Pink Boots and a Machete (3 page)

 

The majority of the more than two million Cuban exiles in the United States live in or around Miami. So, though I was born and raised in Miami, I might as well have called Cuba my motherland. Only Spanish was spoken at the house, as neither my mother nor Mima spoke a word of English. I didn't learn to speak English until I was five years old and had entered the American school system. To this day, when I'm asked my nationality, my immediate response is “Cuban.” That response nearly got me arrested in Mexico, when officials thought I must be presenting them with a fake passport. But that's how strong my Cuban roots grow.

It wasn't always the case. Like most kids, I disliked anything that made me different. Not knowing a word of English at the age of five was a nightmare. As a little girl, I thought my Cuban roots were a hindrance. I'd have given anything to be named Jennifer or Beth, something other than the very Spanish and weird-sounding name bestowed on me (which no one could pronounce). I would shudder when my mom started speaking her foreign tongue in front of my friends.

My upbringing was fit for a princess, a Cuban princess,
complete with homemade frilly dresses that my grandmother sewed and more dolls than I could have ever hoped for. But to my mom's dismay, I would get home from school and instantly rip the dresses off, opting for shorts and tees. I often thought I would have made the perfect son. My interests all involved the outdoors—climbing trees, catching lizards, and going fishing. To feed my girlie side, Mami, Ica, and Mima countered with pink dresses, ballet, and piano.

Fortunately for them, growing up in a big city, I didn't have too many opportunities to experience wildlife in the backwoods. But we did spend lots of time on the beach, and while most kids were playing in the surf, I would wander off with a net, collecting anything unlucky enough to swim into it. Occasionally, I was swift enough to catch a hermit crab scurrying into a sandy hole. I spent hours observing the birds hunting for meals, and many times supplied the bread from my ham and cheese sandwich.

Despite not supporting my desire for merit badges and sleeping in the great outdoors, my mom did tolerate and even encourage my love of animals. I had a lot of pets as a kid. The family room was lined with birdcages; tanks of fish quickly took over the rest of the house.

Our house was basically a zoo, and I considered charging admission to support my animal habit. The menagerie included several dogs of various colors, shapes, and sizes; cats abandoned by neighbors; rabbits; hamsters; fish (both saltwater and fresh); birds; and even a chicken named Maggie, an Easter present. She came to me as a chick small enough to fit
in a teacup and quickly grew to be my favorite pet. Despite county zoning laws against chickens, my otherwise law-abiding grandfather, Pipo, built her a huge, wire-mesh cage. I pretended, or perhaps really believed, I was a farmer. I still have memories of throwing on overalls and getting ready to feed my chicken. In the mornings I would collect the eggs that Maggie had left for us and then go in for breakfast. It would be years before I realized those eggs had been planted by Mima. Such was the life of a Miami farmer.

My menagerie grew exponentially when I became old enough to walk home from school. Growing up, I thought myself a dog whisperer. If there was a stray dog within a two-block radius, it found me and followed me home. Once there, it became part of the extended family. But as much as I loved my pets and capturing bugs and lizards, it was mostly the freedom of animals I reveled in. Butterflies were of huge interest simply because they seemed to embody more freedom than any other creature, with their aimless, carefree fluttering. My interest led to a butterfly garden that enraptured my mom and me each morning over our cafés con leche. To this day, I am mesmerized by the beauty of butterflies, and my garden is full of the kinds of flowers that attract them.

Unbeknownst to my mom (Mima knew), I kept snails, worms, and an array of creepy-crawlies under my bed. Technically, it was our bed: mine, the snails', the worms', and my mom's. It was a small house, so I had to share a room with my mom, and my secret was safe until she accidentally freed them while cleaning under the bed. The memory of her shriek
still sends chills down my spine. She unequivocally put her foot down when I wanted to leave the bedroom windows open with lights on to attract moths.

