1.Leave it all on the floor
Ñaño Jota died, he kick off, my Papi Manuel told me when he came to pick me up from school and take me to the wake. I was nervous all day, could feel the delirium sprouting from the mouth of my stomach up to my tongue, a mass of slime creeping up and down, heralding something heavy. Heavy like the voice of the rag-and-bone men who come up to the neighborhood sometimes, yelling through their hoarse loudspeakers: annnyyyy oollll’ iroooon, annyyy scrap metal, raaag aaan’ boooone!
Heavy, like my Mami Nela saying that when Ñaña Marilú died, she started up like she’d had a bucket of cold water thrown in her mug. That’s how death shows up, mijita. Something similar was happening in my young body, a mass coming up announcing something that couldn’t be scraped off the tongue and turned into words.
Papi Manuel parked his old Ford close to the curb where I always sit to wait for him. From a long way off I could hear the sound of that beast getting closer, an erratic rumble against a background of Lavoe at full volume. For Papi Manuel, the rumble of that machine, heralding its own death, wasn’t enough; he had to dampen the roar of that noise with the honeyed voice of Héctor Lavoe, who shared his name, gasping loudly out of the beat-up speaker like a death rattle.
My papi was loaded. He always likes his whiskeys, but this time he was loaded like people only get at a wake. Yeah, that’s it, Ñaño Jota died, the mass said to me, and it started rising now like a stone rolling uphill along the bones of my chest. My papi had on a black collared shirt with shiny white buttons, black pants held up with a belt, white canvas sneakers with a brown patch, like shit, on the top near the laces. The older girls who were standing around said, look at that daddy, he so fine. That made me mad and I went over so they wouldn’t mess with him. Mami Nela was right when she said the girls these days come out hot from the factory.
Mijita, your Ñaño Jota . . . mijita, your Ñañito Jota kick off. Even now, his voice rising up from the depths of his throat, hoarse from the drink, this papi can’t give the news without a stupid little giggle. Like the giggle of La Lupe in that song he puts on sometimes on Sunday nights, the song that says this fever isn’t new. It started a long time ago. And then she laughs out of nowhere, like a crazy person. My Papi Manuel also laughs out of nowhere, just like his idols, always just when he shouldn’t. What’re you laughing for, what’s the matter with you? I pressed myself against his shirt, gagging on a thick cry, and inhaled the heavy funk of drink, tobacco, and perfume of this papi.
I felt him sob gently behind his brown glasses, and I lifted my head to see tears rolling down his face into his mustache. Papi Manuel’s head looks like an upside-down light bulb, but with a long-haired Afro full of nice, tight curls. Mami Checho doesn’t like Papi Manuel’s hair, but I think it’s pretty.
My Papi Manuel is a skinny guy, so skinny that sometimes you can see the bones poking out under his throat. But he’s strong, strong enough to lift the gas tanks for cooking and to punch out the thieves who tried to make off with the truck that one time. My Mami Checho doesn’t like the truck either, she’s always telling him to sell that old rattle already, that it’s a disgrace. But my papi adores that truck, he says to her, mi reina, you can’t fight love.
Like almost everybody in this house, Papi Manuel is known for his good smell. The women in my house all smell so good and are so neat that sometimes I look at myself in the mirror over my Mami Nela’s dresser and I ask myself if I’m really a woman. I stink, a lot. My Mami Checho, since she birthed me, she always sends me back to wash again even when I’ve just come out of the shower. Scrubs my underarms in a desperate rage, sometimes her and my Papi Manuel together.
The two of them scrubbing away at my underarms so much that after the bath they throb, and even then they
start to stink again. Ay and this girl, why she still smell like a pig? She sick or she just don’t know how to wash? They blame themselves for the funk of my body as they scrub me in the cold shower and sometimes I cry. Not because it hurts but from the shame, because Mami Nela always says that women don’t smell bad like that and what’s the matter with the girl?
And I’m still there smelling like rotten onions and cat piss in the middle of the bustle of the gaggle of women who live in my Mami Nela’s house—who isn’t my mami who gave birth to me but my grandma, a word that she hates.
My Papi Manuel hoisted me up into the truck to take me to the house where they were holding the wake for Ñaño Jota. I buried myself in the red leather seat, the only thing in this car my papi had spent any money on. But instead of giving the truck back its dignity, as he claimed, it gave it the look of a cheap whorehouse, ready for the putas to dance. I’d never seen a whorehouse in my life, but that’s what my Mami Nela hollered when she saw Papi Manuel coming back from the shop, shouting with joy over his souped-up truck.
My Ñaño Jota was beautiful. His black skin shone as if he polished it every day before leaving the house, he had big white teeth like slices of coconut, and he had a different tone of voice for everybody, especially for the women. He always dressed in white and for that my Mami Nela asked him if he was a pimp or what. But he never cared much what she thought.
Every Saturday morning, while I was waiting to go out to play, I would watch Ñaño Jota come out of the bathroom into the backyard of Mami Nela’s house with a white towel tied around his hips. Before he went to get dressed, he would take his white canvas sneakers, drench them with water, and sprinkle on soap or detergent, whatever was left there on the laundry sink where the ñañas washed the clothes. He would spread that all over the sneakers and then scrape at them with an old toothbrush; a swish-swish as he hummed some song by Vicente Fernández, waggling his eyebrows at me. When he could see his face in them, he would leave them on the bathroom roof to dry while he went to get dressed. T-shirt printed with flowers, usually
red, black, or tiger stripes, white high-waisted pants with pleats emphasizing his package and his ass, and a white belt to hold in the skin of his stomach. Then he would scrape over the tight curls on his head with a tiny little comb like the ones you use to find lice, and go out through the back of the house, through the secret exit, slipping through the fence like a black panther.
I’d never seen a panther in real life either, but that was what I thought when I saw him swing himself through, sucking in his voluptuous body to slip through the barbed wire without a sound. From the branch of the guava tree I would watch, blinded by the whiteness of his sneakers and his pants, spotless. And although I’d have sworn he brushed against the wire, nothing scratched Ñaño Jota, nothing could touch him.
When I was three years old, Ñaño Jota—who wasn’t my brother either but the brother of my Mami Checho—told me that it was time I learned to dance. He took me with his rough, black hands to the center of the dance floor: the parlor, on any other day, but today with the furniture arranged so that there was space for the whole family. For all the dancers. That year, like every year, Carnaval started in December. Because Carnaval isn’t only February and the days it says on the calendar, but any party that goes all night long. And in Esmeraldas, where the pounding heat never lets up for a second, a nice spray or bucket of water hit you and you might even give thanks.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
