Chapter 15
I woke up disoriented, covered in sweat. Everything in the room was powder blue: the walls, the ceiling, even the cement floor. A bookcase held three rows of paperbacks, along with stuffed animals, silk flower arrangements, dusty candles and statues of Jesus and Mary. The air was unbearably humid and held a pungent, yet familiar, smell. A loud snore broke through the stench, which I finally recognized as my brother’s sour morning breath. It wasn’t a dream. We were really in Puerto Rico.
The light creeping through the shade was so soft I knew it was early morning. Part of me wanted to stay in bed and not dare venture through the house alone, but I guessed Vince would be out cold for quite a while and my bladder was ready to pop. I unglued the damp cotton sheet from my skin and retied my sticky red hair in a high knot. The cement floor felt soothingly cool under my feet and I knew this must be why there were no rugs in the house.
I opened the door to the hallway. It was silent. My chest loosened as I realized that everyone was still asleep. I padded into the bathroom and was hit with the smell of cleaning fluid. Clearly it had been recently scrubbed, not that it helped the appearance much. The whole room looked straight out of the 1970s—minus the disco ball.
The toilet was olive green with a cracked faux-wood seat and a fuzzy orange cover on the lid (with a matching fuzzy orange tissue box holder). The tub, in a matching shade of olive, had a mosaic of black scratches and permanent mildew circling the drain. The brown-and-white striped shower curtain hung from rusted hooks with a thick layer of mold along the bottom. The tiles on the walls were tan and the grout in between them was spotted black. I flushed the toilet and headed to the kitchen.
The clock on the wall read a quarter after six in the morning. I didn’t even get up that early for school.
Immediately my eyes shifted to the dinette set, which looked like a holdover from Happy Days—chrome-framed chairs with yellow vinyl seats and a chrome table with a white Formica top. The retro look was actually back in fashion—Emily’s parents had just purchased a similar dinette for their Jersey shore house. My great aunt and great uncle probably had no idea they could sell it for good money on eBay. They probably didn’t know what eBay was.
But that wasn’t what caught my eye. On top of the table sat stacks of magazines, dozens of torn glossy pages, and a big three-ring binder. I lifted the pink plastic book from the table and read the cursive penmanship elegantly scrolled on a sheet of paper slipped into the cover’s clear plastic sleeve. It read: Mis Quince Años, Lilly Sanchez.
I flipped it open; about fifty more plastic sleeves were filled with magazine cutouts of ball gowns, dolls, champagne flutes, pillows, jewelry, and tiaras. It was like a low-budget version of Madison’s party planner. All the details were there, and then some, just without the bling.
I thought back to the blur of last night, and Lilly making a comment about her upcoming birthday. Apparently, it wasn’t just a party she was having, it was a Quinceañera. I had only been to one in my life. I was eight years old.
My father had lugged us to the Bronx to attend a party for a bunch of relatives I didn’t see again until my grandfather’s funeral. The girl, la Quinceañera, whom I haven’t seen since, wore a white dress poofier than most wedding gowns and sat on a throne holding a jeweled scepter. She was caked in so much makeup that I couldn’t believe she was only fifteen; her hair was frozen a foot above her head in an elaborate up-do, and she was adorned head-to-toe in chunky sparkling jewelry. She had two tiaras (one for the church service and one for the party) and two sets of shoes (again, she changed at the reception). It was a spectacle so elaborate that a stranger would have thought she was a visiting queen being doted on by her royal subjects. More than a hundred people had packed this family’s backyard, including a live ten-piece band.
The whole ordeal seemed outrageous to an unaccustomed eight-year-old, and for a moment I wondered if that’s exactly how Madison’s party would seem if a stranger happened upon it.
I returned the book to exactly where I’d found it, knowing it was an invasion of privacy just to have opened it.
My throat was dry, but I didn’t want to get caught rummaging through the refrigerator (I had already rummaged through their party plans). I stared at the fridge; it looked oddly familiar with its rounded sides and single white door. My grandparents had a similar “ice box” in their house in Camden and it reminded me of stolen sodas. My parents never let us have caffeinated drinks when we were little, so my grandfather used to tiptoe to the fridge, hide two cool cans under his shirt and slip them to us when my mom wasn’t looking. She’d pretend not to notice. Only I didn’t feel comfortable stealing sodas today, not from a bunch of relatives I still considered strangers. So I grabbed a clean glass from the plastic drying rack and filled it with tap water.
Outside on the porch, dozens of empty beer cans and half-drunk bottles of rum littered the floor. I had never been drunk in my life, yet my middle-aged relatives seemed to have no problem knocking them back.Vince probably had a blast with them last night. I couldn’t believe I was less fun than a bunch of old fogies. I mean, really, how sad is that?
I rested my shoulder against a white porch post and tried to spy the nearest house. It had to be at least a football field away, but I could barely see it through the mesh of exotic trees and plants, which looked nothing like the oaks, evergreens and manicured lawns we had back home.
Suddenly, a giant brush of leaves swished. Wood snapped and I quickly stepped back, clutching the handle of the screen door. I was halfway inside when Uncle Miguel emerged with a machete in one hand and bunch of bananas in the other. He was hacking at the vines so wildly that I couldn’t tell if he was pruning purposefully or just getting plants out of his way. But as soon as he caught a glimpse of me, he halted.
“Hola,” he shouted.
“Hola.”
He flung the machete over his shoulder, wiped the sweat off his wrinkled brow and walked toward me.
“¿ Quieres comer?”
It was the offer for food I was waiting for. I quickly nodded.
“Sí. Gracias.”
I followed him into the kitchen and sat at the dinette set, pushing some of the magazines and torn pages aside.
“Una fiesta. Quinceañera,” Uncle Miguel stated, pointing to the stacks of party plans.
He opened the refrigerator, which was filled with aluminum foil–covered leftover containers.
“¿Huevos?”
He lifted a brown egg from the door and held it out for me. I had never eaten a brown egg before, my mom always bought the white ones, but I had seen them at the grocery store. I was pretty sure they came from chickens.
“Sí. Gracias,” I said again, nodding my head.
He cracked a half dozen eggs into the black pan on the stove, pulled a fork out of a drawer and gestured to me with his spinning wrist. I assumed he was asking if I wanted the eggs scrambled, so I nodded.
A few minutes later he set two plates of scrambled eggs on the table and pulled some sliced ham out of the fridge, as well as a large glass bottle of orange juice and a bowl of tropical fruit. I spooned a forkful of eggs into my mouth, and made a mental note that scrambled eggs in Puerto Rico tasted just like they did in Spring Mills.