An Island Like You Read online

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  She planted another smack on my face and left to help her husband pack his Ghostbuster equipment. I finally fell asleep thinking about Johnny and what it would be like to be his girlfriend.

  “Getting up with the chickens” meant that both my grandparents were up and talking at the top of their lungs by about four in the morning. I put my head under the sheet and hoped that my presence in their house had slipped their minds. No luck. Mamá Ana came into my room, turned on the overhead light, and pulled down the sheet. It had been years since my own parents had dared to barge into my bedroom. I would have been furious, except I was so sleepy I couldn’t build up to it, so I just curled up and decided it was time to use certain things to my advantage.

  “Ohhh …” I moaned and gasped for air.

  “Hija, what is wrong?” Mamá sounded so worried that I almost gave up my little plan.

  “It’s my asthma, Mamá,” I said in a weak voice. “I guess all the excitement is making it act up. I’ll just take my medicine and stay in bed today.”

  “Positivamente no!” she said, putting a hand that smelled of mint from her garden on my forehead. “I will stay with you and have my comadre come over. She will prepare you a tea that will clear your system like —”

  “Like a clogged sewer pipe.” I completed the sentence for her. “No, I’ll go with you. I’m feeling better now.”

  “Are you sure, Rita? You are more important to me than any poor girl sick in her soul. And I don’t need to eat crab, either. Once in a while I get these antojos, you know, whims, like a pregnant woman, ha, ha. But they pass.”

  Somehow we got out of the house before the sun came up and sandwiched ourselves into the subcompact, whose muffler must have woken up half the island. Why doesn’t anyone ever mention noise pollution around here? was my last thought before I fell asleep crunched up in the backseat.

  When I opened my eyes, I was blinded by the glare of the sun coming through the car windows; and when my eyeballs came back into their sockets, I saw that we had pulled up at the side of a house right on the beach. This was no ordinary house. It looked like a pink-and-white birthday cake. No joke — it was painted baby pink with white trim and a white roof. It had a terrace that went all the way around it, so that it really did look like a layer cake. If I could afford a house like that, I would paint it a more serious color. Like purple. But around here, everyone is crazy about pastels: lime green, baby pink and blue — nursery school colors.

  The ocean was incredible, though. It was just a few yards away and it looked unreal. The water was turquoise in some places and dark blue, almost black, in others — I guessed those were the deep spots. I had been left alone in the car, so I looked around to see if the old people were anywhere in sight. I saw my grandmother first, off on the far left side of the beach where it started to curve, up to her knees in water, dragging something by a rope. Catching crabs, I guessed. I needed to stretch, so I walked over to where she was. Although the sun was a little white ball in the sky, it wasn’t unbearably hot yet. In fact, with the breeze blowing, it was almost perfect. I wondered if I could get them to leave me here. Then I remembered the “job” my grandfather had come to do. I glanced up at the top layer of the cake, where I thought the bedroom would be — to see if anything was flying out of the windows. Morning was a strange time for weird stuff, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t feel down about anything right then. It was so sunny, and the whole beach was empty except for one old lady out there violating the civil rights of sea creatures, and me.

  “Mira, mira!” Mamá Ana yelled, pulling a cagelike box out of the water. Claws stuck through the slats, snapping like scissors. She looked very proud, so even though I didn’t approve of what was going to happen to her prisoners, I said, “Wow, I’m impressed,” or something stupid like that.

  “They’ll have to boil for a long time before we can sink our teeth into them,” she said, a cold-blooded killer look in her eye, “but then we’ll have a banquet, right here on the beach.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said, moving toward the nearest palm tree. The trees grow right next to the water here. It looked wild, like it must have when Columbus dropped in. If you didn’t look at the pink house, you could imagine yourself on a deserted tropical island. I lay down on one of the big towels she had spread out, and soon she came over and sat down real close to me. She got her thermos out of a sack and two plastic cups. She poured us some café con leche, which I usually hate because it’s like ultra-sweet milk with a little coffee added for color or something. Nobody here asks you if you want cream or sugar in your coffee: the coffee is 99 percent cream and sugar. Take it or leave it. But at that hour on that beach, it tasted just right.

