When my mom left my house the night of Lou and Coco’s dance, on her way out she did claim that if this powder was what she thought it was, I held an essential ingredient of the beauty regimen of many rural Puerto Rican women from the seventies. At Sunday dinner after the dance, Gloria was forthcoming with a little more insight. She shared that when she and her sisters were teenagers they would take the powder, mix it with drops of water and milk to make a paste, and create some version of a face mask. While she couldn’t remember where the powder came from, she did recall stirring it up, caking it on her face, and then lying out in the sun to let it dry. The taste was bitter to the tongue if it got mixed up in your mouth, but older women in Las Marías claimed it kept their skin moist and healthy after long days working in the orange groves. From a young age and with no intention of picking fruit, Gloria confessed that she worked the mask so she could work her magic with men. Clearly it paid off, because Mom remembers she masked up the morning of her eighteenth birthday, and that night she met my dad.
As I open one of the Ziplocs and take a big whiff, the smell is somewhat familiar. It’s acrid, but definitely not in the coffee family. At least I don’t think so. I recently learned what acai is when, starving before class, I mistakenly ducked into a new quick-eats shop on the Stanford campus. I ordered a bowl thinking it would be easy to discreetly eat in class and was presented with an eighteen-dollar cup of cold, dark-purple mush. I didn’t particularly like the taste, but judging by the line dozens deep, eager to Cash App their payment, I wish I had discovered that purple powder rather than sitting here with this poop-brown one.
From the flavor, conferring with David and Tía Fernanda, Gloria’s beauty revelations, and a hefty Google search, I figured out that the powder is most likely cacao beans that have been ground up with theirshells. Essentially, it’s the throwaway beans, or what farmers callcullage, that could not be used to make sellable chocolate. While agriculture as a way of life has lost widespread appeal in Puerto Rico given the last several decades of destructive hurricanes and the pull of city office work, the reintroduction of gourmet crops like cacao is drawing people back into farming. Now locally grown cacao is a burgeoning industry with a few island farms and novice chocolatiers popping up hoping to make Puerto Rico a sweets hot spot.
I sample the powder and decide it’s too raw tasting to be processed cocoa. It doesn’t taste like anything that would be worth a late-night binge session pining over an unrequited love, or Simon. I go back to an article I found and learn that cacao is the term for raw, unprocessed cocoa that doesn’t taste good but has superior benefits for well-being. While the information is most likely referring to the consumption of cacao being tied to good health, I’m left wondering what it can do for the skin, a la David’s lady friend and my mom. Seems both women were able to capture men with the lure of their luscious skin.
I reread the article a few times and feel my Puerto Rican foremothers sharing their secret to living life under the sun with joy, vitality, and their own versions of riches. It stood in stark contrast to the hundreds of times David, Gabriel, or I misbehaved as children and our antics were met with a stern reminder how lucky we were that our parents saved us from a life toiling under the oppressive sun. While I don’t actuallyknowmuch about life on the island, having only visited once when I was a young girl, I have neverfeltmore Puerto Rican with five bags of its agricultural history sitting on my kitchen table in California. This powder is meant to be my future.
I take a large jar of the lotion Krish and Zwena confirmed smells the best and divide it into four small bowls. With the first bowl I add one tablespoon of the powder, dump it in my Kitchen Aid, and watch the cream turn a sun-kissed tone matching the shade of the well-traveled tan of Simon’s skin. I put it back in its bowl and take a big whiff to determine if the powder has changed my blended eucalyptus and bougainvilleafragrance into something foul. To my growing excitement, the smell is unique and delicious, almost like a chocolate garden. Pleased, I dump the second bowl’s contents into the mixer. To this, I add a full cup of powder. While the consistency with the added powder will have to be thinned, the color resembles my Afro–Puerto Rican skin and rubs in with zero residue.
“Women, particularly moms, like things that are natural, convenient, and intuitive,”I hear one of the femaleInnovation Nationjudges advise Dwayne after he shares a complicated addition he would consider making to the breast pump.Claro.So true.Doesn’t take an MBA to know that piece of gender intel.
