Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  More monsters than people stalked the halls of Culeco: talking animals, animated game pieces, living caricatures with heads bigger than their bodies. They talked to you in Spanglish gibberish. They laughed wildly—not because something was funny, but because nothing in the world could restrain them anymore. Sometimes the monsters would cavort with each other, perform something that seemed like a short scene from a play, except none of it made any sense. They always turned into a slapstick chase, full of pratfalls and/or bonks on the head and/or attempted and/or successful wedgies.

  And somehow, in the middle of all this madness, teachers were supposed to be telling parents how their kids were doing in school.

  “So, Mr. Vidón,” Principal Torres said, walking over to me. She spoke nice and loud, to be sure I could hear her over the anarchy happening around us. “How are we looking?”

  I checked my clipboard. “Looking good,” I said, injecting my voice with fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence. “It’s six fifty-four p.m. The assistant directors are collecting the parents in cohort four outside the Culeco doors as we speak.” I tapped my headset. “All teachers have reported back: They have finished their conferences with cohort two. Cohort three has finished watching their kids perform and are being shepherded toward their teacher conferences. They should be in position just as we let in cohort four. It’s, um…” I said, as calmly as I could, even though the last gerbil in my head was on its deathbed. “I think it’s going pretty well.”

  “You do, do you?” she said. Was it me, or had she just answered me with so much cacaseca in her voice she could fertilize a farm?

  I looked up from my clipboard. All week, Principal Torres had been dressing as different Wonderland characters, but tonight, she was outfitted like a Miami principal: She wore pants with a tropical pattern, a rain forest–green blazer, and a gold pin-on name tag. She told me she didn’t want to compete with her students for attention. Her job tonight wasn’t to shine, but to support.

  Mine, too. I had dressed all in black, the way stage techs do. And luckily, I have cargo pants and cargo vests in all sorts of colors, including black, so I could carry everything I needed as a codirector. Instead of my usual assortment of magic-related gewgaws and doodads, my pockets overflowed with first-aid stuff, extra makeup and spirit gum and latex, scissors and fishing line and superglue, and most importantly of all, duct tape—so much duct tape. Whoever invented duct tape, thank you. You saved Rompenoche at least fifteen times.

  Duct tape wasn’t going to save me from Principal Torres, though. “How do you think it’s going?” I asked her.

  “I think,” she said pleasantly, looking left and right, taking a fresh look at the madness boiling all around us, “that I’ve been in hurricanes that were less chaotic than this.”

  Et tu, Torres? “That bad, huh?”

  “What? No, no, no, Mr. Vidón. I’m a born and bred Floridian. I like hurricanes.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. And apparently, so do a lot of the parents. Look,” she said, pointing to a couple who were taking a family selfie with one of the giant chickens, “those are the Moraleses. They were in cohort one. And so were the Gonzalezes over there, and the Gonzalezes over there, and also, the Gonzalezes over there!” A lot of Gonzalezes attended Culeco. “And there are the Bacardis, and the Aires, and the Cardozas. All cohort one. And that’s just on this floor. According to your plan, you thought cohort one would be gone by now, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, checking the chart again.

  “So why are they still here?”

  “Because,” I said, searching my brain with my eyes, “we didn’t move them through the interactive site-specific theater fast enough?”

  “Noooo,” she said, patting my back. “They’re still here because they’re having a good time. Because they’re proud. Because they love the fact that their kids are attending a school that has this much passion and energy.”

  There was no denying it; clearly, the parents from cohort one were having a ball with their kids. They had caught a little of the uncivilized spirit of Rompenoche. Some of them had painted faces, when they hadn’t entered Culeco with any stage makeup on. Some of them had pieces of costume they’d borrowed or stolen from their kids. Some were improvising right along with the students and giving as good as they got. Betcha loads of them had been theater kids back in the day.

  “Thank you,” I said to Principal Torres.

  She crossed her arms and looked straight ahead. “You and I are a lot alike, you know. Sometimes my reach exceeds my grasp. Sometimes I act like I’m the only person in the world who can fix things. My poor spouse, bless them, has to remind me every three months or so that I can’t do it alone. I need to ask for help. I have to trust people.”

