semester, both of us inhabiting the same space, neither breaching the other’s boundary.
“Alejandro,” I said. The memories bloomed with color. The faded red brick wall and freshly cut patch of grass. My favorite perfume of raspberries, and the wild clatter of lunchtime chaos. But in front of me was a boy with messy dark hair whose focus I envied so much, I decided to save to buy myself better headphones. I thought him tall, as most people are to me, and he always had a book leaned up against his long legs. The only time I ever heard him speak was on the phone to someone else.
“You spoke Spanish.”
He nodded. “Both my parents do. You met my mother.”
Right. Mrs. Aquino. “She knew my dad.” The sunlit moment felt cosmic. There was something here. Something curious and unfinished. I wanted to know more about him. Maybe there were more places our lives connected, more memories we both held. But my alarm sang out from my phone.
“I have to go,” I told him as I silenced it in a hurried rush. “But I want to know about—”
You. Could I just say that? I had no idea how to continue this conversation. It had been so long since I met someone. Maybe that’s all this was. Nerves over a new friendship with someone so much bigger they blocked out the sun.
“—the oyster reefs.” I grabbed my notebook again. “Can I schedule a conversation for us to do that?”
“Sure,” he said after a beat. I clicked my pen, ready to write. “I’m free most afternoons.”
“Great.” I wrote that down quickly. “And where would you be at that time?”
“My boat.”
My pen slipped. I jerked my head up from the stray line of ink. As I watched him leave, once again headed toward the harbor, I realized two things. First, he wasn’t much for good-byes. And the second? Someone alert the viejitos—just kidding, please don’t—but I was pretty sure I was on my way to having a crush on a boy with a boat.
Mom still hadn’t returned that evening. Frustrated, I bypassed the empty living room and climbed into bed with Mimi to watch her telenovela beside her.
“¿Qué es eso?” she asked, looking at my face.
“A sheet mask,” I explained, and propped her throw pillows behind my back.
“Sheet mask, qué es sheet mask?” Mimi leaned over to her nightstand and grabbed her familiar little tub of cold cream. “Me encanta esta crema.”
“Mimi, I’m eighteen. I don’t need night cream yet.”
She opened the tub and smoothed more down her neck. “¿Qué pasó?”
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
“¿Y tu madre?”
“I don’t know where she went. She forgot about her birthday, which of course meant she forgot what today is.”
“Ay, mi niña.” Her sigh was heavy and sad and surprisingly maternal.
“Why don’t you sound like that when you talk to her?”
“Sound like what?” she asked, but before I could argue, the commercial ended and she shushed me. We watched the episode together, and a little while later we heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. After a few more moments, Mom poked her head into the bedroom.
“What are you guys doing?”
“Miguel is about to find out he is actually his dead twin, Diego,” I said, relieved to see her. She sat down at the end of the bed. Mimi handed her the night cream. Mom twisted it open without saying a word and smoothed a little over her cheekbones.
“Where’d you go?” I asked, because I had to know. I was tired of the three of us never asking the real questions.
Mom flicked a glance between us. “You two make a hell of a sight.”
“It’s relaxing and moisturizes my inherited dry skin,” I said.
“Right. Well, let’s see…I bought a bottle of wine and sat at the end of the dock where I drank the whole thing before slipping a note inside and chucking it into the water.”
“Really?” I asked. I had not expected that.
“I do it every year.”
Mimi simmered beside me.
“But this is the first time you’ve been home on this day,” I pointed out.
Mom swayed a little. “I’m always somewhere on the Gulf. Last year I was in…” She frowned in concentration, but it softened as she remembered. “Louisiana.”
“You’re drunk,” I said, annoyed. She did this every year. And I never knew.
She waved her hand back and forth. “I walked home from the marina.”
“They saw you at the marina?”
“Who saw me?”
Mimi reached for her saint medallion on her nightstand and muttered a prayer.
“People, Mom. The fishermen and sailors who say we’re cursed with bad luck.”
“Yes, they probably saw me.” She handed the night cream back to Mimi after several tries of getting the lid back on right. “Never figured out how to swallow my grief in such a presentable way like you, Mami.”
“Borracha,” Mimi accused mildly.
“Y diciendo verdades,” Mom shot back and stood. She wobbled a little but managed to stay upright.
“And that doesn’t sound messy to you?” I asked.
“Well, I suppose it would be considered littering.”
“No, Mom. Emotionally messy.”
She barked a harsh laugh and reached out for the wall, feeling for it to find her way back to the door.
I climbed out of bed. “Come on, I’ll get you some water.”
“But I thought the water cursed us,” Mom muttered. When she stumbled into the door, she glanced back at me and said, “I’m not drunk. Only clumsy.”
I grabbed her arm and led her into the kitchen, dropping her off at a chair. I filled a glass with water and handed it to her. She considered it.