In the end, it was a turtle that got me into the worst trouble. My fascination with turtles began not by the water but on my front porch. One day, there sat a turtle no bigger than a softball. My mom agreed that I could keep it after much whining and wheedling from me, skills I mastered to talk her into every animal I wanted. My plastic pool became the perfect island home for the turtle. I loved watching it swim, its little legs pedaling like crazy. So I named it Bicicleta. It quickly grew, and in hurricane season we would transfer it to our bathtub for protection. During one of those bathtub transfers it refused to let go of my grandmother's finger. I had made my first personal scientific discovery: a snapping turtle!

After that, my mom and Mima insisted Bicicleta be returned to a nearby canal, its likely original home. With tears in my eyes, I let it go. It was my first heartbreak. Mom had suggested I paint a little pink dot on its shell so I could spot it in the future, but I never expected to see it again. Fast-forward several years, and you can imagine the shock when I once again found Bicicleta, with its perfect pink dot, sitting on my front porch. I don't know how it found its way back home from the canal. Or how it had gotten across a very busy street that even I wasn't allowed to cross. I returned Bicicleta to the canal once again, satisfied that it knew the way if ever it wanted to visit.

Eventually, I got over the turtle. In fact, the turtle was the
least of my future heartbreaks. But it taught me two life lessons: “What is meant to be will be,” and “If you set something you love free, if it's yours, it will come back to you.”

Having three mothers with Cuban tempers wasn't easy. The fiery temper of a Cuban woman may be a stereotype, but it is also a reality. However, my collective mothers instilled in me a boundless resilience, confidence, and strength. Little did I know that the strength these women possessed, that allowed them to leave their own country, would be essential for me in my future calling. Then there was the daily diet they fed me of Cuban rice and beans: For months at a time in the field, it would be the food I'd eat every day.

 

My mom is a very sharp woman. She graduated at the top of her class in Havana and had been on her way to medical school, but the only job she could get on arriving in Miami was at Burger King, sweeping floors. Adding insult to injury, BK, a fast-food giant in the country of freedom, justice, and workers' rights, paid her 90 cents an hour under the table, even less than minimum wage at the time. Talk about a whopper.

After she was granted political asylum in the U.S., my mom still hoped one day to go to medical school. But with a language deficit and a family to support, that dream would have to wait. Instead, she worked so that her only sister, who was five years younger, could go to nursing school. My mom saved whatever pennies remained after food and rent to replace the piano her sister had left in Cuba. Ironically, the piano my mom worked so hard to buy would become the bane of my exis
tence, the one I was compelled to practice on. Though it has long been deemed untunable, that piano still sits in Aunt Ica's house like a piece of furniture.

Self-sacrifice is a very Cuban trait. Everyone pitches in for their loved ones. In 1961, when Castro proclaimed Cuba a communist state, my Uncle Pedro, who had just been selected to play professional baseball, fought against the revolution, making himself a target. But it was not his fight alone. My grandfather's younger brother, Gonzalo, risked his life to hide Pedro in his produce truck and drive him to the Colombian embassy in Havana to seek political asylum. The Colombian ambassador personally told Pedro that the regime would tolerate his taking refuge in the embassy but under no circumstances would allow him to leave the island. Still, the ambassador offered to help him escape by allowing my great uncle Gonzalo's produce truck onto embassy grounds. With Pedro hiding inside a crate in the back, my great uncle headed for Varadero Beach, where a boat would whisk Pedro to Florida. Armed militia stopped them on the way but luckily never checked the contents of the fruit and vegetable crates. The penalty would have been death for both.

My grandmother, who was a schoolteacher in Cuba, also endured her share of heartache. Among the fear tactics employed by Castro's regime, she was made to “volunteer” to cut sugarcane, not much different than forced labor. Her oldest child, my tio Nene, was jailed for spending three months vacationing in the U.S., which to the regime made him a suspected CIA agent. He was 17.

