One Year of Ugly

by Caroline Mackenzie

  One day in late September, I was nestled into bed doing exactly that – reading my permitted portion of the manuscript and reconnecting with Aunt Celia. I’d only woken up around lunchtime after my shift at the Pie, but by mid-afternoon, after revisiting Aunt Celia’s acts of domestic violence, I had to venture out in search of food. To my surprise, the house was empty. I checked the wall clock in the kitchen. Papá should be on school runs, taxi-driving or tutoring (I couldn’t keep his schedule straight with our wacky working hours), but I’d expected Zulema and Mamá to be home since they’d both stopped working Fridays and Mondays to recover from their Pie shifts. Zulema’s tips supplemented her income, and once the strippers found out that Mamá wasn’t paid to be their House Ma’am, they started paying her full price for her dressing-room beauty services. (See what I mean about strippers? Hearts as big as their implants.)

  Then I saw the note stuck to the fridge door: Vanessa’s baby is coming!!!! We’re at St Clair Medical! Meet us there!! xoxoxoxoxo Zu.

  At the hospital I had no trouble finding my family. The excited babble of a half-dozen Latinos awaiting a new baby was unmistakable, billowing out from the waiting area through to reception. As I walked towards the Spanish cacophony, a wisp of a receptionist leaned over her desk and waved at me, gold bangles tinkling on her avian arm.

  ‘Miss! Ex-cuse! You part of the crowd in there?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Tell them keep it down! Is a hospital in here, not a fiesta!’

  Ignoring the xenophobic fiesta jibe, I carried on towards the noise. They were all in there, every last family member, even Fidel. With Aunt Celia’s rage at Mauricio’s philandering fresh in my mind from the manuscript, I admit that I did feel more than a twinge of annoyance at the fact that we were all gathered for the daughter Mauricio had conceived on the side. But then, seeing my father’s face shining with anticipation, my mother aglow with excitement while munching on kale chips (the strippers had introduced her to super-healthy organic snack foods, so you never saw her without a kale chip or a black-bean brownie now), there was really nothing else to do but jump on the bandwagon. After all, a new baby was always something to be celebrated – even if the pretentious douchebag father was on the other side of the world, oblivious to the kid’s birth, the mother was a teenager in love with an alcoholic twelve years her senior, and the grandfather was currently in a wildly dishevelled state, looking like he stank of booze and cat piss, slurring at whoever cared to listen that he was going to be an abuelo. ‘Abuelo Mo-Mo! That’s what he’ll call me,’ Mauricio was saying to Mamá while she crunched down on her kale and nodded along, humouring him.

  I gave my family a collective wave to the usual ‘Hola Yo-laaaa’ greeting, then grabbed a chair beside the twins, who were in their school uniforms hunched over a giant stork-shaped card, scribbling congratulatory messages.

  ‘Hey,’ I said to Alejandra while she drew a giant heart in the card, ‘where’s Sancho? Stuck at the casino working?’

  Alejandra rolled her eyes. ‘Please, you really think he’d miss this? He’s in the delivery room.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I couldn’t believe Sancho was actually voluntarily present at something as gruesome as childbirth. Growing up, he’d always been queasy at the sight of blood, fainted whenever he got an injection.

  ‘He insisted,’ said Mamá, who’d been eavesdropping. ‘It shouldn’t be too long now. She started pushing a half-hour ago.’

  ‘Just a half-hour? But haven’t you all been here for ages?’

  ‘Ay, Yola, don’t you know when a baby is coming, the mother always has a foot in the grave? It’s important for us to be here from early on to give her and the baby our positive energy.’

  I stared at my mother as she gestured with her hands to show that there was positive energy radiating from her. What the actual fuck was she talking about? She was letting those strippers fill her head with all kinds of bull.

  ‘So,’ I said to Alejandra, ‘no one was shocked about him being in the delivery room? Everyone knows Sancho freaks over blood.’

  She shrugged. ‘Nope, not really. We expected him to go in. Not like we can’t all see that they’re together. He like lives over at our house taking care of her.’

  She pulled on her pink chewing gum, stretching it out like a long tongue before slowly pulling it back into her mouth with her teeth.

