Beantown Cubans

by Johnny Diaz

  “I can see why you became an educator. Your parents seem to love what they do. How could you not be a teacher?” I say, driving on desolate Route 3 South.

  “I used to visit my mom at her school and help her clean the chalkboard and decorate her room. It grew on me. And she’d let me help grade her papers. I felt like I was being groomed to pursue education from an early age, but instead of teaching, I went into counseling. I prefer to have small groups of kids or to be one-on-one,” he says, as the blur of the highway’s lightposts flash by behind his face in the passenger seat.

  When we pull up to the colonial two-story house, I turn off the lights, and we sit inside the car. We both look at each other and look away. I grin with my mouth closed, even though a big old smile wants to break out.

  “Tommy, I know I’ve thanked you about a dozen times, but I wanted to thank you again for tonight, for Providence and for everything.” His blue eyes glisten in the faint moonlight. I quickly look up through my Jeep’s front window, and I notice that the night sky is sequined with stars.

  “Stop it! I would have done that for anyone!” I say, slouching in my Jeep’s bucket seat. I feel myself blushing.

  “I know you would have done that for anyone who needed help. It’s the person that you are, but you did it for me, and that means the world to me right now.”

  We sit there in silence, our eyes dancing with each other’s. And slowly, we lean toward each other. And then it happens. A sweet gentle kiss on the lips that makes my heart and spine tingle. Several more kisses follow until we pull away.

  “Mikey…we shouldn’t.”

  “Why? My feelings for you never went away,” he says, coming in for another kiss. I surrender to it.

  “But…you shouldn’t be dating anyone. It’s your first year of recovery.”

  “I know,” he whispers. “But my heart is telling me something else. I’ve got my drinking under control. My heart is another matter.”

  We continue kissing. I taste remnants of the maple syrup on his lips.

  I pull away again and create some distance on my side of the Jeep.

  “I just want to support you, Mikey, and be your friend. I’ve read that alcoholics shouldn’t be dating someone in the first year of recovery because they have so much to deal with, and being emotionally involved with someone can only complicate matters. It’s not that I don’t care about you. You know that. I’m just trying to be the best supportive friend I can be.”

  Mikey tilts his head and smiles.

  “Tommy, I know you’re looking out for me, but I’m a big boy. I know what I can and cannot do. You came back to me for a reason, and that has to mean something. Whether we’re friends or more, I want you in my life. But I am not going to stop feeling the way I feel or have always felt toward you.”

  “But…” I say, and he interrupts me with a kiss. “Look…let’s just take things slow. I think you got banged up in the head more than you realize,” I joke.

  “Okay, cutie. We’ll see how things go, but I know and you know what’s going to happen.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’re going to have to drive more often to see me until my car gets fixed.” We start laughing.

  “Just go to bed before your parents give you a detention!” I tease.

  He kisses me one more time and climbs out of the Jeep. As he walks up to the steps to his front door, he sticks out his tongue and bites down.

  I wave good-bye and drive back to Dorchester, thinking about what just happened. I feel like I am transported back to the year before when Mikey and I met and the magic between us kindled. I don’t know what this all means. Who am I kidding? It means that Mikey and I have found our way back to each other. It’s nice. No, it’s wonderful. Okay, it’s incredible having Mikey’s presence—his sober presence—back in my life as if it were meant to be. I blast some Gloria Estefan in the Jeep and wildly sing along to “Everlasting Love” like the loco that Carlos and the other drivers on Route 3 think I am.

  13

  Carlos

  “Class…class…class! Settle down.” Ay, Mondays! My students are so wired on Monday mornings, it’s as if they chugged down cans of Red Bull before walking in. They mumble and chatter about their weekend as if they hadn’t seen each other in weeks when it’s only been since Friday. I stand in front of the class where I have a perfect view of my twenty-three students, the peeling paint on the classroom’s south wall, and the cracked linoleum below on the green tiled floor. Through the eastern windows, I also have a perfect view of some shady characters—Latinos and blacks sitting on their porches and running out to the occasional car to trade something under a gloomy gray winter sky. It’s an odd juxtaposition: students learning a few hundred feet from drug dealers, but perhaps the view may motivate these kids to keep studying as well. What better incentive to excel than your own dicey neighborhood?

