Eduardo Santiago
This Magic Moment
My name is Pablo, but I liked to be called Paloma, which means "dove". My friend Pooky called me Paloma first. But mostly she calls me "girl." With a deep, guttural, growl.
“Girl,” she said smiling, “it’s because you’re small and dress in white like a dove and because you like a peaceful life.”
I guess that's what's most important to me, peace. But for some reason, I attract trouble all the time. Mainly trouble from men. Every time I meet a man I think will treat me nice, he ends up hurting me. Hurting me bad. Leaving nothing but a sad song to remember him by.
“Girl, you want too much from the husbands.” Pooky says. I don’t agree. Pooky is from Manila and she has a different way of seeing the world. Yo soy Cubana. I am Cuban, but even back in my own country I always felt like a foreigner. I just want to belong. I only want to claim a little corner of the United States for myself, and then share it with him, if I ever find him.
I’m not like Pooky. So tough and hard. My heart is still tender – even after all I’ve been through. But I admire Pooky. She's so blissfully ignorant, thinks she can hide behind that phony smile forever. Her life is about dressing up and getting out. Hit the streets before they hit you. Sometimes I wonder how she can keep that huge smile on her face for so long. I've never been with her for two seconds that she's not smiling, showing her big teeth, looking like a coconut after it's been hacked in half.
If the cops ever called on me to pick her out of a line up and she wasn't smiling, I don't think I would be able to identify her. I think about that sometimes, identifying Pooky in jail, or at the morgue. I don't deceive myself about this life, but she does. To her, it's worth it. She says she does it for the money. Pooky means "pussy" in Filipino. Maybe you can figure her out.
Money is not important to me. They say Cubans are the Jews of the Caribbean; that we just want money and think we are better than everyone else. That's why I left Miami. I'm different from them. I always have been different. I walk the streets of Los Angeles because I want to. It's what I'm doing now, but that's until something happens. I know it will. I can feel it. But that’s difficult for other people to understand.
Those Cubans back in Miami can be so heartless. Even to their fellow exiles. If you don’t walk the walk they approve of, they let you know. They tell you to your face. They have sharpened their tongues over the years and are ready to brand you. They look at me, with their sideway glances and bitter sneers and all they see is tropical trash- loca, maricon, mariquita, puto, puta. I've stopped trying to fit in, to prove to them I’m just as good as anybody else. I no longer have anybody to answer to. Everyone of any significance to me I left back on the island. The Cubans here, they’re too ignorant to bother with. I mean, how do you explain what happened with Rodney King last summer? They would never understand. You know what they would probably say? They would say he had it coming. Just because of the color of his skin. They don’t like the black Americans. They think all they’re good for is selling dope and trying to seduce innocent white girls. They’re so wrong. I’ve met some of those innocent white girls and there isn’t a single one of them who isn’t dying for a big black cock. Who could blame them? I’ve also met the innocent white boys those girls have to choose from, the acceptable gene pool, and let me tell you, there’s nothing there. The pool is empty.
The Cubans in Miami, they don’t know the first thing about Rodney King. They don’t know him like I do. They’re too busy figuring out which electrical appliances they're taking back to Cuba when the old man with the cigar finally dies. The washer, the dryer, the stove, the blow dryers, the Cuisinart, the vacuum, all the TV sets. The central air conditioner, the ceiling fans, the compact disc players, the cell phone and DVD players; and that's just the stuff they can't live without. There aren't enough plugs and outlets in all of Cuba; I hear that at least once a week the whole island goes dark, and that's just from the strain of the house lights. I’d like to see what would happen when all these people from Little Havana swarm back and try to plug in all at once. They'll start another REVOLUTION.
See, I'm not just another prostitute. What happened with Rodney King was personal. It was special. He knows it and I know it. Sometimes you feel something. But the Cubans, they would never understand that. Same way they don’t understand the sadness of grandchildren who scream in horror at the icons on the altar. They don’t understand English. And they don’t understand me.
They only understand the pain of exile, gripping as tamarind pulp, virgin daughters, brown-skinned and black-eyed, giving themselves to blond American high school sweethearts who smoke marijuana and don't communicate with in-laws. They understand fulltime, part-time, overtime, and golden-time at factories. Sterile palaces with polished cement floors that manufacture orthopedic inlays, plastic bottle caps, disposable diapers, places that are regimented like chain gangs.