The wise judge is the first one to bow out, claiming the breast pump does not fit her investment portfolio, but she is a champion of women entrepreneurs and loves putting the male judges in their place. When Dwayne starts to debate her assessment, I join in yelling at the TV, “Stay in your lane, Dwayne!” as if he can hear me.
Before I continue to play around with the ratio of powder to lotion to create a rainbow of beige to brown to black creams that dry clear without the risk of staining clothing, I text Frances Antonelli to thank her for having the girls for the evening and much of today. According to what Lou and Coco told me when they called last night to check in, I will be at the airport when Frances drops them off this afternoon, so I won’t be able to tell her I owe her one in person.
12:42 p.m. (Toni)
Thank you so much for having the girls over. Can you make sure Lou doesn’t forget her pajamas this time? Next sleepover will be at my house. I owe you a night off!
12:43 p.m. (Frances)
Toni, did you mean to send this to someone else? We’re in Big Sur for the weekend.
STILL SATURDAY, MARCH 9
“Mami!” I yell into the phone, not even attempting to mask my panic. “Are Lou and Coco with you?” With closed eyes I pray her answer is some version ofyes. Then I’ll know exactly where to go to kill all three of them. What could they possibly be up to that warrants lying to me? Obviously, something I would never allow at home, like those damn highlights Lou won’t stop begging me for.
“Are you smoking?”
“No.” I blow out my smoke, caught with a Camel Ultra Light from my stress-relieving emergency pack of cigarettes. How can she smell through the phone? “Did you hear me, are the girls with you?”
“No, mi amor. I’ve been at the Senior Connection all morning. A few ladies paid me to give them one-on-one dance lessons.” My girls are missing, and my mom’s freelancing.What the hell is going on?!
“I gotta go, Mom,” I cut in, ending her recitation of what was served for brunch in the dining room in order to text Lou and Coco.
Nothing. Not even three dots.
Before calling the police, I’m going to call Father Egan, who stands out in front of Saint Anne welcoming students on Monday mornings, asking after their weekends and wishing them well when school lets out on Friday afternoons. Hopefully he saw Lou and Coco at the endof school Friday and knows whose car they got into. I can’t imagine I mixed up their sleepover invitation, but it’s possible.
Fingers shaking, I scroll down to theE’s and hope the contact information I have for Father Egan is to his cell and not his office. Or better yet, directly to God. About to select the number, I hear a key jostling in the front door followed by the hinges screaming for WD-40, our version of a welcome bell. I stub out the half-finished cigarette butt in the kitchen sink, wave away the smoke, and pull myself together before heading into the living room to lose it. As I take a shaky, calming breath, I hear a foreign but not forgotten voice announce, “This place hasn’t changed one bit, not even the squeak in the front door,” followed by a pair of tween giggles.
My jaw locks as I witness Simon walking around my living room, reading the book spines on the shelves, pawing framed photos of Lou and Coco, straightening a throw pillow like he’s taking a leisurely stroll down memory lane. All three Evanses stop short when they see me in the doorway.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work, Mom?!” Coco barks, her voice smacking of fear—which, I would say, is an appropriate response.
“Yeah, Mom, that’s what the family calendar says, that you’re at work.” Lou blames me, backing up her sister, like I’m the one at fault for catching these two in a complete lie that was seconds away from an AMBER Alert.
Coco and Lou are home, alive, and that’s enough for me. For now. I’ll deal with my two little liars later. The silent treatment should be enough to signal to them they ought to be scared, very scared, of their mother. The bigger shock is my adrift husband escorting Lou and Coco home like this is a regular weekend afternoon as a family of four.
“Simon,” I announce flatly, buying myself a moment to confirm his presence and think.
“Hey, Toni,” Simon responds in an equally measured tone. “Good to see you.”
There is nothing good about my husband returning after two years only to kidnap my daughters and then waltz into my house five minutes before I need to leave for a job his actions forced me to take.
“Girls, grab your backpacks and head upstairs. We’ll be sitting down to talk later.”
