The Games of Monkey Island

It was the one-year anniversary of Antonia Martínez’s death. The young student was shot during the protests against the draft and Vietnam at the University of Puerto Rico. Nobody had heard of Antonia before, but now everybody knew her name. El Topo, a young pro-independence singer songwriter, composed a protest song in her memory that spread like wildfire through the Island.

Mami had a copy of his bootleg single and she would play it on the record player, sitting alone in the library, surrounded by the built-in bookshelves that covered the eastern wall of the Ojeda house. The high-pitched voice of the singer rose above the sad chords of his acoustic guitar, and beyond the foreboding verse, “the people don’t forgive, one day justice will be done.” It echoed against the book cabinets guarding the large collection of Puerto Rican literature.

Mami attended the University of Puerto Rico with my Tía Helga, and they witnessed the student uprisings. The cousins were very close. They would travel together to the Guanajibo house, the ancestral home of my maternal great grandparents, on the Western tip of the Island. We would visit with Tía Helga and her family and stay over long weekends. Mami had planned a stay at the Guanajibo house with my cousins.

Her classes at the University started many changes at home. Now, on Fridays, we ate at the kitchen table instead of sitting at the formal dining room. The kitchen table at the Ojeda house was just big enough for all five of us to sit around. It was a thick, wooden, single slat, door-like table, horizontally set into the kitchen wall.

Mami refused to use the formal dining set every night. We ate on everyday dishes with wide bands of color, and blue transparent glasses, rather than the porcelain dishes decorated with pictures of shepherdesses, and silver goblets.

I didn’t like the change.

The paper napkins felt rough on my lips and were no match for the soft linens embroidered with Mami and Papi’s initials. I didn’t like sitting so close to Güicho or La Nena either, especially during heated arguments between Mami and Papi. You just didn’t know what to expect. Who would drop what. And I was not alone in that department. Güicho fidgeted next to me.

Papi flicked open his paper napkin making a sharp sound. He pressed it against his lap.

“Your classmates are rabble rousers, honey, marijuana-smoking radicalized communists bent on setting the Island on fire.”

Antonia was shot on the same day the pro-independence students exploded a bomb at the university ROTC building. The Island newspapers commemorated the one-year anniversary of the violence with pictures of the students on the front pages.

“You’d better be careful. Things are getting out of hand.”

Papi waited for Tita to come around with the serving tray.

“Remember, the radicals killed ROTC cadets just like me.”

He poured himself a glass of wine.

“It’s a good thing your father changed the law to punish the subversives more severely.”

Papi had a point. There had been more than fifty explosions in El Condado that year alone. Terrorists and pro-independence groups had set off bombs at many hotels and department stores nearby, like the Howard Johnson’s one block away from the Ojeda house.

Not that I worried too much. In fact, I kind of liked the chaos. When I heard the explosions followed by the police sirens, I couldn’t wait for Tita to take me on a tour of the scorched buildings, to walk past the police lines down Ashford Avenue, and then to enjoy a medianoche sandwich at El Lobo cafeteria, followed by a black cow float at Farmacia Totti.

The death of the boy at Ashford Avenue had receded from my memory.

But Mami also had a point.

“Don’t you know that the CIA is attacking pro-independence journalists and lawyers, and they’re trying to kill the leaders of the pro-independence parties?”

Mami reached for the crystal water jug. She sat across from Papi. The three of us, Güicho, La Nena and I, sat on the long side of the table. I sat closer to Papi, and watched Mami as she extended her arm to reach the heavy jug, raising it with ease. She poured herself a cold glass of water without spilling a drop.

“And what about that firebomb set by the Anti-Communist Brotherhood of Puerto Rico?”

She poured water into Güicho’s and La Nena’s glasses before setting the jug back on the table. I reached for the jug with one hand, but it was too heavy for me. I stood up and grabbed it with both hands, by its round belly, pouring myself a glass, and then filling Papi’s cup. The ice was trapped behind the spout and made a crystal sound.

“Anyway, dear, I don’t want to keep talking about this.” Mami looked at us. “Let’s change the subject.”

When Mami said she wanted to change the subject, it meant she was very upset. So, I quietly scooped a serving of Chef Boyardee, and waited for the tray to finish going around the table before digging in. The meatballs were getting cold, but I didn’t mind. Friday night canned spaghetti was much better than Saturday lunch Huevos Flamencos.

