Jubana! (20 page)

Like Mami, he always was kind of literal.

We walked back to my bed, and Papi sat on the edge as I drank, his eyelids drooping.
“¿Ya? Acába allí, gorda, po'que 'stoy muerto.”
All right? Finish up over there, fat girl, 'cause I'm dead.

Even tired in the lamplight in the middle of the night, my father looked handsome, like a deposed Latin American head of state with soft, kind, warm, sweet espresso-brown eyes. The fiancé called Papi
el caudillo,
which means “the leader,” although it was more commonly used as a title for General Franco. (Paul called Mami
la esposa,
which means “the wife.”) I gave Papi the empty glass and kissed his cheek. Then I started crying all over again, thinking about the lost
gindaleja.

“No llores, bobita,”
Papi said, holding two tissues up to my nose so I could blow.
“Más se perdió en Cuba.”
Don't cry, silly girl. More was lost in Cuba.

It all seemed like a long time ago now. But the memory was comforting, that feeling of warmth and fullness and
bienestar,
well-being, that the sweet milk and my father watching over me
with his ever present neatly folded tissues gave.
The memory of all that, no, no, they can't take that away from me.

I pushed away my pillow, rolled over on my stomach, and tapped on the window, daring to disturb the wasp universe. Right on cue, the winged sohkehrz buzzed and swarmed, flinging themselves with malicious
ping-ping-pings
on the pane. They repulsed me. Tomorrow I'd sic Rebeca—cheaper than Orkin and twice as sadistic—on 'em with a ladder, a hose, bug spray, plastic gloves, and the Ecuadorian broomstick she'd flown in on. That'd show those ugly Amehreecahn wasps who was really boss. In the meantime I'd recall
Shall We Dance.
I had watched the movie on a rainy Sunday afternoon on TV with Mami while Fred and Ginger danced to Ira and George's enchanting words and music and I handed Mami her manicure accoutrements one by one like a veteran operating room nurse. Mami had accumulated so many that containing them all required three gigantic picnic baskets. First we prepared: Ashtray. Cigarette. Lighter. Espresso. Then the Main Event. Acetone. Cotton balls. Emery board. Cuticle remover. Orange stick. Base coat. Color. Color again. Top coat. Once her nails were done I'd light Mami's cigarette for her while it was in her mouth so the lighter wouldn't mess up her shiny wet nails.

“Joo know de Gershweens were two Jews, right?” Mami said, accelerating the drying process by exhaling Kool smoke on her nails. They were ice white. Snow white. Albino white.

“Mm-hm,” I said distractedly. I was engrossed in a new
Vogue
with Lauren Hutton on the cover. Tio Bernardo's second-born, a drop-dead gorgeous daughter named Lishka (he “created” her name), looked a lot like her. Dadeland Miami male drivers would crash into Burdines if Lishka was walking down the street. For a Jubana she was unusually tall and willowy, always tanned, with wavy-not-frizzy naturally highlighted dirty blond hair, huge hazel eyes, flawless skin, and a body worth giving up
puerco
for. Plus
Lishka was recognizably human, personality-wise. I loved her. She was always clashing with Tío Nano, which I really respected.

“Doesn't Lauren look like Lishka?” I said, showing Mami the photograph.

“Please. La-La [Lishka's nickname] ees so much preetee-er dan her. An' La-La doesn't have dat gap een her fron' teeth. Oh, I just looohv my nails! I looohv dooheengh dem. Ees my tehrapy.”

“For what?”

“Life,” Mami replied.

“Therapy like my
gindaleja?”

“Jes.”

“So now that mine's gone, what do I take? Do I need therapy?”

“Joo could smoke or sometheengh like dat.”

“Maybe writing can be my therapy.”

“Right but smokeengh ees a lot easier an' much more fun. When people say, ‘Why don' joo queet?' I go, ‘I would not do eet eef I deed not lohvee. Thank joo an' fohk joo.' For now johs keep on dreenkeengh de Knox, okay? Joo are, right? Because joo can transcen' all de coils of de mortahleetees an' de deesahpointmen's by lookeengh goo'. Every
refugiado cubano
needs sometheengh. Fohkeengh—”

“I know. Fucking Fidel Castro. Hitler's demon spawn.”

“Joo got eet, honey. Joo can blame eet all on heem an' hees dehveel father, Adolfo. Because de facts are de facts. Includeengh de need for tehrapy an' long, hard nails.”

