by A. E. Roman
“We’re off to Detroit, Uncle Chico!”
“You gonna miss me?” I said.
“Naw,” said Max. “You’ll come visit. That’s what Uncle Nicky said.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve never been to the city of Detroit. Maybe it’s time.”
“It’s easy,” said Max. “You just drive past 8 Mile, past 7 Mile, until you see a green sign called Exit 13 by the Southfield Freeway. Then you’ll see a sign that says McNichols Road. That’s 6 Mile. That’s where I live, off 6 Mile. If you get into any trouble there, tell them you know my uncle Dean. That’s what I do.”
“Your Black Falcon comics?” I said and tapped the brown box.
Max looked at me with sad eyes, and Nicky shook his head and I realized that the box was not full of my old comic books.
“Gizmo,” said Max.
Max held open the box’s lid. Gizmo the cat was dead in Max’s box.
“He had a good life,” Nicky said. “You treated him real good. You cared. Don’t forget that.”
I kissed Max on both cheeks and she ran off before she started to cry, excusing herself with, “I’ll go show Gizmo to Yolanda so she can say good-bye.”
“Sweet kid,” I said, watching Max go. I pointed across the room to where Mimi was trying to convince Willow to eat some of her roasted pork. Nicky looked over at Willow and said, “I think I’m in love again.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I said.
“Willow says you were playing kissy-face with her when I was in Atlanta.”
“It was one kiss.”
“I know you can do better than that,” said Nicky.
“Next time,” I said.
“After Detroit,” said Nicky, “Willow and me are going on a trip. You going to see your mother, right?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t wanna rock her world.”
“Maybe you don’t want her to rock yours?”
“Your car is waiting, Mr. Brown,” I said and stood up.
Mimi came over, kissed Nicky, and kissed my cheek.
She caressed my arm and my blue sling.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll live,” I said.
“Can you believe it?” said Willow, tugging on Nicky. “I can’t get rid of him.”
“Let’s go, brother,” said Nicky.
And as we left for the airport, Willow whispered in my ear, “Failure is when you stop trying.”
That evening, I went to see my mother at the Gloria’s Taza de Oro Beauty Parlor on Bronx River. As I walked into the joint, a little bell went off, and my heart skipped three beats.
There were no customers. A dyed blonde, fifty-three years old, in a white blouse and skirt and white tennis shoes, was sweeping hair off the checkerboard tiles. I recognized her right away. Over one of the three barber’s chairs, on a mirror, was a poem by Julia de Burgos, “Soy una amencida del amor . . . I am a sunrise of love . . .”
That poem was the only evidence that my mother was once in love with my father. It was their poem. He read it to her the day they got married. It was taped on our blue refrigerator on Brook Avenue. I’ll never forget that poem.
“Hola,” said my mother. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I said. “You?”
“My feet hurt,” she said and laughed. “Pero no es tu culpa.”
“I’m glad something’s not my fault.”
“Where are you from, papito?” said my mother.
“Here,” I said. “The Bronx.”
“I have never seen you around here,” she said.
“Just passing through.”
“Hablas Español?”
“Nah,” I said. “I never really learned.”
“Que pena.”
“Do you have time for one more haircut?” I asked.
“Sí, amor,” she said. “Sit!”
My mother signaled for me to sit in the reclining chair by the sink for a wash. I sank into the black leather chair, worn-out, dropped my head back into the cool white sink, and closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes, my mother was there, smiling down on me, tears in her eyes, holding a slick black plastic sheet. She tied the sheet around my neck. I felt in her trembling fingers her compassion, and as I looked up at her Caribbean face, she smiled wide, eager to console me.
She knew.
I knew.
But no one said.
She told me to excuse her tears that she was just thinking about her son. Freddy. She and her husband had two sons. Freddy was a soldier stationed in Afghanistan. She cried for him not to join, she prayed for him not to die.
“I am so sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I don’t know what is wrong with me tonight. How was your day, papito?”
I could have told her that TSP and Father Ravi were indicted for fraud but that Father Ravi would never be tried on this side of heaven since he was dead.
I could have told my mother about Joey Valentin, Gabby, Gupta, and Giovanni Vaninni disappearing again after Father Ravi’s funeral. Together. Destination Tahiti. How with a sweep of my good arm I had flung a brand-new pack of Djarum cigarettes and the phony baseball into the Atlantic Ocean after kissing Zena a final goodbye in my mind at JFK airport where I had dropped off Nicky and Willow and Max. How Max didn’t cry, but left for Detroit like a champ. How life beez that way sometimes. Instead, I said, “I’m trying to quit cigarettes for the millionth time. It’s hard. I’m sorry I ever started.”