  Then after a few moments: ‘What did surprise everyone was that he’s paying for the delivery, plus he said he’s going to adopt the baby and raise it with her. I think they’re even going to get married.’

  Alejandra knew the key to any twist was timing.

  I, on the other hand, was not so hot with timing. I just couldn’t keep it in. Like projectile vomit shooting up out of me, a hideously inappropriate ‘ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!’ at the top of my lungs. It came out in English too, so all the other nice Trinis waiting for their loved ones, tolerating my noisy family and drunk Mauricio, turned to give me the evil eye. Like a shot, the receptionist flew into the waiting area, pointing a finger in my face like a gun barrel, her gold bangles rattling indignantly.

  ‘All-you need to keep the blasted volume down in here! This is a hospital!’

  I raised my hands in surrender and apologized. If only she knew how warranted my outburst had been.

  When the receptionist left, both my parents came to loom over me. They could not stand scenes in public. My father stood stony with his arms crossed while Mamá hissed her chastisements. ‘What kind of language is that to use in a hospital? Shouting like some streetwalker! You’d think you were raised in a barrio!’ Papá chimed in with ‘Precisamente’ and ‘Exacto’ while she ranted.

  They were so busy cutting me down to size that they didn’t notice two things: Mauricio laying himself down on the ground with a dreamy drunken smile, sprawling out as though making a snow angel. And Sancho running red-faced down the hallway, grinning wider than I’d ever seen, even at his drunkest.

  ‘It’s a boy!’ he cried breathlessly.

  My parents spun around, their anger obliterated by excitement. Mauricio was cheering and whooping like he was at a football match, pumping his arms and legs in the air, looking like a giant overturned beetle. At that, the receptionist came stalking back in, but when she realized what the commotion was about, she left us to celebrate. Even if she’d tried to shut us up, it would’ve been useless. Sancho’s joy was infectious. And here’s what was weird: with all that collective happiness, it suddenly didn’t seem crazy at all that Sancho would adopt Vanessa’s baby. It didn’t seem crazy that we were all happy for her even though she was Mauricio’s outside child. It felt as though Sancho and Vanessa had planned this baby all along. It all just fit like a perfect puzzle. I’d never experienced it before, the contagious joyfulness of a brand spanking new life.

  When at last I got my hands on my brother, I squeezed him tight. ‘I’m so happy for you,’ I said.

  I meant it.

  He gave me a wet smack on the cheek. ‘I have a son, Yola.’

  A fat tear rolled down his cheek and I felt myself choking up too. I guess that meant I was an aunt.

  Vanessa’s son was a perfect nine-pounder with big round cheeks, chubby thighs and the most exquisitely teeny toes. Adorable as he was, every time I looked at him, I was struck by the depressing thought that we’d been under Ugly’s thumb long enough for a cluster of cells to morph into an actual human being. Ten whole months since that fateful Sunday barbecue.

  Mauricio had begged Vanessa for the privilege of naming the baby, and shockingly, she agreed. So of course the kid wound up with the name Che. We visited almost every day just to ooh and aw at Baby Che’s spit bubbles and gurgles and squidgy wet baby farts. We couldn’t get enough. And we weren’t the only ones – visitors rolled in and out of there around the clock, including everyone from the Pie. Papá even started getting antsy about so many people popping by.

  ‘What if the police catch on?’

  Mamá flapped a hand at him. ‘C
atch on to friends visiting a new baby? Relax! Here, have a chickpea cookie.’

  Luckily, none were illegal visitors. Román saw to it that Mauricio’s household got a breather, even if it meant the rest of our houses were at illegal capacity, and in a stroke of good fortune, Gordy told Vanessa she was off-duty indefinitely, until she ‘got her physique back into an acceptable state’. A real gem, that Gordy. As for Sancho, no time off from the Pie. Ugly told Gordy to relay the message that if Sancho didn’t report to work as normal, he might have a hard time carrying the baby with two broken arms. When he wasn’t at the Pie or the casino, Sancho was in full-on daddy mode, changing diapers, rocking the baby to sleep, crooning lullabies, the works. Equally shocking: he was dry as a bone – not a drop of liquor in him – and all he did was talk about how perfect his ‘son’ was. He referred to Che as his child so freely I might’ve even wondered if the whole thing with Kingsley was a mix-up and maybe Sancho really had been the one to get Vanessa pregnant. Alas, there was no mistaking that high-born brow, the fair Willoughby skin, the aquiline nose of that aristocratic Castilian ancestry. I could’ve spotted that little Prince De Oruña Willoughby anywhere. But Sancho didn’t care who the hell Che looked like. He was seeing the world through glasses so rosy he really could have thought a turd was a peacock, tail feathers and all.