  A few months before I arrived, a stray bullet was shot through one of the windows at a nearby public library, sending parents and kids into a panic, according to Tommy who wrote a story on the impact that bullet had on the library and its patrons. Since then, security and police patrols have been beefed up. The school security guards keep the thugs off our property, but sometimes the realities of urban life happen. We’ve had two lockdowns since September and Channel 3 reported the story with the urgency of Columbine. This neighborhood reminds me of Liberty City back in Miami, which was always featured on Channel 7 News. Despite this rougher part of Dorchester, which borders Mattapan and Roxbury, this school remains a safe zone, a place where students can and should be at ease to learn. I make the best of my situation here for the sake of my students. I see a little of myself in them. They don’t think they quite fit into mainstream Boston, but they do because they are mainstream Boston, today.

  The radiator hisses and clanks, and the students continue gabbing. I prop myself on my stool and stare at them with a steely gaze. After five minutes, they finally shut their mouths and focus on me. Ay, finally! This secret weapon works every time—silence from a superior or authority figure. It makes the students wonder what you’re wondering about because you’re not losing your cool, which is what they want—to push your buttons. I know better. They stop talking so they can solve the mystery of my silence.

  “Thank you. Finally! And now we can begin. Open your copies of Finding Mañana by Mirta Ojito.” I hold up my own copy, which Ms. Ojito signed at Books & Books back in Coral Gables after a reading. The students rummage through their backpacks and messenger bags and pull out the used copies I found at various used book stores, craigslist, and eBay. I used my own money to purchase these books because I thought my students, most of whom have immigrant parents, might appreciate the story, even though it’s not part of the curriculum. It never hurts to deviate from the rules if it benefits a good education. (I got that from the movies Freedom Writers and Dead Poets Society a few years ago.) But I received permission from my department head to discuss this book as part of diversity month, so I’m not straying too far from the rules.

  “Okay, class. In this memoir, the author is literally looking for Mañana, a boat that ferried her and her family to Key West from Cuba during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. But she’s also looking for answers that will help her come to terms with her past and the political catalysts that led to one of the biggest mass migrations in U.S. and Cuban histories. This story is close to my heart, because I’m un Marielito.”

  For the most part, the class is quiet and listening. I hear some scattered whispers of “un Marielito?” from the back of the room.

  “If it wasn’t for Mariel, I wouldn’t be here today with you. I would probably still be living in Cuba with my parents and sister. I can’t even imagine that because I love my Dunkin’ Donuts coffee during lunch.” The students laugh. “Anyway, how many of you have parents born in another country?”

  Several hands shoot up. I’m engaging them. Good.

  “How many are from the Dominican Republic?” Six hands a
re raised.

  “And how many are from Vietnam?” Four hands pop up.

  I ask the other students to name the places their parents are from.

  “Puerto Rico!” three students announce.

  “Ireland,” another two shout out.

  “And what about Cape Verde?” I ask. Three students raise their hands.

  “So we’re all from somewhere else, more or less, like this author who used this book to trace the events that caused her and her family to flee their native country. That’s why I want you to read this book because it illustrates how political and historical events in one place affect people in other parts of the world. It’s history and literature in one.”

  As I explain further, I make the lesson local by peppering some facts and figures that I gleaned from Tommy’s news articles. How Boston is a minority-majority city or what the mayor and community advocates refer to as The New Boston. How Dorchester is the largest and most diverse neighborhood in Boston and how it was settled three months before Boston was in the 1630s. How one in every four Bostonians is foreign born just as the early British explorers were. How we can make a difference by talking, connecting, and exchanging our stories from where we are, how we got here and what we want to do with our lives. I love diversity. It makes us richer. In Miami, the most diverse place is Miami International Airport. Like Boston, most people self-segregate, which I don’t understand. How can we enrich our lives by living in silos? But then again, Mami and Papi raised us in uppity Coral Gables, and our family and friends lived there or in Kendall, the sprawling Cuban suburbia. That is why I chose to teach here in Dorchester—to learn about other people and cultures in another city.