The Cubans understand Sunday visits to clean, structured suburbs like Hialeah, or Boca Raton, and the sprawling homes of cousins who may or may not be connected to Colombian cocaine smugglers. Nobody asks them direct questions about how they got their money because they make the best rum-and-cokes and those rum-and-cokes taste so good while watching Telemundo inside a screened-in porch.
Pooky says I think too much.
“Girl, you’ve got that hamster wheel going full on today,” she says whenever she sees that look in my eyes.
Pooky would rather not think at all. And she’s always trying all sorts of pills and powders to stop the process. She loves the street life, and unlike me, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She doesn’t have dreams of a normal life. She doesn’t believe that girls like us can have a settled life. She doesn’t like love songs. She likes the pounding beat of House and Techno, songs that sometimes last half an hour and longer. Savage songs that impede any kind of sentimental emotion. Pooky, she’s not sentimental. She's out all night -- waist cinched, lips slick with frosted pink gloss, giving enticing looks to passing cars, using the whites of her eyes like reflectors. She comes home with the sun, sometimes on broken heels, wearing a torn dress or a purple bruise the way mechanics wear grease and butchers wear blood; the tell tale signs of a hard day at work.
For me, whoring is temp work. I'm as seasonal as a migrant worker, I just smell better. In Los Angeles, seasonal means you do the same thing all year round but you fool yourself into thinking that, come spring, everything will be different.
Like Pooky says, “Girl, it never is.”
When on the streets, I keep to myself. I've had several unpleasant encounters with the Mexican girls, many of which ended up in exchanges of slaps so quick it sounded like a sword fight. I've left countless girls blubbering and resentful, wondering why the razor blades they keep in their teased up hair and the Guadalupe medallions hanging from their ankle bracelets didn't protect them.
I get along with the crack-smoking lesbians that sometimes hang out on my street. Skinny, frizzy-haired, and cotton mouthed, they walk into walls and beg for money. I've tried to get them to trade their oversized prison blues for something more feminine, but they just laugh and call me a fool. Sometimes, when they smoke too much shit, they get obnoxious, picking at me like brain-dead crows. I just take them by the elbow and guide them gently into oncoming traffic. The screeching brakes and blaring horns jolts them out of the stupor. And keeps them away from me for a while.
The only person I can tolerate for longer than a little while is Pooky. We met at the supermarket. I liked the way she carried herself, chin up, shoulders back, tits forward. She maneuvered that shopping cart like a forklift. I caught up with her at the checkout stand where we desperately grabbed all the tabloid newspapers, hoping to get at least the cover article read while waiting in line. But we didn’t get much past the headlines because we immediately got into a serious conversation about international movie stars who are always getting divorced. Like me, Pooky rejoiced in their romantic misfortunes. But for different reasons.
“Girl,” Pooky said that day, “if even the most beautiful women in the world can't make a marriage work, what chance do we got?”
I had thought just the opposite. I thought if even the most beautiful and glamorous women in the world have to keep trying, then there’s hope for me yet.
But I’m just not the type who blurts out her real deep opinions in public. Not about celebrity divorces or anything else. So I just smiled at Pooky (it’s almost impossible not to counter her big smile with one of your own) and kept my thoughts to myself. After that we were inseparable.
Pooky and I share an apartment now in Echo Park. It's really small and roach infested, but we've made it nice. Pooky found an old couch in the dirty alley that runs behind our house. We dragged it home at dawn, after a party, feeling like twin murderesses in one of those scratchy black and white movies they show on Spanish TV. It was in pretty bad shape, but we made a beautiful cover for it. We searched forever for the right material.
I wanted a tropical fruit print. Tart pineapples dripping juice. Ripe mamey sliced open, pink flesh exposed, black pit glowing like onyx. Chunks of guanabana, the prickly green skin covering the sweet pillows of white meat. Squishy mamoncillos, the kind that fall from the tree and explode on the hot earth below, papayas, guayaba, mangos, the list was as endless as my dreams of home.
