Sonrisa Ancha
I would like to begin with my father, Raul “Chico” Flores. When I first met Senor Little Flowers, he told me that a man from our podunky, rustic mountain town of Quirihue (Chile) had once fought against Napoleon.
In my broken Spanish, I told him I play guitar and I don’t like yogurt.
So we played guitars, and we didn’t eat any yogurt. With his eyes shut, he wrapped his arms around his encumbering instrument like a koala to an over-girthed eucalyptus. Singing “Te Recuerdo Amanda” in perfect baritone, I watched his Adam’s apple dance playfully under the baby pudge of his clean-shaven face. He smiled the whole time he sang, as if in on a secret to a very simple truth.
He put his guitar facedown on the couch, raised his fists in the air and yelled, “Alexander!”
He walked me over to the dinner table and pointed at a green garnish dish next to a packet of mayo. He stood on his tippy-toes and put his arm around my shoulders, saying loudly, “Cilantro!” We then walked into the kitchen and (in Spanish) he said, “This was not a kitchen.” He pointed at his right eyeball, then to the ceiling and proceeded to rigidly convulse his body—was this supposed to be the Earthquake Dance? He cackled at my slight pause, and yelled, “My son!”
We totally hit it off.
It always happens in that meandering order, an unpredictable Mad-Lib setting where any scenario seems like a fill-in-the-blank. Example: “Dinner tonight was tasty and [adjective].” Dinner tonight was tasty and… adjective… Let’s think, hmm… Musical! Yes, “Dinner tonight was tasty and MUSICAL,” because my father danced around the kitchen playing a flute, and I ate a hot dog covered in avocado and mayonnaise.
Mi Mami, Senora Mirta “Mirtita” Cartes, walked into the kitchen and hugged me gently around my ribcage. Another billboard smile. Saying earnestly, “Spanish-Spanish, mi hito, More-Spanish- Spanish-Spanish-Spanish, tu estas, Spanish- Spanish,” she grabbed my hand and walked me to my new bedroom. My brand new father followed us the whole way, yelling, “WiFi! WiFi! Te Gustas Wifi!”
***
Petite and dignified, Senora Cartes works very hard. I imagine her afterlife to be a well-deserved eternal foot massage de los dios sus mismos. They will do her five loads of laundry and insist—Insist, dammit!— that they do not need help with any of it, nor the huge mid-day lunches between work shifts. They will send her on adventures outside the Above World while they sweep the dust off the cloudtops. Their only alone-time will be at midnight sipping cups of tea to “Quieres ser un Millonaire." Every day, every single eensy-weensy trans-dimensional microsecond of each day, they will appreciate her.
Her patience stretches for miles—Eh-hem, excuse me, kilometers. Her patience stretches further than wormholes. My success rate in understanding everyday Spanish is approaching 49 percent. Even so, if she sees that I do not understand what she is saying to me, she will continue speaking with her arsenal of synonyms and tenses. She won’t even blink. Then she will give me more food.
Her ear-to-ear-and-back-again smile never ceases. Enamel sunshine.
One time I bought a stupid little hand towel, thinking that it was a regular bath towel (my limited Spanish often leads me to unwanted knick-knacks). It dried just fine, but it was so small that it made loin cloths seem like monk robes. My predicament was simple: After drying, I would change into my clothes in the bathroom. Peachy as two peaches. Regardless, it was my stupid little backup towel for when my “man-towel” was being washed, so I hardly needed it.
When she discovered my stupid little towel, she was perplexed. I didn’t know how to explain to her that I could not really afford another one, nor reveal my shame.
I now have four big backup towels.
I now have four big backup towels.
***
When my father mentioned that our kitchen was never a kitchen, he meant that the back half of the house collapsed in the earth quake of 2010. Improvising, they turned a remaining room into a kitchen, and moved the debris to the furthest part of their backyard. They masked the destruction with a makeshift black tarp fence, but the remnants of old memories still peek out over in piles.
Last Sunday morning, I watched my father plant purple and yellow tulips for my mother. She was sleeping. Not knowing really how to, he surprised me with bacon (I finally found some in Chile!). When she woke he was waiting by the door to the backyard to show her.
I nibbled on little scraps of bacon char while they embraced next to the flower garden.