  “Where is Papá?” I was getting curious about what he was doing in the pink house, and about who lived there.

  “He is having a session with the señora and her daughter. That poor niña is not doing very well. Pobrecita. Poor little thing. I saw her when I helped him bring his things in this morning. She is a skeleton. Only sixteen, and she has packed her bags for the other world.”

  “She’s that sick? Maybe they ought to take her to the hospital.”

  “How is your asthma, mi amor?” she said, apparently reminded of my own serious illness.

  “Great. My asthma is great.” I poured myself another cup of coffee. “So why don’t they get a doctor for this girl?” I was getting pretty good at keeping conversations more or less on track with at least one person. “What exactly are her symptoms?”

  “There was a man there,” she said, totally ignoring my question, “not her papá, a man with a look that said mala influencia all over it.” She shook her head and made a tsk, tsk sound. This real-life telenovela was beginning to get interesting.

  “You mean he’s a bad influence on the girl?”

  “It is hard to explain, hija. A mala influencia is something that some people who are sensitive to spiritual matters can feel when they go into a house. Juan and I both felt chilled in there.” She nodded toward the pink house.

  “Maybe they have air conditioning,” I said.

  “And the feeling of evil got stronger when ese hombre, that strange man, came into the room,” she added.

  “Who is he?”

  “The mother’s boyfriend.”

  “So what’s going to happen now?”

  “It depends on what Juan decides is wrong with this casa. The mother is not very stable. She has money from a former husband, so it is not from physical need that these women suffer. La señora is fortunately a believer, and that is good for her daughter.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she may do what needs to be done, if not for herself, then for her child — when a mala influencia takes over a house, pues, it affects everyone in it.”

  “Tell me some things that may happen, Mamá.”

  It was so strange that this rich woman had asked my grandfather to come solve her problems. I mean if things were going this crazy-wrong, someone should call a shrink, right? Here they got the local medicine man to make a house call.

  “Well, Juan will interview each of the people under the mala influencia. Separately. So they don’t get their stories tangled up, sabes? Then he will decide which spirits need to be contacted for help.”

  “Oh,” I said, like it all sounded logical to me. Actually, I thought all Mamá had said was not too exciting for a supernatural event. Until she got to the part about contacting the spirits, that is.

  “In most of these cases where a restless or bad spirit has settled over a house, it’s just a matter of figuring out what it wants or needs. Then you have to help it to find its way to God by giving it a way out — giving it light. The home is purified of the bad influence, and peace returns.”

  We had a few minutes of quiet then, since she apparently thought she had made it all crystal clear to me, and I was trying to absorb some of the mumbo-jumbo I had just heard. But I got distracted looking at how the sunl
ight was sparkling off the water. I was feeling pretty good. Must be the caffeine kicking in, I thought.

  “Ven” — my grandmother pulled me up by the hand; for a pudgy old lady she was pretty strong — “we have to bring dinner in.”

  So for a while we dragged the crab traps out. She wouldn’t let me touch the crabs, since I didn’t know how to handle them. “Might bite your fingers off,” she explained calmly. So I went for a long walk down the beach. It turned out to be part of an inlet, which was why the water was so still, almost no waves. And I actually found some shells. This was new to me, since the public beach my cousins and I went to was swept clean of trash and everything else, every morning. Sand was all that was left until it was covered by empty cans, bags, disposable diapers, and all the other things people bring for a day at the beach and leave behind as a little gift to Mother Nature. But this was different. How could that girl in the pink house be so unhappy when she could wake up to this every morning?

