She was pressing the pad of her thumb against her incisors. She said, “My teeth are really sharp.”
“So you could eat a crunchy taco?” I asked.
“Okay,” she said.
My mom swatted my shoulder. “Leave her alone,” she said.
“I was just asking if she liked tacos.”
“I don’t know what that means,” my mom said.
“Tacos? It means tacos.”
“I don’t know if you mean something else by it now. All this taco talk.”
That made me laugh. Taco talk. And as soon as I laughed, I realized I hadn’t done it in a long time—too long—and I remembered how good it felt, how it made my muscles warm and filled me up with the kind of lightness that was usually missing in my life, the kind of lightness that was buried under my parents’ bickering and under my awkwardness at school. I stared out the window into the dark, at the illuminated trail of streetlights streaking through the air, and laughed while everyone else on the bus stayed quiet.
THE NEXT MORNING, my mom brewed a pot of Café Ruiz—our annual treat—and brought out the rosca bread with almonds that she’d made the night before. Our apartment was decked out with the same tired decorations she displayed every year—angel figurines on the end tables, a crocheted snowman cozy that slid over the extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom, a dried wreath with a red velvet bow that she hung over the kitchen doorway, a porcelain nativity scene on the floor. We hadn’t gotten a tree and, as threatened, I didn’t get any presents. Enrique didn’t exactly get a mountain of stuff either, unless a four-pack of deodorant and a new Gillette razor along with a bunch of replacement blades counted. “I’m not really into shaving anymore,” Enrique said when he opened them, and when I offered to take them he laughed and said, “Oh yeah. You can use them on that nonexistent hair above your lip.” Besides him, the only person who got a gift was my mom, and it was nothing more than a lousy set of shampoo and conditioner that my dad swore he bought at the salon even though anyone could see from the sticker on the back that he’d gotten it from the clearance shelf at Kohl’s. My mom placed the set on the coffee table. None of us mentioned the sticker.
My mom called my tía Gloria, only to learn that my aunt had finally decided to file for a divorce from my tío Esteban, news that sent my mom into a low-level state of shock, not because she hadn’t seen it coming but because of her adamant objection to divorce. Anyone’s divorce. But by the time the receiver was back on the latch, my mom was on a high from talking to her sister at all, which always cheered her at least for the short term until the cheer was displaced by missing her again.
Late in the morning, the radiators died, and my dad did what he always did—kick them and curse—until he gave up and plopped down on the couch. Not long after, the telephone rang. It was Sra. Rivera, calling my mom to tell her that the heat was out and to ask what they were supposed to do. My mom told her just to wait, that it would come back on eventually.
“The Riveras?” my dad asked from the couch when my mom hung up the phone. “I bet they’re freezing their asses off. They never thought they would leave México for this, I’m sure.”
“We should invite them over,” I said.
“Why?” my mom asked.
I seized up. Why? It wasn’t like we had heat either. What was I going to say? Just because I wanted to see Maribel? Because I’d bought her a present about a month ago, a red scarf that had cost me basically all of my allowance and that I’d wrapped in tissue paper and had been keeping under my bed for her, and now that I was grounded, I didn’t know how I was going to get it to her?
“We should invite everyone over,” I said. “The whole building. More body heat will warm everyone up.”
“Genius,” Enrique said sarcastically.
“It’s true,” I said. “It’s thermodynamics and radiation. They’ve proved it.”
But when Sra. Rivera called again at noon, concerned because the apartment was getting colder by the minute, my mom told them to stop by. Then she hung up and dialed Nelia and Quisqueya and told them to spread the word. She pulled out every candle we owned and lit match after match until the wicks were all burning with tiny flames. “It’s pretty like this, don’t you think?” she said, and I had to admit, it did look nice. Before she could brew another pot of coffee, people were knocking on our door, wishing us Merry Christmas and gripping bottles of rum in their gloved hands.
Everyone kept their coats and hats on. Quisqueya was wearing her fur hat on her head, which I always thought made her look Russian. Micho brought his camera, roaming around the apartment snapping pictures of everyone who was already there—Benny flashing the peace sign; Nelia sitting cross-legged on the couch, nursing a beer that my dad had given her; Quisqueya sitting next to her, pretending like she wasn’t interested in having her photo taken. When the Riveras showed up, Micho bunched the three of them together in front of our door and made them pose while he snapped a shot. Maribel stared right at the camera, but she didn’t smile, so I went up behind Micho, waving my arms and making goofy faces to see if she would react. When she cracked a grin, Micho said, “There we go! That was a good one.”
