Jubana! (15 page)

“Besides no brother,” Valerie said. “What else do you really want?”

“Normal parents?”

“Besides that.”

“I want…I want to write,” I heard myself say. It was a startling self-discovery. I'd never said it aloud. Giving it a voice made it not just real, but
really
real. For the first time, I'd let someone in on my deepest un-Latina secret. Un-Latina because we're supposed to feel that just loving a man is enough for us. It felt scary to tell Valerie, but I knew that she, a Benign WASP, was the right
person to entrust it to. “I have been writing,” I added, “but it's all over the place, everywhere.”

“What do you mean?” Valerie asked.

I slid off Valerie's lap and tugged her hand to come follow me.

My mother glanced up at us from her conversation.

“We're goin' places,” Valerie told her.

Upstairs in my bedroom, with Valerie sitting on my bed, I scrambled around collecting all the scraps I'd used to write on. Mostly they were little sheets from Papi's prescription pads. It had never occurred to me to use my black-and-white speckled school notebooks—purchased, along with all my other school supplies, at Peoples Drug Store or Drug Fair—for anything other than homework. I needed a clear division: personal writing/school-work.

“Oh God,” Valerie said, taken aback at the sight of the colony of swarming wasps who'd built a comb in the corner outside my window. They were huge, like monster yellow jackets. Periodically they'd fling themselves with a
ping
on the glass pane, thinking it wasn't there and that they could get me. Sohkehrz. I found the wasps creepily captivating. I'd tap on the window and they'd go
loco.

“I know,” I said, delighted. “They're so gross!”

“But you need to get rid of them,” Valerie said. “Wasps are destructive little bastards.”

“They don't destroy
me,”
I said, sitting next to her and placing all the Rx's on her lap. “I don't wanna hold their hand, though. You like that Beatles song? ‘Oh yeah I'll tell you something, doodoodoodoodoo, I think you'll understand…'”

“‘I wanna hold your hand!'” we sang in unison.

“‘And when I touch you I feel happy inside,” I continued. “‘It's such a feeling that my love I can't hide, I can't hide…'”

“‘I can't hiii-de!'”
we sang together loudly, laughing at our
selves. This was so much more fun than the stupid shoe shine party going on downstairs.

“You know what?” she said. “I think what you need is a diary.”

“A diary?”

“A place to keep all these in,” she said, meaning the paper pile on her lap. There was a poem about wishing for a puppy I'd name Martini (after Valerie's favorite drink), and a map I'd drawn of Cuba with tear-shaped raindrops falling down on it and stick people with upside-down U's for mad, sad frowns. I'd labeled my picture “Castro Cuntri,” with a swastika on either side of the title.

“A diary is just what's needed here,” Valerie said. “You can put it all in one safe place. Then you won't lose anything precious.”

“Anne Frank! Like in the secret annex up in this room. And the wasps can be like the Nazi bullies outside, the S.S.”

“Yeah,” Valerie said. “Only you,
señorita
in a Pucci…”

“Faux
Pucci.”

“You will have a happy ending.”

“Dios,”
I said, “is in the details.”

“Right.”

I jumped on Valerie so hard to hug her in my jubilation that I knocked both of us back on the bed. I hadn't felt this good since that moment in the Varadero sea when something beautiful in my body vibrated, awakening me.

M
y Jewish friend Holly was pale and slender and quiet, with very dark straight hair and thick bangs, dark eyes, and full lips. Holly's chain-smoking, deep-throated, redheaded New York City mom was Louise. Louise ran a drama school called Stage Studio on Connecticut Avenue at Dupont Circle in Northwest Washington. Sharing Red Hots, Smarties, and Lemonheads after school, Holly would tell me stories about her mom's rip-roaring days in New York, when she was an actress and something called “a hoofer.” I liked the sound of it. New York, I imagined, was an island as openminded and exotic and sophisticated as Cuba. Mami talked to Louise, and soon I was enrolled in Saturday afternoon drama class, right after my morning ballet.