  I sat down on a sea-washed rock that was so smooth and comfortable I could just lounge on it all day. I stared out as far as I could see, and I thought I saw something jump out of the water. Not just one, but two or three — dolphins! Just like at Sea World. They jumped out, made a sort of half circle in the air, then went back under. I couldn’t believe it. I ran back to my grandmother, who was stirring a big black pot over a fire, looking like the witch cooking something tasty for Hansel and Gretel. Gasping for air, which made her frown — that old asthma again — I told her what I had seen. I didn’t know the Spanish word for dolphin, so I said “Flipper.”

  “Ah, sí, Fleeperr,” she said, rolling that r forever like they do here, “delfines.” She knew what I was talking about. “They like these waters, no fishermen, except for me, ha, ha.” I avoided looking into the pot — strange sounds were coming from it.

  “Wow,” I said to myself. Dolphins. I couldn’t wait to tell Meli. I had seen real wild dolphins.

  Mamá Ana handed me a sandwich, and after I ate it, I fell asleep on the towel. I woke up when I heard Papá Juan’s voice. I pretended to be still sleeping so I could listen in on an uncensored version of the weird stuff happening in the pink house. Mamá Ana had made a tent over our spot on the beach with four sticks and a blanket. She was working over the campfire, pouring things into the pot. I was getting hungry. Whatever she was cooking smelled great. Papá Juan was writing things in a notebook with a pencil that he kept wetting by putting it into his mouth. I was watching them from the corner of my eyes, not moving. It was Mamá who spoke first.

  “It’s that man, verdad?” She spoke very softly. I guess she didn’t want to wake me up. I had to really strain to hear.

  “I have told the mother that her house needs a spiritual cleansing. The mala influencia has settled over the young girl, but the evil has spread over everything. It is a very cold house.”

  “I felt it too,” Mamá said, making the sign of the cross over her face and chest.

  “It is the man who is the agent. He has brought bad ways with him. He has frightened the girl. She will not tell me how.”

  “I saw a bruise on her arm.”

  “Sí.” My grandfather put his notebook down and seemed to go into a trance or something. He closed his eyes and let his head drop. His lips were moving. I watched Mamá to see what she would do, but she continued cooking like nothing unusual was happening. Then he sort of shook his head like he was just trying to wake up, and went back to writing in his notebook.

  “Have you decided what to do?” Mamá came to sit next to him and peeked over her shoulder at the notebook. She nodded, agreeing with whatever it was.

  “I will tell the mother that she must not allow this man into the house anymore. Then I will prepare the herbs for her so that next Tuesday and Friday she can clean the house and fumigate.”

  “What about the niña?” Mamá asked. They had their heads together like two doctors discussing a patient.

  “I will treat her with some of our comadre’s tea. I will also tell her that the only way for us to get rid of the evil in the house is with her help. She will have to work with her mother.”

  “The woman will not want to throw the man out.”

  “You will have to help me convince her of the consequences if she doesn’t, Ana. She is a believer. And although she is misguided, she loves her daughter.”

  “We have to bring light into this home, Juan.”

  “The girl saw Rita from her window. She asked who she was,” my grandfather said. “Let us send our niña to invite Angela for dinner.”

  “Good idea,” said Mamá.

  Great, I thought, great idea. Send me over to get the girl from The Exorcist — good way to ruin my day at the beach.

  “Rita! Hija!” Mamá called out loudly. “Time to wake up!”

  * * *

  The house was pale pink on the inside too. The woman who answered my knock was a surprise. She looked elegant in a white sundress. She also looked familiar to me. I guess I must have stared because she said, “I’m Maribel Hernández Jones,” like I should recognize the name. Seeing that I didn’t, she added, “You may know me from TV. I do toothpaste commercials.” That was it. Her commercial had come on about five times during the telenovela.

  “I’m Rita. My grandmother wants to know if Angela would like to eat with us.” The smile faded into a sad look, but she pointed to a closed door at the other end of the room. The place was like a dollhouse. All the furniture was white and looked like no one ever sat on it.

