Jubana! (8 page)

“¡Mira pa' esto!”
Mami said, examining my blistered inner thighs. Look at this! And then to my father,
“¡Has algo!”
Do something!

“¿Qué coño tu quieres que yo haga? ¡Hay calor! ¡No hay dinero!”
What the hell do you want me to do? It's hot! There's no money!

“¡La niña no puede vivir así! Mira pa' esto. A mi no m'importa un carajo. Compra un aire acondicionado, coño. O róbate uno, a mi que m'importa. Pero hazlo!”
The child can't live like this! Look at
this. I don't give a fuck (what it takes). Buy an air conditioner, dammit. Or steal one, I don't care. Just do it!

“Okay.”

My father went to Sears and bought an electric fan for $12. They put it in my bedroom. My hives and rashes cleared right up. Mami needed a target for her fury. Papi was the most convenient one to blame, as if he had caused our new impoverished circumstances with all its attendant problems and deprivations. Mami railed against Fidel Castro, she howled at the moon for the random unfairness of life, for the constan' eensohlt of snow, for the red rash on my thighs.

Later on we got a.c. and she kind of calmed down. It made her feel slightly less bereft, since in Cuba we always had a.c. in our houses. Just like we always had maids and silver stove-top espresso pots. Those are the culturally specific symbols of lifestyle continuity from one country to another. We didn't have much else here, though. We had one another, sort of. I hardly ever saw my parents, and when I did, we were rarely alone. They were either at work or resting in their bed after work or going out or throwing dinner parties for psychiatrists or resting in their bed from the dinner parties. I grew up surrounded less by children than by adult psychiatrists and other assorted health care professionals who were all Mami's new work friends. (Papi didn't really have friends except Mami. He was always too shy, withdrawn, awkward, and socially indifferent. I found those qualities alternately sad, infuriating, and touching.) I had always felt more comfortable and normal around much older people than I ever did or would around my peers—with a couple of caveats. The people I have always gotten along with best are straight women either my age or younger, married men of any age, straight men close to my parents' age, gay men around my same age, and blacks and immigrants of either gender and any age. After all, until I was sent
in the fall of 1967 to a prep school in the fifth grade, my friends were almost exclusively black: nannies, children, and their families.

What I didn't grasp until Sidwell Frenzy, as I refer to that hellish eight-year period from fifth to twelfth grade, was just how racially segregated Washington, D.C., was. It was an unpleasant realization, one that I've really never gotten used to. Maybe that's the reason I identify so much with people of color, although I am technically white. I have a Caucasian Mexican-American friend, Mayra, who likes to point out that white
is
a color, one that “contains all of the visible rays of the spectrum.” Well, Mayra went to Harvard. That's how those people talk. Acing the SAT verbals is just in their blood. But Mami says saying we're whitey crackers is wrong. Here's why: There used to be a discount chain of stores in the northeastern part of the country called the Cosmetic Center. One time Mami was shopping there and saw a fetching display of particularly colorful makeup. It was really hard to shoplift in there—visible cameras and mirrors everywhere—so she grudgingly walked up to the counter to “pay” for an olive eyeshadow and a rust-colored lipstick, two of her favorite “earth” colors.

“Oh no,” said the cashier. “These aren't for you.”

“Of course dey are, honey,” Mami said.

“No, ma'am. See? This says it's for ‘Women of Color.'”

“Right. So?”

“Well, it's for women of
color.”

“Das right. I
am
a woman of colors. Peenk.”

Unlike Mami, whose heavy-duty accent instantly gives her away as a ferner, as they say down South, I have no accent either in English or in Spanish, and besides, I look mainstream and unethnic. Therefore, I can “pass” as a whitey. Or someone peenk. Whatever. But in some ways, that only compounds how different I feel underneath the skin. I've had blacks, Latinos, and Asians
treat me one way before they found out my background, and then act completely another way when I open my mouth and start rattling off in rapid-fire, perfect
Español.

