Caitlin Killion
Palitos
This morning has been quiet. It’s just grey skies and me and Mami today; at least that’s all I’ve seen. I wake up to her voice whispering through the creak of my door to tell me that breakfast is on the table – cornflakes with powder milk that I can mix on my own, a boiled egg and hot chocolate that’s almost cold. I sit in the chair and my feet don’t touch the ground. I look at the photographs in Hoy while I eat.
“Make sure to wash your plate once you’ve finished, mijo. We’ve had ants.” I turn around with the spoon still in my mouth and I watch Mami walk up the stairs, her braid bouncing behind her, the zipper on the back of her old blue dress beginning to come undone.
I turn back to the table that I have all to myself. It’s covered with newspapers that nobody has thrown out, and scribbled on its edges are Papi’s lottery numbers – numbers that make his mouth tighten so much that he doesn’t like to talk, sometimes.
I hold my nose as I slurp from the rest of the milk from the bowl. I didn’t mix the milk so well. I put in too much powder and it sticks to the back of my tongue. Sour. I begin to gag and then I swallow again, and it is done and the cup is empty except for some clumps on the bottom. If I wash it fast, Mami won’t notice.
The window is open and I listen to the hum of the buses and cars, the fruit carts rolling, their bells jingling. “You can hear the city waking up,” my abuela used to say.
She showed me the inside of it once, where she kept a pen and a tube of lipstick, but that was a long time ago, back when she was still nice to me and her four years older than me didn’t mean she was four years too old to talk to me. I wonder what she keeps inside there now.
I listen to the buzz of the thick heat that has surfaced too early, and I can hear our neighbors, the Churrucos, getting ready for church. They go every Sunday and according to Mami, they are very loud about it. All five of them go and all five of them dress up and all five of them walk together, the boys in front and the girls in back. Talia, the youngest, always wears her same white dress, the one that poufs out, even if it’s dirty because her mami didn’t get a chance to clean it that week. Sometimes it has green and brown stains all over it. She wears it with her pink round-toe shoes and her small pouch that she calls her purse.
She showed me the inside of it once, where she kept a pen and a tube of lipstick, but that was a long time ago, back when she was still nice to me and her four years older than me didn’t mean she was four years too old to talk to me. I wonder what she keeps inside there now.
They begin to yell, shouting over the city sounds, and it feels like they are in the same room with me.
“Mami! These shoes don’t fit!” the oldest boy shouts.
“You haven’t grown that much since last week. I don’t believe you,” she shouts back.
But he keeps yelling, yelling, yelling and then he yells, “okay, I’m going to saw my toes off if that makes you happy,” and then it is quiet and I see the family finally leave, a few minutes late, walking past our gate, the oldest in his house shoes. If my abuela were still alive she would be sitting in her favorite rocking chair in the front patio of our house and she’d be shaking her head at him. My abuela used to shake her head at everything. She was always making small little movements like that, raising the front part of her arm so she could smoke her cigarettes, pucker her lips and scrunch her face into different shapes depending on what she was looking at. Other days, she’d smile all day long.
Everyone used to call my abuela the old lady at 161, because 161 is our street address and people tend to forget our names. Mami says it’s because we’re so quiet. And I see that it’s true. We’re not so loud like the Churrucos, and we don’t give people much to talk about, I guess. So they forget our last name is Suiles and instead they just call us that niño, or that vieja at 161.
For a minute I wish I were walking with the Churruco family. Maybe I could try on the oldest boy’s shoes that are too small for him now. They’d still be too big for me, though, because he is much older.
I go to the sink to wash my bowl and cup. I step on top of two upside-down milk crates so that I can reach, and I use the rough side of the sponge to scrub the leftover milk powder.
Eduardo’s seventeen and he has big muscles and he seems even older, and he and Papi talk to each other like two grown men. In quiet voices off to the side where no one can hear them, they laugh and Papi pats him like he’s his own son. Mami once told me that I should try to be like Eduardo. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I’ve started lifting heavy things in the kitchen when no one’s looking so that I can grow some muscle.
It’s Sunday today, which means three things. I don’t have school and Papi doesn’t have work and Eduardo will probably come by in the afternoon to sell us empanadas. I don’t like empanadas and Mami doesn’t care too much for them, either, but Papi goes crazy for them. He likes Eduardo, too. Eduardo’s seventeen and he has big muscles and he seems even older, and he and Papi talk to each other like two grown men. In quiet voices off to the side where no one can hear them, they laugh and Papi pats him like he’s his own son. Mami once told me that I should try to be like Eduardo. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I’ve started lifting heavy things in the kitchen when no one’s looking so that I can grow some muscle.
