Victoria answered, “I don’t know…I’d have to lie to him, and to my mom, and he’d find out and then I’d be in the doghouse for weeks…”
“What, he’s going to ground you? Vicki, I have news for you: you’re an adult. You’re twenty-eight. Let him kick you out. You’ll move in with me, I’ll teach you to bet jai alai. You’ve got a good head for figures, you’d be a natural at it.”
A laugh caught Victoria by surprise, the suggestion was so outrageous, so not her. She changed the subject and they talked on, of family and Eugenia’s louche life, and when they ended the conversation, Victoria felt herself again. Which was? She didn’t quite know, but it was not as an escapee like Eugenia, she decided as she turned again to the close-ranked numbers, not escape, but victory. Her father’s daughter, after all.
There was a plaque at the base of the tree, placed by the South Florida Horticultural Society. This plaque proclaimed it the largest tree in Florida, and informed the interested that it was a FICUS MACROPHYLLA, a banyan fig, and had been planted around 1890 by a minister to provide shade for his church. It still provided shade to the large brick-built steepled building that had replaced the tin-roofed original, and also, in the late afternoon, to the low, modern structure that housed the Providence Day School, K through six. The tree covered an area the size of a big-league baseball diamond, a vast ball of dark green elongate shiny leaves suspended over dozens of trunks and subtrunks, smooth and gray as elephants, and in the spooky cloud-stopped light of this afternoon, like elephants these seemed to march with infinite slowness across the lawn that surrounded it. There was a wooden bench established under one of its boughs, slung cleverly between two living buttresses. Upon this sat Miss Milliken, the first-grade teacher, who read to her class from Tik-Tok of Oz, a special treat at the end of the day. The parents knew to collect their children there on paradisiacal afternoons such as this, and there was a small circle of adults, almost all well-turned-out local matrons or young nannies, standing around the clump of sitting children, listening while the chapter was read out. The sole listener who was neither matron nor nanny was Jimmy Paz.
The book closed, the children sprang up and began to chatter, the parents moved in. Some grabbed their youngsters and moved off in a determined manner, to tightly scheduled activities meant to build up resumes. The students at Providence Day came from a social stratum that did not believe in wasting the unforgiving minute, whose members believed that it was never too early to sacrifice to the gods of success. Jimmy Paz was not one of these either, nor were several others, who demonstrated by their costumes and vehicles that they were the heirs of the former indigenes of Coconut Grove-the laid-back, the artistic-even if wealthy enough to afford Providence’s stiff fees. These gathered around Miss Milliken to chat, to discuss their children briefly, to hang out with one another in the welcome shade of the great tree.
Unconvivial Paz, no former hippie, no artist, followed his daughter’s lead into the green center of the ficus. Here he observed a demonstration of tree climbing and was forced to admit that he could not swing upside down from a low limb by his knees. He could, however, still tickle her so that, giggling, she lost her grip and fell into his arms.
“Daddy, do you know there’s a monster in this tree?”
“I didn’t know that. Is it scary?”
She considered this briefly. “A little scary. Not very scary, likearrrrrgh! ” She demonstrated what scary would be like by physical gestures and a snarling face. “He talks to me,” she added. “In Spanish.”
“Really. What about?”
“Oh, stuff. He’s from a real jungle, and he can talk to animals. I showed him to Britney Riley, but she couldn’t see him. She said I wasstupid. I hate her now.”
“I thought she was your best friend.”
“Uh-uh. She’s a total dummy. My new best friend is Adriana Steinfels. Can she come to our house?”
“Not today, honey. Can you show me the monster?”
“Okay,” with which she took his hand in hers and led him deeper into the maze of prop-roots. The air there was damp, cool, and filled with the spicy-rotten smell of the leaf and fruit litter below. They came to a gray-green vertical column that looked as big around as a dump truck: the main trunk of the state’s largest tree. Amelia pointed upward. “He lives up there,” she said, and waited for a moment, listening, then shrugged. “I think he’s not there now. Where’s Abuela?”
