by Gigi Anders
“Is there any more coffee, Geeg?” asked the preengagement boyfriend, Paul.
I was too engrossed in the TV news show to hear him. Talking heads were butting heads over Elián.
“Geeg?” Paul repeated.
“What?”
“Is there more coffee?”
“Here,” I told him. “You can finish mine. Sweetie, I really want to watch this.”
Paul understood, and not just because he’s a journalist. My gringo boyfriend of one year, looking mighty cute in his Romeo y Julieta–brand cigar T-shirt (I’d bought it for him many months before in a Little Havana tabaquería, cigar factory, I wrote about for the Washington Post), had by now gotten a deep immersion in all things Cuban, thanks to me and my family. Although my parents and I didn’t remain in Miami Land after leaving Cuba, there were always summertime trips to Miami, the Other Homeland, to visit friends and relatives and overeat at Versailles, my favorite Little Havana restaurant. Those vacations became increasingly less fun for me as time went by, however. The eternal, crushing heat. The political tunnel vision and dogma. The vanity and materialism and concern with appearances, with ¿el qué dirán?, the what will they say? The nonstop Castro-bashing mania over the airwaves, in restaurants, at people’s houses. The clannish, provincial hysterics. All those things would have been my norm had my parents settled there instead of in our nation’s capital. And yet, sometimes I’ve been sorry they didn’t. After all, there’s strength in numbers, a sense of belonging and acceptance and solidarity.
In Miami, Cubans know who they are. They never have to feel ashamed to be it. That’s one of the things I love most about going there, that instant unspoken understanding that nosotros somos Cubanos. When you’re such a minority all the time, it’s wonderful to be a part of a majority for a change. On the other hand, most Jubanos are Democrats, which puts us in the minority among overwhelmingly Catholic Republican Cubanos. Considering that all Cuban Americans are the tiniest Hispanic group in the United States—an underwhelming 3.7 percent, or about the same number as Jewish Americans—Jubanos are really in the minority. (According to the 2002 Census, most U.S. Hispanics are Mexican, 66.9 percent; then Central and South American, 14.3 percent; Puerto Rican, 8.6 percent; Cuban, 3.7 percent; and the rest make up 6.5 percent.) Don’t even get me started about the blank, polite, Thorazine smiles on Jewish American faces when you tell them you’re a Cuban Jew. Pass the halvah and pass the pork. At any rate, when I’m sitting in Versailles, the weirdos are the Americans who can’t pronounce plátanos maduros.
So although I obviously feel very Cuban most of the time, especially in contrast to my New Yorker fiancé and his North American family and most of the rest of the native English speakers in my northeastern life, I will nevertheless never feel as fanatically or defiantly Cuban, or as Cuban to the exclusion of all other things, as do my friends and family who left Cuba in the early sixties, moved to Miami, and haven’t budged since. Still, when a crisis arises in the community—and the fate of little Elián was certainly considered primo crisis material—we tend to circle the wagons.
Since Paul had polished off the remnants of my café con leche and I needed more caffeination to couple with my freshly lit Parliament for my Elián fixation, I unscrewed a fresh bottle of TaB. Yes, bottle. TaB is available in most metro areas, but usually only in cans. Canned TaB tastes metallic. In a pinch, I can settle, but for some bizarre reason, only TaB in the fabulous twenty-ounce plastic screw-top bottles works for me. Sometimes I have to drive more than two hundred miles one way just to get my hot pink cases of those TaBs. You should see them piled up in my trunk and backseat. Think of my shock absorbers! And then having to haul them all out and bring them upstairs into my apartment and find a nonobtrusive spot for forty cases of TaB. And then people come over and see the wall o’ TaBs, and I have to pretend to laugh it off and say something like, “I know. It’s an ironic statement. Neo-Warholesque, if you will.” All because I have an addiction. Paul said he knew I was Really in Love with him the first time I willingly shared my TaB. Well, what can I tell you? A girl goes puerco wild when she’s in love. Wild and blind. Just as my fellow Cubano Americanos on TV were acting over Elián, a boy whom the majority didn’t personally know but with whom they were madly in love, madly to the point of blindness.
