Learning to Die in Miami

by Carlos Eire

  We meet Mr. and Mrs. Foster, who allow our uncle to use their phone. Mrs. Foster will end up being my math teacher in eighth grade. We meet Reverend Nordquist and his whole family. He’s a Presbyterian pastor and is always doing favors for our new family. Most of their used furniture came from his flock, as did their winter clothes, and the clothes that are waiting for us at our new home. He’s a civil rights activist, and he wears a little piece of burlap on his lapel all the time to let people know that he won’t rest until the Civil Rights Act is passed. We meet Mrs. Junk and her teenage kids. She drives Uncle Amado and the family to the supermarket every week, so they can shop. She has a nifty Volkswagen bus, a brown one, and it’s in that van that we’re driven home from the airport. We can’t all fit in there, since so many people came to greet us, so we end up with a small caravan.

  But before I get into the minibus, I hand over the stinky cheese to my aunt Alejandra. Mission accomplished, and preserved for posterity. Someone snaps a photo of this slice of eternity, at once infinitesimally thin and infinitely vast. In it, Tony is giving some babe the eye, and I’m holding the stinky cheese bag under my left arm, looking delirious.

  I have never, ever been so happy. No lie. On the way into town I see many huge Christmas trees, everywhere. Enormous pines. And other sorts of trees I’ve never seen before, some of which make the ones on Coral Way seem puny by comparison. All of the houses have sloping roofs, and most of them are wooden, with elaborate trim. I’ve never seen houses like this before, except on Christmas cards. Many of the streets are paved in red brick, and the cars make the most wonderful sound as we roll over them: one long constant low whrrrrrrr. We pass a very modern looking building, with a wing that looks a lot like a flying saucer.

  “That’s our high school,” says Mrs. Junk.

  I’m a little thrown off by her surname because at this point I’m not sure if it’s really “Junk” or “Yunk” or “Yonk.” I’ll find out soon enough that she’s a widow, and that her husband died a few years back when their furnace exploded.

  She asks us questions about ourselves and points out landmarks. I’m so high I can barely answer her questions. Everything here is enthralling. Every little detail. It’s so different, so totally unlike anything I have ever seen, even in movies. This is the real thing. This is the land of snow, and I’m higher than I ever was on airplane glue or Robert Mitchum on marijuana and cocaine, together.

  We pull up to an old house with two huge Christmas trees in front. “Okay, here you are, your new home,” says Mrs. Junk. It’s a little run down, but still very attractive. Later, when I learn more about architecture, I’ll be able to tell that it’s an Arts and Crafts house, built in the early 1900s. It’s a riot of triangles juxtaposed against one another, low-slung in front, with a glassed-in porch that’s topped by a peaked roof line that runs east to west, and two gables sticking out of the steeply sloping roof that rises above the porch, sloping from north to south. The driveway is empty.

  “Our very own Christmas trees,” I say to Tony.

  The house next door is enormous, and the largest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen is sprouting from the front yard. It’s as tall as the house itself, and it reaches all the way to the top of the steeply sloping roof, three stories above the sidewalk. Unlike the two trees in front of our house—which are a bit ratty looking—this one is perfect.

  “Look at that,” I say to Tony.

  “It’s a blue spruce,” says Mrs. Junk. My idolatrous instincts reawaken.