“Something came up. She had to go to herile.”
“Could we go, too?”
“We could,” said Paz, somewhat to his own surprise. It would mean a fight with his wife. Did he want that? Maybe it was time to have the whole thing out. Whether Paz believed in Santeria or not, the thing was part of his child’s heritage, not to mention his own, and this absolute ban had suddenly become unbearable. Amelia was not a Britney or an Adriana, a white bread…the word gusano, a maggot, floated into consciousness, and was shoved down again. The kid was a mutt, and seven was not too early for her to learn where she came from. Okay, now they’d have it out. He loved his wife dearly, in parts, but her materialist self-righteousness he did not love, and he’d come to the end of avoiding the issue. So he told himself, and ran a few little testing arguments through his head, as husbands so often do, as he left the bowels of the fig tree and entered the open air, clutching the little warm hand. The monster in the tree, though-also not a good sign. Amelia had gone through a number of imaginary playmates, and Dr. Mom had explained at length that it was perfectly natural at the appropriate age. Was this the appropriate age? Nearly seven? Paz had thought that real friends took over the social impulse about now, and dumping a real friend because of an imaginary one could not be right. Now he was about to take the child to a place where nearly every adult had an imaginary friend who emerged unpredictably from the spirit world and took them over completely-would that betherapeutic under the circumstances? He knew what her mother would say to that. Paz told this line of thought to stop and it did but promised to come back real soon.
Theile, the Santeria congregation, was lodged in the unprepossessing home of Pedro Ortiz, located in the largely Cuban-inhabited area southwest of the original Little Havana on SW Eighth Street, which bore therefore the Spanglish name of Souesera. He had to park the Volvo two blocks away, so great was the number of cars-mostly venerable and including a number of well-used pickup trucks-that crowded the streets nearby and also the small former lawns of the houses, now converted into green-painted asphalt parking lots. It was the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, an important day in Santeria, for when the African slaves first saw statues of that saint, they had conflated the beads of his rosary with the palm-nut chains used in Yoruba divination and so associated the Italian saint with Ifa-Orunmila, the orisha, or spirit, of prophecy. It was considered particularly auspicious to get your fortune told on this day, hence the crowd and hence the presence here of Margarita Paz. Paz explained some of this to his daughter as they walked; she took in the information in the perfectly accepting manner of children, and then asked, “Will they tell a fortune for me?”
“I don’t know,” said Paz honestly. “You could ask Abuela. She knows more about this stuff than me.”
“What’s in that bag?”
Paz hefted the plastic sack. “Yams.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Do we have to eat them?” Not a yam fan, Amelia, despite his best efforts. “No, they’re for the orisha, ” he said. “Ifa loves yams.”
“Yuck,” said Amelia, unimpressed by the tastes of the Lord of Fate.
They went into the house. Paz’s nostrils were immediately full of the typical smell of such places-burning wax from scores of candles, the sweet incense sold in botanicas throughout the city, the earth smell of piles of yams, the sweetness of coconut and rum, and beneath all, the acrid odor of live fowl. Despite the murmur of the crowd, these could be heard clucking from their pens in a room at the back of the house.
He held tight to Amelia’s hand, although the place wa
s full of children running free. Besides these, the people were of all ages, as one would expect at any church, and of all colors, too, although tending to the darker shades indigenous to the Cuban community.
“Look, Abuela!” Amelia cried and tore away to greet her grandmother. Paz liked to see the two of them together, because of the expression that came over his mother’s face when she embraced her nieta. It was joy unrestrained, an expression he did not recall seeing there during his own youth. Once he had felt a pang of resentment at such times, but no longer. None of that mattered anymore, whether or not his wife the shrink agreed. Some of the joy even carried over to him. Mrs. Paz embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks, smiled, showing the gold teeth.
“You brought her,” said Mrs. Paz.
“Sure, why not?”-a question that had a real answer, which they both knew.
“Thank you,” she said, and Paz had to keep from gaping. It was the first time his mother had ever thanked him for anything.
