Mi Vickicito

Host Julia Longoria signs off from Unexplainable with one final question: Why does her grandma love Vicks VapoRub so much? A version of this episode originally aired on WNYC’s ⁠Only Human⁠ podcast. For more, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable It’s a great place to sign up for our newsletter, view show transcripts, and read more about the topics on our show. Also, email us! [email protected] We read every email. Support Unexplainable by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Noam Hassenfeld?

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• 0:39Speaker 01

  I'm Anna Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Chloé Maill. We talk all about her taking on the top job at Vogue, finding her personal style, and her favorite lunch order in the iconic Conde Nast cafeteria. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Hello, Unexplainable listeners. Julia Longoria here, one of your co-hosts. And I'm here with you to share a piece of news, which is that this will be my very last episode with Unexplainable, at least for now. Who knows what turns life takes? And to say goodbye, I wanted to share with you one of the very first radio stories that I ever made, because at the center of it is an unexplainable phenomenon, which is, why does my grandma and so many people in the world put Vicks Vapor Rub on everything?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  I worked on this story with a reporter named Kenny Malone for a show from WNYC called Only Human.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  My grandma just turned 80, but I'd be willing to bet my grandma's 80 is not the 80 you're thinking. This is a woman who, in one year, underwent knee replacement surgery and took trips to China, New York City, and Paris. The woman defies expectation. One minute, she's designing high-fashion dresses; the next, she's starting spitball fights at dinner. Irreverent, intelligent, it's like every week, she's telling us about a different novel she's reading, in English, her non-native tongue. All of this is to say, my grandmother is no fool. That's why I can't wrap my head around how or why the woman I've just described worships

• 2:54Speaker 02

  a little blue jar of eucalyptus jelly. Of course, as a little kid, there was no reason to think Grandma's love affair with Vicks was unusual, but in hindsight, there were some pretty obvious clues. There was a time I remember walking into her bedroom and seeing four, five, maybe even six jars strewn on her vanity. There's the fact that Grandma doesn't actually call Vicks "Vicks." She only talks about her beloved "Vicky Sito." She adds the "ito" as a mini-love letter to the stuff. And then, maybe strangest of all, was that when she would stay at our house and take

• 3:35Speaker 02

  a shower, the bathroom would always reek of Vicks VapoRub afterwards, whether or not she was sick. Now that I'm older, it occurs to me that actually, I have a lot of questions about Grandma and her Vicky Sito. So I sent an audio recorded to my sister Paula, who was with our Grandma, and I called.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  Nobody pick up the phone!

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Just a few things to know before you hear this. Number one, my grandma is from Cuba, so I'm gonna kind of translate for her as she speaks in Spanglish. Number two, she's got a little bit of a low voice. And number three, before I could even ask her why she loves Vicks so much, she said something that sent the conversation totally off the rails.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Hello?

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Grandma?

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is Kama, Julia.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Hi. Okay, yo quería hablar contigo sobre Vickicito.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Oh, Vickicito. Oh, yeah, yeah. Every time that you have like a sore throat or feel like you are coughing, yo decía, no, no, si tienen toma hay que darle Vickicito. Es bueno para todo, es bueno para todo.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Right there. Vickicito es bueno para todo. Vicks is good for everything. So I'm like, wait, what do you mean everything?

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Para el pecho es lo mejor.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  So first she's like, you could put it on your chest because it'll help with your cough.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  That makes sense, that's on the label. Then she's like, you can use it on your knee, if you have a sore knee. And that one's also on the label. But then, things start getting weird.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  ¿Cómo le dicen eso? Fungus?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  She says Vicks on your toenails will cure your toenail fungus? And she says she puts it on her fingernails to stop them from breaking. You think it makes your nails stronger? And then, this is just insane to me.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Grandma, you used to put it in your hair?

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, before you got your, before you shampoo your hair.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Vicks Vaporub as Hair Conditioner. So I asked her, is this why the shower smelled like Vicks? And she said, oh no, I'm sure I'd stopped using Vicks as hair conditioner by then. It was probably because I was using it as hand and foot cream.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  So the story of how my grandma ended up using Vicks literally from head to toe turns out to be a story about Cuba. Or at least, that's what she hinted at in our conversation.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  What's your earliest memory of Vicks?

