25 FEBRUARY 1961
Victoria, may I speak to you for a second?”
Victoria looked up from her inventory list and almost dropped her pencil. In front of her stood Monique, Phil’s sister. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and she kept rocking back and forth on her heels.
“Jackie’s in the storeroom. Should I go get her?”
“I actually wanted to talk to you.”
Victoria swallowed, bracing herself for a criticism or even a threat. “Of course.”
“I—well, Grann and my brother Marcus can’t stop talking about you, and they want you and Jackie over for dinner at some point. Grann actually said you’re the bee’s knees—all her English expressions are old-fashioned.” Monique rolled her eyes in mock annoyance.
“We’d love to come for dinner, thank you. Please let us know if we can bring anything.” Victoria smiled politely, even though she wondered if the invitation was an empty one. She would also have to ask Jackie if she knew what “bee’s knees” meant. She was pretty sure insects didn’t have knees. “Your grann is one of the sweetest people I’ve met, and Marcus is a perfect gentleman.”
Monique averted her eyes and rocked even more on her heels. “Anyway, uh, if you’d like, you can join our table at lunch on Monday. Apparently we are cousins.”
Victoria blinked to interpret the subtext. Had her grann made her say this, or was the grann’s acceptance of her enough for Monique to finally realize Victoria wasn’t an outsider? “Thank you for the lunch invite as well, and I shall sometimes, but for the most part, I think I’d rather sit under the orange tree. It’s the only quiet time I have all day. You know how trying families can be.”
It hadn’t been meant as a joke, but Monique chuckled. “Phil wasn’t wrong. You are all right.” Then she smiled shyly and waved goodbye.
Victoria waved back and returned to her inventory sheet. She doubted if she would ever understand estadounidense behavior. At least now she had a place to eat on rainy days.
She finished with the inventory and returned the list to the office. On the desk, Mr. Pulaski had left $9.60, her and Jackie’s combined daily wages.
“We’re now at seventy-three dollars and twenty-four cents for Tía’s passport. Almost halfway there,” Victoria said as she and Jackie crossed the street toward the apartment.
Jackie sighed. “It sounds like a lot, and yet it’s still not enough.”
“I know, but we’ll get there.”
“We should have charged people to attend carnaval. We could have made a killing.”
Half a block from the apartment building, the whine of the wrought-iron security gate being wrenched open cut through the afternoon. A split second later, a head of red curls burst through.
“¡Papi está en el hospital!” Nestico called out.
Victoria and Jackie sprinted toward the building. They took the concrete steps two at a time and burst through the apartment door.
“¿Qué pasó con papi?”
They found Mami crying hysterically on Nestico’s couch with Inés offering her a warm mug of malted milk.
“We don’t know,” Inés said, her green eyes wide with shock and confusion. Her voice sounded almost robotic. “They called from the hospital saying he’d been brought in, but then the line cut off before we heard anything else.”
“We have to go to him. I’ve been a bad wife, not taking care of him,” Mami choked out before breaking into a new wave of hysterics.
“I’ll get a paper bag from Mrs. Greenwald. That always helps in the movies.” Jackie left without a further word and returned within seconds.
Since Monique’s awkward apology, a fog had clouded Victoria’s brain. Now it lifted, and she saw everything with clarity.
“Mami, take some deep breaths into the paper bag. We’re going to the hospital as soon as you calm down. You just focus on breathing.” She didn’t say that everything was going to be fine, because Victoria knew nothing about Papi’s condition, and that wasn’t how she’d been raised. When Papalfonso had had his accident, Mamalara had made sure they all knew his recovery wasn’t certain. Honesty hurt less in the long run, Mamalara said. “Inés, help her drink that milk. Nestico, find the map of Miami and the bus routes.”
“¿Estás loca?” Mami dropped the paper bag in ear-piercing shrillness. “Did you forget your grandfather died riding a bus?”
That wasn’t exactly true. Papalfonso had been hit by a bus, which had left him paralyzed for months until he died. But Mami wasn’t in a position to hear technicalities.
“I don’t know how else we can get there, if not by bus,” Victoria tried to reason.
“No, no, we can’t. I can’t.”
On a regular day, Mami would never ride a bus. Too many germs and potential molesters. Now the idea just drove her into further hysteria. Even though Victoria had ridden the bus a few times with Papi in Miami and come out unscathed, it would be impossible to convince Mami otherwise. Yet with every second they wasted, Papi’s condition could be getting worse.
“Let’s take a taxi,” Jackie said.
“But—”
“Buses take a while to come, and we’ll probably have to take two or three different ones to get to the hospital.”
“¿Segura?” Victoria asked Jackie. The only way they could get a taxi was if they paid for it from their passport savings.
Jackie nodded. “We need to do this. You father needs us now.”
Victoria picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect them with a taxi. As she waited for the call to go through, repressed tears trickled down her cheeks. When she caught Jackie’s eye, she mouthed, Gracias.
The taxi got them to the hospital in twenty minutes, but then it took another twenty at the hospital just to confirm that Papi had been admitted. And still no one told them anything. What had happened, what was wrong, nothing. Just directions to the waiting room.
