Efraín hadn’t been out all day. He didn’t truly need anything from la bodeguita, but the house smelled like dirty, wet socks, and it would for the next couple of hours, until the dust burned off the coils. It happened every year the first time the central heat was turned on for the winter. Now the sour, musty smell combined with Emelina’s cigarette smoke. And Efraín had to leave.
Chigo walked in two hours late, shell shocked and smelling of tea rose perfume. His ex-wife Tobenna was waiting at the door, a bowl of bitter leaf soup in one hand, a green book of psalms in the other. She swore that her potent version of bitter leaf helped a man in their village who could not pee for two days and whose testicles were on fire, but Chigo did not trust it. What good would the soup be against an ibuonu that was placed on the family years ago? he thought. What good against his cancer?
The day before Noche Buena, I decided I’d waited long enough and set off to Tío Fito’s apartment to find my dad. I’d been back in Miami for three days at that point, and Papi had only called once—the day I got in from Rawlings, to make sure my flight landed and that I’d been on it. He didn’t ask how my first semester went, or make plans to see me so he could ask me this in person over a meal or something. I figured he’d call again, and when he didn’t—and when Noche Buena, the most family-infested of holidays, crept up on me faster than it ever did when I was a kid—I decided to just be pissed off.
I was stirring a pot of collards when I heard his key in the lock.
“Come on back in the kitchen, Cristophe,” I called. “I got some talk for you.”
He slouched into the room with his round-shouldered stride, a dirty muskmelon tucked beneath his arm. I didn't even have to ask. It had been hastily plucked from his stepfather’s garden, big but green around the edges. He’d been pulling up things before they were ready ever since he was a little boy.
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