We owed the recipe for Huevos Flamencos to Abuela Vicki, my paternal grandmother. I had seen the recipe in Mami’s typed version of Abuela Vicki’s cookbook: two eggs with asparagus and tomato sauce, cooked in a clay dish, in a hot oven for five minutes or less. The cooking time was so quick that Mami called the technique “an oven punch.”

It was a good name for it because Huevos Flamencos always delivered a punch to my gut. Every time I ate them, I felt like somebody had done a Flamenco dance on my tummy, and I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom.

I was grateful for the Chef Boyardee. Papi, not so much. He liked his Huevos Flamencos.

Papi didn’t back off when Mami called for a truce. He swung right back.

“The university should be a place to get an education, not a place to get brainwashed.”

He turned his silver fork to capture spaghetti with it.

“You’re parroting the Communist propaganda machine.”

He sliced one of his meatballs in half with his knife, pinched it with his fork and took a bite.

Mami opened her eyes wide and slowly set her knife and fork down next to her plate, Kirk Douglas girding himself for battle in Spartacus. She wiped her mouth with the paper napkin and said, “Well, at least there’s no Falangista Nazi sympathizer in my family.

Nobody dared talk about my paternal great grandfather, but we all knew the story of how his body was flown by a Luftwaffe escort when he died in Spain.

“Nor does my family bear responsibility for the Ponce Massacre!”

I soon would learn that the Island police chief that gave the order to shoot was also related to Papi’s family.

Mami’s words came out mechanically. As if they were part of a script. An invisible power seemed to be pulling her strings: the empire forcing Kirk Douglas to fight and kill Tony Curtis in Spartacus. The dinner became a duel between two gladiators sitting at opposite ends of the table-Collosseum. Each one wielding silver weapons: a sword and a trident.

Papi ran out of words and patience. He stood up and pushed his hair-pin-back chair to the floor. He raised his full plate of Chef Boyardee with his hand and threw it against the wall, looking straight at Mami.

The spaghetti hit the fan.

Meat balls and tomato sauce flew all over the kitchen floor and table. Streaks of red sauce covered the oil and vinegar crystal tumblers. Parmesan cheese rained on the salt and pepper silver shakers. A piece of meatball hit Güicho’s eye, which he closed and quickly wiped with a paper napkin.

I hadn’t seen Mami and Papi fight so openly before. It was as if something larger than themselves took hold and possessed them, a haunting ghost.   

Mami stood up. Papi stood still. Taking the pause in the fight as her cue, Tita quickly walked the short distance from the stove to the table and collected us.

On the way up the stairs, I asked Tita about the Ponce Massacre. It was her hometown so she should know. She explained that in 1937, Puerto Rican Nationalists were gunned down by the police during a demonstration.

“Who were the Puerto Rican Nationalists?”

She answered with a look that meant I should stop asking silly questions.

Mami had told us about the Puerto Rican Nationalists when we visited the tomb of Abuela Cita in the cemetery outside the Old City walls. Mami would take a detour and stop by the gray square tomb of Pedro Albizu Campos, framed by two flags: the flag of Puerto Rico and the Revolutionary flag. She would let go of my hand and clench hers into a tight fist, as she told the story of the tragic death of the champion of the Nationalist Party, and of his bloody struggle for Puerto Rican independence.

“Don’t you mind about that,” Tita said.

She corralled us into our rooms.

“We have a long trip tomorrow, and you best get right to bed.”

“We’re still going to Guanajibo?”

“You better believe it. Nothing’s going to stop your Mami from going to see your Tía.”

Standing in the threshold, Tita cast a long shadow into our rooms.

Güicho and I put on our pjs, brushed our teeth, turned off the light, and went to bed. My door cracked open, and somebody looked in. I couldn’t see who it was. The door closed again, softly.

I slowly fell into the hands of Mami’s favorite spirit, Morpheus: the god of dreams.

***

The next day, Tita helped us to load Mami’s Volvo sedan. Mami took the driver seat, Tita sat next to her, and Güicho, La Nena, and I, climbed into the back. Papi was nowhere to be seen. Mami had her large tortoise shell sunglasses on, and she didn’t say a word. I asked and she answered, “Your father won’t be joining us on this trip.”

