The Closer

1

Fish and Consequences

MY COUNTRY IS A curvy strip of earth at the southern tip of Central America that doesn't look much wider than a shoelace when you see it on a map. It has 3.6 million people and one famous canal that meanders for forty-eight miles and connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a shortcut that saves the world's ships about eight thousand miles of sea travel. Costa Rica is the neighbor to the north, and Colombia to the south. Panama isn't just a place where two oceans meet; it's a place where two continents, North and South America, meet. For a nation that is a little smaller than South Carolina, it has a lot going on.

Puerto Caimito is about twenty-five miles from the canal, on the Pacific side of Panama, and about fifty miles from a volcano called El Valle. It is a village put on the map by fish. If you aren't an actual fisherman in Puerto Caimito, then you probably work at the ship repair shop or the fish processing plant, or take the fish to market. Just about everybody is connected to fish, and everybody eats it.

I ate fish every day, and that's what made me strong, my father says. His father lived to be ninety-six, and my father says he is going to go longer than that, and I wouldn't bet against him.

My father comes from tough farmer stock. One of fifteen children, he was born and raised in the province of Darién, near the Colombian border, and after he left school following sixth grade, he spent eleven hours a day, six days a week, working on the small family farm. They grew rice and corn and plantains, and an assortment of vegetables, and did all of it without a tractor or any other sort of power equipment. Shovels, hoes, rakes—that was the high-end gear, tools for the well-to-do farmers. My father and his family used a machete to cut the brush and the weeds, and sharp sticks to till the soil. Each week they would take their goods to the market, an all-day trip in a boat powered by a pole in the water, gondola-style.

It was a hard, even brutal, life, and by the time my father was a teenager, several of his brothers had already moved to Puerto Caimito, because fishing was considered a more prosperous line of work. At age seventeen, my father joined them. He started out by getting whatever fishing odd job he could, and he was still trying to get to know his way around when he went for a walk one day and came upon a girl who was washing dishes and singing in front of her home. The girl, one of eight children herself, was fifteen years old, and my father will tell you that he fell in love with her in that instant. Her name was Delia Giron, and two years after she stole my father's heart with her singing, she gave birth to a baby girl.

Two years after that, she gave birth to me.

My own life in Puerto Caimito is simple, and smelly. For my first seventeen years we live on the shore of the Gulf of Panama, in a dingy cement home on a dirt road, two rooms with a beat-up tin roof, just a long throw from the fish-meal plant. There's a whole lineup of such homes in the village, most of them occupied by my aunts and uncles and cousins. When my parents move in, the home has no electricity or running water; there is an outhouse in the back and a well for water a short walk away. Light comes from a kerosene lamp. By the time I come along in 1969, we have electricity and water, but the outhouse is still the only bathroom option. Steps away is a big gritty beach strewn with broken shells, pieces of old boats, and fragments of discarded net. It is not a beach you see in a Corona commercial or a tourist book—no turquoise water or tropical trees or sand as soft as talcum powder. It's a working place, a storm-battered boat here, half a dead fish there, the humble soul of a village where people are trying to eke out a living from the sea.

This shore is where I become an athlete. At low tide it is the best playing field in Puerto Caimito, flat and big, a place where you could run forever on the mudflats. I play soccer here. I play baseball here. I play all kinds of games, really, and my favorite is the one where we get a piece of cardboard and cut three holes in it, and string it up between two sticks in the sand. Then we stand back about twenty or thirty feet and fire rocks and see who can get the most rocks through the holes.

My aim is good.

We learn to be creative on the shore, too. We have no bat, so we find an old piece of wood or saw off a branch of a tree. We have no ball, so we wrap up a rock with fishnet and tape. We have no baseball gloves, but it's amazing what kind of pocket you can make out of a cardboard box or a six-pack carton, if you know how to fold it.

This is how I play ball for almost all of my childhood; I don't put a real glove on my hand until I am sixteen years old. My father buys it for me, secondhand, right before we move away from the shore, up the hill about a third of a mile, to another cement block home but in a quieter location, without so much drinking or as many men hanging around the shore all hours of the night.

Neither of our homes has a telephone (I don't have a phone until I move to the States), or a single amenity to speak of. There is a plantain tree hanging over the roof. I don't have my own tricycle or bicycle or any kind of cycle, and really, I have only one toy for most of my early childhood. It's called Mr. Big Mouth. You touch his belly and his big mouth opens and you put a little chip in it. I love touching Mr. Big Mouth's belly. I don't feel deprived, because I am not deprived. It's just the way life is.

I have everything I need.