  The only person left out of the new-baby hubbub was Vanessa’s mother. When she’d tried to get on the plane to leave Venezuela, the Guardia asked if she had five hundred US on her. They might as well have asked if she had five hundred pounds of bullion. Who in Venezuela had five US dollars, far less five hundred? They refused to let her travel without the money, along with more than half the other passengers. Maduro was using any tactic he could to stop the whole country jumping ship. So Che’s grandmother had to stay put, because unlike my wayward family, she had no desire to either embroil herself with the criminal underworld or find herself a man with a boat.

  Vanessa didn’t seem bothered. I don’t think she had the energy to care about a damn thing other than Che and surviving on a few hours of scattered sleep a day. She was like any new mother. Cried a lot, looked blissfully happy one second, then as if she were going to kill herself and everyone around her the next. She was covered in vomit, snot and liquid black shit from sun-up to sundown. And you know what? It made me like her even more, forcing me to let go of any vestigial resentments I’d tried my best to harbor on Aunt Celia’s behalf.

  It wasn’t Vanessa’s abject fatigue and fluctuating emotional torment that did it. I’m not a sadist. It was seeing her be a mother. Through all of the terrifying post-partum changes happening to her body that she’d never expected (and that I was equally horrified to learn of), she sucked it up, never complained, and did it all like a champ. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, she was only seventeen when she’d made up her mind to get out of Venezuela, then travelled to Port of Spain alone through pure determination – and with a lot of help from her Lycra-clad curves.

  Then, of course, there was the other thing that made it impossible for me not to like Vanessa: Sancho was happier than he’d ever been. Not to mention stone-cold sober. How could I dislike any girl who’d achieved that? I even found a quiet moment to congratulate her on it while she was sterilizing bottles one day.

  ‘You’ve really been a blessing for Sancho,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t been so dried out in as long as I can remember, and he’s never been this way over anyone before. So settled and happy. His track record with women has always been sort of … tumultuous, at best.’

  She smiled weakly, eyelids heavy with sleep deprivation. ‘Really? He’s always been so great to me. He’s the real blessing. I don’t know what I would’ve done without him.’

  She dropped her eyes abruptly, her lip trembling.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked gently.

  She wiped a fat tear. ‘Sorry, hormones,’ she said with a watery laugh. ‘I’m just really glad you and I are cool. When I first got here I used to worry that you sort of …’ She trailed off with a shrug.

  ‘Didn’t like you?’

  We shared an awkward laugh.

  ‘Listen, it was never about you, Vanessa. Your dad was the one I was pissed at. I shouldn’t have made you feel bad. It’s just Aunt Celia and I were close, you know?’

  ‘I get it. I always heard she was a sort of – legendary woman. My mother was terrified she’d find out about me and find a way to make our lives hell.’

  I shook my head. ‘She wouldn’t have hated you. Aunt Celia would’ve liked anyone with the balls to smuggle herself out of a country alone and raise a baby she didn’t expect.’

  It was the truth. If there was one thing Aunt Celia had taught me to respect, it was a woman who could stand on her own two feet.

  THE CAPTAINCY BEARS FRUIT

  About a month after Che was born, a few interesting things happened. First, I turned twenty-five. I had no time or energy to commemorate the milestone, but a bouquet of white anthuriums was on my bed when I crawled home exhausted from the Pie at six a.m. on the morning of my birthday, along with a signed first edition of Love in the Time of Cholera, which Román knew was my all-time favourite García Márquez novel. Needless to say, the man knew how to keep me head-over-heels.

