Memory Mambo

by Achy Obejas

  Amazingly, the all-time denial queen in Caridad’s family isn’t her mother, but her maternal grandmother, Nivia. Patricia once told me that, back in Cuba, Nivia’s husband Felipe was notorious for womanizing. Felipe didn’t drink like Tío Pepe but they both shared a penchant for mistresses, quite an accomplishment on Felipe’s part because Gibara, where they lived, was a little spit of a town. In other words, everybody knew; it was impossible not to.

  According to Patricia, who heard it during one of her canecutting trips to Cuba and then secretly confirmed it with Tío Pepe, the story goes that Felipe met death while in the throes of passion with one of his mistresses. She called the police in hysterics, creating an incredible scene, and the town coroner took away the corpse. Although very embarrassed, the town authorities were forced to ask Nivia to come in and claim the body—the rest of the immediate family was already in exile and there was no one else to do it.

  Unfortunately, Patricia told us, the coroner was a revolutionary from another part of the island and a stickler for rules. He told Nivia the circumstances of Felipe’s death before letting her in to identify him. So when Nivia finally got her eyes on Felipe’s cadaver—naked and waxy, something of ecstasy about his face, and his formidable member stiff and pale on his thigh—she didn’t blink: She told the coroner there had been a mistake and that this was not her husband. Needless to say, the coroner was aghast. But Nivia’s resolve was such that he felt he had to go along with her. In fact, everybody went along: the newspaper, the neighbors, even the mistress in whose arms Felipe had died.

  Of course, this was not a simple lie; it caused tremendous headaches. Because Felipe was declared missing instead of dead, it took years for Nivia to collect on his pension, leaving her dependent on friends and relatives in exile for a long time. The mistress bore a child she named Lázaro (for obvious reasons) and didn’t even bother to try to legitimize him. Felipe’s body, left unidentified in the morgue, was eventually buried in an unmarked grave.

  Later, Nivia began to claim that Felipe hadn’t exactly disappeared, but had escaped from Cuba by boat, and that he was living in southwest Miami in a big house and trying to get the paperwork together to get her out of Cuba too. Once, Tía Celia suggested that, to please Nivia, who was still in Gibara, the family should pretend they had contact with Felipe in Miami, but Tío Pepe—who had supported Nivia for years until she got Felipe’s pension and had since run out of patience with the whole matter—said that if he ever heard about such a scheme he’d give Tía Celia another disappearance to make up stories about.

  “Juani, are you even listening to me?” asks Caridad, now kneeling in front of me, her cigarette drowning in a glass on the table.

  “Yeah, of course I’m listening,” I lie, because it’s true that I’d drifted off. I’d been thinking about Gina, about our last embrace, and about the pain in my chest. Everything ended so horribly between us, so shamefully. A glance outside the window tells me dawn is upon us, and I suddenly feel tired.

  As I stroke Caridad’s hair I listen to the hum of the apartment again: It’s the machines—the refrigerator, the clock, the blinking VCR in the living room, the Maytags. The only sounds that break through the drone are from a couple of cats screaming, the female in heat and enraged. Caridad laughs.

  “She’s not having a good time,” she says, meaning the cat.

  “How do you know, huh?”

  “ ‘Cause cat weenies have tiny little spikes that rake the female cat’s vagina,” she says. “Of course, by morning, she’ll forget, she’ll share her stupid tuna with him, whoever he might be.”

  And then she laughs again, bitterly, just like before.

  When Caridad opens her robe, we both see the greenish bruises on her shoulders and the bloody red spiders under her skin; there are purple blotches on her breasts, which are tender even to her own touch, and just below her neck. There’s a huge scrape from her thigh up to her hip from when she raced too fast around the kitchen table and got cut on the corner. I cannot bear to look—I have my own fresh memories to run from.

  Because the fight is over, because she’s too tired to be angry anymore, Caridad’s adrenaline is down now and just taking the robe off is an effort. I run a bath for her. The water splashes hard into the tub and steams up the mirror on the medicine cabinet. As the tub fills, I drop in chamomile tea bags which turn the water yellow and fill our nostrils with its familiar sweet smell. A few tea bags I merely dip in the water and hand back to Caridad, who sits naked on the edge of the tub. She holds the tea bags to her breasts and groans.