My favorite time of year is Christmas. As the oldest boy in the family, my job is to get our Christmas tree. I do it every year, and know just where to go. Behind our house is a manglar—a swamp—that has a lot of little trees growing in the muck. You aren't going to find a Fraser fir in the swamp, of course, so the next best thing is to scope around for a decent three- or four-foot tree, yank it out, and bring it home. After it dries out, we wrap the branches in cloth so it looks festive, not like some sad little swamp bush. Santa Claus doesn't make it to our part of Panama—maybe because there are so few chimneys—but Christmas Eve is still magical, with lights twinkling and Christmas songs playing and all the anticipation of the big day. For years I get the same present—a new cap gun. I am happy to get it. I like the pop-pop-pop sound it makes. I like firing it when I am watching my favorite television show, The Lone Ranger, about a do-gooder in a black mask, though the truth is that I like his companion, Tonto, even better. Tonto is smart and loyal and so humble that he doesn't care about getting credit. You can't find a more trustworthy person in the whole Wild West than Tonto. I think that is pretty cool.

I discover early on that I love to run, and I love to be in motion. If I am not playing soccer or baseball, I am playing basketball. When the tide is in and the beach shrinks, we switch to El Tamarindo, just far enough off the shore to let us play without being ankle-deep in mud. Whatever I play, I want to win badly. When a baseball victory is about to turn into a defeat, I throw the ball into the Gulf of Panama and declare the game a tie. It doesn't win me any sportsmanship awards, but it does prevent an outright loss.

If the tide is in, I do the next best thing to sports and hunt iguanas. They are everywhere in Panama, green and spiky and leathery, six-foot lizards that lounge on branches and hide in the vegetation. I know exactly where to find them, and how to hunt them. All I need is a rock and my right arm. Iguanas are very fast when they get going, and they are amazingly resilient; they can fall forty or fifty feet out of a tree and run away as if all they've fallen off is a park bench. Mostly, though, iguanas stay stationary on the upper branches of trees, and that makes them an easy target. Most times I'd have a direct hit on the first try, then pick it up and sling it over my shoulder to bring home for dinner. Iguana—chicken of the trees, they call it—isn't as much of a staple as coconut rice or tamales, and you aren't going to find fast-food restaurants selling iguana nuggets, but it's one of my favorite dishes.

I never stop and figure out how many relatives I have in Puerto Caimito, but all I can tell you is that my cousins might outnumber the iguanas. It makes for an instant stash of playmates when you want to start up a game, and a total small-town feel, where, if everybody doesn't know your name and what you are up to, they at least know somebody who does. It's a great comfort to grow up this way, surrounded by friendly faces and people who are looking out for you, the only trouble being that it is almost impossible to do anything without three-quarters of the town knowing about it.

This is not always a good thing when you have a father like my father.

My father has taught me so much in my life. He's not big on speeches and parental declarations, but his actions have imparted many lessons that have shaped who I am. A strong sense of discipline, doing things the right way, sticking with a task no matter how difficult it is—he models all of these things for me. He is a great provider, getting up at 5:00 a.m. on Monday and staying out on his fishing boat all week, not coming home until Saturday, spending twelve- or fourteen-hour days (or longer) hauling and dragging the nets, a man of the sea right to the core. I'm sure there were times he didn't feel like going out, but I don't remember him ever taking time off.

Vacation? Weekend getaways? Sick days?

No such thing. He is a fisherman. Fishermen fish. He takes care of business, day after day after day.

You don't appreciate all these things so much when you are a child, though. You are too busy kicking soccer balls or feeding Mr. Big Mouth, or trying to pry the family bicycle away from your sister. As a kid, mostly what I associate with my father is fear. He is a big, strong man. I am a small, skinny kid. He has a barrel chest. I am all rib cage. He walks in the house on Saturday, and the stench of fish is with him, and I immediately look at his hands.

They are thick, powerful, workingman's hands.

They are hands that petrify me.

They are hands that hit me. Hands that have me walking on seashells, because you never know when they are going to strike. As the oldest boy, I am his favorite target. Sometimes I feel as if I am my father's personal piñata. I don't keep track, but I get the beatings often. Before leaving for the boat, my father gives me a list of things to do around the house and yard. They don't always get done. And when they don't, it is not pretty.

Pili, why did you not do what I asked? my father demands.

I did most of it, I say.

You did not do everything I asked you to do.

I'm sorry, Papa. I will do everything next time, I promise.

But there is no slack with my father.

Bend over, he says.

They are the words I dread more than any others. A close second is when my mother says: Wait until your father gets home.

When he does get home and gets a less than favorable report, there is rarely a delay. My father's thick hands go to his waist and unfix his belt. And then it begins, three or four hard lashes to my backside, sometimes more. I try not to cry, but sometimes I do.

