Never Too Real

by Carmen Rita

  “Hola . . . ?” Magda’s mother said tentatively.

  “Hi, Ma.” Up from the fridge door popped the sheared blond head and makeup-free face of her beautiful daughter.

  “Ayyy!” Still holding her very dirty gloves, Ma clutched at her chest as her eyes grew big.

  “Hi.” Magda was not interested in her mother’s drama. She had rehearsed hard on how she was going to ignore it. She knew she’d have to be the one with feet on the ground. So, she gave her mother a “Wha?!” face, closed the fridge door, and turned to get a glass from the cabinet for her cold drink. Her mother still hadn’t moved from her spot, nor even moved her face. Normally, she would have run to her and hugged and kissed her darling, gorgeous, pride-and-joy daughter Magdalena. She was her first and, as everyone knew, her most treasured.

  “M’ija . . .” she managed to whisper. My daughter.

  At least it wasn’t a yell. Magda had prepared herself for some extremely negative reactions, some screaming and throwing things. But she had also hoped dearly that her mother wouldn’t be anything other than sad but accepting. Isn’t that what all gay kids want?

  “Whatcha got back there, Ma?” Magda was determined to pretend all was well, and she gestured easily toward the garden and its blooms while she made her way to the breakfast table to sit. This table was the family conference center, the space where her mother held court and all the family enjoyed being Reveron de Sotos. Announcements, arguments, decisions, confessions, forgiveness: all happened at this table. But her mother was not going to talk about the peonies in the garden right now. Her beloved daughter was shorn. Send a child to Europe . . .

  She sighed.

  Magda picked up a magazine and drank a soda, as if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary was going on. So her mother sat down, too, next to her, still staring, mouth agape. Her dirty gardening gloves left a dark smudge of fertilizer on the white Saarinen table. She didn’t speak.

  “Well, the flowers look great,” Magda offered.

  Her mother still didn’t speak.

  “So . . . can Miranda make me something to eat? I’m starving.” Magda spoke into what she was reading, her face toward the table. She was doing a worse job of hiding her growing discomfort in this moment.

  Her child was now in need, so Magda’s mother broke her silence, “Jes. Sí, sure. Miran—”

  “Sí, señora.” Miranda was right outside the door, all too eager to hover around this conversation. “Magdalena, mofongo, ’ta bien?” Magda’s favorite dish of salty, mashed plantains was usually best for hangovers, but right now, it’d taste like a hug.

  “Ay, Miranda, te amo!” Magda smooched the fingers on her right hand and blew a kiss Miranda’s way. Most families kept a bit more distance between themselves and their employees, but Miranda protected what she knew all these years and Magda loved her for that.

  “Magdalena . . . querida, what is dees?” her mother asked her, more gently than she’d thought.

  Magda turned the page of the paper, adding the crinkle of folding paper to the sound of sizzling food coming from the stove.

  “Wha?” she asked her mom, shrugging.

  “What do ju mean, wha?” Mami’s eyes looked fiery—and not with anger, but with fear.

  “What are you talking about, Mami? I’m fine!”

  “Why ju do dees? Dees?” She gestured toward Magda’s makeup-free face, chopped hair, loose white T-shirt, buffed arms, and burly posture. Ma switched to English when she didn’t want Miranda to understand too much. If she had taken the time to know Miranda better, she would have learned that her housekeeper understood English perfectly well. She just acted as if she didn’t.

  Magda sighed and put down the paper. Moving her mother’s dirty gardening gloves to the side, she took her mother’s hands into her own. “Mama, this is who I am.”

  Her mother’s response was a deep swallow, a gulp, as her eyes welled up with tears.

  “Ma?”

  “Jes,” Magda’s mother whispered as she maintained her stare at her grown daughter who left their home one way only to return a completely other person, in her eyes.

  “Things aren’t going to be so bad.” Magda squeezed her mother’s shaky hands. “I can’t live my life like someone else, you know that.”

  “Jor father, Magdalena . . .”

  At the mention of the patriarch, Magda straightened up and pulled her hands away from her mother’s.

