Waiting for Snow in Havana

by Carlos Eire

Cargo cultists, all of us at those parties, and we didn’t even know it. Just like South Sea islanders, mumbling their version of English phrases, expecting B-26 bombers to show up loaded with manufactured goods: knives, shoes, hats, screwdrivers, screws, jockstraps, cigarettes, and chewing gum. Phrases as “English” as ours, we fortunate boys and girls.

  Pago-Pagoans we were, and we didn’t know it. Tongans. Papuans. BoraBorans. Nanumangans. Manihikians. Nukulaelaelans. Head-hunting cannibals, no better than grass-skirted, bone-in-nose savages, we were. And we thought we were Cubans. Urbane Cubans, mind you.

  But there we were at party after party, singing Japy berrssdéy tú yú just before the painstakingly well-wrapped presents showed up. Mel Blanc would have loved to hear us. Good thing he never did.

  Of course, we knew that we had brought the presents. And, of course, all of us were studying English at school and knew at a very basic level what we were singing. But it was a magical song. Sacramental, too. It was so much like the Latin used in church, which we both understood and didn’t, and which brought about such major changes in the fabric of reality. Hoc est corpus meum. This is my body. Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei. This is indeed the cup of my blood. Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world have mercy on us. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. For ever and ever, world without end. Or even the Greek that we mistook for Latin: Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy.

  Somewhere between South Sea savages and ancient Romans. Somewhere between London and Madrid. Somewhere between heaven and earth. But, oh, so close to heaven compared to so many other Cubans.

  All the cakes had themes. American themes. Cowboys and Indians. Popeye. Hopalong Cassidy. You name it, if it was part of the American entertainment empire, we had it on a cake. Keik. Or more properly, in that relaxed, African Spanish of Cuba, kei. That’s what we called them, keikes, or keiis, in the plural. Not tortas or pasteles, the proper Spanish names. Never, ever, ever did we call a cake a bollo, as in other Spanish-speaking countries. In Cuba bollo had somehow evolved into the swear word for a woman’s private parts. Maybe this is why the English cake had taken over all the Spanish words? Or did bollo evolve into a bad word as a revenge for keik?

  Anyway, those cakes were amazing. Some were mountains of multicolored meringue and icing. Others were dioramas worthy of display in a museum. Under the decorations there were surprises. Some of the meringue flowers and plastic figurines had jawbreakers attached to them, buried inside the cake. A treat within a treat. I didn’t really like the jawbreakers, but I loved getting them. They made me feel lucky, even as I tossed them away into the shrubbery, passing on the treat to the lizards and fire ants.

  And virtually every party involved costumes. Especially the parties for very young children. No special theme, just random costumes, like at carnival time. Clowns, cowboys, Indians, policemen, Cossacks, pirates, yachtsmen, baseball players, bullfighters, Dutchmen in wooden clogs, Bavarians in lederhosen, doctors in lab coats. But never ever monks, priests, or Cuban peasants. And never ever ever boys in their underwear diving for pennies and nickels at the Regla wharf.

  Sometimes monkeys would show up in costumes, too, just like Blackie. I have pictures to prove it. There seemed to be a lot of pet monkeys in Havana, and affluent Cubans had a penchant for dressing them up, even though Cuba had no native primates. No monkeys or apes of any kind. No native humans either: all of the Arawaks, Tainos, and Caribs who lived there before the Spanish arrived had been wiped out by the end of the seventeenth century, their genes sent to oblivion.

  None of the Indian costumes I ever saw at those parties were those of Cuban Indians, who tended to wear loincloths or nothing at all. No good Cuban mother would allow her child to go to a birthday party naked or almost naked. Someone might mistake your offspring for a boy from Regla, or think you were too lazy to make a costume—or even worse, too broke to pay someone to make it for you. They were all North American Plains Indians, those Cuban kids, most of them chiefs, too, with large feathered headdresses, war paint on the cheeks, fringed vests, beads, and moccasins. Some of them brought peace pipes along, or even said “How,” the palms of their hands upraised in greeting. Well, really Jao, in Spanish.

