Cuba 15 by Nancy Osa Page A

at another long-lost somebody. Like I said, we hadn’t seen much of these folks from the old neighborhood since Abuela and Abuelo flew south. They were an exotic foreign species to me.
    Mark, in his ball cap and shorts as usual, ran around the corner of the house, followed by a chain of yelling kids dressed in Sunday clothes. “Vi, Mom says come to the kitchen right now!” he called over the noise, and kept on going. They zigzagged between tables, guests, and tiki torches, miraculously hitting none of them, and disappeared around the other side of the house.

    The whole weekend was like that, like stepping onto a carousel ride gone berserk. Friday night, I fell asleep to the alternate clacking of dominoes and Tito Puente’s
timbales
. The only time I could get a dime in edgewise on one of the packed porch tables was when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and found Abuelo and two friends still playing. The stereo had been switched low, and an empty, grease-dotted
plátanos
plate sat on the floor beside them. I picked it up and ran a wet finger around it, finishing off the last of the salt.
    The men signaled me to throw in a dime, and a new game began.
    “This is the life,
eh,
Teo?” asked one of Abuelo’s friends. “This remind me of
las fiestas navideñas
back in Cuba.”
    Abuelo nodded. He wore his party shirt, a pastel pink, yellow, and blue striped
guayabera,
over his usual dark trousers. “Sí, claro que sí. Padrino use to hang las hamacas in the
eh
stables,
para las siestas
.”
    “Like a sleepover, Abuelo?”
    He grinned an ocean of teeth at me in my baby-doll pajamas and sweater. “Sí, como un Sleep Over. People would come and go for many days, and Padrino would roast the
lechón
in the big pit, and there were cards and dominoes, never stopping.”
    The four of us at the table sighed.
    “Those were the days,” Abuelo said.

    Chucho needed a run on Saturday morning after being penned up in my room most of the night before. The hot spell had left town overnight; outside, in my shorts and gym T-shirt, I felt that crisp September bite that said, “
Adiós
, summer!”
    Chucho felt it too. He skittered down the blacktop toward the street like a pup, until we reached the spot on the sidewalk in front of the Vespuccis’ house where old Mrs. Vespucci tossed stale bread for the birds. Sparrows and robins squawked in all directions as Chucho found an almost-whole kaiser roll and chunked it down in one lump, like a python.
    I scooped him up in my arms before Mrs. V. could spot us through the oversized slats of her skeletal venetian blinds and yell through the screen door.
“Cabrito,”
I scolded Chucho, releasing him a few paces later and jogging off down Woodtree.
    We got back and went to the kitchen for a drink, where I found Mom in high gear; today was Abuela’s day to play. Ovals of kielbasa sausage were lined up on the counter, at the ready. Mom checked on some steaming cabbage, stirred a tomato sauce, and drained a pan of browned ground beef, practically at once. I licked my finger and stuck it in a plate of powdered sugar left over from making kolachke cookies. This was better than Christmas. Maybe I’d get a chance to win some simoleons today too.
    “Mom, can I have a few bucks for dimes?”
    She threw me a harried look from a sinkful of suds and dirty pots. “How about an even exchange?”
    “But I just walked the dog!” I sighed. “Oh, all right.” I washed a few pans, and Mom let me lick the brownie bowl and told me to take some singles from her purse.
    “Thanks, Mom!”
    I put Chucho outside on his tether and hunted down my brother. He sat in the garage surrounded by patio furniture, sorting through a huge box of old golf balls he’d found.
    “Mark! I need you to watch Chucho today. Make sure none of the little kids lets him off the leash.”
    He dropped a fluorescent yellow ball into a bucket of soapy water as if I weren’t there.
    “Okay?” I prompted.
    Mark set