The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (31 page)

One by one, the men asked Ariel what he knew of their homes and the places they had left behind: the old schoolhouse with the leaky tin roof, Chilo’s Bakery next to the sugar mill, the
club juvenil
where many of them had met their wives as teenagers dancing
danzón
under the stars. They asked about old friends with whom they had drunk and sung
décimas,
about neighbors who watched their children, schoolteachers who had spanked them, grocers who had let them buy on credit when times got tough. They asked if the sugarcane fields still looked the same, if the mangos still tasted as sweet, if the palm trees were still as beautiful. But mostly, they asked about family they hadn’t seen in years, and would perhaps never see again. “Do you know
mi madre,
Conchita Vazquez? She lives in Palmira, on the street where the old train station was?”
tío
Pepé asked. “I haven’t seen her in fifteen years. She says she’s fine in her letters, but I don’t know.” He took off his Groucho Marx glasses and pinched his eyes to keep from crying. Ariel said, “
¡Sí!
She used to trade her homemade
dulces
for rice with my mother. I’d see her once or twice a week. She looked fine, just fine.”

For years I had heard of these people and places, but they had never seemed quite as real as they did that afternoon. Listening to Ariel made everything and everyone come to life. Through him, they weren’t simply vague stories told by old, weepy men. “
Oye,
Ariel, what about my parents’ old house by the reservoir? Is it still there?” I asked him, as if I had lived there and remembered it, as if it were me dressed in a cowboy outfit, sitting on a porch swing, and not my brother, in the old photo on our coffee table. Ariel knew the house, but said he thought it had been torn down. Papá’s eyes grew heavy:
“¿De verdad? No . . .”
I grew jealous of Ariel. He knew—saw, touched, smelled—so much that I never had; he could love and understand my family and their country in a way that I probably never could. I didn’t know where Hormiguero or Palmira were, what sugarcane fields looked like, or my other grandmother’s name—and I had never bothered to ask. Why?

“Oye, el lechón,”
Ariel said, calling us back from Cuba to the pines of El Farito and the pig roasting in the
caja china
. It took six of us to slide off the top pan, full of red-hot coals. The women watched the spectacle, everyone oohing and aahing, praising Ariel as
un bárbaro,
and the pig as
beautiful
. Everyone except me. The pig looked even more ghastly than it had before: seared holes were all that was left of its eyes; and its charred face was fixed in an expression of agony as if it had been burned alive. How could
this
be
beautiful
? But I thought about
tío
Mauricio’s stories about his farm in Cuba, and how Abuelo once wanted to raise a pig in our backyard. Suddenly it made sense, and it was so obvious. They didn’t mean
beautiful
as in
pretty
or
gorgeous,
or in the way Ariel was beautiful. The pig was
beautiful
not because of how it looked, but because of what it meant. It reminded them of who they were—
cubanos, siempre,
always, as Ariel had said, no matter where they lived, no matter how many years had passed or how old they had become.

After we checked on the pig, cousin Danita pranced over, her boom box blaring.
“¡A bailar!”
she shouted, and grabbed
tío
Mauricio by the hips, giving him a quick slap across his butt. Like a whipped horse, he knew exactly what to do and stepped right into rhythm, starting a conga line: one-two-three—four, one-two-three—four, one-two-three—four. One by one, everyone joined in, even Yakson barking as he followed Ariel around. Everyone, that is, except
tía
Mirta, who’d had bunion surgery a week before, and me, embarrassed that I wouldn’t be able to follow the steps.
Tía
Susana, Cousin Danita, Mamá, even Abuela tried to pull me out of my chair and into the dance, but I squirmed away each time. Then Ariel circled around, yelling above the music, “Come on,
primo
!” He cuffed his hand around my wrist, flinging me into the line, sandwiching me between him and
tía
Susana, breaking the order of boy-girl, boy-girl, boy-girl. I stumbled at first, distracted by the warm, strong hold of Ariel’s hands on my hips, nudging me left one-two-three—four, and right one-two-three—four. But I picked up the rhythm and then, Ricardo Blanco was one with them—kicking up sand, dancing barefoot under the pines of El Farito, one-two-three—four, while
el lechón
roasted to perfection.