  When we weren’t at parties we sometimes played cowboys and Indians. Never conquistadores and Indians. After all, we had no movies about our own history.

  But that’s what a colony is all about, isn’t it?

  I finally realized I had grown up in a colony years later, on a London bus, thanks to a Jamaican. So wise, that man, that Caribbean neighbor, reading his tabloid newspaper. I asked why the bus had stopped and its driver had disappeared, for no apparent reason. “Tea time,” he said, in his blessed Jamaican accent. “The bus driver has to stop for tea,” he said, turning the page, not even looking up. “And if you complain, they say you’re not civilized.” Then he laughed. A deep laugh that came from the very bottom of his soul, each “ha” so carefully enunciated, as perfectly spaced as beads on a rosary. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” And he turned another page.

  Sometime between first and second grade, there were no more costumes at birthday parties. Just games, cake, and presents. I was so glad when the changeover took place. I hated most of my costumes.

  We played a lot of American games, of course. Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Bobbing for apples. Hopsack races. Tug-of-war. Blind Man’s Bluff. We could have been in Ohio. But we also had piñatas, a small nod to our own culture. Cuban piñatas were just like the Mexican ones now sold in the United States, made of cardboard and brightly colored tissue paper, with room inside for candy and party favors. But there was one difference. Cuban piñatas were not destroyed by blows, much to our chagrin. Instead, they had long ribbons attached to panels at the bottom. Every kid at the party would grab a ribbon and at the count of three, or seven, or ten, all would tug, the bottom of the piñata would rip open, and goodies would rain down upon us.

  The day I found out that Mexicans got to beat the crap out of their piñatas with sticks, I was so jealous. That must be a far superior culture, I thought.

  Ripping open the piñata was one of the high points of every party. The instant those goodies hit the floor, all of us would lose control and jump on one another like American football players scrambling for a fumble. Or kids in Regla diving for pennies. Sheer pandemonium. Arms and legs flying all over the place. Pushing. Grabbing. Screaming. Punching. Kicking. No holds barred. Every now and then a kid would emerge from the huddle with a black eye or a bloodied lip.

  I always made off with at least some candy. But never with one of those tokens for a really nifty party favor. My brother Tony always got those.

  The mothers seemed to enjoy the melee. They shouted loudly and laughed their heads off.

  These parties were full of mothers, you see. That was another very Cuban deal. Mothers stayed around for the party. None of this drop-off-the-kid-thank-God-see-you-two-hours-later American kind of stuff. No. These mothers stayed for the whole party, keeping an eye on things and talking to one another. How well I remember those phalanxes of moms, and my own mother among them.

  When I was very young, I think the costumes used to scare me. So many familiar faces, so much else out of place. And I was dressed just as ridiculously as everyone else, perhaps even more so. I would orbit fairly close to Mom, and return to her repeatedly, as if she were some kind of safe haven.

  Eventually I would leave her alone and go off on my own, to seek out what the party had to offer. Just as I would do on a much larger scale at the age of eleven, when she and my dad put me on a plane and sent me to Miami, with a suitcase containing two pairs of socks, two undershirts, two briefs, two shirts, two pairs of pants, one handkerchief, one sweater, and one jacket. No costumes allowed. No toys, mementos, money, or jewelry either. My brother Tony and I had to strip down to our briefs at the airport, just like the boys from Regla, so a government official could ensure that we weren’t smuggling any of our property out of Cuba. Like my
number two Batman comic book, or my firecracker wrappers, or family pictures.

  The worst part was when they tugged on the elastic band of your underpants and peered down at your butt and your genitals to make sure you hadn’t hidden anything there.

  Wait, I take that back. I think it was even worse when they laughed at you.

  I didn’t think about parties that day I left, but it might have helped. I should have tried to recall the party to end all parties. Sugar Boy’s party. The party that made it inevitable that I should end up in a small, stuffy room at José Martí Airport, a stranger peering down at my bare ass and laughing.

  It was second grade. It must have been. Or maybe it was the first half of third grade. It couldn’t have been any later than that, because the world changed over Christmas vacation in third grade. The exact date is inconsequential. What matters is that it happened, and I was there, and that I came away from it a changed boy.