We headed South across the Central Mountain Range, past Ponce, to the Western most side of the Island and to the town of Mayagüez. The straight shot to Mayagüez was a relief after the ordeal of the winding military road. I looked out the car window and the view of the Caribbean Sea settled my stomach. I asked Mami whether the island on the horizon was Caja de Muerto.

“Yes.”

She took a drag of her cigarette.

“They say it’s the original Treasure Island.”

The novel was one of my favorites. Mami took another drag.

“The author suffered from tuberculosis and traveled the world to get better. He stopped in Puerto Rico on one of his trips.”

She looked out her window again, and the car swerved, giving us a scare.

“But it was his visit to Desecheo, the island across from the Guanajibo house, that inspired Treasure Island.”

Abuela Cita instilled a love of pirates in Mami. Her favorite poem was “The Pirate Song” by Espronceda. I remembered her as we sped past the exit for Ponce, where the Alhambra house sat in wait for her return from the other world.

My grandmother could recite Espronceda’s poem from memory, but I only remembered the opening lines about the Dreaded, his fearsome two-masted schooner.

“She doesn’t cleave the sea, but fly; a swiftly sailing brigantine.”

Abuela Cita was an old, pale, thin, and frail-looking woman. It surprised me when she recited the poem about the fierce pirate. She closed her eyes and looked as if she travelled to a place far from her land-locked Alhambra house. Perhaps the poem returned her to the home of her ancestors in Guanajibo.

The poem sang to a violent and stormy world of wars and hurricanes, where local pirates fought the invaders’ cruisers. A world of vows of freedom.

“My treasure is my gallant bark; my only God is liberty; my law is might, the wind my mark; my country is the sea.”

Mami cracked open her window to let smoke out of the car. She looked at us through the rear-view mirror and said, “Did I ever tell you the story of Cofresí, the pirate?”

She told the story every time we went to Guanajibo, as we sped past the exit to the town of Cabo Rojo, where the famous Caribbean pirate was born.

“He ruled the Caribbean without mercy from El Mosquito, his swift schooner, the bane of the slow and bulky Spanish galleons.”

As Mami spoke, Güicho, La Nena, and I played the “Pum cayó la Piedra” game. We poked each other in the ribs trying to make each other squeal and forfeit the game.

“In the end, a US battle cruiser confronted El Mosquito. Out-matched and out-gunned, Cofresí ran El Mosquito aground on the treacherous coral reefs of Cabo Rojo.”

Güicho knew how to make me mad. He pulled the shirt out of my pants. He mussed my hair. I pushed him against the metal window lever. But he was silent as a tomb.

“Mona Island was Cofresí’s hideout. The island was named after its Macaque monkey population. Guanajibo’s old monkey, Long John Silver, is one of their descendants.”

Güicho started acting like a monkey. He scratched his sides, jumped up and down on the seat, trying to make me laugh.

“In the end, Cofresí was captured and killed. He was related to Abuela Cita and was buried in the same cemetery.”

As Mami finished her story, I laughed and lost the game.

We drove over the breakwater protecting the stone walls surrounding the Guanajibo house from the pounding sea.

The tide was low, exposing the muddy floor of Guanajibo bay to the setting sun. Desecheo floated in the distance, another reminder of pirates dead long ago since.

Hector, the old caretaker, opened the gates, and Mami drove her Volvo into the garden. The flying wrap-around balcony of the big house, its cement flower beds filled with giant ferns, and the house’s single-gabled roof, loaded with blue baked-clay tiles, all came into view.

The Guanajibo house was the perfect refuge from the strongest hurricanes that regularly hit the Caribbean islands.

Tía Helga’s black Cadillac was parked in the back. Mami parked right behind it. Pepe and Coca, my cousins, greeted Hector and Rosajulia, the ancient cook, older still than Hector.

Tía Helga saw us coming and ran to embrace us. She asked Mami, “Where’s your hubbie?”

“And where’s yours? Mami countered.

They exchanged a tight smile and went no further.

Tía Helga asked us for a kiss and to say hello to our cousins.

Pepe was nine, a year older than I was. The same age as La Nena. Coca was six, one year older than Güicho.