But liking the sound of another's life and wanting to get into it yourself are two different things. The only reason I couldn't go into hiding under my bed for drama,
a new experience and therefore terrifying,
was logistical. I'd finish my two hours of ballet, Mami would pick me up, and we'd drive straight to Dupont Circle.

“Don' worry,” said Mami, aggressively tailgating the sohkehr going too slow for her taste in front of us. “Jool lohvee.”

“Like I have a choice,” I said. “Couldn't we at least have gone home to change? I'm in a leotard and ballet slippers, for God's sake. My hair's in a chignon. They'll think I'm retarded.”

“Joo know what? Eef dey do, deyr de retardeds, honey. Tell dem, ‘Fohk joo! I am a
bailarina
as well as an actress an' JOO are johs a notheengh one-deemehnshohn zero weeth notheengh else to offer een all de life.'”

“I'll quote you.”

“Please do.”

I didn't mean to the students. I meant in my diary. Valerie had given me a dreamy one (which, if it wasn't lost when we later moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, is probably tucked away somewhere in my parents' house): a stiff-backed journal covered in silk cloth in a plaid pattern of predominantly pink with black, turquoise-blue, green, yellow, violet, and red on a white background. The heavy vellum pages were all lined, and there was a brass lock on the strap, with its very own tiny old-fashioned brass key. Though I always wanted to keep some kind of record of my life, I initially hesitated defacing this treasure with my little scribbles. But Valerie said, “Oh hell, mess it up. All you want. That's what it's there for. Writing is a messy business! All the greatest writers throughout history have been messy people, everybody knows that.”

“What happens when I fill it up?”

“Call me.”

 

To my Baptist divas' parents, however, I would quote not Mami but Martin Luther King Jr. or Langston Hughes, figuring the latter's patois would be more appropriate for that given audience.
(I'd memorized Hughes's famous poem, printed on the first page of
A Raisin in the Sun,
a copy of which Alfie Brown had given me.) Here's why: The tradition at Amidon Elementary was that whenever there were birthdays, the birthday child's parents would provide cupcakes for the entire class. When it was my turn, Mami and I would go to the Safeway or Giant grocery store bakery and order a couple dozen to bring in. But kids had birthday parties at home, too; it's important to keep the sugar going and the presents flowing. So I'd be invited to my little friends' galas, and Mami and I would go out to buy me birthday clothes at Best & Co. on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest, across the street from Sidwell Friends' upper school campus. Mami picked out a dress with a dropped waist, fitted elbow-length sleeves, and a full skirt—
tafetán color champán,
of course. (Never too early to get your Jubana child into the ultimate, aka marital, groove.) We'd go to Rich's Shoes, farther up Wisconsin Avenue in Chevy Chase, over by Saks Fifth Avenue, where one of Mami's former patients was a salesman. I tried on thin-soled maroon patent leather Mary Janes with squared-off toes and a single pearl button clasp on the outer end of the thin straps that traversed the cutlets. The shoes were sleek and slim, obviously meant for a narrow-footed
princesa,
which I was not.

“They're pretty but they hurt,” I said, looking down as my medium-width feet created a bulge where there shouldn't be, thereby ruining both the line of the shoes as well as my God-given right to have shoes that fit properly.

“Hurt?” Mami said. “Hurt where?”

“Everywhere,” I told her. “They're too tight.”

“No. Deyr not. Deyr great! Ees de right size.”

“Bitch, too tight
here,”
I said, touching the bone that protruded just below my big toe.

“What ees joor point?” Mami said, taking out her wallet. “Joo
have de same feet as me. Narrow. All the Jubanas
mas finas
[most refined] have dos same feet. Jackie Fohkeengh Kennedy has dos feet, okay? An' her husband ees dead!”

“I may have to kill myself,” I said. “Or you.”

“Chee looohvs dem,” Mami told her former patient. “We'll take eet! An' also dees an' dees an' dees, too. Thank joo SO much.”

