Waiting for Snow in Havana (24 page)

I thought our Christmases in Cuba were inferior because we didn't have snow. Christmas was all about snow, and here we were, eating Christmas Eve dinner in our shirtsleeves, with palm trees waving in the wind outside. We Cubans were getting cheated out of the real Christmas.

Coño, qué mierda.

Little did I know that years later I would nearly freeze to death in Galicia, in one of those stone houses where my grandparents grew up. Or that I would almost burn to death in the same house when my electric blanket caught on fire.

Little did I know that I would one day end up in Minnesota, where winter is eight months long and the lakes freeze so solidly that you can build houses and drive big, heavy trucks on them, and the heating bills sometimes add up to more than your paycheck.

My favorite story that night was the one my grandfather told about finding a wolf who had frozen to death. “There he was, the beast, totally stiff, hard as a rock. I tried to bend his legs, but they were like steel. So I picked him up and threw him, and he sounded just like a rock when he hit the ground. And one of his ears broke off. Just snapped right off, cracked as easily as a mirror, it did.” I tried to imagine air cold enough to freeze a wolf solid, but couldn't.

After dinner there were wonderful desserts, and nuts, and
turrón,
or nougat. There are many different kinds of
turrón,
from very soft to tooth-cracking hard, and I liked them all. I especially liked the thin waferlike covering on the hardest
turrones
because it was made out of the same stuff as the host we got for communion at church. Imagine, covering a piece of sweet candy with a huge host! A host that didn't require you to be pure and holy in order to eat it.

Tony and I loved tearing the hostlike wafers off the
turrones
and eating them with utter abandon, usually after we'd hidden some of our aunt Lily's jewelry or spit on some pedestrians from the balcony.

I also loved cracking walnuts and filberts—pure, good food from the land of snow and
Santicló,
and all good TV shows and movies. I loved playing with the nutcrackers too—those simple metal ones, not the wooden Russian ones. I'd beg to crush those nutshells for everyone in the house. It amazed me that two pieces of metal enabled me to do something I couldn't with my bare hands.

That Christmas Eve my grandfather showed me how to take two walnuts in the palm of my hand and crack them both by pressing one against the other. How I wish I could have learned a few more things like that from him. He knew so much more, like how to throw a frozen wolf, or how to build a house from scratch. He was an amazing man, and so quiet. How I envied his reserve. My mother tells me he could get weepy, but I never saw that side of him. All I saw was the stoic, stone-hard Amador.

He sat on the balcony after dinner. Sat in a rocking chair, with his beret on and a bottle of wine next to him. He drank and rocked and remained silent, looking up at the stars, thinking perhaps of frozen wolves and everything that had slipped through his fingers, and all the relatives he never, ever saw again. He must have missed them terribly.

Still, he was tough. And he wasn't the least bit scared of lizards. Once, when we were sitting side by side on a park bench near his house, a huge chameleon dropped out of a tree and landed on his shoulder with a loud thud. I jumped out of my seat, looked over at him, and instantly panicked. That lizard was huge—one of the largest I had ever seen. And he was looking straight at me, examining me with his beady eyes, threatening to jump on me. My grandfather turned his head ever so slowly. It was as if he were moving in slow motion, as lizards sometimes do. He showed no surprise, no concern, nothing at all. Just like a lizard.

He looked the chameleon straight in the eyes. They rolled away from me and over to meet his light brown eyes. He stared the reptile down for an instant and then, with a quick swipe of the hand, he knocked it off his shoulder. It flew through the air and landed on the ground with exactly the same kind of thud as when it had landed on his shoulder. Then it scampered off with its long green tail wagging, as if nothing had happened at all.

My grandfather didn't say a word. He just sat there on the bench next to me, as quiet as ever. I sat there quietly too, dumbfounded. Forget Batman, Superman, Aquaman, or any other superhero. I had just witnessed a heroic act of the highest magnitude.

