The Book of Unknown Americans(38)

I tried to imagine it, going off to college in a few years, walking into a life that was all my own, one where I didn’t have to wear a tie to church, one where I didn’t even have to go to church, where no one could ground me, and where I could do whatever I wanted.

I pulled the tie off and tossed it on the bed. “Fuck that,” I said, a little too loudly.

Enrique laughed. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

We rode the bus to midnight Mass with the Riveras, although Enrique sat all the way in the back, plugged in to his iPod, so it was basically like he wasn’t even there. The bus driver tuned the radio to the all-Christmas-music station, and when “Feliz Navidad” came on, I guess since we were the only people on the bus, he raised the volume and shouted back at us, “Here you go! A little piece of home for you!”

Under his breath, my dad said, “Every year the same thing. If it’s in Spanish, it’s a piece of home. Well, I never heard this song until I came to the United States.”

“And every year, you complain,” my mom said.

“You like this song?”

“No.”

“It’s like how everyone thinks I like tacos. We don’t even eat tacos in Panamá!” my dad said.

“That’s right. We eat chicken and rice,” my mom said.

“And seafood. Corvina as fresh as God makes it.”

“Yes.”

This was one of the few things that could unite my parents, the thread that mended them: their conviction that no one else here understood Panamá the way they did.

I was sitting in front of them with my feet up on the seat, my dress socks pulled halfway up my calves. I had my coat zipped to my chin so that my mom wouldn’t see that I wasn’t wearing my tie. The Riveras were across the aisle from us.

“I like tacos,” I offered.

My mom sighed. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“What about you, Maribel?” I asked. “Do you like tacos?”

When she didn’t answer, I repeated the question, louder.

She was pressing the pad of her thumb against her incisors. She said, “My teeth are really sharp.”

“So you could eat a crunchy taco?” I asked.

“Okay,” she said.

My mom swatted my shoulder. “Leave her alone,” she said.

“I was just asking if she liked tacos.”

“I don’t know what that means,” my mom said.

“Tacos? It means tacos.”

“I don’t know if you mean something else by it now. All this taco talk.”

That made me laugh. Taco talk. And as soon as I laughed, I realized I hadn’t done it in a long time—too long—and I remembered how good it felt, how it made my muscles warm and filled me up with the kind of lightness that was usually missing in my life, the kind of lightness that was buried under my parents’ bickering and under my awkwardness at school. I stared out the window into the dark, at the illuminated trail of streetlights streaking through the air, and laughed while everyone else on the bus stayed quiet.


THE NEXT MORNING, my mom brewed a pot of Café Ruiz—our annual treat—and brought out the rosca bread with almonds that she’d made the night before. Our apartment was decked out with the same tired decorations she displayed every year—angel figurines on the end tables, a crocheted snowman cozy that slid over the extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom, a dried wreath with a red velvet bow that she hung over the kitchen doorway, a porcelain nativity scene on the floor. We hadn’t gotten a tree and, as threatened, I didn’t get any presents. Enrique didn’t exactly get a mountain of stuff either, unless a four-pack of deodorant and a new Gillette razor along with a bunch of replacement blades counted. “I’m not really into shaving anymore,” Enrique said when he opened them, and when I offered to take them he laughed and said, “Oh yeah. You can use them on that nonexistent hair above your lip.” Besides him, the only person who got a gift was my mom, and it was nothing more than a lousy set of shampoo and conditioner that my dad swore he bought at the salon even though anyone could see from the sticker on the back that he’d gotten it from the clearance shelf at Kohl’s. My mom placed the set on the coffee table. None of us mentioned the sticker.

My mom called my tía Gloria, only to learn that my aunt had finally decided to file for a divorce from my tío Esteban, news that sent my mom into a low-level state of shock, not because she hadn’t seen it coming but because of her adamant objection to divorce. Anyone’s divorce. But by the time the receiver was back on the latch, my mom was on a high from talking to her sister at all, which always cheered her at least for the short term until the cheer was displaced by missing her again.

Late in the morning, the radiators died, and my dad did what he always did—kick them and curse—until he gave up and plopped down on the couch. Not long after, the telephone rang. It was Sra. Rivera, calling my mom to tell her that the heat was out and to ask what they were supposed to do. My mom told her just to wait, that it would come back on eventually.

“The Riveras?” my dad asked from the couch when my mom hung up the phone. “I bet they’re freezing their asses off. They never thought they would leave México for this, I’m sure.”

“We should invite them over,” I said.