Learning to Die in Miami

by Carlos Eire

  And how beautiful it is, the river at night. How dark and quiet. Above us, through the haze created by the city’s lights, a few stars poke through. Shadows large and small lurk off to our right and left, and we can imagine whatever we want: virgin forests, ancient ruins, Amazon villages. We’re so free, so totally on our own, the three of us: Tony, José, and me. We’re so far from everything and everyone, we really could be in some far-off jungle, even on another planet. I don’t know about the others, but the danger that lurks under us and around us and in my mind doesn’t scare me that much. Neither does the prospect of getting caught with a “borrowed” rowboat. Just the opposite: It revs me up, steadies me, and makes me feel more alive.

  This is the high life.

  We’d row all the way to the end of this river, given the chance, up into the Everglades, the real jungle. If we rowed long enough, maybe we could be there by daybreak, and no one would be able to find us. But then what?

  At one point we all agree that it’s time to turn back. So we do. And we return the boat to its mooring, cross the big empty lot in total darkness, and head home.

  While we’re crossing the field, Tony starts talking about coral snakes, and how poisonous they are, and how many are probably ready to bite our ankles right now.

  “Shut up,” I say. He laughs.

  We borrow that boat often, so often that I lose count. And we make it upstream a little farther each time. But still no jungle. None at all. No alligators, manatees, or cottonmouths either. But the fear never loses its edge for me, or its kick. Miami is full of alligators, and everyone knows that. Miami is also full of boat owners who wouldn’t like to see theirs being “borrowed” late at night by three hoodlums.

  Going up and down that river in total darkness calms me, despite all of the obvious perils. It soothes me like nothing else has lately. It’s not at all like being held by my mother when I was very little—in fact, it’s just the opposite—but it has the same effect on me. I don’t have my ear pressed against her chest. I don’t hear the air going in and out of her lungs, which has the same rhythm as the waves that crash against the Malecón. And I certainly don’t hear the sound of that heartbeat, that eternal heartbeat, the sound above all others, the pulse of the entire universe echoing in her and in me. But I feel the very same calm, the same dissolving of boundaries between me and the pulsating source of life, the same exact sense of total well-being, the certainty that I was born for this moment, which, of course, is eternal.

  If you can’t see yourself or anything else around you, and all you hear is the sound of oars dipping in the river, where do you begin and end? Where are you, and where is the world? Isn’t the world in you, and aren’t you in the world, each in the other, completely?

  The more that the boundaries of my body dissolve, the more that the danger soothes my soul. And the same goes for the dissolving of the normally thick boundary between right and wrong. I’m being bad right now, yes, but not totally bad. This is good for us, and the boat’s owner will never know. We’ll return the boat, undamaged. Being bad while also being good is the ultimate thrill ride.

  No amusement park will ever top this. No way. None will even come close.

  But nothing good can last for long, ever; especially in the Palace Ricardo, where the Three Thugs insist on knowing everything so they can lay a claim to whatever you might have found that isn’t theirs yet.

  “Where have you guys been?” It’s easy to lie when asked that question.

  “What’s the deal with that mud on your shoes?” That’s easy to evade too.

  “Where’d you get those fish in the jars?” Impossible to evade.

  So, they find out about the river, and they check it out for themselves. A couple of times they show up while we’re there. They find the docks and the boats, which interest them a whole lot more than the jungle.

  Miguel gets it into his head to steal a boat. Not “borrow,” but steal. Not a rowboat, a motorboat. “I can hide it upriver, and I can steal gasoline from the other boats,” he says.

  Eventually, he figures out that this isn’t such a great plan. So he decides to steal an outboard motor. It’s portable. It can be brought on land. And someone might want to buy such a thing, especially from a sixteen-year-old kid who’s selling it for far less than retail or wholesale.

  Our resident criminal mastermind tries to recruit us as accomplices. But even the two other Thugs, Roberto and Mariano, refuse to do something so utterly stupid. They’re more interested in fighting the other gang on Calle Ocho and stealing small stuff from stores.

