These days, telling that story served as a moment of clarity for Abuelo. Mostly, he was lost in his illness, imagining that his backyard in South Florida was the park he’d played in as a child in Cuba. Sometimes, he called Daysy “Eugenia,” after the infant daughter he’d lost to dengue fever in 1935, before Angel was born. Once, in the shade of the lemon-orange grafted tree, Abuelo had crushed Daysy to his chest, crying, “Mi Eugenia, mi tesorito,” so loudly that Daysy could hear the air whooshing in and out of his lungs, her ear pressed so close to his body.
Days like that frightened Daysy. Even so, she enjoyed spending time with him in the backyard. That summer, while her parents went to work, Daysy stayed behind to watch Abuelo. In the fall, they’d have to hire a nurse to babysit the ailing man. For now, Daysy didn’t mind staying in the house with her grandfather, especially on sunny days. After breakfast they’d go outside, and she’d help him pull up the dwarf banana trees that grew in clumps. Abuelo’s movements were swift and strong as he killed the baby plants that seemed to sprout overnight, choking their tall, leafy mothers. His head bumped the low, flowery spike that was just forming into bananas. As they worked, she sometimes told him about the events of her life that she was afraid of sharing with her parents.
“You know that boy I told you about, Iggy Placetas?” she’d begin, tossing aside a small banana plant, then filling the dark hole where it had been with more dirt.
“Sí, mi vida,” he’d say, examining the banana tree’s flower, picking at the smooth, purple surface of its pointed petals with a tough nail.
“He and I, well, we made out in the art closet. Do you know what ‘made out’ means, Abuelo?”
“Sí, mi vida.”
“I think I love him,” she said. Abuelo nodded, and heaved against a stubborn plant. Daysy did not say that she didn’t think Iggy Placetas loved her back, that he’d gone into the art closet with another girl later in the day, and that when the teacher pulled them out, Iggy’s face was covered in pink lipstick. “I’m ready for a boyfriend,” Daysy told her grandfather, “but Mami and Papi would kill me.”
“Sí, mi vida.” Their conversations would go on into the afternoon this way, with Daysy telling her grandfather the things she could tell no one else, because he was a good listener, and because her secrets were often accompanied by his humming, which Daysy liked.
It was mid-July when Daysy found Abuelo crouched behind the boxy air-conditioning unit, picking at the skeleton of a little lizard trapped in the fan, just shy of the blades. His eyelids were a little swollen as he stared at the tiny bones. Daysy tried to get him to stand, but he was immoveable. Sweat formed on his forehead, and his cheeks burned red. It was noon, and the sun overhead was making Daysy dizzy. Above the metal AC unit, the air was blurry in the heat.
“Abuelo, stand up!” Daysy shouted, but he sat there, sweating and staring, as if he couldn’t hear her. Daysy ran inside, filled a glass with cold water, and brought it out to her grandfather.
“Mira, Abuelo. Take it. Drink, please.” She pressed the cold glass to his lips, and he opened them slowly, looking into Daysy’s eyes as he did so. He reminded her of the people who took Communion at church, the gold chalice brought so tenderly to their lips, their eyes often wide in anticipation of the moment. Daysy herself had only taken the wine once, her mother admonishing her that to drink from the cup, no matter that it was blessed, was to invite catching someone’s cold.
“Where is my mother? She said she’d be here at noon,” Abuelo said in Spanish.
Daysy closed her eyes and thought for a minute. She’d have to say the right thing to shake him out of his confusion. Mindlessly, she put her hands into her pockets, and her fingers brushed against the picture she’d found earlier in the summer, the one of her family in Cuba, which she hadn’t yet put in her journal. She’d hung up the jeans without washing them, and the photograph had remained in the pocket.
Daysy held the picture up for her grandfather to see. It trembled in the heated air coming out of the A/C unit. “Abuelo, mira, this is Cuba. See the picture? That was a long time ago, remember?”
Abuelo took the photograph, his face softening. It looked to Daysy that the many years of his life were returning him to the present in all their precision, so that his expression was more like the one he’d worn before he became ill. “Ay,” he said, “poor baby. She died so young.”
“That’s not Eugenia, Abuelo,” Daysy said, her voice sounding exasperated even to her own ears. She was often able to check herself, control her patience around Abuelo, but the day was so hot, the rumbling of the air conditioner so loud, that Daysy felt on edge.
“¡Claro que no es Eugenia! You think I was born yesterday? I mean your sister, Belén.”
“I don’t have a sister, Abuelo. Please, let’s go inside.”
“Your ignorance is your parents’ doing. When Nieve and I were told Belén had drowned on the way to Florida, that she fell into the ocean somewhere between Mariel and Key West, ay, que sufrimiento! It was too much for your poor grandmother, losing you both forever. They say people can die of sadness, and I think it’s true.”
“Abuelo, I don’t have a sister. That’s a cousin.”
“Pal carajo,” Abuelo said then, stood, and kicked the A/C unit so hard the motor stopped running for a moment, as if the machine had been shocked temporarily, before starting up again. “You shouldn’t call people liars, Daysy. Not people my age,” he said again. He thrust the picture back into Daysy’s hand and stomped into the house.
It was not until the evening of the next day, during a torrent of rain and wind that loosened three terracotta tiles from the roof of the house, that Daysy thought of the baby Abuelo had recognized in the picture.
She’d been in the living room when Angel came in and turned on the television, sighing as he sat down. In another chair sat Abuelo, wittling away at a bit of mango wood. The shavings came down between his slippered feet. His face held a fixed expression on the little branch in his hands, and it was that look that reminded Daysy of Belén, and Abuelo’s assertion that she had been his other granddaughter. It was the same look he had given the photograph. Daysy watched his hands, so leathery and dark. On his good days, he’d call Daysy over onto his lap and scratch lazily at her back, and she would close her eyes and pretend that Abuelo was not losing his mind. Now, she suppressed the inclination to sit on his lap again, afraid Abuelo might return to the subject of a dead sister. Daysy had never given much thought to Abuelo’s ramblings. He went on about ghosts one minute, the location of his long-dead mother the next. He called her Angel, by mistake, and once, Nieve. All of this had somehow become familiar and unsurprising. But when Abuelo told the story of Belén, Daysy felt unease. This story had come out of nowhere, had been so earnestly told, as if Abuelo were his old self again, and now, it troubled Daysy’s imagination.
Daysy sat on the floor between her father and grandfather and soon felt her father’s heavy hand on her head, rubbing her scalp as he watched the Spanish news come on. Images of rafts at sea, overloaded with sunburned, ragged humans, filled the screen.
“So many of them,” Angel said. Daysy watched her father watching the television. It was as if someone had injected hot water into his veins and he couldn’t keep still. Every muscle in his face tightened, and he began drumming his fingers on the top of her head, making a tap-tap noise deep in her ears that made Daysy nervous.
“You’re going to catch a heart attack. Calm down.” Daysy jerked her head away from her father’s fingers.
“Of course I’m going to catch a heart attack! Look at this disaster of a country!” Angel meant Cuba, and pointed at the television as if he were pointing to the island itself, as if he were marking it with a fingerprint, smudging its edges.