When they arrived to arrest him, my mother asked one of the soldiers, who had been a longtime family friend, how he could do that. The soldier responded, “If my own father had to be executed for the purposes of the regime, I would put the bullet in him.” Those words would haunt her for many years.

Regular incarcerations ensued, completely at random. In 1961 there was an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Castro government by a U.S.-trained force of Cuban exiles supported by the U.S. military, famously known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. During the invasion, Castro ordered that all suspected dissenters, my grandfather and Tio Nene among them, be picked up and jailed to keep them from joining.

The prisons were so crowded that my grandfather described having to sleep in turns, sometimes standing up. Executions were brutal and not uncommon. It was at that time that my grandmother made the wrenching decision to help her son flee the island.

Cuba's borders had yet to be closed, so with breaking heart Mima arranged to have Tio Nene sent away as soon as he was released. She signed the necessary papers for him, a minor, to travel by plane to the U.S., ostensibly to visit a friend. But this was no vacation. Shortly after, Cuba's borders closed. Mima did not know if she would ever see her only son again.

In 1965, four years after both my uncles had made their escapes, Fidel Castro stood in the Plaza of the Revolution and announced that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba could go. My grandfather didn't want to abandon his mother, but my grandmother wouldn't take no for an answer. She begged him to think
of their children. Less than 24 hours later, police arrived at their home to inventory their belongings, making sure that nothing but the clothes they were wearing left the island with them.

I often try to imagine how difficult it must be to leave your country, your relatives and friends, your home and all its contents—all the people and possessions that make up your life—fully knowing that there is no turning back. My grandmother made that life-altering decision overnight.

It was a fortunate decision. By the end of the 1960s an estimated 15,000 to 17,000 people had been executed.

But my grandmother didn't leave everything behind. Living up to the adage “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” she hid her most valued possessions under her clothes. She boldly left the island with photographs of her children, to this day their only tangible memories of their cherished childhood.

Although she eventually became a nurse, my mom's dreams of becoming a doctor were first reduced to working for one. She became secretary to one of the top oncologists in Miami and put in extremely long hours. As a result, I spent most of my time with Mima. My grandmother's job was to take care of me, which was, I admit, no easy task. Mima never learned to drive, so most of our time was spent on long bus rides, one of the most exciting parts of my childhood. Something about the treks to the bus stop and the ensuing trips seemed adventurous. There were journeys in the making, my first expeditions, even if the destination was only the park or the shopping mall.

At the park I would disappear into the trees and come
back with handfuls of tamarind, which I would proudly watch Mima eat on the park bench. I showed early that I had skill as a hunter-gatherer, like the BaAka, the Pygmy people of Africa I would come to know and love years later.

My grandmother, who in the mother-chain was second in command, was a bit more permissive of my exploratory tendencies. In my mother's absence, I would get permission from Mima to ride my bike in areas I knew very well Mom wouldn't allow. As soon as I got home from school, I wasted no time in ripping off my skirt and jumping into what my grandmother called “street clothes,” so that I could join in a neighborhood ball game. Baseball glove in hand, I'd take off on my bike and race down the street, crossing the railroad tracks and hollering at the prostitutes who plied their wares there, racing on as they hollered back. I'm not sure why we did this, but I do remember loving the adrenalin rush. It also seems to have been good training for fleeing elephants.

After some pedaling, I would find myself in a much more affluent area, where banyan trees lined the avenues. These trees are majestic, with limbs that grow thick and wide from their trunks. In order to support the tree's great weight, the limbs grow shoots at stress points that stretch downward and take root when they reach ground.

The banyan always makes me think of my family; in many ways they are alike. Both are resilient, surviving even the harshest of storms. And like the shoots that help support that great tree, my family was always there with the support I needed to get where I wanted to go.

I admit I didn't take the typical scientist route. Though my love of animals continued as I got older, in fear of being labeled the creepy critter girl, I stopped harvesting eight-legged creatures under my bed. I was a very good student, but in school I wasn't very good at science or math. Even today I think the teaching of those subjects is geared toward boys. Rather than fight the system, I focused on what ballet had trained me for: I joined my first cheerleading dance squad, the West Kendall Wildcats.

