Cuba 15 by Nancy Osa Page B

aside two balls with gashes in them and dropped a scuffed Titleist in the water bucket, saying nothing.
    “Okay?”
I said again, giving his Cubs hat brim a tweak.
    “Hey!” he yelped. “Why can’t you watch out for Chucho? I’m busy.”
    “I just took him for a walk, he’s not my responsibility.”
    He bared his gums at me. “Oh yes he is too. You’re the one having the keent-sy party. You’re the one who has to be responsible.”
    I opened my mouth to deny it, and my brother jumped up and ran away, leaving his golf balls soaking.
    What a baby. I stamped my foot and had turned to leave when a box on a shelf over the washer and dryer caught my eye: RIT. It was a box of red dye Mom had used to make a Santa suit out of a pair of pajamas several years ago. Could dye go bad?
    I took out a handful of tabs and dropped them in Mark’s golf ball water. Then I went out to the playing porch to look for some trouble.

    In between siestas that afternoon, I lost my shirt to my grandmother. No matter the configuration of players at the table, Abuela and I battled neck and neck, and she rallied to win at the last minute. I was beginning to think she carried around a double-blank tile in the pocket of her silver gaucho skirt or its matching jacket.
    “
Lo
siento,
Violeta,
pero
I win again!” she sang cheerfully from pimiento-colored lips, reaching for the pot as the other players commiserated with me, one game after another. Still, I kept coming back for more.
    After my dinner break, I had to cadge some more dimes off Dad, who was running the change exchange. He wore one of those canvas coin pouches the volunteers used at the Lincolnville Petunia Festival every year. Blue plaid pants and penny loafers stuck out below the pouch, and above, he’d tucked in his favorite sunshine-yellow long-sleeved shirt with the monkeys on it. Dad roamed the porch, in his element: A guest would hand him a five, and he’d count out fifty dimes like he was filling a prescription. You knew he’d never make a mistake.
    Unfortunately, he knew exactly how many doses he’d already given me. “That’s it for tonight,
chiquitica,
” he said sternly, doling out five measly coins. “Your friend is here, by the way.”
    “Leda?”
    He nodded toward the backyard.
    She’d made it. “Hey, Leed!” I called, finding her at one of the smoking tables outside.
    She waved for quiet. “
Shhh,
Paz. I’m concentrating.”
    Leda, my cousin Marianao, and a heavyset man with a shirt just like Abuelo’s all bent over a long domino chain, each player with two pieces left to go.
    Marianao had returned tonight, this time dressed in a white cotton halter dress with a slit skirt. Her blood-red lacquered nails fingered the two dominoes rhythmically. She and the other man had parked a couple of steaming Coronas in the ashtray, one of them smeared with red lipstick. Leda, in a T-shirt that said LOVE YOUR MOTHER over a photo of planet Earth, eyed the board shrewdly. She feinted with one piece, then went to the other, laying it quietly on the end of the chain.
    “Caramba,”
growled Marianao, knocking.
    The man laid down a low number.
    “Caramba,”
said Leda, in a damn good accent. She knocked.
    “Se acabó,”
grumbled Marianao, knocking.
    But the man couldn’t play either, and they all ended up adding up their points. Leda won by two.
    Marianao reached for the mug on the table and handed Leda a cigar.

13
    As Sunday dawned, I padded out to the porch in bare feet and pajamas, hoping to find a few forgotten dimes stuck in the edges of a domino board or under some chair cushions. I came across Abuelo asleep on the old couch, party shirt crumpled, snores escaping his lips like blasts of percussion. He was probably dreaming of the hammocks at Padrino’s farm in Cuba. I didn’t have the heart to wake him. And I refrained from going through his pockets.
    I got up early because today was C-Day: comedy day. The threat of a deadline might help; hadn’t Mr. Soloman said