Every five minutes Mami pestered the nurse on duty for updates.
Every five minutes she was told that when there was news, she’d be the first to know.
And so it went for endless minutes that felt like eons.
Nestico fell asleep with his head on Victoria’s lap while Inés pored over a fashion magazine, often showing Victoria the styles she admired, and the ones worth ridiculing. Jackie, who made friends wherever she went, had a friendly debate with a family about the best baseball team.
Victoria sat stock-still. Resting her hand on Nestico’s red curls. Grimacing at Inés’s fashion pictures without looking at them. Thinking that the Dodgers were from Brooklyn, not Los Angeles, but what did she know about sports?
“Mrs. Pino?”
Mami rose to her feet in an instant. The man who addressed her wore a cheap suit and had his hair greased flat against the sides of his head with a distinct central part. By Mami’s instant lip-curling reaction at the sight of him, Victoria knew that she knew he did not work at the hospital.
“Del Mar de Pino,” Mami corrected, and looked about to give him an education on Cuban last names for married women, but the man had turned to gather two other women who had been waiting just as long as them. A Miss Johnson, an older woman whose graying hair was coming out of the curls that had been set that morning, and a Mrs. Lamar, who had straightened black hair and was very young and several months pregnant.
Victoria tried to shift in her seat, but Nestico’s dead weight kept her from budging. At least she heard enough snippets of the conversation to understand what the man said:
He was the boss at the construction site.
There had been a horrible accident, but thankfully only the three men were injured.
All three should make a full recovery.
The company would pay their hospital bills, of course, and their jobs would be available for them when they recovered.
Miss Johnson cried into her handkerchief and thanked the man for his generosity.
Mrs. Lamar remained tight-lipped and silent.
Mami did not remain quiet. But for once her voice wasn’t shrill so much as determined. “That is not acceptable. These men have families to support.” She gestured to her bunch and then to the two women. “Their recovery could easily take two or three months. Does that mean we’re expected to starve during that time? Get thrown out into the streets because the rent is not paid? They got injured on your watch; they should get compensated at minimum their full salaries until they can return to work.”
The twenty-some people in the waiting room all began to clap. Nestico jerked awake and absently clapped without knowing why.
“You tell him, Tía,” Jackie hollered, and Mami didn’t scold her for being unladylike.
The boss man pressed a hand over his greasy head. The eyes of everyone in the waiting room bored into him, including the nurse who had entered with a clipboard.
“Of course they will continue to receive their salaries until they can go back to work. Didn’t I say that? In fact, I have a few desk jobs opening up that pay better than a laborer if they want those instead. I’m sure I mentioned that before.”
Mrs. Lamar nodded her thanks to Mami while Miss Johnson continued to weep at the kindness of people.
The clipboard nurse called on the family with whom Jackie had discussed baseball, and the room returned to waiting.
“Mamalara would be very proud of you,” Victoria told Mami when she returned to her seat.
Mami scoffed at the compliment. “Pues claro. I couldn’t let my husband be treated that way. He’s an educated engineer.”
Victoria smiled and shook her head. Everyone always said that Mami couldn’t take care of her family, that she would panic in a crisis. Very true: Victoria had called the taxi and Jackie had offered the money to pay for it. But when it came to her family’s honor and standing up for what was right, Mami’s strength came through. That was good enough for Victoria.
Judging by the rumbling of her stomach, it must have been near dinnertime (had she even eaten lunch?) when an orderly finally appeared with Papi in a wheelchair, ashen-faced and with a cast on his left arm strapped to his chest.
Papi tried to stand the second the wheelchair stopped, but his legs crumpled underneath him, making him fall back onto the chair.
“¿Qué pasa, qué te pasó?” Mami rushed to his side.
“He’s just coming out of the effects of the ether,” said the orderly. “A doctor will be here shortly. Now you just sit still, sir.”
“A beam fell and landed on us. We’re lucky it didn’t kill us.” Papi took a few deep breaths, holding each intake for a few seconds before exhaling. He straightened up in the chair but didn’t try to get up again. “How did you get here?”
“We took a taxi,” Inés said.
“Though the driver didn’t speak a word of English or Spanish.” Mami proceeded to give an exaggerated account of the business transaction she had negotiated.
Once she was done, Papi reached out to them with his good hand, and each family member gripped one of his fingers, including Jackie. “I know it’s been hard, but being in Miami has been good in making us grow and mature. I’m so pleased to have each and every one of you in my family.”
He let go of their hands to rub his head. When he spoke again, it didn’t sound as if he’d meant to say his thoughts out loud. “I was going to enlist on Monday. To fight for Cuba.”
“So it’s a good thing you got injured,” Mami said. “To prevent your stupidity.”
Maybe because they were in a public hospital surrounded by strangers, or maybe because the ether hadn’t completely left his system, Papi didn’t rise to Mami’s taunts. “I have failed my country.”
“Nonsense. One man can’t make a difference.”
Papi stood again. This time his legs held his weight and he didn’t lose his balance. “If that were true, Fidel Castro wouldn’t be in power.”