Memory Mambo

by Achy Obejas

  “Waiting for somebody?” the other woman at the guesthouse asked, out of nowhere, while I was staring off the pier at what I was sure was the halo over Havana.

  “Huh?”

  “You know, a balsa or something?” She was trying to be funny but I wasn’t amused. I remembered all those times my cousin Titi had tried to leave and had never made it very far off the shore. I tried to project myself into her place, to consider the impact of those ninety miles and the possibility of washing up here, in this crazy queer town that has so little do with the rest of the world. I turned around and tried to find Miami in the opposite direction, but the sky was mysteriously black and starless to the north, with a toxic haze over what might be the city.

  “There used to be a railroad that connected the Keys to Miami but it got destroyed by a hurricane,” the woman said, apparently reading my mind. She wasn’t going away, regardless of the fact that I was ignoring her. “Now there’s a highway,” she said, turning her attention away from me and to the jugglers and hustlers who flock to the pier.

  “Yes,” I said, realizing just how small she was, how like a child who I could just hold in my arms. I assumed she was trying to pick me up, and I considered it for a minute.

  “No hay mal que por bien no venga,” she said, turning in my direction again. Her accent in Spanish was Colombian or Venezuelan. While I thought about it, she repeated what she said in English, in case I didn’t understand: “There’s no bad that’s not good in the long run.” She dropped some coins into a hat a mime had put out on the ground for just that purpose. The guy, dressed in green—including green face make-up—looked like a giant sprout and was pretending he was trapped in a box.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked, licking the ice cream dripping around and between my fingers.

  “You don’t really look like you came here to have fun,” she said, “but more to get away.”

  I laughed. “What are you, telepathic?”

  Now it was her turn to laugh. “Well, no, not exactly,” she said. “But I’ll do a Tarot reading for you for ten bucks if you’d like.”

  When she said that, I laughed aloud. So she wasn’t after my body after all, but my money and soul. I thought about my mother and the babalao who told her she’d marry my father and have beautiful white-skinned children, and how now Nena was in love with Bernie, whom she no doubt would marry, and with whom she’d have children, darker than Rosa, with curly mulato hair and lips like rose petals; and I thought about my Tío Raúl and his encounter with Caviancito, how he’d ignored his advice and met his destiny anyway.

  “What good would a reading do me?” I asked, but I was smiling.

  She shrugged. “It’s different for each person,” she said. “You know, for some people, it confirms their plans, their ambitions. For others, it helps them stay away from dangers. I suppose, if you don’t believe, it’s worthless.”

  I tossed the remainder of my cone into a trash can and wiped my hands on my shorts. I hadn’t realized we’d been walking together.

  “You know,” I said, “I actually do believe in those sorts of things—Tarot, shells, tea leaves, the works. But I think I’d rather not know my future. I think I’d rather be surprised. But thanks anyway.”

  Then I stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the street to a little stationery and book shop, where I bought a copy of Penthouse Letters. I needed to get my journal right, and to write that letter to Titi, but first, I needed to wipe myself out, I needed to put my head down and stop thinking.

  “Hey Bernie,” I said in his direction when I got back to Miami. I’d just walked in the door and he was sitting at his computers, his head bent intently into the screen. Nena was at work.

  “Hey Juani,” he said, smiling but barely looking up, his fingers working furiously on the board. I guessed he was tracking couriers for his business or doing some other mysterious technological work.

  I didn’t want to bother him, so I quietly set my bag down on the floor, and plopped down on the couch. I liked Nena and Bernie’s loft but I didn’t think one big open room was for me. It didn’t matter how large it was or who I lived with—even Nena—I’d want to close a door sometimes.

  I watched Bernie, his shoulders curving toward the screen, all his muscles tight. The phones were curiously quiet. There was no music on. Bernie’s arm arched on the desk, moving his mouse in a circle. He was so at home. It struck me, in fact, that this was much more his home than Nena’s—his business was here, his rehearsal space. I knew that big bed in the corner hadn’t come with her. The art was too African, too Third World, to be Nena’s—the elongated bodies of the wooden sculptures by the door, the multi-colored handwoven kentes on the walls. There were a handful of surfboards, phallic and thick, leaning against one wall. For an instant, they looked like an installation.

