“Everyone here takes a nap like Abuela?”
“Not necessarily a nap, but just staying cool. Una siesta.”
Siesta. I remember the scratchy blue cots and the tinkling music during nap time at Little Tykes Preschool. Then at home, the weight of Papa’s warm hand on my back as I fell asleep.
I’m about to collapse on the sidewalk from the heat, when Big Eddie says, “There’s el mar. The ocean.”
I stop walking and gape. In some ways, the ocean looks no different from a Minnesota cornfield in winter, all flat and endless. The white sky blends into the expanse of grayish water. In one direction, two shirtless boys kick a soccer ball across the sand, and in another a bent old man steps gingerly along the shore, a large white hat shading his face. Down the beach, a woman in a brightly colored dress carries a basket on her head.
Big Eddie pulls me across the busy Avenida Santander that snakes between the neighborhood and the beach. We run across the street and keep running when we get to the sand.
“¿Listo?” Big Eddie has already slipped off his flip-flops. He piles the towels and his T-shirt on the sand. “Ready?”
“To go in? Definitely!”
It’s like walking into a huge bathtub. At Lake Mad, you have to prepare yourself for cold water, even in the summer. But this is so warm, there’s almost no difference between air and sea. Big Eddie is splashing in waves that surge forward and then back. The soft sand squishes with each step I take.
I’m waist-deep when something brushes against my ankle. I scream. What if it was a fish? I think of the stingrays that Mama used to see. I try to run, but the water is a wall and I fall into the waves.
“Got you!” Big Eddie’s head appears above the water. He laughs and makes pinching motions with his fingers.
“Quit it!” I shout at him. Last time he came to visit in Minnesota, we went swimming at the lake. He did the same thing, attacking me underwater. I didn’t think it was funny when I was eight, and I don’t think it’s funny now. “Don’t—” I start to yell, when a horrible taste fills my mouth. I spit out the water. “Ew!” I spit some more. “Gross.”
Big Eddie laughs again. “It’s seawater. Salty, you know?”
I stop spitting. I knew that. Seawater is salty; lake water is not. I know lots of things. The encyclopedia says that seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered in saltwater oceans.
The water pulls me off my feet, swirls around my arms, pushes me forward, and drops me. Then a wave catches me and I’m on a roller-coaster ride inside a warm hug. Is this what it’s like to be a fish? Weightless and careless, floating along? With the next wave, I kick off the sand and propel myself even farther. Big Eddie is a few feet away riding the same waves, and I forgive him for teasing me.
“Little Eddie!” my brother shouts. “Look!”
“What is it?” I sputter and spit.
Big Eddie stands chest-deep facing the great expanse that disappears into the fading sky. The water is up to my neck here, so I grab on to Big Eddie’s shoulders.
“Over there.” He points to something bobbing in the water a few yards out.
It’s dark and its shape reminds me of something. “It’s a hat,” I say. A hat floating in the water. From this distance, it makes me think of the kind of hat Abraham Lincoln wore.
“Let’s get it.” Big Eddie is swimming out toward it, and I try to keep a grip on him. “Hang on.” When my hand slips, he says, “Careful! Don’t pull down my pants.”
I let go of his swim trunks. But when I kick my feet, checking for solid ground, there’s nothing there. The more I kick, the more my stomach churns. What’s down there? The photos of fish from the album swim past my squeezed-shut eyes.
Big Eddie grabs my arm. “We’re almost there.”
In front of us, riding the wave ahead, is the hat. At least, it looks like a hat. What if the hat is being worn? What if there is a person beneath the surface of the water? I get a bad feeling.
“Stop!” I yell.
Big Eddie grabs for the hat.
And then the hat—which isn’t a hat at all—bobs and dips. It’s a bucket, old and scratched. The kind of bucket the fishermen bring to the dock. An ordinary bucket. Big Eddie pulls it closer. He tips it forward, trying to get a good grip.
My bad feeling doesn’t go away. “Don’t!” I shout.
Out of the bucket, like a nightmare, comes the slosh of dirty water and a wriggling, jiggling black cloud of leeches. Big Eddie and I screech as the leeches come tumbling out, some sinking, some floating. They brush my arms and legs as they sink into the deep water below.