Eduardo’s cool. He messes up my hair when he presses down hard on my head, like he’s shoving me down into the cement, and he calls me “negro,” which he means as a joke because I’m pretty light skinned, actually. Lightest in my family.
His empanadas are good, too – some say the best in la capital – but me and Mami like sweets better than empanadas. Palito de coco is Mami’s favorite. It’s that candy that tastes like coconut and looks like long, white sticks of Styrofoam. I’m washing my cup and I can hear someone calling it in the street now: “paleeee-to de cooo-cooo!” And I run towards the window in my bedroom. “Paleeee-to de cooo-cooo!” It echoes.
This is when I get my idea, and I start thinking about that one-hundred-peso bill I’ve been hiding in a shoebox underneath my bed since last Monday. I haven’t told anyone about it and I’ve been saving it for something special. The whole reason I got the money in the first place is because of Eduardo. He told me about this game he used to play as a kid and it’s the most fun game you could ever play, he said. He told me I should play it as much as I can, before I get too old for it.
So I did what he told me to do: I sat down on the stairs in the front of the movie theater with my knees tucked into my chest and my baseball hat upside down in front of me, and all of a sudden women in high heels started bending down to pour all their coins into my hat and I didn’t have to say anything.
On my way home I got uneasy legs and I decided to dump all the coins I had into another woman’s cup, a woman who was holding onto a rosary real tight in her hands like that was all she had. I gave it to her because my Papi always tells me that when you have something extra, you should give it away. The woman was old and had deep wrinkles and she smelled like pee, and I dropped everything I had into her little cup and I heard them all go clink, except for that one hundred peso bill. I kept that for myself.
Then this short man with a mustache and a big wide brimmed hat who reminded me of my laughing Tío Marco looked straight into my eyes and he threw in a whole hundred peso bill in my hat, and I opened my mouth wide and made a gasping sound because I think that’s worth three whole movie tickets. I watched his back as he walked away and I worried that maybe he looked at the number on the bill wrong or maybe he was blind, or maybe he was confused and he thought I was someone I’m not. The front stairs of the theater began to empty out because the movies were starting, so I got up. On my way home I got uneasy legs and I decided to dump all the coins I had into another woman’s cup, a woman who was holding onto a rosary real tight in her hands like that was all she had. I gave it to her because my Papi always tells me that when you have something extra, you should give it away. The woman was old and had deep wrinkles and she smelled like pee, and I dropped everything I had into her little cup and I heard them all go clink, except for that one hundred peso bill. I kept that for myself.
I look underneath my bed now and I take out my shoebox, and there it is, folded in the middle of the box. I run to the front of the house with the bill in my hand.
“Wait!” I say, just loud enough for the old man on the corner to hear, but soft enough for Mami upstairs not to notice. “Wait!” My voice blends in with the honks, the engines, the other vendedores.
“One palito,” I say, waving the bill in the air.
The old man smiles and he makes his way to our gate. I see him glance at the money in my hand. “You just want one? You can buy more with that. You can buy a whole bunch. Una pila.”
I look at the sweat dripping down below the edges of his hairline and I wonder how many kids he has. “Okay. I’ll buy a bunch of them. A whole stack of palito de coco para mi Mami.” We do the swap – money for sweets – in between the bars of our grille, and then he turns around and keeps yelling. “Paleeee-to!”
The chalky dust of the candy rubs off on my palms. I can barely wrap all my fingers around the bunch of palito de coco because there are so many. Nine of them. I smell the coconut in them and my mouth begins to water as I think about the sweet meringue powder crumbling, dissolving along the edges of my tongue. Mami is going to like this. One time last year, Papi bought her palito de coco and she was so happy. We were in Plaza de España for carnaval, and Mami ate the little stick and she danced to the music while she walked. She was swinging her hips and Papi kept putting his hands on them like he was trying to direct them, to show her that they were his.
In that moment, she seemed more powerful and fierce than ever. But I worried: what if she thought she was stronger than she really was? What if her arms broke from holding me?
“Come on,” she said to me, picking me up, raising me to her hips like I was still a baby, rocking me to the 1-2-3 beat of bachata. Her eyes sparkled. “Let’s go to the moon tonight, look!”