  I was tired but I knew I couldn’t sleep with Bernie working in the same room, no matter how far away from me he was. It would just feel like he was watching, even if he never even glanced my way. I figured I’d try to work. I took out the notebook on which I’d scribbled a few notes to Titi. Nothing was coming to me. What, after all, do you say to someone you’ve never met? Someone who, you’ve been told all your life, is nuts? Someone whom you suspect is a lesbian, like you? I didn’t want to make assumptions but I also wanted to make a connection.

  I’d come to the realization that, if I went to Cuba, I wanted to stay with Titi, or at a hotel. My cousin Tomás Joaquín, whom I love, is just too much of a gossip. Whatever I did on the island would be reported back to my family in more detail than I’d ever care for. (I suspect Patricia knows that, which is why she didn’t recommend writing to him, much less staying with him.) I was starting some new scratches when Bernie let out a yelp on his computer, shot up from his seat and hit the refrigerator for a carton of orange juice, which he guzzled straight.

  “Want some?” he offered me.

  “Nah, thanks,” I said.

  He nodded and wandered back to his computer. “Okay, level twenty,” he said, settling back in.

  “Hey, you’re not working!” I exclaimed, slapping down my notebook. “And here I’m trying to be quiet and everything.”

  He laughed. “Well, so was II” he grinned. “You play Mario?”

  “Hey, man, I play anything if you teach me,” I said, leaping over to his side of the loft and settling into his partner George’s chair.

  Bernie turned on a second computer. He had loaded it with a slew of games I’d never even heard of. When I told him I liked Lethal Enforcer and Mortal Kombat, he found a killer kick-boxing game with stunning graphics and some nasty sounds. Bernie stacked six CDs into the deck and we took off on our respective screen rampages with a soundtrack that spanned the globe: Guillermo Portabales, Angelique Kidjo, Khaled, Sheila Chandra, some weird klezmer compilation, and The Beades.

  For at least a few hours, I was in heaven.

  CHAPTER 17

  “WHY DO YOU WANT TO TORTURE your father with this?” my mother asked me on the phone. She was back home in Chicago, but I knew the distance between us was much greater than actual miles would ever indicate.

  Still in Miami, in that vast, modern loft where Nena was living, I couldn’t take my eyes off Bernie’s computer screen: Natural adhesives come from a variety of animal and vegetable sources. Synthetic adhesives are compounded from simple chemicals, read the text.

  “Mami, please, if you won’t ask him, then let me, por favor,” I begged.

  I’d been trying for more than an hour to get her to let me talk to my father about his duct tape formula. I don’t know what had come over me—why it suddenly became so fucking important—but I was obsessed: I had to know the truth about this stupid thing and the human cost seemed irrelevant.

  But my mother refused to put Papi on the phone the minute she found out what I wanted. And her refusal seemed to fuel my insistence. I kept calling back but she was as quietly adamant as the guards at Buckingham Palace. She wouldn’t take the phone off the h
ook, and I wouldn’t give up, so we just kept playing the same game: The phone would ring, she’d pick up, I’d implore, she’d say no and eventually hang up. There was no yelling on her end, no emotion. Then I’d re-dial and we’d start all over again.

  But I was starting to get sick of it, so I got a little threatening: “Listen, Mami, if you won’t ask him now, I’ll just ask him when I get home—I’m gonna ask him, no matter what, okay?”

  Mami stayed silent. I could hear distant traffic on the phone, as if she were sitting by an open window. There was a TV too, or a radio, something broadcasting the news or some kind of informational program.

  Nena and Bernie sat nearby on the couch with worried looks. They were letting me play this out, dangerous as it was. Nena rattled her fingers on an end table, got up and began pacing. I could see her in my peripheral vision, shaking her head. Bernie looked nervous and guilty, occasionally glancing up at Nena but avoiding her eyes when she looked back.

