Connie considered this. “I think she would . . .” she answered finally.
“I’ll get you a nice little apartment near campus. I’ll buy your books. I’ll give you beer money so you can go party with the undergrads! I’ll—”
“You’ll be all alone, Papi,” she interrupted. “Out at sea. No one to talk to. I can’t abandon you like that.”
An evil part of me thought, You don’t think asking for a separation is abandoning me? That ship has sailed, sweetheart.
But I didn’t say that. I raised Connie’s hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles and replied, “You can vid me, and text me, and send me pics of Ela. We can talk every day if you want to. If you don’t abandon me, Connie, I won’t be abandoned.”
She dropped the pamphlet on her lap, clutched my hand with both of hers, and brought all three to her chest. “I will never abandon you, Papi.”
“I know,” I lied. “That’s why I’m not afraid to go. And besides,” I said, mustering excitement from I don’t know where, “I won’t be alone.” I took the pamphlet off of her lap and flipped to the next-to-last page. “See here? These breachdives have some of the most advanced AIs in the world. They’re all certified therapists! I’ll be monitored twenty-four seven by a psychologist—”
“An AI psychologist,” she added dubiously.
“Who in turn will be monitored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s perfect, Connie. Everyone gets what they need.”
Connie took the pamphlet from me, read for awhile. When she looked up at me, she frown-smiled and resisted the urge to cry. “You knew I was going to ask for a separation.”
“I was thinking divorce,” I said truthfully.
She nodded. “You let me say my peace. You came prepared with a plan. And you’re generously offering to send me back to school to follow my dream.” She put both her hands on my leg. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, Papi. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to try to be good to yourself.”
“I’ll try,” I said, and had no idea if I meant it or not. I felt myself slipping into old patterns; I needed to say something truthful, fast. “Therapy will help,” I added, which I hoped would be true.
But I needed more honesty still. So I added, but only to myself, And if it doesn’t, I can just sail away and never come back, and maybe everyone involved will be better off.
El Cuento de la Examinación Médico, as Performed by Prudencia, with Nádano as Nurse and Human Helper
Sick Bay is on the opposite side of level two, through the dining area (which always feels like the loneliest place on the ship, with its antibacterial bench-table that seats sixteen), and past the galley, the food freezer, and the “honor freezer.” The honor freezer is where you put a dead body in case someone dies out here, so you don’t have to stick them in with the food. Of course, it only works if there’s another person who can pick up a corpse and put it in there. If I died, I’d just rot wherever I happened to collapse until the next port of call.
I walk into Sick Bay and lay my baby down on the antibacterial wall-table. After I give Prudencia a minute to work and she hasn’t said anything, I ask her, “How are my baby’s vitals?”
“All normal,” she answers, almost upset. “How can her vitals be normal, Nádano?”
I shrug. “Because El Coco didn’t want to hurt her. The opposite. He wanted to save her.”
“That doesn’t—” she begins, but stops herself and tries a different tack. “Grab the handheld, please. Let me get a closer look.”
I do. I run the wireless camera close to the seam in my baby girl’s neck, zoom in on the line between skin and hairy husk. There’s a clear demarcation. The two don’t seem to be physically connected to each other at all.
“What is holding her together?” Prudencia asks, exasperated, her speaker crackling. My baby girl turns to look at me with that permanently questioning face.
But I’m right there to make sure my baby’s okay. “Her papi’s love for her,” I say, running the back of my fingers over my baby girl’s hairy cheeks. “Her papi adores her. Isn’t that right, baby girl? Isn’t that right?”
Even though she’s a coconut now, it’s clear she enjoys this. She doesn’t have a mouth, but she still has a larynx. Her laugh is muffled inside her neck, but it’s real nonetheless.
“I’m flailing,” says Prudencia. “Nothing makes sense right now. Why are you so calm?!”
I tickle my baby’s coconut chin. She’d spent the last eight days crying so hard I thought she would kill me, but now she’s cooing like she has a pigeon in her throat. “I’ll explain it to you the same way I explained it to Connie,” I tell Prudencia.
El Cuento de How I Told Connie el Cuento de How I Met El Coco
Consuela Melendez, a.k.a. Connie, had an ethnography project due in ANT 253: Myths, Legends, and Superstitions. I was Ethnography A.
This was before we were married, back when we were juniors at the University of Miami. Her major was Anthropology; I was Marine Affairs. I would have preferred Creative Writing, but I was on a state-funded scholarship for foster kids, and taxpayers wanted their money’s worth. No bullshit artsy-fartsy degree for me.
Connie wouldn’t tell me her ethnography project’s topic until she’d sat us down at a dining hall table. “So,” she asked me, “do Cubans scare the shit out of their kids with El Coco, too? Dominicans do it all the time. My parents called him ‘El Cuco.’ I mean, seriously, I slept with the light on until I was thirteen so El Cuco wouldn’t snatch me up and take me away. What about you?”
I blinked. A lot.
Connie couldn’t read me, judging by the look on her face. “You’ve heard of him, right? Or her. Or it: in Brazil, Coco’s an alligator!”
The feeling of remembering everything at once is a lot like getting nailed by a water balloon. You’re soaked through in a second, but it takes a minute to realize what’s happened, how you should feel about it. Who deserves your revenge.
“Are you okay?” asked Connie.
Blinking seemed to help. “Can I answer with a story?”
“That’s perfect!” she said, then set her phone on the table and pressed “record.”
I leaned in close, so I’d be heard above the general din of the dining hall. “Once upon a time there was a boy named Nothing. Now, that wasn’t what anyone called him—his parents had given him a perfectly boring Cuban name for everyday use—but that was his real name, because that’s how everyone treated him.
“His papi was a cloud of fists and belt buckles and a huge flat face floating in the center. He kept a pistol in a safe that he could go get in a second if Nothing didn’t shape up quick. Powpowpow! Tres tiros and he’d make Nothing nothing.
“His mami didn’t protect him, for he was Nothing. Nothing were his papi’s threats, according to her—that’s just how men talk. And nothing were the nightmares Nothing had, just pathetic, unmanly cries for attention. ‘Just go back to bed, Nothing,’ she said, ‘or ¡te va a visitar El Coco, que se roba las cabezas de los niños malcriados! You’ll end up with a coconut head, Nothing, and then where will you be?’