Finally, we found it one day, on display in a store window. The fabric I had dreamed of. Charcoal black cotton emblazoned with the bright, beautiful fruit of my childhood, fruit so realistically rendered that I could almost taste their balm and juices.
“This is the fruit that dared me to climb trees and lick myself clean.” I told Pooky while we waited for the woman to ring us up at the counter. “The fruit whose sticky secretions, blooming flowers and ripening seeds taught me about sex and life and made me want to open myself up to be tasted over and over again.”
“Girl, shut up and pay the lady,” Pooky said. “You’re sounding crazy.”
Pooky hates it when I get dreamy, or nostalgic. She says it doesn’t do anybody any good. She says I should live for the moment. She never talks about Manila. I asked her once and all she said was, “you Cubans act as if you’re the only people to ever leave their country. Look around.”
She doesn’t understand that we didn’t leave our country.
We lost it.
So I just don’t talk to her about such things.
Pooky is the best friend I could ever hope to have. For example, that day, just to make me happy, she took the fabric home, popped a couple of pills, and sat at the sewing machine well into the night. She worked like a demon, cutting and sewing, her dilated eyes fixed on the needle, her bare feet on the pedal making it go faster and faster. It was more than a little scary.
The sky set bright red that night. You'd never see that in Cuba. In Cuba, night falls fast, like the black skirt of a young widow in love. Here it takes hours for the sun to set. From dusty orange to muddy magenta to wilted orchid, and finally a flimsy gray that passes for night.
I was standing on the sidewalk outside the Circuit City near the corner where Fountain Street meets Sunset Boulevard. I could feel the talcum powder under my arms starting to turn to paste. My skin was covered with a light coating of salt. I could smell the sex of the neighborhood women, ripe as a dumpster in August, as they hurried past me, ignoring my greeting. “Hola!”
I was growing tired. Pooky had just been picked up by the guy in the silver Eldorado, one of her regulars. I almost had myself convinced that the right thing to do was to march my happy ass home, kick off my heels, and throw myself on my couch when a black guy in a dark red van pulled up to my curb.
Usually, black men do not approach me. Most of the guys I go with are fucked up gringos looking for a blowjob. You know them, they're the guys behind the counter at the DMV who tell you you're in the wrong line but refuse to tell you which is the correct one. They're the guys at the post office who lord it over black girls with four-inch nails and severe haircuts. The ones who rent “Adventures of a He/She Slave” at the local video store, but put a Disney cartoon on top so no one notices.
Abusive Salvadoreńos come to me on payday. They call me nasty names while they fuck me, then get moody and weepy when I take their money and don't fall in love with them.
But on this florescent night thick with diesel fumes and steaming tar, my heart told me that I should go with this man. My grandmother, was a santera and she had taught me a long time ago, how to listen to my heart.
My grandmother had promised herself to the Saints when her youngest son had gone up into the mountains to join Fidel Castro in his efforts to overthrow Batista. She promised to always wear white if the Saints made sure my uncle returned unharmed.
My grandmother had owned a small bar for most of her life. It was located downstairs from a whorehouse called “Babilonia”. She never worked as a whore, but as she told me, "I served enough rum to pre- and post-coital men to learn a thing or two about their nature." She had seen them stumble out of darkened cribs at dawn, in their shirttails and no pants, their eyes bleary, testicles still sticky from a night of sex and rum that had cost them a week’s pay, and launch into drooling diatribes about the virgin, their wives, and their mothers; frustrated and angry because they couldn't tell them apart. She would just go about her business, mopping the countertop, rinsing the shot glasses and pretend to listen. Pretend to care. She’d heard it all. My grandmother had very little use for men who purchased women. Funny, when you consider how I ended up. It’s in her honor that I favor white.
The moment that changed my life was just that. A moment. I got into the van, which was a challenge in my spandex skirt. Every time I lift a knee, when I wear this skirt, it threatens to roll up above my hips – expose what Pooky calls my moneymaker. So I held the skirt down with one hand and pulled myself up with the other. As ladylike as I could manage.