  “Just ask him this, just ask him if the base for his duct tape was a natural or synthetic adhesive,” I told my mother. “And if it was natural, if it was animal or vegetable, okay?”

  “What does it matter?” she asked. “His invention was the concept, not the specific product.”

  I kept reading: A major type of natural adhesive is animal glue. The animal glues are made from collagen, a protein found in skin, bone, and sinew. Since ancient times animal glue has been used in woodworking and now it is also used in making books, sandpaper, and certain gummed tapes. I wanted to know what my father really knew about duct tape, I wanted to test him, I wanted him to fail that test, and to nail him. I wanted to throw myself on the floor and kick and scream and cry.

  “I don’t know if it was animal or vegetable, I tell you,” my mother finally barked into the phone. She was so frustrated with me, I thought she might cry. But she was still trying to keep her voice even; she couldn’t afford for my father, sitting in the next room reading the newspaper, to have a clue about what was going on. His ignorance was her bliss. So she’d pause, breathe, then answer.

  “Juani, por favor,” Mami pleaded.

  I read on: Both natural and synthetic rubber are used as adhesives in pressure-sensitive tapes, such as masking and cellophane tapes.

  “But I thought you carried the duct tape formula to the boat,” I said, my voice so mean now I barely recognized it myself. It was a low growl, robotic but desperate. I could feel my face twisting as I spoke; I was sure I looked like my own version of Jimmy.

  Nena’s head snapped around when she heard me. She wasn’t so much worried as angry now: Her look was hard, unforgiving. Bernie sat on the couch, slumped and miserable. He covered his face with one of his hands and stared at the floor.

  “I lost the formula, remember?” Mami said, breathing hard, exasperated.

  “And you didn’t read it? It didn’t occur to you to read that stupid piece of paper, just in case something happened?” I badgered.

  “It was your father’s formula, Juani, don’t you understand? I had nothing to do with it.”

  I was slowly dying from the venom coursing through my veins, doubled over in Bernie’s chair now, my legs shaking. “If it was so fucking important, if it was so goddamn vital, how could neither of you think to memorize it, or to have a duplicate copy?” I yelled into the phone.

  “It was too difficult to memorize,” Mami said in a terse whisper. “It’s a chemical formula.”

  “Well, how come Papi never tried to duplicate it?”

  “Juani, the yanquis stole it—do you understand?—there was nothing to duplicate, it was already for sale at the supermarket when we got here,” my mother said. She’d surrendered. She was crying now. I could hear the sniffling, I could picture her shoulders sloping, shaking. “And we had no proof of anything. We couldn’t sue—there was nothing. Do you understand? How many times do you have to hear the story to understand? There was nothing!”

  But I was on an evil, evil quest. “You’re lying,” I said, hearing the words like bullets piercing my mother. She gasped then folded, sobbed. But I didn’t stop: “You expect me to believe the Americans stole the formula and put it on the market between the time we left Cuba and the time we arrived here? What was that, Mami, a couple of days? Is that what you expect me to believe? You’re lying, you’re both lying!”

  I started screaming the same thing over and over into the phone, my own tears coming down hot and salty. I was up, stomping and pacing, my face red, my body acrid from sweat. I was going under with some hideous fever, lights flashing in my eyes from imaginary strobes.

  Then I felt Nena’s strong arms around me, restraining, not comforting, and the jerky way she took the phone from my hand, now frozen into a claw-like shape. As soon as I sensed her grip on me, the way she lifted my whole weight off the floor, even if it was for just an instant—less than a second, a moment utterly immeasurable—I fell into the abyss. Nena let go and I collapsed on the floor.

  “Mami, I’m sorry,” Nena said into the phone. Her voice sounded cold and alien. “Juani’s out of control,” I heard her say. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.” I heard Mami’s fuzzy response, then Nena set the receiver down.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” she demanded. Her eyes were red; she was furious. Her whole body leaned forward as if she were a wrestler, ready to take me. Her arms hung just a few inches away from her body.

  “I…I don’t know,” I tried to say, but I was wailing now. I was a pile of human debris on the floor, shaking from the pain and havoc I’d wreaked.