  “You trusted me,” I said to her, “after I gave you a lot of reasons not to.”

  “Exactly. And you rewarded me,” she said, opening her arms wide, “by well and truly breaking the night. ¿Formaste una corredera propia, no?”

  I had to agree. “I declare this noche officially rota.”

  “The resolution passes,” she said, saluting me. “Now, is it time to welcome in cohort four?”

  I checked my smartwatch; the time switched from 6:59 to 7:00 as I stared. “Yes, it is.” I activated my headset. “Assistant directors, please escort cohort four into the building.”

  “Copy that, my dude!” replied Srx. Cosquillas, who was my assistant director in charge of directing the assistant directors. “We’re releasing the hounds in three…two…one.…”

  The massive double doors opened toward us, and a crowd of curious, smiling parents started pouring in. Leading them were the Reál family, because, of course, the Reáls had jumped to the front of the line. They entered Culeco and spread out in front of Principal Torres and me like a dance troupe ready to throw down.

  Ms. Reál, who stood in the center of the line, looked exactly like Lewis Carroll, with her curly, drapey haircut, white tie and tails, and the kind of dreamy look that implies that you’ve always got one eye watching a different universe. If I didn’t know better, I would have mistaken her for a professional Lewis Carroll impersonator, or at least a Victorian rich dude.

  The other Gabi dads seemed less interested in accuracy and more interested in adding personal touches to their costumes. Lightning Dad looked like Lewis Carroll, if Lewis Carroll had been struck by lightning on the way to Rompenoche. His suit was covered with holes and burn marks, and his hair stood straight up from his head, gelled to electrocuted perfection. Cari-Dad looked like Lewis Carroll, if Lewis Carroll had been a female heart surgeon. Her outfit was half tie and tails, half scrubs, as if she’d just left the operating room after a really bloody surgery, slapped on half a suit, and rushed over. If Lewis Carroll had been a bear—or at least a huge dude in a huge tux wearing a hairy brown-bear mask, hairy brown-bear gloves, and hairy brown-bear Uggs—he would’ve looked like Grizzly Dad’ums. If Lewis Carroll were an eco warrior in a camouflage tailcoat trying to convince the world that they should eat mopane-worm sandwiches instead of cows, he’d dress exactly as Daditarian was dressed now, and he’d also be carrying a basket of mopane-worm sandwiches. If Lewis Carroll had done his own illustrations and had doodled them all over his Victorian-gentleman suit, Dadaist would have been the second person to wear the outfit he had on, instead of the first. If Lewis Carroll were a masked avenger stalking the night in search of evildoers, wearing a cape and a ruffled shirt and a musketeer hat, with a fencing sword on his hip and a grapple gun hanging from his belt, he still wouldn’t have looked half as ready to save the world as Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman!, because Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman! was way more brolic than Carroll and his tiny mathematician muscles. And if Lewis Carroll had been a class-nine AI, he…wouldn’t have been Lewis Carroll at all. He would have been a completely different lifeform. But Dad: The Final Frontier still looked a lot like Lewis Carroll. The biggest difference between her and the writer of nonsense fiction we all know and love is t
hat she had a protective gyroscopic ball sticking out from her belly. Inside, Iggy, the world’s smallest Lewis Carroll impersonator, looked out on the world with his piercing eyes.

  Principal Torres clapped both hands over her mouth, then slapped her thighs, and finally, shaking the incredulity out of her head, applauded. “You are too much, Reál clan! But you’ve been helping with Rompenoche night and day! Where in the world did you find the time to make these costumes?”

  The dads took their turns shaking Principal Torres’s hand and scruffing my hair. Ms. Reál went last, kissing me on the top of the head and then Principal Torres once on each cheek. “It’s like Gabi’s T-shirt says: ‘You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.’ How are you, Principal Torres? You must be so proud. This”—she added, spreading her arms and rotating—“is incredible! You must be exhausted!”

  Principal Torres waved it off. “I made the kids do the hard work. All I did was make sure they didn’t do anything dangerous.”

  “Or vulgar!” I added. “Vorágine’s covering our [BLEEP!] on that one.”

