Fish Out of Agua:. Michele Carlo
time when I lived there. My mother looked perfect, as always, but she also looked tired. She spent the morning screaming, releasing some of the hurt, anger, and fury that swirled inside her like a whirlpool. But like a whirlpool, no matter how much poured out, it always filled right back up.
Then abuelita said, “Ven acá!” and everyone came in to eat. Five-year-old Cousin Benny (who was Titi Ofelia’s son from the first husband whose name no one ever mentioned anymore) switches from English to Spanish flawlessly. “Grandma! I’m hungry! Damé un poco de algo, por favor.” Even Ray-Ray at two-and-a-half, squirming in his high chair, speaks more Spanish than I do as I struggle to ask for another glass of refresco. My brother Kevin, who is a year older than Benny, doesn’t even try. It’s hard enough for him to speak English sometimes. He has to go to a special speech class in school.
The dishes were passed. Ray-Ray, Benny, and Kevin all slurped down their chicken stew with big smiles on their faces. I didn’t. I carefully picked all the capers, pimento-stuffed olives, and bits of recao off my plate and every bean off my rice before I started to eat.
Titi Ofelia looked at me with her lip curled up the entire time I inspected my food. She was now on Husband Number Three, a quiet, bespectacled man with thinning hair wearing a powder blue jacket with a Nehru collar. He started to say something, but she cut him off with that look and he went back to eating. Of course he had to be quiet. He’s married to Titi Ofelia.
“You know, Lucy,” Ofelia starts, “maybe the reason why Michele is so difficult is because you don’t teach her about our food. What do you cook at home anyway? She’s becoming a chubby little gordiflona.”
My mother stiffened, her ivory skin blanched yet another shade lighter, setting off the contrast between it and her black hair and even more contrast with the beige and brown faces of her family. But before she could answer, Titi Dulce cut in. Dulce looked at my mother and then at Benny shoveling in rice and beans and said to Ofelia, “Oh, but it’s okay that your son is fat because he is eating what you want him to eat?”
Titi Ofelia turned bright red and retorted, “When is Raymond coming back? It must be hard to be living back here with mami and papi again. You must miss him.”
They both started arguing in Spanish until abuelita made them stop.
After dinner everyone went into the living room where the couch, my old listening spot, was now pushed firmly against the wall. The TV went back on, the G.I. Joes came back out for Kevin and Benny, and Ray-Ray was put down for a nap. My father took off upstairs to the roof with Ofelia’s husband for a cigarette, even though Ofelia and Dulce both smoked in the apartment. I walked into abuelita’s room to draw until it was time to go home.
I looked up when I heard music. Titi Dulce had come in and turned the radio on. She was dancing to Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People” and singing along.
“Come on,” she said, “I’ll teach you the Mashed Potato.”
She tried to teach me the dance, but I was as stiff as a seventy-pound bag of frozen lard. I quickly gave up and flopped onto the bed. Dulce continued dancing. Her tiny feet were a blur, and even though she was huge, she still seemed to float over the floor.
Benny waddled into the room and jumped up and down. Then Kevin came in. My little brother was a better dancer than I was. I left them and went to the back bedroom to get Ray-Ray. “Let’s see how good he can dance,” I thought. But as I reached into the playpen, I sensed something and turned around. Papa Julio had come into the room. He started to close the door.
For almost a year I had lived in that apartment like a vole, hiding in shadows, never knowing if or when the weasel would strike, and when it did, I’d go back into darkness to lick my wounds alone. I knew what a vole and a weasel were. I had read The Wind in the Willows. But I didn’t have to live there anymore. Instead of backing up as I always had, I ran toward Papa Julio. It surprised the both of us for the instant I needed to squeeze between him and the door.
I ran down the hall until I saw the breakfront at the end near the kitchen. In it were all of abuelita’s good dishes, the ones that came all the way from Great-Grandma’s house back in Corozal. But Papa Julio was right behind me, and I was afraid of what would happen if he caught me. Before I knew what I was doing, I took off one of my shoes and threw it at the breakfront. It shattered the glass like an explosion.
“Don’t touch me!” I screamed.
Everyone immediately came into the hall and stared at the glass sparkling the floor and me sitting in the midst of it. Feet came running down the stairs and into the apartment. It was my father and Titi Ofelia’s husband. There was a flurry of Spanish, and my father picked me up and said, “Why did you do that for?” I could tell he didn’t really want to spank me—he never did, actually—but I knew I was going to have to be punished for this. I couldn’t say what had happened to make me do this. If I did, I was sure my mother would have to go back to the hospital, and I would have to live in that apartment again. I started crying.
My mother was standing behind abuelita, Carmen, and Ofelia. They didn’t see her. No one could see my mother but me; my father’s back was to her and everyone else was in front of her. Her face went white and then still. All of a sudden I heard a voice say, “Don’t hit her, Rudy!”
My father said, “What?”
It was my mother. “It was an accident. I saw it. Michele was skipping down the hall and slipped and fell into the breakfront. It was an accident. We should be glad she didn’t get hurt.” I saw her eyes searching the hall. Was she looking for Papa Julio? I turned around. He had disappeared. When I turned back, so had she.
“Gloria al Señor! Praise the Lord!” Titi Carmen said. “It’s a miracle. Si, un milagro.” She squinted and raised her arms skyward with the framed photos of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and the blond, blue-eyed Jesus in agreement behind her.
I started to relax. Maybe everything was going to be okay. Except Titi Ofelia started saying “Accident my ass…” But before she could finish her thought, Dulce, who had been looking at my mother and me the entire time, grabbed at her stomach. Abuelita leaped toward her, “Mija, you must lie down,” she said and shot Ofelia a look that produced another milagro: it closed her mouth.
The grown-ups started to clean up the glass, and I ran into the dining room. I had a feeling my mother would be there. She was there, back at the window, and I could tell she was watching the Ferris wheel. It was all lit up from its lights and the setting sun, spinning and going nowhere like the whirlpool I could see she was trying with all her strength to control. My father came in and got me. It was time to go home.
We took a Checker Cab back to The Bronx: my mother and Kevin staring out of one window, my father staring out of the other. I lay across the folding seats and went to Kittenworld right in front of them. I had to. The entire day had just been too much for me.
It had been too much for my mother too. When we got home, she wouldn’t stop speeching and wouldn’t take any of the pills my father tried to give her. After a while he gave up and spent the rest of the night on the phone. I was sure she would go away again, and it would be my fault, but my mother didn’t go back into the hospital. Instead, abuelita came and stayed with us on the days my mother went to a day clinic and my father was at work. Titi Carmen, Titi Dulce, and Titi Ofelia took turns coming over too.
I remember going into the kitchen soon after that Sunday and seeing Titi Dulce with my mother. Although I didn’t hear what they had been talking about, Titi Dulce’s face reminded me of Sunday school when we learned about Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt because she had seen something she wasn’t supposed to. Suddenly Dulce got up and put on a sweater that couldn’t close over her belly. But before she left, she handed me a bag. Inside were a new Twist-and-Turn Barbie, a Skipper, and an extra outfit for both.
“You can draw them for your next book,” she said. “You’re getting good at it.”
I was happy to get the presents, but I didn’t know why Dulce was leaving, so I hugged her. She hugged me back.
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