But integration is how Latinas and Jubanas have always survived. Paradoxes “R” Us. We're always integrating the European with the Indian with the black with the Russian with the Mongolian with the Spanish with the English with the Jewish with the Gentile with the Old World with the New World with the real diamonds with the fake diamonds. Making sense of what doesn't make sense is how we've survived historically. That and a lot of red lipstick and toenail polish. We, or at least I, feel invisible without it.

One time when I was monastically shuttered at home for a few days while on deadline for the
Washington Post,
I was under so much pressure to produce and scoop the
New York Times
that I forwent makeup! That tells you how bad it was. Anyway, once I'd filed my story, I had to come into the office to get edited. I took a long hot shower, washed and blow-dried my hair to frizz-free perfection (it takes six styling products to get it that way), and lovingly applied my makeup with an I've-missed-you! gusto. I caught sight of myself in the hallway mirror in my apartment as I was leaving and I literally said out loud, “Oh,
there
you are!” In other words, Jubanas are more “themselves” with makeup than without it. Something is terribly, terribly wrong if we skip it.

Which is why the first time I went to see Gramps without a trace of makeup (okay, I think I did have some Kiehl's clear lip balm on, but that doesn't really count), we got our multicultural wires crossed. We'd been together for a year or so and the trust was there, so I decided to do something really bold, really daring, really wacky: a naked face in public! But it was simply because I'd overslept. And you
know
how these Freudian fuckers will
never
pass up an opportunity to psychoanalyze your every last move. If you've overslept—and by age four or five, having been ringed by
so many psychiatrists, I hardly needed yet another one to point this out—there's a
reason
for it and that reason usually has something to do with
resistance
or
avoidance.
I just didn't have the energy to go there. So I arrived right on time and, knowing I looked like a raging hag, immediately apologized to Gramps for my appearance.

“I'm so sorry!” I said. “This is the worst you'll ever see me.”

“Did something happen?”

“Well…”

“I mean, what happened to make you feel so bad?”

“No!” I said. God, he
so
didn't get it. “I'm not wearing any makeup! You can't tell the difference?”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “I thought you said you'd had a crisis.”

I had. But explaining it would involve an additional five years on the couch. Not that I minded—psychoanalysis was good for me, it was enlightening and permanently useful. But I quickly did the calculations. Let's see, $200 a session, at three times a week (Gramps would have preferred five because “It only gives you the weekend to hide”), at four weeks per month, at…forget it. No health insurance is that good. And while the 'rents were kindly picking up the slack on that tab, they had mixed feelings at best about my treatment and
no
mixed feelings whatsoever about Gramps's fee.

“Coño, el tipo es un ganef,”
Papi remarked in Spandish, or Spanish and Yiddish. Dammit, the guy is a thief. Mami Dearest's aversion to paying for anything had long since rubbed off on Papi, who delayed “expansion” payments as long as humanly possible.

In return, I of course ran to my expander and reported exactly what my father had said. I thought that would be “helpful.” Gramps, a hard-core German Jew, was, shall we say, not amused. The news unfortunately backfired on me:

GRAMPS:
Goddammit. He called me that? Look. If there was a flood in your father's basement and I was a plumber he called to come fix it, we would expect that I would be paid for my work on the spot. Right?

GIGI:
Right. Absolutely.

GRAMPS:
If I completed the task correctly, I would stand there while he wrote a check. I wouldn't “bill” him for the future. That's how the world works.

GIGI:
Right!

GRAMPS:
Except in your parents' world, everything comes for free.

GIGI:
Right!

GRAMPS:
NO. That is WRONG.

GIGI:
Oh. Yeah, you're right.

GRAMPS:
Goddammit, I know I'm right. Stop agreeing with me.

GIGI:
Okay. Sorry.

GRAMPS:
I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to realize that this is YOUR therapy. I don't give a shit how you pay for it. What I do give a shit about is that I get paid in a timely way, and that is YOUR responsibility.