Watching the live footage of my fellow exiles in furious full-throttle right-wing mode on TV, threatening to sue attorney general Janet Reno and the U.S. government, and weeks later erupting onto the streets of Miami when Elián was finally returned to Cuba with his father, I was truly torn between cringing (Americana: God, these freaks are so embarrassing!) and empathizing (Cubana: We may be short but we’re fierce. You go, kids!).
So. Which camp would I side with, which one should I side with? But then I thought of a lesson I learned from Dr. Marvin L. Adland, my retired psychoanalyst-expander, and an exceptional student of the human condition. It was one of the hardest lessons to get locked into place inside me. Namely, you don’t have to raise your voice or use bad words to be effective and get your point across—which is, of course, the ultimate anti-Cuban attitude. As a matter of fact, acting “Cuban” in that way in certain milieus of this society actually weakens people’s perceptions of you and makes them think you’re just…a typical, trivial, crazy, hot-blooded Spic.
Maybe we exiles drink too much espresso and we’re wired from the caffeine. Maybe we live in chronic sugar seizure mode from our ultra-rich sweets like flan de coco or pastel de tres leches or turrón. Maybe we just have too much downtime. (Indeed, ask any Cuban old enough to have lived in pre-Castro Cuba about life in pre-Castro Cuba and you’ll be incredibly sorry you ever brought it up. Ask about post-Castro Cuba and you’ll be even sorrier.) I think what we really need isn’t less caffeine and sugar and free time; it’s better public relations. Because if the Miami crowd’s goal was to make mainstream America feel sympathy for the cause and understand that Castro’s repressive, anachronistic regime was behind all of this from day one—dey totally blew eet, as my testy Mama Jubana would say.
A few days earlier my mother and I had been on the phone, both of us watching the same CNN show in which “famous” Cuban Americans had formed a human chain that they called a prayer circle in front of the Little Havana house where Elián was. There was a well-known actor, a talk-show hostess, a singer, a musician, a mayor, and, to my personal astonishment, a newspaper colleague whom I knew fairly well. I could perfectly understand the celebs getting out there—all publicity is good publicity, after all—but a journalist?
“If I were her editor I’d fire her Cuban ass on the spot,” I heard myself tell Mami. I was surprised to hear myself pop that out just like that. “She’s entitled to her opinion—in print. But she’s injecting herself into the news. That’s not journalism. That’s—”
“De newspaper might talk to her but dey won’ fire her,” Mami said. “Chee has a consteetuahncee. De paper knows dat. Der would be an uproar. Dey have to take eet. Chee knows exactly how far chee can poosh her agenda.”
Back on the Sam and Cokie show on TV, George Will was saying, without a trace of irony, that a Communist cannot be a good parent.
“There’s a howler,” Paul said.
Was it a howler statement? Or was this situation a Cuban exile version of “it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand”?
“Jesus Christ,” Paul continued, “Will’s such an anal-retentive Tory.”
“You think so?” I said, lighting a new Parliament and sipping my TaB.
“You know what the Justice Department should do? Reno should get a court order that the loony uncle [Lázaro González, at whose home Elián resided while in the United States] cough up the kid. And if he refuses, they should lock him up for contempt.”
“You would LOCK HIM UP?”
“Absolutely. ‘Communists can’t be good parents.’ Christ.”
“Maybe they can’t,” I ventured.
“Fidel is a hypocritical thug. But the Elián crowd, those peop
le down there are loud, bombastic, right-wing, hard-liner ass-holes who are trying to use their political clout and campaign cash to put themselves above the law.”
Paul picked up my bottle of TaB and took a long swallow. Now not only was he insulting my people but he had the audacity to drink my TaB right afterward, without so much as waiting for me to offer him some. This is my LIFE, dammit. Don’t you get that I saw myself in little Elián? It’s the story of so many Cubans.
Me cago en este cabrón jodedero! Shit! I was thinking very bad things about Paul, all because he insulted My People and took My TaB. Could I continue to voluntarily sleep with a man who drinks My TaB and has an anti–Cuban exile attitude? I mean, it’s one thing for ME to criticize them, it’s quite another for outsiders to.