I get the belt for a variety of offenses. Break something playing ball? Misbehave in school? Get into some mischief with my sister and brothers? It doesn't take much. One time I pass a friend of my father's in town. I don't really know him, but he looks a little familiar. Or maybe my mind is somewhere else, I don't know. Anyway, I don't wave or say hello to this man. He mentions it to my father the next time he sees him.

My father comes and finds me.

Pili, why did you disrespect my friend? He said he saw you and you said nothing. You didn't even wave hello.

I wasn't sure who it was, I say.

That doesn't cut it. The belt comes off. It is the last time I do not say hello to one of my father's friends. Now I wave to everybody. I also develop a key pain-prevention technique. When I know I've messed up and that the belt is coming, I put on two pairs of pants.

Sometimes I put on three pairs of pants. You need all the cushioning you can get against the belt.

The worst beating I get comes late one February, during Panama's Carnival celebration. There is a big dance in town to commemorate the occasion. I am fourteen years old. My parents have opened a small bodega out of our house to make a little extra money selling fruit and groceries and sundries. They head to Carnival and leave my sister, Delia, and me to mind the store. We stay open for a while, but business is slow, with everybody at the celebration. It doesn't make any sense to stay open when there are no customers.

It makes even less sense knowing there is all this fun and dancing going on and I am not part of it.

Let's close up and go to the dance, I say to my sister.

We can't do that. Do you know how much trouble we'll get in? she says.

I know, but it's Carnival. It's the biggest party of the year. And you might as well come with me, because even if you stay behind you're going to get in trouble for letting me leave.

My sister isn't so sure of my reasoning, but we change our clothes and go to the dance. The merengue music is blasting. The spirit is festive, the dance floor packed. It is all I had imagined it would be. I am out there in the middle of it before you can bang a conga drum, feet flying to the beat, having the best time.

And then I feel a hand on the back of my neck.

A big, strong hand. A hand that feels like a clamp.

If I'd seen it coming, I would've run, but I had no chance. I do not even turn around. There is no need. Only one person in the world grabs me this way. My father is right in my ear, hollering over the music.

What are you doing here? Weren't you told to work in the store?

I do not talk about the slow traffic in the store. I don't offer any defense whatsoever, because there is none. I have disobeyed him. I figured this moment would be coming. I'd just hoped to get a little more dancing in before it did. My father has been drinking, and that makes me even more apprehensive. He is always rougher after he's had something to drink.

He clamps down on my neck ever harder, pushes me forward. He rams my head into a pillar, a direct hit. A big bump pops up on my forehead. A surge of anger courses through me. Part of me wants to lash out at him, punch him, but I know better than to do anything or say anything. It would only make things worse. Much worse. I do not go back on the dance floor. I know the belt will be coming later, when my father returns from the party.

Our house is just five hundred yards away. I walk home through the tropical darkness, sad and hurt.

I think, Why does my father have to be so harsh? Why can't he understand what it's like to be a kid and how much it meant to me to be at Carnival? Why does he want to hurt me all the time?

I know it's a parent's job to instill discipline and teach kids right from wrong. But is this how it has to be done? I don't know. I am confused. Maybe it's in the genes. My father's brother—my uncle Miguel—lives next door to us. He is very tough on his kids, too. He works on the boat with my father. I am very close to him and his family, and one time I decide to ask my uncle straight-out.

No way would I ever think to ask my father.

Why are you and my father so rough on your children? Do you want us to live in fear of you?

My uncle thinks about it for a few moments. I can tell he wants to answer the question the right way. He seems more reachable to me than my father.

I know that we are tough guys, your father and I. But if you think we are tough, you should've seen how our father was with us, he says. This is not an excuse, but this is all we know, because it is how we were raised. We left home as soon as we could—to get away from it. He doesn't give me many details, but I know they lived inland, in a farming area, and they practically had to flee, things were so bad.

I think about my father as a kid, being afraid of his own father, going out on his own when he wasn't much more than a boy. It is hard to imagine him as small and vulnerable, but listening to my uncle helps. I never doubt that my father is trying to help me find my way in life by hitting me. I don't doubt that he loves me, even though those are not words that he says when I am a child. It's just so… so… hard all the time. I walk away from my uncle Miguel feeling compassion for my father, feeling love for my father. I know how much he cares, how much he is trying to teach us what we need to be a success in life. Even so, I know one thing.

When I have children, I will discipline them and I will teach them, but if I do nothing else, I am going to do it in every other way than through outright fear. And I will pray that, with their own children, they are even better parents than me.