Interfictions 2 (15 page)

Papi wasn't okay. The day Mami came home for a few hours cut a permanent, diner-sized pie slice out of his will to live. It was bad enough that Mami's return was illogical, impossible, and, for all that, irrefutable. It was that they had fought. They had spent that last precious coda of their marriage fighting over a stupid dead cat.
My
stupid dead cat.

But I wasn't going to tell Ms. Anbow any of that. I just said to her, “He's okay."

She looked at me askance. “I called to tell him that we're awarding you the Science Student of the Year Award. Again. Most parents would've been thrilled. Do you know what your father said to me?"

"No."

"He said, ‘Science is just the lie of the moment. Like religion. Or astrology. Or alchemy. Right now it's science.'”

I just waited for her to continue. “Your dad has a reputation for being one of the smartest teachers in Connecticut, Sal. But this ... well, I don't know him very well, but that didn't ... that's not the sort of thing I would expect him to say.” She gripped her nose, shook her head. “I'm sorry. I'm not making any sense."

I just kicked my legs and looked at her.

She came around her desk and to the chair I was sitting in, kneeling down to look at me eye to eye. Her blouse bagged; she had on a practical tan bra. “Sal, I want you to let me know if you need anything. Sometimes it takes years to work through the grief of losing someone you love, like a mom, or a wife. Hey,” she said kindly, pushing my chin up with a single finger so I would look at her eyes. “You're doing great. Your dad, too. But everyone needs a little help sometimes. I want you to let me know if there's anything you want to talk about. I know I am your principal, but I am also a trained psychologist. I can help you, if you want me to. I just want to help. Okay?"

When I went home that day, I said to Papi, “Ms. Anbow is worried about you."

He sat on the floor, in front of his shrine to Elegua. He had set it up in the living room a few weeks after Mami had come back—had gone—and hadn't much moved from it since. It was decorated with a red-and-black runner and candles and rumshots and hard, brilliant candies and old fruit collapsing in on itself and a big coconut with shells for eyes and mouth. And Mami's wedding picture, dead center.

Papi sat in a half-lotus in front of it, dressed all in white, except for a necklace of red and black beads. He had shaved his head, his beard. He looked thinner and younger. But older, too, because though he had lost weight, he still had all the skin that had bagged his fat for so many years. Now it hung off his skeleton like the wrinkly hide of a shar-pei. Without turning to me, he said, “Let her worry."

I walked up behind him. There was a new addition to the shrine, next to the coconut: a painting of a young boy. Bright colors, almost psychedelic. The boy looked like he came from a couple hundred years ago. He had on a cloak and a hat with a feather in it, and he carried an empty basket and a staff with a gourd hanging off the tip. Putti flew around his head and smiled down on him.

"Who's that?” I asked.

"That's Elegua."

I pointed at the coconut. “I thought that was Elegua."

"That's Elegua, too. See, when the Africans were enslaved and taken from their home countries and brought to the Caribbean to work the fields, they weren't allowed to practice Yoruba, their own religion. But they were allowed to be Christians; they could have all the Christian icons they wanted. So they practiced Yoruba by using Christian saints. All of their gods got assigned one: Chango got Santa Barbara, Oshun got Our Lady of Charity, and Elegua got that little fella: El Santo Niño de Atocha."

"So Elegua is a little boy?"

"Kind of. He is an old man with a little boy's face. That's because he is eternally young and playful. But wise, too; he is the pathfinder god, the guide to travelers. He helps you find your way when you are lost and takes care of you along the journey."

"Really? He can do that?"

Papi looked away from the shrine, at me. Some of the old irony came back into his face and made him seem more himself. “I don't know,” he said finally. “I don't know anything. Before I met your mother, back when we were in Cuba, I was a Santero. A cabeza of Elegua. But I gave it up for her. She was a Catholic and thought Santeria was all black magic. It really scared her. She equated it with witchcraft, and the Bible says witchcraft will get you a one-way ticket to hell, and then she would spend all eternity without me.” He laughed. “That woman. She was so sure she was going to heaven! Well, long story short, she cried and cried until I finally gave up my religion and became a Catholic."

"We used to be Catholic,” I said. I had forgotten.

He stood and went to the shrine and picked up a shot of rum and dumped it down his throat. He looked at the coconut and said, “Don't worry, I'll get you a refill."