He was a good-looking guy. I didn't say anything; I always let them do the talking. It's their fantasy; I'm just the painted prop. I'll bet most of the guys I've been with couldn't remember my face five minutes after we’ve done it. I'm just a substitute for what they really want and can't get. Some sweet little girl from the past or a third grade teacher with a certain look that got their little weenies hard way back when.
We drove down Sunset Boulevard, past Silverlake towards Echo Park. I usually take them to the Olive Motel, a cheap stucco fortress built for sin near the corner of Alvarado Street. It's run by a Guatemalan speed freak, he calls it crystal, which is a romantic name for a drug that makes all your teeth dry up and fall out. He has a mania for germs and keeps the rooms so clean and disinfected it's like fucking in a sulfurous cloud. Actually, I hate it there and since this guy had a van, I figured it would be more convenient and quicker to just park somewhere and get it over with. I kept thinking about my grandmother and about sinking deep into my fruit covered couch.
My customer was driving real slow now and still not saying anything. I started to get a little nervous, so I began to rummage through my purse. That always gets their attention because they think I'm going to pull a switchblade knife; or worse, a badge. I could feel his eyes on my naked shoulder. I looked right back at him and fixed him with my sexiest look. I can punish with a look. The magic of false eyelashes, flawless eyeliner and sparkling eye shadow. Never mind the moneymaker, no one hardly ever looks down there. It’s just a hole. I know it’s all in the eyes. So I continued looking at him, scorching him with my glance. Inflaming him with desire, making him forget that he was going to pay good money for my services.
And at that moment, in an instant, I could tell he didn't know about me. That biologically I’m still a man, I mean.
That's usually the worst moment for me; that's the moment that separates the gentlemen from the criminals. If they're going to go psycho, this is when it's going to happen. It's just like being an airline pilot; the most dangerous moment is right after takeoff.
I could tell my look had had the desired effect because he looked away. He just looked back at the oncoming traffic. He drove around the block as if he knew where he was going, pulled into an alley, shifted into park and left the motor running. "This is definitely going to be a quick fuck," I thought. Usually, my next move is to pull out some bright red lipstick and slowly run it across my lips until I look too hot to kiss. Tonight, I just stared at him. I liked the song on the radio, it was gentle. And there was something about his face, the way he kept his eyes down, that made me want to touch him.
And then it happened it took me by surprise I knew that you felt it too by the look in your eyes – that’s what the song was saying.
It has always been my gift, a gift I got from the girls who worked in Babilonia, to know what a man really needs. In my childhood, I spent countless afternoons looking through keyholes and cracks in the wall, watching them work. Their casual, resigned attitude was exciting. How they led the men into the small rooms with a laugh. The effortless way they dropped their robes, allowing complete strangers to see it all. Their thick, dark nipples, their curving stomachs, tangled bushes, deep stretch marks and blue veins. I remember watching as they turned their backs to the men, took orders, obeyed commands, bent forward, spread further, sucked harder, moved faster; whatever they wanted. And always, the final mandate: when the men were about to come, they were told to be still. Be very still. All movement would stop, just for a moment. The women would stiffen as if suddenly gripped by rigormortis – while the man arched above them, plunging deeper and growling into orgasm.
Then it was over. Now the money, a drink, sometimes a short nap until the next knock on the door. I had known these women all my life. Kind ladies, always complaining of being tired or pregnant or sick. I had seen them drunk, screaming for death, or so happy in love that they acted like children. I had seen them after an abortion, limping to the toilet, yellow pus flowing down their parched brown legs.
And I had seen some of them carry their babies to term, all the while working away, the men happy to suckle their engorged breasts for milk or fondle their swelling bellies. I had seen them thrash on blood-soaked bed sheets, translucent with pain; then, a few days later, walk slowly, carrying a restless bundle wrapped in a knitted blanket, to the local orphanage, where round-faced nuns relieved them of all responsibility. I can remember them clearly, and I keep them alive in my heart.
As I became more and more different from the other boys, the women at Babilonia were some of the few who never judged me. On the contrary, they adopted me and showered me with the affection that they couldn't give their own abandoned children. Lazy afternoons were spent listening to dramas on the radio and acting out the female roles. They'd dress me up by wrapping me in colorful bedspreads and curtains. I was still Pablo then; a different person.