She pointed towards the full, yellow moon, hanging low in the sky, and she whispered in my ear, “I heard that when you’re up there, you can bounce up and never fall back down. Imagínate, mijo. Staying way up there, in the middle of a jump that lasts forever.”
In that moment, she seemed more powerful and fierce than ever. But I worried: what if she thought she was stronger than she really was? What if her arms broke from holding me?
“Let’s get out of here,” Papi said, grabbing Mami’s arms, and she let me down.
“Yes, your highness,” she said in a syrupy voice, licking her palito. Papi squeezed her waist and Mami laughed. He tickled her the whole way home and she kept on laughing. I skipped behind them, slamming my feet down on the cobblestones so they’d hear me and wouldn’t worry, wouldn’t turn around and forget about each other.
Today, Mami’s going to get a whole bunch of palitos, and I wonder if that means she’ll be even happier than that one night at carnaval. Because lately, she’s been having moods like tormentas. That’s what my abuela always called it when her face would swing back and forth, from a big wide smile to tears. And I like it when Mami’s happy, when she’s smiling.
And who’s gonna slap her across the cheek if she does something stupid like kiss Eduardo on the lips again, once in the closet and once behind the open refrigerator door? If Papi’s not here, who’s going to make her scream at night?
But that’s not the only reason I want to give her the palitos. The second reason is because it’s Sunday and Papi doesn’t have work on Sunday and Papi never has work on Sunday, but Papi’s not here. And he hasn’t been here for the past six Sundays, and stuff like that makes me worry. Because if he’s not here on Sundays then who’s going to be here to control Mami’s hips when they won’t stop dancing? Who will set aside the grocery section of the newspaper for her in the morning? And who’s gonna slap her across the cheek if she does something stupid like kiss Eduardo on the lips again, once in the closet and once behind the open refrigerator door? If Papi’s not here, who’s going to make her scream at night?
I climb up the stairs with the palitos in my hand and I find Mami in her bedroom, her door wide open. She’s sitting in the corner of her room, which is funny because there’s no seat or couch or anything in that corner. She’s just sitting against the two walls with her butt on the hardwood floor and her knees pulled up against her body. She’s in her old blue dress with its runny back zipper and I think well isn’t that perfect, because it’s the same thing she was wearing last carnaval, the last time she had palito de coco. But the thing that isn’t perfect is that her face is red and snot is running down her nose like she’s a little kid who doesn’t know how to use a handkerchief, and her eyes don’t sparkle anymore; they’re just red and wet.
Mami looks up and rubs her wrist against her nose and says, “Ay mijo, what are you doing here?” She doesn’t stand, but stays withered there in the corner.
I hold out the candy like I’m holding a bouquet of flowers, and I notice that my hand is shaking. “I got you palito de coco, Mami.” I stay grounded in my place. I want her to get up. I want her to walk towards me so that I can look up at her instead of down.
“Mijo,” she says again. “Did you wash your dishes like a good boy?”
I nod and she sighs and stands up, brushing off the folds in her dress. I watch as she slips her feet into high heels. She clicks out of the room, patting my head as she walks past me.
“Then you can have the palito de coco,” she says. “All for yourself. For being such a good boy.” When she reaches the door of the room, she switches off the light.
***
By the time Eduardo comes in the afternoon, Mami’s washed away the red in her eyes and she’s covered over it with a powder that is one shade too light for her skin.
The Churruccos have returned from church and the oldest brother has already bought a new pair of shoes. The abuela is complaining that they’ll have to buy another pair next week because the boy’s feet are growing like weeds, and soon they won’t be able to afford the groceries from all this shoe-buying they’re doing. After all, they are not rich like the Filomenas, who live in the big colonial house on the corner.
Eduardo comes to our gate. I see Mami’s body jerk when he comes, like she just felt a mouse at her feet. But she doesn’t look up from the one sentence in the newspaper that she’s been reading and re-reading for the past hour, while I’ve been watching the TV on mute so not to disturb her.
I go to meet Eduardo at the gate and I see that his fingers are wrapped around the bars, his fingers loose and his smile loose, too.
“Hola, negrito,” he says to me. I stand on the cushion of the chair so that I can reach the lock on our gate. I twist the key to the right so it clicks open. Eduardo reaches his hand through the bars and he pushes the lock over in one stroke, fast and to the left.
We are standing together in that front patio of our house, the patio that used to be my abuela’s territory before she died. It used to smell like her café con leche and her cigarettes, but now it just smells like the street outside: a combination of the black banana peels and the red-eyed dogs.