  “I can’t live for him anymore, Ma!” Magda hissed. Her mother straightened her back, stiff, in response.

  As the sweet odor of plantains and reheated pernil wafted from the stove, Miranda materialized behind her long-time jefa and slid a small box of tissues to her side before soundlessly moving back to the stove. Magda’s mother slowly pulled a tissue out and wiped her eyes. She blew her nose loudly. Finally, she sobbed, “I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

  Magda’s father was no more abusive or oppressive than any other macho, successful Latin father. But his wrath could still be a frightening thing.

  Over the past several months, Magda had been so single-minded in her quest to live her life as she wanted that she hadn’t thought much about how her mother would handle this. Magda knew she’d be disappointed. And she knew that her mother would have to manage her father’s anger somehow. But she was pretty good at that.

  “Mami. I’m sorry. This is not your fault, okay?”

  “I know.” She sniffed. “I jes don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll take care of it, okay?”

  Suddenly a lightbulb went off in her mother’s head.

  “Ay, m’ija! What about marriage and children? How can you have children?” She started to wail.

  Magda had not seen this coming. This was the time before marriage was legal, even well before living with a partner of the same gender was considered normal. She leaned in again and gently pulled her mother’s arm toward her.

  “Mama, calm down! I can have kids, somehow, or maybe someone I’m with can have kids. But really, I’m way too young for that right now, okay?”

  More wailing.

  “Anyway, don’t you have other kids who can get married and start families?”

  “Is anyone else un gay, too?”

  “No, Ma. No one else in this family is gay. I’m pretty sure,” Magda assured.

  “Okay.” She stared into space now, sniffing and adding to her pile of wet tissues.

  “It’s going to be okay, Mami.” She patted her mother’s jeweled hand. Those gloves protect and cover so much, Magda noted.

  Miranda swung over Magda’s place setting and laid down her plate. Magda dug in.

  “Oh, Miranda, tan rico!”

  “Gracias, Magdalena. Disfrute.”

  As Magda moved her silverware swiftly from the plate to her mouth and back and forth, stifling her grumbling stomach, probably upset both from hunger and nerves, she looked at her mother.

  “Mami, I’ll talk to him, okay? I’ll make sure things are all right.”

  “Okay, m’ija. I need to go lie down . . .” Her mother didn’t make eye contact, just pulled away gently from the table in a daze.

  But things weren’t going to be okay. When Papi got home, Magda tried her usual, casual greeting as if nothing had happened; as if her father hadn’t had a beauty-queen daughter—a tomboyish one, admittedly, but a glamorous one—for twenty-one years. Instead, this tall, blond, athletic-looking, gender-bending person in front of him.

  Again, there was no yelling. No throwing things, no threats. He gave his first-born daughter a look like a long, slow sip from a cup, then climbed the stairs slowly toward his wife, bed-bound in shock. Magda felt the ice of his eyes behind her as she attempted to walk nonchalantly to the driveway to greet one of her siblings, meeting her before she got inside the house just in case things got heated. But that stare from him, that stare, screamed and yelled and glowered a thousand decibels. It was the loudest she’d ever hear him, for decades.

  After going for a run on the
local college track—sweat always cleared Magda’s head—she showered, changed, and checked in with her mother. It was nearing evening and all in the home remained eerily quiet. It seemed dark and the humidity inside hung low and tight like a fog. Without even turning around in bed, her back to Magda, the mother told her daughter that her father was out and it was best if she packed her bags and left before he came home after having too much to drink, potentially exploding at the sight of her clean-scrubbed face with rage at her betrayal, which is how he saw it: betrayal. Magda was a fighter, but she didn’t want to cause her mother more harm, more stress. She had known this might happen. She had hoped that it would not. She kissed her mother’s hand before she left, both of them crying, her mother’s hand still wet with wiped tears, and decided that it was best if she did do just that, leave. And as she raised herself up from her mother’s bed, Mami asked her to make sure she locked the bedroom door behind her, just in case.