  As his frustration intensifies, Miguel gets increasingly violent and unpredictable. One morning he emerges naked from the back room, pees on all of our breakfast toast, and howls with delight. He threatens all of us nonviolent types constantly, promising swift retribution if we refuse to join in the heist of the century. One evening, as I’m throwing out the trash, he sneaks up on me from behind and bashes the back of my legs with a huge club, made from a palm frond. He howls with delight again, thinking that he’s broken my legs. They’re not broken, but it takes me a while to get up off the ground, and no bruise, ever, will match that one.

  Then he disappears for long stretches. And whenever he does show up, he keeps to himself and talks to no one.

  One afternoon, the police show up and arrest Miguel. A recently pilfered outboard motor, it turns out, is up on our flat roof, which has a ledge around it. Perfect hiding place. Less than perfect accomplice, however. As it turns out, Miguel is turned in by a snitch from one of the gangs on Calle Ocho who agreed to “help” him as a way of currying favor with the cops.

  Good-bye, Miguel. Off to the hoosegow again. He doesn’t howl with delight on his way out. Not at all. The other Thugs say nothing: Roberto and Mariano have one less roommate. More room for them.

  And as Miguel exits, a new guy joins the household. A redhead with freckles who looks just like Archie, the comic book character. All he needs is a bow tie. Nice guy. Very nice. Normal. A great relief. Fortunately for him, he’s given a couch on the sun porch rather than Miguel’s empty bed in the back room. And as soon as I lay eyes on Archie, I realize that José is the spitting image of Jughead. I kid you not; all he needs is that stupid crown-like hat. This should be interesting, especially with no Veronica or Betty anywhere in sight.

  Yes, we have redheads in Cuba.

  In the meantime, Lucy Ricardo is making life hell for Tony, who gets phone calls from a friend he made in school. Tony always calls him Gordo, or “fat guy.” Since we have strict instructions not to bring friends to the house, Gordo is confined to the phone. But that’s a problem too, it seems. Lucy resents the fact that Tony spends a lot of time on the phone with Gordo, because it runs up the monthly charges. But there’s also an undercurrent of ill-will embedded in her resentment. Soon enough, Lucy starts accusing Tony of being a maricón, and she threatens to write to our mother and tell her that her oldest son is a homosexual if he doesn’t stop getting phone calls from Gordo. She openly mocks Tony’s masculinity, and she pretends to be him on the phone, saying such things as “Gordo, oh Gordo, how much I love you,” again and again.

  Tony swears to me that he’s going to kill both Lucy and Ricky.

  One night, as all of this is going on, we go to bed as usual, late at night. Normally, Tony goes to the bathroom first and I follow, and he gets into his bunk while I take my turn. But this night, unlike other nights, I beat him to the loo. So flushed with pride about being first in line, I climb up to my perch on the top bunk and the whole thing collapses. It pancakes, the whole top, right onto the bottom bunk. Crash, kaboom.

  I’m not hurt at all, just stunned. Tony rushes out of the bathroom and finds our roommates gathered around me and the collapsed bed. Had he been in his place, as usual, he would have been crushed. We have a good laugh about it and find a place for his mattress in the living room. How funny. We all chuckle our way into dreamland.

  A close inspection the next day reveals that all four c
orners of the top bunk gave way simultaneously. The screws and brackets simply decided, all at once, not to hold anymore. They were tired, it seems. Or maybe someone made them feel awfully tired, on purpose.

  I say nothing. Neither does Tony. But we know this is no accident.

  Jesus H. All-seeing Christ. Are you watching from way up there, at the right hand of the Father?

  Apparently, yes.

  Soon after the bed collapses, Tony finds a prayer card in his pocket. It just shows up in there. He has no clue as to where it came from. It’s just simply in his pocket, one day, as the downward spiral is pulling him deeper and deeper into his abyss. It’s a holy card of St. Martin de Porres, recently canonized by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Pope John has just died, by sheer coincidence, shortly before the card mysteriously appears in Tony’s pocket. We see the huge headlines on a newspaper stand on Seventh Street as we’re returning from the library one night.

