The Mango Chronicle

1

BIENVENIDO

It had been five hard months since we arrived in New Jersey. I used to sit at a turquoise vinyl armchair in the bedroom, where I laid a cut-out piece of plywood over the armrests. That was my desk. We were cramped in a creaky two-story, one-bathroom house where sixteen of us, including my two uncles and their families lived together. With the clunky steam radiator beneath the window, there was hardly space in the room for my parents’ double bed and for the trundle bed my six-year-old brother and I shared. That night the pipes in the heater clanged and the air in the room was hot and dry. I woke up, hoping no one would be using the bathroom at five in the morning, got dressed for school and sat quietly in the stairwell, practicing my rudimentary Inglich until it was time to eat breakfast. Twenty minutes later I followed my cousin Carlos out the door and onto school. Vamonos! It was now late October, cloudy, cold, windy, and miserable. A garbage truck roared past us, trailing what would soon become the familiar stinks and smells of living in the city.

At the end of the school day, at Horace Mann Elementary they let the seventh graders out first, then the eighth graders. Fists clenched at his sides, Tommy caught up to me and stomped across the street in my direction. He shouted something in English, and before I could react, he shoved me hard into the wall of the synagogue on 85 th and 4 th. He then grabbed me by the lapels and slammed me onto the sidewalk. My knee caps clacked as they hit concrete.

He tore the front pocket of the coat my primo Carlos had lent me. Tommy stepped back, cocked his head, and glared. He was furious and kept shouting. I had no idea what he was saying, but the pain in my knees, the trembling, and the suddenness of it all was so overwhelming, it must have been enough to blunt my understanding of what was happening.

Tommy was a kid in my grade. I did not know him, but I knew he pushed and shoved other kids in the school yard. He had beyond pale white skin and blond-white hair in tight curls, not quite albino, but close. His pale grey eyes bulged as he stared me down. In his three-quarter length black leather jacket, he reminded me of Nazi soldiers I had seen in movies.

It was a bizarre moment. My bones throbbed and in my agony, I could not stop trembling. Still on my knees, I reached for my splattered books as Tommy loomed over me. Gathering my papers and books was the only submissive thing I could think to do because I thought he was about to kick me in the face. But he didn’t. He towered over me for what felt like forever, but may have been only a few seconds.

I planted one foot forward as if genuflecting and then, lowering my right arm as I stood, I hooked the pasty cabrón with a tight fist. I missed his chin, but made contact, as I felt his front teeth scrape my ungloved knuckles. The blood on my fist was not only mine. In reaction to my punch, Tommy stumbled back a step, cupped his nose with both hands and lowered his head. Blood gushed from his nose and dripped onto the concrete.

Shit, shit…you goddamn-fucking SPIC. You SPIC!

Still stunned and not sure of what brought all this on, I rescued what books I could and ran down 85 th street towards tio’s house. Tommy didn’t follow me. He walked off in the opposite direction, bleeding and cursing, stomping his feet, and clutching his face. As I looked over my shoulder, he launched the middle finger of his gloved right hand in my direction.

He shouted something to the effect of You don’t belong here, you fucking banana-boat, shit-eating SPIC! Go back the fuck where you came from!!

As I reached the steps of Tio Carlos’ house I realized I must have peed my pants during the ordeal. I looked down at my chest. Over where my heart lay, the torn pocket of my cousin’s jacket still clung to the coat, dangling like a limp tongue. Blood spattered on my hands, on the coat, and all over my book covers. The ragged cuts on my bare knuckles stung in the cold air. I just sat there on the second step of my uncle’s stoop. It felt like I wanted to cry but my ribs hurt and I couldn’t catch my breath. I stood, went around the back of the house and washed Tommy’s blood off my hands.

I hated the New Jersey streets, the naked trees, the drab red brick, and brown stones of the houses with concrete for yards, the dented garbage cans on the curb, the dogshit on the sidewalk, the graffiti. I hated the cold wind and the ever-grey skies. I hated that all the houses in the neighborhood had steps to climb to the front door. I hated the moldy-smelling basements and the honking cars day and night, and the people who didn’t say hello back or smile. I hated not understanding what they said.

I never told my parents what had happened that afternoon. I went to bed that night, fretting whether Tommy would be waiting for me outside school in the morning, and would I have the strength to defend myself if he decided to attack me again. I started praying Santa Maria, madre de Dίos… The cut on my knuckles stung and my kneecaps ached from where Tommy had slammed me onto the sidewalk. I couldn’t help but start to sob under my blanket and I must have dozed off from the exhaustion.

Sometime during early morning, while still dark, I awoke and realized I must have been dreaming about being back home. Lying there on my back, staring at the ceiling, I began to remember all kinds of things, like the time at my friend Juanito’s parents’ finca on the outskirts of the Ciudad of Matanzas, when we climbed a large mango tree that his abuelo had planted behind their house. The tree which grew on a bank, overlooked a stream on the edge of tall cow grass. This tree had to be quite old, as even as a tall nine-year-old, I could not wrap my arms around the trunk. The bottom branches were worn from years of friends and relatives of Juanito’s family trying to climb it, and the broken branches looked more like stubby knobs. The knobs made it easier for not-so-good tree climbers like me and Juanito to reach the higher branches.

