Naïa, you
see, the 12-year-old daughter of Lady and Nico, the owners of the café which I frequent (it’s
sort of a stretch to say “where I work”), had offered me a piece of pizza, at
the instigation—I later found out—of her mother. “Make sure Marc gets a piece,”
said Lady, before tearing off a ten-dollar bill from the wad in her purse.
Naïa, fortunately, is still a few steps away from adolescence, so rather than
argue, pout, flare, or stalk away, she popped across the gift shop and into the
café to offer me the pizza.
“You are
now officially my niece,” I told her, on the way to the pizza. She was with
Stephen, her tutor, and the two were busy cramming useless information in her
head, so that she could take a test before forgetting it all. Remember that?
So I
returned to writing what I was writing, and she returned to renting brain space
to geography, or whatever The
World and Its People is about. Then Lady arrived, and I told her I had
adopted Naïa as my niece.
“Wonderful,”
said Lady
“Not
really,” I said. “I intend to be a completely cranky and querulous uncle. Very
exigent. Oh, and she’ll have to take care of me in my declining years….”
So Lady
went off to consult with Naïa about all that, and then came back with the news:
I had just said what I did because of the offer of pizza.
“That is
absolutely untrue,” I erupted. “Dammit, when are people going to stop assuming
that random events are causal? I’ve been very seriously pondering adopting Naïa
for some time now.”
At this
point, Naïa was doing a spelling test—one of the words, by the way, was
“serendipity” and that’s a word for a 12-year old?—so I decided to
tackle it later, though I did wonder whether putative niecehood (well,
computer, what’s YOUR suggestion? It’s bitch, bitch, bitch all day from you!)
wasn’t more important than spelling.
I went back
to considering the topic of family, since it’s been different, often, for gay
people. More than most people, we’ve tended to form our own, informal families,
especially in those days when coming out to parents and siblings was
impossible, or very difficult.
It was a
long time ago, and we’ve all gotten over it, but for some of us it’s happening
still, and will never stop. But twenty-five years ago, the phone would ring,
there would be silence when I answered, and then a click.
“Your mom
called,” I would tell Raf. Eventually, he confronted her: “Mami, Marc knows
perfectly well that it’s you…”
There were
other things: Raf was barred from seeing his nephew, who was probably four or
five at the time. And when we moved to Puerto Rico, I wasn’t welcome in the
house. And so, on one of those
early Christmas Eves, I found myself alone in the house: Raf had gone home to
his parents, and the other people living in the building were gone as well.
It was a particularly
beautiful night, with a gentle fog, and the streets were deserted, hushed.
Everybody, it seemed, had gone home to family; in a few hours time, everybody
would rush back in to the old city, and the partying would start. But now, it
was just me, alone in an empty house.
And then,
far away, I heard music approaching, and realized that it was that loveliest of
traditions—a group of neighbors gathering with guitars and güiros, walking the streets and singing the
old-fashioned Puerto Rican carols, called villancicos or aguinaldos.
Let me
explain, this was not the traditional parranda, or maybe, in fact, it was. Because the
usual parranda tends to take place a 2 AM, when you are dead asleep, and your
friends? Dead drunk!
They then
gather outside your house and make enough noise—ostensibly called singing—to
rouse you. They then shout “¡ASALTO!”—assault, which is almost literally true. You then have to
start making the asopao—a
rice and chicken stew, and very tasty—while your “guests” raid your liquor
cabinet. The only good thing about it? You can retaliate the next night, when
they’ll really be groggy.
But there
was none of this about the group singing carols; it was before nine PM, the
group was singing almost under their breath, and exchanging greetings with
whatever passerby was on the street. Really, the carols seemed part of the fog,
and the fog seemed part of a past: a gentle, sweet past that would disappear at
any moment. It was spectral.
I stood by
the window and listened. And felt, of course, anguishingly alone. I considered
going out to join them, but couldn’t—I didn’t speak Spanish.
It feels
disloyal even to remember this, much less write about it. Why? Well, I was playing my Bach
suites yesterday in the café, next to Naïa; Lady and Craig joined us.
“You know,
Naïa, I was utterly serious about being an uncle, which is definitely not good
for you, since I’m generally wretched at the business. In fact, we should
probably start right now….”
I then put
on my crotchety English accent and begin the harangue:
“Naïa,
fetch me my shawl. No, not THAT shawl, the other one! How many times do I have
to tell you, I never use that shawl at home, only for the opera. And my tea,
Naïa, where is my tea? You know that I always have tea with my shawl! Naïa, the
tea is too hot. Now it’s too cold!”
Naïa, of
course, is completely ignoring me, but that’s fine, because I know what to do
about that.
“Naïa, are
you ignoring me?”
“I think
she is,” I tell her mother. “She completely doesn’t believe I’m serious in my
avuncular (you knew that was coming, right?) intentions. Maybe what I should do
is write about it, since this blog has an international readership, and people
will want to know.”
“That would
be good,” said Lady.
“Or we
could have a pizza party,” I said.
So I played
some Bach, and was just finishing up, when Ilia, Raf’s mother, came strolling
in. Well, strolling isn’t quite the term, since both she and Quique, Raf’s
father, are now using walkers. So let’s say they came walkering in….
“I can’t
stay,” she told me, “because Quique doesn’t want to….”
Quique
gives me the half-embrace that guys give each other in Puerto Rico and,
surprisingly, sits down. I begin the G
major suite and wonder when they will drift off.
They don’t.
So I finish
the suite—that’s twenty minutes of Bach—and turn to Ilia.
“Wonderful,”
she says, “why don’t you make a recording?”
Then I
remember Naïa, still sitting next to me, still absorbed in her iPad.
“Do you
know that you have a new granddaughter?” I ask Ilia.
“I had no
idea,” she said.
So it was
time to get Naïa’s attention, which is done by waving a hand in front of the
iPad—the ear buds seem to be an essential part of Naïa’s anatomy.
“You really
should meet your new grandparents,” I tell her, and Ilia responds in form.
“Ay,
¡qué linda!”
(For a boy,
it’s “¡ay, que guapo!”)
My new
niece smiles and waves at her grandmother and returns to the infinitely more interesting
world of the iPad.
‘Family,’ I
think, ‘gets more important as you get older. When you’re a kid, it’s
commonplace and almost annoying. But at Ilia’s age? Wow….”
‘How long
will we have them?’ I think. ‘Because it’s precious to have new people come
into your life, like Naïa. But it’s ripping everybody apart, knowing that Ilia
and Quique… Well, there will be a day…”
‘We’ve all
moved on,’ I think. ‘Now I get in trouble if I skip going to family
affairs. Can’t win, can you?’
Ah, but I
have!
