A Full Cellar by Jackson Bliss
Pinot comes from Pinot Grigio, not Pinochet (though that makes more sense, considering she's a dictator, and a gorgeous one, at that). My brother Malbec is known affectionately as Mal, because he dropped out of high school twice and is now the world's suckiest tennis player (ranked 921st in the world). When he's home, he also cheats at board games and breaks things by accident. Reese (Riesling) doesn't go anywhere without her iPod, and I mean anywhere. She's also the puta in the Flórez family (but also incredibly sweet, too). Raz (aka Shiraz) thinks he's Moroccan and hits on girls at Level when he's in town, using a fake Arab accent that bleeds into a lazy Borat once he's tanked. And my name is Grantinto, the great red wine-holla! Anyway, when Pinot asks Papi for sixty bucks during this time of year, really she's asking me for $60, because Papi is retired, living off his Social Security checks, and what little money he does have, he blows on porn. In the summer, Pinot can ask Mami. But in the winter, my mom escapes to Lima, where she fights with her sisters and writes us long letters full of guilty promises she never cashes. That's just the way this family is: guilty, dramatic, and insolvent. Don't Ask Sixty bucks might not seem like a lot of money, but when you're flat broke and it's vacas flacas, sixty bucks can be the difference between a massive bowl of yellow rice and a mouthful of cobwebs. I forked over the rest of my Christmas money to Pinot because she needs it bad. She lives all the way on the West Side of Chicago, which is punishment enough. I'm just another poor college student who steals napkins from restaurants, but she's a poor mom with four hyperactive kids and a million anxieties. When she needs money, I don't ask questions. I just give her whatever I've got, because we're sisters and loans are the way Pinot avoids crashing into telephone poles. Pinot just turned 36 and has four little tyrants of her own (Angelika, Bright Eyes, Carrie, and Diesel), one of which has her own kid (I'm not naming names, but it's Angelika). As I learned in my Great Dictators Seminar, Mao, Lenin, and Stalin had all devised campaigns in their day, which were basically cycles of economic and social reform. Pinot's campaigns take place in her va-jay-jay, once every four years. It's a different kind of revolution, if you know what I mean, but it allowed her to usurp control of the family. Every pregnancy is a coup d'état. And based on my calculations, Pinot is due for another revolution any time now. It all started back in the day when Pinot got pregnant for the first time, transforming into an 18-year-old blimp. She'd come up with this stupid-ass idea of giving birth to the alphabet, starting from the letter A. If she makes it to H, it will be a goddamn miracle. She acts like it's the ovarian Olympics or something. To help her quest to overpopulate the world, Pinot also has two part-time boyfriends. Both of them have their own kids, too. So, using the magical rules of Peruvian multiplication, Pinot is only one person, and yet she has an immediate family of 15 (excluding our standing army of tíos, primos, grandparents, neighbors, and childhood friends). And since Shiraz is in law school, Riesling is at U of I, and I'm milking my bachelor's degree in studio dance at UIC, Pinot is shit out of luck. She's the only person working full time in the family right now, so she needs three jobs to cover everyone's ass. If you break it down, that's one job for every five people. Guilt Money My tía Esmeralda is a devout Christian. Devout as in fucking crazy. She's the kind of woman who sends you a rosary for Easter and a painting of Jesus surfing on the Red Sea for Christmas. She's so mad religious she couldn't even admit to herself that Jesus was catching a gnarly wave in the painting. She said he was flotando. Floating, not surfing. As if. One day, when I was in the storage room, flipping out because I couldn't find my box of emergency Grishko pointe shoes for an upcoming recital, I looked long and hard at surfer Jesus-I was that freaked out and desperate-and I swear to God he turned to me and said: Grantinto, fuck ballet. You need to shake your ass on that dance floor. It freaked me out, the hallucination, Jesus saying shit like shake your ass, but maybe that was just the stress talking (or the X I took the night before). This past Christmas, instead of sending me the traditional Jesus-in-action painting, my tía sent me a hundred dollar bill taped inside a card addressed to her Ahijado Hermoso. I guess to make up for the fact that I'm not her fucking godson, she felt like she should give me cash instead. Guilt money-the best kind, man. A couple days later, I dished out the rest of it to Pinot, who came by my apartment carrying little Diesel in one arm. He was knocked out, all high on baby food and dressed in a black parka, White Sox cap, and snow boots. He looked like baby gangsta. "I'll pay you back," she says. "You always do," I say. "Chau, Ti," she says, kissing me on the cheek and gripping my hand tight. "Chau, Pi," I say, kissing