Showdown at the Grand Cinema

Mami gave me permission to go to the Saturday double-feature matinee at the Grand Cinema.

I went for the door, but Tomás beat me to the punch. He was surprisingly agile for his size. He blocked me with his big body, and pushed the glass door open so his dad could go in first.

“Thank you, Tomasito.”

Tomás turned to me, smirked, shook his head, and followed his dad inside. The heavy door closed soon after him. BAM!

I pushed open the glass doors to the lobby and rode a wave of cool air-conditioning.

Tomás, his dad, and I, stepped into the soothing twilight of the movie theater. We sought refuge from the bright morning sun of Calle Loíza.

I ranked the Grand Cinema low on my list of movie houses.

Papi drove us to the movies on Friday or Saturday nights in his Pontiac. We drove up Juan Ponce de León Avenue and back the opposite way on Fernández Juncos, studying the names of the movies, displayed in bright neon lights on the marquees.

After a couple of rings around the rosy, we would settle on a movie showing in one of the best theaters, all of which were on Ponce de León: usually the Paramount, or the Metro, sometimes the Matienzo.

Once in a blue moon, we would choose a movie from the second group on Fernández Juncos. Those few times, we would go to the Cinerama, because it had a bigger screen, and then only because the movie was about a big place: Africa or another galaxy.

We turned into Fernández Juncos before we got to the third group, which was at the end of Ponce de León. There, La Riviera advertised XXX movies on its red marquee.

The Grand Cinema and the Sylvia Rexach were in the fourth group. Nowhere near the others, but close enough to the Ojeda house that I could walk to them.

Papi never took us to the Grand because he drove his Pontiac everywhere, and the heavy traffic and narrow lanes of Calle Loíza were a constant threat to the long and flowing lines of the Bonneville, and to its shiny black coat.

Calle Loíza was named after a famous village of runaway slaves. The street began after the traffic light on De Diego Avenue. It was strictly out of bounds to us because it connected to a government housing project, El Caserío Lloréns Torres.

Calle Loíza was full of stores without air-conditioning that sold cheap knickknacks that I never found at home. That’s where Tita bought the snow globes she collected.

Tomás lived close to Calle Loíza. If I was allowed to visit him, it was because he lived just this side of De Diego Avenue, on Wilson Street. Named after the American President.

I was only allowed to go to Calle Loíza accompanied by Tita. And only to buy costumes for Halloween, or to buy our favorite black Gayla chiringas with big yellow eyes, which we would fly on the grounds of El Morro fortress on windy days in Old San Juan.

So, it was a big deal that Mami had allowed me to go with Tomás and his dad to see the double-bill at the Grand that Sunday. They were playing Batman, The Movie, and Dracula: Prince of Darkness.

The Grand Cinema was a neighborhood movie theater, and it was falling apart. It didn’t have any lights on its marquee. Some of its letters were missing, and some were upside down or reversed. But I got a kick out of being on Calle Loíza and it was worth the trip just to see the ticket seller.

We called him Largo. He was a tall and big boned fellow who did triple duty at the theater. He sold Tomás’s dad three tickets and three bags of popcorn, walked us inside with his blinking flashlight, and left us there, stranded in the middle of the darkening hall, while he went upstairs to start the movie.

Aside from a couple who sat too close together in the back, in the shadows, right under the small projector window, we were the only ones in the hall.

We tried several crimson velvet chairs for the right seats. Most of them were rickety, and it was difficult to find three in a row that worked. After several tries, we found a set of three on the right side, close to the entrance and to the smelly trash bin.

The floor was sticky with old chewing gum, which explained why they had seen little to no action. We squeezed into the row of seats stepping over the booby traps.

As we sat down, Tomás threw the first punch. “Who do you like best, Batman or Dracula?” THWACK!

Tomás was in the habit of testing me, and I knew it was a trick question.

I wasn’t very familiar with Dracula, but I knew Batman very well. I watched his show every week on TV, and Batman reminded me of Papi. They were both strong men and were always on the right side, the side of good, the side of the law.