Not long after, José Mercado and his wife, Ynez, showed up, her gripping his elbow while he hobbled with his walker.
“Gustavo had to work,” Benny told my dad, even though my dad hadn’t asked. “Movie theater might be the only place that’s open on Christmas Day.”
“Hollywood doesn’t believe in God,” my dad said.
Benny laughed. “But God sure believes in Hollywood. Have you seen those women? Megan Fox? And the mouth on Angelina Jolie? God is in the details, man!”
My dad raised his beer. “?Salud!”
“Despicable,” Quisqueya said.
Even our landlord, Fito Mosquito (that’s what I called him), stopped by long enough to poke his head in the front door and announce that Delmarva, the energy company, was on their way to fix the heat. “Don’t blame me!” he said.
“Don’t worry,” Micho shouted. “We won’t blame you. We’ll just deduct it from our rent checks this month!”
Fito wagged his finger, and a few people laughed.
Micho said, “We’re just teasing you, man. Come on inside.”
The radiators didn’t kick back on until late that night, but with all the people packed into our apartment that afternoon, it started to feel a little more like Christmas. Everyone shivering and laughing and drinking and talking. When we ran out of coffee, my mom mixed up huge pots of hot cocoa that she made from heavy cream and some chocolate bars she’d found in the back of a cabinet and melted down. Sr. Rivera asked if she had cinnamon sticks to put in the cups to make it Mexican style, and my mom found a jar of powdered cinnamon in a cabinet that she sprinkled into the pot.
“Are you happy now?” she joked. “It always has to be the Mexican way. México, México. As if the rest of us don’t exist.”
“?Viva México!” Micho shouted from the corner of the room.
“?México!” Arturo said.
“?Panamá!” my dad said.
“?Presente!” my mom said, and everyone laughed.
“?Nicaragua!” Benny shouted. “?Presente!”
“?Puerto Rico!” José said.
“?Presente!” Ynez and Nelia chimed at the same time.
“?Venezuela!” shouted Quisqueya. “?Presente!”
“?Paraguay!” said Fito. “?Presente!”
Then “Feliz Navidad” came on the radio.
“This goddamn song again!” my dad said.
“Oh, come on!” my mom said. She started singing along and swishing her hips while my dad eyed her skeptically.
“What?” she said. “You don’t want to dance with me? Fine. Benny, ven.”
And Benny took my mom by the hand, spinning her around.
Ynez and José joined in, José leaning on his walker while he rocked back and forth, and Micho pulled Nelia up off the couch into a twirl. Almost everyone in the room started singing along and eventually my dad put his drink down and cut in on Benny and my mom, sliding his arm around her waist.
“Now this is more like it!” my dad yelled above the noise. “This is like the Christmases I knew!”
I took the dancing as the opening I’d been waiting for and stole Maribel away so that I could give her my present. We sat at the end of the hallway outside my bedroom where no one could see us, and I handed her the square lumpy package I had wrapped.
“You can open it,” I said. “It’s for you.” I felt nervous all of a sudden, like maybe it was too much or maybe she wouldn’t like it.
“It’s light,” she said, and I nodded, anxious for her to get on with it.
She pried off a piece of tape and folded open the tissue paper at one end. She held it up at eye level and squinted inside.
“It’s a scarf,” I said before she’d even pulled it out all the way. “It’s alpaca.”
She unfolded the whole thing and laced her fingers through the yarn fringe at the ends.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I picked out a red one so that it would match your sunglasses.”
“It’s so soft.”
“It’s alpaca,” I said again, like I was suddenly some kind of alpaca salesman or something.
She wrapped the scarf around her neck.
“I’m sorry I haven’t seen you,” I said. “My dad grounded me.”
“What is that?” she asked.
“It means he’s not letting me go anywhere besides school. Whatever. It’s not a big deal. I just wanted you to know why I haven’t been around.”
She nodded.
“I wanted you to know that it isn’t that I don’t want to see you.”
“Okay.”
Then, there in the shadows of the hallway, I kissed her. This strange electricity shot through my body. My first real kiss. Her skin was warm, and she smelled like laundry detergent and frost, as fresh as the winter air. She pulled away first, but she peeked at me and smiled. All I wanted was to do it again—to kiss her, to inhale her, to feel her mouth against mine. I was fuzzy with the thought of it, like I’d somehow slipped underwater. But then, from the living room, my dad started singing along in English: “I want to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart,” warbling like a yodeler on “heart,” and Maribel giggled and the moment passed.