I remember how we sat with our backs against the large branches that split off from the main trunk, feet braced on the knobs below. We picked only the ripest and yellowest fruit, cupping it in one palm, and pounding the fruit against the trunk to soften the flesh inside. After a while, the fruit became soft as the pulp inside became mushy beneath the leathery skin of the mango. When squeezing the fruit from the bottom upwards, nicking the skin of the fruit with our teeth, sweet-scented juice would ooze out. We ate mangos until the sweetness became near-sickening, or until our hands became so sticky that bees landed on our knuckles, trying to get to the spilled yellow nectar. In our carefree world, the supply of mangos was endless.

Those days of sitting in the arms of the old mango tree, of feeling the salty Cuban breeze touch my face, of hearing the shiny green leaves shiver on its branches while we told each other stories and talked about what we would become when we grew up seemed so distant from the moment. But the moment felt so good. I missed my friend.

When I thought of that sunny life back just a few months before, the drab days of now, and all that has passed since we came to New Jersey, I felt half-full, half-empty. What happened to Juanito? Was the old mango tree still there? In my memory, I was taken back to its branches, to the rich soil that embraced its roots. I began to feel sorry for myself now that my own roots felt like they had been ripped apart. Would I just become another nameless extranjero emigrante dropped onto the sidewalks of New Jersey? The alarm on mami’s night table went off and mami woke my brother up.

After lining up and waiting for turns in the bathroom, I finally crossed the threshold and shut the door behind me. On the cover of a magazine on the floor by the toilet, was a picture of a white-bearded man, with a white star on his top hat, a blue coat, and a red tie, pointing his finger. It was like this gringo, dressed in red, white, and blue came to life and was staring at me. He was dressed in the colors of my Cuban flag. Maybe he was trying to tell me something. In time, I thought, my Cuban blood will become American blood.

2

FOTOS

Irecently found a handful of photos that my relatives sent to the U.S. after we left Cuba as refugees. One in particular: a black-and-white glossy of a boy who was bare-chested and stood inside a chicken coop in his play shorts and leather high-top shoes. The boy smiled, one foot planted forward with hand outstretched towards a curious rooster. The bird’s beak was one inch from the boy’s hand. Scribbled on the back of the photograph was " Ricardito, patio de Abuela, Noviembre 1953 ." The little boy was me. I have no reason to think the rooster might have pecked at my hand, since looking at the image all these years has never triggered anxiety—and I have always loved chickens.

I do not remember who might have captured the scene, but the feelings I get when I look at this photograph are so intense that, even a half-century later, the rooster’s tail feathers feel eerily palpable. I have always considered the gentle sense of place evoked by this image as defining what I first remember of my childhood. What I am about to tell you is what I remember, as I remember it, acknowledging that some memories might have been tainted by the passing of time, by some perhaps-not-so-accurate-recollections, and by a number of gaps along the way.

3

LA CASITA

Ispent most of my childhood at abuela’s house. Abuela was my mother’s mother. The house was simple: whitewashed stucco with a large, two-panel heavy wood door-to-ceiling front door with iron hinges and large lion-head shaped knockers. The living room had Moorish style garnet and gold tile floors and the rooms in the rest of the house had coarse flagstone floors throughout. I craved the coolness of the stone floors where abuela would usually find me sprawled out, deeply asleep on the stones with my toy soldiers spread about me.

All the rooms opened out to a long, narrow courtyard. At the end was the kitchen. This cocina had a stone charcoal pit with an iron grill on which all food was cooked, water was boiled and café con leche was made. Wooden shelves above served as storage space for dishes. Large burlap bags filled with Cuban staples like rice, red, black, and pinto beans were stored beneath the countertop. Pots and pans hung from the ceiling over the grill.

Ricardito, bring me an onion and some parsley from the garden. When abuela stood at the grill, it was impossible not to tug her skirt and beg for a little piece of bistec. The pungent smell of lime juice and fresh pepper, the sound of the garlic-laden skirt steak as it sizzled on her hot iron pan sending puffs of flavor into the kitchen was overwhelming.

Here, she would say, You scrub this potato and wash it, then we peel it and cut it. We can fry the little pieces with salt and olive oil like you like it.

I would eventually learn to set mousetraps behind the grain-filled sacks in fruitless attempts to control the mice her cooking attracted and which considered the kitchen their cantina.

Abuela…look! We caught a ratón! But…it’s not moving.

Can you take it off the mousetrap? she would say, But first let’s get some more stinky cheese to bait it again.

But abuela, I would say, Do mice go to heaven?

Only if you bury them. So, I would bury them.