Pepe had intensely green eyes and an impressive collection of comic books stashed away in the closet of their house in Old San Juan. I envied his collection, and he knew it. He never allowed me to look at it. I also envied his superpower. Pepe had a wonderful imagination, maybe from reading so many comic books. He could come up with the wildest games to play.

Coca was smaller than us, and plump. She was happy, smiling, and was ready for any game. I liked her but she was the butt of Pepe’s constant jokes.

My cousins were the same as Güicho and me. We loved but disliked each other intensely. We hugged our cousins and kept our distance.

Hector and Tita helped Mami and Tía Helga with our bags. We climbed up the stairs to the first floor.

The Guanajibo house was high off the ground, which protected it from the floods of Guanajibo bay. Below the first floor was a basement that was always closed and off limits to the children.

One time, I had secretly entered it to discover its furniture covered with dusty blankets, including an iron safe the size of two men side-by-side, with its door firmly locked.

There were no cobwebs on the first floor of the house. But it was just as dark. Its floorboards creaked during the day. The tinkling sound of crystal wind chimes echoed with the sea breeze at sunset.

I studied the portrait on the mantel piece of a stern-looking man in Spanish uniform that lorded over the long dining room table. I asked Tía Helga about him. She told us he was our great grandfather.

“He was admired and feared by the family.”

“But there was a mystery behind the man.” Mami added in a hushed voice.

Tía Helga continued quietly. “It’s the family secret.”

Tía Helga was darker than Mami. Her olive skin, long pitch-black hair, and dark eyes, made her look like a raven from a fairy tale. Her nose was as bony as her face, and she had a mole on her right cheek.

“Your great grandfather was from a highly strung Corsican family,” Tía Helga continued in a whisper.

Mami followed along as if they were playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie.

“He killed a man who refused to pay him what he was owed.”

Mami looked at Tía Helga.

“His daughters inherited his passionate character.”

They both looked at La Nena and Coca and smiled.

The younger cousins kept quiet. Perhaps like me, they didn’t understand the smile. Or perhaps they just didn’t like the story.

***

The next day, I went to the kitchen for breakfast. I sat at the table and waited for my siblings and for Pepe to join me.

Coca was already up, and so was Rosajulia, a small woman with big bones who didn’t say much. She went about her business quietly, working in the background, stepping in and out of the rooms of the Guanajibo house. She was dressed in white cotton, wore a handkerchief over her head, a necklace of cowrie shells, and a bracelet of blood red and black beads.

Tita had warned me against the cowrie shells. She told me they were the mouths of pagan prophets from Africa. That’s why Tita stayed away from Rosajulia when we visited the Guanajibo house. She only came out of her room to supervise us when we played in the garden.

“What would you like for breakfast?” Rosajulia cleaned her hands on her apron.

“Anything but eggs.”

Rosajulia took out a loaf of bread, cut it into quarters with a knife, spread butter over each piece and put it in the oven. Coca asked her about her bracelet.

“They’re peronías, but we call them Crab Eyes.”

Rosajulia touched the shiny beads.

“Sometimes we put them in our musical instruments, in maracas mostly. They also protect against evil hexes. And they bring good luck.”

“I’ve seen them growing in the garden.” Coca reached out to grab the bracelet.

“That they do. But you must be very careful.”

Rosajulia moved the bracelet away from Coca’s reach.

“They’re poisonous. If you chew them, they could even kill you.”

Pepe, Güicho and La Nena joined us at the kitchen table. We asked for freshly squeezed orange juice from the garden. It was bitter, meaty and delicious.

While Rosajulia prepared our breakfast, Pepe described a game he had come up with that night and wanted us to play.

“I call it the Games of Monkey Island.”

Pepe could come up with imaginary worlds in the time it took me to say abracadabra.

“There will be pirates and there will be gladiators.”

I already knew who I wanted to be. I practiced my limp, my hearty laugh, and my guttural arrrgh in my imagination.

“We each put something of value in a Tupperware. The pirates will hide the treasure in the center of the hedge maze.”

Everybody looked out the window looking for the maze.

“The gladiators will fight their way through the maze to get to the treasure, and the pirates will try to stop them.”

Pepe took a wide stance and held up an imaginary sword.

“I’m in, but only if I play El pirata Cofresí,” I said.