Batman had a car with wings, which he drove around Gotham City, with Robin riding shotgun. The Batmobile reminded me of Papi’s black Pontiac Bonneville.

Batman had gadgets in his utility belt that reminded me of Papi’s Hasselblad camera and Atom speargun. When push came to shove, neither Batman nor Papi used these gadgets because their fists were enough. Well, almost enough.

Papi often told the story of the bully that pushed him down the steps of Perpetuo Socorro elementary school.

Papi never explained how it was that he happened to be carrying a pair of metal roller skates to school, but the important thing was that he hit the boy in the face with one of them, knocking him to the floor and chipping one of his front teeth.

In broad daylight and in front of everybody.

The next day, Papi and the bully sat at the Principal’s office, with their moms by their side. The Principal scolded them for getting into a fight, and she made Papi apologize.

Papi said he didn’t have to fake the apology. He felt sorry for the bully. His mom was very disappointed in him, and Papi knew the bully would get the beating of a lifetime at home, for being bested by a smaller kid.

“He never shoved me again after that.” Papi proudly rubbed his middle finger where the blow had left a scar.

The lights in the theater started to dim. I answered Tomás’s loaded question: “I love Batman!” POW!

Tomás counter punched. “I much prefer Dracula.” I could hear the contempt in his voice. “Everybody knows that Christopher Lee is a much better actor than Adam West.” KAPOW!

Tomás was a movie buff, but I didn’t know Christopher from Adam. I didn’t want to admit to it, but I knew Tomás had to be right.

He knew the names of the actors and actresses of his favorite movies and TV shows. He owned a super-8 home movie projector, and an impressive collection of horror movies.

“Tomasito!” The diminutive brought Tomás down a notch. “Did you remember to take your medication this morning, Mijito?”

The question caught Tomás off-guard.

It was dark in the movie theatre, but I saw his eyes reflected by the light from the movie screen. He closed them and looked down. “Yes, Papi.”

He was embarrassed, but who could blame him? I also hated it when my parents called me Mijito, and the reference to his weak heart didn’t help either.

Because of his heart condition, Tomás didn’t play hard, and he couldn’t play at all without his medicine. He pretended to be a vampire, but he couldn’t run up the stairs to save his life.

Tomás’s mom often warned me to take it easy with him, and Tomás resented me for it.

After the show, Tomás hit me again with another loaded question. “What did you think of Cat Woman?” SPLATT!

Cat Woman had two sides in the movie. She was the beautiful Miss Kit Kat, a Soviet journalist that seduced Batman with her feminine wiles. As Miss Kit Kat, she was an innocent foreign guest in need of Batman’s protection.

But she was also the leader of the United Underworld, a group of the most powerful villains in Gotham City. As Cat Woman, she took care of herself, and took on Batman without batting one of her long eyelashes.

Cat Woman reminded me of Mami. They both had soft white skin and dark piercing eyes. And Mami also had two sides to her.

During the weekends we all went to the Caribe Hilton Beach Club, and she would swim out to the wooden float, and lounge there, a cat in the sun.

She took off her swimming cap, and shook her smooth mane of chestnut hair. The sound of her laughter carried over the water, back to where I was sitting in the shade, under the palm trees, safe from the scorching sun.

But it was a different story during the week. Mami would go to the University in Río Piedras and Papi did not approve. At home, they argued about her university classes over dinner, and the last fight had been a doozy.

A brawl had broken out at the University, and it was all over the news. The students had burned down the ROTC building where the soldiers trained for Vietnam. Abuelo Beto went on TV asking for calm and repeating his favorite phrase: “Reason persuades, it doesn’t scream.”

Just in case, he also gave orders to send in the police in riot gear. A young woman who was a university student, an innocent bystander, was shot dead.

The news reported she was killed by a stray bullet. But everyone suspected the police. Mami was angry at Abuelo Beto. She questioned his words and his actions.

Papi had been in the Army reserves, an officer in the Korea conflict, and he was very angry that Mami defended the university student protests.

“You’re going to be the death of me, honey. How can you defend those long-haired, marijuana-smoking, rabble-rousers?”

