Don't Date Rosa Santos

by Nina Moreno

  Tension swam from our table like a storm cloud that swallowed the rest of the dining area. A domino did not move at the viejitos’ table, and chairs refused to squeak beneath their uncomfortable patrons. Even the breeze stilled.

  What did I want? I wanted the reassurance that it was okay to dump all of my questions about family and culture on someone who’d lost both. I wanted her to be proud of me, to let me in, but instead she guarded me from all of it. Our past was a wound that would not heal, and I didn’t know how to make her understand I just wanted to make it better. For all of us.

  Mimi watched me with an old fire banked in her steady brown eyes.

  Tucked away in my bag, a notification sang out from my phone, breaking the standoff. I fished it out, because it was the sound assigned to incoming messages from my school e-mail. My heart skipped when I read it was from the study-abroad program director. I clicked it open without reading the subject line.

  So it took several tries to understand the first sentences.

  Thank you for your interest…recent changes in national policies with regards to American students traveling to Cuba…need to review. The rest of the e-mail blurred into a watercolor mess.

  “What’s the matter? What happened?” Mom asked.

  It took a few tries to collect my fractured thoughts. “Um, well.” I put my phone away, my throat tight. “I actually just got word that the study-abroad program to Havana has been…canceled for the foreseeable future.” As Mom and Mimi looked back at me with stoic expressions, I realized I should have expected this. There was no reason to be surprised or disappointed. No reason to cry. The timing of the e-mail didn’t even strike me as strange—of course this would happen to the cursed girl as soon as she had finally worked up the courage.

  “See?” Mimi said after a beat. “You can’t go. You try to go and they’ll keep you. Throw you in jail, and when they take you to jail, you don’t come back.”

  Mom lowered her voice. “She’s not going to go to jail, Mami.”

  Mimi gritted out in Spanish, “You weren’t there. They show up and take you because you said the wrong thing to the wrong person. And you don’t come back again.”

  “Is that why you left?” My heart was somewhere in my throat, and it felt too big to fit back into place. I felt both starved and selfish. “Were you going to be arrested?”

  “It was not safe,” Mimi said, her eyes haunted. “We were not safe.” She blinked at the familiar window of el Mercado. She scanned the space around us, taking in the viejitos at their table, the town square lit by gas lamps just beyond her. She looked strung tight and ready to snap or flee. With a shaky hand she picked up her ice water. “They promise one thing before taking it away again.

  “Carajo, qué mierda,” she cursed. Mom choked on her next sip, erupting into coughs.

  Benny dropped off our plates of arroz con pollo with tostones and yucca drenched in mojo. “There’s flan when you guys are done.” He slid me a sad look. He’d overheard my news, then.

  I pushed my fork into my rice but couldn’t find my appetite. An ultimately impossible idea had proved itself as such. It was as simple and inevitable as that. Look at the three of us. Mimi was secretly chasing miracles on an island she would never see again, while Mom was throwing bottles into the sea with letters no one would read. And now there was me, the dutiful daughter who still couldn’t win.

  “It’s okay to be sad,” Mom told me quietly as I grieved for a future that had never been mine.

  Once Mimi was tucked away in bed with her novelas, I slipped into the garden room and grabbed the notebook. On my way out, I stopped at her bedroom door and said, “I have to finish some homework with Ana.” Focused on her TV and night cream, Mimi waved me off.

  On the front porch I quietly closed the door behind me.

  “When I used to leave at night, I had to use the window.”

  Startled, I dropped the notebook. Mom glanced from it to me. She knew it wasn’t my notebook, but I didn’t explain, and she didn’t ask. She continued to lazily rock back and forth in the rocking chair.

  “Well, she trusts me,” I said.

  Mom nodded with a thoughtful look. Her gaze returned to the night sky.

  With nothing to say, I turned to go.

  “Be safe,” she called after me.

  I followed the sound of drumming to Ana’s garage. The room was empty save for Ana and her set. Her family was probably upstairs, cursing her right now, but Peña house rules said Ana had until nine to play. When she spotted me, she acknowledged me with a nod, but continued to play whatever song she was drumming along to in her headphones. I settled onto the old orange couch. When she was done, she pushed back the headphones.