  Both women looked at me, and then at each other, with the patience and the humor of adults who have a lot of experience dealing with smart-aleck kids. But then Principal Torres’s dimples fell from their smiling heights. “So,” she said to Ms. Reál, “how is Iggy doing? Gabi had mentioned he was doing better. But does he need a sterile environment again?”

  Ms. Reál’s confusion lasted only a second. “Oh, the ball! It’s true it can be made sterile very quickly, but Iggy just likes it in there. He’s doing fine. I mean, look at the little boliche.”

  “He is the cutest Lewis Carroll lookalike I have ever seen.”

  “Hey!” said Grizzly Dad’ums. “I’m standing right here!”

  Ms. Reál fake-slapped his arm. “No, but Iggy’s gotten so big in just a few weeks. Está más gordito than a butter-stuffed piñata, no?”

  “Oh, yes, I can see,” Principal Torres agreed. “But what I don’t understand is why all of you Reáls have decided to torture me.”

  Ms. Reál blinked. “¿Perdóname? We are torturing you?”

  “Yes. Here you brought the cutest baby in the entire world with you, and you haven’t offered to let me hold him yet!”

  “¡Ay!” wailed Ms. Reál, like a criminal caught in the act. “I am so sorry!” She turned briskly to Dad: The Final Frontier and waved her over. “Bonita! Come, come, mi vida!”

  Bonita did, and the dads parted the way to let her through. We were all being slowly backed up against the wall as parents continued to pour in through the doors, but the dads formed a perimeter around Principal Torres and Dad: The Final Frontier to give them a little space.

  Dad: The Final Frontier pressed a virtual button on her phone, and the top of the ball opened like an eye. Principal Torres scooped Iggy out of the ball mama-bear quickly and mama-bear gently.

  Iggy, as always, was looking around, making super-serious eyebrows at everyone and everything. But once Principal Torres had him comfortably settled in her arms, he expressed his love in the way of babies everywhere. He smiled wide and toothlessly, and then took a massive dump.

  I’d learned a lot about infant care these past few weeks, hanging out with Iggy. Sometimes babies can poop and you don’t even know it for a long time, and discovering that surprise when you’re the person in charge of changing diapers no es bueno. But sometimes babies poop like grumpy-faced gods hatching new planets, and the surprise is even worse. It’s never not surprising, the gas giants babies can make in their diapers.

  “¡Muchacho!” whistled Principal Torres. Clearly, she’d done the mother thing before. Not only was she not grossed out, but she knew how to reposition Iggy in her arms so his diaper wouldn’t leak onto his little Lewis Carroll trousers. “You’re having your own personal Rompenoche in your pants, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve got him,” said Lightning Dad, carefully relieving Principal Torres of Iggy. “My turn to be the baby wiper and diaper sniper.”

  “I will go,” said Dad: The Final Frontier. “You don’t want to miss any part of Rompenoche.”

  “But neither do you,” said Dadaist.

  “None of us do,” Cari-Dad said philosophically, “but one of us has to.”

  “Déjame atender a mi niñito,” said Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman! “Yo casi ni entiendo nada en inglés de to’l manera.”

  “Stop picking on your English,” Daditarian said to him. “You understand plenty. I’ll go. Ooh, and then you can all owe me a huge favor of my choosing, and the favor is to eat one mopane-worm sandwich each.”

  “Save us, Sal,” Grizzly Dad’ums whispered to me.

  I got in the center of the Dad circle. “I shall do the honors,” I proclaimed showmannishly. “All of you need to go see your daughter perform. She’s waiting in the auditorium, where Principal Torres is about to lead you, for your Rompenoche disorientation session.”

  “We can’t miss that,” said Ms. Reál. “None of us.” She took Iggy out of Lightning Dad’s arms and placed him in mine. A blast of cacaseca minus the seca filled my nostrils.

  “Do you know how to change a diaper?” asked Dad: The Final Frontier, slipping the strap of the diaper bag over my neck. “It can be surprisingly difficult for the uninitiated.”

  “How hard can it be?” I said. “You take the nasty nappy off, you wipe the kid’s butt, and you put a new nappy on. It’ll be easier than—” And here I pulled a fun-size bag of Skittles out of Iggy’s ear.