  Second, Sancho asked me to be Che’s godmother. We were sitting at Mauricio’s dining table playing Rummy while Vanessa and the baby napped. It was that time of the afternoon when the clouds turn cotton-candy pink and flocks of screeching green parrots come in to roost. I was shuffling the cards, looking at the light coming in through an open window, a fat shard of diaphanous rosy gold. Then I realized Sancho was looking at me with this boyish grin.

  ‘What?’ I asked, instinctively covering my mouth. ‘Something in my teeth?’

  He chuckled and shook his head.

  ‘What then? I hate when you do that, sit there laughing to yourself with some stupid little secret.’

  ‘Vanessa and I want you to be Che’s godmother.’

  I stopped shuffling. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you.’

  ‘But … why?’

  Sancho blew into his second cup of herbal tea in twenty minutes. (He guzzled the stuff now. You’d never see him without a steaming travel mug.)

  ‘You’re the family bitch so no one will ever mess with Che if you’re his godmother.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Shush! The baby!’

  ‘Sorry – but what? I’m the family bitch?’

  Sancho reached over to clap a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s a compliment, chama. Aunt Celia left an opening and you got the job.’

  I thought of the twins, Zulema, Mamá, and even Aunt Milagros back in Venezuela, and realized that yes, by God, I was the new resident bitch of the family. Mamá was a close contender but she’d never shown her catty side to Vanessa because she’d never cared for Aunt Celia. All I could do was graciously accept my new title.

  That’s when I noticed Aunt Celia’s urn was no longer at the centre of the table. Just heaps of baby stuff plus Sancho’s teapot. I scanned the room until I found her – relocated to the bottom shelf of an inconspicuous side table.

  That’s how it was. You died and stayed the centre of attention for a while until the next big thing came along. Then you were tucked away, a memory no one would forget, but ultimately out of sight and out of mind. I felt a pang in my chest and promised myself to keep re-reading the manuscript so Aunt Celia would never be relegated to a dusty corner of my memory like she had been in her own home.

  Not long after Sancho awarded me my godmother/head family bitch title, the third interesting thing to happen was this: The Pink Pie was booked to host a birthday party for its most high-brow, high-ranking guest yet.

  It was four-thirty a.m. after another night of strip-club indentureship. The club was empty and the strippers had paid their dues – everyone had gone home but us staff. Gordy had gathered us all on the main floor, a large room decorated black and hot pink with plush booths along its perimet
er where the lap dances were given, and a pole-equipped stage at its centre. It was separated from the bar area by a dramatic arched doorway hung with a floor-length curtain of glittering black beads that lent an air of mystique, like Mata Hari might be back here shaking her stuff instead of all of us, red-eyed and exhausted. We sat around on the velvet seats, checking for any fresh suspicious stains the evening might have yielded, struggling to stay awake as Gordy launched into a motivational monologue. I nodded off at least twice and had to be woken with a jab to the ribs from Sancho. Finally, after blabbering about first impressions and taking pride in your work and God knows what else, Gordy got to the crux of the thing.

  ‘Only a couple hours ago, I received the momentous news that tomorrow night, we at The Pink Pie will be exclusively hosting our most distinguished guest to date. The Attorney General himself, to celebrate his fifty-eighth birthday, will be joining us along with a party of his fellow government ministers …’

  Chill began clapping with stupendously sarcastic vim. ‘Isn’t that just perfect,’ he said. The rest of us snickered. Gordy, not quite sharp enough to figure out whether Chill’s ovation was sincere, smiled uneasily.

  ‘Yes, it’s a big deal. It really is – and another prime example of why you must all listen when I encourage you to always be on top form. As it turns out, the AG’s personal assistant was here a few months ago and called me personally this evening to book a table for the AG’s birthday celebrations tomorrow night. Imagine if things had been sloppy when he came in? If my standards hadn’t been upheld? Well, thankfully, my captaincy of our ship has borne fruit. Not only will the AG be coming in tomorrow, but I’ve informed the AG’s assistant that regardless of the late notice, we will happily close the club so that the AG can have the Pie to himself and his friends for his own private birthday festivities. I’m told Mr Ugly himself will even be joining the AG, who I believe is his close personal friend.’