Cuba 15 Read online

  “Then I guess you should thank us,” Janell said dryly.

  We hadn’t finalized our routines yet. “Mine’s not done,” I said to Leda. “Maybe you should piss me off.”

  Janell slapped me a wry five.

  I looked around but didn’t see Clarence Williams anywhere. Ms. Joyner, resplendent in a flowing batik robe, manhandled the crowd into submission as usual and got started. We were prepping for our first tournament, the following Saturday at Taylor Park.

  Ms. Joyner described the timetable: two preliminary rounds, plus a final, then the awards ceremony. “You should have all received the rules for your events from your coaches, so you already know that you have to be on time for your rounds, or the team loses points with your disqualification. Even though these are individual events, a team trophy is at stake too. Please make it a habit to wear a watch. You have a little over a week to prepare.” She looked up at the booth. “Are you ready, Rick?”

  “Ten-four.” The Ax’s voice cut through the sound system like piano wire. “Let’s see what kind of blood we’ve got this year.”

  Ms. Joyner called everybody center stage one by one, according to event. Janell sailed away first, along with another sharply dressed girl named Cherise, to represent Verse Reading. I saw Gina from my gym class with the Dramatic Interpretation group, which included Zeno Clark and his duet partner, Trish Lazlo, the favorites. Competitors in Humorous Interpretation, Oratorical Declamation, Radio Speaking, and Prose Reading filed down to the stage. When Extemporaneous Speaking was called, Clarence still hadn’t shown up.

  Leda was the lone Original Oratory candidate, and I shared Original Comedy with Vera Campbell, a junior who sometimes sold the school newspaper; the rest of the team members I’d either met at the first meeting or never seen before in my life. It’s a big school.

  “Okay, gang,” Ms. Joyner said, surveying us all. “We’re a team now. You can sit down.”

  As we filtered back to our seats, she delivered final instructions. “Clean, neat clothing is a must! Do not talk during your round. Do not ask the judges for your ranks; you’ll get critique sheets later. Do not ask the judges how you did,” she said with a smile. “You’ll do fine.”

  “And above all,” the tech mike boomed, its operator sounding not unlike the great and powerful Oz, “no yelling during the awards ceremony. Whether we win, or whether we lose.”

  A few wails rose. The guy in front of me argued, “But everyone at Brighton South went nuts at State last year!”

  “Those are the Tri-Dist rules,” Mr. Axelrod hushed into the microphone, as though issuing a prayer.

  “And we have a reputation to uphold,” Ms. Joyner added, nodding. Tri-Dist had won State a few years before. “So be on the bus at seven-forty-five next Saturday, bring a lunch, and be ready to compete.” She shrugged at the booth. “Rick?”

  “Just one more thing, ladies and gentlemen: Practice like crazy. And kick ass!”

  Mr. Soloman liked my ideas for the speech; he told me to add a few minutes to it before our meeting the next Tuesday. So I headed for the source of my material. I went home.

  For a going-away dinner that night, Abuela made arroz con pollo, everyone’s favorite dish except Mark’s. At least there was flan for dessert. As I sat down next to my brother at the kitchen table, I saw the look on his face, a sort of Cro-Magnon glare that spelled “foul mood.” It had been his unhappy fate to take the last turn in the Death Throne, and he faced a steaming plate of chicken and yellow rice, which he hated. On top of that, the sorry Cubs had just slipped out of play-off contention. I was devastated myself. Mark wasn’t even wearing his hat.

  “So that’s what color your hair is,” I said.

  He ignored me and kept picking the little canned peas out of his rice. He had already made a pile of pimientos on one side of his plate.

  Abuelo stirred in his soft chair and sighed. “Bueno, another year down the drain for los Cubs, no? I am happy to go home to my Marlins. They are going to win the World Series this year.”

  Mark cut him a look and pushed some food around on his plate.

  Dad thought to salve Mark’s wound with the old standby Cub-fan reply: “Well, Mark, there’s always next season, eh?”

  Mark nodded numbly and rocked in his seat, trying to get some blood to flow to his butt.

  We attacked our plates with varying degrees of gusto, and Abuela said it was time to talk about the guest list for my party.