 

Poor Mrs. Dorothy Blanchard (A.B., University of Nebraska; Columbia University). She just didn't know what to do with me or her new scarf. Mami bought my Sidwell Friends fifth grade teacher a faultless silk scarf in a primary-colored Frank Lloyd Wright design from Lord & Taylor. It was a getting-to-know-you
gesture, a more sophisticated apple for the teacher. It was also a Juban bribe. Translation: Joo can be bought. Now let my baby slide.

Implicit Mrs. Dorothy Blanchard response: No, I actually can't. No, I actually won't. Where are you people FROM?

My perplexing predicament: Shit. The old silk scarf trick may not work here. Mrs. Blanchard looks like Pat Nixon, but with less warmth, spontaneity, wit, and enthusiasm. She expects me to know how to do fractions. I just recently mastered papier-mâché, for God's sake. I was doing swans. Whenever I attempt fractions my head gets hot like an overheated car engine and I have to pull over, cool off, and refuel with a nice
café con leche
and a lightly toasted strawberry Pop-Tart. These Gwyneths and John-Johns don't seem to get overheated like I do. There must be a paper somewhere with the rules on it, a manual that would tell me step-by-step how this game is played, the same way I learned which nail tools to give Mami in which order. Can academic achievement be like a manicure? In steps? Nobody tells me anything except when I do something wrong. Mrs. Blanchard just keeps giving me demerits for talking too much. AFTER MAMI GAVE HER A FUCKING FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT SILK SCARF. Really, really tacky! What's more, that scarf didn't buy me
anything.
Who's going to help me now? Certainly not my refugee parents. They're as lost as I am. They can't even help me with my fractions homework. They don't know what it is. Mami says she never heard of it.

 

If you go to the Sidwell Friends School Web site today, it will still be, exactly thirty years after my high school graduation, tragically all maroon and gray. But you will also find something even more shocking and telling about how it's entered the twenty-first cen
tury than the upgraded tuition ($19,975 per year for lower school and $20,975 each for middle and upper school): the Hola Corner. I love and covet the Hola Corner. It's the lower school's three-year-old mandatory
Español
program for all 290 of its adorable, privileged, pre-K through fourth grade
estudiantes.
You can even watch video clips of the tiny tots singing songs
en Español,
tots who will eventually go to Harvard and run this country bilingually. As a gay Nuyorican friend of mine says, “It's the new Spic Chic, darling. We're finally hot!”

Maybe we are. But Hispanics and Hispanic style were anything but chic and hot to most North Americans in 1967, and the North Americans running Sidwell Friends were no exception. Frustrated all fall by Mrs. Blanchard's lack of puppy love, Mami suggested I invite
la vieja,
the old woman, over for a Cuban winter dinner, a final, desperate Juban attempt at warming up and seducing
la gringa
with marinated pork products. After all, all my previous teachers had been over to the house. I really couldn't imagine having (or wanting to have) Pat Nixon there, though, chowing down on
puerco asado
and
frijoles negros
and
plátanos maduros,
foods she'd no doubt consider Fifth World sordid. So I sidestepped a direct invite by asking Mr. Arnold if that's “done” at Sidwell.

“Well,” he said, Dumbo ears reddening, “it doesn't hurt to ask. But remember, if you invite her you'll have to invite her spouse, too.”

That night at dinner I told Mami, “If you invite my teacher you have to invite her dog.”

“Her dog?” Mami said. “Das really weird. I mean, lohv doggies, but steel, das really weird.”

“I know but that's what the principal said. It's a kind of dog called ‘spouse.'”

“‘Spouse'? I never heard of eet. Must be, like, an Amehreecan
breed das not dat goo'.
¡Ay! ¿Papito, que tu 'stas haciendo?”
Oh! Little Daddy, what are you doing? Underneath the dining room table Eric was manically polishing our shoes—for money. He'd gotten so carried away that he'd smeared the top of Mami's narrow white foot with thick black shoe polish.

“That child needs help,” I said, curling my legs up under my butt to avoid the same fate. I sipped my TaB and picked stray pieces of
picadillo
and grains of
arroz blanco
off Big Red Al's hair, cheeks, and high chair tray.
Picadillo,
traditionally served over white rice with a side of fried ripe plantains, is a savory sautéed dish of ground beef, crushed tomatoes, sherry, cubed potatoes, dark raisins, and olives. It was one of Rebeca's many traditional Cuban specialties. Big Red Al had moved on to moisturizing his face and décolletage with a very ripe, very soft, sweet, and squishy fried plantain.