  I knew that some of the kids at my school were very wealthy. I knew this because even in my own neighborhood, our house was relatively small. Crammed with valuables, but still small. Eugenio’s house was much larger, and so was Gerardito’s. I knew this also because my parents told me that some of my classmates were fabulously wealthy. But I had no idea what wealth really was until I went to that party.

  It was a birthday party for the son of the man who owned the largest sugar company in Cuba. This was sort of like owning the largest steel mills in Pittsburgh or Chicago around the same time. Or owning an American railroad in the late nineteenth century.

  Sugar Boy was one of my classmates, and he invited the entire class to his birthday party.

  No one else had ever done that. Birthday parties were rites of inclusion and exclusion. Always for a select number, never for all. But this family could do it. They could have invited the entire school, for that matter. Perhaps even every boy in the Social Register, some of whom were unfortunate enough to attend other schools.

  I started off the day on the wrong foot.

  “Oh my God, today’s the day of the birthday party, and I forgot to buy a present.”

  This wasn’t what I wanted to hear my mother saying.

  “What do you mean? Are you saying that I won’t have a present to bring to the party?”

  “I mean I forgot about this party completely, and now we don’t have enough time to go down to Los Reyes Magos to buy the kind of present we need. We only have one hour to get ready and another half hour to drive all the way out to the party.”

  Los Reyes Magos was the largest and finest toy store in Havana. And it was far from our house, eastward, in the heart of the city. The party was in the opposite direction, beyond the western suburbs of Havana.

  That toy store was my favorite place in the whole world. A temple to be entered cautiously, with few expectations. Perhaps one might exit with a small token of its vast, wondrous treasure. Perhaps one might find some of the items displayed there under the Christmas tree, brought there by Santicló, or on January 6, by the Three Magi, who also brought presents, and after whom the store was named.

  “Oh no, I can’t go to the party without a present! I can’t, I can’t.”

  “Yes you can.”

  “How? Tell me, how can I go to this party without a present? You have to bring presents to a birthday party.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure we can find something here at home you can bring.”

  This was worse than I had thought at first.

  “No, no, no! I can’t bring him one of my used toys. No!”

  “Oh, yes, don’t worry. We’ll find something you’ve barely used, and no one will know it’s not brand-new.”

  At this point I started praying for some kind of miracle.

  “What? What do I have that isn’t used? I play with all my toys.”

  How well I remember the exact spot where this desperate conversation took place. It was in the dining room, right by the window that faced Chachi’s house and her bitter-orange tree, the window opposite to Visiting Jesus and the house with the breadfruit tree. It was the window under which my mom kept her sewing machine. Her favorite spot.

  “Don’t worry. Let’s take a look in your room. We’ll find something.”

  I refused and started crying. I might have thrown a fit of sorts too, throwing myself on the ground and pounding the marble floor with my feet and fists.

  The next thing I knew I was in my room with Mom, pawing through my toys, looking for something that didn’t look used. But everything looked well used. Destroyed, for the most part. It was hopeless. And didn’t my mom know that all new toys came in specially designed boxes?

  “What about a box, too? We can’t bring a present in any old cardboard box. It has to be inside the original package.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Marie Antoinette. “But you just gave me a good idea,” she added.

  There would be no way out of this labyrinth of shame, I realized.

  “What about one of your board games? They all stay in the original boxes, and they don’t get that much wear and tear. Let’s look through all of them.”

  So I climbed up on my bed and reached for the top of my wardrobe, where my board games were all neatly stacked up, dust-free. The maid dusted up there every day.

  We inspected each game carefully. Monopoly? No way! Even a blind man could have told it wasn’t new. Chess? Nice wooden pieces, but too banged up. Checkers? Not too badly scarred, but even my mom had to admit that you couldn’t give the richest boy in Cuba a game of checkers for his birthday. Parcheesi? No good either. Banged up and way too low-class. Chinese Checkers? Even worse than plain old checkers and Parcheesi combined.

