The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico by Sarah McCoy Read Free Book Online

called.
    She looked up and smiled, “Ay Faro!” She kissed Papi’s cheeks. I hadn’t seen her since the day before my birthday when she’d taxicabbed up the mountain with three dozen besitos de coco macaroons, only to realize it was the wrong day. But I didn’t mind. It meant I got to celebrate for two days instead of one.
    “Bendición” I said.
    “Yo le bendigo en el nombre del espíritu santo.” I bless you in the name of the Holy Spirit. Mamá Juanita was a devout Catholic, even more than my mamá, which was hard to imagine. She kissed my cheeks twice over and crossed my forehead.
    “You have grown so tall—and what a beauty. You have my eyelashes, you know.” She batted them. They looked like two black flies caught on her face. I laughed. It felt nice to be beautiful like Mamá Juanita.
    “And how is my prince?” she asked.
    Papi was the eldest of Mamá Juanita’s boys and the only one she called a prince. All of her children had moved to the States except Tío Benny and Papi. She flew to Washington, D.C., and Miami for holidays, but stayed mostly in San Juan. She liked it in the city. She’d never truly been a jíbara woman.
    “I’m fine, but Venusa is sick,” he replied.
    Mamá Juanita opened her eyes big and stuck out her lips. “I hope it isn’t the cancer.”
    My heart quickened. That’s how Abuelo died. Cancer. He’d been overseeing the finca like any other day when he got a sudden pain in his middle. The doctors said the tumor had been growing in him for years. I looked to Papi and ground my back teeth against each other. I didn’t want Mamá to die. I didn’t hate her that much.
    Papi shook his head. “Morning sickness.”
    “Ah.” She smiled. “Tell her to have sopa de leche and a sip of malta —she’ll be fine.” She patted Papi’s cheek.
    I unclenched my jaw.
    “Are you ready to see el presidente de los Estados Unidos?” she asked.
    “Sí . President John F. Kennedy.” Papi had taught me to say his full name perfectly.
    “And so smart!” she said. Papi winked at me for doing well on the name, and I batted my eyes at him the way I’d seen Mamá Juanita do it. She took my hand in hers, soft from cocoa butter, like Mamá’s. “ Vámonos” she said, andwe followed the crowds down San José Street toward the Plaza de Armas and City Hall.
    The crowd filed into the square. A large woman who smelled of witch hazel and café stood in front of me. I tried not to breathe her in. Boys and girls my age and younger already claimed seats on top of the Four Seasons statues around the plaza. Papi tried to make room for us to squeeze closer to the front, but no one would budge.
    “This is fine, Faro,” Mamá Juanita said.
    “Can you see, Verdita?” Papi asked.
    I could see every stitch in the witch-hazel woman’s teal pantalones , but that was about it. “No, Papi.”
    He tried to move me, but the crowd was thick. Someone gave a push, and I was sandwiched between the witch hazel and a man who spoke a language I had never heard before, neither Spanish nor English. It sounded like the last time I was sick and coughed up green chunks. I held my breath and tried to sing a song to myself—one of Mamá’s nursery rhymes—but the heat of the day and the bodies around made it hard to keep a tune that didn’t follow the pounding in my temples. And then something started to rise from my stomach, a hot taste, like an iron spoon left in the soup pot. The colors around me, the brightness of Mamá Juanita’s dress, the blue of the pantalones , the green of the trees, all began to darken, to turn to grays. I looked up to the sky, trying to breathe, trying to reach the fresh air, but I couldn’t swallow it fast enough. The darkness crawled over and everything faded. Thesmells and sounds turned to tastes: burning and bitter. The American and Puerto Rican flags flew side by side over City Hall. Red, white, and blue. Red and white. White.
    I leaned forward and threw up. The crowd opened into