After everyone got congaed out, Cousin Danita switched to salsa, and the crowd revived. Danita was as good a dancer as Ariel—and together they became a sensation. We formed a dance circle around them, their bodies moving in perfect synchronicity, shadows of one another. They twirled and twisted, swayed and swept, each move recorded in the sand, an abstract drawing of the dance. Watching Ariel shimmy his shoulders and gyrate his hips, I couldn’t imagine him dancing to
el
New Wave. He still didn’t quite make sense to me, but what he had said earlier in the day did make sense:
I like what I like . . . I like what I like
. Possessed by those words and the music, I lunged into the circle and cut in on him and Danita, taking her into my arms as if I knew exactly what to do. I must’ve looked like a fool, but
I like what I like . . . I like what I like
. Good thing Danita took the male lead, placing one hand on my hip, the other on the center of my back, guiding my every move.

Ariel, pretending he was mad with jealousy, playfully tried to cut back in. I wouldn’t let him. But when I finally did, instead of whisking Cousin Danita away, he took me and began twirling me around. “
Así mismo,
Ariel. Show Riqui how it’s done. You make a beautiful couple,” Danita said, and the crowd roared, so amused by his antics that I had to play along. Exaggerating our steps and pretending to fight over who should lead, we clowned around inside the dance circle. “Look, I’ve turned
el gringo
into
un cubanaso
!” Ariel shouted.

Slowly the dance floor thinned out. The women, who seemed to never drink or sleep much, sat at the picnic tables to chat. But the men, who’d had one too many beers, were ready for a late-afternoon nap. Ariel collapsed into a lounge chair, and I nested in a hammock. Peeking through the hammock’s netting, I spied on him—his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open, his chest rising and falling. I watched squirrels scurry over the gnarled branches of the sea grape trees. I listened to the faint sound of the distant waves and my own close breaths until I fell asleep.

Everyone woke up to the sound of
tío
Pepé yelling:
“¡El lechón! ¡Coño, el lechón!”
Papá rushed over and poured a beer over the coals. Ariel and I helped him slide off the top pan as everyone looked on. I was no expert, but judging from the charred tips of its ears and snout, the pig was overdone. Still, no one said a word about the
beautiful
pig as we carried it over to the picnic table.
Tío
Mauricio took off his straw hat and placed it on the pig’s head.
“Mira,
he looks like
un guajiro
from Pinar del Río,” he joked. Ariel asked for a puff of my
abuelo’s
cigar and instead stuck it in the pig’s charred snout.
Tío
Pepé took off his Groucho Marx glasses and put them on the pig with no eyes. “
Mira
—it looks just like you, Pepé—when you were younger and better looking,”
tío
Mauricio teased. The pig did bear an eerie resemblance to Pepé, but more so it reminded me of one of the bizarre Santería deities that
tía
Irma kept in her bedroom.
“San Lechón del Farito,”
I blurted out, and to my surprise the crowd laughed, taken by my unwittingly witty remark. Maybe I
was
one of them—a
cubanaso
!

Mamá, however, was not as amused: “
Qué come bola
. Now stop fooling around,” she interrupted the blasphemy, holding an eight-inch knife. She handed it to me and ordered me to carve the pig. “I don’t know what to do,” I complained, but she insisted. “I’ll help the little gringo,” Ariel said, but really it was I who ended up helping him. I couldn’t look at the pig’s face when Ariel cut off its ears and handed them to Mamá so she could raffle them. She had everyone guess a number from one to twenty she’d written on a scrap of paper. Abuela’s guess was right on at sixteen; she got one ear, and
tío
Pepé got the other for guessing fourteen. Next we broke through the bones; the warm pig still felt alive in my hands as I helped Ariel crack off the ribs. He then carved thick slices of pork, which I served on loaves of Cuban bread loaded with raw onions and doused with more
mojo
. Before we dug in, Mamá asked everyone to bow their heads in prayer:
“El Señor es mi pastor . . .”
she began, then asked God to keep watch over those still in Cuba, and gave thanks for keeping all of us safe, able to share another Sunday together. Then she finished with, “But most of all,
gracias
to
San Lechón del Farito
,” as she sprinkled the pig carcass with holy water.

Cousin Danita cranked her boom box back up and the party continued. The consensus was that the pork was absolutely perfect: not too dry, not too soggy; not overdone or undercooked. Mamá glowed. Even Yakson couldn’t get enough of the scraps Ariel and I fed him under the table. “Looks like
San Lechón
couldn’t save himself,” Ariel said, shooing away the flies that buzzed around the carcass as we finished our sandwiches. “
Oye,
why do they call this place El Farito anyway?” he asked me. I explained how no one could pronounce “Bill Baggs” and how my
abuelo
had started calling it El Farito after the lighthouse. Ariel’s eyes suddenly grew wide: “
¿De verdad?
A lighthouse? Where? Let’s go, take me!” he pleaded, turning into a little boy despite the five o’clock shadow sprouting over his chiseled jaw and square, dimpled chin. “Yeah, sure, no problem,” I said, unsure why he was so excited. We put on our sandals, and he whistled for Yakson.
“Eh,
where are you two going?
Necesitan
toilet paper?” Mamá offered, reaching for her tote.