“I know what you want me to say, dear,” I said, trying my best to not repeatedly stab my gringo beloved with the now empty—EMPTY!—TaB bottle. “Like in those multiple-choice quizzes in Cosmo, when you know what the ‘right’ answer is and you choose it just so you’ll get a better score and not have to face the fact that your attitude’s all wrong and you’re all fucked up?”
“What does that mean?”
Where would I even begin? How to explain to an American, a non-Cuban, the passions behind this, the frustrations and hurt feelings of more than four pent-up decades…? Ay, Cuba. See, this is why I always wear waterproof mascara. You just never know when life will make you cry. What really drives me crazy is how tears uncurl your lashes—but not evenly. Half will be up and half will be down, and all that effort you put into curling them all perfectly with your Shu Uemura eyelash curler in the morning just gets shot to shit. Hate that.
“Elián’s mother died to get him here,” I said, blinking and feeling my eyes brim. “What do you not understand? She wanted him HERE. You know how many other Cuban parents have made similar sacrifices? Hello, there’s a REASON for this. I realize no six-year-old gets to call the shots, but…”
Coño. Elián was affecting me way more than I’d expected. I’d just mentally cursed out the man I loved. At least I’d kept my volume in check. That’s a real accomplishment for a Cuban. Here’s the thing that clouded my judgment and got me so riled up: Seeing that terminally cute (which is how Paul describes me, actually) Elián swinging on the swings in his Little Havana yard, playing with his five bazillion Toys “R” Us toys, drinking his little mamey nectar, and enjoying all the fruits of Los Estados Unidos, I was very moved. I identified with him. My parents didn’t want me to live in Cuba under Castro, either. They also took risks to get me from there to here when I was a tiny child. So to see all of Elián’s mom’s effort and risk and even death come to nothing for her son except a U-turn ticket back to Cuba after having lived it up here was just sadder than any words. Who knows what might have become of me had my parents been living apart, as Elián’s were back in Cuba, and my mother had drowned trying to get me to America and my father had come here to reclaim me and return me to Castro’s Cuba? I’d never have met Paul, that’s for sure, or experienced the life-altering thrill that only fashion magazines and TaB in the bottle can bring.
So Paul should be glad and Paul should agree!
Paul was glad—for me. But no, Paul didn’t agree—about Elián. Hm. Maybe I should be involved with a Cuban, not a gringo. The machismo would turn me homicidal, true, but at least we’d agree on Elián and the importance of flan de coco, pastel de tres leches, and turrón.
“Geeg?” Paul asked.
“No sex for joo tonight, Mr. Señor Jahnkee imperialista.”
“What? Why?!?”
“I’m too confused,” I said. “I might be sleeping with the enemy.”
“Come on.”
“You should have seen this coming, dear,” I said. “You know how I feel. You should have either agreed with me or just humored me and gone the hell along with it.”
“Why? I don’t patronize you. That’s ridiculous. We can’t disagree about a six-year-old Cuban and move on?”
It was a good question.
“You know what?” I said, lighting another Parliament, reaching for a new TaB, and pulling back in my chair to physically extend his proximity to my elixir. “My pussay is Cuban and your ‘apprentice’ is American.”
“Oh my God.”
“No more invasions for a while. Okay?”
Know how I was able to be so Cubanly ballsy with Paul, who can be quite ballsy himself when the occasion calls for it? The same way I’m able to be it with anybody who pushes me beyond my pathologically delightful Cuban limits. As Dr. Adland always says, “The only way to have a good relationship with anybody is to be prepared to lose it.” (Which is different from Mami’s joos eet or loos eet.) Cuban exiles are not prepared to lose their relationship with Cuba and are therefore doomed to go ballistic over Fidel over and over and over until they croak—or he does. I told Paul I needed to walk it off, and he said that sounded like a pretty good idea. I took my cigarettes, lighter, TaB, and keys, and went outside. It’s a quiet residential neighborhood in a fancy burb, lots of old apartment buildings, grass and trees. It had rained overnight, and the sidewalks were still damp. As I walked down the tree-lined street, a few stray raindrops falling from the leaves touched my face.