  “How about my party?” asked Mark.

  “Your birthday isn’t until January,” Mom said.

  “Sho?” Mark raged through a mouthful of chewed-up rice. He choked it down. “Her party’s not till May! Why is it always Violet, Violet, Violet?”

  “Because you’re not mature enough to make your quince, ” I said.

  “Claro que sí,” murmured Abuela.

  While Mark sulked, we turned to the matter at hand. My sponsors had been mostly lined up and a budget set. We had decided on eighty guests, a number that seemed too few to fill a hall and too many to perform for.

  “Can we invite Mrs. Lowenstein?” I asked, meaning my piano teacher. I’ve known her since I was four.

  “I think we should invite the Caprizios,” Mom said, stabbing a fork with two peas stuck to it at Dad. “They asked us to that New Year’s party last year.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “I don’t even know the Caprizios. And kids weren’t invited to that party.”

  “Ehstop it,” Abuela cut in. “We ehstart with the familia.”

  I counted on my fingers. “You, Abuelo, Mom, Dad, Tía Luci, Mark—”

  Mark spoke up. “I’m not going.”

  Dad tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, as if considering the option himself.

  “Forget it,” I snapped with a steely look, and Dad shrugged. Mark made a fist with his lips.

  “Y Juan Pedro y Arnalda,” put in Abuelo.

  “Y Sara y Roberto, y los Guerreros,” said Abuela.

  Mom and Dad joined the litany in Spanish.

  With a primeval scowl, Mark muttered, “Who cares about some dumb Cuban party?”

  Dad heard him. “What did you say, young man?”

  “I said, this Cuba stuff sucks!” Mark pushed his numb behind up from the Throne.

  Everybody stopped talking.

  Fuming, and using the umpire’s signal for player ejection, Dad ousted Mark from the room.

  The Cubs loss and no dessert. I felt a pure sorrow for my brother at that moment and went out on a limb. “Dad, Mark shouldn’t have to come to the party if he doesn’t want to. You didn’t go when you were growing up.”

  I could tell by Dad’s expression that it was the showers for me too. Before he could give the sign, I got up from my chair and said, “I know, Ump, I know. I’m outta here.” And, in solidarity, I left the field.

  16

  Even if I had refrained from sticking up for Mark, it wouldn’t have saved me from my impending appointment with Señora Flora, party planner to the stars. My dress had to go back to Chez Doll soon, and Señora Flora’s sister was going to handle the dress replication, or whatever you’d call this guerrilla tailoring.

  As Dad was putting the bags in the car for my grandparents’ trip to the airport, Abuela handed me an envelope to give to Señora Flora. Mark and I had apologized the night before—in English—and Abuela had promised never again to make arroz con pollo, if that was what it did to Mark.

  So Mark was happy.

  But he wasn’t on his way to see Señora Flora, a meeting I looked forward to with about as much enthusiasm as another class trip to Springfield, Illinois. I had visited the sixteenth president’s hometown thousands of times during elementary school, but if forced to choose between hearing Lincoln’s life story broadcast at his tomb once more or having Señora Flora size me up and dress me down, I’d be gathering brochures and buying log cabin figurines in a heartbeat.

  I figured this Señora Flora for some fussy, ruffly type who harbored set ideas about
how us quince-babes were supposed to look and act. She’d probably teach me the Cuban minuet. I wondered what was in Abuela’s envelope, a fifty with the word tradicional scrawled across it?

  Mom drove us to Arlington Heights and made me look for the street number when we got close. A compact blond brick building housed the salon, with the famed party planner’s name up in Broadway-style lights: SEÑORA FLORA, FI-ESTERA DE LAS ESTRELLAS. Mom crowbarred us into a parking space, and I carried the dress box into the shop.

  A tiny slip of a woman in a suit hunched over the front desk, reading a Sun-Times through the thickest glasses I had ever seen. She took in Mom’s out-on-the-town ensemble— powder-blue knit skirt, red and white sailor blouse sewn all over with anchor buttons, plus her “sensible shoes,” soot-colored nurse’s oxfords bought at a uniform-store fire sale— and hoisted a magnified eyebrow. Apparently her glasses prescription was right on the money.

