Jubana!

by Gigi Anders

  So.

  What it is, is that Mami would have had to go out to an actual grocery store and actually purchase ham and shrimp, which are not only more expensive than a carton of Kool kings but require actual preparation.

  It’s not that the huevos a la Malagueña got no butter on their respective tops because we ran out of butter or we don’t believe in butter. It’s that the butter has to be melted, and why would you stand there melting butter and then have to deal with yet another item to wash when you can simply…not?

  It’s not that Mami overcooked the dish to the point of huevo fossilization because she liked her huevos hard. It’s that when you insist on having a TV set in every room of your house (why else go on living?), you’re bound to WATCH TV AND NOT THE OVEN.

  Guests are always too polite or too ignorant or too hungry to say anything negative about Mami’s huevos a la Malagueña. Papi had bought several dozen assorted bagels and a nineteen-pound slab of cream cheese. Mami made tuna salad and egg salad (both actually fit for human consumption) and there was a huge hunk o’ Jarlsburg cheese and a bowl of green grapes. There were cheese blintzes and empanadas de picadillo (turnovers stuffed with ground meat). Papi made a pitcher of sangria and there were the usual twenty-nine pots of Cuban coffee with the requisite three thousand pounds of sugar mixed in.

  I grabbed a TaB out of the refrigerator, spread some cream cheese on half a bagel, and sat down with the company as Eric made the shoe shine rounds in his squeaky Pampers.

  “So, Gigilah,” Neil Greene said, “you must be happy about your new school.” He was a good-looking architect who lived a few doors from our town house

  “My new school?” I said, stalling. I slowed down my chewing and pretended the thickly spread cream cheese was sticking to the roof of my mouth, making it impossible to talk.

  “Sidwell Friends,” Neil said. “That’s a big accomplishment, bubbeleh. How many new kids do they accept every year? What is it, David, something like seventeen percent of all applicants? Eleven?”

  “I really don’t know,” Papi answered, refilling Neil’s sangria glass. “But for the tuition those ganefs charge, it had better be…”

  “Seedwells ees de BEST,” Mami snapped. “Gigi ees threel-ed to go der. THREEL-ED. Right, mumita?” She cupped my bagel and cream cheese–stuffed cheek in her cool hand. “Nex’ weekend we’re goheengh choppeengh for new fall outfeets. Ees so much fun, ees eencrehdeebl!”

  “I have to go now,” I said, stepping over Eric, who was on his hands and knees, digging in the brick-colored shag carpeting for an errant quarter. I ran upstairs to the aqua sanctuary of my bedroom. I was breathless and a little dizzy. My heart was racing. I had a terrible presentiment about Seedwells. But the fact of me going there was inexorable. I lay on my bed and curled up into myself like a fetus, hugging my second pillow (Mami’s always believed in more than nineteen of everything, hence many pillows on every bed at all times). I wished I still had my gindaleja, I really needed it now. But to commemorate my fourth or fifth birthday—God, what was I thinking?—I announced to Mami that gindalejas are kid stuff and I was a big girl now. She asked me if I was absolutely sure and I said yes and we threw it away. In the middle of the night I ran to my parents’ bed and jumped on Mami, screaming for her to get it back.

  “What?” she said. “De gindaleja? Das gone, honey. I ask-ed joo are joo choor an’ joo said jes.”

  “I changed my mind!” I cried.

  “Sorry, mamita. Ees a goner. Go back to joor bayt, okay? Jool be fine. Nighty-nighty.”

  “Oh my God. I want it back!”

  “Nighty-nighty!”

  “It was a moment of weakness!”

  “Das great, honey. Nighty—”

  “Well, can you at least make me some leche evaporada caliente con azúcar [warm evaporated milk with sugar]?”

  “Dahveed,” Mami said, poking Papi’s shoulder. “Wake OHP. La niña quiere leche. ¡Despiertate, coño!” The girl wants milk. Wake up, dammit!

  Papi dutifully arose, and while he heated a can of evaporated milk, poured in the requisite fifteen cups of sugar, and stirred, I inspected all the garbage cans in the apartment—we had many; Jubans are incredibly trashy—to make sure Mami wasn’t lying. She wasn’t. Coño! I told Papi that I was fully prepared to slide down the garbage chute down the hall to exhume the gindaleja from the Dumpster. Papi said, “Tu ’tas loca? Esa cosa ’sta llena de microbios. Olvídate.” Are you crazy? That thing’s full of germs. Forget it.

  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 century 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 attack 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?”