Memory Mambo

by Achy Obejas

  “Yeah?” she asked, leaning up. She was excited too, I could tell.

  “I want to go to Cuba.”

  To my surprise, Patricia wasn’t thrilled with my decision. Shockingly, she actually sounded somewhat like I’d expect my parents to respond. “Oh, god, Juani, why?” she asked, making a face. “It’s nothing like it used to be. In fact, there’s nothing there.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “Did I just hear you correctly?” I asked incredulously.

  Patricia nodded. “I mean, sure, if you want to go, I’ll help you with the paperwork and stuff, but I mean, why?” she went on. “The revolution’s dead, Cuba’s just another miserable little Third World country, only a little more romantic than the others because Fidel’s so charismatic. What would you do there anyway?”

  So I told her—except I left out how my whole inspiration came from the fight with Gina and her friends—how I just wanted to see Cuba with my own eyes, walk the streets of Havana by myself, see where we used to live, talk to people, ask questions.

  “I don’t know, maybe visit crazy cousin Titi,” I said.

  Patricia finally smiled. “Yeah, well, that one is special, all right, but probably for different reasons than most of us here think…”

  I was hoping she’d say more but she just got a strange, faraway look on her face. When she saw me staring at her, she smiled and shook her head, as if to shake off spirits, or memory.

  “You should visit her, why not?” Patricia asked rhetorically. “Of course, you should write her first—let her know you’re coming, ask what she needs. I have a friend in my department who’s going to Cuba in the next month or so, so he could probably take it for you. That way she’ll get it for sure.”

  “God, what would I say?”

  Patricia stood and started cleaning up. “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “That’s up to you.”

  “I don’t even know if my written Spanish is that good,” I confessed.

  “Well, don’t worry about that,” she said. “I can fix that for you—if you don’t mind me reading the letter.”

  It was one of those American things you could expect from Patricia: She would, of course, assume the letter was private and confidential—even if it was to a stranger. Of course she’d ask if I minded. Most other cousins would have assumed the opposite, that it was family property, like a bulletin board or magnets on the fridge.

  “I don’t mind you reading the letter,” I said, deciding to take her seriously and not to rib her about her little americanadas. I’d always thought it was unfair to kid her about being Americanized when she is, in fact, American-born. Besides, Patricia’s always known more about Cuba than all of us put together—our parents included.

  “Cool,” she said, now wiping the coffee table where I’d made such a mess. “Figure out how much time you want to spend there, then figure out what you want to do when you get back.”

  “What do you mean, ‘When I get back’?”

  Patricia stood up straight. “Look, you’re not going back to the laundromat—not permanently,” she said. “Try to figure out what you want to do…if you can’t, at least consider coming down to campus and talking to a career counselor, okay?”

  It was another americanada, that was clear—but what could I do? I needed her help, to go to Cuba and in so many other ways. And there was no question she was coming from a big warm Cuban heart that loved me tons. I nodded.

  “Okay,” I said, feeling tiny and grateful. “I’ll think about it.”

  CHAPTER 15

  WHEN NENA HEARD ABOUT “THE INCIDENT,” she called immediately. It was the first time in our lives something had happened to one of us when we hadn’t been together. Nena and I had always been there for each other and this new, and seemingly sudden, separation caused by her move to Miami stirred some dreadful, uneasy feelings in both of us. In spite of the fact that Caridad was around every day, and Patricia stopped by frequently too, I couldn’t help feeling abandoned. My main comfort had always been Nena; she’d always known what to do, what to say.

  Now with the whole neighborhood buzzing with Jimmy’s story about the attack on Gina and me, and the entire family hovering protectively around me, I wished desperately that Nena was home. I wanted to tell her the truth; I’d never kept anything from her in my life. But when I wrapped the cold plastic of the telephone around my face to talk to her, I struggled for words.

  “And you really don’t have a clue who it was?” Nena asked, surprised. “Wow, you must have been really out of it, sweetie.”