It’s something most of our visitors can’t do – especially the women, like Mami’s beauty parlor friends and old Señora Cruz. They have to swivel the bar up and down, up and down, over and over again until they can open the gate. But not Eduardo: he knew how to unbolt our gate fast and quick without even learning. Swing, push. Open. Swing, push. Locked.
We are standing together in that front patio of our house, the patio that used to be my abuela’s territory before she died. It used to smell like her café con leche and her cigarettes, but now it just smells like the street outside: a combination of the black banana peels and the red-eyed dogs.
Eduardo is messing up my hair, pushing my curls that tilt right to the left. I look at his big muscles and his sweat marks on the sides of his yellow t-shirt.
“Why do you look sad today, negrito?” he asks me.
I don’t look at his face. I just study the deep crevasses that run down his arm. And I can tell that he isn’t looking at my face, either. I feel his eyes glancing past me, towards Mami who is sitting at the table. She is still reading that same sentence in the newspaper, looking at the individual letters so closely that they are probably blurring together.
“I don’t look sad,” I say back.
“Good. You’re too young to be sad.” He takes his hand away from my hair.
“I played your game,” I start to tell him, but he doesn’t hear me because he is already walking into the living room, leaving me alone in my abuela’s old patio where she used to rock all day. I watch him walk towards Mami at the table, and I notice that today he doesn’t have his plastic box filled with layers of empanadas. He doesn’t have it.
I wonder if he forgot it on purpose or by accident. Even though I don’t like empanadas all that much, I want to count them through the clear sides of the box, and I want to guess which one he’ll leave for Papi.
He doesn’t ask where’s Papi today, and Mami doesn’t press her lips in a straight line like she usually does and she doesn’t say “on a quick errand,” the same way she’s been saying for the past six Sundays.
Instead, Eduardo walks over to her and he puts his big hand on her shoulder so lightly it looks like there might even still be a sliver of space between his palm and her bone. It’s like he’s afraid to put any weight on her.
I watch Mami shiver when Eduardo touches her, and I shiver, too. She looks up at him. I wonder if he notices that this morning she has rubbed and strained the soft skin around her eyes and that now it is light pink and worn like the skin of a balloon that died from time, not from being popped.
I want to stamp my feet loudly now, or slam the gate. I’m still here, I’m still here, I want my footsteps to say. I want Eduardo to lift his hand off Mami’s shoulder. But I don’t say anything, and I don’t move from where I am, right in the doorway in between my dead abuelas’ front patio and my Papi’s living room where he sometimes reads a book sitting there, right there in that chair. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I want to remind them.
Eduardo leans his body towards Mami and he says, “I did nothing but sleep all day. I didn’t even cook, would you believe it?” But Mami doesn’t speak.
“I wanted to buy you some flowers,” he goes on. “I’ve been thinking about going away. Come with me, Mariana.”
Mami raises her eyebrow. “On vacation?” she asks. But he doesn’t answer. They just look at each other for a long time until she says, “How old is your mother?”
“She’s dead,” he tells her.
“But if she were alive?”
Eduardo takes his hand off her shoulder and his arms fall to his sides, where they look big and heavy and in the way. “I don’t know. Ten years older than you, maybe.”
“That is young,” Mami says, her voice hard. “You had a young mother.”
“I don’t think about age, you know.”
I see Eduardo look over at my stack of palito de coco. All nine sticks are still there, huddled together on a napkin. Its chalky white dust has gotten everywhere.
I am not hungry and for some reason it tastes like a sharp-edged piece of metal when it slides down my throat, but I think I have to eat it, with Mami and Eduardo watching me in silence as I chew and then swallow.
“What is that?” he asks.
Finally Mami turns to look at me. “What are you doing over there, mijo? Come have some of your snack.”
“Snack?” Eduardo asks.
“He bought it this morning,” Mami waves her hand away. I settle into the chair across from her and begin to nibble on a palito. I am not hungry and for some reason it tastes like a sharp-edged piece of metal when it slides down my throat, but I think I have to eat it, with Mami and Eduardo watching me in silence as I chew and then swallow.
Suddenly, Mami’s eyebrows point down and she reaches for my hand across the table.
“How did you pay for that, mijo?” she asks. There is still palito in my mouth. “Was Papi here this morning? Did he buy those?” She is sitting up tall. I shake my head.
“Eduardo’s game,” I tell her after I swallow. I wonder if I’ve eaten enough to make her happy.
“What game?” she asks. Her eyes narrow, narrow, narrow.