  “How did it sound?”

  “Awesome.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What song was I playing?”

  “You know I don’t know.”

  “I practiced with the band today, and oh my god. It was so much better than jazz band. I mean, as soon as I got there, the lead singer dude, Tyler, is all…What’s the matter?”

  “What? Nothing! Tell me about band practice.” It was getting harder to hold my smile in place.

  “You look like you’re about to cry.”

  I laughed. It sounded a little unhinged. “I always look like that.”

  She wasn’t convinced. “What happened?”

  My voice careful, I confessed, “They canceled the program to Havana.”

  Ana got to her feet and pulled me into a fierce hug. My tears spilled against her shoulder. Ana wasn’t soft, but she tried when I needed it. “You’ll find a way,” she whispered, sounding so sure. But I wasn’t. “It’s right down there, and hell, even cruise ships are going now. It’s not like it is for Mimi or our parents. You can go, school or not.”

  I stepped back and wiped my face. “I’m so bummed, but I’m also freaking out, because now…I don’t know what I want. And I always know what I want. Do I still want to go to Charleston? Did I really consider Florida? Miami? Or even a different major? It all just lined up as this perfect, legitimate way of studying in Cuba in the face of everything that said I couldn’t.”

  We stared at each other in the ensuing quiet. Ana raised her brows. “The indomitable Rosa Santos is in the midst of a small crisis.”

  I held my thumb and forefinger up, and tried to measure my panic in centimeters.

  She tugged my hand down to my side. “You’re getting tiki-tiki.”

  “I am not.”

  “You are,” she said. “You’re stressed because you’re used to impressing.” I tried to argue, but Ana wouldn’t hear it. She lived in a house full of Latinos, so it was hard to talk over her. “You are. You’re afraid of disappointing everyone. You prepared yourself to death, but you don’t owe anyone a success story.”

  “Success story? Ana, I am not offering one. If anything, I’m being super selfish and was wholly prepared to take all of Mimi’s work and sacrifices and break her heart.”

  Ana was shaking her head. “You weren’t being obvious about it, trying to become a lawyer or doctor. But you’re barely stopping to consider what you want, because your diaspora dream has always been to grow up and stop questioning whether you’re Latina enough or deserving of what Mimi lost.”

  “That’s not…” I trailed off.

  Enough. I was still trying to work that one out. I was a collection of hyphens and bilingual words. Always caught in between. Two schools, two languages, two countries. Never quite right or enough for either. My dreams were funded by a loan made long before me, and I paid it back in guilt and success. I paid it back by tending a garden whose roots I could not reach.

  “I do want to see Cuba,” I said, my voice quiet but firm.

  “I know.”

  “And I want Mimi to be happy and proud of me, and”—I sighed, willing only to admit the next vulnerability here—“I want Mom to come home.”

  Ana tapped the notebook in my hands. “Let me guess, you already wrote out a new pla
n to make all that happen.”

  “Actually, no. This is Mimi’s notebook. I wanted to see if you’d help me with a cleansing spell, because I need to get this new batch of bad energy away from me after this disappointing plot twist.”

  “Rosa Santos, are you saying you came over, past your bedtime, to ask me to do some brujería with you?”

  I could almost feel Mimi hissing at me. “Yes, I am.”

  Ana grinned. “Awesome.”

  I flipped through the notebook. “I should do some sort of ritual,” I decided, thinking of Mimi and Mom. Memories of them working together flashed in my mind so clearly I could smell the pungent green herbs and the sweet citrus of Florida Water. “A cleansing or something. Light some candles, say the right words, and I kick this bad juju out the door.”

  Ana was nodding. “Remember that time we tied a string to a doorknob?”

  “That was for San Dimas because I lost my notebook and needed him to help me find it.”

  “Or when we wrote down our wishes and left them in bowls of water under our bed?”

  My dream had been to become taller. I sighed. “Did you get your wish?”

