Affinity For Trouble - Samples

Affinity For Trouble Well guys, we all know that God works in very mysterious ways, and so it was that the three kings strangely met at a point in their travels before crossing a great desert and together followed a star to Judea where they were intercepted by King Herod, who was also looking for the Christ child to kill him. The star disappeared. And Herod, an evil one, tried to trick the three magos by telling the three wise kings that he was also looking for the King of Kings so that he too could worship him. They were not called magos for nothing and they knew that Herod had lied.
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As soon as I saw your mami for the first time in the business place I fell in love with her and she fell in love with me. So she got a divorce and we got married and had you guys so we could have a family. Do you guys understand so far?” All I understood from this softly delivered story was that all it took to renounce one another was for your parents to say the word “divorce”.
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I could not imagine where she came from, but there she was in the flesh wearing a bright yellow dress, her big tetas jumping up and down with every little hop of obvious joy that she made at seeing my papi Guelo. She had brown hair, bright red lips, white skin and long eyelashes with hazel eyes. She had what my papi would call all the attributes of a mujer que esta muy buena. At that time I only suspected what this might mean. One thing that I remember was that she did not seem to have the refined features of my pretty mami Letty. She had thick, manly-looking wrists, with fat fingers, thick thighs and gelatinous ass cheeks.
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Ours was built as an afterthought when my mami Letty married my papi Guelo. That was why it was on the very corner of the no name alley, which connected our street of Los Pinos to Calle Daffaut, where two cars would actually fit going in opposite directions. The houses on Calle Daffaut were more pleasing to look at. Some had actual greenery planted with flowers. And, if my memory doesn’t fail me, the raw sewage did not flow unimpeded down their street culverts during the rainy season. Tropical monsoon time things got ugly, or better said, smelled ugly. As my tío Freddy used to say, “It’s simple; a little septic tank designed for a couple of asses cannot entertain forty-two without exploding in shit.”
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Already the smell of the freshly baked bread wafted into the sitting room. I gave my sleeping little brother a kiss on the cheek and went to find out about the status of breakfast. I vowed to be good this day. I promised the Sacred Heart to have breakfast with Vitín without stealing his share. How happy I felt. ¡Qué bien! What a good God us poor folks had most of the time, I thought. Today was Saturday and we could breakfast together, Vitín and I. Afterwards, we could surprise my papi Guelo by taking him a cool glass of mabí. Today, definitely promised a sweet existence of joy and felicity on this little piece of earthly paradise. It was not at all bad to be poor if you loved and were loved in return like we of Calle Los Pinos, behind the Paramount Theatre, on stop #19 in Santurce.
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It was so intense that it seemed to have always been. Everybody was dancing. Young, old, ancient, and even babies answered the call of the tropical music. Women abandoned their pretensions of propriety and control and their hips gyrated and swayed around and around and sometimes glued to the pulsation of their men’s frenetic dance. Even my best títere buddies Papo and Cuqui were frantically dancing around the little ten year old neighbor girl, Mayra, who was not being outdone by the adult women. They responded to her swaying and gyrating hips with crazier and wilder moves, clearly possessed. Even Vitín, drenched in sweat, was frantic in beating his inverted tin cans in emulation of the bongos. The pulsating music appeared to have a supernatural power over physical bodies and grabbed all within hearing distance. I was struck and fascinated by the powerful music. Men, women, boys, girls, old and ancients gave themselves to the beat. There was no doubt in my mind that this had to be the most passionate and rhythmical of all music, and that it was boricua. The power of the African drum reigned supreme in Santurce.
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Around noon time everyone had edged back towards the ramparts not wanting to miss seeing the troop ship and drinking it in with their eyes for every minute that they possibly could. Around 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon several soldiers came and told all of the people on the ramparts that the USNS Marine Lynx would sail under cover of darkness and that the soldiers would not be able to glimpse El Morro or the relatives from the ship. You could see the disappointment and sadness in the faces of everyone around. A lot of tears began to roll down the cheeks of the boricua relatives who had hoped for a glimpse of their beloved to put in their heart and take home to the casa, casucha, choza or bohío and remember Juan, Antonio, Francisco, Manuel, Guelo, Miguel and Pancho.

In this island all the Borinqueneers were dearly beloved and so the people stayed, just as we stayed, to sense the passing of 2,000 boricua souls from the shores of their Borinquen! Not withstanding the sad news and the encouragement by the soldiers for the people to go home, not one single person left the ramparts of El Morro!
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“You know child, you ask for some answers to life that no one has. The questions you ask make the adults uncomfortable. They are great questions to which they are embarrassed to admit they do not know the answers to. It’s much easier to divert you onto another path. I can only tell you what I think and you must understand that it is what I believe in. So look at it as what Paula thinks. Others will disagree with me, specially the priests. I could be wrong. No one however, can prove I’m wrong. Your friend Carlos is dead only to those that have very little or no faith. To me, he has completed a circle that is slowly drawn for each of us. This in my faith of an omnipotent being means he is alive but inaccessible to me or me to him. His memory and how he affected my life live on in me and the love that he showed me lives in my heart with him. Based on my faith I only mourn for myself in that his part in my own circle is over. Time will allow you to let him go as it will also teach you that he is not really gone at all. He is in the rapture of omnipotence because he was an innocent child. It is not for us to question the plan of the Creator. Just give thanks that the love was given. Was he the son of an American man? He probably was; the physical son of an American man. But what is important is that he was the spiritual creation of a powerful cycle and in innocence gave the gift of love and in a state of innocence returned to the creator of spirits. If anything we should rejoice in that he was spared the troubles to which we are every minute that we are physically alive exposed to. Remember querido that Carlos no longer suffers the inequities of the physical shell and that in his present rapture has only one Father, who is the benevolence of all things spiritual. Think of all the wonderful times you had together and the love which you showered on one another, and Carlos lives. You should not have gotten angry with your mami Letty because I think that she just wanted you to think of good things,” Paula said and went into the kitchen, where she put water in a saucepan and lit the burner underneath.
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After several sets mamá Provi came out on her porch and informed the crowd, in a singing voice, that there was work to be done on the following day. That was the biggest mistake mamá ever made. A beautiful feminine voice sang out, “I am the laína… tomorrow there’s work, bomba.” All the percussion instruments responded in an explosion and the bombas and plenas made Calle Los Pinos undulate and sway once again behind the Paramount Theatre, on trolley/bus stop #19, in Santurce, just as I had previously observed on another occasion. The African drums reigned supreme!
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“Well, Héctor, I don’t exactly know everything that happened because I’m so scared. It seems to me that suddenly primo Toño and Mr. Ladrillo were on the sidewalk yelling bad words at one another about some ladies called María Juana and Tequata. They said their names several times with such rage that I tried to make myself part of the black power pole. Every minute that passed they yelled louder and louder at one another and got angrier and angrier. Héctor, I was so scared that I thought I was going to die.”

Vitín started to whimper so I refreshed the cloth with cool water and again applied it to his face and head. “Everything is over, Vitín, go on with your story,” I said gently.
“Well, suddenly primo Toño had his big pistol in his hand and the big pistol began jumping up and down in his hand throwing out fire, every jump of the pistol made Mr. Ladrillo jump like a doll, and not like the big man that he is. And a red mist began to form like a cloud in front of Mr. Ladrillo. And then, when I was looking at Mr. Ladrillo, the back of his head exploded outwards and little pieces of gray stuff, and white, and pink stuff, flew out of his head and through the air. I tried to make myself as small as I could and I didn’t see anything else, or remember anything else, except that you washed my face with the cool cloth.”

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