Sweeter than wine softer than a summer night everything I want I have whenever I hold you tight.
The song brought me back to the van with an involuntary shudder. Like a kiss from an angel, a downpour of holy water, a divine and blissful blessing.
My customer was still looking at me. Waiting. The motor of the van idling, I could feel the vibrations all through me, and the fumes of exhaust seeping through the cracks on the floor smelled like a fine perfume.
But I was worried. I remembered what movie goddess Rita Hayworth had said, in a moment of extraordinary clarity, when asked about her many failed marriages, “They all fall in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me.”
I knew exactly what she meant. Gilda was her most famous role, just like Paloma was mine. Although the interview had been in print, I could easily imagine the simple, resigned shrug or self-deprecating roll of her beautiful eyes that accompanied her heartbreaking statement. We were simple souls looking for love trapped inside voluptuous bodies.
I pushed Rita out of my mind and looked back at him, but realized I had lost all my defenses. I was melting under his gaze.
His eyes reminded me of someone I had tried hard to forget. Yes, what they say it true, every girl working the streets has a secret love, an ache that no amount of eye make-up can cover. Without thinking, I reached out my hand and placed it on his, and just as I did, as soon as our flesh made contact, he let out the biggest sigh I have ever heard in my life. It made me shiver. I was just about to put my arms around him and give myself to him completely, without restraints or reservations, with my whole, entire heart, like I haven’t done with anyone in a very long time, when there was a loud banging on the side of the van.
He jumped back and tried to shift into reverse but the damned thing jammed. Cops surrounded us. Every window framed an ugly face, their teeth bared, banging at the glass with their nightsticks. It reminded me of that Sunday morning in Cuba when the gates to the labor camp for “undesirables” had opened wide, and a huge group of us had made our way through the streets of Havana towards the Port of Mariel.
The same ugly expression crowded the sidewalks, calling us names, throwing rocks and garbage. Viejas; old ladies who have survived countless revolutions and should know better; chamacos: school-age kids who had been taught to hate what they did not understand; zanganos: useless men who hang out at corners drinking cafe-con-leche and trying to change the world with cheap philosophy, clutching their home rolled cigars with wicked fingers; flinging the fat rolls of ashes. They followed us as we tried to get to the Port, making the familiar worm-like movement with their index finger: gusanos, which means maggot, but more importantly to us, means traitor.
Gangs of military police followed us, not so much to protect us, but to make sure we reached the waiting boats, to make sure we left the island forever. I knew them well. The first time I had been stopped by the police, I was sixteen years old, as pretty as any sixteen-year-old boy in all of Cuba could hope to be. I was wearing tight green satin pants. I knew that it was forbidden for men to display their creative desires, which was the only the reason I was not wearing a dress. I thought I could get away with it; they were, after all, just pants. Men wear pants.
I had been strolling in the park, arching my feet to simulate heels, turning heads, and getting catcalls. It was a Sunday night and the park was full of people traditionally walking the loop. The men in their best suits, strolled, with eyes like hawks, in one direction. The girls, in homemade summer dresses, sauntered in the opposite direction, chatting and giggling distractedly with the other girls, as if the men weren’t there at all.
Occasionally, one of the men would cross the invisible line between them and stand face to face with his special girl. That was how they introduced themselves, seducing an intended with romantic whispers and poetic promises. Or if the man already knew the girl, if they had passed each other around the park many times and she’d had the audacity to hold his gaze. If she was one of the well-traveled, saucy girls, he could take the opportunity to suggest a late-night tryst. If he was a serious man, he could offer to meet her parents, or if he was a charming adventurer, he could hand her a fragrant flower that could mean everything or nothing.
I would have been happy with any one of them. I was sick with longing and loneliness, zigzagging through the park. Their mating ritual making me dizzy. The smell of gardenias, the balmy air, the cologne and the sweat of the men intoxicating me, turning me mad with desire.
Castro had been in power a few years and he had a special police called G-2. They were the thugs who had been with him during the revolution.
That night they cornered me against the park fountain. The water droned my ears. I was scared. They asked me questions, about sex.
“Are you queer? Eres maricon?” One of them spit out.