  When I met a recruiter from Boston Public Schools at a job fair in downtown Miami a year ago, she asked me if I would be interested in coming to Boston to join its small but growing pool of bilingual Hispanic teachers. The pay was considerably more than in Miami, and they had a list of schools I could choose from if I got hired. Also, Mami had just died, and I didn’t want to be in Miami. I wanted to escape and start fresh somewhere else. The house and the city in general carried too many memories of her. So when I told the recruiter I would be interested in teaching in an urban school to gain more experience, her mouth widened and she almost fell over her chair. I told her, “I want to make a big difference. Those are the kids who need to see more professional minorities in their daily lives unlike here in Miami where we’re a dime a dozen.” I was pretty much hired on the spot.

  For the rest of the class, I have the students share stories about their parents’ or grandparents’ struggles to come to the United States. I also lace the lesson with my own experiences, something they seem to enjoy hearing about. Teaching is a give and take process, an educational exchange. The more I share about myself, the more they want to reciprocate by listening and actually doing what I ask of them. Speaking of homework, I need to give them their new assignment.

  “I want you to talk to one of your relatives who lived in another country and write an essay on how and why they came to the United States and Boston. I want you to trace that family history in the essay from their point of view and I want you to write some of those similarities you found in the Mirta Ojito book. Comprende?” The class starts to chatter again about the assignment. Most of my students seem somewhat enthusiastic. When you learn something new about yourself and connect that to a larger global picture, your knowledge base deepens. It makes learning personal and fun. If I had them write an essay solely on Mirta Ojito’s book, I bet they would be bored and uninterested. A teacher has to tailor the lesson to the student and the setting.

  By 8:45, the second bell rings, and I use the brief break to walk outside and smoke a cigarette. I dial Tommy with one hand and wave with the other to Juan, the school’s friendly janitor. Juan is hauling away some trash from the school’s breakfast session. El pobre! With budget cutbacks, he and Luis are the only two custodial workers left at the school. I can see small chocolate milk boxes and candy wrappers topping the trash can from where I stand in my own cloud of smoke.

  “Why, Carlos, why?” Tommy answers the phone with a yawn.

  “Loco, it’s almost nine. Shouldn’t you be up already?”

  He yawns and groans some more.

  “I don’t have to be at work until ten-thirty. I live ten minutes away.”

  “You’re so lazy, Tommy. Knowing you, you probably get up, roll out of bed, drink your Gatorade and slice of wheat bread, grab your Diet Coke, and you’re out of the door all within fifteen minutes. Right?”

  He simply yawns, which means I’m right.

  “Bueno, I’ll let you get back to sleep. I’m on my cigarette break at school. I just wanted to know if we’re still meeting up later at El Oriental to catch up. I’m planning to stay here at school to grade my ever-growing pile of papers and tweak my lesson plans for next week until dinner.”

  “Um, yeah, like six o’clock.”

  “Okay, sleepyhead. I’ll see you later!”

  Tommy yawns loudly and mistakenly presses some other buttons on the phone. I hear him drop his cell phone. Que loco!

  The bell rings and signals that my smoke break is up. I take some last few delicious puffs of my Marlboro and flick it into the parking lot, which is pocked with crater-size potholes from many winters and no maintenance. Even the slab of sidewalk I stand on is cracked like shattered glass. I have five more classes to teach and then have to help out with the after-school tutoring program for kids who are new to this country and don’t speak much English. I just want to flash forward to El Oriental and talk to Tommy and chow down.