Mami and Mima were happy I was back in skirts.

In high school I cultivated my artistic side and let the nerdy boys have science. I excelled in writing courses, largely because
of my vivid imagination, and became editor of the school paper. This gave me the opportunity to get some life experience outside of the classroom. To pursue a story, I embedded myself in a homeless camp in downtown Miami. My mom thought I was staying at a friend's house. When she realized I'd been living in a tent amid vagabonds, she encouraged me to pursue other extracurricular activities. To this day I feel a strong affinity with the homeless as fellow wanderers and survivalists. It was with them that I first learned to camp.

But in life there are detours, and for a brief time I headed not toward the wilds but in the opposite direction.

My grandfather Pipo passed away when I was six. We'd always lived in the same house and been very close. I would often go to work with him at the cinema, where he was a handy-man. He could usually sneak me into screenings of films before they were released. It was very exciting to go to the back room, where all the films were stored and previewed. I fell in love with movies.

Most of all, I fell in love with stardom.

My grandmother looked like a blonde, green-eyed starlet. She loved to watch television and often said that I was destined for fame. Apparently I was, though not in the Hollywood way she surely had in mind. But knowing I would have my grandmother's support and approval, I began auditioning for school plays and quickly landed a lead role. After glowing reviews, I received an internship at the Actor's Playhouse, a local professional theater, where I continued performing in musicals. I'm Cuban. Drama queen runs in my blood.

When I graduated from high school, I got a two-bit agent and appeared as an extra in feature films. Yes, I am that unrecognizable girl walking past the camera in
that
movie. I didn't even consider applying for college. I honestly believed that school would get in the way of an acting career. Oddly enough, my mom and Mima were OK with this decision. In fact, they were proud. My grandmother, in particular, loved watching me in the limelight. Though I had yet to get a speaking part, I considered myself a professional actress.

In reality I was a professional secretary and waitress who got fired a lot.

My big break finally came when I began appearing regularly as a bikini-clad model on Mima's favorite Latin TV program,
Sabado Gigante
. Sadly, Mima did not live to see me on it. But I always had the feeling she was somehow responsible, smiling from heaven.

(Years later, in a funny twist of fate, I appeared on that show again, not in a swimsuit but as a wildlife expert with lemurs in tow. “The snakes,” I was told, would have to “wait outside.” Turns out my grandmother's crush, Don Francisco, the effervescent host who is a household name in Latino circles, was terrified of snakes and highly superstitious.)

Much to my mother's delight, I had become a full-fledged girlie-girl and performer, putting to good use all those years of ballet classes. But the truth is I was spending more time behind a desk than in front of an audience. I didn't mind the work, though it was often tedious, and the long hours didn't scare me, but I quickly realized I wasn't cut out for a nine-
to-five job. The woman who sat next to me, though not my supervisor, got her kicks from bossing me around. She was so miserable and frustrated with her dead-end job that I vowed never to become her. You know when people ask you what that moment was when you
knew
? Fran was my moment. It was watching her belittle an assistant at the fax machine that made me realize the only thing that could save me was to sign up for college. It seemed my only ticket out.

It turns out that campus life suited me, and I surprised myself by how much I loved academia. I particularly enjoyed creative writing and philosophy. I even fell madly in love with my philosophy professor, an older, free-spirited vegetarian whose lectures on animal cruelty, ethics, and religion mesmerized me. Plus, he was really cute and even dedicated one of his books to me.

Philosophy and logic classes were a natural fit for me. Given my Cuban background, I was very good at arguing and excelled at coming up with a rationale where none existed, a talent I had no doubt learned from my three mothers. Repeatedly, I was told by professors that I'd make a great lawyer, a statement I had often heard from my moms. When I graduated from my two-year college, I received a full scholarship to the University of Miami, where I went on to finish my bachelor's degree.