He stared at Mami, who glared right back at him with her Cat Woman stare.

La Nena, Güicho, and I, were sitting at the dinner table, the boxing ring for many of their matches.

Mami rang the silver bell, asked Tita and María (Tita’s younger assistant) to clear the dishes, and excused us from the table. Mami and Papi were getting ready to rumble.

We hurriedly left the dining room and ran upstairs. They raised their voices behind us. Mami backtalking Papi.

Back at the Grand Cinema, I deflected Tomás’s question about Cat Woman. “I can’t figure her out. I thought she was both good and bad.” SWISH!

Tomás gave me a knowing look and went straight for the jugular. “Does Cat Woman remind you of someone?” I had made the mistake of describing Mami and Papi’s rumbles to Tomás. I was terrible at keeping family secrets.

I played rope-a-dope. “I’m not sure. Who are you thinking of?” DEFLECT!

Tomás didn’t answer my question. He smirked and shook his head at me. A regular MacArthur who never backed down, just fought in a different direction.

“What did you think of Dracula?” JAB!

I thought Dracula was fantastic. The dark and bloody scenes were strange and somehow exciting, the opposite of predictable Batman. But to admit as much would mean throwing in the towel. So, I played dumb again and pretended not to be impressed.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He looked kind of weird.” PARRY!

I saw why Tomás loved Dracula so much. The vampire didn’t look strong, but he was fierce.

In one scene, Christopher Lee opened his cape. I saw his rib cage. A starving Largo with fangs.

Drácula also had a major weakness that incapacitated him. He clearly suffered from a Vitamin D deficiency. Daylight literally killed him.

But he didn’t have to use his fists to win a fight. He choked his victims with his mano poderosa. His blood-shot eyes were hypnotic. Dracula had a strange power over people, something else he shared with Tomás.

On the screen, Dracula’s servant had joked. “My master died without issue … in the accepted sense of the term.”

Tomás was one of Dracula’s secret sons. He saw what I was thinking. He smirked and jabbed again. “Yeah … he looked queer all right.” CRACK!

We went silent. I would call it a tie, but I knew better.

Tomás’s dad took us back to their walk-up. Tomás lived with his parents in a three-story building next to the Medical Center, where his mom cleaned the doctors’ offices. Back in Cuba, she had been a nurse, his father, a doctor.

Earlier, when I mentioned to Papi that Tomás had invited me to the movies, Papi had said that they probably were part of the first wave of Cuban refugees escaping from Fidel Castro and his Revolution.

“It must have been a punch in the gut.” Papi added, “Tomás’s dad must be getting back on his feet. Cubans are a hard-working people.”

We were sitting in the terrace, under electric fans, surrounded by cushions on rattan furniture. “Our lazy people could learn a few lessons from them,” Papi said.

Mami had some reservations. She said that living on Wilson Street, at the edge of hoity toity Condado, was no easy feat for Tomás’s family, and warned me to be sure to thank Tomás’s father for the movie and not to abuse their generosity by staying for dinner afterwards.

“Probably Tomás’ dad can barely afford to take his own family out to the movies, let alone take you along.”

Papi replied he wasn’t so sure. He thought Tomás’s father was a come-back-kid, an example of the American fighting spirit in the face of a Communist bully.

Mami’s prediction turned out to be true. On the way home, Tomás’s dad invited me to have dinner with them. I didn’t know what to do. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I loved Tomás’s mom’s fried plantains with black beans and rice. Her maduros with congrí were tastier than Tita’s rice and beans. I almost accepted, but heeded Mami’s warning in the end.

“I’m expected for dinner at home, thanks for the invitation, though, and please give my regards to Tomás’s mom.”

Tomás gave me a look that said he didn’t believe my exaggerated politeness. He read all my moves. Embarrassed, I ran the two remaining blocks back home.

The next day, I was sitting in Miss Mundo’s class during her English lesson. The cool morning breeze came in through the Miami blinds. The students sat six rows wide and six rows deep. A perfect square. Miss Mundo politely asked us to read aloud from our textbook in her soft and crystalline voice.