  “¿Nombre?”

  “We’re Paz,” said Mom.

  This didn’t impress the woman. “¿Y quiénes se nos refieren?”

  “References?” Mom was taken aback. “Mi suegra, Lupita Zarza.”

  That was Abuela.

  “¿Y hay otra . . . ?”

  Now Mom was pissed. “Yeah, I’ve got another reference. The Pope! You want his number?”

  This invented credential did impress the nearsighted woman. “¡El Papa! Pues . . .”

  “We have an appointment with Señora Flora at four. Are you gonna get her?”

  Our hostess jumped off her stool. “Seguro, seguro, Doña Paz, cómo no, cómo no.” And she disappeared behind a blue curtain.

  With a great rustling of fabric and clinking of metal bracelets, Señora Flora swished through the curtain, kissed Mom on two cheeks, and took the dress box out of my hands before you could say cocotazo.

  “Buenas tardes, bienvenidas, welcome!” she said, taking a step back and getting a good look at me. I wore my rust-colored tunic outfit again, this time with a maroon T-shirt underneath and my favorite sandals.

  Señora Flora gave me a nod and said, “You must be Violet. Lupita told me great things about you.”

  “Me too, you—too, that is,” I said stupidly, even though Abuela had told me zip about her, except that her parties were so popular that she normally had a waiting list a mile long. But Abuela had an in.

  How she knew Señora Flora, I couldn’t imagine. The party planner to the stars was, first of all, young; way younger than I’d expected. She must have been under forty, because she had good hands. I’d read in some magazine that you could always guess a woman’s age by her hands, and it showed how hands look at different ages. The twenties and thirties hands hadn’t looked too bad, but once those fingers hit forty, you could tell. Too many years, too many dishes.

  Besides the smooth hands, Señora Flora had a shiny black pageboy with just a few gray hairs streaking it, chestnut eyes with big dark lashes, and a comfortable manner. She wore a long, sweeping silk dress in a bold abstract print that Ms. Joyner would have envied.

  “Never mind my sister. Fauna gets carried away with security sometimes.”

  Fauna?

  “She’s very thorough,” Mom said with a barb.

  Señora Flora didn’t seem to notice. “Step into my office. Por favor, this way.”

  Señora Flora was surprisingly businesslike. First off, we talked scale and we talked money. We filled in the blanks on her form: number of guests, type of refreshments, number in the court. Dressmaking and dance lesson fees. Invitations and party favors. Music and lights. Tux rentals and corsages. Mom obliged by showing her the plans in our “portfolio,” a Snoopy notebook just like Mom’s restaurant planner, with a twelve-month AT-A-GLANCE calendar stapled to the back cover.

  When we had agreed on an affordable package, Señora Flora sent Mom back to the waiting room. She said she wanted to talk to me alone.

  I remembered Abuela’s envelope and offered it to her, ready to defend myself against whatever pinkness it contained. “Señora Flora . . .”

  “Call me Flora, amiga.”

  “But isn’t that your last name?”

  She grinned sheepishly, tearing open the envelope. “It’s Flora Markowicz. My mother is Cuban and my father was Polish. My parents’ neighborhoods overlapped, and I’m the result.”

  “Me too—the opposite,” I said, amazed. “Señora Markowicz?”

  “You can drop the Señora. I’m not married. It just sounded like a catchy business name. Would you trust your once-in-a-lifetime party to a Señorita Markowicz?”

  I had to admit, Señora Flora’s had more of a ring to it.

  Flora scanned Abuela’s note—I didn’t notice a money bribe in there—and folded it back into the envelope. Then she looked into my eyes with such unexpected feeling, I recoiled on the office couch we were sharing.

  “What do you want from life, Violet?”

  What kind of question was this? And what kind of answer did she want: the car-house-kids one; or the health–happiness–world peace one?

  When in doubt, lie.

  “Um, I want to become an emergency-room veterinarian and teach people about animals and stuff.” This had been true several years back, before I realized that I was deathly allergic to cats and that I had no affinity for blood, two things that make a bad animal doctor.