The courtyard of what became my childhood playground opened into a square backyard, which was mostly dirt, but which was flanked on either side by beautiful rose, herb, and flower gardens. If plants were the love, passion, and pride of my abuela, raising chickens was abuelo’s obsession. In the backyard was a round pen for training his fighting cocks. There was the chicken coop described in the fotos, and a pig pen which were the sources of our fresh meat supplies, given the absence of niceties of modern living like freezers and supermarkets in those days.

Time to clean up the pigeon coop, Uncle Yayo would say, handing me a scoop, a brown paper bag and hoisting me up the little wooden ladder. Make sure you scrape all the corners real good. In one corner of the yard there was a large pigeon coop built on a platform atop the rabbit hutches. My uncle, a schoolteacher and bachelor who lived with my grandparents raised fancy rabbits and trained carrier pigeons as one of his many eccentric hobbies.

We had no air conditioning and no telephone, but we had running water, electricity, and an indoor toilet. The house had a Spanish tile roof over the main part, and a corrugated tin roof over the kitchen. My grandparents owned three oscillating GE table fans, the only refrigerator on the block, a Frigidaire, and a seafoam green Phillips shortwave radio which adorned the living room.

Mamá, make sure Ricardito never tells anyone we have this radio, my grandfather would remind abuela on an almost weekly basis. That Phillips radio would eventually become our family’s conduit to the free world during Voz of America broadcasts after Fidel’s revolution. These items constituted the sum of household luxuries in my grandparents’ house.

The courtyard on the side of the house had a concrete slab. It was the hub of my uncle’s eclectic menagerie, with over twenty homemade bird cages hanging from the eaves, filled with colorful and melodious finches, grassquits, mockingbirds, bluebirds, cardinals, and other tropical birds that he trapped, bred and collected. Every time any of my friends came to visit at abuela’s house, Uncle Yayo would warn us,

Keep your fingers and your friends’ fingers away from the cage! He bites!

Ok, tío, but how come he never bites you?

My uncle had built a large cage which housed his prized pet, an untamed squirrel monkey. He also had several fish tanks teaming with tropical fish. Then there were the clay pots and planters exploding with bougainvilleas and night-blooming jasmín whose branches crept over the stone wall flanking the courtyard, separating it from the house next door. The animals were my uncle’s realm, but the flora of the yard, and the splendor of the many flowers in it were my grandmother’s and the honeybees.’

One day abuelo came in the house.

Mamá, I’m here…I can’t stay too long. The orange bus has a flat tire.

He had come home for lunch as he did every day, and after abuela served him a hot meal and he finished eating, all of a sudden, he pulled his teeth out of his mouth, dunked them in a glass of water, rinsed them-then put them back in his mouth. I was shocked at how someone could pull so many teeth out at the same time and put them back in without crying or bleeding…like when papi pulled mine. I did not know about dentures and abuelo never let on, making me feel like he was a wizard, and this was a special magic trick of his. The thought of his toothless grin always brings me back to that special table. Abuela’s table was in a multipurpose room adjacent to the kitchen, as the kitchen was too small to sit in and the ceiling was low. Her table was of heavy, unvarnished majagua wood, the same wood that professional baseball bats were made of. When the table wasn’t used for meals, my uncle used it as a worktop or a desk.

Ricardito, please hand me the camisas from the clothesline if they are dry, abuela said.

I pulled them off, saved the clothespins and brought in the clean shirts. The old table was the place where my grandmother folded laundry. It was the place where my mother sat and mended my socks, or around which my father and uncles sat on Saturday nights drinking cafecitos (super sugar-saturated expresso black Cuban coffee) till the late hours as they mostly laughed, argued baseball and boxing, and it was where I learned to play dominoes.

On the same table, every day my grandmother placed a large tin tub full of lukewarm water, and bathed me prior to putting me down for my ritual midday nap. She combed my hair with violet water, rubbed cornstarch on my chest and trunk, so I wouldn’t stick to the sheets during my daily siesta in the room next door. Abuela’s house was where I first began to grow my roots.

4

AN ENIGMA IN PARENTHESES

No one could come within five feet of it. The plum as the neighbors called it, was a 1951 maroon, four door Chevrolet, with gray cloth seats. He kept the car on calle Cuba , but it seemed like anytime he took it out, he had to have a person guarding it. That person would be me.

Keeping a lookout for that maroon Chevy made me proud, but also scared me a little because if anything happened to the car while I watched it, it would be my fault. Uncle Yayo bought a special washcloth and he bragged that it was made from leather from an animal from Africa. Two or three times a week, he filled a bucket with water, and put exactly three drops of kerosene in the water. If he put more than that, he would dump the bucket and start over. He used the soft leather thing to wet, wipe and shine the car with it. Uncle Yayo said that the kerosene made it shiny and took off any dirt from the road- and that it did.

One day, Uncle Yayo let me sit next to him up in the front seat. I was around eight years old and could barely see over the dashboard. Riding in the front seat with my uncle made me feel special. But the car stopped suddenly, wheels screeched. I shot forward, but his arm kept me from getting hurt. A stray