Who do I want to be? I wondered, blinking a raindrop off my eyelashes. (See? You not only never know when life will make you cry but you also never know when it might rain. Waterproof mascara at all times.) Do I want to be a person who dedicates her life to reacting to the arbitrary exhortations of one singularly sicko dictator named Fidel Castro? That’s like being an abused wife, no? An abused wife who takes it and complains about it but who can never leave the abuser? My great Puerto Rican psychoanalyst friend Manny Roman would call that the “Let me tell you what he did to me this week” school of victimized female patient-hood. What was my relationship with Castro, really? Was there a relationship, except in my head and in the foment of the Miami crowd? Well, maybe indirectly. Oh please. Even I can’t make myself believe that. The truth is that there is no relationship. Castro is a fact of life but I have no control over him. I can, however, control how I deal with me.
Oh.
I had to walk away from all the noise—the ever buzzing TV set, the Internet, the newspapers, magazines, radio—that had gotten me so wrapped up, caught up, and carried away every day from far away for months, to gain some perspective. Kind of like my family and I leaving Miami for points farther north. Kind of like turning off the news and going for a walk.
The street was tranquil. I saw a faint sun hovering behind a cluster of pale gray clouds, trying to come out. Cars went by, open windows full of music. A passerby smiled. A woman jogged with a dog on a leash. A trio of kids laughed as some raindrops fell on them from the leaves. I had a relationship with Paul, not with Fidel, and I didn’t want to lose it. I had wanted to make Paul understand me better as a Cubana, and to persuade him to respect and approve my exile-centric point of view. But now I just felt silly about it because…oh God, dare I say it…Paul was right. As long as the parents are good, their children belong with them. Period. (Except for me, who deserves to have good black parents. Hey, it’s not as strange as it sounds. My godmother, Nisia, is black, and if my parents had died in Cuba, I’d still be living there. Remember, Nisia stayed behind by choice. I’d have been a myopic commie dressed in olive drab fatigues and Ché Guevara T-shirts. Which, come to think of it, is what the adult fashion cognoscenti don as “style statements,” poor slobs. I guess it was good that the parentals didn’t die and we got the fuck out of there.)
But getting back to Elián, who are we as Cubans, or as anybody else, for that matter, to say what’s best for Elián? It’s outrageous and arrogant—two adjectives Castro hurls across the water at Miami exiles—to think otherwise.
I lit a Parliament and thought, really thought. I sipped some TaB and considered Paul. I’d had enough hours of expensive psychotherapy and watched too many Dr. Phil shows to know that if Paul and I had broken up over Elián, it
wouldn’t have really been about Elián; it couldn’t have been. Just as when couples divorce over “money issues” you know it’s not really about money per se at all, but rather about what money represents, the metaphor of money. There’s something else going on, and it’s usually a power struggle. Once he’s acknowledged and diagnosed that, Dr. Phil always says, “So do y’all want to be right or do y’all want to be happy?”
I put out my cigarette, finished the TaB, and thought about how you can love people, feel tremendous empathy and affection for them, and still not be able or want to live with them. This wasn’t good or bad, it was just the way it was for me vis-à-vis Miami Cubans.
I went home. Paul was napping on the sofa, his back turned outward. My gorgeous little cat Lilly was curled at his feet, as sweet as could be. I put down my stuff and noticed the New York Times haphazardly strewn across the dining room table, read and discarded. By tomorrow it would be yesterday’s recycled news. The TV had been turned off and in its place a Cuban CD softly played an old mambo. My copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was right where I’d left it on the coffee table. I thought about what I’d like to have for dinner; there was still some fabulous puerco asado, roasted pork loin, I’d made the night before, and some white rice and black beans and fried ripe plantains, some of Paul’s adopted favorite foods.
I walked over to the sofa, knelt down, petted Lilly, and stroked Paul’s hair.
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” I whispered into his ear, quoting a line from Shakespeare’s lovely play. I meant my true love for Paul and I meant the extreme love of Cuban exiles for Cuba.
“Hm?” Paul murmured, moving a little. He was very sleepy.
I traced a map of Cuba on his back with my fingertip, the bumpy brown mole where Havana, my birthplace, would be. There. Now the place and the person I loved most in the world, loved madly, seethingly, and without cool reason were one.
