Chapter 6
chapter six
camilo
I winced as the smell of stale cigarettes hit me in the hallway of my mother’s apartment.
I rang the bell before I pushed my key in to open her door, so I didn’t startle her, and braced myself for whatever mood I’d find her in.
I suspected it wouldn’t be good if she was feeling so out of sorts, she was smoking inside the apartment.
As I walked in, I felt a wave of relief when I saw she was up, dressed in jeans and a sweater, and pulling something out of the fridge in her tiny kitchen.
“Mama. ?Como estas?” I greeted her as I put down the bagels and lox I’d brought on her breakfast counter.
“Milito, hijo.” She turned around and walked to me with her arms wide open to give me a tight hug and kiss. As she enveloped me in her slender arms, I smelled the peppermint castile soap and the almond oil lotion she used. She’d showered, too, so things couldn’t be that bad.
She leaned back and the lines on the corners of her eyes pulled up as she smiled at me. “Hola, mi corazon.” I squeezed her hand, grateful to find her in a good mood.
My mother struggled with depression. It was tough but manageable most of the time. But every once in a while she’d hit a rough patch and get leveled by it. It was just her and me, so I made sure I paid attention when I came to see her.
“Hey, Ma, you’re looking good today. How was the hospital this week?” She shrugged as she got out the stuff to make coffee. She turned around, holding up the old stovetop espresso maker she’d had ever since I could remember.
“?Quieres café?”
I nodded enthusiastically in response. My mother’s Cortadito was the best Cuban coffee in New York City, full stop. “Si, por favor.” She came over to the stool I was perched on and kissed my forehead.
“Okay, mi amor.”
I watched as she efficiently worked on the coffee, scooping out heaping spoonfuls of Bustelo from the yellow can and pressing them into the metal funnel before setting the coffee on the stove. When she was done, she turned around, sighing heavily.
“The hospital is all right. You know how it is, now with all this uncertainty with health care, every week it’s something different.
We keep working and taking care of the patients, but it’s stressful right now, and you know the nurses’ aides aren’t exactly a part of the conversations when decisions are made. ”
She shook her head again and went for her pack of cigarettes, looked at me and put it back down. She knew I worried when she started smoking, but she was an adult and I was not going to tell her how to live. Besides I knew it was a sign she wasn’t doing great and I didn’t want to push.
“How are you feeling, Mama?” I asked as I glanced at the pack.
She leaned against the counter and looked at me with tired gray eyes exactly like mine. My mother was very fair skinned with fine light brown hair she’d let go gray.
I was a complete mix between her and my dad. He’d been tall and strapping while she was petite and slim. I had her body type and her eyes, but my skin was brown and my hair a mess of dark brown curls. She smiled sadly as she reached for one, tucking it behind my ear.
“It was our anniversary Thursday.”
Fuck.
I forgot to call her. My father passed away twenty-four years ago, and my mom still mourned for him on significant dates like it happened six months ago.
I knew it was because he’d been the only person in her life to ever give her refuge but seeing her still be brought so low by the past was hard to watch at times.
“Mama, I’m sorry, I forgot to call you. This week has been so busy.”
“You don’t have to apologize, papí. I know you’ve got a lot going on. Besides, it’s not a big deal. I just remembered that’s all. I lit a candle for him.” She smiled sadly and turned around to fix my coffee.
I felt like an ass. “Did you go to Mass?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t feel like going out. I just came home after work.”
I worried about my mom. She’d never really wanted to deal with all the traumatic shit she’d been through and I knew eventually it would wear her down.
She was a Marielita. One of the thousands of Cuban refugees who’d left from Mariel harbor in 1980 to come to the U.S.
That year Fidel Castro lifted all restrictions to leaving the island and told the Cuban people that anyone who wanted to leave was free to go.
Within days, hundreds of makeshift boats filled with people looking for asylum had arrived in Miami, and my mother had been in one of them.
As I watched her fiddle around making our breakfast in her little South Bronx kitchen, it was still hard to imagine my mother, at twenty-two years old, getting on one of those boats on her own.