  We go into the house. It’s a bit like the exterior: somewhat scruffy, but beautiful. A long curved archway separates the living and dining rooms. The living room has one wall that’s all windows. These windows open onto the front porch, which is itself totally wrapped in windows. If it weren’t for the tall Christmas trees out in front, which cast a dense shade, a lot of light could stream in. The space is furnished with an old couch and armchair, both of which look slightly worn out, yet decent enough to let you know they have a lot left to offer, much like a pretty woman whose face is just starting to wrinkle. A very square television set fills one corner, directly beneath a framed print of a garden scene. The only other decoration on the walls is another framed print, a portrait of Jesus Christ. It’s an image I’ve never seen before: a rendition of the face of Jesus that doesn’t scare me to death. This Jesus isn’t bleeding or suffering in any way, and his eyes aren’t looking straight at you. He can’t follow you with his gaze, either, for his head is turned sideways to the right, nearly into a full profile. You can still see both of his blue eyes, but they have a far-away look. This Jesus seems kind and slightly weary. Maybe worried too. Come to think of it, he looks as if he’s waiting for a haircut at the barber college. I have no way of knowing that this is an American Protestant icon I’m staring at: Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ, painted in 1940, in Chicago, and reproduced half a billion times by the time I lay eyes on it. This icon hangs right above the armchair, which—as I’ll soon find out—is strictly reserved for my uncle. Jesus H. Midwestern Christ, what a contrast with every tormented, bloody, pain-inducing, terrifying Catholic image of Our Savior! No doubt about it: Even the Son of God looks better up here in the Corn Belt. One wall in the dining room is all windows, which open onto the empty driveway and the house next door, with the giant blue spruce. The kitchen is large and has a breakfast nook: two benches and a table tucked away, with a window that looks out onto the backyard. Tony and I get a large room downstairs. It has two big windows and a walk-in closet with built-in shelves and drawers. We have our own clean bathroom right next to our bedroom. The other two rooms downstairs are vacant, and it’s a shame, for they’re both beautiful. The front room, especially. Two of the walls are nothing but windows, and the ceiling light fixture is made of stained glass. It has dragonflies on it, blue and purple when the light shines through them, set in the midst of all sorts of greenery, with traces of yellow and orange. It’s a work of art, far superior to any of the crystal chandeliers in my house back in that place that doesn’t exist anymore. Uncle Amado says he has to keep these two rooms closed up and empty because he can’t afford to heat them.

  For the rest of my life I will ache for that unused and drafty study.

  Uncle Amado, Aunt Alejandra, Marisol, and Alejandrita have rooms upstairs and their own bathroom. And, as a bonus, there’s an attic crammed with stuff, including old family photo albums that belong to the owner of the house, a certain Mr. Guttman.

  Then, another bonus: There’s a cellar, or as they call them in Bloomington, a basement. It’s the first one I’ve ever seen, other than in a movie. It’s huge, like some medieval dungeon, only very clean and well-lit. It makes me think that we’ve moved up to a castle.

  By now it’s pitch black outside. We have a simple meal. Ham sandwiches with stinky cheese, which, as it turns out, tastes much better than it smells. The sandwiches are on white American bread, whole. No diagonal or vertical or horizontal cuts. I devour mine and don’t take the time to thank God. The ham slices have been carefully prepared by Uncle Amado, who trims all the fat away, patiently, with ultimate concentration, much like a watchmaker working with tiny gears and springs. I’ll see him do that every night at the breakfast nook table during the two years, two months, and two days that I’ll spend in his house. It’s a ritual for this architect who has lost everything and has to count every penny at the checkout counter at the A&P, literally. He needs to trim the fat from everything in the universe, to reduce everything to the bare essentials. And this includes the ham. I’ll have many a great conversation with him as he performs this essential nightly ritual. Trim, trim, trim.

  I will learn a great deal from this wise man.

  We have nothing uniquely Cuban to eat, save for the stinky cheese, because there’s no place to buy anything slightly tropical in Bloomington. No black beans. No plantains. No mangoes. No malanga. No yucca. No saffron with which to turn our rice yellow. No thinly cut steaks. No guava paste. No espresso coffee. It’s even hard to
find French bread, the closest thing to Cuban bread.

  So what? Maybe these things are worth discarding in exchange for a life up north, where it snows and everything is nearly perfect.

  We watch television after dinner. It’s Sunday night, so it’s Candid Camera. We missed The Ed Sullivan Show. I discover another minor drawback: We have only one channel to watch. Bloomington has no television stations. Our television set—an ancient model—receives only VHF signals, which means that it can’t pick up signals from very far away. And all we get is the CBS network, broadcast from Champaign, about thirty miles southeast of us. Nothing else but snow on the other channels, the wrong kind of snow. The other networks broadcast in UHF, from big cities such as Peoria, and we’re as unable to pick up their signals as those broadcast by alien beings in other galaxies.

  We also don’t have a telephone. Can’t afford one.