“My mom never let me see her cry,” she admitted thoughtfully. “I was always so afraid of being sad, because I thought it would swallow me whole.” She looked at me, her brown eyes shining with emotion. “I want you to know it’s okay to be sad.” She smiled and touched my face. I realized I still had on my sheet mask, so I pulled it off. Mom watched me and said, “You look like a ghost who came back to life. Oh, baby. I shouldn’t have left you here. You got all…serious.”
“You didn’t leave me, Mom. I chose to stay.”
Mom looked at me now as if she was remembering. “You and her were always good together,” she whispered. She drank her water, kissed me on my cheek, and stumbled onto the couch.
I helped her out of her shoes and went to grab her favorite blanket from my bed, but when I returned to her side, she was already covered with the quilt from Mimi’s room. I glanced up. My abuela stood in the doorway to her bedroom. Her face was weary with heartache. She said nothing before closing her door.
I watched my mother sleep and wondered what she wrote in her notes to the sea.
Mom slept in the next morning. Spread across the couch with her mouth half-open, she would probably wake with a righteous hangover, but that was between her and Mimi.
&
nbsp; “Happy birthday, Mom,” I whispered. She was out.
With five minutes until I had to clock in for work, I burst into the back room of the bodega, grateful to catch Ana in time. It was a weekday, so she’d only come into the bodega to grab free food on her lunch break before returning to school. Bright cartoons bounced around on the TV. Junior and Paula sat across from her with their plates of ham croquetas and crackers.
I sank into the chair beside Ana. “I have to talk to you.”
“Well, here she is.” Junior looked up from his phone with a cheeky grin. “You Santos girls are good at stirring up chisme.” My impatience to talk to Ana disappeared in the wave of fear over what my mother had done now. “Hold on, there’s a picture.”
I was going to die. Or kill her. Oh god, someone saw her drunk at the docks. Ana, Paula, and I leaned forward to look at the picture. Relief washed over me only to be immediately doused by outrage. It was me standing on the sidewalk outside the hardware store with Alex yesterday afternoon.
I gasped. “Are you spying on me, you sleazebag?”
Paula smacked her brother’s shoulder.
“No! This is the viejitos’ Insta account.”
“Those chismosos,” I hissed. It was a good picture, though. The sunlight was all soft and gold, highlighting my brown skin and floral A-line skirt that gave my short, curvy frame a nice silhouette. Alex’s head was bent toward me.
Paula snatched the phone out of her brother’s hand. “Damn, that’s Alex now? Dude got fine.” She swiped to scroll, but Junior wrestled it back.
“This is real friendly.” Junior pointed at his phone. “You guys are looking real hard at each other, if you know what I mean.”
Of course I didn’t know what he meant, but I wanted to look at the picture again. I focused on Ana. She was giving me such an I told you look. “You’re making time to sneak around with this dude and I bet you still haven’t told Mimi.”
“About Alex?”
“No, about college!”
“Listen,” I said. “I’m not sneaking around. Every time I’ve seen him I’ve been on task. It all started when I almost crashed the delivery bike—”
Junior’s laugh became strangled. “The hell are you doing talking to strange dudes when you got that much merchandise? What’d I tell you?” He tapped his temple. “No street smarts.”
“And then I saw him at the bookshop and he was reading about knots—”
“Knots?” Ana practically yelped. “You know who reads about knots? Kidnappers and murderers, Rosa.”
“You listen to way too many podcasts,” I accused. “It’s for boat stuff.”
Ana jabbed a finger into the table. “That’s just what a murderer would say.”
The door to the inside of the store opened. It was Mrs. Peña, and Lamont Morris trailed behind her. He wore dark jeans and a short-sleeved button-up decorated with tiny pineapples. His backpack was slung over his shoulder. His tense expression relaxed into a smile when he saw me. “Hey, Rosa.”
“What’s up, valedictorian,” I said, smiling. Our competition for the top spot had been a friendly one.
Mrs. Peña snatched the clipboard off her table. “Teen-agers will be the death of me. So now you’re telling me I have no band?” she asked Lamont.
His face was pinched. “I guess Tyler and I could just do an acoustic set, but to be completely honest, we really suck at those.”
“Dios mío.” Mrs. Peña rubbed her temple.
“What happened?” I asked Lamont. I knew he was the bassist in the Electric.
“Brad just moved to Nashville,” he said. At my blank look, he explained, “Our asshole drummer. Well, former asshole drummer.”
Beside me, Ana perked up. “I’m a drummer.”
Mrs. Peña’s head jerked in her daughter’s direction. She considered her and then looked at Lamont. “She is a drummer.”
“Cool. Do you have a set?”
Before Ana could answer, Mrs. Peña said, both aggrieved and relieved, “Yes, she does. One that cost too much money.” She pointed back at Ana with her clipboard. “If I give you a drummer, you give me a band again, right?”
“Works for me.” Lamont turned to Ana. “Meet us at Tyler’s garage tonight to practice.”
Ana agreed coolly, but once he left, her eyes lit with excitement and she let out a wild laugh. “Can you believe this? A band! A real band and a show and oh my god, finally.” She grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
“Ana!” Mrs. Peña called from somewhere inside the store. “School! Now!”