  “Uh, does it look like I’ve been discovered by Janelle Monáe and am now playing in her band for her next big tour?” She hit a cymbal, then pointed her stick at me. “Hey, Walter Mercado, can you find my horoscope in there?”

  “No, but I might have found a long-lost tía.”

  “Whaaaaat?” Ana gaped at me. “Wow. Maybe this really will turn out to be like a telenovela.”

  I found Nela’s name on a new page beside the city of Santiago and another miraculous healing. “I don’t even know if Mimi has sisters; she’s only ever mentioned her dead parents. Maybe Alvaro had sisters?”

  I flipped to a new page and found a small sketch of a root. I never took Mimi for someone who liked to draw, but it looked like a botany piece with the parts of the root broken down. Next to it were instructions to burn the root and throw the ashes into the sea along with seven pennies. The ashes were for release and the pennies an offering, asking for protection. The second made sense. Things were always done in odd numbers, and pennies carried a lot of energy—people infusing them with wishes before tossing them away. Mimi advised me never to pick them up out in the wild. When they crossed her hand, she cleansed and kept them for future offerings.

  “I think I found something.” I described the ritual to Ana. Before I did anything, I needed to make sure I was grounded. “I’ll do a limpieza and then I’ll go do this.” I didn’t have time tonight for a spiritual bath—though I should really do one soon—and I definitely didn’t have cigar smoke, but there were other things I knew how to do.

  “You don’t have that root, though,” Ana said.

  “No, but I bet Mimi will.”

  We hurried back to my house and snuck into the garden room through one of the open windows. “I really hope I don’t run into my mom,” I whispered.

  “Because you’ll get in trouble?”

  “No, because I’ll be proving her right.” Trying for super stealth mode, we quietly searched through Mimi’s tables and shelves. The glass jars were different sizes that held all sorts of ingredients. Darker bottles were tucked in the back with aging tinctures. I moved aside the hanging, drying bushels of herbs and searched the jars.

  “Check us out, snooping through Mimi’s witchy stuff.” Ana laughed under her breath. “It’s like we’re in middle school again. I’m not going to find, like, eyeballs or anything, right?” A ceramic bowl clattered against the table before she hurried to right it. “Sorry,” she said.

  Finally on the third shelf I found a root that looked similar to the one Mimi had drawn. I uncorked the jar and noted how it smelled like licorice. I slipped the root out. “Got it.”

  Before we left I checked her desk and found a little stack of pennies. There were exactly seven. When the right number presents itself to you, it is an invitation, Mimi had told me once. I grabbed the coins.

  Ana jumped out of the window, and I followed, trying not to laugh.

  Back at her house, her mom asked if I needed dinner. I told her that I was fine as Ana snuck an egg from the fridge behind her back. We ran upstairs and hid in her room.

  We dropped our pilfered goods on her bed. “I forgot to grab oil,” I muttered.

  Ana plucked a scented blue candle off her shelf. “What kind?”

  I wanted one of Mimi’s anointment oils but didn’t want to sneak back in and try my terrible luck again. “I’m not sure.”

  “I’ve got some coconut oil in the bathroom, hold on.” Ana left the room and banged on the bathroom door. “You’ve been in there for an hour,” she yelled. Benny shouted something back. Ana pounded down the stairs before racing back up a moment later. She swept into the room and closed the door behind her, raising a small bottle. “I got olive oil.”

  I warmed a few drops in my palm before circling the candle’s wick with the oil. “Wait, I forgot…” I muttered, feeling nervous as I tapped the candle against the desk three times. I exhaled a shaky breath before asking for protection and guidance. Ana dimmed the lights, watching me. With the swipe of a match, I lit the wick and held the egg over the flickering candlelight for a few seconds before closing my eyes and mindfully holding it to the top of my head. I circled my scalp before lowering it to the back of my neck, over my throat, and around my shoulders. I opened one eye and whispered, “Rub this over the rest of me.”

  “If only Mike could hear us,” Ana murmured before taking the egg and doing as I asked. When she was done, she got to her feet. “Now what?”