She was the opposite of Sister McGraw, with a maw like a saw. Sister McGraw was our sour math teacher, and she was so old that even Papi remembered her from his days at the school. But Miss Mundo was young. She put me in a trance. Her voice lulled me to sleep.

It was homeroom, and Mauricio sat behind me. I jumped when I felt him drawing something on the back of my shirt with his pencil. I don’t know why I didn’t have a stronger reaction. Maybe I was dozing off. Maybe the pencil reminded me of Abuela Cita’s sobito back rubs.

(Abuela Cita had bony but soft padded fingers that put me to sleep.)

Or maybe I feared interrupting the class and making a scene. Whatever the case, I kept still and allowed Mauricio to finish his drawing. What harm could he do?

Mauricio was a chubby kid with a funny nose identical to the evil Penguin’s, except he had freckles on his white face. And he was bigger than me.

When the bell rang, I quickly got up and ran to the bathroom, my least favorite room in the school. It reeked of urine and vomit. Sometimes a nervous kid would ralph, and the janitors would throw a thin film of sawdust on the vomit to dry it out, and to cover the rancid smell of half-digested soft-boiled eggs.

Other times, standing in front of the urinal, I saw the cockroaches frantically trying to climb out of the porcelain lip.

I skipped the sawdust, ignored the cockroaches, and went into the stall, locking the door behind me. Took off my shirt, turned it around, and felt my ears turn bright red. Mauricio had written, in big letters: “Batty Pato.”

“Pato” was the worst thing you could call anybody at school. It meant you were a pussy. That you swung your butt side to side, the same as a duck.

I remembered that I had mentioned Batman, the movie, during recess and Mauricio must have heard me, and he must have caught the admiration in my voice. Why did my voice always give me away?

I turned the shirt inside out, put it back on, and pretended as if nothing had happened. I tried to ignore Mauricio’s smirk and the look of contempt of my classmates, who huddled around him, including Rafi.

Rafi was my distant cousin. He often visited our house to play in the blue-tiled square fountain in the middle of our yard. Tadpoles filled the fountain if left alone. And they would turn into frogs, which gave us warts during the hurricane season.

We filled the fountain with fresh water to play Shark.

The game was perfect for Rafi and my two siblings because it involved all four corners of the shallow pool. The designated “shark” swam in the center, and he would try to catch and prevent the “little fishes” from reaching their opposite corner.

Rafi was quick and strong. When it was his turn to be the shark, he slammed my head against the tile. He grinned his Joker smile.

I had run to the front door, crying, looking for sympathy. Mami was going out. She was dressed to the nines. She wore her hair up, and was wearing red lipstick, pearls, and her Cat Woman eyelashes. Her black sequined bag with golden handles hung securely from the crook of her strong arm.

She had seen what happened and she had no patience for me. “You will not come in the house until you get back there, and you punch Rafi in the face.”

I would never have thought of doing that. Rafi was stronger than I was.

Instead, I went back to him. I nudged him on the shoulder, and prayed and hoped things would go no further. But I was wrong.

He didn’t hit me back right then and there, but later, when Mauricio wrote Batty Pato on my shirt, he helped to spread the word around school that I was a sissy.  

That night, during dinner, Papi asked me what I had learned at school.

I don’t know what made me tell him what actually happened. Maybe I wanted his advice, maybe his sympathy. La Nena and Güicho looked at each other wide-eyed and gasped. They knew better than me.

Mami stared at me with her laser-eyes letting me know her disappointment. Clearly, I hadn’t learned my lesson.

“Did I ever tell you the story of the bully from Perpetuo?”  

Papi rubbed the scar on his middle finger.

“Tomorrow, you go back there, and you punch Mauricio right in the face. Mind you, don’t let him see what’s coming.” Papi reached for the cut-glass olive oil bottle. He poured a thin line of Betis oil on his rice and beans. “Don’t give yourself away by warning him. Sneak up on him, tap him on the shoulder, and then WHAM, a punch to the kisser.” He put the glass stopper back on the flask. It clinked.