The grandmother and the child moved through the crowd, greetings and cooings arising in their wake. Paz followed, bemused, feeling the removal of a weight he had not realized he was carrying. The child was no stranger to praise, but her immediate family was small, and praise was associated with accomplishment. She had not ever received a flood like this, and he saw her shyly blossom. Paz got the feeling that the members of theile had been prepped for this by grandmotherly boastings. And why not? he thought; she’s had a rough life, this is a small enough pleasure to give her. His mother seemed to have transformed herself into an entirely different woman from the stern field marshal of the restaurant and his childhood home. Not for the first time he wondered why she had not raised him in Santeria. Apparently age was no barrier, as the many children here proved. Again he suppressed resentment.
They approached the sanctuary, a tent of yellow and green silk partially enclosing a squat cylinder covered with satin brocade in the same colors-the fundamentos, or sacred ritual symbols, of Ifa-Orunmila. Dozens of candles in glass holders burned around this shrine, and the floor was covered with layers of yams and coconuts. Amelia was allowed to deposit a yam and then taken to see the cake, a huge wedding-style confection of many tiers, on which was inscribed in icing Maferefun Orunmila.
“Is that a birthday cake?”
“Yes, in a way,” said Mrs. Paz. “It’s the day we celebrate and give thanks to Orunmila. See here, it says ‘thanks be to Orunmila,’ in Lucumi.”
“Could we eat it?”
“Later, dear. First we have to see our babalawo. Now, he’s a very holy man, so when we meet him, we bow and say ‘iboru iboya ibochiche.’” They practiced this a few times and then pushed through a thicker crowd to where Pedro Ortiz, the babalawo, sat on a simple caned chair. Mrs. Paz and Amelia dropped to their knees and said “may Ifa accept the sacrifice” in the modified Yoruba language called Lucumi by Cubans. Mrs. Paz introduced Amelia to the santero. Paz watched from a short distance. Ortiz was a slight cordovan-colored man with a thick head of black hair just starting to go gray and large dark eyes that seemed all pupil. He embraced both Mrs. Paz and Amelia and then looked over the heads of his followers directly at Paz, who understood that the babalawo knew pretty much what he was thinking. It interested Paz that he had expected this and was untroubled by it. Yes, weird stuff happened, weird stuff would continue to happen. It was a permanent part of his life, and it looked like it would start to be a part of his daughter’s life, too. His mother was beckoning him. Ortiz rose and shook hands. No bow was apparently expected from the great quasi-agnostic. Mrs. Paz said, “He has agreed to throw Ifa for Amelia. It’s very important, but you’re the father, and so you have to agree.”
“Um, right. What’s going to happen?”
“Just agree, Iago!” she said sharply.
“Okay, Mami,” he said. “Your show. I trust you.” As the words came out, he found that he actually did.
Ortiz led the way into a smaller room in the back of the house. In it were vases full of tropical blooms and trays of fruit, and there were depictions of the orishas on the walls: Ifa in his guise as St. Francis, Shango as St. Barbara, Babaluaye as St. Lazarus, and the rest. In one corner was a life-size statue of St. Caridad, the patroness of Cuba, and along one wall was a large mahogany cabinet, the canistillero, repository of the sacred objects. The only other furnishings were a folding bridge table with a round wooden box in its center, and four straight chairs. Ortiz sat in one of these and waited while the others sat. Ortiz looked into Paz’s eyes and said, “We don’t usually ask Ifa to tell the future of children, you know. Their future is so little formed that it would be disrespectful to ask. In a way, their little spirits are still held in the hands of their ancestors, such as yourself and Yetunde here.” Here Ortiz smiled briefly at Mrs. Paz, who nodded when she heard her name-in-religion. “And of course the child’s mother. So, what I will do is throw Ifa for you yourself, asking if there is anything that needs to be done or not done for the child’s sake. It’s difficult to make such a reading, but I have agreed because of the love and respect I have for Yetunde. So, now I need you to give me five dollars and twenty-five cents.”
