Try to Remember

by Iris Gomez

  “Mami,” I began, “could we ask Tío Lucho to let me work in the Hialeah factory? They’re letting Marisol do it.”

  My mother frowned. “I don’t know. How would I explain to your father?”

  “We could pretend I’m keeping Marisol company.”

  “Lucho can’t be driving you back and forth from Hialeah.”

  “I could go on the bus!” I offered desperately.

  “All the way to Hialeah alone? No, mi’ja. I don’t think so. I have to resolve this situation with your father. Then we’ll see.”

  I bit back disappointment and tried to steel myself to be patient. But pessimism’s little cloud hung around. “Mami, did you tell Camila about Papi’s attack?”

  “¡Cómo va a ser posible!” she exclaimed in shock. “And don’t refer to it that way either.” She eyed me suspiciously. “Have you been talking to anyone?”

  “No!” Guiltily I thought of El Chino. He didn’t really count, did he? Aloud, I only argued, “What difference would it make? Why should we hide it?”

  “Hide it? It’s respect for your family. You say you want to go and work like a grown woman,” Mami shimmied her shoulders to make her point, “but you talk like a child who needs bringing up.”

  “You’re the one who left us!” I blurted out.

  As her jaw dropped, I turned on my heel before she could get the last word in. Then I took off on the pretext of delivering new Avon literature to her customers.

  Camila saw me in the neighborhood and invited me over to meet her niece.

  The niece, Olguita, was vacationing from Colombia to help out with Hernán. She had shiny, blue-black hair gathered into a large peinado high on her head. Her eyes, honey brown as her skin, were blackened with eyeliner that curled up at the edges like elegant script. She looked like a beautiful alien in a sci-fi movie.

  I was shocked to hear she was seventeen, only two years older than me.

  “We have to teach Olguita English,” Camila said, smiling as she served us glasses of tart tamarindo juice.

  “I don’t understand a word, mujer,” said Olguita, using “woman” the way Cuban girls used “chica” or “girl,” and waving her beautifully manicured hand in a casual dismissal of the entire English language.

  She invited me to come over one day for makeovers—undoubtedly intended for me, given my “natural look.”

  “That sounds nice,” I replied with tepid enthusiasm.

  But I did return, two days later, since I didn’t have much going on besides trying to keep an arms’ length away from my father, who fortunately hadn’t shown signs of the explosive anger with which he’d pummeled Manolo—except for one brief outburst over a movie Mami was watching.

  At the makeover, Olguita chatted about her fleet of older brothers and pushed my hair into a headband while I sat pinned to a chair she’d set up in the bathroom. As she dolled me up, she said so many nice things about my cheekbones that she managed to mesmerize me. “Models have operations, you know,” she observed, “but you have them muy au naturel.”

  I grinned at her unconventional but chic blend of French and Spanish. This mujer was growing on me. In between sharing beauty tips, she put on cumbia records and danced around drinking saccharin-laced iced tea. Now and then she’d pop into her uncle Hernán’s room to get a smile out of him too.

  When she was done with me, heavy shades of taupe eye shadow were gilded by Olguita’s trusty eyeliner and signature curl at the end. It was the makeup style modeled on Colombian album covers by women whose breasts bulged out of bikini tops. I didn’t think I would ever choose to let my womanliness bulge out like that, but Olguita’s ministrations pleasantly distracted me from thoughts of home. Plus, I had to admit, I did look glamorous.

  Even my mother offered cautious approval of Olguita’s work. “Very nice,” she remarked, studying me.

  For the rest of that afternoon, however, she was in “No Mode,” as Pablo called it. Stuck with his cast, he asked for permission to eat in front of the TV, but she refused. “And why did your brother have to put in that yellow brass lock instead of aluminum?” she complained again. She went on and on, pretending it was the color that bothered her rather than the fact that Manolo had installed a lock at all. I figured she was feeling anxious about the looming face-off with my father; we were all counting on it to resolve our familial difficulties.