That night, I dreamed that Batman and I were playing basketball during recess. We were surrounded by Cat Woman, the Penguin, and the Joker. They had a slight resemblance to Mami, Mauricio, and Rafi. Batman and I were in the middle of the rumble. I heard the music from the TV show in the background.

Da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na … BATMAN!

Batman was throwing punches right and left. Jab, BAM! Cross, ZLOPP! Hook, POW! Uppercut, SPLAT! Colored bubbles appeared from thin air. KAPOW!

I tried hard to throw a punch, but I was all gummed up as if caught in a slow-motion movie. I threw angry punches with great effort. The frustration woke me up, sweating.

The next day, I knew I couldn’t go up to Mauricio and punch him in the face. He was too big, and I was too afraid. But I was worried for my reputation. If I didn’t do something about Batty Pato, rest periods would be minefields until kingdom come.

After class, I huddled with Tomás in our makeshift cardboard box exclusive Club in the middle of the empty lot next to his building. I told him what had happened thinking that maybe he would help me. Tomás knew I was no match for Mauricio and Rafi. But he also knew how to best them.

He listened to me patiently. “It’s a matter of turning Batty Pato into something else, something that will make you famous.” His familiarity with movies gave him the idea for a script. “Do you have any money?”

The Easter talent show at school was coming up that Friday. After our meeting, I went home, broke my piggy bank and asked Tita if she would help me. I explained my situation and she agreed to take me and Tomás to La Cosa on Calle Loíza.

La Cosa was a nickel-and-dime store famous for its racks of disguises, practical jokes, and magic tricks. We found a Batman mask, glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth, and fake blood in a tube.

Tita walked us to Tomás’s house, and we talked to his mom. She agreed to make two capes. One for me, black and shiny with a scalloped bottom, and the other for Tomás, black with red lining and a high collar. The capes would do double duty for the Easter play and later for Halloween.

Then, Tomás and I sat down to write the script for a play. We called it, “Showdown at the Grand Cinema.”

The show was on Good Friday. Tomás and I dressed up as the two main characters. He played Dracula and I played Batman. I flattered Rafi and Mauricio into playing the parts of the Joker and the Penguin. La Nena offered to play Cat Woman. Güicho played Robin. It was a family show.

In the play, Cat Woman scratched Batman with one of her poisoned claws, killing him. But Robin resurrected Batman in a bloody ritual that turned him into Bacula, a composite of Batman and Dracula. Cat Woman was no match for him.

In another scene, Bacula stabbed the Penguin with a Batpencil. In yet another, he blinded the Joker with water from his Poisoned Pool. He even turned Cat Woman to his unholy side with his hypnotic powers and mano poderosa. In the end, Bacula became the lord and master of Gotham City.

We performed the play in the school gym and when the Penguin and the Joker appeared on stage, the students booed and hissed loudly at them, as if on cue.

The look on the face of Sister McGraw told me she didn’t approve. I was worried.

But when I said Blacula’s last lines. “Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make…,” the bleachers exploded with laughter, jeers, and applause.

After the play, I watched Mauricio and Rafi leaving the basketball court in disgust, their heads down. I smiled at Tomás. I didn’t have to throw a punch!

Neither Mami nor Papi were there for the show. But Tomás’s mom came up to him and gave him a kiss. Miss Mundo gave me a hug.

Later that night, during dinner, Papi again took me to the matt.

“So, tell me Noti, how did it go today? Did you do what I told you to do?” BAM!

“Not exactly. It’s complicated.” DEFLECT!

“Those things aren’t complicated. It’s simple and straightforward. Either you belted Mauricio like I said, or you didn’t.” KAPOW!

After a few seconds, I searched my pockets for my false teeth, and slowly raised my head, baring my fake fangs at Papi and cracking open a smile. I hissed through the plastic in my best Transylvanian accent, “My master died without issue … in the accepted sense of the term.”

Everybody but Papi laughed.

It wasn’t a knock-out punch.

But I won by split decision.