Much as I was loving college life, something was missing. I was no longer performing in plays, and I'd stopped going to commercial castings. Throughout junior high and high school, I'd been good at basketball, even receiving a full basketball
scholarship to the University of Mississippi, but I had by now stopped playing sports competitively.

Then in a simple twist of fate on the beach one afternoon I met Vivian.

She was a gorgeous blonde with a Colgate smile, and I couldn't help but notice that she was flaunting the tan I had always yearned for. We hit it off, and I asked her what she did. “I'm a cheerleader,” she responded. My puzzled look may have prompted her to add “For the NFL,” as if to say “a professional one.”

A professional cheerleader?

I loved watching football, but somehow I had never given a thought to the bouncing beauties on the sidelines. Vivian said, “You should try out next week.” Me? I thought. I hadn't even made the high school squad. How could I possibly be selected among hundreds to be a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins?

“OK, I will.”

My mom had always encouraged me to go for the seemingly impossible (as long as camping was not involved), so I convinced myself to give it a try. The mere thought that there might be something I couldn't do ignited my competitive instincts and gave me the push to audition. I really wanted to believe I could do it and figured I had nothing to lose but my pride and dignity. Plus, I thought the uniforms were cute.

But let there be no mistake. I auditioned not because I really wanted to be a cheerleader, but rather as a way to get into the games. As an avid football fan, I knew standing on the sidelines would give me a far better view than any ticket
I could buy. And did I mention the cute uniforms?

On arriving at the stadium for the auditions, I could see just past the parking lot hundreds of beautiful, scantily dressed girls stretching and practicing their best yoga moves. I walked back to my car and called Mom to tell her I had changed my mind. In her usual way, she boosted my confidence and urged me not to take myself out of the race. As I paced back and forth, never straying more than 20 feet from my little red convertible, the blond goddess Vivian walked by. In her bubbly, professional cheerleader way she said, “So glad you decided to come!”

Not wanting to admit defeat, I walked into the sea of beauties.

I signed in and was assigned a choreographer and given a number. For the next several weeks I would answer to #325. Later that afternoon, I was one of 75 selected from the initial hundreds to go on to compete for the highly coveted pompoms. The audition process was grueling, both physically and emotionally. I gave up several days a week to rehearse and was regularly humiliated by the coach for missing a step or standing slightly out of line. Luckily, I was used to being yelled at. You can't live with three Cuban moms and not be.

After hundreds of hours, badly bruised hamstrings, and more high kicks than a 50-year run of the New York City Rockettes, I was deemed flexible and coordinated enough to hold the title of professional cheerleader. One of only 32 spots. Vivian was not so lucky. She was the last to be cut.

I had reached stardom, I thought, even if I got paid only $25
a game. Regardless of the pay, I still smile when I think back to being on the football field in a stadium filled with 70,000 screaming fans and the emotion that would come over me every time I stood listening to the national anthem.

Though if I'm honest, the height of gratification came the following year when some of the cheerleaders from my high school who had snubbed me from their squad came to audition and got cut. Very like a cheerleader, I realize.

I continued going to university, slightly more popular now, and was breezing through a double major in English and philosophy. I excelled, in fact, never failing to make the dean's list. There came a point when I was just a few credits shy of graduating and needed to fulfill one last science requirement. The women's biology course I wanted to take was full, and all my pleading did not convince the professor to let me in. Even batting my lashes failed to do the trick, a tactic that up to that point had been foolproof.

I had no choice but to scroll through the list of available courses to find something else, and I settled on an anthropology course that seemed vaguely interesting. More important, it was scheduled at the perfect time—it didn't interfere with prime poolside hours for tanning. OK, burning.