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh. I think I grew up with that when I was very little.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  She said she grew up with it when she was very little, which was surprising to me because Grandma doesn't talk much about her past, about her childhood, her life in Cuba. She was 30 when she and her family left in 1967. And I feel like Cuba, for her, it's like when we're watching TV together. She'll always pick Everybody Loves Raymond over any HBO drama I want to watch. "Ay," she goes, "why are we going to choose to watch ugly things? Life has enough ugly things already." I'm pretty sure for her, Cuba is one of those ugly things. Do you think, I mean, I wonder, like, when the embargo started, did you still get Vicks?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  She's like, "Well, sometimes it was there and sometimes it wasn't. If it was there, I used it."

• 7:14Speaker 02

  So I ask her, "There was a time when there wasn't Vicks?" And she says, "That's right, but then it came back. I don't remember very well, after the Bay of Pigs."

• 7:25Speaker 02

  I know that may not sound like much, but I'm almost positive that that was the first time my grandma ever said the words "Bay of Pigs" out loud to me. That's when the US tried to invade Cuba in 1961. She was still living there at that point. And we've never talked about that, or the revolution, or her childhood. Nothing. In college, I became obsessed with Cuba. I did my thesis on Cuban bloggers. And last year, I went to Cuba for the first time. I haven't really talked to Grandma about any of this. And it's kind of weird, because I think of us as close. But I guess I don't know much about her as the person, pre-Grandma. The whole thing is making me kind of nervous.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  All four of my grandparents fled Cuba, and Grandma is the last one still living. I've never known how to start the Cuba conversation. If Vicks Vaporub is a foot in the door, it's better than nothing.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  So I asked her if she'd be willing to sit down in person and talk more about this VIX stuff and maybe VIX in Cuba. I don't know. We should do that when I'm, when we're together again.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  Okay, maybe another day.

• 8:34Speaker 05

  Okay. Grandma was scheduled to come visit me in New York in a few months, and she promised she'd sit down with me and tell me the rest of the story. That's after the break.

• 8:56Speaker 05

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• 11:44Speaker 06

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• 12:19Speaker 02

  You sit on it? And it smells like potpourri, but it also smells like grandma? Before sitting down with grandma, there was something she'd mentioned in our first conversation that I needed to understand. She seemed to imply that there was some connection between Vicks Vaporub and the Bay of Pigs invasion?

• 12:37Speaker 07

  The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Just a little refresher. In 1961, the United States tried to overthrow Fidel Castro. This was about two years after he'd taken power. The US trained a small militia of Cuban exiles to invade their former country and oust Castro.

• 12:56Speaker 07

  And the rebellion against the red-tinted dictator was on.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  The invasion failed spectacularly, and Castro captured around 1,100 people. Have you heard much from your husband since he's been in prison? I'm too much nervous. They stayed in Cuba's prisons for almost two years. And just before Christmas in 1962, the US and Cuba finalized a deal to free the majority of the prisoners.

• 13:20Speaker 07

  What do you think about the release of all your companions?

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Well, I think this is a wonderful thing.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  The reason this is important to our story is that the US paid an unusual ransom for the hostages. It wasn't cash. The prisoners were exchanged for about $50 million in food and medical supplies. Everything from Listerine to aspirin to surgical equipment. And as best we can tell, in that ransom was a whole lot of Vicks Vaporub.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  You could sit there.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  Are we talking about Vic? Vickicito?

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Yes, we're talking about Vickicito. So it's two months later, grandma's in New York, and we're sitting down in a studio at WNYC.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  I think I got nervous.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  You shouldn't be nervous. This is like, I know it's weird, but it's like we're sitting at home, whatever. We just never do this. I've always thought of grandma as this fearless matriarch who started a new life in a new country as a young woman. It's so strange to see her nervous like this. And do you remember, what's like your first memory of Vicks?

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Oh, when I was very young, and then I got cold. My mother, she used to put Vic, and then you have to... Be in your room.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  And do you remember what your room looked like?

• 14:36Speaker 04

  My bedroom set was pink with flower painted and I have my pink cupboard, you know, for my bed. I have a good life when I was young.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Grandma grew up near one of the most beautiful beach towns in Cuba called Baradero. She and my grandpa met on the beach. He was a friend of her big brother's. I have this black and white picture hanging in my room of the two of them sitting on the sand. Grandma's got one of those 50s halter bathing suits with little buttons down the middle. Abuelo's got his hair slicked back. They're both smiling, this stylish, effortless smile. She was 21 years old when the revolution came.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, that was unbelievable what happened there. Let me tell you, unbelievable. But that is another point of.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Well, what do you mean?

