Yankee Come Home

by William Craig

  A few hours later, I was walking up a dark path through a favela built into a ravine miles south of Santiago’s waterfront. The houses—mostly shacks—were close enough to touch with outstretched arms, and a green brook of sewage chugged down the middle of the path. Isolina walked ahead of me, carrying the bottles of Bucanero ale we’d bought as offerings. Her niece Irina, a fourteen-year-old who liked competitive dance and karate, walked behind. The cubanas would mediate my strangeness to anyone met on the path. The few people we passed didn’t attempt to disguise their surprise at seeing me, but only one drunk man bristled.

  Still, it was a relief to arrive at the rebar gate of a well-lit masonry house. Actually, it was much more than a gate: rebar had been welded to form a stick-figure house in front of the house, a gabled cage that served as a sort of outdoor foyer. The door to the house was the gate, and the stick-figure door was overlaid with a rebar cruciform.

  A skinny, pock-faced man looked us over from behind the gate, while light and music flowed enticingly from the real front door beyond. He recognized Isolina, and I was introduced to Manuel, who served as the padrino’s majordomo on great occasions. The cross swung open, and we were in.

  The front room was a narrow rectangle of peeling paint, its tile floor patterned in arabesques and flourishes. Three couples were seated along the wall facing the door, adults in their best clothes, some talking to their dressed-up children, obviously instructing them on manners and deportment. A flirty gaggle of young men and women carried refreshments through an open archway into the little house’s dim back rooms. As we stepped in, Isolina’s sister Ileana—Irina’s mom—rose to greet us, along with her son, Yasel, a skinny ten-year-old.

  The feast of Santa Barbara, and santería in general, is a family matter, an ordinary wonder, and this place I’d been led to was simply its church for a day, tabernacle of a faith that had never been allowed or needed cathedrals of its own. This was, after all, the padrino’s home, his living room. One wall featured a rug embroidered with a nearly naked Asian girl and her enormous, lion-maned collie dog. A stereo boom box in one corner bumped out a hiss-drenched mixed tape of what sounded like rootsy salsa, heavy on the drums.

  Oriente’s folk religions make sacred space by creating altars, and there in the back corner of the long wall was a niche for Santa Barbara, a china-faced doll in scarlet robes, holding a scepter and a cup. The table below held bananas, Changó’s favorite fruit, holiday cakes, cigars, bunches of outsized flowers, and a small plastic Christmas tree, complete with blinking lights and topping star.

  And in the middle of the steadily filling room there was José, wearing baggy blue-and-red Hawaiian shorts, a shiny red sleeveless sports jersey, and a crimson silk turban. Moon-faced, his broad cheeks already flushed with rum fever, the padrino strutted on his tiles, a sloshing tumbler in one hand, a tremendous cigar in the other. Accepting kisses and embraces, he greeted his guests seriously, then teased them in a voice that rumbled and rolled and then cackled up high. It was as if there were two men under the rakish turban: one a swaggering macho, the other a come-on queen.

  Isolina introduced me right away, and I could tell she was nervous. José treated her with sloppy affection, then looked me up and down. His handshake was limp, but he drew me close and seemed to sniff the air about my head. Whatever he learned seemed to please him; he asked a few questions about my life in the States, appearing to ignore the answers while watching me talk.

  “¡Bueno!” he declared. “Have some rum!” He shoved the tumbler at me.

  “Ah, por favor, no. No tomo alcohol. I don’t drink.”

  “¿Como no? How is that possible?”

  He held the glass up to my lips. I could smell the fire in the water.

  “No, gracias. I’m very sorry, but I cannot drink. Soy alcohólico.”

  “But you must drink,” José insisted, frowning first at me and then at Isolina. And I saw that we had a problem. There was no telling what, if anything, alcohólico meant to him. (Recovering alcoholics know that it carries surprisingly little accurate meaning to a lot of people, including many a doctor and shrink who ought to know better.) Whatever he thought it meant mattered not at all, in his estimation, compared to the sacred duty to drink white-hot rum in honor of Santa Barbara and Changó.