  I’m still feeling down from the other night. I know Tommy can cheer me up or figure out what is going on with me. I lean on him a lot because he has been my only true friend in Boston so far. I’ve become friendly with others here. There’s Juanita, my fellow teacher at school who always watches my class when I need to use the bathroom or appease my nicotine craving. There’s Marcello, well, scratch that name out. I haven’t heard from him since we hooked up. There’s Doris, the nice lady at the market who always gives me extra slices of ham at the deli. There’s Jim, the straight college student who works at the membership desk at Bally’s and gives me free advice on how to work out when we see each other by the weights. He practices his beginning Spanish with me. But can I really count on these friendly faces in case of an emergency? Not really. They are people you say hola to and chat with for five minutes on your way to somewhere else. Extremely nice acquaintances.

  I’ve always been a little socially awkward at making friends, which is why I was always with Mami. I did have co-teachers at Braddock High who I was friendly with, but for the most part, I hung out with my ex, Daniel, and his friends. When we broke up, his friends, naturally, remained with him.

  Later on in the day, I’m standing outside the restaurant, as usual, waiting for my loco. I survived another day of Dorchester High. Before I took the job, I had heard all these stories about the school. Two female students stabbed each other, and one of them was four months pregnant. But I was looking for a challenge, and these incidents weren’t the result of teaching or the school itself. They were some bad apples in and outside of school. It’s not the students’ or principal’s fault. These things can happen anywhere.

  I see Tommy whiz by, bouncing in his Jeep. After he pulls into a space, he climbs out and saunters toward me. We give each other our warm Latino hugs and do our usual exchange of greetings.

  “Great to see you, man!” Tommy says, messing up my hair.

  “Same here, loco!” I also mess up his hair.

  We walk in, take our spot in the corner of the eatery where the young Latina waitress, who looks as if she could be one of my students, hands us the rectangular menus. As I stretch out my legs under the table and settle into my plastic chair, Tommy immediately orders a Diet Coke. I order a Sprite as we eye the menu. I notice that Tommy has a big smile on his face, which is pretty routine, but he seems to be glowing more tha
n usual. There’s a certain extra bounce in his curls.

  “Loco, que pasa? What’s going on with you? How’s your, ahem, amiguito Mikey?” I say, sipping my Sprite with one eyebrow cocked up.

  Tommy just smiles.

  “Talk! Spill it.” I egg him on.

  “Well…”

  Tommy is going to make me drag this out of him. For a gregarious reporter, he can be tight-lipped at times.

  “Wait, you and Mikey hooked up, no? Is that what I was interrupting the other night when I text-messaged you? Oh shit!”

  “Actually, we had a great dinner and a fun night. But then he got into an accident. Long story short, he’s fine. He was shaken up. I met his parents at the scene. They were super sweet, just like Mikey, good people. We all went to the hospital and Mikey had a slight concussion. Nothing too serious. We then kissed outside his house,” he says in one breath. I almost spit out my piece of Cuban bread.

  “Que cosa?”

  “Carlos, calm down. It was a kiss. Okay, several kisses just like the ones we shared when we dated.”

  I grab a napkin to clean up the bread crumbs on my shirt. I’ve made a mess.

  “That is great, loco! I knew you guys would get back together. Friends my ass! It was meant to be.” I high-five Tommy.

  “Thanks, Carlos. It just happened. I just don’t want to go too fast, you know. He needs to focus on his recovery, which he’s doing a good job at. I don’t want to get in the way of that.”

  “Well, it sounds like you are being supportive. That’s wonderful, chico. I’m happy for you.” I look down and then toward the window where traffic backs up on Centre Street. Plumes of fumes rise from the manholes that line the street’s spine. I am truly happy for Tommy, but I secretly wish I had some news like that to brag about as well. Despite my I-will-be-happy declaration in the mirror the other night, I’m still depressed. I can’t seem to escape it. The sun setting at four in the afternoon and shortening the day hasn’t helped much.