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

colossal onion rings, and the Big Boy double-decker hamburger. To the right, the desserts: strawberry pie, shakes, malts, cafés , and hot fudge sundaes. I was overwhelmed. I’d never been to a place with so many choices. Whatever Mamá made for dinner, we ate. And even the roadside kitchens only sold one thing at a time. Fried chicken or fish. Rice and beans. From the backs of trucks, farmers might sell a bunch of different fruits: oranges, bananas, mamey, custard apples, passionfruit, and acerolas. But I could get those from walking through our finca . I’d never been to a place with so much I hadn’t tasted. One cook could not make this much every day. Maybe the food grew from magical American beans—fields of fried onions and hamburger buns.
    We reached the front of the line and the man in red and white said, “Feliz Navidad . Welcome to de Beeg Boya. May I take jur oda?”
    A jíbaro . He didn’t speak proper English like we did.
    “Sí, una hamburguesa Americana,” I said.
    “Y para usted?” He looked at Papi.
    Papi sucked his teeth. “Una hamburguesa Americana también .”
    We paid, and the man gave us a plastic card with a number. We took a seat in the dining room. At the head of our table was a cardboard flyer with a cartoon of Santa Claus in a checkered Big Boy shirt. He flew across a dark sky behind two lines of horses with tree branches comingout of their heads. In one hand he held a double-decker hamburger; in the other, the reins.
    “Papi, why do they put sticks on the horses’ heads?” I asked.
    “Those aren’t sticks, they’re reindeer,” he said.
    “Why do they put reindeer on the horses’ heads?”
    Papi laughed. “No, Verdita. Those aren’t horses. They’re reindeer. They have horns like goats,” he explained.
    I’d never seen reindeer before, and Santa Claus had just started coming to Puerto Rico for the Navidad . Mamá and Papi said that he used to fly right over when they were young. It was a small island. And in the dark, back when not everybody had electricity, I could imagine we were easy to miss. Until this year, he had only visited the homes in the cities. Now he was coming to our mountain barrio . Papi saw the announcement in the newspaper and told me. I was sure it was going to be the most exciting Navidad ever. First, Saint Nicolas Claus would bring me presents and then, a week later, gifts from Saints Gaspar, Melchor, and Baltasar.
    “There aren’t any reindeer in Puerto Rico. Right, Papi?” I asked, still staring at the cartoon.
    “Sí .”
    “Are there reindeer in the States?”
    “I think so.”
    “Does Omar have reindeer in Washington, D.C.?”
    “Maybe.”
    We split a Coca-Cola, but I drank most of it beforethe man brought our food. When he did, I had to turn the checkered paper tray around three times. It was the biggest sandwich I had ever seen, let alone eaten. I could tell that Papi was surprised too. He asked the server for a knife and fork, but the man said that most people used their hands.
    “In the estates, they pick it up. Como esto .” The man cupped his hands into two Cs and pretended to take a bite.
    “Gracias,” Papi said, and picked up the hamburger as the man had shown. I did the same.
    “I guess you have to eat American hamburgers like an Americano .” Papi shrugged and bit into the sandwich. Some red sauce seeped out the side and landed in a glob on the table. He wiped it up with his napkin and chewed, his cheeks bulging.
    I tried to get my mouth around mine, but could only manage to take a chunk out of the white bread. I tried again and hit meat. It didn’t taste like I expected. Not like the men and women on television said it did. Sweet and spongy, it left my mouth feeling slimy around the corners.
    “It’s good?” I asked Papi.
    He turned the hamburger around and set it back in the tray.
    I tried to smile, but my lips slid apart on the sugary grease. The bottom one pouted out. “They’re fun to eat,” I said and G-cupped my