  But I don’t care, not one bit. Tony and I have been redeemed from bondage, and from a tropical existence. From now on we’ll be real people, not troglodytes chained by our necks to a cave wall, constantly duped by shadows. Miami was only the mouth of Plato’s cave. This place, I know, is way beyond that. Here, the true light bathes everything, fully, all the time.

  And it will be in this living room, where I’m watching Candid Camera, that I will see the true True Light for the first time. I don’t know this yet, of course.

  Flash forward, ten years again, to 1973.

  We’ve been driving all day, and my bride has been crying nonstop, all the way from Chicago to Buffalo. It’s August, and beastly hot. Our crap-brown Chevy Nova has no air-conditioning, and I’ve been driving about eighty to ninety miles an hour the whole way, with the windows wide open. The rushing cyclone that flows into the car keeps us sort of cool, and its unrelenting roar muffles her sobbing. Under the circumstances, we don’t have much of a chance to talk.

  In Buffalo, at a Holiday Inn, she soaks a pillow with her tears. It’s like a giant soggy sponge now. I don’t want to wring it out because, unlike the God of the Psalms, I don’t want to keep track of the number of tears. I just want them to stop.

  We’re moving to New Haven, Connecticut, and my bride of eight months is most unhappy.

  And I’m trying to relive the first of September, 1963, moment by glorious moment. I play it over in my mind, again and again and again. Every little detail. I’ve been doing it in the car all day, and I’m doing it now. Oh, but for some of that stinky cheese now.

  Some deaths are so much sweeter than others.

  Ay.

  Twenty

  You can’t have a name like Carlos around here,” says the salesman at the sporting goods store on Main Street where we’re being outfitted for gym class. “That’s not American. Is there an English version of that?”

  “Charles,” I say.

  “Oh . . . great. But you don’t want that either. Nobody’s going to call you that. You’ll be either Charlie or Chuck.”

  This guy seems to know a lot. And he’s asking about my name because when he sells me these Converse high-top sneakers I’ve just tried on, he’s supposed to write my name on them with an indelible marker.

  “If you want to know, Chuck is better than Charlie. It has more weight to it; you’ll be a lot happier with Chuck than with Charlie.”

  “Oh,” I say, weighing my options. I need to think fast. Whatever he writes on that shoe is going to be my name at school, maybe forever. Chuck certainly sounds tough. I’ve never heard that name before, but it has a ring to it like Buck or Flash, the two space heroes played by Buster Crabbe. Come to think of it, Chuck is also like Buster. Man, this is a killer name.

  I hesitate. This is hard. Can I change my name so completely without having thought about it first? You bet. “Thanks, make it Chuck.”

  So he writes Chuck Nieto on my sneakers, smiling as he does it. A very fast-germinating seed has been planted in me that will soon choke out both Carlos and Charles and turn me into Chuck Neat-o. It’s a lethal combination, this pairing of name and surname—Chuck and Nieto—because no one in Bloomington will be able to pronounce Nieto correctly.

  “What? Say that again? Neat-o?”

  “No, it’s Knee-a-toe.”

  “Oh, okay, Neat-toe.”

  Aaaaaargh.

  Having been stripped in Miami of Eire, my other surname, I’ve given up on reclaiming it. It’s as dead and buried as my Cuban self.

  All of my life, up until the day I set foot in Everglades Elementary School, I’d had two last names, each equally significant: one from my father, Nieto, and one from my mother, Eire. But everything changed in an instant at that school in Miami. “Only one surname per customer,” the assistant principal said. “You can’t have two. Pick one.”

  Sophie’s choice, in reverse: Is it better to reject your father or your mother?

  I briefly ponder what might happen if Chuck were to reclaim Eire tomorrow, during the first day of school. Given the enormous trouble that Americans seem to have pronouncing anything in another language, it might be risky. Eire is tougher on American tongues than Nieto. Chuck Eerie. Chuck Ire. Or Chuck Air. Man, those are no good at all. Or how about the full combination: Chuck Neat-o Eerie, Chuck Neat-o Ire, or Chuck Neat-o Air. Holy smokes, forget about it.