GIGI:
Can't this one be an exception? I'm sure my dad will cough it up eventually.

GRAMPS:
There are no exceptions. You either stand for something or you don't.

GIGI:
Well, I mean, hello. I can't MAKE him write the fucking checks.

GRAMPS:
You're going to leave here in a few minutes—the sooner, the better…

GIGI:
Gee, thanks.

GRAMPS:
You're welcome. And you're going home and you're going to sit down with your parents tonight and tell them the following: “Either Gramps gets paid NOW or we have to terminate treatment.” You ask them: “Can we afford this? Because if
not, we have to make other arrangements for therapy for me.” And don't come back here until and unless you've had that conversation and bring me that check. You got that?

GIGI:
Holy shit.

GRAMPS:
That's right, holy shit.

 

I was so freaked out about having such a blunt, non-Jubanesque talk with my fantasy-and denial-ridden parents, for whom explicit money discussions were more taboo than sex, that as Papi finally, reluctantly, handed me the check, I felt the top of my skull pop open and fly away.

In our next session, I described this bizarre, unfamiliar sensation to Gramps, who took the check and practically broke out into a one-man “Hava Nagila” hora.

“Mazel tov!” he cried. “Your head's cracking open! Expansion! It's about time.”

 

But before your head can crack open, before anything, for that matter, Jubanas are required by their families to learn how to throw great dinner parties. As her Aunt Alicia told Gigi in the eponymous movie I was partially named after, “Bad table manners, my dear Gigi, have broken up more households than infidelity.”

Entertaining well is a skill that will always come in handy, like being able to tweeze your eyebrows without a mirror or knowing how to bikini wax at home without setting your kitchen and nether regions on fire. Mami and the maid always served a Cuban menu. Typically it was
arroz con pollo,
the Cuban version of the Spanish paella, preceded by light appetizers, such as mixed drinks and little bowls of cashews or plantain chips. (Cuban food is a little heavy, and Americans experiencing it for the first time
always go hawg wild and overeat, so you want to keep the appetizer situation light.)
Arroz con pollo
is a well-seasoned casserole of saffron-scented and colored rice (usually short-grain Valencia rice, which is fat, creamy, soft, and smooth like risotto) with chicken, pimientos, olives, sweet peas, and whatever else you've got lying around. Mami served it buffet-style, with white or red wine, fried ripe plantains, guava-stuffed croissants, and a romaine salad with sliced raw mushrooms and sliced red onions and a creamy dressing. Dessert was always flan, aka
crème caramel,
embellished with some sort of berry purée on the side, and espresso.

Watching Mami in confident, recipe-free Cuban hostess mode is how I learned to entertain others. She'd show me how to set a table: The little fork always goes to the left of the big fork; the water glass is always to the left of the wineglass; multiple candles and cut flowers project beauty and power. Even though we were still pretty poor, making do with style has always been a quintessentially Cuban trait. It's a matter of dignity and good taste, of Old World manners and savoir faire. Mami always insisted on fresh flowers at the dinner table. Her favorites were and still are
margaritas,
daisies.

The first dinner party she had in Washington that I recall was in the late winter of 1963. It was set for 8
P.M
. on a Saturday night, which is the traditional Cuban dinner hour and because one of Mami's favorite movies is 1933's
Dinner at Eight
(“Jean Harlow's hair was totally FAKE een dat plateenohm, but chee was so fohnny an' cute! I lohv-ed her!”). It was the maid's day off, but she and Mami had everything prepared well ahead of time, which is easy with Cuban food, since it's forgiving and tends to improve over time. At 8:05, the doorbell rang. Everything but Mami was ready; she was just getting into the shower. Papi had gone out to buy some wine or ice or something. In Cuba, if you invite people for eight
o'clock, nobody with any civility or manners even
thinks
of arriving until nine-ish. Any sooner would be incredibly tacky, rude, and bizarre. Mami wondered why the doorbell was ringing and asked me to go see. I opened the door and saw a man and a woman.