Two of them involve his fists. My cousin was a short man. He was, however, like everyone else on the Mexican side of my family, built like a brick two-flat. Maximilian was heavy and hard. He was a cannonball, the way my grandmother on my mother’s side was a cannonball, the way my uncle Blas was a cannonball. They were all skull, they were impossible to hug, but they were warm-blooded, steaming, like just standing next to them could get you through a winter’s day. My mother was like this. I miss her terribly. But Max, my cousin, Maximilian, was young. He was sixteen or so when my memories of him first begin. It was at his sister Irene’s cotillion, in the basement of Saint Procopius church on Eighteenth Street and Allport. I don’t know much about the planning. I was eight years old. But I know my sister, Delia, stood up in it. She was a dama, and my cousin on my father’s side, Little David, was her chambelán. They were off doing their own thing, dancing, waltzing, the way they had been practicing for weeks, my sister constantly fitting and refitting her dress, me calling her Miss Piggy because she was chubby and more queda than the rest of us darkies.
