voice. Why lay all this stuff on his mother? All she wanted was peace and harmony. So he stopped talking altogether and gave her a sad smile.
She moved closer, and from her own sad smile he knew what was going to happen. She wanted to put her arms around him and assure him that Mother still loved him. He just couldn’t go through that.
He raised his hands up before his chest, palms outward ::::::Hold it:::::: at the same time he gave her a smile and said, “It’s okay, Mami. I can handle it. All it takes is a little ‘uncritical willingness to face danger.’ ”
“Your father and Yeya and Yeyo didn’t really mean… all those things they said, Nestorocito. They were just—”
“Oh, they meant it,” said Nestor. He made sure to keep his smile spread across his face.
With that, he went inside and left Mami outside to further chasten the concrete slab with the power spray.
Inside, the casita was overwhelmed by the odors, good and bad, of the pig roasting in the caja china. Good—bad—the neighbors wouldn’t care either way. They were all Cuban. They all knew what a big thing, what a family ritual, a pig roast was, and besides, most of them had been invited to the party. That was the Cuban way.
Nobody seemed to be in the house. Nestor headed toward the back. Yeya and Yeyo’s door was open, and so he went in there and looked out their back window. Sure enough, the whole macho crew was out in the yard. There was I, Camilo, directing Yeyo, who was bringing a bucket of coals for the caja china. There was Yeya, the muchacha vieja, pointing this way and that way, directing both of them… correcting both of them. Nestor could be sure of that.
So… he could either walk right up to the caja china clergy and force himself upon them in conversation ::::::Gosh, now that’s some pig! How much longer you think it’ll take? Dad, you remember the time the pig was so big—:::::: for the ten or twenty seconds it would take the three self-righteous pharisees to start spitting their vile bile all over him again… or he could turn his back on the whole scene… The birthday girl, Yeya, obviously didn’t care whether a non-person was there or not. It was not a difficult decision.
Back in his room, Nestor lay down to take a nap. The only half-decent sleep he had gotten in the last twenty-four hours were the three hours when the aroma and the flake-fall of pastelitos had put him under as he sat back at a twenty-degree angle in the driver’s seat of the Camaro outside of Ricky’s with the engine running and the air conditioner on. He couldn’t think of any prospect more inviting than going under again ::::::here in my own bed where I’m already horizontal:::::: but the phrase “here in my own bed” made him anxious. He didn’t know exactly why, but it did. What did “my own bed” mean in a house where three people considered you a traitor and the fourth, kindly enough, said she was willing to forgive you for having sinned against her and the three others and their heritage, and all of Mother Cuba’s offspring in Miami and, for that matter, everywhere in the world. So he lay there horizontally in a regular stew of rejection, stigma, and guilt, those three, and the worst of these, as always, was guilt… even though what was he supposed to have done, looked the mere americano Sergeant McCorkle in the eye and said, “No, I will not lay one hand on a Cuban patriot!—even though I haven’t the faintest idea who the fuck he is,” and then just taken his dismissal from the force like a man? Bubble bubble bubble bubble went the stew, while the fouler odors of the pig roast wafted over him, the odors and the occasional rude cry, probably of excoriation, from the backyard, and the time passed as slowly as it had ever passed in his life.
After God-only-knows-how-long came the sound of the chosen pig roasters coming back into the casita, bringing their various recriminations with them, although mercifully he couldn’t really understand them. It was about 1:15, and Yeya’s party was to start at 2:00. They must have come in to get dressed. No one had said a word to him about that or anything else. Why was he even staying? He was nothing but an embarrassment to them all.