Then he turned back to me. “When your mami died, I thought God was dead, too. But then your mami came back. We both saw her. She kissed us both that day, you on the forehead and me on the lips.” He got on his knees in front of me, locked our eyes. “And that ruined everything. Because it's impossible. Your mami is dead. But there she was, in our living room, kissing and fighting with us like she had never gone. It's like there's a parallel universe out there where she and you and I are still a family, with small arguments and small problems...” he was crying now “...and all the unspoken love. And only God brings people back from the dead. Only God can do magic."

"I do magic,” I said quietly.

Papi didn't hear. He took a second shotglass from the altar, but this time he poured a trickle of rum on the coconut. “Okay?” he said to the squinting Elegua.
"?Pare jodiendo entonces!"
He drank the rest, and breathed through his teeth for a second, and then, still looking at the coconut, said, “I don't know what to believe anymore. So I'm going back to the start. This is where I started, as a child of Elegua. So this is where I'll begin again."

He laughed without joy. “I've forgotten almost everything I used to know about Santeria. I can't find the things I need to perform the few rituals I remember. Connecticut isn't exactly a Santeria mecca, you know. Where the hell do you get aguardiente in Handcock? But Santeria was born of adaptation. I will do the best I can with the materials at hand. If Elegua wants to hear me, he will hear me."

We stood quietly and together studied the altar for a while. And then, pointing at El Santo Niño de Atocha, I said, “He kind of looks like me."

Papi looked at the picture, then at me. “I guess he does, a little. Hey, you're going to be ten soon. You want me to get you an outfit like his for your birthday?"

"No!” I yelled, and laughed; Papi laughed, too, which made me feel better. That's when I knew I was on the right track. That I needed to learn everything I could about Santeria.

Papi was right; Connecticut in the ‘80s was no Santeria mecca. My library didn't have a single book on Santeria. They did, however, have lots of books on psychology. I found a book on grief written for the parents of grieving kids called
Child of Mourning
. It featured chapter titles like “The Maze of Grief: The Child's Journey through Suffering"; “Voicing Pain: Giving Your Child the Words He Needs to Grieve"; and, my favorite, “Telling Time: How to Align Your Adult Internal Clock with Your Child's.” You see, adults think of time as linear, a one-way street with a consistent speed limit. But not children. They think time can go forwards, backwards, sideways, and loop like a Hot Wheels racecar track. You need to understand how children see time to help them understand that the dead stay dead forever.

Unless the dead show up one day to tell you to get rid of your stuffed black cat.

One chapter towards the end of the book I did find useful. It was called “Love Again: How to Bring a New Member into the Family without Destroying your Child's Trust.” Apparently, it's very natural to fall in love again after your husband or wife has been dead for a long time. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Your departed loved one would want you to be happy, would want your child to grow up in a household with both a mommy and a daddy. But your child—young, ignorant animal that it is—may not understand that it's okay for you to love again, may feel that you are betraying the memory of the deceased parent. So here are several steps you can take to prepare your child t welcome a new member into the family.

But I didn't need to read the steps; I got the message. Papi needed to fall in love again. It was natural. It was good. It would help him find his way.

Now, who would make a good wife for Papi? A good mom to me?

Ms. Anbow handed me a thin book with a heavy green cover; on the inside flap was stamped “Property of the University of Connecticut Library System.” Printed in gold lettering on the spine was
The Ebos of Santeria
. It was a typewritten manuscript that had been the master's thesis of a student named Ines Guanagao. Recently, in a fit of nostalgia, I tried interlibrary-loaning it, but it seems to have gone missing in this timeline. I'm jealous of the Many Worlds that still have a copy. I would've loved to have Proustianly perused it again as an adult.

"It's the only thing I've been able to find so far,” Ms. Anbow said back then. “The librarian from my alma mater said she'd keep looking for more, but she said, ‘Don't hold your breath.'”

"Thank you,” I said. “Did you read it?"

"I flipped through it.” She studied me for a moment, then asked, “Santeria is a religion?"

"Yes. It's my dad's religion."

"Okay.” She seemed unconvinced. “It's just that this book looks like ... well, like a spellbook.” She smiled. “You're not going to cast any bad spells on me, are you?"

I smiled back—Papi would've known I was lying—and said, “Magic isn't real, Mrs. Dravlin."

"Ms. Anbow, Sweetheart. I'm divorced, remember?"

"Oh yeah,” I said, tucking the book in my bag. “I keep forgetting."