There were stacks of open shoe boxes all around us. No way any self-respecting Jubana exerts the quaint Anglo concepts of “self-control” or “restraint” when confronted with more than one pair of beautiful shoes—or beautiful anything else, for that matter. In our world,
mas es mas.
More is more.

“Somehow,” I said, picking up a gray suede Hush Puppy loafer with black crepe soles and swirling black tooling on top, “I just don't hear these calling my name.”

“Dos are for de school days,” Mami said, signing the receipt with her distinctive signature small, round, fat script and hollow circles for dotting I's and making periods. This style used to drive her Cuban professors crazy, the way being left-handed used to be considered bad or wrong in the old days. But as usual Mami persisted, and I learned to punctuate the same way myself.

“I'd rather have black leather riding boots than these gray things. When am I ever ever ever ever EVER going to get those? I've told you a thousand times.”

“Joo know when? When joo get joor own leetl horsee.”

“And when will that be, exactly?”

“When joo get joor own leetl job to pay for joor own leetl horsee an' eets own leetl barn an' de leetl black rideengh boots.”

“I'm in
elementary school,”
I reminded her. She evidently required a reminder of my world status. “It's illegal for me to work!”

“Das joor eemeegration problem, honey, not mine.”

“So glad we cleared that up.”

“Me too. Now ees time to go an' smoke an' have a leetl drin
kee. I need to relax. Chohpeengh ees exhausteengh. Motherhood ees a beech.”

“‘Shopping is exhausting.' Please. It's your favorite thing in life.”

“Dat ees so wrong. My favoreet theengh een de life is chohpeengh…a LOT.”

On the day of the given birthday party we'd get me all dressed up—I initially played along to divert Mami—and there I'd be in my
tafetán color champán
dress, opaque ivory tights, patent leather maroon flats, horrendous baby-blue cat-eyes, and long hair pulled back into a fragrant Agua de Violetas–infused ponytail, with a strip of ivory satin ribbon tied in a bow to cover the band. Mami would have the girl's gift all nicely wrapped—and I'd dive straight under the bed. Every time. Then we'd commence the same routine: Mami cursing and grabbing a stray foot or arm and dragging me into the car, the two of us yelling at each other all the way to the kid's house, Mami slamming on the breaks for pissed-off emphasis (nearly hurling us both straight into the windshield), walking up to the door, plastering abrupt fake smiles on our faces, Mami ramming me inside the house and saying buh-bye.

It would take me a few awkward minutes to acclimate to the social environs. And then I'd be fine. More than fine. After the obligatory time with the kiddies, I'd go find the more (for me) socially suitable parents, and proceed to endear myself to them.

“I looove your house!” I'd commence. “You must be really happy and proud that you live here.”

And they'd say in an aw-shucks kind of way, “Well, yes. Thank you!”

Then depending on the size and looks of the place, there'd be two alternate responses. Either (1) “You are so welcome. And I notice that there's a lot of room. So lucky. We live four to a room be
cause of our Cuban immigration problems. It's kind of hard. Black Americans have had to face so many similar things.” Or (2) “You are so welcome. And I notice how COZY it is here. Sooo cozy. It reminds me—I'm sorry, I don't mean to cry but it's so hard when I think back to this—of our beautiful tiny little home back in Cuba. You know, it wasn't much, but just having the family all together was so wonderful. And now…”

