Jubana!

by Gigi Anders

  “Oye Basulto,” I said into my mike, “porque hay tanto calor?” Hey Basulto, why is it so hot?

  “Quité ’l aire,” Basulto’s deep voice crackled back to me. “Come gasolina.” I cut off the a.c. Eats fuel.

  This would be pleasant. Basulto peeled a banana and devoured it, tossing the peel out the window. He had no problem littering but God forbid you mess up his Cessna’s seats with your dirty sneakers. So Cuban. Basulto was, as I jotted down in my notebook, stern, affectionate, wry, precise, courtly, spiritual, and fussy. He LOVES planes.

  We’d been in the air for almost two hours. I was in massive Parliament and TaB withdrawal mode and had to pee real bad.

  “Oye Basulto,” I said, “Donde ’sta ’l baño?” Where’s the bathroom?

  “¿¡¿El BAÑO?!? ¡Ay, Dios mío!” He laughed maniacally and shot a macho look at the copilot.

  “Me ’stoy muriendo,” I wailed. I’m dying.

  “¿Tu tomaste café esta mañana?” he asked accusingly. Did you drink coffee this morning?

  Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “Look, I will pay you cash money to land this fucking plane in Cuba,” I said. “I don’t care. I got Visas, I got MasterCards. We can’t be that far away from Havana. I’ll handle Castro’s troops personally. I’ve done it before. I have to GO!”

  Basulto chomped on a tropical plum, shaking his head and throwing little seeds out the window. So that’s how you stayed hydrated without drinking coffee or water! This was becoming tragic—for me.

  “Hey,” my photographer whispered to me, “if you wanna aim at this empty can I promise I’ll try not to look at you while you do it.”

  “Freak,” I said batting my hand. “Just…go ’way.”

  “Oye niña,” Basulto said, “mira pa’ ’llá.” Look over there.

  I looked out my window. Heat waves shimmered everywhere. We were crossing the southwest reaches of the Straits.

  “¿Mira qué?” I said. Look at what?

  “Allí. Mira más duro.” There. Look harder. “¿Qué tu ves?” What do you see?

  I blinked. Still just shimmer. I found my eye drops and blinked again. It was a mirage, it had to be. It couldn’t possibly be…could it? It was white and long, like whitewashed Legos vertically stacked in a row in the haze.

  La Habana’s skyline.

  Havana.

  Home.

  The cockpit was silent. I glanced at Basulto. Was that sweat or tears streaming down his face? Because decades after surviving the Bay of Pigs invasion, Basulto was still enraged. The first man to die in his brigade, during CIA-backed training in Guatemala, wore the serial number 2506. Basulto had painted that number in vivid saffron yellow at the tip of his immaculate plane (and that was the number on his cap). Every time Basulto took to the sky he stowed the memories of that humiliation. When he saved Cuban balseros—on that lucky day we found nine live men in two separate rafts—and watched them be plucked from the sea by the Coast Guard (Basulto himself had no legal authority to deliver refugees to American shores), it’s like a big FUCK YOU to Fidel.

  To me, seeing home for the first time since I left it with my little red tricycle and stuffed lamb was sadder and happier than any words. Mostly sadder. From twelve miles away, the territorial limit from Cuba’s coast, I put my finger on the squeaky window-pane and touched La Habana.

  With a sigh, Basulto banked the Cessna, turned it north, and flew us back home. To our other home. The one with the bathroom in it.

  The Cubans in my life have been in a holding pattern since the Revolution, waiting for Fidel to die so they can alight. I’m really not sure what we’re all going to do once Castro croaks, but I think it’ll be pretty good and I bet you can watch it on TV. I bet I’ll think of how many needles and pins I’ll stick in Hitler’s demon spawn, that fucker. Vamos a meter una, dos, tres…

  Since the second-most important flight of my life was with Basulto, I’d like to call him up and fly together to a Fidel-free Cuba. And I wouldn’t drink coffee that morning, either. Maybe if there’s room in the storage compartment next to the inflatable raft, I could stack some TaBs to share with my godmother, Nisia. ’Cause I’m sure they don’t have any there. Also, for the eight hundred Jews left in Cuba, who are very poor and haven’t been able to get any traditional foods for the Seder since 1960, I would like to bring about one hundred cases of gefilte fish. Excuse me, gehfeelteh feeshy.

  Mami would be proud.

  Plus I think it goes with TaB.

  Acknowledgments

  To write a book a Jubana requires a lot of TaB and Parliaments. I don’t even want to think how many. And a Jubana needs support, because it can get hard. When I appealed to Mami Dearest she said, “I don’ know why joor makeengh eet eento such a beeg deal. Every day I watch dat Today Choh an’ dey have an author on der every damn day. Das five times a week, times a jeeahr, times whatever. De whole worl’ has a book.”

  Sigh.

  Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Except for my kitchen cabinet, that inner circle of people I trust implicitly with my soul and secrets and work. Advisers, friends, psychiatrists, rabbis, journalists, priests, cheerleaders, lawyers, agents, editors. (You might question whether the last three constitute actual “people” in the human sense, and really, who could blame you? But I’m telling you, while my record of choosing fiancés may be, shall we say, pocky, I’m exceptionally talented at choosing everybody else. It’s a gift.)