An Ebo to Remove Evil Spirits from your House. An Ebo to Bind Good Luck to You. An Ebo to Sharpen Your Mind. An Ebo to Bring Ruin Upon Your Enemy. An Ebo to Discover Hidden Money. An Ebo to Ward Against the Evil Eye. An Ebo to Win a Case in Court. An Ebo to Make a Man Infertile. Getting closer. An Ebo to Destroy a Marriage. An Ebo to Stop a Husband from Cheating. An Ebo ... there it was. An Ebo to Attract a Lover.

Whoever Ines Guanagao was, she wrote one hell of a thesis. As a master's student, her job wasn't to write an exhaustive book on Santeria, but it was her introduction to the thesis that gave me a functional understanding of my father's religion. Oh, so that's why Papi wore a necklace—sorry, an
ileke
—of black and red beads: those were the colors of Elegua, whose name can also be spelled Eleggu? or Elegba. Oh, that's why he called himself a
cabeza
of Elegua—when the spirit “mounted” him, he became the “talking head” of the god. Aha! So that's why Mami's picture was dead center in the altar: she was Papi's main eggun, the pantheon of protector ancestors who basically hang out all day waiting for you to call and ask for help.

Papi was trying to commune with Mami, but he wasn't doing it right: at least not according to Guanagao. He shouldn't have a single altar for both Elegua and his
eggun
. Your
eggun
should have a dedicated
b?veda
, with a white runner, and nine glasses of cool water, and flowers, preferably white, and, sitting on the floor in front of the
b?veda
, a shot glass with a little clear rum and a cigar in it, and next to it a cup of black coffee, in case you poured too much rum and they get drunk and need to sober up fast.

Mami never drank when she was alive. Had she started after death? Nothing left to lose?

There were lots of ebos for making people fall in love with you. Most of them were disgusting—even to a ten-year-old boy. Every single one in Guanagao's thesis required some mix of pubic hair or urine or poop or blood or head hair or nail clippings or some other body part from the person you wanted, and sometimes you had to throw in your own pubic hair or urine or etc. as well. And since I wouldn't be performing the ebo for myself, but on behalf of Papi, that meant I'd have to gather gross stuff from
two
people: him and Ms. Anbow. Wasn't gonna happen. Plus, most of the ebos required other weird stuff I wasn't going to be able to find. Papi had complained about not being able to find aguardiente, but that was nothing. Where was I supposed to get sea turtle eggs, preferably powdered, or whale oil, or smoked
jutia
, or
amasa guapo
, whatever the heck that was?

There wasn't a single love ebo in the thesis I could—or would—follow all the way through. But there were ingredients of different love ebos that I didn't mind, like cinnamon sticks and wine and hard candies and incense and borax. So why couldn't I combine those to make my own ebo? Papi said that Santeria was born of adaptation; if the orishas wanted to help me, they would. I just had to prove I was sincere. Serious. Willing to sacrifice for the sake of my desire.

Sacrifice. According to Ines Guanagao, the orishas needed food. Blood. The sacrifice of animals is vital to the rituals of Santeria. As life leaves the sacrificed animal, it radiates outward, bathing the participants in the mystery of life, carrying them out of the bounds of normal reality and into the realm of the spirit. Minds grow sharper, senses keener. Souls awaken from their quotidian slumber and stand ready to receive the wisdom of the gods.

Guanagao's rhetoric, fantastic and sincere, utterly convinced me. My soul definitely needed to awaken from its quotidian slumber and hear the wisdom of the gods. I needed a sacrifice.

In several of the love ebos, one consistent sacrifice was the heart of a “
paloma.
” Guanagao left the word “
paloma
” untranslated, so I looked it up in our Spanish/English dictionary. I found two main definitions: (1) a dove; (2) a pigeon. At first I thought the ebos probably called for dove hearts. Doves are beautiful and beloved and are symbols of peace and hope. And “dove” rhymes with “love": game, set, and match, right? But then I read in the thesis that Olodumare, the father/creator of all the orishas, didn't like animal sacrifices of any kind, and he was symbolized by a dove. You can't possibly be allowed to symbolically sacrifice the creator of the universe, right? So the paloma hearts in the ebos
must
be referring to pigeons [1]. That made me feel better: there were always a few doves in cages in the magic store, so I had formed a bit of an attachment to them. I didn't think I could kill one, even in the name of love.