A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey Page 0,5
made this batch of Abuela’s magical chicken soup. That plus a generous coating of “Vivaporú”—Vicks VapoRub—could cure any ailment. “I said more, Lila,” she told my shaking head and tucked-in lips.
“Enough,” I said. My skull housed a bass drum.
Pili huffed and slammed the bowl down on my nightstand. This accounting major moved like an army nurse, stoic and strong, back to our little first-aid caddy.
Her hands rubbed more of the cool, tingling VapoRub onto my calves. I winced when she went in for another round of blister salve.
“Serves you right.” More salve on my heels and toes, patches of skin rubbed clean off. “If you never wear those red stiletto sandals again, it’s your own fault, hermana.”
Yes, my fault. It’s what I got for running for over five hours and more than twenty miles, all but crawling at the end. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. And I just hadn’t cared.
Pilar skittered around my bedroom, fluffing pillows and refilling my water glass, poking her head out to see where Mami and Papi were. She muttered hushed Spanish.
Ridiculous girl. Clueless, rash, and selfish. What if I hadn’t found you? What then? God, Lila.
This was what I heard.
This was what I saw.
Mami and Papi huddled in my doorway with their courtroom verdict. Papi’s head bent low, revealing his salt-and-pepper hair and sand-dollar bald spot.
Mami clutched a wad of tissues. “We just got off the phone with Catalina and Spencer.”
Her words came fast and harsh: England. Summer at the Owl and Crow. Cool down. Take some time.
At the end, Mami was crying and my chest was a hollow cavity.
“England? Are you kidding me?”
Papi stepped forward. “This is for your health. This spring was already unbearable for you, and now Stefanie has left.”
They just had to leave me alone. Let me fix it.
Mami brushed black waves from her face. “You think we don’t see you? Weeping in corners for weeks? Hunched over and almost running into the walls? Papi finding you crying in the panadería walk-in? Alone and freezing. That is not right, Lila.”
But it had felt more than right. I remembered the delicious relief of head-to-toe numbness, cooling the flaming loss of Abuela’s forehead kisses. And for Andrés, too. The way he used to hold me so tightly, so completely. Warmed from ankles to ears, his embrace was the one place I’d felt both as big as planets and as light as feathers. In the walk-in freezer, I’d only wanted a few moments of quiet relief. But Papi had barged in, worrying and overreacting.
“You can’t send me away.” Not from La Paloma. Not from my Miami. My family.
“But the neighborhood, también. They’re talking about you more than ever. You can’t heal when…”
When what? When my private business was whispered around town? Oh, it wasn’t hard to see why. It had been going on for three years. All I had to do was snag Andrés, son of prominent Congressman Millan of posh Coral Gables. Andrés was featured in local magazines and society columns. He’d flashed his movie star face on TV with his family during campaigns. Customers and neighbors and fellow shop owners shipped us; they thought our story was adorable. Four years ago, I’d catered his parents’ fund-raiser, where he’d tried his first Lila-made guava pastry. For two years, he came into La Paloma every week for more, until he finally asked me out. I was fifteen and head-over-pastelito for the congressman’s son.
A West Dade Cuban fairy tale. But Andrés canceled our castle.
My parents faced Pilar, practically turning their backs to me. “Elena from Dadeland Bridal came into La Paloma last week,” Mami said. She gulped back a sob. “She told me there was a game between the employees and some of the regular customers. They had a bet on when Lila would be picking out her vestido de boda.”
A wedding dress? Seriously? My blood passed through fire. “Mami! Do you hear yourself?” Just cut me open, spread the past three months all over my bedroom like another coat of pale blue.
“But it’s true,” Mami said. “And I’m so sorry.”
“Now the gossip has changed,” Papi told Pili. “Why did Andrés break up with her? How could Stefanie leave her best friend without any notice? Horrible. People talk at the bodegas, the grocery, the newsstands.”
Pilar sat on my bed. “I know. I hear it too.”
Was I even present here? Wasn’t this my life? Their little trio of oversharing went around and over the top, even right through the apparently invisible me. “Enough, okay?”