Either way I'd be smothered in parental hugs and kisses and given extra helpings of coconut cake and lemonade, two American items I adored and never had at home. As with any ice cream flavors but coffee and pistachio, whatever taste didn't compute for Mami, we simply never ate. Lemonade? Mami looked down on it. Cubans do limes,
gracias,
never lemons. Coconut cake? The closest I ever got to that at home was
flan de coco,
coconut caramel custard, which Mami made the hard-core Cuban way, with canned
coco rallado en almíbar
(grated coconut in heavy syrup), three hundred egg yolks, and a can each of condensed and evaporated milk. Hey, we started with the
café con leche
laced with eighty-seven tablespoons of
azúcar
at birth; this is nothing for us.
Dulces, pasteles,
and
postres
—sweets, pastries, and desserts—are not our island's most subtle or airy delicacies, not that Cubans have much subtlety to offer the world. As poor dead Pauline Kael said of movies, “It's got to be too much or it's not enough.” She could have been Cuban, actually. Consider our beloved
tres leches,
three-milk cake, which we co-opted from the Nicaraguans. God forbid our cakes should have just one milk, that's for anorexic amateurs or crybabies. Our sweet shortcake is soaked and layered in evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream. (The latest Miami version is
cuatro leches,
a
tres leches
with the addition of
dulce de leche,
a caramel sauce made of sugar, cream, and butter.) Or try some
turrón.
Calling the traditional holiday treat “a nutty Spanish nougat candy” is like calling
Middle East politics “untidy.” Either way, this decadent imported goodie, whose heavy reliance on ground almonds is a Moorish-Arab influence, is not for the faint of heart or diabetes-prone. The two main kinds of
turrón,
and both come in rectangular seven-ounce bars or bricks, are
jijona
(smoothly textured, hyper-rich, mega-sweet, oily, with a gritty trace of ground nuts) and
alicante
(like a stone wall of almond-studded nougat, less sweet than
jijona,
it requires a hammer and Phillips screwdriver to break into edible pieces). Cubans are really passionate about their favorite
turrón;
I myself am partial to the
jijona.
One time I bit into a jaggedly hacked
alicante
chunk and it fractured a molar.

 

So there I sat on the birthday girl's mom's or dad's lap, happily consuming my lovely light coconut cake and lemonade, with the damn party shoes kicked off the now aching, throbbing cutlets. Hey, no birthday girl ever minded that I hogged her parents. She was grateful I got them off her back so she could go off and play and do whatever she wanted. But I, an alienated and deprived political refugee child in search of Other Parents, obviously had much more important work to do than these immature, monolingual American kiddies did. So I got to it. After all, the parental grass is always greener on the other side, no matter what skin colors are involved. (I'd have glommed on to Valerie, my first choice naturally, but she lived much farther away from us than these here parents, so she wasn't as accessible. As for Latino families, there weren't any around, besides mine. You have to be realistic when you're trying to switch parents.)

“I love you
so
much,” I'd say. “I love you so much that I have a dream. Yes, I have a dream today. Want me to tell you what it is?”

Naturally they'd say yes.

“‘The Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of
a vast ocean of material prosperity,'” I'd begin, reciting key portions of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech, the one he gave on August 28, the hot summer day before Eric, my business prodigy brother, was born to shine shoes and eventually make a fortune in pigdom. We'd talked about King in school, and my teacher had handed out mimeographed copies of his entire address, certain portions of which I'd memorized, as I felt they spoke directly to me, an honorary Negro love child. Besides, in acting all you do is memorize other people's words. This was a cinch. “‘The Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile…And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.'”

I'd wait for a reaction. Usually it was wordless wonder. Then laughter.

 

Same thing happened when I walked into that drama class for the first time. Holly's mother, Louise, introduced me to the class. She was a no-nonsense dame, with pockmarked skin, a cigarette hack, and a tough demeanor. She was nice to me. She felt sorry for me and my refugee straits. I scanned the faces scanning me. Not another prepubescent in sight. (Holly never took drama, and Louise felt I'd be better suited to being placed in an adult class due to my “precocious social maturity.”) Then, just as I'd predicted to Mami, they all laughed at my ballet clothes and ballet hair and heinous baby-blue cat-eyes. Louise told them to knock it off, that I was a Cuban ballerina as well as an aspiring actress. Truly, I didn't see myself as either. The dancing and the drama were more for Mami, a vicarious way for her to overcompensate for my tragic deficits. I just wanted to get back to my room and to my beautiful new diary to fill it all up and to call Valerie like she told me to and see what would happen next.