  The door rattled, startling us both. Benny poked his head in. “Hey, what are you guys—”

  Ana leapt forward and slammed it in his face.

  “I’m going to tell Mom you’re doing brujería,” he threatened against the closed door. We exchanged glances. Ana whipped the door open and let him in, shooting him a death glare.

  I grabbed her glass of water from the nightstand and cracked the egg into it.

  “Remind me not to finish drinking that,” Ana said.

  “The hell are you guys doing?” Benny asked.

  I studied the yolk. It looked okay. Nothing was floating. No signs of anything wild or dangerous was hanging over me.

  “Okay,” I said, relieved. “I just need to burn that root, toss the ashes into the sea, and then I should be good and ready to know what to do about college.”

  Benny raised his brows. “You are really intense about school.”

  It was a quiet walk back to the marina, where I stopped at the stairs again. My new point of no return. In my denim jacket’s pockets were a bag of ash and the seven pennies. I took the first step down to the docks. It was so dark, windy, and wild. How was I still in Port Coral? My cozy, soft hometown was gone, swallowed by a hungry, growling ocean I couldn’t see. When a black cat pulled away from the shadows and stopped in my path, someone else might have seen bad luck, but this brujita saw a familiar.

  “Which way is C dock?” I asked under my breath.

  The cat began to bathe itself. I waited, pathetic and desperate.

  Finally it stretched and slunk down the dock. I hurried to follow. The boats all looked tucked in for the evening. I checked around for some sort of signage or map, but there was nothing, only the string lights that decorated the back porch of the Starfish like stars.

  It was just past nine now. I ought to be home and on my way to bed with a book, lemon balm tea, and a face mask. That new golden shimmery one that smelled like honey.

  Feeling utterly lost, I sighed at the stars. “What am I doing here?”

  “Rosa?”

  I screamed.

  Alex froze, one foot on the dock beside me, one still on the boat behind him. “What are you doing here?”

  I pointed accusingly at the cat.

  He frowned, his gaze skipping between us as he stepped all the way off his boat. “Luna?”

  “You know her?” I squeaked out.
r />   “She hangs around a lot. Rosa, seriously. What are you doing here?”

  I didn’t know how my devil-may-care mother swept through town with paintbrushes and wine bottles when I felt foolish and out of my depth just standing here. It didn’t help that Alex sounded so brash and grumpy. My eyes pricked with embarrassing tears. There was no way I could expose myself any further and bring up my mom or father right now. Poor baby Rosa, so lost she was chasing after stray cats.

  “You’re the one who told me to find you on your boat,” I said.

  Alex looked at me like I had three heads. “I didn’t mean at night.”

  “Well, my bad,” I said haughtily and spun on my heel to leave, fully knowing I was possibly going in the wrong direction.

  “Rosa, wait.”

  I stopped and glanced over my shoulder. Alex stood just behind me. He rubbed his brow. “I don’t mean to be rude.” He sounded so earnest and anxious I turned all the way back to him. He pushed a hand through his hair, and it swooped over his forehead in almost a wave. He gestured to a bench I hadn’t seen. “You want to sit?”

  I considered leaving, but I needed a moment, and this little seed of a crush really wanted me to sit with him. We sat on opposite ends and stared out into the dark. He leaned forward to study his hands. His thumbs circled each other in calming patterns. Luna curled up by our feet. It was almost cozy.

  “I came to see where my father last set off from.” Saying it out loud was like taking a dare. I felt bold and, yes, a little messy. It wasn’t terrible, though.

  “But why come when it’s dark?”

  I laughed, both tired and a little delirious. “I didn’t want anyone to see me.” I stared straight ahead, unwilling to see whatever was on his face. There was no way I could explain what I carried in my pockets.

  Alex pointed ahead of us. “It’s the one at the end of this dock.”

  I studied the empty spot with a knot in my throat. So that’s where it all went wrong. Again. “It’s so ordinary,” I said. I’d spent most of my life trying not to become my mother, for Mimi’s sake, and yet it wasn’t until I acted a little like her that I found something this important.