  When Olguita called later to say she was hosting a cocktail party on Saturday, my mother expressed relief at my getting an opportunity for more feminine socialization. She’d long before tried to teach me the lessons of her adolescent girlhood, a Dark Age of formal dancing and queer manners; but then the problems with my father had started and she had no time for frivolity or even for fighting off my Americanization. All she could do, really, was rue the fact that I’d abandoned el castellano as I conversed with my brothers almost exclusively in English.

  When Saturday came, Mami cooked my father Aunt Jemima pancakes and slathered them with syrup. He was in excellent spirits by the time his brothers arrived.

  Pablo was shooed away from the TV.

  “Please, Mami!” he protested, “I can’t do anything with this cast.”

  “Read a book,” I encouraged, feeling a little sorry for him as he hopped away on his crutches.

  My father greeted Tío Victor and Tío Lucho. “Siéntense, siéntense.” Gaily, he gestured toward the couch and pulled over a couple of dining room chairs for extra seating.

  “Gabriela, make some tinto,” Mami instructed.

  “Okay.” The kitchen post let me hear everything in the living room, so I took my time washing out the espresso pot and matching the coffee posillos to their tiny saucers until things got under way.

  “Roberto,” Tío Victor began. “How do you feel?”

  My father laughed. “Good, good,” he answered. “A little full this morning.”

  “I’m referring to your mental state,” my uncle said sternly.

  I heard timid Tío Lucho offer cigarettes to everyone.

  “Not now, Lucho, thank you,” said Tío Victor.

  “My mental state is good too,” my father announced.

  “I don’t think so,” said Tío Victor. “These illusions you have of getting rich.”

  “You’re mistaken, Victor, they’re not illusions.”

  “Roberto,” Tío Victor continued, with customary gentleness. “Something has taken over your mind. These conditions have a solution.”

  “We want to help you,” Tío Lucho added.

  “Gabriela’s helping me,” my father declared.

  “I’m talking about a doctor,” said Tío Victor.

  “But nothing’s wrong with me,” my father answered. “Sometimes I feel tired, but with my vitamins, I bounce right back.” The obsession with vitamins was one of the relatively milder eccentricities my father had developed after seeing some of their strength-promoting qualities touted on The Jack LaLane Show.

  From the kitchen, I could only imagine Tío Victor’s uncomfortable glance in my mother’s direction when my father mentioned his “vitamins.”

  “A doctor can prescribe better ones,” I heard Tío Lucho say, as if coaxing a toddler to eat.

  Mami intervened then. “Roberto, it’s not that. Your brothers are talking about your nervios. Your hand, mi’jo, the shaking.” She hesitated for a bit before pressing on. “You’re spending so much time thinking about those papers.”

  “¿Cómo?” my father barked, his voice rising. “I keep explaining it to you, Evangelina. You don’t understand a thing.” His chair scraped the floor loudly as he stood up. “Let me get the letters,” he begged my uncles, then called out, “Gabrielita!”

  “Hombre, I don’t want to see more papers!” Tío Victor declared. “You have children, Roberto. This can’t continue. You have to get a hold of yourself.”

  “But my check is coming, Victor,” my father insisted. “Gabriela! Bring me the papers from my office!”

  I walked halfway into the living r
oom.

  “Roberto!” Tío Victor was losing his patience. “The only checks that come here are the ones your wife brings home and the ones from Lucho and me! Take responsibility, hombre!”

  Mami gasped in horror.

  “Evangelina?” My father’s voice rose as he turned toward her. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Nothing,” my mother said. “Nothing, mi’jo. Victor is referring to the time I went to the factory with Lucho.” Her eyes flashed in anger at my uncle, then turned patiently back to my father. “Please, Roberto, sit down.” She patted his chair. “If you go to the doctor, you will get a check. Like Camila’s husband, I told you about that. People get checks until they can work again. It’s like a pension. You get a pension.”

  My father kept looking from my mother to his brothers and back.

  “Roberto,” Tío Lucho ventured, “we’re all getting older. It’s a good idea to go to the doctor sometimes to make sure everything works, eh?” He gave an unconvincing chuckle.