Ana’s grin didn’t budge. “We’ve got a band and festival to save.” She let go and slipped her purple drumsticks off the table, tapping a rat-a-tat on her way out of the room.
“Don’t forget, my mother’s birthday dinner is tonight,” I announced before everyone scattered. Mom’s shameless honesty last night had inspired me. She drunkenly told Mimi she’d been tossing bottles into the sea every year, and the world hadn’t ended. Mimi even covered her with a quilt and looked at her fondly after the confession. I wanted that. We might argue after I told her about Havana, but after the uncomfortable argument, we would be okay. And Ana was right—Mimi probably wouldn’t yell at me in public.
“Don’t sharpen the knives tonight,” Paula said.
“Also, I might need help defusing us when we start arguing.”
“Are you a granddaughter or referee?” Junior asked.
“Is there ever a difference?” I grabbed my apron and went to stock cereals and practice how I would tell Mimi my news. Finally.
At the end of my shift, I met Mom and Mimi in the newly renovated outdoor dining area. The tables, painted in bold, bright shades, were now lit by hanging tin lanterns. Mimi took in all of the recent changes with a curious look. By the margarita at her elbow, Mom was clearly moving on from her hangover. The viejitos covertly watched us, ready to report the inevitable fight.
Benny stopped beside our table. “Tonight, we have appetizers.”
“Stop lying. We never have appetizers,” I said. Mr. Peña cooked dinner and that was it. He didn’t understand why people expected snacks before their food.
“Mom is trying something new.” Benny waved a hand at the lights and chairs. “There was a lot of yelling in the kitchen, so please don’t order any of it even though it looks decent.”
“You’re a terrible waiter,” I told him.
“So I keep telling them.”
Mimi tsked. “You are a good boy who works to help his familia.” The praise was for him, but the loaded implication was a birthday gift for Mom.
“Tell your mother to keep the tequila coming,” Mom said with a shake of her ice.
Benny, obviously noting the tension, took a step back before spinning away. It hadn’t always been this way. When it was just Mom and me we always did something fun and ridiculous for both of our big days. For my seventh birthday we ate pizza for every meal and rented all the Star Wars movies, and the next year we went to a roller rink in Georgia that sold frozen pickle juice and played nonstop disco. We always gorged on food and laughed, which made getting older feel like a perfect thing to do. But when we moved to Port Coral, the day—just like everything else between us—had changed.
Mrs. Peña delivered a shrimp-and-scallop ceviche served alongside plátano chips still warm from the fryer and crispy chicharrones. It was plated very cool and not at all like Mr. Peña usually did. Because Mrs. Peña waited at the table, we holstered our issues and took our first bite.
“Good?” she asked, and Mom and I both shot her a thumbs-up. Mimi leaned into the fried pork belly with gusto. “Good,” Mrs. Peña said, delighted. “I’m going to go tell my stubborn husband and then maybe kill him.”
She left, and I spooned a mountain of ceviche onto a plátano and shoved it in my mouth. The lime and salt sang together in concert.
“I saw your wall today,” Mimi said to Mom. “It’s white. Is that it? If you want to paint houses, ours could use a coat.”
&nbs
p; “I don’t paint houses.”
“Pero you could. That would be steady work, no?”
“I’m not looking for steady work.”
I popped three chips into my mouth.
Mimi made a haughty sound under her breath.
I continued to dig into the ceviche while another argument rolled over them. It was mild and mostly passive-aggressive, but we pulled a few glances. Mr. Gomez was pretending to take a selfie, but I could see the screen and it was pointed at Mom and Mimi. Mr. Saavedra was getting the latest Wi-Fi password from Benny. I idly wondered if they’d figured out how to do live streaming. Mom and Mimi’s fights were like a summer storm—sudden, inevitable, and impossible for me to plan my day around.
I wondered what this table might be like with two more people. If this family were whole instead of broken into pieces, would our edges still be so sharp?
“Mimi, I have to tell you something.” There was no going back this time. I had practiced this all afternoon, and the boxes of cereal had taken it well enough.
Mimi readjusted the bracelets at her wrist. “¿Qué pasó, mi amor?” she asked me.
“I got into a university in South Carolina, and I’m going to accept, because they have a study-abroad program in Cuba—with the University of Havana, actually—and I intend on going.” I ripped off the Band-Aid like a total pro. The ensuing silence would possibly kill me, but still. I’d done it.
Mimi set her glass of water down. “¿Qué?” she asked softly, her gaze sharp.
“I want to go to Cuba,” I told her. “For school. I want to go to school there.”
Mimi looked at Mom. “What did you do?”
Mom signaled Benny for another drink. “This is Rosa’s decision, not mine. Or yours.”
“You can’t go back.” Mimi’s voice sounded small and haunted.
“But I’ve never been in the first place. I want to see it now that we can.”
Mimi shook her head.
“Why not?” I asked, desperate and frustrated.
Her hands swung up, her bracelets hissing. “The farm is gone, our family is dead, everyone is hungry, and a Castro is still alive, but you want to go to school there? Dime qué quieres.”