Friday, December 17, 2010

(Recommended Reads) "The Two Worlds of Franky Benítez" by Julio Ricardo Varela

Imagine Franky Benítez hiding on a subway platform in Boston and humming the song his father improvised twenty years ago outside a cinema in Santurce.

We love you, Franky.
Oh yes we do.
We love you, Franky.
We love you true.
When you’re not with me,
We’re blue.
Oh, Franky, we love you.

And as he hums, Franky Benítez enters a green trolley that cradles him back to his days of final comfort: August, 1976, the rear of a station wagon, sucking on a bottle of chocolate milk.

His abuelo drives. His mother smokes. A week had passed since the judge formally decreed his parents’ divorce, and now here was Franky Benítez, his mother and his baby sister, three passengers checking into Eastern Airlines Flight 17 nonstop to El Bronx, Nueva York...

click here to read the rest

1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Al, for linking this! Much appreciated.

    ReplyDelete