On Mami in Quarantine

Mami called me the other day to tell me that she has begun to super self isolate and not leave the basement of my sister's house. My sister lives in one of those McMansion style homes cut quickly from what used to be a swamp so its big. Bigger than my house so Mami saying she is quarantined to the basement is the equivalent of me being quarantined to my house. She still drinks wine. Which I am not sure how she gets but I imagine it is one of my nieces dropping it outside the basement door that opens to the patio. A tall goblet filled with wine and marked by a saucy beaded charm. Safe and fabulous.

"Better than being back home," said said meaning PR. There people are ordered to confine at all times and going into the Easter weekend prohibited from leaving homes at all Friday through Sunday. Save for gas or pharmacies everything else is to close. Mami said she would be afraid but the reality is she was a champ at this before. All those years drinking wine on the patio and talking on the cordless phone until the battery bleeds dry were practice. This is her Super Bowl.

The old house would have been ideal for quarantine. Her current apartment merely just suffices. But the old house with its two living rooms and front and back terraces offered multiple spaces to idle. The backyard with patchy grass and the doomed lemon tree. In a testament to the tropical heat if we wanted to garden we could just grab a shovel and go. Eggplants and corn and pigeon peas were favorites to just stick in the ground and come a week later to see shooting from the muddled clay. The alleyway between the houses where we could play wall ball or squirt water on the neighbor's freshly waxed car.

Watch ants idle in lines on the outside of the house. Let a mosquito sit on my arm until it engorged into a cartoon Christmas light bulb bug. Then squash it in a cruel move where so helpless it can't even fly. Watch a lot of TV. Clean the ever hot water of the tiny 2 gallon fish tank and the blue gourami skimming air off the surface. Walk down to the bottom of the street and peer over the steep hill where the neighborhood ended and dove into the Rio Piedras.

All acceptable to a basement.