The waves push us until we collapse on the shore, half panting, half laughing. Big Eddie throws himself down on the sand. “I did not expect that,” he says.
“Leeches! Did you know they live on blood? Yuck!” I shudder. In the entry about leeches in my encyclopedia, it says that they feed on the blood of animals. And people. Bloodsuckers. Maybe it’s not good to have so much information. I shudder again. “How does a hat turn into a bucket of leeches?”
“This is Colombia,” Big Eddie says, as if this is an answer. He stands up and shakes the water off his hair like a dog.
“But it looked like a hat.” I pull my knees up to my chest. “It was a hat.”
“In Colombia,” he says, holding out his hand to help me up, “anything can happen.”
12
WHEN WE GET BACK from the beach, Abuela is sitting in a white plastic patio chair in the courtyard. Big Eddie kisses her cheek. She smiles and looks up at me. “How was la playa?”
I glance at my brother. He sits down on the bricks at her feet. “Little Eddie had an adventure,” he says, taking her hand.
“An adventure, Eduardito? Dígame.” She winks. “Tell me.”
“We saw a hat turn into a bucket of leeches.” I wait for her to laugh.
“Ah,” she says. “That is Colombia.”
“That’s what he said,” I say. I go to the lemon tree and test the strength of its branches. Maybe I can climb it.
“That’s because that is how Colombia is, Eduardito. Do you know surrealismo?” She looks at Big Eddie. “¿Cómo se dice?”
“Surrealism. Magical realism,” he says, like he knows what the heck she’s talking about.
“Yes, Eduardito,” Abuela says to me in her whispery voice. “Colombia is magical. This is what we know.”
I look at Big Eddie.
“Right. Magical realism is…” He pauses like he’s looking for the right words, the words that will make me believe. “Magical things happening to real people or real things happening in magical ways.”
“Like two brothers with the same name?” I ask.
“Sort of,” my brother says.
“Espantos,” Abuela says. “Fantasmas.”
“Ghosts,” Big Eddie translates.
“Ghosts,” Abuela repeats, her tongue getting tangled on the Ss and T.
Even though Big Eddie claimed he saw a ghost, this sounds like what my teacher called old wives’ tales. And Abuela is certainly an old wife. But my brother nods. “Sometimes ghosts, and sometimes a hat turning into leeches.”
“But I bet that bucket just fell off a fishing boat. That’s not magic.”
“That’s one possible explanation. Who knows?”
I grip the lowest branch of the lemon tree. “I get it,” I say. But I don’t really get it. Magical hats? Ghosts? Am I supposed to believe that? My encyclopedias are full of facts. That’s what’s real. I know magic is just made up. One time a magician came to my school and performed. Afterward he showed us how his tricks worked. It was all about timing and distraction. Not magic.
Abuela and Big Eddie watch as I swing my leg, hooking it onto the branch. I pull myself up and hug the trunk. The scent of lemons tickles my nose.
“I used to climb that tree when I was young,” Big Eddie says. “I would break the branches now.”
“Eduardo planted it,” Abuela says. “El árbol.”
“
You did?” I ask my brother.
He shakes his head. “A different Eduardo.”
“Really?” I jump down. “My father?” I glance at Big Eddie. “I mean, our father?”
Abuela nods. “We had a mango tree long ago when my husband was still alive and the children were small. When it died, Ana María—”
Big Eddie grins like he knows where this story is going.
“Yes, tu mamá,” Abuela says to him. I like how she mixes her Spanish and English words. It’s like she’s inventing a new language. “Ana María was so sad when the mango tree died. Eduardo was always at our house; they were so young, childhood sweethearts. Novios.” She takes a deep, raspy breath and closes her eyes.
“Papa proposed to her,” Big Eddie says, supplying the rest of the story. “This was after he planted a new tree as a gift to her. He pulled out the dead one, redid some of the bricks. Abuela says my mamá put on her lipstick every day and sat on the patio watching him.” He laughs and then says, “When he asked her to marry him, she said yes, obviously.”
Abuela smiles even though her eyes stay closed. She’s about to fall asleep. She sleeps a lot. I wonder if that’s what happens when you get old. Maybe it’s like practicing for when you’re dead.