  Nena took a deep breath, bent down and cradled me. “Ay, Juani…” She was finally crying too.

  I put my arms around her and felt her, flushed and damp, up against me. She was all softness, which surprised me. Bernie got up from the couch, came over and hovered above us for a minute or so, but he was too freaked out to do anything other than his own cautious pacing. I saw him pull on his lower lip with his fingers, sort of plucking at the skin there, then he turned around and walked away.

  “What…I mean, did Mami say anything else?” I asked as I slobbered on Nena’s shoulder.

  “No…no, but she’ll talk to me later,” she said, patting me on the shoulder and head as if I were a baby needing to belch or vomit. “She was too upset. She was kind of out of it, mumbling something about the duct tape and milk.”

  I couldn’t believe it! Had she really just said that?

  I pulled away and leapt to my feet, maniacally searching out the keyboard and scrolling down the computer screen. Nena stood by, stunned and helpless. There it was: Casein glue, made from milk, is from an animal source but it is not a true animal glue. I slammed my fist on Bernie’s desk.

  “What? What?” Nena asked nervously. She was at a complete loss. She looked as if she wasn’t sure whether to call the mental health authorities or the cops, hit me, or just cry until she fell asleep and perhaps hope to wake up from this hideous nightmare.

  I dropped into the chair in front of the keyboards. “I just don’t know who or what to believe,” I said, “ever.”

  It had all begun innocently enough. After hours of video games on Bernie’s machine, I asked him what he used the computer for. Maybe we could use one at the laundromat. I’d been thinking there might be ways of being more efficient that I just didn’t know about. Later, when I got back to Chicago and told Patricia the story, she accused me of wanting to introduce a computer to the business because it would scare Mami and my aunts—and make me indispensable again, at least for a while. I got mad when she said this but now, with some time to think about it, I realize she may have been right.

  At my request, Bernie walked me through some of his basic set-ups on the computer and I began to understand how we might be able to use one at the Wash-N-Dry for inventory and cash flow purposes, but I also knew pretty instantly that our business was so simple, we really didn’t need one. It would make me indispensable to have one all right, but it would also trap
me. Papi would never consider learning it—he was such a figurehead manager anyway—and my mother and aunts would feel compelled to pretend they were intimidated by it, regardless of their true feelings. The only one who might not care if it became obvious she knew more than my father was Tía Zenaida, and I wasn’t sure how ready I was for that kind of competition. She’d certainly done a good job of making me feel useless since “the incident.”

  “Sometimes, the computer’s just fun, though,” Bernie said with a grin.

  “Yeah, the games are cool,” I said.

  “Well, yeah, but also, you can learn all kinds of weird stuff,” he said, punching up some music charts. “See? I can find out the Top Ten in Brazil, in Puerto Rico, in South Africa—all in, like, a minute.”

  I peeked at the screen. “Yeah, that’s neat,” I said, “for you, being a musician and all.”

  “Oh, but you can find out all kinds of other things too,” he said, his fingers flying again. Up on the screen came a quick paragraph on his mother: Maure, Amparo (Amparo Angelos, born 1944), Puerto Rican poet, performer, and author of candid autobiographical works, born in Ponce, Puerto Rico; encouraged to write by older brother, Jaime, an anti-statehood Puerto Rican legislator who was later killed in a terrorist shoot out. New York University, 1968; poetry, Plena Voz (1970), an anti-statehood history of Puerto Rico in verse, and La Papaya (1974), Mujeres y Niños (1976); Godless Children (1986), her first English language book; Move It (1990).

  “Wow,” I said, actually impressed. “I didn’t know any of that, other than Plena Voz.”

  Bernie laughed. “This is from one of the on-line encyclopedias,” he said. “They pretty much tell you what they want you to know. Like, they don’t mention any of her feminist activities, or that she runs the only press in the world exclusively publishing Puerto Rican lesbians. And, of course, everything’s ‘antistatehood,’ like that’s the only way you can read her work. I mean, that’s part of the fun with this stuff, I guess—reading between the lines.”