“Me too,” said Coca, “I’ll be Jim Hawkins.”

“You can count me out,” said La Nena.

All eyes were on Güicho.

“Well, if Güicho wants to be a gladiator, he can join my team, and that will make it two against two. What do you say, flaco?”

“Those who are about to die, salute you.”

I was impressed that Güicho remembered the line from Spartacus. He made me laugh.

After breakfast, we went looking for our valuables and regrouped on the balcony.

The sun was out after a misty morning. A rainbow stretched across the faded blue sky. Guanajibo bay reflected the light like red mercury.

We sat around a large Tupperware bowl and each one put their treasures inside.

I put in the Nixon tie pin that Abuelo Beto brought us after his visit to the White House. Güicho put in his Panzer die-cast toy tank. Pepe put in his Spartacus comic book with Kirk Douglas on the cover. And Coca added a fist full of peronías that she had collected that morning after breakfast. It was a mighty haul.

Coca and I took the treasure and headed for the maze.

The gardens of the Guanajibo house were a jungle. Long John Silver, the macaque monkey, lived in a cage next to the carriage house. Inside, there was a horse buggy, and an old Model-T Ford.

A cracked stone fountain sat next to the carriage house, in the middle of the garden.

The circular hedge maze hid in the back of the property.

I’d seen old photographs of the family posing in front of it in its heyday, and it looked very different now. Hector didn’t bother with it anymore. The limoncillo bushes were overgrown, and I could barely make out the path leading to the center of the maze. Clearly, the pirates had the advantage.

Coca and I buried the treasure in the center and made a big X on the ground. We called out to the gladiators, who were waiting for our signal to come in search of the treasure.

I went to tag them, and Coca stayed behind to stop anyone who made it past me.

Pepe was easy to tag. He made noises that made it easy to spot him. But Güicho slipped through my fingers. He was wiry and quick. He moved more like a wild animal at the Colosseum than as a clunky gladiator.

Coca lunged out at him, but he spun around, like a tiger, and jumped on the X, digging out the treasure before Coca could tag him.

The gladiators won the game. To the winners went the spoils.

We walked back to the house and Güicho opened the treasure chest, throwing its contents onto the cool tile floor. Güicho went straight for the peronías, probably thinking they were candy.  

He took a fistful and quickly threw it in his mouth.  

Coca screamed and Pepe up and ran to fetch Rosajulia. I went to Tita’s room. I explained what happened, and Tita came out, took a hold of Güicho, and disappeared into the bathroom.

The commotion brought Mami and Tía Helga out to the balcony. They asked us what happened.

“Güicho swallowed a bunch of peronías,” Coca cried.

They ran to the bathroom.

Tita had made Güicho throw up the poison seeds.

“I think there’s some Benedictin in the medicine cabinet, from when I was pregnant,” Mami said.

The medicine made Güicho feel better. But Mami decided to cut short the visit and return to San Juan, just in case.

***

Hector loaded the Volvo, and I went to say goodbye to Long John Silver, the macaque monkey.

His body was covered in gray fur, and his face was pink. It’s yellow beady eyes were set close together and stared at nothing. He lay at the bottom of the cage, looking as if he were dead.

I thought about the treasure of Monkey Island and the spirit of Cofresí. I approached the cage saying the name of the pirate, casting a spell.

Mami followed behind me.

“Go ahead, Noti, he won’t bite.”

I put my index finger through the cage and wiggled it.

The monkey came back alive and threw himself at me, grabbing a hold of my finger. He pulled it inside his maw. He showed me his sharp fangs and I screamed.

Mami took a hold of me and pulled me back with force. I was afraid of losing my finger, so I held on to the cage, pushing back hard against Mami.

I was caught between her and the wild macaque.

Hector appeared out of nowhere. He calmly asked Rosajulia for a sweet mango. She came back with the peeled fruit, and they offered it to Long John Silver.

He lost interest in my finger, released me, and took the sweet seed instead.

Hector went back to loading the Volvo without saying a word.

Everyone was quiet on our drive back to San Juan. Güicho broke the silence and said, “I liked playing gladiator. It was too bad about the peronías.”

The island of Caja de Muerto appeared on the horizon looking like its namesake.

Tita turned around and said, “People shouldn’t play with ghosts, unless they’re ready to join them.”