Big Eddie and I sit on the warm patio and listen to the faraway sound of life happening in other places. It’s strange to think of Papa here in Colombia, strange to think of him anywhere else besides our old apartment in Minnesota. I clutch Papa’s fishing medal in my pocket. I start to wonder what’s more real—the cold disc or being here, standing under a lemon tree that he planted. Seeing Colombia makes it easier to imagine Papa having a whole life, not just the short one I remember. And that makes me sort of sad. Maybe that’s why Mama never wants to talk about him; she can see his whole life.
I picture Mama at our duplex alone, Liam in New York with his new stepbrothers, Cameron at Kamp Kids without any friends, Papa’s fishing gear waiting in the dark garage.
If anything is possible in Colombia, does that mean I can catch a fish?
13
ABUELA HOLDS my arm just above the elbow as we walk across the front yard to the little blue car. The children next door are getting yelled at. No matter what language, you can tell when a kid is in trouble. Remembering their little faces peeking over the wall, I guess those kids are in trouble a lot.
Big Eddie fusses around Abuela, helping her get situated in the front seat. “Tranquilo,” she says, and bats his hand away when he tries to help with the seatbelt.
“You see what I’m dealing with, Little Eddie?” he says, and then leans into the car to give her a kiss on the forehead. He gently closes the door. “Jump in, hermanito.”
Abuela has an appointment at the clinic, and this is the first time I’m coming along. I wonder if Abuela hates going to the doctor as much as I do. The smell, the fake smiles on the nurses, the needles alongside cartoon Band-Aids—as if that makes it better.
Abuela’s clinic is loud, and people of all ages sit in plastic chairs. Men and women in white coats go in and out of two doors, one at each end of the waiting room. A woman with a yellow-and-black-striped dress sitting at a wide metal desk hands Big Eddie a clipboard. While he fills out forms, Abuela says buenas tardes to an old man across from her, and they start talking in Spanish. She smiles a lot, and he blushes. Abuela has put on extra lipstick for this appointment, and I wonder if bright colors make men like women. I think of Cameron’s purple hair, and my own face flushes.
When a nurse in a white uniform comes to get Abuela, Big Eddie says to me, “You wait, okay?” He leaves me with the Spanish language magazine he was reading and follows the nurse and Abuela. I shuffle Papa’s medal between my fingers as I look at the pictures of people in the magazine who wear even more lipstick than Abuela. The celebrities smile too big, and their clothes are odd. By the time I get to the ads at the back of the magazine, my brother is leading Abuela back into the waiting room.
She smiles at me and shows me a Band-Aid inside her elbow.
“What happened?” I ask. “Did you get a shot?”
“Blood,” she says. “They want my blood. Like a…” She makes claws out of her hands and bears her incisors. “What do you call it?”
I laugh. “Vampire?”
“Sí, vampiro,” she says, and then her laugh turns into a cough.
I turn to Big Eddie. “Is she okay?”
He nods and then shakes his head. “She has cancer, so she’s not okay. But the doctor is going to keep her comfortable. So that’s good.” He looks at his grandmother the way Mama looks at me after I throw up when I’m sick. I suddenly miss Mama, and so I reach for Abuela. Her hug is surprisingly strong for an old lady.
When we get back into the car, Big Eddie says Abuela wants to go to El Centro with us.
“Sí, El Centro,” she says. “Did you like it?”
I nod. “The wall is really cool. Walking on it. Super cool.”
“That’s all he took you to see?” Abuela swats Big Eddie on the arm. Then she turns to look at me in the backseat. “We go inside the wall. To the plaza.”
“Vale,” I say, and she grins.
Big Eddie drives, taking each turn in the same gentle way he helped Abuela into the car. Now that he’s not driving as wildly as before, it’s easier for me to watch the traffic—cars even smaller than this weave in and out, and yellow taxis honk and buses spurt black smoke. On one side of us the ocean appears, the water as endless as a snow-covered winter prairie.
“Mira,” Abuela says, and points out the windshield. I lean between the front seats. We are in front of the city’s impressive wall now, and in a grassy field in front of the gray bricks, dozens of people are pulling on kite strings.