• 15:26Speaker 04

  It's another point because with the revolutions and all that, you know, then in Cuba, it was really hard. It was a very hard time.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  What do you mean? Like, what do you remember when you say it was a hard time?

• 15:37Speaker 04

  It's really scary. Right away, everything disappear. You go to the groceries and it was nothing. It was a very, very hard time.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  And then when, when all those medical supplies came in.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  Oh, my God, people get crazy. You have to see the lines on the pharmacy to people get.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Was that when you started using Vicks in different ways, like for conditioner and stuff like that?

• 16:01Speaker 04

  Yes, you know, because I remember when Castor two power in Cuba that you can't find any hand cream or anything. Then I find out that when I use it for my kids and I put it in my hand, oh, my skin, you know, my hands look soft. I thought, oh, this is good for the skin too.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  And then what else? After that, like, how did you get to, like, put it on?

• 16:22Speaker 04

  And then, you know, I remember when I was in Cuba, the soap there was very hard. And then the water wasn't good. And then my nails started to break a lot and, you know, I said, oh, gosh, my hands are big and not pretty, but I like to have my, my nails to look nice. Then I started to use that on my nails. I said, oh, my God, my nails look much better.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Grandma, I don't think your hands are ugly. Like, I actually think about your hands as like, I want to have beautiful hands like Grandma. I always think that, for real.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  I don't know. I compare my hands with my friends. I said, oh, my God, my hands are so big.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  I do that same thing, actually. And then you said you, did you use it for fungus? Was that, when was the first time?

• 17:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have fungus and then I nodded and they start to get better.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  So it was, but it was on your toes, right? Like, how did you get from the point of like?

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Well, it's good for your hands and it has to be good for your feet, too. So I thought to use.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  It was like the worst period of your life when you were using Vicks in all of these crazy ways. If that were me, like, it would bring back horrible memories and I might like never want to see it again, right?

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  But you embrace it now.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, because that always made me feel good. When I was sick, I mean, like I said, it was working for me. So even in hard times, I have a lot of that.

• 18:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  So, hold on, I can't be crying in this part.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Take me. Smell me.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  When I get one with a Vicks, I am transported back to my room at grandma's house. I see my pink and teal bedspread. I hear grandma opening the door to say good morning and sing me Las Mañanitas loudly and off tune. I laugh and throw pillows at her. She throws them right back at me. Vicks takes me to my origins, a place of comfort and silliness and joy.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I never thought about where Vicky Cito must transport grandma. I always figured her obsession with an American product must be another way she dissimilated and left her past behind. All this time, the stuff has been bringing her back to her own beginnings, to her own pink room, the place where she learned what comfort is.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  When I was going back and listening to the tape, I found this one wonderful moment. It happened when I had to step out of the studio for a second, and I left Grandma by herself. Hold on one second. Let me just... I'll be right back.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  While I stepped out, Grandma picked up a little container of Vicks I had in the studio. She unscrewed the lid and just enjoyed the smell for a while.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I love these.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  It's hard to hear, but Grandma just said, "I love this." Oh, I love these.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  This episode was produced by Kenny Malone and me, Julia Longoria, with help from Gillian Weinberger. It was edited by Ben Adair. Special thanks to Jim Ratzenberger, Ashley Kaufman, and the Greensboro History Museum. Some of the archival audio you heard in this episode comes from the Lynn and Louis Wolfson Florida Moving Image Archives. The Unexplainable team includes Jorge Just, Joanna Solotaroff, Meredith Hadenot, Bird Pinkerton, Noam Hasenfeld, Sally Helm, Amy Padula, and Christian Ayala. If you have thoughts to share with us, we are at [email protected]. And if you'd like to support this show and the journalism that Vox does, we would love it if you would become a member. It's easy to do.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Just go to vox.com/members. You'll get full access to all of Vox's journalism. And for those of you who have emailed to let us know that you signed up because of Unexplainable, thank you. It makes a huge difference. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back soon with another episode.