My grandmother was every bit as reserved as her husband, and probably every bit as heroic. I just didn't get to see her in action. That Christmas Eve, she spent most of the time in the kitchen or talking to her two daughters. As always, I didn't pay attention to what any of them said.

I was too busy cracking nuts.

How still the night air was that Christmas Eve. No wind. Just the soft murmuring of other families on their porches and balconies. Families like ours, enjoying one another's company—or, maybe, not enjoying it very much.

My uncle Mario and his wife left right after dinner. They had to go spend time with her family, who lived two blocks away. She looked kind of glum, maybe because of her recently tortured brother.

My dad and his sister Lucía just sat there most of the night, counting the minutes until it was time to leave. They seemed so stiff and uncomfortable.

We didn't know it then, but it would be the last time my entire family would spend
Nochebuena
together at my grandparents' house. That's what God had decided, as my grandmother would have said. In her world, God decided everything, down to the smallest little detail. Every time she spoke about any event in the future, even minutes away, she would preface or conclude her remarks with
“Si Dios quiere.”
If God wills it.

As all of us sat on that balcony after dinner, unable to discern God's will, Fidel was very close to winning his war against Batista. In eight days, it would all be over—his guerilla war and our future as a family.

My grandmother would discern very soon after he assumed power that Fidel was up to no good at all. She had a way to tell.

“You know, that Fidel can talk for hours on end and promise all kinds of things for the future, but he has never ever said
‘si Dios quiere,'
not even once. He's up to no good. He doesn't know what he's talking about, and he is a fool. He may also be an atheist, and that can only mean trouble.”

That beautiful silent night God willed that we drive home the long way, down the Malecón, the boulevard that ran along the seashore, the road where we always went car surfing. My brother and I were wired up, abuzz with anticipation. But we didn't need to talk about it. Really good things don't need words. No. The best thing about really good things is that you can just sit there with someone else and not say a word. And you both know.

That, my friend, is the sweetest of all feelings in the universe.

God willed that certain families decorate their houses with garlands of Christmas lights, house after house, and God willed that I should love those lights beyond measure. God willed it, too, that some families place their Christmas trees by their front windows, so that I could see them as we drove by.

God willed that my father take a special detour so we could see the street decorations on La Rampa, a wide, busy boulevard. God willed it that those decorations should be splendid that year. Better than ever.

God willed it that the sky should be clear and the stars very bright over Havana that night. And God willed it that each and every star in that swath of sky should be reflected in my Fidel glasses as I stuck my head out of the window with an upturned face. God willed that the smell of the saltwater should embrace me, that the soft murmur of the waves should caress me, tenderly, and that the warm tropical air should kiss my hair and make it whirl about in absolute rapture.

God willed that my mother and father sit quietly in the front seat, saying nothing to each other. He also willed that my aunt Lucía fall asleep on the way home.

God willed that we arrive at a darkened house and that I run to the Christmas tree and plug in its lights. God willed that I ignore the Nativity scene my dad had worked so hard to create.

God willed that Ernesto be home with his own family that night, and He also willed that it should be the very last time that would happen. God willed that Ernesto be adopted by my father, against all of our wishes. God willed that Ernesto inherit Eye Jesus, Maria Theresa's portrait, and everything else in that house.

God willed that I get my brother's old bike as a Christmas present the next morning, and that an anxious man should knock on our door to remind us that there was trouble brewing on the streets of Havana.

God willed that Fidel and his army be close to victory that night, and that the rebels would take over Cuba a few days later, destroying our world.

God didn't ask my permission for any of these things. Should He have asked?

God willed that I should have no clue whatsoever about the way in which He runs His universe, or any say in how He chooses to redeem us, or not.

God willed it, even, that I should still be asking Him impertinent questions and that I should still be doubting the wisdom of his plans, brooding over the logic of the Virgin's womb and the Word.

God wills it all. And it's our job, our very purpose in existing, to submit graciously, like the lizards who fall off trees onto the shoulders of white-haired grandfathers and are swiftly brushed off.