  “Can I get cancer from this?” she asks, dropping her feet slowly into the nearly scalding water. She pulls them out quickly; they’re red. “I mean, I know I ask every time but I’m getting worried, you know?” She’s holding her breasts with a pair of tea bags in each hand.

  “Well, do you have any lumps or anything?” I ask, unbuttoning my shirt and rolling up my sleeves because it’s gotten so hot. My right arm feels heavy.

  “You mean now or when I’m, you know, normal?” she asks, and tries to stick her feet in the water again. She grimaces but keeps them there this time.

  “Ah…normal,” I say.

  “I don’t know,” she says, smiling ironically. “I haven’t been normal in a while.”

  “You got lumps now?”

  “Everything hurts now,” she says. “I got ninety-eight wounds now, just like Jesus.” She stands in the tub, holding herself up with a hand on the tile wall. “Or is it ninety-six wounds?”

  “It’s ‘Ninety-six Tears’,” I tell her, smiling. “Question Mark and the Mysterians.”

  “He was Mexican, you know,” she says, lowering herself into the water.

  “Chicano, actually,” I say, “but trying to pass, don’t you think?”

  “Well, then, he wasn’t Chicano,” she says, laughing. “Chicanos, Juani, don’t pass—they’re raza—they’re cool. Besides, he’s so dark what’s he going to pass for—Arab? Armenian? Puerto Rican? Big improvement, huh?”

  We laugh. She’s all the way in the water now, floating among all the tea bags. The purple blotches look like faces, spirits on her flesh. Her hair spills out from behind her head like ink from a squid. Caridad sucks in air, then forces her head under as well. It’s only for a few seconds—only long enough to get all her hair and face wet—but I feel my stomach start to turn. I grab her hand and pull her out of the water. She jerks away, wiping her hair from her face.

  We look at each other. Then, together, we start singing: “Too many teardrops/ for one heart to be cryin’.” I drum on the edge of the tub. “You’re going to cry/ ninety-six tears….”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE NEXT MORNING, I’M AT THE LAUNDROMAT bright and early, making sure all the coin slots are operable and double-checking the machines that dispense single-wash detergent boxes when Emilia Fernández walks in, her hands empty.

  “Juani, mi negrita,” she says, all skittish, her eyes already telling me she’s embarrassed about whatever she has to say.

  I’ve always liked Emilia Fernández, in part because she has a soft round face that’s so inviting, and in part because she’s a lesbian, even though I know that isn’t public information. Normally, I don’t care for people who are in the closet, a subject that Gina and I debated intensely because she’s always been somewhere on the threshold. Emilia Fernández, however, is an absolute exception to my rule: She’s sweet and from a generation in which coming out meant much greater risks than what we deal with these days. I know from stories around the neighborhood that, even in her twenties, when she was pressured by her father (a mafioso precinct captain with the old Democratic machine who used to have an interest in jukeboxes), she never tried to pass by parading with a make-believe boyfriend or inventing elaborate lies about her life. Even though she’s been named to the board of education, which is very high-profile, she talks in neutral pronouns (as much as Spanish allows), and, according to all the newspapers, pushes a fairly progressive agenda. In
fact, every time something even vaguely gay comes up, such as family planning or AIDS policy, Emilia Fernandez does the right thing, unlike the other gay member of the board, a swishy closeted white man who, in trying desperately to throw the scent off his own trail, consistently backs the most homophobic proposals the board ever comes up with. Once, he even considered a suggestion to pull HIV-positive kids out of the schools.

  “Ay, Juani,” Emilia says with a sigh. I cringe. I can tell she’s not here to give me good news. “Juani, Juani.” She shakes her head but doesn’t say anything other than my name. I try to pretend it’s one of our regular mornings but it’s difficult because she’s just standing there repeating herself, empty-handed. This means I have no laundry to fold, so I dig out the Windex and some paper towels and begin wiping down the counters. As my arm stretches across the surface, I feel the weight of my breast, which is swollen today.