  “I mean personally. How do you see yourself?”

  “Well . . .” I could either snow her now, or tell it to her straight. “Well, since you ask.” I narrowed my eyes. “First of all, I’m not the quince type.”

  Her eyebrows flexed, but she said nothing.

  “I don’t wear dresses—haven’t since grade school. A person has to choose their own style. Though I know Abuela doesn’t think so. . . . And plus, I don’t do slow dances, with or without my dad, and I don’t know any of the Cuban customs.” I thought that summed it up.

  Flora nodded. “This is what you are not. How about what you are?”

  “I am . . . someone who likes to watch sports but hates playing on teams. I’ve studied piano since I was four, but I don’t know how to play the kind of music I really like. I’m on the speech team and I’ve done lots of skits and puppet shows, but I’m not really the onstage type of performer. It’s like, I have a lot of half talents.”

  She nodded, still silent.

  “I guess I want them to be full talents, and that’s the kind of person I want to be.”

  “Anything else? Any other hopes, dreams, aspirations?”

  I considered. “I wish Spanish weren’t so hard for me. I’m taking first year. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

  “You are on your way, then.” She got up from the couch and went around to a file cabinet on the opposite wall to fish through some papers. “My job, Violet, is to take what is true about Violet Paz and put it into the fiesta. The quinceañero is a statement, about who you are and where you are going.”

  “How am I supposed to know that?”

  “You do; you don’t think you do, but you do. Who knows you better than yourself?” She brought a folder and the Snoopy notebook and sat back down next to me, flipping to the theme page in my notebook. “ ‘All the World’s a Stage.’ You are already cultivating one of your—not ‘half,’ but shall we say, hidden, or amateur, talents.”

  I relaxed some. What she said was smart. And she seemed interested in the me-ness of me. That was a new one. I wasn’t even that interested in me.

  Flora produced a questionnaire from her folder to fill out. “I’ll be talking with you more in depth over the next few months. Now I want you to go see Fauna about your dress. Here,” she said, handing Abuela’s note back. “Give her this.”

  She smiled warmly. “You’re going to have a fabulous quince, Violet. Think about what we’ve talked over, and I’ll see you again in a month or so. Fauna will schedule you.”

  I let Fauna take my measurements and told her that, yes, I did like the fabric and the colors of the Chez Doll dress. I didn’t tell her it was the dres
s part I disliked. I was beginning to feel like a freak.

  After a perfunctory look through her heavy lenses at the white and purple gown, Fauna rewrapped it in its tissue paper and returned the box to me.

  “Don’t you need to . . . trace the pattern or something?” I asked.

  A smile passed over her face. “Todo está aquí,” she said, pointing to her right temple.

  “Cool,” I said. Fauna had hidden talents too. I thought maybe I should tell her we didn’t really know the Pope.

  Then I thought, Nah.

  17

  The speech tournament at Taylor Park was approaching. On the day of my rehearsal with Mr. Soloman, I awoke to the familiar seesawing between blind courage and pure terror that preceded any performance. I was so revved up that I wore two different socks, one fuzzy anklet and one crew— both white, but still.

  “Relax,” Mr. Soloman said to me from a seat in the back row of one of the classrooms. “But not too much. Being keyed up keeps you on your toes.”

  I was already performing mental pirouettes. I’d waltz right through, then.

  “We’ll let you get your feet wet this weekend, and after that we’ll work on revising and improving,” he said.

  Revising? I’d finished the writing part. And it was pretty darn good, if I said so myself, which I humbly kept quiet about. I paused to get in character, then began the routine I’d practiced a dozen times in front of my bedroom mirror.

  I started out: “The story you are about to hear is true. None of the names have been changed, because no one is innocent. This is the sad case of a girl wrongfully accused, tried, and sentenced to life—with her family.

  “It all began innocently enough: I was born, I went to kindergarten, I lost my front teeth. By then, it was already too late. I was a Paz.”

  I described my family’s hereditary fashion deficiency, the domino gene, the penchant for puns. Then I narrated the crazy domino party, from Abuela’s suspicious good luck to the conga line and the burning roast. Finally, the cops showed up.