  I look up St. Martin at the library. Martin de Porres lived in Peru in the late-sixteenth to early-seventeenth century. It took him a long time to be canonized not because he lacked miracles or local admiration, but because he was of African descent. St. Martin wanted to become a priest in the Dominican order, but couldn’t because of his race. So instead, he became a lay brother, and swept, and cleaned, and cooked for all the white Dominicans in Lima. He also ran their infirmary and worked miraculous cures, and soon enough all of Lima was seeking him out. Martin could also communicate with animals—just like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Antony of the Desert, and Adam in the Garden of Eden before the Fall—for he was in perfect touch with nature. He even talked the mice into staying out of the kitchen, back in Lima.

  So Tony prays to St. Martin for help. Get us out of here. The quicker the better. Please hurry. We can’t take it much longer.

  As for me: I’m not praying anymore.

  One very hot afternoon, a social worker suddenly shows up out of the blue to handle some other business at the Palace Ricardo, probably something having to do with Archie or the recently departed Miguel.

  She takes one look at Tony and me and gasps. “What are you boys doing here? You’re supposed to be with your uncle.”

  She’s horrified. I can tell. We’re a big mistake. No doubt about it.

  Next thing you know, we’re shopping for new clothes with her at Sears in Coral Gables. She tells us how much we can spend and helps us pick out stuff, including new shoes. On the way there, of course, and on the way back to the Palace Ricardo, the giant trees on Coral Way stand guard, as always. I haven’t seen them in a long time, these great friends about whom I think all the time, whose images flood my imagination way too often. In the dense shade provided by their powerful limbs and foliage—under the winged arch that stretches over the roadway—Tony and I make our way back to the warm and fuzzy home run by Ricky and Lucy Ricardo.

  In the meantime, all sorts of things have been happening out of our field of vision. Our uncle Amado has been contacted, up in Bloomington, Illinois, even though it’s hard to reach him since he has no phone. In order for him to take a phone call, arrangements have to be made for him to be at a pay phone or a neighbor’s house at an appointed time. Letters take a long time. Telegrams can’t say very much. But, somehow, all of the obstacles vanish, and solid plans are made to send us to him, as quickly as possible.

  Elation is too weak a word to describe how Tony and I feel when we hear the news. So is ecstasy. Spanish is no better, and neither is any other language. There’s no earthly tongue that contains any word capable of describing how we feel, save for the original one lost at Babel, the one used by Eve in all her poems. She had a word for this feeling because she could remember it, way back before she and Adam screwed up everything. It’s how they felt all the time, way back then.

  We race to the library and look up Bloomington in all of the encyclopedias. As it turns out there are a lot of Bloomingtons, one in nearly every state. But the one in Illinois seems like a great place. It has only around thirty-six thousand people, which makes it seem tiny to us. It’s right next to another town with the howlingly funny name of Normal, which has only about fifteen thousand people. Imagine that. Normal! And these twin towns are right smack in the middle of something called the Corn Belt. Bloomington/Normal, as some encyclopedias call it, has some factories, large insurance firms, two universities, and a mysterious-sounding Scottish Rite Temple where a Passion Play is performed every spring.

  Oh no. Holy Week, up there too. Can’t we ever escape it? Even if they dress everyone up in kilts at the Scottish Rite Temple, rather than period costumes, it’ll still be a grim play.

  They do make vacuum cleaners up there, though. That’s a plus. They make stuff. We’ll be living in the industrialized world, finally. And it snows. It snows! Good God in heaven, we’re going to where it snows, finally.

  Tony and I go to the barber college on Flagler in downtown Miami for one last free haircut. This time we hit the jackpot. Tony and I are both assigned to absolute novices. His head and mine will be their first ones, ever. My haircut comes out halfway all right, just as slightly bad as all the others: about a half dozen rough spots and one monster untamable cowlick. My barber-in-the-making shows promise. Tony is far less lucky, however. His novice barber struggles to keep his cool, but finally gives up. The master barber who runs the school comes over and takes a look.

  He shakes his head and says, “Sorry, kid; this one can’t be fixed.” Whirrr. Taking the electric clippers from the apprentice, he attacks Tony’s head with absolute resolve and shears off all that was left of his hair. He walks out looking as if he’s just joined the Marines, with a total buzz cut.