  “I do work, that’s what I’m trying to show you,” my father objected, falling heavily into his chair. “Neither of you knows about refineries, Lucho. I can explain it.”

  Tío Victor sighed. “Roberto, we scheduled you a doctor’s appointment. All we’re asking—”

  “I don’t need a doctor!” My father popped up.

  “Everybody needs a doctor sometimes,” Tío Lucho corrected.

  My mother nodded. “Yes, mi’jo, like Lucho says, we’re all getting older.”

  “ He’s getting older!” my father retorted, the vein in his forehead in full throb.

  I ducked into the kitchen.

  “ Roberto, por favor,” Mami implored.

  “¡Basta!” My father came marching into the kitchen where I’d hastily retreated. There I stood at the ready with the coffee pot lifted. “You want some, Papi?” I offered meekly.

  “No gracias, mi’jita.”

  I waited for him to go into his room before pouring the tintos and carrying the tray of cups into the living room. My mother and uncles stared up at me. Finally, Tío Victor took a cup.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” my mother said.

  “You have to convince him, Evi.”

  “Nobody can convince him.” She shook her head. “He’s too stubborn.”

  “He always was,” Tío Lucho added.

  “How are you going to avoid another episode?” Tío Victor nodded in my direction to indicate what he meant.

  Mami’s eyes smarted but wisened up. “Victor, that was because I was gone.”

  “Well, Evi,” he said, handing me the empty cup. “You know the situation. You drive. We’re the passengers.”

  Yeah, right, I thought, thinking of that show Lost in Space and of my mother at the helm of some wildly orbiting space ship.

  Even the cups on my tray shook as I carried it to the kitchen.

  Later, after the uncles had gone, I anxiously sought her out. She was gathering sheets off the line in the yard. “Mami, how are you going to get Papi to that appointment?”

  “Appointment?” She grimaced, handing me two corners of a sheet to help fold. “He won’t go. Your uncle doesn’t understand your father like I do. He’s a proud man.”

  She didn’t understand my father like I did: He was a knock-somebody’s-brains-out man. Deportation was hardly our gravest problem anymore. “I think you’d better make him go, Mami,” I advised soberly, joining my ends of the sheet to hers.

  Her eyes narrowed. “No te vengas a igualar.”

  Don’t make myself her equal? I jerked a pillowcase off the line. How was I supposed to respond to that?

  Mami dumped a clothespin into the bucket and sighed. “He’ll come around in his own time.”

  “You’re just going to wait?” I exclaimed in disbelief.

  She put a fist on her hip and stuck out her chin. “And what choice do I have, smarty-pants?”

  “Trick him! Try something!”

  “Nobody can make your father change, Gabriela,” she said wearily. “I make do with what God gave me.” She swung the hamper onto her hip and turned toward the house.

  With my mouth wide open, I watched her go. I couldn’t believe it. She was totally giving up! What about what Tío Victor had said about my father being a peligro?

  I stormed inside, dumping my hamper on the table. Then I furiously gathered my party clothes. Boy did I need to get out of that place!

  Things were happy at Camila’s. Dance music played and Olguita had placed chairs against the wall with portable TV tables in-between. Plates lined with paper doilies were stacked with sandwiches that Olguita had cut into tiny triangles filled with chopped olives and Velveeta cheese. She and Camila were drinking whiskey and laughed when I admitted I’d never had liquor. Camila added water and lots of ice to a drink before handing it to me. The whiskey had a smoky taste.

  Olguita ushered me into the bathroom. She said she had a surprise for me, the pieza de resistencia. From my one French class, I knew it wasn’t proper to translate pièce de résistance that way—she made the pièce sound like an apartment for revolutionaries. But Olguita would have waved her hand in the classy way she always did whenever I tried to correct her, so I just shook my head and smiled.

  The surprise was a pair of false eyelashes like hers. She was giving them to me, she gushed, because with my eyes—“esos ojos divinos”—it would be a crime to ignore the lashes. Then I donned the silky orange V-neck top she’d lent me, although I didn’t like how the material curved so closely around my breasts.

  By the time her invitees arrived, I was no longer the scruffy girl I’d gotten used to.