  “Ah, well, I…” I stammered a little. “He hit me first, I think, and then, ah…that was it.”

  As soon as I heard what had come out of my mouth, I wanted to die. I had just lied to Nena. Now, to tell her the truth would be a lot more complicated, a lot more humiliating than just explaining about the horrible things that had actually happened that night. Now, I’d have to explain about Jimmy, and about the coward that was living inside of me, the parasite who had made a home in my useless little brain.

  “Oh, god, Juani, I am so sorry,” Nena said on the phone. “I wish I could be there, I really wish I could be there…” As she spoke, Nena cried, her voice breaking now and again. I could tell the guilt was just eating her up, that she was sure that, if she’d been in Chicago instead of Miami, the situation might have been averted in some way—as if that were possible.

  “You know, if it would have been the three of us…we probably could have taken him, with the three of us…”

  I shrugged, invisible to her. My eyes were misty and I was miserable. My nose was running too and I wiped it on my sleeve. I didn’t care about anything. “You wouldn’t have been there then, believe me,” I said, trying to bring some levity to our conversation.

  Nena gasped. She was horrified at the possibility that an intruder could have walked in at an intimate moment, at what greater atrocity could have befallen us if he’d been provoked by such a scene. “You mean, you guys…?”

  “No, no, nothing was going on,” I said. “We were just cleaning up after the party and stuff but, you know, you would have been gone anyway because I was staying and it was clear and everything.”

  Nena was silent. Our sniffles filled the line. “I still wish I could have been there. You never know,” she said. “And I wish—I really, really, really wish—I could be there now.”

  But she couldn’t. Her job was too new to pack up and leave for an extended period of time, and, at least on the surface, it didn’t appear to be a situation that demanded her specific attention. After all, I wasn’t an invalid, and the rest of the family was around, helping me with what I needed, keeping me company, looking out for me.

  “Juani…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why don’t you come here?” Nena asked. “To Miami.. .like, for a visit?”

  But before I could say yes, before I could even think about it, Nena backed off her invitation. It was as if she’d caught herself, as if, unable to retrieve it, she wanted to make it so unappealing that I wouldn’t accept.

  “I mean, I’m at work all the time and I.. .we’d have a lot to talk about,” she said hurriedly. “I have a few things to tell you too but…well, hey, it’s just stupid stuff about my life and you probably still need space and some time to recover from this horrible thing that’s happened—I mean, Juani, I just can’t believe it happened right in Gina’s apartment, just like that! Do you think—maybe—she’s right and it really was some kind of political warning?” She barely paused to take a breath. “You know, here in Miami, Cubans are always shooting each other and blowing each other up because they’re not anti-Castro enough. Maybe it’s the same for Puerto Ricans with their independence thing, huh?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe,” I said, baffled. I wanted to accept her invitation, to be with her, to just hang out in the same room as her. For me, Nena’s mere presence was often as reassuring as anything she might say. All our lives she’d just intuited my needs, took care of them withou
t much discussion between us at all.

  I remember when I first realized I needed to move out of my parents’ house. I was nineteen and restless. I’d sat at home for a full year out of high school and I was feeling ridiculous about all the excuses I was coming up with—not lies, just omissions and misrepresentations—so I could stay out and play with my lesbian friends, and so I could sleep over at a lover’s house now and then.

  Finally, at dinner one night, Nena announced that she thought it’d be good if she and I moved out. I still remember our faces—all of our faces—including what mine must have looked like: mouth gaping, shocked. Nena hadn’t said a word to me—she took the challenge on herself because she knew she had a better chance to get my parents’ approval: She’s older, she was in school, she’s always been tougher. Most Cuban women don’t move out of their family’s home unless they get married or go off to school. The idea of the two of us sharing an apartment while single and living in the same city as our parents was pure American thinking.