  A date is set for our departure to the land of snow: Sunday, the first of September. Nine months and two weeks since we were first thrown into the Palace Ricardo. We don’t have much to pack, so there’s not much to get ready. And we have no neckties. Sometime during our stay at this house, the ties we brought with us from Cuba have vanished. So José lends us his only two ties. This is 1963, and, if you’re Cuban, especially, you can’t get on an airplane unless you’re wearing a coat and tie.

  Lucy Ricardo gives us a weird gift to bring to our uncle: a chunk of the stinkiest cheese I’ve ever had the misfortune to smell. I ask no questions. Neither does Tony. And we’re dumb enough and hungry enough to bring the cheese with us, which is in a paper bag. The cheese drips and leaks, and we have no choice but to carry it on board with us. No way we’re going to put this in our luggage. The cheese bag will get increasingly stained and its powerful stink will be released more and more as the day wears on. All along the way, people will ask us what that awful smell is. We’ll have to say, “It’s cheese.”

  Now, this is a nice death. We say good-bye to José and promise to keep in touch. We say good-bye to everyone else too, and promise them nothing. As always, Ricky Ricardo is nowhere to be found. Just as well. The guy was getting increasingly creepy, on top of everything else, pinching us on the cheeks and assuming an effeminate voice.

  It’s a beautiful day, this first of September. The sky is heartbreakingly blue, and the cumulus clouds at their most boastful. This time around there’s no fishbowl at the airport, no pecera where you are strip-searched and made to say farewell to your loved ones through a thick glass enclosure. And we don’t have any loved ones to say farewell to, anyway. We’ve already said good-bye to the Becquers on the phone, and also to the Chaits and Rubins.

  We board this Eastern Air Lines plane in much the same way as we boarded the one from KLM in Cuba, eighteen months ago. But we’re not the same boys. Far from it. Tony and I have each died at least three times since then. And it’s getting so much easier to go through it.

  The burning silence strips us clean one more time, inside that cabin. It doesn’t surprise us, and we welcome it. This is one life we’re both glad to slough off.

  It’s going to be a long travel day. It’s a prop job, our plane, not a jet, and it has to stop in Atlanta and Cincinnati before it gets to C
hicago, where we’ll change airlines at the busiest airport in the world, the one where Tony will end up working for many years.

  What a beautiful death. And how utterly painless. The opposite of pain, in fact. This is a mystical transport. This is how saints who know they’re going straight to heaven must feel when they die, or how souls feel when they’re released from Purgatory.

  A nice family is seated across the aisle from us: a man, his wife, and two teenage kids, a boy and a girl. The boy looks just like Jimmy Olsen, from the Superman comics. I’ve already met Archie in person, and I’ve been living with Jughead for a while. Who’s next? I hope it’s Lois Lane, or Wonder Woman. Or Betty and Veronica. Females, please.

  These good people are headed for Cincinnati, where they live. Real Americans. Ohio has to be the most American of states, I think, if this is what people from Ohio look like.

  We take off. I’m used to it now: It’s a familiar tug as the burning silence envelopes me. Fire! Fire! Fire! Thank you, brother fire, gracias, sister death. I see the Orange Bowl from above for the first time, and the Miami River too. I see that there’s no jungle anywhere near that river. I see the angels on Coral Way—they stand out like a long green ribbon. I see a turquoise sea below me, and the islands offshore, briefly. It’s vaguely familiar, that sea, but that water isn’t part of me. I hardly ever got to swim in it. Off to the east, the sun is low on the horizon, having just risen less than an hour ago. It has a long, long way to go before it gets to sink in the west, that incandescent yellow host, so similar and yet so different from the glowing orange one, the setting one that I left behind in Cuba.

  The plane veers sharply, to the northwest. And the sea disappears.

  North by Northwest. Off to the Corn Belt.

  Jimmy Olsen’s dad asks us, wincing, “Say, kids, what’s that awful smell?”

  I say it’s cheese, but what I really want to say is “My former self.”