“Are you a man or a woman?" Another growled. “You can't be both.”
I became defiant to keep from crying.
“I am what you want me to be, Papi.”
A crowd had gathered to watch. A few minutes ago they’d all been enjoying my imitation of Brigitte Bardot. Now they were watching in silence, the revolution at work. Two of the men held me while another used scissors to cut my pants up the seams.
“This is for your own good.” One of them said.
“Men must dress like men.” Added the other.
The second time they stopped me, I was wearing a large, feathered, sunhat and so many bracelets I could hardly raise my arm. The worst they could do, I figured, was to ask me to take them off. But they did more than that. That time they took me in and accused me of moral corruption. Then, they shaved my head roughly, cutting the scalp in several places. When I complained, they painted my head with iodine.
“Men are not supposed to be pretty,” I was told.
“This will help you remember,” the man with the iodine growled.
Their faces were ugly, masculine, thick purple lips framed by a dandy's mustache; mouthing words that branded me.
This magic moment so different and so new was like any other until I kissed you.
Suddenly, those faces were here. But they were American faces, calling me the same names in a different language. Just as one of the nightsticks cracked the glass, our van miraculously shifted gears. We sped down the narrow alley, in the rear view mirror, I could see the cops -- their guns drawn and aimed at us.
We made a turn out of the alley, the wheels of the van rising off the ground the way they do on television. We hit pavement with a jolt on Sunset Boulevard and continued speeding full blast for a couple of blocks. Then he slammed hard on the brakes, bringing the van to a sudden stop; leaned over, kissed me violently on the lips, opened the door, and shoved me out.
This magic moment while your lips are close to mine will last forever forever till the end of time.
I landed on my ass on the sidewalk and found myself in front of Circuit City again. A little spray of gravel hit my face as the van sped away, going hard, eastward on Sunset. Two squad cars followed, their lights flashing, sirens blaring. I knew they would arrest him and then come looking for me. I had to keep going. So I limped home, pissed off because I had ruined my new pantyhose.
My heart was pounding in my throat as I entered my dark apartment. I dropped like a rock onto my glamorous, fruit-covered couch and forced myself to relax by counting breaths. I fell asleep. I dreamt about red. Everything was a frightening red, bright, living, pulsating red. Then, the world started to wrinkle, like paper does seconds before it burns. I woke up to the sound of the door opening. It was Pooky, coming home from another night of exploits. My dream had left me feeling depressed, and I was grateful just to see her stupid face.
We sat together watching TV. The late news was coming on and there was the top story: Rodney King, the fellow who had recently made headlines when someone videotaped half the Los Angeles police department kicking his ass, had been arrested for trying to run down two cops who had caught him having sex in a van with a transvestite prostitute.
"Oh my God, that's me!" I told Pooky.
She wouldn't believe me until I showed her the hole in my pantyhose. She kept looking at me, pacing back and forth, shaking her head. It told her the ordeal I had just been through.
"You fucked Rodney King for money? Girl, You must be crazy," she said.
"You're a very crude woman," I said to her seriously, "I didn't fuck him...and I didn't know he was Rodney King, I just thought he was some guy."
She continued to stand in front of me staring, her dim brain sluggishly sorting through the information. While in my mind I ran the song I could not shake -- this magic moment so different and so new was like any other until I kissed you.
"You didn't recognize Rodney King.” She asked as if I was taking her for an idiot. “You didn't notice the big chunk of skin missing from his cheek?"
"No." I said, plain and simple. Maybe it's the way I said it, but for some reason I really had her intrigued.
Pooky had started to change out of her work clothes, which that night consisted of a black lace leotard and a puffy black wig. Standing there, her arms hanging at her side, she looked like the upside down exclamation marks we use in Spanish. I wanted to laugh, but she hates it when I laugh at her.
"Did you kiss him?" She asked as she struggles out of her tight outfit.
Sweeter than wine, softer than a summer night.
"He kissed me. “A rude, hard kiss." I said, adding as much drama as I could. She had modestly turned away to remove her brassiere. She always hides from me when she's naked because she doesn't want me to see her silicone implants, they've shifted and it makes her self-conscious.