The anthropology professor was tough, and I considered dropping the class more than once. But it was during that class that my passion for animals was rekindled. When she began talking about primates, our closest living nonhuman relatives, I was transported to places exotic and faraway. I came to learn of the plight of these animals, so many of
which were on the verge of extinction. As I researched my newfound obsession, I saw that there were no photographs, only line drawings, of some of these animals. I started to ask more and more questions in class and discovered that even at a time when we had set foot on the moon, many places here on Earth had yet to be explored.

After class one day, I nervously approached my professor—who looked me up and down, stopping at what I'm sure she thought was an all-too-revealing top and too-short skirt, along with platform shoes—and began to ask her a question. But before the words came out of my mouth, she said, “I saw you on TV. You're a cheerleader.” I thought I would die. She'd seen me wearing the little uniform and shaking my pom-poms. All this before handing me back the assignment I'd turned in late as a result of that Monday night game.

I gathered my courage and said, “Dr. Taylor, I think I would like to become a primatologist. How do I do that?” I immediately realized how silly I must have sounded, but without missing a beat, she replied, “You need to develop a research question, formulate a hypothesis, and apply for a grant. There's actually a university grant for women in the sciences, and the deadline is in a couple of weeks.” Noticing that she had answered my question without so much as cracking a smile, I felt like a scholar for the first time.

Dr. Taylor then asked me about my “other” life as a cheerleader, which had obviously intrigued or puzzled her for some time. As it turned out, Doc, as she soon let me call her, was a huge Dolphins fan. Despite her stern exterior, we shared
another couple of interests: shopping and shoes.

And so began our lifelong friendship. I soon found myself hanging out less with friends, opting instead to spend hours in her office.

I remember watching
Gorillas in the Mist
one day and thinking, Oh, my God, that's it! That's exactly what I want to do! I want to go live with mountain gorillas in Africa! I was picturing myself wearing camouflage gear in the Rwandan forest, befriending a 400-pound silverback, and waving a machete at poachers when I glanced up at my pink Hello Kitty clock.

Realizing I was late for practice, I jumped off the couch, wrestled my way into a small black leotard and tights, grabbed my pom-poms, and ran through the door. I figured I could fix hair and makeup in the car. But what I
really
wanted to do was pick up the phone and call this Leakey guy, who obviously had the financial means and seemingly peculiar bad sense to send Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas, and Jane Goodall to live in the wilds, all of whom had little to no background in primate research.

I wanted to become one of Leakey's Angels.

I wondered if Prada would design me a functional yet stylish backpack. I mean, even if the gorillas didn't know labels, I saw no reason to go out there looking like, well, a bush woman. Designer khakis and fashionable field boots would become all the rage if I had anything to do with it. But even in my dreamlike state, I realized that my newly found ambition to go live in the forest among apes would not excuse my being late to rehearse next week's halftime routine, which, curiously, had been choreographed to Robert Palmer's “Simply Irresistible.”

I arrived at our rehearsal site, Don Shula's Gym, where I was greeted by my 31 cheerleading colleagues. Funny how the words “colleague” and “cheerleading” don't exactly roll off the tongue together. I dabbed on some lip gloss and eavesdropped on the week's latest gossip, which I have to say almost without exception involved a blonde. “Did you hear that Christine is getting kicked off the squad? She was caught out on a date with one of the running backs!” First or second string? I thought. This was a real no-no in the world of professional cheerleading. We all signed contracts clearly stating that fraternizing with the players would be cause for immediate dismissal. Maybe she didn't know what “fraternizing” meant, I chuckled to myself. Christine was the best cheerleader on the squad, certainly the prettiest. I was sure she'd be given a stern warning, get benched for a game or two, and then all would go back to normal. But just then Christine came out of the locker room with red, swollen eyes, grabbed her belongings without so much as a word or looking at anyone, and exited the gymnasium. Our coach, without wasting a second, clapped her hands to get our attention back into the room and yelled at us to start stretching. The music came on, fear and curiosity filled the room, and everyone just focused on not becoming the target of our coach's wrath that day. A wrath that had earned her the secret nickname Hitler.