  It was done. Magda was out. And it would be years before she’d ever see her father again. He came home after she had gone to bed, left then before she awoke, taking packed bags with him. He returned within a few days—once he knew Magda was gone. It then took a full year before Magda’s mother had the fortitude to see her daughter in person, having to carve some lies to get out from under the watchful eye of her husband. Magda’s choice created a house divided. Her siblings, all in their own youthful worlds of college and high school, fell to the side. They were hurt by the aftermath, living with an angry father and a quieted, meeker mother. They were too young to do anything but blame Magda, because to them, in those years, being gay seemed a choice. One maybe done by their much-stronger, more independent sister, selfishly. But only Mami remained on Magda’s side. She knew the only choice Magda made was in changing how she looked, not who she was. The distress at home still had her a bundle of nerves, but she was also unable to tear herself away from her firstborn child, gay and all.

  Chapter 9

  “Oh! Sorry . . . sorry.” Cat mumbled apologies as she bumped into a grumpy, burly man heading up the subway stairs. I’ve gotta wake up. It had been a while since Cat rode the subway during the day. It was cabs all day every day when she was hosting a daily television show. Not anymore. Cat had shifted into the eat-out-less, no-bottles-of-wine, no-shopping, hunker-down-on-every-dollar mode. Her bank balance was still healthy, and the checks continued rollin’ in as her contract clock ticked down, but she knew the drill: It was feast to famine in this business. She knew the streets were littered with laid-off TV people. She had to be ready for famine. But she also needed to get her head on straight.

  When not fully made up for the screen, Cat’s face was still more colored in than the faces of most women she passed. But that wasn’t just the habit and influence of her job. Cat was one of those women who didn’t even walk to her mailbox in her apartment lobby without putting mascara on. For her, it was a Latin thing. Her mother was always put together perfectly, so Cat grew up with the lesson that “ju never know who ju gonna see—or who gonna see ju!” It went far back. In college she was even teased for wearing skirts with her collegiate sweatshirts instead of the more apropos sweatpants or jeans. And every day for years, sneakers were only for the gym. Whatever, she’d say to herself, it was true. She never knew who she was going to see. Or who was going to see her.

  As she rose from underground like a manicured mole, Cat’s face took in the sunlight for a moment before looking downward at her buzzing phone.

  “Looks like the local folks want to see you.” It was the voice of her increasingly frustrated agent. Young buck on the rise that he was, he couldn’t understand why Cat was so particular about her next gig. Money was money and a job was a job, right? Not for his client, Cat.

  “Local? C’mon, Guy. We’re heading in that direction now?”

  “We’re heading in the direction of the interest, okay? It’s what we’ve got—you want it or not?”

  Cat stood on the street corner, tears welling in her eyes as strangers buzzed around her. She reached quickly for her sunglasses before answering.

  “What is it?”

  “A new, like, daily lifestyle thing that actually may roll out to the other affiliates if it works. Promising!” Few people made Cat cry out of frustration—and Dios, did she hate getting emotional, falling into the “hotheaded” stereotype—but this guy just did it to her, moved her mind into that space. He worked for her, yet he acted as if he was doing her a favor. At the start of their relationship, when she’d been the biggest talent on his books, it was all fawning and cupcake deliveries for great ratings numbers. But a couple of years later and here he was, repping a sportscaster who got more “likes” for her sky-high hemlines than Cat did for her reporting. Now he had decided that he was in charge and she was the needy one.

  “When.” Her voice was an icicle, hard and cold.

  “I’ll shoot you a note—look in your e-mail.”

  “Fine.” She cut him off and swallowed her disappointment. She loved the folks at the local affiliate. And they loved her back. But everyone in the business knew that once you went from national to local, local was where you’d likely stay. Cat had met for lunch the previous week with a former network colleague of hers who had had twenty years as a national network man-of-color trailblazer—and now had little choice but to move his three kids and a very disappointed wife to Cleveland. But that was all there was for him on air: local.