  But Nena sold it to Mami and Papi anyway: She explained that she needed more space, more time alone to study, more opportunity to have classmates over for group work. She made it sound like it was her need, not mine, even though I knew better. By the end of her con job, our parents were convinced she was just being considerate to them, knowing they couldn’t afford to move to a bigger place that they’d get stuck with later, after we moved out for the right reasons. She was so good, we all walked away from the dinner table sure I was doing her a favor by rooming with her, since I had no apparent reason to leave home other than to keep her company and help with expenses.

  Of course, Nena didn’t need to move out: In fact, she was better off staying home, saving money. I needed my own space desperately, but I would have never had the gall to ask for it myself, or to ask Nena for such a favor. I wasn’t even sure I’d known that’s what I needed until Nena started talking at the dinner table, pacing herself between bites of rice and picadillo. Afterwards, we never talked about it, not directly, but it was totally understood between us that it was her gift to me. That night, as we were getting ready for bed, I came up behind her and hugged her as tight as I could. Later, when she moved to Miami, I kept the apartment and no one dared say a word.

  Now—as usual—she’d understood my needs better than me. I did need to get away, I did need to shake out from “the incident.” So why was she backing off?

  “Hey, listen…Nena,” I said, sniffling still. “Did you mean that invitation? About coming down to visit?”

  She paused. What the hell was going on? She sighed. “Yeah, sure,” she finally said.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked, because if something was wrong on her end, I wanted to know, I wanted to have a chance to be there for her, for once.

  Nena laughed. “You know, yeah, everything’s fine, finer than I could tell you on the phone,” she said, relaxing now. “Look, buy your ticket, come down for a few days, a week, whatever you want. We’ll talk when you get here, okay?”

  So I ended up with a plane ticket to Miami. I packed a small bag with a bathing suit and some books and I trotted over to Tía Celia’s, who lives around the corner, before heading to the airport. Because Pauli was still in Mexico and relations with Caridad were somewhat strained because of Jimmy, I was who Tía Celia was relying on for translations and explanations about mail, bills and other things.

  Since Tío Pepe died I’d gotten in the habit of dropping by every few days or so and Tía Celia and I had developed a whole routine. I’d walk over for lunch—huge steaming plates of fufú with a big slab of meat next to it, or a massive bowl of caldo gallego, because everything at Tía Celia’s is big and Cuban and delicious but probably bad for you—and we’d sit and chat. At the end of the meal, she’d make me take something from her big bowl full of citrus fruit.

  During lunch Tía Celia would ask me about whatever was on her mind—about whether she should switch long-distance companies (AT&T is direct to Cuba, so she kept it), or whether she should invest in a money market fund, or maybe buy a car with the money Tío Pepe left her (not for Caridad but for herself). It’s certainly true that I’m not Nena, who really knows about this stuff, or Patricia, who has Ira to guide her, or even Tía Zenaida, who’s always done so well and whose English is impeccable. But I think Tía Celia appreciated talking to me because I was there, live and in person unlike Nena, and never in a hurry, the way Patricia and Tía Zenaida always seem.

  “I think it’s so good you’re going to see Nena,” Tía Celia said, spearing a big chunk of swordfish out of a pot and dropping it on my plate. “It’ll be good for you to rest, and she’ll be happy to see you.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a shrug, then immediately got down to the business of eating. I really was looking forward to being with Nena but, even though she’d sounded cheery at the end of our call, I wasn’t sure what she had to tell me. I worried she somehow knew I was lying, worried she’d judge me and think less of me.

  “¿Qué te pasa, eh, Juani?” my Tía Celia asked, pulling up a chair for herself at the kitchen table. She began to peel an orange, the rind dropping on the table like eggshells.

  “Nada,” I said between mouthfuls. The swordfish was meaty and chewy. I shovelled in a forkful of rice.

  Tía Celia shook her head. “So what are you going to do in Miami, eh? Nena plan anything special?” She licked the juice from her fingers, a gesture so sensual it shocked me at first.

  “Not that I know of,” I said, wiping my mouth with a napkin.