  It was at the bottom of the pile that my mom found what she was looking for: a board game that hadn’t been used very much. The corners on the box were slightly scuffed, and the instructions looked a little rumpled, but everything else looked almost new. I would like to emphasize the word almost. I knew then that the game looked used, beyond a shadow of a doubt, but she convinced me with that voice of hers that it was really all right. Everything would be fine. Everything she touched was always fine. And that voice of hers could convince me to do just about anything.

  “Oy vey!” That’s what the Jewish family that took me in four years later in Miami would have said. Or maybe “Oy gevalt!”

  Louis XVI said nothing about the gift. He never got involved in birthday party details. So I went to Sugar Boy’s party, tainted. When we finally got there, after driving way beyond any suburb I had ever seen, even Biltmore, we came to a huge gate flanked by tall royal palms. We drove through the gates and entered an earthly paradise.

  Sugar Boy’s estate had everything the world had to offer, and more. A colossal swimming pool. Tennis courts. A stable full of horses. An enormous garage full of luxury cars. A golf course. The house, if one dared insult it by using such a humble word, was no house, really. It was a palace. Not quite Versailles, Aranjuez, or Neuschwanstein, but definitely a palace worthy of the Loire Valley. A tropical Chambord. With palms and tropical foliage, of course.

  The road that led to the palace from the gates was long and winding. The lawns were lush and green, and immaculately mowed. An emerald sea it was, with multihued accents everywhere. Crotons of all kinds. Giant philodendrons. Caladiums. Flowers. Palms in all shapes and sizes. Especially royal palms, so tall, so regal. So Cuban. Palms that pierce my heart and entrails to this very day.

  Other cars streamed in with us, a caravan of guests bearing gifts.

  And there he was, in the circular driveway that skirted the palatial garage, Sugar Boy, driving a miniature sports car. Not a homely go-cart, but a perfect miniature replica of a real Ferrari or Porsche or something like that. He was taking curves, honking his little horn, impressing the hell out of everybody. He didn’t wave at me when I got out of the car. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence.

  All the other kids gathered around Sugar Boy and his car when he came to a stop, like ants around
a sugar cube or some discarded jawbreaker.

  “Look at that car! Look, Mami, look, Papi!”

  “Yes, it’s very nice,” said Louis XVI, probably pining for those days at Versailles.

  “Can I have one? Please? For Christmas? For my birthday?”

  “Sorry, I think that’s too expensive for us,” answered the King of France.

  I knew he would say that, but I had to ask anyway. Imagine having your very own car! I almost had the nerve to ask my dad to sell foul-mouthed Maria Theresa. But I bit my tongue. I knew better. He wouldn’t exchange her to ransom me from El Colorado if he had to. Or from Fidel, as it turned out.

  My mom seemed more impressed than my dad by this estate, probably because she had no memories of Versailles, the Louvre, and Chambord.

  Tony was not with us. He hadn’t been invited. He had stayed at home with my father’s sister and Ernesto. But I didn’t feel too sorry for him. He got to go to Batista’s son’s party every single year, and I didn’t. One of the older Batista kids was his classmate.

  After dropping off Marie Antoinette and his non-Bourbon son, Louis XVI departed. “See you at nine,” he said, and home he went. I don’t think he looked back once.

  Unimpressed, he seemed. Nonchalant. Such a fine French word. It suited him.

  So there we were, my mom and I, at Sugar Boy’s party. I walked over to a small mountain of gifts and placed my stinking offering down at the bottom of the pile. How I hoped it would get crushed, that the pile would crumble on top of it. How I hoped he would never open it! That would be even better.

  Then, as I turned to leave the gift pile, a woman handed me a huge box, beautifully wrapped.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “These are your party favors,” answered the well-dressed lady.

  “But the party is just getting started.”

  “Yes, I know, but you’ll need some of the favors during the party.”

  Talk about surprises. This one topped them all.

  I went back to Marie Antoinette, who was already busy talking to other mothers, and sat as close to her as possible. And I unwrapped that beautiful box with the red ribbon around it. The wrapping paper was silver: two shades of silver, in alternating stripes that traversed the box diagonally. I can still see the paper. To this day, stripes remind me of wealth.