  “Shit, shit . . .” she hissed through gritted teeth. Just standing there talking, then thinking, she had lost nearly ten minutes—now she was going to be late meeting her mother for lunch. Now, Ma could be late for lunch, but you’d better not be late for Ma. Hell no. My time ees valuable! Don’ ju know how rude eet ees to be late? Didn’ I raise you right, to be on time? Yeah, Ma, Cat thought. You raised me for a lot of things. Doesn’t seem to be working out so well right now.

  Cat had waited tables alongside her mother from the last three years of high school through college. Every school break, every long weekend, Cat was back working those tables, while most of her college-mates were off to Jamaica to get their hair braided and lie in the sun, getting waited on by people like her. She so resented those girls and their cultural appropriation of braids and burnished, dark skin. They returned from school breaks like peacocks with new feathers, feathers that divided the haves from the have-nots. Cat, on the other hand, returned from breaks with sciatica from hauling dishes over twelve-hour shifts, relieved just to sit in a chair and study. School was her break. But working alongside her mother was a challenge Cat longed to forget, every day.

  One summer, working with her mother proved particularly difficult. It was her last summer before graduation. By mid-July, Cat got the creeping sense that her mother was envious of her impending “escape” into the land of white-collar work after this final college year.

  “I got a lucky penny!” Her mother held out the grungy coin, admiring it, before dropping it into her uniform apron. Cat was busing the section next to her mother’s, wiping spit-up baby bites and squished nibs of cheese.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Dat table gave it to me.” She pointed.

  “What table?”

  “Dat one.” Her mother had pointed to an empty two-spot, already cleaned and set for the next couple. “But dey’re gone.”

  “Ma . . .” How was Cat going to say this? “Ma, that’s not lucky.”

  “Whatchu mean? O’ course it is!” Ma was offended.

  But the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. Now, as had happened many times before, the daughter was committed to educating her mother on the ways of the “gringos.” Sometimes, Cat would just let things go. Let her mother think that “taking the bull by the horns” is an appropriate idiom in this moment. Let her think that making Cat wear an old-lady slip under her school uniform is okay. I’ll just take it off once I get to school. I pick my battles. This time, however, Cat couldn’t let it fly. She was fueled partially by the anger she felt at th
e couple who had insulted her service by leaving her a penny. The fuckers. Cat looked straight at her mother and propped her arm up on a railing separating booths.

  She had said to her softly, so as not to embarrass her in front of the other women working, but firmly, “When someone leaves a penny as a tip it’s because they didn’t like your service. They’re insulting you.”

  “Da’s ridiculous! I know dees is luck and ju don’ know whatchu’re talking about!” her mother hissed, then stomped off to take a poll of the other servers. They might tell her the same, or maybe not. They saw Ma differently. They saw more where her insistence on luck came from—her need to believe it. Her need to believe that things were so wonderful that someone would wish luck upon her. Cat was too weighed down with feeling shame for her mother. Sensing that it was a racist incident, the gesture of bigots. After all, they were the only two brown folks in a ten-mile radius, at least.

  Plus, in the “lucky penny” moment, all Cat could see was a stupidly proud woman who could never be wrong. Who barely had an education but presented herself to the world as if she were third in line to the throne. That was her role, though, as the American-born daughter—wasn’t it? To be an antidote to her mother’s immigrant insecurities? But what she didn’t realize at the time was that the penny wasn’t about her, about Cat. It was about her mother rationalizing a lack of money, of income. And why couldn’t Cat allow this by-the-bootstraps woman one victory, even if it was a delusion?

  The answer was because the world that Cat lived in was lonely. She was the first in the family to make it this far. And like a frightened child asking Mom to please turn on the bathroom light in the middle of the night, she wanted her mother to be with her there, in reality. Not in her fantasy land, her comfort castle. To instead be with her daughter in her difficult-to-navigate cross-cultural world. Over here, Ma. I’m over here. Please be with me. Please be like me.

  Trying to assuage her mother’s need to make sure her daughter would stay on top and on her telly, Cat suggested treating her to a fancy café uptown for lunch. She knew her mother just adored being seen with her daughter, and impressing her mother provided Cat with satisfaction in turn.