“Sí,” she said. “When you quit smoking, it’s like losing a best friend. People who have never smoked don’t understand. I tell my husband, think of giving up watching soccer forever because they discover it causes cancer. La vida.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Life.”
She dried my hair and guided me to a barber’s chair, grabbing her clippers and scissors. Then my mother began to rhapsodize on one of her favorite subjects: cooking.
As my mother buzzed through my nappy locks she let loose a culinary rat-a-tat-tat of ginger, coriander, paprika, oregano, sofrito, achiote, arroz con pollo, plátanos, pasteles, gandules, garbanzos, sopa de pescado, sopón de garbanzos, patas de cerdo, chorizos, tostones, flan y tembleque, cooked in sugar and cinnamon, arróz con dulce, coconut cream and coffee, real strong, real black, café con leche, rum and Coke, Don Q, always Don Q, and Pina Colada, and always Don Q. She ended my haircut with a square cut at the back, and told me her mofongo recipe:
3 green plantains
4 cups of water
1 spoon of salt
3 garlic gloves
1 teaspoon of olive oil
1/2 pound of pork
1 teaspoon of vegetable oil
Jay Z came on over the radio rapping:
Half of Ya’ll won’t make It
And then it was over, just like that. I paid my bill, gave her a good tip. She smiled and kissed me on the cheek and said, “Goodnight, amor.”
“Goodnight,” I said.
She knew I wouldn’t be back. I knew I wouldn’t be back. I don’t know why my mother didn’t acknowledge me or why I said nothing. Maybe I was, for her, something she didn’t want to be reminded of, a sad past best left in the past. I could never come back. She had buried me. She had no use for ghosts.
Maybe I didn’t either.
My mother was married again, had kids, a new husband, a business. She seemed alright. Me? I had four limbs and good eyes, a full belly, an office, and a roof over my head now in Parkchester. There were real tragedies in the world. This wasn’t one of them, I kept telling that lump in my throat, as I paid for my cut and went for the door.
It just felt like it.
No matter. Move along, Santana. There’s nothing to see here.
Outside, a summer rain was coming down like a waterfall. The water beat on the Bronx in streams. I walked in the warm rain to the elevated 6 platform. I thought about visiting my father’s grave. Adam Santana had taken his final ride in a white limo too many years ago. After the funeral ma
ss, the mourners had met at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where my father was buried, joining musical greats Duke Ellington and Miles Davis and some folks I knew personally. No. I would not make the trip to the 140-year-old cemetery. I had had enough of graveside visits. I’d be there myself, as the guest of honor, soon enough. I was both afraid and not afraid. There was loss, but there was something else too, something sweet and heavy, like forgiveness. And as someone once said, death would win in the end, but for today, no matter how I felt or didn’t feel . . . For now, Woodlawn could wait.
That night I went to an old movie at the Film Forum downtown. Alone in the dark, in the shadow of the flickering light I could still see Max’s wet brown eyes. I could still see her waving sadly as I walked out the sliding doors of JFK airport.
Max sucking on a candy ring in the shape of a diamond.
A college girl in a gray Hunter College sweatshirt with purple lettering chanted in the darkness, two seats behind me before the picture started, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily . . .”
I worried about Max back in Detroit with a murdered father.
“It’ll all be over in forty-five minutes,” said the movie screen.
Later, I returned to Parkchester to a Chihuahua named Boo and an empty co-op apartment.
I never saw Joey Valentin or Pedro Sanchez again.
I never saw Zena Gupta, either.
It was over. Dust and faded kisses. We met with a crash and we ended with a crash. I remember Joey. “I apologize if I caused you any trouble, Chico. I’m still learning.”
I remember Zena.
I can still taste her kiss and on certain nights when the air is wet and thick and hot enough I am overcome by memory and the scent of honeysuckle.
Better not to think about it . . .
“Goodnight, Chico.”
Goodnight . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every book is a wrestling match against silence and the blank page. This book had four corner people: Caren Johnson, my agent; Carol Mangis, always my first; Emily Adler, my partner; and Toni Plummer, my editor at Thomas Dunne Books.
Thank you for being on my side . . .