her. Bye, OG, I said, wuzzling my nose on his baby fat cheeks that smelled like condensed milk and baby wipes. Pinot knows shit. And one of the things she knows better than anyone else is how to increase the circulation of money in this tight-ass world. Someday, the Federal Reserve is going to fine her for the inflation problem in America. I just know it. With cash in hand, Pinot and I drive to some crappy Jewel-Osco in Lincoln Square where she spends $10 on the Illinois scratch lotteries and gets back $15, even though statistically the odds are totally against her. Then, we drive back to her house in the West Side, where Pinot gives $5 to Conchita, the old lady who lives upstairs and watches novelas all day until she's sick to her stomach. Fifty is the magic number with Conchita: She doesn't pay you back until you've lent her $50. It's this weird (lame) policy of hers. The rumor is that she's got a huge roll of Grants underneath her plastic-covered mattress and she hates breaking bills even more than she hates owing people money. Somewhere in her brain, there's a broken circuit where loneliness is worse than debt. But I get it. It's a Latino thing. We hate solitude way more than we hate guilt, or even insanity. Also, when you owe people money, you have to talk to them. When Pinot gets her money, she uses the starched $50 bill that Conchita gave her with a sigh to buy a prepaid calling card for her cell phone at the currency exchange, and then she calls Mustang, her ex-husband (Angelika's daddy). With her angriest face, she tells him he has exactly one hour to bring the $1,000 in child support he owes before she sics her lawyer on him and gives him una paliza. The truth is, the closest thing she has to a lawyer is Raz, but because she's a beautiful dictator, she wills the truth until it starts to be true. Mustang bitches and moans; he says: Carrajo, tranquilísate. In the end, though, he says he'll stop by with the money on Friday. She nods like: That's right, bitch, you bring the money, even though she's all swagger and kinda soft in the middle. The thing is, when Pinot smiles at you, it's like sunlight filling empty rooms. And when she's mad, it's like drowning in a wet veil. I go back to my homework and listen to her as she conference- calls Bright Eyes (who is 14) and Carrie (who is 10) and tells them that Angelika is picking them up from school. Then she grabs my hand and mouths you look pretty before she calls TJ (Carrie's daddy) and asks him to stop by on Sunday to pick up his plata. He says gas prices are too fucking wack to drive all the way to Papi's house from Humboldt Park, especially for 20 sad dollars. She tells him she's making arroz con mariscos, which is basically paella for Peruvians, and then he says, Yo, I'll be there at eight with two forks, my little Fujimori. She snickers and shakes her head, but her eyes glow. After that, Pinot calls Clay (Diesel's daddy) and tells him that she needs her ceramic bowl with the incestuous carp on it, the one he'd borrowed for his indoor-man barbecue, because she's making arroz con mariscos on Sunday. He asks if he can come over, and she says, of course, honey. Come at eight. Next, Pinot calls Angelika and tells her she has to pick up Bright Eyes and Carrie at school and Jasper at daycare. And, by the way, the big family dinner on Sunday is at seven. She lies because Angelika is always an hour late to everything, from Diesel's baptism to abuelo's funeral. Pinot calls Bright Eyes again and tells her to remind Angie to pick up Jasper and not leave him there for half the frigging day like she did last week. Then Pinot calls her two part-time boyfriends. She tells Trix that she's hanging out with Eddie on Sunday. He pouts, calls her a bitch, and hangs up on her. Finally, she calls Eddie and tells him she's hanging out with Trix later because he's pouting. Eddie curses into the phone and tells her he loves her. She tells him she loves him, too, but only a little bit (which makes him love her more), and, if he wants, she'll cancel her plans with Trix to spend time with him instead. He jumps at the opportunity. She tells him to come by at eight on Sunday if he wants arroz con mariscos and ten if he just wants love. He laughs and hangs up. I can tell by the look on her face that Pinot is considering calling Eddie back, because it's not clear what time he's coming or what he wants a bite of, but she restrains herself. Having finished all her business now as she drives in her beat-up Volkswagen Rabbit with the ugly spoiler on the ass, she heads west on North Avenue and decides to pull into the parking lot of Bigass Supermercado. That's actually its name, if you can believe it. Pinot has exactly $117 in her pocket and not a single emotion to spare. I kiss her on the cheek and walk to a dirty café in the WP to get some work done for my midterms. Bartering Calories A week ago, all the way from University Village, I tried to talk Pinot into doing her grocery shopping at my co-op in Lincoln Square on my cell, but she wasn't hearing it. Helping the little guy makes me feel better about the world, because I'm