  This conviction was all the deeper for the fact that he was already drunk and clearly intending to get drunker. Isolina started trying to explain me, but not, I noticed, in terms of that alcohólico abstraction. He rolled his eyes at her, half satyr, half campy faun. She kept him talking and they drifted toward the back of the house, heads together in conspiracy.

  By now there were at least forty people in the house, and more gathered out in the rebar gazebo. The front room was crowded and busy with greetings. I could stand in the middle without feeling conspicuous, examining the altar, taking in the holiday clothes, the little girls in stiff skirts and the boys with their hair slicked down.

  Three young men bustled across the room with two conga drums and a battered wooden beatbox. Their leader, bare-chested except for a thick rope of beads, sweating as if he’d been playing for hours, scowled at me as he set down a drawstring bag filled with sticks and shakers. As far as he was concerned, I didn’t belong there, but his arrival made me all the more anxious to stay. Sooner or later the cassette player would be turned off, and José’s feast would become a true tambor, a party inviting the orisha with drums and dancing.

  As a teenager, I learned to drum with Babatunde Olatunji, the Nigerian master drummer made famous by his Drums of Passion LPs. The late-’50s and early-’60s albums were the first “world music” hits. Baba toured the globe, became a cultural pioneer in the U.S. civil rights movement, and played for the Kennedy inaugural. Before his death in 2003, he’d spent decades performing and teaching his music. Thousands of students passed through his Harlem loft. He was a charismatic, profoundly kind man, and his workshops taught me more than basic beats and bell rhythms.

  The trio of drummers had gone back to the kitchen in search of ale, leaving their instruments by the altar. One of the two drums had lost its leather head; a grain sack was stretched in its place. Whatever was going to happen wouldn’t be fancy or formal. There were three drums, the ritual number, but a consecrated batáa is usually a matching set of ornamented drums, stored and deployed in pampered state. Maybe the people of the ravine were so poor that they couldn’t do better than this odds-and-ends trio. Maybe they were contemptuous of pomp. In any case, this tambor was going to call Changó with these unadorned drums, play the orisha’s own potent and inexorable rhythm, four against six, six pushing four.

  How could I leave? It was a privilege to be here. But how could I stay if it meant drinking José’s rum?

  Isolina returned with a glass in one hand and a plate in the other, closely followed by the grinning padrino. He threw me a little social nod and waded into the crowd of congregants, but I could see he was keeping an eye on me. Isolina stepped up close and offered me un refresco.

  Sin alcohol, she assured me. “Alcohol-free.”

  I trusted her and took the glass. Mango juice, watered down. Definitely no kick, and very welcome; I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was, after just half an hour in that hot, smoky house.

  “Have some cake,” she said, looking right into my eyes.

  I met her gaze for a long moment.

  Isolina is as good as people come, and I’m not sure she can lie even if she wants to. Whatever José expected of her, she wasn’t trying to fool me. She smiled, her eyes offering both concern and reassurance.

  I looked down at the white, frosted cake. It didn’t appear to be soaked in rum. Merely drizzled with it, or maybe splashed. Stained? I looked back up to her. Somehow, by not moving at all, she instructed me to take a discreet sideways peek at José. The padrino was watching from across the room, snickering like Wile E. Coyote watching the Road Runner peck at dynamite dressed up as ears of corn. This was José’s clever plan to lure me beyond foolish prudery,
into Santa Barbara’s embrace.

  I checked Isolina’s eyes again. Same message, and now I understood. Whatever I chose, she’d back me up.

  I picked up the little fork and cut and ate a piece from a dry corner. Had she been careful to leave one for me? She smiled as I chewed. Hardly a whiff of booze. I took another forkful before casually looking around the room. José had seen. His face was ruddy with orgullo, pride in his subtle wiles.