  I like this new name, Chuck. It suits me, the new me, here up north, in the realm of light—and snow. Hell, I could be like Buck Rogers now, if I go with that name, or Flash Gordon. Then I could be super-American.

  Comemierda, says Carlos. He doesn’t like being shoved aside again like this. And he swears revenge against both Charles and Chuck, and threatens Charlie just in case that moron decides to stake a claim.

  School starts tomorrow. We got here just in time. Monday was a holiday called Labor Day, when everything was closed. Today we’re getting ready for school, buying all sorts of stuff with money that we were given by the social worker in Miami. My uncle could never pay for this stuff. We’ve gone up and down Main Street and found everything we needed. Downtown Bloomington is close to home; we can walk there, easily. Uncle Amado walks to Lundeen and Hillfinger, the architectural firm where he works as a mere draftsman, which is near the domed courthouse that squats right in the middle of downtown. This courthouse looks like a small version of the Capitol in Havana, which, in turn, is a small version of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. I’ll soon discover that fat old men like to sit on the courthouse steps all the time. They’re almost like sculptures, permanently affixed.

  Every building on Main Street is made of red brick. None of them is very tall, and none of the stores is very large. The largest building is the twelve-story headquarters of the State Farm Insurance Company. It dwarfs everything else. The largest store is one block west of Main, and it’s one I’d first learned about in Miss Esterman’s class, while listening to The Music Man: “Montgomery Ward sent me a bathtub and a crosscut saw.”

  Uncle Amado tells us everything at Ward’s is way, way too expensive. Once we’ve used up this money, he says, there are only two stores in town that we can go to: Goodwill and Salvation Army. He says that the used clothing they sell is practically new, and that you can get great bargains. Fortunately, they’re both close to our house, in one of the shabbier corners of downtown, which surprises me when we walk past it. What? Squalor, here, up north?

  The public library is downtown too, much closer to our new house than the library was in Miami. I make plans to check it out as soon as possible.

  Our neighborhood is a bit run down, but you can tell that it was once the best in town. The streets are all lined with old giant trees, taller than most of the houses. Many of the streets are still paved in red brick rather than asphalt, and some of the houses still have hitching posts for horses. There are palatial houses everywhere. Many of them have turrets, and lots of gables. I’ll find out soon enough that most of them are called Victorian houses. I’ll also discover that many of them have been turned into apartment houses, and that the few that haven’t are usually occupied by lonely ol
d ladies.

  Our house looks a little more run-down in the full light of day than at twilight, especially when viewed from the backyard. The Christmas trees out front could use some trimming, and the siding and windows could use some paint. And the backyard could use a lot of work. You can tell it was once beautiful. There’s a scruffy old trellis out there, and also a cement fishpond, about the size of a large bathtub, crammed with rocks and debris. This rubble looks as if it was deliberately dumped in there, and it’s all under three inches of stagnant water. The edge of the fishpond is inlaid with river pebbles of different colors, and it looks a lot like a tarnished jeweled necklace. As soon as we lay eyes on it, Tony and I decide we will restore this treasure to its former glory. We’d like to freeze stuff in there, once it gets cold, and see it suspended inside the ice. I try to imagine what it’ll look like as a block of ice, with toy soldiers sticking out of it at all angles.

  The fence along the edge of the backyard has seen much better days. So has the garage at the far end of the yard, which faces the alley.

  What a concept! An alley. A street that runs behind the houses, and is used as a service road. Your trash goes out there, not on the street. How utterly civilized, how perfect. Every block in Bloomington has an alley. We also have a huge steel barrel out there, where all of the paper trash gets burned. More than perfect. Fire! Yes!

  As soon as we find out what the barrel is for, Tony and I both volunteer to burn the paper trash every day. We’ll spend a lot of time out there and become creative incinerators, and scientists too. We’ll not only toss all sorts of nonpaper items in there to see how they fare under scorching temperatures, but also test each and every aerosol can our family discards, to see whether or not it will really explode when tossed into the fire, as the dire warnings printed on such cans predict. We’ll also keep track of time as we wait for them to explode—or not explode—and determine which ones detonate faster than others. After two years of testing we’ll fail to find a single aerosol can that won’t explode immediately.