  So I have to send a major thank-you note, as it were. Now if I were poor dead Jackie O., I’d have sent it within twenty-four hours. Joo know?

  Anyway, here’s the director’s cut.

  These are the five in the backfield, my heroes, my infinitely brilliant and generous quintet:

  Jaime M. Naughton, my Irish Catholic guardian angel and former marine. You kick my ass when it and any other part of me resists writing what’s too tough. You don’t give up on me, especially when I’m at my most give up on-able. We disagree and still like each other afterward. You tell me strongly when the work really works, and gently when it really doesn’t. You pay attention. You stay committed. You have integrity. You have grace. You have fun. You have a kayak. You embrace my energy and literary risks. You make me laugh. You make me think. You make me better. You understand me—this is a major miracle. You are the editor and friend of a lifetime. You are my eternal role model. I bow down.

  I couldn’t live without my beloved rabino, Bruce Kahn. My teacher, my touchstone, my friend. You guide my spirit toward wholeness with love, wisdom, humor, warmth, and compassion—not to mention how often you rescue me on Hebrew and Yiddish transliterations, Jewish history, and our beautiful Reform rituals and traditions. I love you and admire you and I will always be grateful you are my rabbi, sent from God just for moi.

  Manuel “Manny” Roman, you are the world’s greatest Bronx-born Puerto Rican psychiatrist-psychoanalyst and friend. Thank you for unraveling my knotty heart with insight and patience and no judgment, and for soothing my seething Jubana mind (what’s left of it). You say be brave and strong and Jubanique so I can strap on my ovaries and go for the gusto! You tell me to tell fear to go fuck itself—that’s how we solve problems. And you teach me that just because someone smokes Marlboro, it doesn’t make him a cowboy. You rule.

  Everyone needs a Joe McLellan. Joe, aka Tío Pepe, you were there from before the genesis of Jubana!, when I was a wreckopotamia (even more so than usual). Thank you for getting me down from the tree. Trees. Over and over and over. You’re my literary fireman.

  And a special gracias to Paul “E.D.” Jablow, without whose gifts of a desktop computer and really good peripherals this book would not have been written so well.

  In alphabetical order, here are the other most important, trusted, dearest, everything-est people, the ones who also keep me intact and alive, who go far above and well beyond. (And no, you cannot have them for your weddeengh guest lees):

  Ana Acle

  Marvin “Gramps” L. Adland

&
nbsp; Lily Anders

  Christopher “Mi Abogado por Siempre” Bolen

  Ken Bookman

  Joan Breiter

  Coca-Cola Company (for TaB)

  Bill Ervolino

  Shaníta Furjaníc

  Macarena Hernández

  Robert Kelley

  Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, the bride and groom atop the lyrical cake

  Philip Morris USA (for Parliaments)

  Steve Padilla

  Sidwell Friends School’s alumni office

  Beth Silfin

  Anthony Scialli

  Mitch Tuchman

  Sharyn “La Shar” Vane

  Eman “Brastrap Petunia” Varoqua

  Lucinda Williams

  Muchas gracias to the inspirational others who also helped:

  Henry Allen (actually, legally, sign-the-mortgagely, Henry Southworth Allen IV)

  Suli Baicowitz

  José Basulto

  Katherine Beitner

  Anita Bernhaut

  Helen Buttel

  Michelle Dominguez

  Kimberly French

  Joel Garreau

  David Gonzalez

  Jonathan “Johnny” Gordon

  Peggy Hackman

  Mary Hadar

  Michael Hill

  Larry “Mumo” Katz

  Jean Marie Kelly

  Bridgette Lacy

  Lewis Lawson

  Maureen Lewis

  Zev Levin

  Elizabeth Llorente

  Phil McGraw

  Tom Miller

  Emanuel Ory

  Michael Pakenham

  Rem Rieder

  Laurie Rippon

  Richard Rodriguez

  Joe “Papo” Vidueíra

  Neville Waters

  Richard Wertime

  Daisy Wise

  Mil gracias to:

  My exceptional agents and fearless leaders Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich, the Jewish and Cuban literary dream team. You saw something in me before I could see it in myself, and smoothly drew me out from under de bed and into a real live book dream. Wow.

  My family, particularly my beautiful mamá, Ana Anders, and my tío, Bernardo Benes, whose memories, feelings, and observations helped immeasurably to feel een de hohls of de heestohrees.

  My reclusive Republican vegetarian copy edtor, Eleanor Mikucki. Eleanor, who knew a reclusive Republican vegetarian could be this good?

  My senior production editor, Sue Llewellyn. Sue, I still have no idea what the hell you do, exactly. But maybe that’s because you make it look so effortless.

  My Rayo editor, René Alegría. What can I say, René? You had me at “Hello Kitty.”

  My other Rayo editor, Andrea Montejo. Someday, dear, we’re getting you some how-to-be-mean lessons. Just not during my lifetime.

  I love you and thank you all.

  About the Author

  GIGI ANDERS, a Washington Post special correspondent, was born in Havana. She has written for, among other publications, Glamour, Allure, Latina, and American Journalism Review.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Credits

  Jacket design by Greg Mollica for Mucca Design

  Jacket photograph © Beth Dixson/Photonica

  Copyright

  JUBANA!. Copyright © 2007 by Gigi Anders. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  ePub edition May 2007 ISBN 9780061745997

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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