  That did it. I was okay by José. The room embraced me in a new way, with more smiles, handshakes, and introductions. The drummers began to play; the room filled with still more people and yet found room for us all, so we could all see the drummers and see José as he danced in the center of our long circle. He drank and smoked and danced, entering a state of intoxication that began to seem inhuman, drunk, and detached from us yet strong and shiningly present. His voice deepened and he began to roll his r’s, praising Santa Bar-r-r-rbar-r-r-ra. He pulled people from the crowd and made them dance, pushing men and women together. We cheered and clapped. Then he reached for Isolina and me.

  Out in the circle’s center, I suddenly understood what José was doing. He was recognizing couples, nominating, creating them … The crowd was clapping. Isolina took pity on my inept footwork and held out her hands; I took them and followed her steps.

  The dancing and mingling continued as José moved through the crowd, kissing some guests, shaking others, blowing smoke in faces, laughing like a trombone. Though increasingly manic, he could snap into uncanny calms. In one of these lulls, he found Isolina and me and brought us into the next room.

  For all the crowding in the front parlor, this room was empty. There was another altar in its far corner, where another Santa Barbara kept quiet company with San Lazaro, the crippled beggar who is an avatar of Babalú-Ayé, the orisha who commands both suffering and healing. They were honored by drifts of blossoms and presents of tobacco and fruit. Our Lady of Charity stood in state at the front of the altar, a little virgen morena representing Changó’s lover, Ochún.

  There was no lightbulb in this room, but enough light from the big one to make out the paintings and photos on the walls, which included a framed reproduction of naked Danäe fending off a lascivious shower of gold. On one side of the frame was a photo of young people visiting the Capitolio in Havana; on the other, Cuba’s coat of arms, including its lone-star, tricolor shield and a red Liberty cap.

  Isolina took my hand and we knelt in front of the altar, José beaming at our backs. My prayers remembered all my family, my stepbrother Peter’s health, the spiritual help that keeps me sober, and all my kind friends in Cuba. I prayed especially hard for Isolina’s happiness, and for help avoiding any hurt or misunderstanding.

  Out in the big room again, José commanded us to dance again. The drummers were bearing down, working deep into their cross-rhythms, and all the young couples and many of the families were dancing. José positioned Isolina and me by the front altar. Singing in a mix of Spanish and santería’s Yoruban creole, he danced at our side, shaking a maraca up and down and around us. Then he called Manuel, who brought him a huge, stoppered flask, a quart jar, and a small pitcher. Singing and praying, José began to drizzle us with perfumed oil, white rum, and honey. The perfume was cheap and mighty, an impenetrable aura. The rum was a chill sizzle on my skin. The honey—Ochún’s own balm and aphrodisiac, the love medicine she uses to intoxicate Changó—stuck everything to everything.

  Isolina and I were dancing side by side, not touching, for which I was grateful. I was touched by everything that was happening, knew I understood only half of it, was trying to accept it all in joy and friendship. And it’s impossible not to laugh and give thanks when the gods are drenching you in honey and scented oil and burning spirits. But I couldn’t help worrying, Am I getting married?

  When José was finished with us, I noticed Ileana and other adults looking at us the way guests look to the reception’s head table, all mush and benediction.

  Amiga, I said, pitching my voice just over the drums and under our neighbors’ hearing, gracias por esta experiencia fantastica … I thanked her for the amazing experience, confessed my ignorance of much of what was happening, and asked whether we were still friends.

  Her smile just turned up a little at one corner, as if to say she’d seen this coming. Sí, Wheel-yam, she answered, somos amigos.

  We are friends.

  Then she led me to the back of the house. The kitchen there was feebly lit by a single, short fluorescent tube, enabling us to navigate around tables and chairs. We spent a long time at the dribbling sink, washing honey and oil off our arms and faces. My eyes adjusted, and by the time I was using a ragged towel to dry off I could read some of the books and papers piled on a table. A tight spiral staircase led up to a loft that appeared to be stuffed with more books. All the reading material seemed to relate to political theory, and diplomas and certificates on the wall declared José to be an accomplished bureaucrat, an activist in the government-sponsored “grassroots” organization Poder Popular, and, most remarkably, an official ideologue: a Party member trained to explain doctrine and policy to his neighbors.