She’d told me once she’d left Cuba with only the clothes on her back, a roll of old twenty dollar bills her father had given her before he died, and a few family photos.
Once she arrived, she’d been held in a detainment camp for months before settling in Miami. I knew very little about what that experience had been like for her, because she rarely mentioned it. She would always jump right over all of it and talked about how her life had changed when she met my dad.
As a teen I’d read about the Marielitos obsessively trying to get a sense of what she’d gone through to make it to the States.
Everything I’d read suggested she’d probably experienced unthinkable trauma to come to this country.
On top of whatever pushed her to get on a makeshift boat alone and cross the ocean to get here.
As much as I tried, I could not imagine how terrified and how desperate I’d have to be to do that.
But my mother had done it and she’d survived.
“M’ijo ?A donde te fuiste?” My mother’s concerned voice pulled me back from my errant thoughts. I stood up and went over to kiss her on the cheek.
“I didn’t go anywhere, Ma. Just thinking,” I said as I pointed at the old photo of my dad, my mom, and me at Disney World she kept on a little table in the living room. “Just thinking about the story of how you guys met.”
My mom smiled at that and put down the bread knife she’d been using to slice our bagels.
My dad had come to the States from Jamaica with his mom as a little boy.
Back then there were lots of jobs for nurses and my grandmother came over to work at a hospital.
Like my mom and me, it had just been the two of them for a long time, until my mom joined their little family.
“He was so handsome.” My mom’s eyes always sparkled when she talked about my dad.
It made me sad that my memories of him were fuzzy at best. “Every day I would get on the bus to go from my little efficiency to the English classes at the church, and he’d be sitting at the driver’s seat, so tall and strong in his uniform, and I could barely breathe.
” She actually blushed, still, after all these years.
“I practiced for weeks before I worked up the courage to talk to him, because I wanted him to understand me when I spoke to him. I didn’t want to embarrass myself. ”
She lifted a shoulder then, a soft smile on her lips. “I didn’t have to worry. We didn’t need English, from the first moment your father and I had a connection that was…undeniable.”
“I love hearing about you and dad,” I said trying hard not to sound too maudlin.
She sighed and started working on our brunch again. I leaned on the counter and watched her preparing our bagels. She was slicing avocado to put on top of mine, just how I liked it.
I thought about what she’d said about the connection she and my dad had, and it made me think about Thomas Hughes.
How drawn I was to him, how no matter how much I knew I shouldn’t, I kept going back to the night we met and the pull I’d felt for him.
How incredible it had been to be completely myself.
How hot it was to know that everything I’d done that night turned Tom on that much more.
Too bad getting involved with him was foolish in every way possible.
“Camilito.” My mom gave me a funny look as she handed me my plate. “Sorry, Ma.”
“How’s work? Anything new going on over there?” I immediately stiffened, unsure of how to explain just how much was going on at work. I picked up my bagel, and took a big bite before getting into it.
“We got pretty big news this week actually. We have a donor for the renovation. It’s this rich business guy; he wants to give two million dollars to the agency.
” I tried to school my expression and sound neutral, because I knew if there was anything in my tone that sounded even remotely like drama, my mom would pick up on it.
The way she raised her eyebrow told me my attempt at being coy had completely failed.
“Oh, so what’s wrong with him? Because your eyelid’s doing something funny.” I slumped and laughed in defeat.
“I sort of know the guy. Like, in that way.” I was the only child of a woman who grew up in the Cuban revolution. Sex had never been taboo in this house.
“Who is he? You hadn’t mentioned you were seeing a millionaire, Milito!” She widened her eyes like she did when something particularly juicy happened in one of her telenovelas.
“We weren’t seeing each other, Ma. It was a one-time thing.” I took another bite of my bagel, just to have something to do. I felt so exposed and weird talking about Tom, even with my mother.
She looked confused now, like she couldn’t understand why I was making a big deal out of it, then a worried expression settled on her face.
“Did he say something disrespectful to you? Is he trying to force you to do anything?”
I help up my hands, concerned I’d scared her.
“Not at all, it’s nothing like that. It’s just awkward.”