We headed down the trail, the branches of the Australian pines waltzing in the wind, their needles falling as softly as feathers through the air. Walking side by side, we chatted about high school again, and concerts we had or hadn’t been to. But I wanted to know more about his life and Cuba, and asked him how he had learned to dance so well. “
Coño, primo,
remember that I grew up in Cuba,” he answered, and so I asked him what that was like. “
Bueno,
” he began, “I didn’t know how
difícil
things were there until I came over here. I had nothing to compare it to, you know? There was nothing over there—blackouts all the time and most days all we had to eat was bread and
frijoles
, maybe some rice. We had no television—or even a flushing toilet,
broder
. I don’t miss any of that
miseria,
but I do miss
mi gente, mi pueblo
. Miami isn’t the same—no way—no matter how many Cubans you can fit in here. I’m still
un cubanaso, compadre
—always will be,” he said proudly, yet with a tinge of resignation in his eyes.

Ariel stopped walking, tilted his head back, took a breath, and contemplated the pine trees for a moment. “This place reminds me of
la playa
in Rancho Luna,” he began again. “
Puedes creer,
sometimes I wake up in my bed thinking I’m still in Cuba.” Surprised by his sudden openness and the fragility in his voice, I began listening intently as he continued: “Weird,
’mano
. Some days,
como que,
I’m nowhere—not really here or there. It’s like I’m still somewhere in the middle of that ocean,
primo,
in that boat with all those people crammed shoulder to shoulder. We had to take turns sleeping on the floor. Most of the night we spent standing up. For three days, man—
¡tres días!
” As he spoke, I recalled the photos in the
Miami Herald
that ran for weeks as the Mariel boats arrived loaded with refugees. Grimy babies in their mothers’ arms and frail mothers in the arms of their sons. Teary-eyed men and children waving peace signs. So many faces like bouquets of flowers wilted with exhaustion, yet fresh with hope. “It was
de pinga, primo
!” Ariel cursed. “One night the waves were tossing the boat around. I don’t remember what happened really, but—
bueno,
forget it, why talk about that,” he stifled himself. That same faraway look took over his eyes again. He kept quiet until we cleared the trail and stood in sight of the lighthouse.

“
Caramba—
beautiful!” he said. As with the piglet, I’d never thought of the old lighthouse as
beautiful
, exactly; its once red brick had turned a mute pink, scoured by years of salt-laden wind and rain. “
Coño,
why can’t we go inside?” Ariel complained, his fingers hooked into the chain-link fence that surrounded the lighthouse grounds. A
NO TRESPASSING
sign was posted on the fence, but Ariel was determined. “
Cojones, broder,
we have to get in. Let’s try this way,” he said. We walked around to the other side, but the fencing continued. We made our way through the thicket of pines toward the beach, then meandered through a maze of sand dunes and sea oats and found a way through. “
Te lo dije
. Come on,” Ariel said.

I followed Ariel as he snooped around, checking every door on the lighthouse keeper’s cottage—all of them locked or boarded up. “
Primo,
check this out—do this,” he said when we reached the base of the lighthouse. Following his instructions, I stood beside him, leaned my body face-first against the lighthouse, and hugged it, my fingertips almost touching his. “Now look straight up,” he said. I tilted my head back. The lighthouse seemed a hundred times taller and more massive than it ever had before, and yet it also felt small and vulnerable in my arms, as if
I
were mightier than it. “
Coolísimo,
no?” he said, “I used to do this with my brother Mayito when we were
muchachos
in Cuba. There was
un farito
kind of like this one near Cienfuegos. We went whenever we could catch a ride on one of the farm trucks. We’d spend hours there playing Superman, pretending we could lift the lighthouse from the ground and toss it into the ocean. Do you remember, Mayito?” Ariel asked solemnly, looking up at the sky as if speaking to his brother. He let go of the lighthouse. We walked over to the jetty and sat down, dangling our feet over the water, our thighs almost touching, and our backs warmed by the sun hanging low in the sky, the lighthouse shadow inching out to sea.