“His game. The one with the hat. Where you put it in front of you and then people bend down to give you money.”
Eduardo makes a “haha” sound that doesn’t sound much like a laugh, and he glares at me. “What are you talking about?” he asks in a cloudy voice. “I only taught you about baseball.”
I look at my Mami because I am confused, and she is shaking in tiny fierce motions and her jaw is shut tight and she doesn’t look at Eduardo or me or anyone. She just keeps staring at the palito on the table.
“I didn’t tell him that,” Eduardo is saying. “Mi amor, please. Please, mi amor, please look at me.”
But Mami stands and she pushes the chair into the table so that it makes a sound like the ripping of paper.
“You should go,” she says to him in a low voice. She walks into the kitchen where she begins to re-wash the clean dishes, and I know she’s using the hot water that turns her hands pink and makes clouds of steam dance out the window.
I am still sitting at the table with the pile of palito de coco in front of me. Eight of them now. I try to focus on the photo that is on the front page of Hoy, sitting on our table. I try to concentrate hard so that Eduardo will not speak to me in that voice of his.
On the front page, serious men wearing black jackets and ties are walking toward the edges of the photo and they look like they’re about to escape off the page. The man in the middle looks has his hands chained in front of him. I wonder what it feels like to have that cold metal rubbing against the bones on your wrists. I wonder if Eduardo’s ever felt that, or if my Papi has. Does it feel any different from Mami’s frozen fingers wrapping around you tight? I think of the wrists of the small skinny Jesus that is hanging beside our back door that leads to our garden where we keep the laundry machine and the cages for our birds.
Eduardo leans forward on the table, his giant body wrinkling the open newspapers, and he grabs my arm. His face is crumpled and red, and he begins to breathe harder, his eyebrows collapsing into one another.
“I never told you that,” he is whispering with the force of a scream. “Tell her I didn’t tell you that.”
I think back to when Eduardo told me about the game and I cannot remember him saying anything about a secret. All I can remember is him squatting on his feet so he could be eye-level with me, and his goofy smile and the spicy smell of his breath from his favorite empanada (con todo, sin huevo).
I am afraid of the grip that he holds on my arm and of the snarl that is in his lip. I am afraid of this Eduardo whom I’ve never seen before. I think he sees that I am afraid because he loosens his grip and he whispers more gently, “I told you not to tell anyone, remember? It’s a secret game. Our little secret.” He tries to smile but he only shows his teeth.
I think back to when Eduardo told me about the game and I cannot remember him saying anything about a secret. All I can remember is him squatting on his feet so he could be eye-level with me, and his goofy smile and the spicy smell of his breath from his favorite empanada (con todo, sin huevo).
“It’s a game I used to play,” he had explained to me. “When my Papi was always gone. I used to play it so I could help my Mami out around the house. Give her little presents – regalitos, you know? Because my Papi wasn’t there to give her any.”
That’s all I remember him saying to me in the front of our house when Mami was making the coffee in the kitchen and Papi wasn’t home for what was then his fourth Sunday in a row. And I remember Eduardo’s body soaring up high all of a sudden like a tall tree when Mami came out to the front of the house with the two white porcelain cups jingling on their saucers, one for him and one for her.
Now Eduardo’s scaring me and I want to cry. We listen to the sink whistle in the kitchen.
I look at the front gate and I wish Papi would walk in now, his shirt warm with sweat like it always is after he’s walked too many blocks. Or I wish, at least, my abuela was still sitting in her rocker with her head turned towards us.
But no one walks in and Eduardo lets go of my arm and he stands. I look up and I see that his body has grown too big for our living room and that he must go. I want him to go.
“Eat this,” she shouts. Her arms stretch out and she is pressing the chalky white sticks into his mouth, forcing the candy through his lips. “Come, come, come esto,” she screams in between tears. “Eat the fucking palito de coco.”
The sink in the kitchen turns off then and the whistling stops and I hear Mami’s heels click against the floor. She walks towards me and grabs the whole stack of palito. Her eyes wild. And she’s holding the candy so tightly that pieces of white are crumbling and breaking off, falling onto the floor. She has to hold it with both hands because there are so many.
“Eat this,” she shouts. Her arms stretch out and she is pressing the chalky white sticks into his mouth, forcing the candy through his lips. “Come, come, come esto,” she screams in between tears. “Eat the fucking palito de coco.”
Eduardo chews slowly and it fills up his cheeks, jutting out in different places until he swallows. And he eats it; he eats all of it.
