Ernesto’s
My mom says it hasn’t really changed much, and my dad agrees. “Course, this didn’t use’ to be here.” He gestures to the laminated menus that look like they’ve been made on Microsoft Paint. I’m ten, so I don’t really care, I’m too enraptured with the green iguanas scurrying in and out of the windowless restaurant. Well. Window glass-less. The building is covered in bright white paint with little red accents everywhere, one wall, four pillars, the roof. There’s a swirly red name painted on the side. Ernesto’s. “Your mother and I used to come here all the time,” he says, and sit around a plastic table in plastic chairs and eat possibly the best fajitas I’ve ever had in my life.
But again, I’m only ten, so what do I know?
Cozumel itself is an island that exists perpetually in the past and present to me. There’s the reality, the things I can see, like the sweeping ocean views out the back window of the restaurant or the sticky chair or even the warming familiarity of seeing that sign thirteen years later when I go back. Then there’s the illusions, the smokey images I try to see from my parent’s time here in their twenties. The ghosts of their past selves haunt the whole island, but it’s in Ernesto’s where ten year old me gets to really meet them. “I remember when they got the TV in here, can you?” My mom asks as she piles heaping slices of steak into a floured tortilla, and my dad nods, gesturing to the back patio.
“Don’t really remember it being that big,”
“Sure, we used to pull the dive boat up and sit there in our wetsuits.”
That image seems to bring the memory back, and he nods and keeps eating.
Cozumel, as an island, is small. In theory, you could drive its perimeter in a total of four hours, maybe five if you stop for pictures. San Miguel, the main city and the city where Ernesto’s is, is really the only city. Cement block buildings stand along the highways like a breaker wall between the ocean and the town. I am only ten, so I didn’t realize any of this at the time, too distracted by the green iguanas and tortillas and the very inviting beach, but I am sitting in a spot occupied by many versions of myself. But I am only ten, so instead I drink a strawberry soda and watch the waves roll in as the sun starts to hang low in the sky, counting down the hours until I can splash on the shore.