  Tía Celia sighed. “I miss Pauli,” she said. She sucked in an orange slice. “And I miss Rosa too—I even miss not being able to sleep because of her crying. It’s funny what we miss, no?” She smiled sadly, then dropped an orange half-moon in her mouth.

  I nodded, fascinated. “When are they coming back?” I took a sip of water from a glass she’d set at the table for me and waded through chunks of lemon floating on top.

  Tía Celia shrugged. “No sé,” she said. “Maybe next week sometime. It’s taking a little longer than Pauli imagined to wrap up her business in Mexico. I guess things aren’t always as easy there as they are here.” Tía Celia rolled her eyes.

  “You think maybe…she’s not coming back?”

  “Oh no, she’s coming back—she promised.”

  There was no question then that Pauli would reappear. She’s the kind who’ll get martyred to keep her word. “Maybe what’s taking so long is…stuff with Rosa’s father?” I asked cautiously. I leaned back in my chair, tilting its front legs off the floor. Lunch had been incredible.

  But Tía Celia shook her head again. “Nah, that’s not it.” She cupped her hands and collected all the rinds, then got up and threw them into the garbage can under the sink. “Whomever he is, he’s here in Chicago.”

  I dropped back down to the floor with a thud. “Really?” I was amazed. “What makes you think so?”

  Tía Celia smiled slyly. “I just do. Mother’s instincts.” She washed her hands.

  I laughed. “She hasn’t said anything, huh?”

  Tía Celia smiled again. “Of course not. Who are we talking about here? The Fortress of Solitude, isn’t that what you girls call Pauli?” She began to clear off the table. I followed with my plate in hand to the sink. My arm and chest were remarkably pain free.

  “Do you and Mami and Tía Zenaida know everything?” I asked with a chuckle.

  “Almost,” she said, winking. “There’s some concern about Rosa’s citizenship—Pauli wants to make sure she can keep both U.S. and Mexican passports. Also, I think Pauli’s trying to figure out something about art school. I guess she took some classes in Mexico and wants to see if she can transfer the credits or something like that.” She covered the pots on her stove, which steamed like a witch’s cauldron. “And you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know what you’re going to do when you get back from Miami?” She asked this with a too casual tone, immediately betraying my famil
y’s concern about me. That’s when I realized that somewhere, somehow, my mom and my aunts had already turned a corner about my role at the Wash-N-Dry.

  There was no point in pretending with Tía Celia, the sweetest of all my aunts. “No, I really don’t,” I confessed. “Patricia wants me to see a career counselor when I get back. And I will, but frankly, it’ll be just to please her.”

  I thought it wise, at least for the moment, to skip any mention of Cuba until I had secured a visa or a date of departure, something more concrete than just a desire to go and Patricia’s promise to help. Not that my family would have political problems with such a trip, but I knew it was the kind of thing that would, at least initially, spin them all into a frenzy of worry. There was already enough anxiety whirling around me. I really didn’t want more attention.

  “I don’t believe that,” Tía Celia said. “Of course you’re going to see the career counselor for yourself. Everybody has some sense of the future. Otherwise, why would we go on living?”

  “Well,” I said laughing while scrubbing the few dishes in her sink. “I have enough sense of the future to want to go on living, I just don’t know what I want to do when I go on.”

  “Then maybe you should think about what makes you feel good,” Tía Celia continued. “Think about what you want for yourself, then worry about what you need to do to get it.”

  Since when had my Tía Celia become so wise? I stared at her as she fidgeted around in the kitchen, checking on her food, putting things away, folding this dish towel and that piece of aluminum foil. “Tía?” I said. She looked up at me. I tower over her, as I do over my Tía Zenaida and Mami. Her eyes were eager and wide. “What about you? What’s your sense of the future?”

  She laughed. “Ay, Juani…”

  “No, really—I mean, what’s yours?” I wiped the sink clean and turned toward her. “Come on, Tía.”

  We were standing in the kitchen across from each other. Our muscles were suddenly tense, our eye contact direct and challenging. Tía Celia was standing the straightest I’d ever seen her.