conscientious (political) like that. Pinot, on the other hand, doesn't give a shit about drowning polar bears or the plight of dairy cows. Her only soft spot is the Flórez connection. She'll buy macaroni and cheese at a garage sale, wine at Family Value (which gives Papi a heart attack), and bread at a fucking gas station. To her, it's food, and sometimes a bribe for cuddling, reconciliation, and debt collection. Nada más. But, if you think about it, that's a lot of bartering for something that doesn't mean anything. A Supermarket in Little Village Pinot walks into the gigantic Mexican supermarket even though she's Peruvian and spends most of her cash to buy stuff that should cost her $150 at Jewel and $200 at Whole Foods. Among her purchases: two big bags of Jasmine rice, some ghetto saffron wands, a pouch of smoked paprika, a big bottle of fancy extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil, a large box of Maggi bouillon cubes with enough partially hydrogenated vegetable oil to clog up the arteries of a rhinoceros, and a whole shopping bag of tentacles, shrimp, cuddlefish, clams, and oyster shells. Pinot isn't a great cook, but one thing she knows how to kill (in the B-Boy sense of the word) is arroz con mariscos. With one specialty, she transforms herself from the goddess of Frozen Microwave Food to the Genius of Seafood and Rice. The truth is her dish is Peruvian cocaine-so delicious and addictive, it can fuck you up, make you lick the plate, and leave you feeling all empty inside. Investments and Derivatives On Friday, Mustang brings $500 and a bunch of flowers, which is a start. Pinot tells him he has one week to come up with the other five hundred or she's going to puncture his tires. No me jodas, she growls, her hand clawing the air. Mustang smiles faintly, then he kisses Angelika, then me. He hesitates, but finally kisses Pinot, too, on the cheek. She rubs his shoulder, says O.K., it's fine, and pushes him to the TV room, turning around to wink at me like: I'm all over this. I tell her to be nice, then I grab a daisy from the bouquet and stick it through my chignon. You look like Eve, she says. I airslap her. Now, she says, will you pirouette for me? Please? Fuck no, I say, grimacing. She pleads with her eyes like: You know I love it when you do that ballet shit. I shake my head. She growls again and pretends to claw at me. Loaves and Fishes The next day, even though she's been divorced twice now, Pinot drives to the pawnshop and buys back an oil painting of Disco Jesus in a white sequin leisure suit and platform pimp shoes that tía Esmeralda had given her when she married Mustang. Pinot is sentimental like that-we all are, really-even though Disco Jesus was clearly the first omen. Afterward, she hops in her car and drives to Target, where we talk on the phone as she buys a new water filter, white bread, creamy peanut butter, ugly apples, frozen chicken breasts, low-fat chips that no longer cause anal leakage, low-fat ice cream, SunnyD, a bag of Twizzlers, instant soup, frozen mangoes, a stack of Lean Cuisines, some new clothes for the kids, some fancy headphones for Raz, some condoms for Reese, a new Wine Bible for Papi, a hoodie for Angelika, and new Spalding tennis balls for Mal. Pinot buys some conditioner for her hair, Flintstones for the kids, and a geography board game for the family, even though we're too old (or too young) for that shit. Then she cuts the mic on her phone while she buys something secret for me, which, she explains later, is her special delivery. Then Pinot picks up Diesel, Bright Eyes, and Carrie to buy school supplies. In the car, while I'm still on the phone with her, she conference-calls Papi and tells him she'll be there bastante soon. Land Expropriation When I get to the house after my Soc. exam, Pinot and Papi are drinking wine and laughing. He flips through his new wine guide and hands me Pinot's specially delivered regalo that's been wrapped in old Chicago Tribunes. Pinot tells me to open it later. Fine, I say. Bright Eyes and Carrie, dressed in their new clothes, are in the TV room playing Monopoly with Mal against their better judgment. They're hawking him, because they know that sometimes when he gets mad, he swallows people's hotels. Papi hands me a glass tulip full of wine. It's a nice Syrah, but not so nice that you feel like you don't deserve it. After we're done with the bottle, Papi asks Pinot to lend him fifty bucks. She squints her eyes and gives me a look like Why did he spend a hundred bucks on wine if he knew he was going to hit me up afterward? I give her a look like: Because he knew he was going to hit you up afterward. She kisses me on my right eye and walks to the dining room with Papi. "I'll pay you back," he says. "You always do, Papi," she says, rubbing his back. "Where's my loot?" I ask from the other room. "On the kitchen table," they both say. I nod, but stay where I am. "Thanks, hija," he says, kissing her on the cheek. "Don't thank me," she says. "Thank Grantinto." I smile because I support the dictatorship even when I rebel against it. If you liked this so far, |