  The girl must have heard me or else been spying from her window, because I’d barely gotten to her door when she flew out, grabbing my hand. We were out of the house before I ever got a good look at her. Shorter than I was by about four inches, she was very thin. She had long black hair and beautiful, sort of bronze skin. Still, she looked kind of pale too, like you do when you’ve been sick for a while.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in English, which surprised me, “I just had to get out of there. I’m Angela.” We shook hands.

  “You speak English,” I said, noticing the huge ring on her thin finger. She was also wearing a gold bracelet. This was a rich girl.

  “My stepfather was an American,” she said. “We spent a lot of time with him in New York before he died.”

  “Oh,” I said, thinking, I see where the money came from now.

  My grandmother had already set out plates and bowls for the crab stew she had made. I ate like a fiend. I was starved. The beach always makes me extra hungry, even when I don’t swim. Angela ate a few spoonfuls and put the bowl down. My grandmother put the bowl back in her hands. “I spent all day catching the crabs and cooking them, señorita. Do me the honor of eating a little more.” She was outrageous. She actually watched Angela as the poor kid forced it all down — you could tell it was an effort. Here is the secret weapon against anorexia, I thought: my grandmother.

  It wasn’t long before the mother came out to get her daughter. “We have to talk,” she said. Mamá and Papá nodded. It was part of the plan, I could see that. I was a little disappointed; I had really been looking forward to getting a little more information directly from the source. Angela looked at me as if she wanted to stay longer too. Then Mamá Ana spoke up.

  “In two weeks we are having a quinceañera party for Rita. I would like Angela to come.”

  Angela smiled and kissed her on both cheeks. Mamá hugged her like she did me, that is, so hard that you can’t breathe. It didn’t seem to take long for people to get familiar with each other around here.

  I had thought that the party had just been something Mamá had made up at the beach, but it turned out that she meant it. Although the next two weeks were mainly the usual routines of eating too much, drinking café, watching telenovelas, and accompanying Papá to two more jobs — neither one as interesting as Angela’s case: one turned out to be a simple problem of envy between two sisters, easily handled with special charms Papá carved for them himself; and the other was a cheating husband who
was told that he would be haunted forever by the restless spirit of a man shot by his wife if he did not give up womanizing — Mamá and I spent some time shopping for my dress, with money Mamá had had my mother send us, and for food and decorations for the house. It all seemed pretty childish, but on the island they make a big deal of a girl’s turning fifteen. I wondered who she was going to invite besides Angela, since I didn’t know anyone except old relatives like her. No problem, parties are for everybody, she explained, old relatives, neighbors, kids. Apparently, I was just the excuse to have a blowout.

  I chose a blue satin cocktail dress my mother would never have let me buy. Mamá thought it was muy bonito, very pretty, even if we had to stuff a little toilet paper in the bra to fill out the bodice.

  The party started at noon on a Saturday. There was a ton of food set out on tables in the backyard under a mango tree, and there were Japanese lanterns hanging from the branches, which we would light when it got dark, and a portable record player — about fifty years old — ready to blast out salsa music. I had a few of my tapes of good music with me for my Walkman, but there was no player or stereo anywhere around. People piled into the house and hugged and kissed me. I was starting to get a headache when a long white limousine pulled up to the front of our house. Angela and her mother stepped out of it. I looked to see if the “mala influencia” man was with them, but the car drove away. A chauffeur too. Wow. Everyone had stopped talking when Mamá’s big-mouthed neighbor shouted, “Oh, my God, it’s Maribel Hernández!” And people crowded around her before she could step inside. I saw Angela trying politely to come through several large sweaty women, and I reached for her hand and led her to my room. I had to shoo Ramón off my bed, where he was getting ready to crow, before we sat down. Angela laughed at the crazy rooster, and I saw that she looked different. She didn’t have that pale greenish color under her skin. She was still skinny, but she looked healthier.