“Oh-kay,” said Paz, “five and a quarter. Here you go.” He handed the man a bill and a coin. Ortiz wrapped the coin in the bill using a complex origamilike fold. He opened the box on the table and took from it a chain made of eight curved pieces of tortoiseshell connected by brass links, and an ordinary drugstore notebook and pencil. The word opele floated up from memory. Paz had seen one of these before but never in actual use. Ortiz pinched the currency and coin around the center of the opele and pressed this to Paz’s forehead, breast, hands, and shoulders, and then did the same to Amelia. He placed the money in the box, and after a low humming incantation that proceeded for some minutes he raised the chain and let it fall with a small tinkling clatter on the table.
The babalawo studied the line of the shells, observing which had fallen concave side up and which ones concave side down. This, Paz knew, is how Ifa speaks to men. Ortiz made marks on a sheet of paper torn from the notebook, a vertical stroke for concave-up and a circle for concave-down, two columns of four marks. He studied these, frowning, looked sharply at Paz, frowned more deeply, studied Amelia. Finally he uttered a soft grunt and asked Paz if he had a dog.
“A dog? No, we don’t. We have a cat.”
Ortiz shook his head. “No, it would be a large dog, or…something. Are there neighbors with such an animal?”
“There’s a poodle down the block. Why are you asking this?”
“Because…hm, this is very strange, very strange. I have been doing this for forty years and I don’t recall the orisha ever sending this. You know, all this was born in Africa and there are some things that happen in Africa that don’t happen here. The locusts don’t come and eat our crops. We don’t give cows in exchange for our wives. Very strange.” He stared at the opele as if he hoped it would change itself into another shape.
“But it involves a dog?” Paz asked.
“Not really. But what else could it be? Here we have no lions. Lions don’t carry off our children here in America. But here it is, ‘the oldest child is taken by the lion.’ That’s how the verse goes.”
“You could do it again,” Paz suggested after a moment. There was a peculiar cold chill in his belly, and without thinking he reached out and grasped his daughter’s hand.
But Ortiz shook his head. “No, we don’t mock the orisha. What is given is given. But it’s certainly a great puzzle. I will have to pray about this, and make a sacrifice, too. Oh, and that is another peculiar thing. There is a sacrifice required.”
“You mean an animal, right?”
“No, the oracle speaks about a human sacrifice, but it’s not definite. The verse reads ‘who is so brave as to sacrifice the dear one?’ When such things appear, we always take it to mean a spiritual sacrifice, a purification. But, as I say, in forty years, this has not been told to me. There are very many figures, not only two hund
red fifty-six from the one throw, as you see, but changing with the days and the seasons. Not all babalawo know this. Come back and see me again, and may Orunmila give us more light then.”
The three of them walked out of the room, and an elderly woman passed them going in. A long line of people had formed, like that outside the toilets at a theater, all chattering softly in Spanish, waiting to know the future. Paz felt a ferocious anger displacing the fear from his mind, together with whatever small scraps of credulity he had so carefully assembled. After sending Amelia off to where they were serving cake, he directed it at his mother.
“What was that all about?”
“You’re angry.”
“Ofcourse, I’m angry. Animals eating kids? Human sacrifice? Do you have any idea what it’s going to take to get her to bed now? She already has dreams about animals eating her up.”
His mother’s eyes grew wide. “What! She has dreams like that! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why? Because they’re just dreams, Mother. All kids have nightmares at her age, and this kind of crazy…stuff doesn’t help. Speaking of which, I must have been nuts to bring her here. All of this…” He gestured to the room, the devotees in their standing clusters. He couldn’t think of any word that was not vile, for all of this.
“You don’t understand,” she said with uncharacteristic calm. “You should be made to the santos, like a man. But you hold back, and this is why Orunmila can’t speak to you clearly.”
She spoke as to a child, and this made Paz even angrier. His mother wasn’t supposed to be calm like this, he wanted a fight. He said, “I’m taking tonight off,” a statement normally guaranteed to produce a battle.
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