Just like lizards, I'm afraid.

T
he air was a huge, all-enveloping knife. Even through the thickest layers of wool, the wind coming off Lake Michigan, two blocks away, would plunge the blade deep into you. It was about minus ten degrees Fahrenheit. Cold enough to freeze your spit in two minutes or so. I knew from empirical observation. I had just timed it, right there on the elevated train platform, after I'd coughed up a huge jade green wad of phlegm.

I'd come a long way from Havana. A very long way.

I was standing at the Bryn Mawr El station in Chicago, waiting for an A or B train to take me all the way past the Loop, to the Harrison subway stop, where I'd get off and walk the four blocks to my night job at the Conrad Hilton Hotel.

Long underwear, two sweaters, gloves, ear muffs, wool socks, fleece-lined shoes, and a long, hooded woolen coat weren't enough to keep me from getting stabbed. My face took the brunt of the assault. My nose was gone. Couldn't feel the damn thing, though I could taste the snot that dripped from it onto my lips.

The elevated train platform lurked over Bryn Mawr Avenue and all its lousy shops at second-story level. Most of the platform straddled the street, but the rest of it looked out upon the gritty, rear façades of buildings that stood tightly pressed against each other. I was facing the brown bricks of the Bryn Mawr Theater, which screened second-run films at a price that was just right for refugees.

ALL SEATS FIFTY CENTS
read the permanent sign on the marquee, right under the movable letters that spelled out
GOLDFINGER
.
SEAN CONNERY AS JAMES BOND
007. The Bryn Mawr Theater was a poor substitute for the Miramar Theater, but it was good enough. Especially on those rare days off from work.

Goldfinger
was one of my favorite movies. Right up there with
The Vikings.
Oddjob's killer hat was every bit as cool as Kirk Douglas' flying axes. And Sean Connery was cooler and smarter than Kirk Douglas. He didn't burn for any single woman. No. He burned for all good-looking women, and he knew how to get them to burn for him, at least for a few hours. Which was all he wanted to see of them, anyway. Detachment, shaken not stirred.

The elevated train turned into a subway just a little bit south of the Armitage station. The tracks plunged rapidly and deeply into a dark tunnel, and the dank smell and the noise of the steel wheels grinding on the steel tracks in that deep gloom made you feel as if you'd plunged into the Underworld.

That's what I felt, anyway, on the way to my dishwashing job at the Conrad Hilton, in January 1966. I counted every lightbulb on the way as I prayed for the perverts to stay away from me, especially at two a.m.

Two thousand, four hundred and thirteen lightbulbs.

What a long, long way from Havana I had come. It was a dream to me by then, sunny Miramar, where there wasn't a single brown brick to be seen and no face-searing wind. It was not one whit different from all the fantasies my brain spun as I slept on a sofabed in the living room of our basement apartment on the North Side of Chicago.

My brother and I had lived as orphans in the States for more than three and a half years in camps and foster homes, and, most recently, with our uncle Amado in a small town in central Illinois. I was very happy in Amado's house, happier than I'd been most of my life. But our mother had finally managed to get out of Cuba, after three desperate years of trying, and she'd been sent to live in Chicago by Mr. Sandoval of the Cuban Refugee Center in Miami.

“Well, let's see: you don't speak a word of English, you're physically handicapped, and you've never had to work a day of your life. Your husband is in Cuba and you have two teenage boys you haven't seen in over three years. I think Chicago is the place for you.
Sí,
Chicago. There are lots of factories up there. Just about everyone we've sent up there has landed a job in a factory. Do you know anyone there?”

“No, not really…except for the cousin of one of my friends. But I don't know her very well. Not very well at all. And she's only been there for a month or so.”

“That's great! At least you know her. That's better than most of the cases we handle. Chicago it is, then!”

That's how we ended up in Chicago, thanks to
Señor
Sandoval's quick thinking. Excuse me, I think he had become “Mr.” Sandoval, just like any other Cuban refugee.