  “¿Qué pasa, Emilia?” I ask, making an effort to smile.

  “Well, you know how life is,” she says, shaking her head, her ears glowing red. “Es que…”

  Just as she starts to talk, I notice Jimmy hanging out by the laundromat door, glancing over his shoulder out to the street, then at Emilia, then at me. His hands are stiff at his sides; he’s practically goose-stepping in and out of the laundromat. Every time he comes in, the temperature in the laundromat goes up a bit. Our eye contact’s minimal, an infinitesimal measure of time, less than a second, but I feel suspended in mid-air by it, as if I were hanging by the thinnest thread above the most horrible, darkest hole.

  “…So you see, Juani, although it really pains me, I’m going to have to stop,” Emilia finishes saying. She looks at me expectantly but I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about. I’m still hanging over that hole, trying to defy gravity. “Do you understand?” she asks me.

  “Claro, claro,” I assure her, but I know I’m unsteady. In the instant I focus back on Emilia Fernández, Jimmy disappears.

  “It’s no reflection on you or your family or my deep affection for all of you,” Emilia Fernández continues, her voice relieved, almost excited. “But the new house does come with the Maytags—we didn’t even order them, really, they just came with. Isn’t that something?”

  That’s when I register the finality of her bare hands, and that there will be no laundry of hers to separate, no fine fabrics to admire, no lacy underwear to imagine her in. In that moment, I realize why Emilia Fernandez, with her tender curves and velvet breasts, has been so important to me.

  Emilia Fernández is annoyed. “Juani,” she says, sighing again, “haven’t you been listening? I just told you I’m moving into a new house with my friend Adriana and it comes with a new Maytag washer and dryer so I won’t need to bring my laundry down here anymore.”

  I can’t help but think, What is it about Maytags that has everybody buying them? Whatever happened to Kenmore, Whirlpool, or GE? Every time I hear about a Maytag, I picture Jimmy’s face the day the delivery people hauled the machines up their stairs: He was just so sure of himself, a triumphant general watching his soldiers bringing in the spoils. Caridad stood numbly by his side. Jimmy put his arm proudly around her, but she didn’t respond, just stared off into space like a mental patient.

  I remember seeing that strange face on Caridad once before, when we were kids: She’d fallen through the ice at the lake and though the water was only about three feet deep, she couldn’t move. The shock was such that, though there was nowhere to go, Cari began to sink, little pieces of ice like crystal around her shoulders and neck. I was standing right there the whole time, watching her descend, not moving. I watched her drop into that black and white hole in the lake, imagining the water seeping in slow motion through her clothes, piercing her with spears of brittle ice. In my mind, Cari splintered into a million pieces right there. It wasn’t until the water touched her lips that I reached over and yanked her up, suddenly screaming and yelling and causing everybody to come help. Everyone in the family remembers me as a hero that day—including Caridad, who seems clueless about my actual behavior—but I know better: I’d watched, mesmerized, until she had almost disappeared and drowned.

  “Juani, I’m sorry,” Emilia Fernández says, waiting for me to respond.

  She has little crow’s feet around her eyes, but no lines at all on her pink, plump cheeks. I want to tell her—with real words, not just by implication—that I know what’s really going on, that I’m happy for her, and that I couldn’t possibly begrudge her doing her laundry at home with someone who will help her sort and fold and love her all the while. As I picture her and Adriana, my mind transforms the figures into Gina and me, impossibly happy, folding cotton undershirts and jeans. But because I know all too well the rules of my understanding with Emilia Fernández, what I say comes out quite different.

  “A new house? That’s wonderful, that’s great, I’m sure you and Adriana will be very happy, with your own washer and dryer and everything. We will miss you here but, hey…life goes on.”

  But then, for the first time ever, Emilia Fernández falters. “Well, we’re just roommates, just two friends,” she says with an unexpected defensiveness. “I just thought it’d be better if I came down and told you myself that I wouldn’t be coming by anymore rather than just have you notice and wonder if I was mad, or if you’d done something wrong—which you haven’t, not at all.”