In Minnesota there’s a kite festival in the winter, on a frozen lake. If the weather is just right—not too warm and not too cold—Mama and I watch the people fly kites, holding their strings in mittened hands, bright colors against the snow.
But the kites in Cartagena are even more colorful. I’ve never seen so many in one place. In the pink light of the setting sun, the kites dip and dance. One looks like a butterfly; one’s a flower. Some are as big as the car I’m in. There’s a giant squid and a whale. The kites swoop up and then dive down. They look like they’re swimming.
Big Eddie turns through another opening in the wall and drives down a narrow street lined with purple and yellow houses. When we get out of the car, Abuela takes my arm again. Cigarette smoke and the smell of something raw like pee hang in the air. It’s getting dark now, and I help Abuela around the big vines that grow up the sides of buildings, their branches as thick and black as snakes. I step off the curb into the street so that she won’t get jostled.
Big Eddie leads the way down one street, around a corner, and along another street to a big square. There are restaurants on one side, a big white building with bars across the windows on the other. Little shops with open doors line the other two sides. Music bubbles out of the restaurant, and Abuela hums along quietly. The square is planted with trees and flowers, and I hear the splash of a fountain. In the center of the square is a statue of a man on a horse.
“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing at the figure.
“That?” Big Eddie looks up. “That’s Simón Bolívar, the first president of Colombia.”
I look up at the bronze man. I never thought about Colombia having a president. Maybe this place is more like home than I thought.
“This is called Plaza Bolívar after him. Come. Do you want to try coconut water?” Big Eddie asks. There are little carts with hand-painted signs. One says AGUA COCO. Men and women stand by the carts selling cups of coconut water or paper wrappers of food. “Or do you want ice cream?”
“Ice cream.” I grin and watch him cross the plaza to the carts. It’s hot out even though the sun has set. I can feel the day’s heat radiating off the buildings as if the sun has been stored in them like in a bank.
“Ice cream,” Abuela repeats. “Helado,” she
enunciates for me.
“Eh-law-doe,” I say, and she cheers.
When she starts coughing, I lead her to a bench at the edge of the plaza. We sit and I wait for her coughing to stop. I look at her arm and notice that blood has seeped through, leaving a dark spot on the Band-Aid. She sees me looking at it and folds her arms.
“You want a toy?” she asks. “¿Un volador elástico?
“A what? What toy?”
Then I see another cart where a man sells the little spinners I saw the first time I came to El Centro with Big Eddie. They shoot into the air like light-up helicopters. In the dark, the spinners fly into the sky with bright blue and pink lights like fireworks. When they float back down, a little kid runs to collect them for the man, who shoots them into the air again.
Abuela shifts next to me, and the next thing I know, she’s pulling out a damp, crumpled bill. She tucks it into my hand. “You get one.”
I look for Big Eddie, but I can’t see which ice cream vendor he went to. I watch the spinner fly into the air and touch the sky before drifting back down. “I’ll be right back.”
I wave the pesos in the man’s face, and he says a bunch of stuff in Spanish. After I point to a spinner, he hands it to me with a toothy smile. Back at the bench, where Abuela watches and smiles, I pull the rubber band and let go. The spinner flies into the air, just a couple of feet.
In my encyclopedia back home, there was a picture of a girl spinning a yo-yo. It was an article about physics and centripetal force. Physics—one of the forces of nature. The article had a lot of long words I didn’t quite understand, but this toy spins in the same way.
When I shoot it back into the air, Abuela claps. Scooping up the spinner, I try again. It goes higher this time, and Abuela laughs. Again we watch the spinner soar into the air, and we track the light as it lists to one side. Next time I’ll get it straight up. The spinner nose-dives into the grass behind us.
Even though it doesn’t look like you’re allowed to go into the garden that surrounds one of the four fountains in the plaza, I step over the low hedge and between two red flowering plants. My spinner is balanced on the edge of the fountain—a few more inches and it would have been in the water. I kneel and grab the toy, and pause to reach in and splash my face. But, as I’m about to stand up, a movement in the pool catches my eye.
What If a Fish Page 7