  “Taking candy from a baby!” all the Reáls said together, and then applauded.

  All day and night, Aventura and I had been taking turns being the director on duty: an hour on, an hour off. That way, we’d stay rested and sharp. So, as I carried Iggy to the bathroom, I used my headset to ask her to take her next shift a little early so I could change his diaper.

  She nearly blew my headphones off my head when she replied, “YOU KNOW HOW TO CHANGE A DIAPER?!”

  “I need my eardrums, woman! Stop yelling.”

  “Just when I thought I couldn’t love you any more, Sal,” she said. “Honestly, I never even took off the last shift. I’ve been running around fixing costumes left and right. Everybody’s starting to look patchier than scarecrows. We just really didn’t have the time to do a good job on the wardrobe for this show.”

  I locked the bathroom door behind me. I’d be a coward if I didn’t ask the question. I was almost okay with that, but not quite. “Are you regretting that we changed everything at the last minute?”

  She used her sonic attack on my ears again. It’s super effective! “WHAT?! ARE YOU KIDDING? NO WAY, SAL!”

  “Are you trying to make me drop this baby, woman?” Before I risked that, I gently set Iggy down on the counter next to the sink, opened the diaper bag, and started taking out everything I needed to change him: portable changing pad, baby wipes, Daditarian-made organic baby powder (I mean, that’s what the jar had written on it, anyway), and, of course, a fresh diaper.

  “It’s so much better,” Aventura went on. “I think my show was more beautiful. Like, it would have made for prettier pictures on Insta. But now, we’re gonna have way better memes. And better stories. And just, like, more fun. The energy in the hallway is giving me life.”

  I started to wash my hands. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to wash your hands before you change a baby. I mean, you definitely have to wash them after : blecch. But this was my first time doing a diaper change, and I wanted to be extra sure I did everything right—especially with Iggy, who not too long ago had been a very sick baby. “Also, Aventura, did you see how many parents came to help their kids with their parts of the show? Srx. Cosquillas says the teachers finished, like, two-thirds of their conferences before Rompenoche even started. And the teachers got to talk with parents way more than they normally would. Principal Torres wants this to be the way they do parent-teacher conferences from now on.”

  “And it’s all thanks to you, Sal.”

  �
�Yeah,” I said, drying my hands. “Me and my big fat mouth.”

  She laughed. “Speaking of which, take it from a big sister: You better close that big mouth of yours when you take off the diaper. Little boys are squirters. I suggest you put on a welder’s mask before you do anything else.”

  “I don’t think there’s a welder’s mask in the diaper bag. But anyway, Iggy wouldn’t do that to me. We’re bros.”

  “Chacho, I’m telling you: Trust your bros, you get the hose.”

  “Literally the least helpful thing you could say right now. Are you going to cover for me, or not?”

  She had a good long giggle before she finally answered. “Yeah, I got you, chacho. But now you owe me two favors: one for this, and one for helping you with your Death costume.”

  “Wait, what? I’m your codirector. This is your favor.”

  “Nee nee nee. This is you making up for your rudeness. So now you owe me twice. And I am going to have a goo-oo-ood time collecting. Bye, Sal.”

  And with that, she cut our connection.

  “Learn from my mistakes, kid,” I said to Iggy. “Shut your mouth before you dig yourself in deeper.”

  It’s funny, when you love a baby, how non-gross changing them is.

  I mean, all the separate steps of changing a diaper are gross, if you analyze the parts individually. But when you put it all together? Not so much. With Iggy, I didn’t feel tying him into a new nappy was any more disgusting than handling my own bodily needs. In some ways, it was even less squicky. I mean, a body is supposed to poop. It isn’t supposed to bleed as much as I have to make mine bleed, just to check my sugar levels. And I’ve got the calluses to prove it.

  “If you need any help with the diaper,” said Vorágine, drawing me out of my own thoughts, “I can pull up tutorials, or talk you through the steps, or fill the room with a more pleasing scent. Would you prefer lemon verbena, vanilla and cinnamon, or pumpkin spice?”