  I realize I’ve never seen her quite so nervous, so animated. She talks in a rush, her fingers pinching the air, eyes everywhere but on me. I quickly scan the laundromat to see if maybe Jimmy’s back and that’s what has set her off, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I instantly wonder how much similarity there is between her response to me and what Gina might have said about us in a moment of doubt.

  “Felicidades,” I say, barely able to disguise my disgust. “I’ll explain to my family.” But I can’t look at her anymore, and I turn away before she can open her mouth again.

  When Emilia Fernández finally leaves, I ball up the paper towels I’ve been using to clean the counters and toss them into a trash can by the front door. My breast bops up and down and sends sparks all over my right side. I cup it immediately with my hand. A Mexican woman folding the last of her husband’s shirts eyes me for an instant. I resent Emilia’s denial of her lover. But more importantly, I’m upset because, in spite of everything, I know I’m going to miss her. I put the Windex away, grab a handful of quarters from the cash register and head for the Lethal Enforcer machine. I know I need a few rounds to feel okay again. I just hope it won’t be too painful this time.

  “Let me make this perfectly clear, okay?” Jimmy’s saying, standing as close to me as he can get without bumping me, poking the air in front of my face with his finger. We’re like angry ball players, shaking bitter sweat off on each other, daring the umps to eject us. “Just stay the fuck away from my wife, understand? Just ‘cause I said it was okay for her to come by a few times while you were down doesn’t mean you can hang all over her again. I don’t want you alone with her, get it?”

  I want to ask the bastard what he’s afraid of, but instead—and as usual—I say absolutely nothing. I stand there, awkward and useless, trying not to let him know how angry he’s made me. His vein throbs like a pneumatic pump. Luckily, it’s a very slow afternoon at the laundromat, so we can have our little family fight without the whole world as an audience. There’s nobody here, not the Mexican woman who’d been folding her husband’s shirts, not even the usual cluster of kids at the video games.

  “Did you fucking hear me, you little dyke?” Jimmy asks, hissing between his teeth. Then he does it—he bumps me—except instead of using his stomach or chest the way ball players do, he uses his pelvis: He leans over, for a second practically standing on his toes. The lump in his pants reaches out to me, but I arch my body, and he misses. Then I push him back, hard.

  “Leave me the fuck alone,” I tell him. “And get out of my fucking business.”

  He falls back a bit, surprised, and bumps up
against a counter. He smiles that smug smile of his, eyes all muddy. “Oh, right, Juani, like you’re going to do what? Call the cops to throw me out? Like they’d believe you, right? Call your brother again? Is he gonna hit me for you, huh?” He grabs his dick through his pants, as if it’s some kind of power tool. “Like I care,” he says. “Besides,” he adds, licking his lips in an exaggerated, disgusting way, “I’m your favorite guy in the whole world, remember?” He’s laughing, wearing loose sweats and wagging his thing at me.

  “If you want me to stay away from my cousin, Jimmy, then quit hitting her,” I say, surprised at the steadiness of my own voice. I look him square in the eye, my jaw tight.

  But Jimmy doesn’t flinch, and his dick continues to bounce up and down. “You are telling me not to hit somebody? You?” Jimmy stands there, acting like Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, his face askew. “What happens between Caridad and me is between Caridad and me,” he finally says. “And besides, she’s not your cousin; you’re not family. I’m the only one here who’s really family, understand?”

  “You’re just her husband,” I say, defiantly. “Husbands can be divorced, husbands come and go. I’m family, I run the laundromat—get it?”

  “It’s ‘til-death-do-us-part with us, babe,” he answers, his hand still around his dick. “And you’re nothing. You’re just decoration here anyway. You’re all nothing. Who cares about this fuckin’ laundromat, okay?” I know from the look on his face that he could just spit on us. “I’ve got my own job, I don’t need you people, get it?” he says, letting go of his dick long enough to tap his finger on the place on his chest where his name tag would be if he had on his hospital janitor uniform. “You hear me?” he says, his hand immediately encircling his cock again. “Stay away from her, got it? If you don’t… well, who knows what could happen if you don’t, okay?”