  “Sí,” Isolina said, watching my expression. “He’s very well integrated in the community.”

  Integrada. She means he’s an integral part of this society, someone with an important role in its functioning and a stake in its success. But I think, too, of the word’s Stateside connotations: integrated schools, racial integration. José is mulato, a dark-skinned man who would have had little chance of integración in Batista’s neocolonial regime, or under Spain’s divide-and-rule racial policies. When Batista fell, one in four Cubans could not read, and that ratio was far higher among poor, black cubanos, especially in the East. The Revolution’s literacy campaign, educational investments, and commitment—however muddled and imperfect—to racial equality had made citizens of poor and disenfranchised people. José was the third black ideologico I’d met, and the second who also was a padrino.

  That last fact sank in as I stood there, wiping honey out of my ears. Many practitioners of the people’s religion—leaders in the spiritual life of their communities—are also leaders in Poder Popular. They’re ideologicos and government officials, Revolutionary stakeholders.

  Back home in the States, everyone asks Cuba travelers, “What’ll happen when Fidel dies?” It’s the question that drives U.S. policy toward Cuba, a policy based on a series of assumptions: “The Revolution is just a dictatorship. The people have no stake in it. When Fidel dies, Cuba will rush into the waiting arms of free-market capitalism.”

  From down in the ravine, at this feast that seemed to be attracting both José’s poor neighbors and a number of more prosperous people from other neighborhoods, those assumptions seemed far too simplistic.

  Many of Fidel’s own barbudos marched across their country and into power in Havana wearing beads and amulets. His own legend had benefited from many symbols rich in meaning for santeros, including a famous occasion when a dove had alighted on his shoulder. Almost half a century later, I’d met a great many santeros who are strong—though hardly uncritical—supporters of the Revolution, people working in government offices and in libraries, as teachers and railroad conductors. Even speaking in confidence, many of these people were much more critical of the United States than they were of their own country; many expressed still-strong socialist ideals and a deep mistrust of capitalism’s effects on education, health care, and social equality.

  Santeros are rooted in a tradition so strong and enduring that it is sometimes considered the “real” Cuba: a half-hidden, inner social dimension of syncretistic spirituality, allegiances, and understanding predating Party, colony, and Columbus.

  And from what I’ve seen, santeros aren’t waiting for Fidel to die so they can become capitalists.

  Too many of them know their history. Too many understand the connection between monocrop economies—like the old sugar regime—and inequality. Too many of them understand th
at tourism, that staple of Caribbean economies, is all too often an abstract monocrop; instead of exporting sugar, islanders allow themselves to be exploited.

  They know that the first thing many surviving batistianos (and their political heirs) in Miami would do, if they came back to Cuba, is use dollars to revoke the Revolution. The U.S. government—which allowed free-market ideologues to direct an Iraq reconstruction effort that wasted hundreds of billions of dollars—would encourage the kind of “economic restructuring” that has made corporate kleptocracies of most former Warsaw Pact economies. They know that when most yanquis think of Cuba, we think of a once-upon-a-time playground, of ’57 Chevys and cheap rum drinks and casinos stocked with exotic and available mulatas. We wonder why we can’t have all that anymore, and cubanos know that if Fidel dies, we’ll start trying harder than ever to get it back.

  When Isolina and I returned to the front room, José was dancing and talking, talking and dancing, his voice rising in volume and falling in pitch as his r’s rattled like flourishes on a snare drum. The band was taking a break and the boom box was back on, playing a song that José kept rewinding: a woman chanting over a big brass section, ¡Qué viva Changó! ¡Que viva Changó! Isolina told me the singer was Celina González, and the song a favorite at every Santa Barbara feast. The singer rolled her r’s, and José’s own trills grew more outrageous.