My mother still thinks of Sandoval as a nice man.

Marie Antoinette met us at Union Station early in November 1965. Tony and I had taken the train upstate from Bloomington, carrying all of our belongings in two beat-up suitcases purchased in a hurry at the Salvation Army thrift shop. My luggage had decals on it for Saint Moritz, Monte Carlo, and Rock City, Tennessee. We'd been torn from Amado's house and all of our good friends with less than a week's notice. I'd barely had a chance to say good-bye to anyone.

We rode through the November darkness past a hundred and twenty miles of flat, bare, harvested fields of corn and soybeans. As the train began to roll past the steel mills and oil refineries on the South Side of Chicago, it seemed we had passed through the gates of hell. We saw acres and acres of smokestacks shooting out flames, huge twisting labyrinths of pipes, mazes of twisting stairs, giant spheres, and colossal storage tanks. But it was the flames that made me reel. Big, noisy flames. Balls of flame. Jets. Plumes. Flares. Soft, dancing flames that swayed in the wind and made the chimneys look like giant candles at Satan's dinner table. Fountains of fire. Satan's Versailles. We could hear them through the closed windows of our train.

Whooooosh! Fffrrrrrrrggshhhh! Sssswrrrrooosshhh!

Marie Antoinette was shocked by our appearance. We'd grown so much. She couldn't believe that I was taller than my older brother. Later, she would say that the sight of me nearly made her faint.

She looked about the same, except that her hair, which had been brown when we last saw her, was totally gray.

We ended up living for two months with the cousin of my mom's friend, the one she didn't know all that well. Two whole months, the three of us sleeping on one sofa bed in someone else's living room. Four adults and two teenagers in a two-bedroom apartment. Two families that didn't know each other very well. One family with no income at all.

That's Cuban refugee hospitality for you.

Marie Antoinette didn't know how to look for work. She'd never done it. She did the best she could, under the circumstances, applying only at those places where other Cubans had found jobs.

No place wanted to hire her.

So we went to the public aid office to ask for help. But Mr. Fajardo, the Puerto Rican social worker who saw us at the welfare department, wasn't very helpful.

Marie Antoinette didn't know that you weren't supposed to dress nicely when you applied for welfare. She wore a fine suede coat that a wealthy friend had given her in Mexico, where she had spent the first six months after leaving Cuba, waiting for an American visa. It was a beautiful light green suede coat.

“You've got two grown sons, lady. Both of these guys could find jobs in an instant. Nope, we can't offer you anything,
señora.
This country is all about work. Work, work, work. Look at me, I came here with nothing but the shirt on my back. I had nothing when I came here. Nothing at all, and I've worked my way up to this job. I didn't have a nice leather coat like yours.”

“Yes,” said Marie Antoinette softly, “that's admirable. But you have to understand, that shirt on your back was probably the only one you owned in Puerto Rico. We had a lot in Cuba, and we lost it all. We lost absolutely everything we owned. And this is a suede coat, not leather, and it was a gift from a friend.”

That was it. Mr. Fajardo stiffened and he started talking very, very fast.

“How old are you?” he asked my brother.

“I'll be eighteen in two weeks.”

“Great. Wonderful. You can get a full-time job during the day and go to high school at night. Lakeview High has a night school up on the North Side.”

“And how old are you?” he asked me.

“I'll be fifteen in two weeks.”

“You guys don't look like twins. Do you have the same birthday?”

“Their birthdays are only two days apart,” said Marie Antoinette.

“Well, your case is a little more complicated,” said Mr. Fajardo to me. “Only fifteen, huh? That means you can't go to night school. You have to be sixteen to do that. That means you have to go to high school during the day. And you also have to be sixteen in order to work in this state. Huh, that's a tough one. Well, here's what you can do: go to high school during the day and get a full-time job at night. Lie about your age. Tell everyone you're seventeen. You're tall. You can fool everyone. Lie about your age and work at night. And as soon as you turn sixteen, drop out of day school, and switch your schedule around.”