"Girl, sounds like husband material,” she mumbled, a row of bobby pins in her mouth. “I think you got a new husband."
She had removed her wig and wrapped herself in the yellow silk gown I had made for her last year when I was taking a fashion design class at City College. She looked, more than ever, like the tiny, middle-aged Filipino man that she really is.
I had been wondering how long it would take her to size up Rodney King as husband material. That's just one of the many irritating thing about Pooky. Men are either “girls” or “husbands” biological women don’t really exist for her. And she’s obsessed with husbands. I'm not. To me, husband means pimp. I left one of those back in Miami, wishing he'd been born with a pussy.
That's just one of the tricks I learned in the camp. I don't need a chulo. Especially one of those Cuban bastards- bugarrones, who think they are better than you because they follow the rules and keep a pregnant wife at home. I know how those wives ended up, though. Miserable, fat, living with their parents, waiting for their queer, alcoholic husbands to come to their senses. But men like that, they never do. I keep telling Pooky the meaning of husband, but she won’t listen.
Rodney King became famous beyond my expectations. For months, his beautiful, bruised face replaced all the miserable, brokenhearted movie stars on the cover of the tabloids. Pooky and me no longer stood at the checkout counter holding up the line while we read the cover story. We bought the paper, shelling out our hard-earned money. Pooky didn’t like it, but I carefully clipped the pictures and articles and pinned them up on the walls until our whole room had turned into a shrine to Rodney King. My grandmother had been right. Something was going to happen for me, something wonderful. I followed every story, every news report. I was a part of history now.
We held our breath all through the trial. What everyone was calling The Rodney King Trial, when in fact Rodney was not on trial at all. It was for the four cops who beat him. Unlike back in Cuba, the cops needed lawyers. And they must have been good ones, because in spite of the damning videotape, they walked out of that courthouse four free white men.
A scream of pain and outrage could be heard from one end of the city to the other.
When the riots broke out, Pooky and I could see everything out of our bathroom window. That's the only window that has a real good view. Pooky and I stood on the edge of the tub and watched the city burn. We were too scared to go outside. One of dozens of police helicopter was flying so close to our building that we would duck and cringe as the blades buzzed violently past our window.
We stayed indoors eating frozen pizzas and burritos we bought from the convenience store at the corner and watching TV. We saw the fires advance, saw the throngs of looters running down dirty sidewalks, people who would normally be robbing each other were now helping one another carry washers and dryers, stoves, blow dryers, cuisine arts, vacuum cleaners, TV sets, air conditioners, ceiling fans, compact disc players, cell phones and DVD players. That week we received panicked phone calls from people we hadn’t heard from in years. Even Pooky’s mother called. Up until then I didn’t even think she had a mother, certainly not one who cared. Pooky took the telephone into the bathroom for privacy. But I wasn’t about to let a moment like that pass. So I put my ear to the door. I heard Pooky talk to her sweetly, reassuring her that she was safe, that the fires were far away. That’s the kind of man my Rodney is, the kind of man who brings people together.
After the riots, we walked through the charred neighborhoods, past gutted, burnt out buildings. Our high heels sinking into the layers of black ash and debris that covered the sidewalks. We saw neighbors helping each other cleanup the mess. White schoolboys and girls came from the suburbs in bright, yellow buses to help.
We watched Rodney on TV when he gave that little speech that almost tore my heart to little pieces.
“Why can’t we all just get along?” I echoed.
Pooky and I just sat close together on our beautiful, fruit-covered couch, in our City College silk robes, holding hands; thick tears were streaming down my face.
"Don't worry, Paloma,” she said, holding me close, “he’ll come back to you. He's just waiting for the smoke to clear."
Of course, I didn't believe her. But I was grateful that for that for once she didn’t crap on my dreams.
Slowly, the city came back to life, burnt and scarred, but eventually even the blackened palm trees that had gone up in flames like giant torches, grew a new, stronger skin, sprouted gorgeous green fronds.
Eduardo Santiago is the recipient of PEN USA's Rosenthal "Emerging Voices" Fellowship 2004. This Magic Moment is one of eleven short stories that comprise his book about Cubans in America, titled The Sex Lives of the Saints, and 
