Paz directed Morales into the small parking lot, observed that his mother’s pale blue ’95 Coupe de Ville was in its stall, and bid farewell to his supervisor-companion. He rang at the outer door. No answer. He used his key. At her apartment door he rang again with the same result, and after a brief wait, he let himself into the small foyer. He called out, “Mamí, it’s me.” Nothing. Now a little prickle of concern.
In the foyer, on a small wooden stand was a half-life-size clothed statue of a black woman holding a paler infant. The woman wore an elaborate silver crown, and there were silvered metal rays emanating from behind her gown of blue brocade, which was covered with silver embroidery depicting shells, fish, and other marine life. Below her feet tossed plaster sea waves, from which emerged a miniature steel anchor. When Paz was a little boy, this image had been a cheap framed poster; later, that had been replaced by a plaster statue, and then another more elaborate one, and finally this one, probably the most luxurious available image of La Virgen de Regla, aka Yemaya, theorisha of maternity and of the sea, to whom his mother was dedicated in Santería. As a little boy he’d imagined it was a representation of Mom and himself.
The living room, which he now entered, was furnished in pale pink velvet and mahogany, heavy, expensive pieces-a tall breakfront, a long couch, armchairs, a coffee table inlaid with a marine scene in pale woods. The lamps on the side table were plaster sculptures, whose pale silken shades were protected by clear plastic. Mrs. Paz, in a flowered blue robe, was lying on the couch like a corpse, one arm and one foot resting on the floor, a copy ofPeople en Español fallen from her slack hand, reading glasses dangling from one ear. Her breath came in snorts and hisses.
Paz had not seen his mother asleep all that often, despite having lived in her house for eighteen years. In his mind she was always up and pushing, often pushing Paz as well, full of angry energy focused on never, ever, falling back into the nothing from which she had finally emerged. Here was the consequence: utter exhaustion. Paz was struck by a tender compassion and was wondering whether to tiptoe out and leave the poor woman in peace when she suddenly awoke. A lightning flash of fear appeared on her face when she knew that she was not alone, and then, when she observed who her visitor was, she quickly reassembled her normal stern mask. She made her glasses vanish, sat up, and said, “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what?’ I’m your son, I’m visiting you on your day off.”
“Do you bring Amelia?”
“No, she’s still at school. Look, Mamí, the reason I came is I need your help.”
“Money?”
“No, money’s fine. This is a spiritual thing.”
Eyebrows climbed on her dark face. “I’ll make coffee,” she said and left for the kitchen.
They sat there at the old, chipped enamel-topped table he recalled from their days of poverty, drinking her bitter brew, and he told her about the dreams, his and Amelia’s, of the spotted beast, and about what he thought was happening to his wife, and how he had given the child the charm, theenkangue he had received from her years ago.
“That wasn’t wise,” she said when she heard that. “Enkangueare made for one person.”
“I know that, but she was scared and anyway it seemed to have worked. She hasn’t had hardly any nightmares since I gave it to her.”
“You should have come to me.”
“Iam coming to you, Mamí. I need a set for the whole family. I thought, these dreams, and after that reading Amelia got…and now I’m looking at my…you know, Calderón’s death, and there’s some kind of big cat involved in that, too.”
“Your father,” she corrected.
“Honestly, I can’t think of him that way. I mean he treated us like garbage his whole life.”
“You he did. But not me, never.”
“What do you mean? I thought he, you know…when you needed money for our first catering truck, he took advantage of you.”
She fixed him with a glare. “Is that what you think, son of mine? That your mother is a whore to buy a catering truck?”
Paz felt blood rush to his cheeks, but he met her stare. “You had no choice,” he said.
“You know nothing about it.”
“Thentell me, for God’s sake!”
She took a sip of coffee. “Ah, finally he asks, after nearly thirty years. All right, since you ask. Juan Calderón loved me and I loved him. He was a bad man and he loved in the manner of bad men, not like you love, but it was love all the same. He wanted me all the time, and I wanted him. Of course, it was impossible that it should go any further, but this we had, for seven months. You understand, it was something that was common in Cuba, the rich white man takes a black mistress to learn about passion before he marries whatever cold little white girl the parents have arranged. So I became pregnant, and therefore you must never think, my son, that you were not made in love, even in the love of a bad man. When I told him, he wanted to fly me to Puerto Rico so I could kill you, but I said no, and then he said, I will put you in a little apartment, you’ll be available. This is how it’s done, or was done where we both came from, a few years of comfort, he buys you some nice things, and then he finds another girl, a younger girl, and you go to work as a maid somewhere, and take care of your littlecabrón. But I said no, I said I wanted a loan from him to start a business, and we fought, because always he wanted to control me. But in the end I was stronger and he gave me the money, and said he would never see me again and if I ever made a claim on him, or you did, he would make something bad happen to the both of us. So I didn’t tell you about him, I made up a story, so you wouldn’t approach him. But you did anyway. Thesantos made it part of your life. And that’s also the reason I didn’t raise you in Santería, may it not be held against me. I wanted you to be an American boy. I thought I could protect you with my prayers to thesantos, and you would have a different kind of life, that you would escape from all this…the dark things. But Ifa has drawn out the thread of your fate in a different direction than I planned. And you know this, too, which is why you had Ifa cast for my grandchild and why you come to me now, although for your whole life you’ve thought that all of this was nonsense.”
“I’m still not sure I buy the whole thing-” he began, but she made a dismissive gesture of her hand and interrupted, “Yes, yes, you believe in your heart, because theorishas have shown you things, things not even I have seen.”
She drained her coffee down to the dregs, and swirled these around in the cup, a habit of hers. Sometimes things were revealed there, but apparently not now. She rose from the table. “I’ll get dressed and we’ll go see Julia at thebotánica.”
Paz just sat there mute, as if he had taken a blow to the head. She paused at the door and added, “I’m sorry, Iago. I was wrong. I tried to control things instead of handing everything over to thesantos. But you know, this is how I am, like a mule.”
Paz tried to recall if his mother had ever apologized to him about anything and came up blank. This was nearly as disturbing as the revelation about his father.
The shop had no name. It was jammed between a pharmacy and a shoe place in a strip mall on West Flagler near the county auditorium, a twelve-foot frontage with one dusty window that announcedBOTÁNICA in peeling gilt letters. Behind the window stood a row of dark-skinned plastersantos lined up like people waiting for a bus back to heaven: St. Lazarus, who was Babaluaye, curer of ills; the Virgen de Caridad, who was Oshun, the Venus of Cuban Africa; St. Peter, who was Ogun, lord of iron and anger; St. Anthony of Padua, who was Eleggua, the trickster, guardian of the ways; and Yemaya, walking on her plaster seas. Above these a slack piece of wire had been draped, from which hung cellophane packets of herbs and powders.