Silence from the three of us.

“Yeah, you boys can take good care of your crippled mother here. Work, work, work, that's what this country is all about. I think I can get you a welfare check for one month, while you boys look for work. After that, it's up to you two to earn the money. I doubt your mom will ever find a job.”

Lucky thing Tony found a job a month later, in a print shop on Lake Street. A good union job that paid slightly more than minimum wage, with lots of overtime. And he would get to learn a trade, on top of it all.

He went to night school at Lakeview High, for a year or so. Then he dropped out. Never finished high school.

But Tony has always been such a good con man, he managed to get into the night program in the business school at Northwestern University three years later. He didn't finish that either, but at least he got in. Without a high school diploma.

I had a harder time finding a job. Not easy when you're in school all day, in a strange city, and you don't have a clue as to how to look for work. Even harder when you're lousy at lying.

Tony couldn't help me: he was always too busy working overtime, or resting. Our mother tried to earn some spare change by doing a bit of sewing, but the two customers she found through the Cuban network would pay her with yards of old fabric rather than cash.

Lucky thing we ran into another Cuban,
Señor
Mancilla, at the Woolworth's on Bryn Mawr Avenue around Christmas, as we were picking out a Nativity set. We had to have one. Had to, even if it was from the
“Tén-cén,”
or ten-cent store. Mancilla recognized us as Cubans by our accents, came over, introduced himself, and within two minutes, solved my unemployment problem.

“Hey, I can get you a job tomorrow. A good job. Washing dishes.”

Señor
Mancilla had once been a small-scale Sugar Boy in one of the eastern provinces of Cuba, where his father owned a sugar plantation and a mill. Now he ran one of the freight elevators at the Hilton Hotel on the night shift. And he knew all the Puerto Ricans who ran the dishwashing department.

That's how I ended up at the Conrad Hilton Hotel, working as a dishwasher. I told them I was eighteen.

But, Jesus H. Wonder-working Christ, what was this cough I had?

I couldn't stop coughing. Neither could my brother. Cough, cough, cough. That's all we did, all day, all night, since shortly after Christmas. Coughing so intense, so deep, it nearly turned you inside out. Sludge denser than rubber in our throats and lungs. This wasn't any garden-variety green phlegm, the kind we'd seen on the sidewalks and curbs of Havana, but a vicious, lung-clogging gunk that could seal shut your windpipe and leave you gasping for air.

A couple of times Tony and I came close to death, or so we thought. Tony actually turned blue one time, right there under the ceiling pipes. I smacked him on the back as hard as I could, harder than I'd ever hit him, harder than I'd ever wanted to hit him. Our mother was screaming at the top of her lungs, “Do something, Carlos, please, do something, he's choking to death!
Ay, Dios mío!
”

I pummeled him mercilessly and mercifully at the same time, in a panic. I knew just what he felt like, gasping for air. I'd been there myself, a couple of times already. Once, on the way to the elevated station, all alone on a quiet side street, and once at the Conrad Hilton, in the employee's restroom on the fourteenth floor. Both of these times, I nearly passed out from lack of oxygen, but somehow managed to expel what was clogging my windpipe by pounding on my chest as hard as I could.

I hammered Tony's back with my fists as if I were a prizefighter.

At last Tony coughed. Out came the industrial-strength phlegm, and in went the life-giving air. His face gradually turned from blue back to a sort of normal color. Then Marie Antoinette made a panicky phone call to a man who lived down the street, the only Cuban we knew who owned a car. She asked him to drive us to Edgewater Hospital, about seven blocks away.

Señor
Pujol told my mom that he couldn't do it. “Too risky,” he said. “If your son dies in my car while I'm driving him to the hospital, then you could sue me. That's what people do in this country. No, sorry,
lo siento mucho,
but I can't risk having your son die in my car and then having you sue me afterwards. Sorry. Call someone else.”