The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood Read Free Page A

from the flyer and stuffed it into her coin purse, which she then stuffed in her bra, and kissed Abuelo good-bye as if she might not return. “ Dios nos ampare —God be with us,” she muttered. She said nothing until we reached the store entrance: “Now take me straight to los pollos and no talking to no one. We don’t belong here.” The electric doors yawned open. I reached for a shopping cart, twice as big as the ones at La Caridad, but Abuela tugged me back, saying Don’t you dare with her wide-open eyes, too anxious to speak. I could barely speak myself, not from fear but from pure awe. I was finally in Winn-Dixie. The air-conditioned air smelled as crisp and clean as Lysol; each of the ten checkout lines was numbered with an illuminated sign, and the cashiers all wore polyester uniforms. Instead of warped squares of linoleum, polished terrazzo floors gleamed, and soft violin music rained from the speakers in the ceiling. I was finally in America.
    Suddenly Abuela froze: “ ¿Qué pasó? What’s that?” she whispered, startled by a price check announced over the PA system. “ Nada, Abuela, nada, ” I assured her as we stepped into the produce section. It was full of fruits and vegetables I had never eaten or even heard of: Brussels sprouts, squash, tangelos, apricots —I kept pronouncing them in my mind, trying to imagine the taste from the sound of their names. Pretending I was looking for the chicken, I deliberately wove us through every aisle, taking it all in: the cartoon faces on the cereal boxes I’d seen only on TV—Toucan Sam, Cap’n Crunch, the Lucky Charms leprechaun; the frost like snow on the freezer cases; flavors of Jell-O I never knew existed: raspberry, black cherry, lime. Soup made from cheddar cheese? From potatoes? Broccoli? I wanted to buy and taste everything I saw.
    But of all the things I had tried at Jimmy Dawson’s house, my absolute favorite was Easy Cheese: we’d squirt cheese smiley faces, cheese stars, and cheese rainbows onto Ritz Crackers. And there, in the snack aisle, I saw it. “Can you buy me this, Abuela?” I asked, grabbing a can off the shelf. “What’s that?” she asked. “It’s queso, Abuela. Queso americano . Please, it’s my favorite,” I begged. “What? ¿Queso en una lata? ” she questioned, unable to fathom the idea of cheese in a can. But I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was intrigued. “Look,” I said, spraying a dab on my finger and licking it off, “you don’t even have to put it in the ’fridgerator.”
    She looked at me, at my finger, at the can, at my finger, at the can, and then back at me. “Qué cosa. Cómo inventan los americanos,” she marveled at the ingenuity of Americans. “Let me taste,” she asked, holding out her index finger. “Ay, qué rico . . .” She paused and then questioned, “ Pero how much it is?,” taking the can from my hand to look at the price. “ Un peso thirty-five! Bueno, okay, but only if you promise to eat it all. I don’t want to be wasting food. But let’s get a fresh one, mi’jo, ” she said, putting the can back on the shelf and taking a new one.
    Out of her element, Abuela had become strangely vulnerable, hardly putting up an argument like she usually did whenever I asked her to buy me something. Things were going even better than I’d hoped, but I didn’t want to press my luck. The Ritz Crackers would have to wait until the next trip to Winn-Dixie. “ Bueno, vamos . Where are los pollos ? Take me there now, ándale, ” Abuela ordered. In the back of the supermarket we found the refrigerated cases, a wall of meats with names that sounded like the nicknames of outlaw cowboys: Ground Chuck, Rib Eye, Flank Steak . As we walked the aisle, white-gloved hands seemed to magically appear from behind the sliding mirrored doors at the backs of the cases. The hands placed packages of meat already wrapped, priced, and labeled—clean and neat, unlike at La Sorpresita, where Juanito