“I theenk dees keedees should go to Seedwells, too,” Mami said, referring to my brothers.
“Qué te parece,
Dahveed?” What do you think, David?

“We'll see,” Papi said. “Maybe.”

I could barely contain my snicker.

“What?” Mami said. “Why ees dat fohnny?”

I had to think fast. In drama it's called
improvisation.
Following a successful run at Stage Studio as Helen Keller, we had moved on to Carson McCullers's
Member of the Wedding,
in which I played Frankie Adams, a lonely, alienated Southern twelve-year-old who alternately clings to and rejects her black maid. Perfect casting,
n'est-ce pas?
Let's face it, the part was not exactly a stretch for me.

“The fact that I go to Sidwell means Eric and Big Red Al will never get in,” I said, trying to sound witty and ironic and self-deprecating. Hey, it wasn't a total lie. I
did
make Sidwell second-guess their decision to accept me on a daily basis.

Mami flashed me The Look.

“Wanna hear what I learned in school today?” I asked, anxious to change the subject and her terrifying expression. I cleared my throat and sipped some TaB. “Ready? Hell-ooo?”

Mami reached for an ashtray. It was a beauty, too: forest green with gold leaf and a lion's head insignia. Mami had snatched it and some lovely silverware from the bar at the Shoreham Hotel on Calvert Street in Northwest D.C. She and Papi went there a lot for cocktails and late suppers with Valerie and Walter, who were best friends with the swank hotel's owner Bernie Bralove, whose father Harry had built the place in 1929. Valerie and Walter lived in the opulent Rock Creek Park apartment building right by the Shoreham, and the Braloves lived nearby in a huge, gorgeous house. (I'd never been there but Valerie had told me it was really nice.) Bernie's second and current wife was Alice, a nice shiksa who taught ballet at the Washington School of Ballet just down the street from Sidwell's upper school campus. I was still taking ballet in über-gauche Southwest and had made my stage debut the previous December. I was a dancing snowflake in
The Nutcracker
's snow scene and a marzipan in the second act, with a beautiful pink tutu all festooned with tiny flowers. Considering that I wasn't allowed to wear my hideous glasses onstage, I thought I did pretty well, though I occasionally collided with Lisa La Bicha, who was a lowly peppermint candy cane.

“‘O come let us adore Him,'” I sang to my bewildered family over the
picadillo
pieces, “‘O come let us adore Him, o come let us adore Him, Chri-ist the Lord.'”

“Wh-what?”
Mami said, choking on her Kool smoke and coughing. She slapped her chest with her outspread palm as her eyes watered.
“Wh-who? Wh-who
are we a-a-a-doreengh?”

“Christ.
Chri-ist the Lord.”

“¿Tu 'tas loca?”
Mami said, slowly recovering from the Kool at
tack and dabbing her watery sunflower eyes with Papi's proffered folded tissues. “We don' adore Christ! Hees not our Lor'! De only Lor' right now for joo an' for me ees de one up der een de blue eh-skies an' de one down here weeth de an'-Taylor!”

“Lord and Taylor are Jewish?” I asked, confused. “Which one, the Lord or the Taylor? Or are they both?”

“Dahveed?” Mami said beseechingly to Papi.

Papi shrugged, sipped his espresso, and contentedly ahhhed, his eyes far off and away like one of those
New Yorker
maps of Cuba as the center of the universe just beyond the frontier of the Potomac River and our front door.

“Look, joor Lor' ees our Lor',” Mami continued, “an' our Lor' ees de Jeweesh one!”

“So the Taylor isn't Jewish? But the Christ was. Definitely.”

“Dat ees SO not de poin',” Mami said. “De poin' EES dat we are payheengh all dees beeg bucks to dat damn school an' den joo come home seengeengh abou' Jesúcristo.
¿Tu 'tas loca?”

“Eric and Big Red Al will sing for Jesúcristo too if you send them there,” I said. “Good luck to you.”

“Dahveed!” Mami cried.
“¡Has algo!”
Do something!

“¿Qué coño tu quieres que yo haga?”
Papi said.
“Yo ni coño sé de que coño tu 'stás hablando.
Lord
y
Taylor,
Jesús Cristo—¿qué coño? Estoy, pero, perdido total.”
What the hell do you want me to do? I don't even fucking know what the fuck you're talking about. Lord and Taylor, Jesus and Christ—what the hell? I'm, like, totally lost.