  Olguita’s cousin, Antonia, hugged me and introduced her tall boyfriend, Mauricio, and two cousins, Jairo and Tomás, visiting from Colombia. Olguita offered each guy an aguardiente to “remind them of home,” she said charmingly, then poured me a second whiskey drink with less water than Camila’s rendition.

  I started adapting to the taste.

  Everyone took their drinks to the chairs. I was the youngest, and Olguita explained that I’d come to the United States years before, like her aunt. The handsome cousin, Tomás, asked if I liked aguardiente, and I grimaced. He laughed and all the guys started talking about what they missed most when away—the women or the food. Olguita held up her glass, offering a toast “to Colombian women,” and gave me a quick smile. Then everyone got into a conversation comparing American and Colombian schools, which interested me now—just in case we did live to survive my father’s peligro and end up in one of those mudslide-prone villages that tormented my mother.

  “We come out more educated than the gringos,” Jairo concluded boastfully.

  “Maybe it’s our Catholic discipline,” Antonia suggested.

  Eventually, they mentioned plans to visit the Miccosukee village, and I warned them about the noisy airboat rides. “Everything else in the Everglades is so quiet,” I said, “even the alligators.”

  The guys compared American alligators to caimanes and birds of the Colombian interior to birds of the coast. This led to a debate about where the better Spanish speakers lived, whether salsa had originated in our port city of Cali, rather than Cuba or Puerto Rico, and back to the women. “Who won the last beauty pageant, ah?” challenged Mauricio. “A girl from the interior!”

  “You’re drunk, hermanito,” Tomás replied. “The Cartageneras consistently have the best legs,” he said with a wink in my direction.

  As Olguita changed the album, I lost track of the whiskeys I drank. Quite honestly, I didn’t know when to stop. Tomás invited me to sit beside him on the couch and I did, fighting off a few unpleasant heart-flutters of the TV-kissing type. Together, we began to read titles off the album cover as the songs changed, and eventually I drifted into the pleasant scent of his cologne until the rise and fall of the music, like the sounds and scents of my own life, were somewhere far, far away.

  At some point close to midnight I wobbled up for a bathroom break. I managed to keep my
footing, pee, and wash my hands, but when I sized up my lovely lashes in the mirror, the right one seemed a little precarious. I thought I ought to remove it and wondered, Does Olguita have a case? It took a while to find paper cups. Then, carefully, I removed the lashes and plopped them into a cup. I stood staring at myself for a long time with an uneasy feeling. My de-lashed eyes looked slower and sadder than before.

  Olguita knocked on the door. “Is everything okay?”

  I had trouble speaking. “No sé,” I admitted, opening the door. Something overwhelmed me, and I started crying.

  With a worried look, Olguita hugged me and encouraged me to go sit in her bedroom. As she went to get her aunt, I heard the voices in the living room go low.

  When Camila came and saw me crying, she turned to Olguita. “She’s drunk. Evi will have a heart attack.”

  I began sobbing in earnest, telling them I couldn’t go home, I just couldn’t.

  “Of course you can.” Olguita patted my arm and laid me back on the bed, shoes and all. “As soon as the alcohol wears off a little.”

  I shook off her hand. “I can’t!” I cried. “My father has a knife under his pillow and he’ll kill me!”

  They stared at each other. The living room grew completely silent behind us.

  “I’m going to make her some tilo and tell Antonia it’s time to go,” Camila said. “Why don’t you get a warm washcloth and wipe her face.”

  Olguita left, and I heard her saying good-bye to the guests. After the door slammed shut, I cried harder. What a spectacle I’d made, ruining Olguita’s party. And no one had even come to say goodbye! I cried and cried until I wore myself out.

  When Olguita returned, she placed a warm, wet towel over my face. I started to drift off as she and Camila talked, their shapes passing by me like the Guardian Angels the nuns had taught me about in elementary school. Afterward I didn’t know what time it was, but Camila coaxed me into sitting up to drink the tilo. Then she said she would drive me home.

  “Okay,” I said, lifting my legs off the bed one at a time.