Memory Mambo

by Achy Obejas

  “This is it,” she said, smiling but stiff, her arm sweeping her kitchen as if it were a show room on a TV game show. “My sense of the future was always to live without pain, without humiliation; to have Pauli here, with her own child, so she’d understand what it’s like to be a mother; and Caridad…well, my vision isn’t complete yet.”

  Tía Celia turned, grabbed a pear from her fruit bowl and walked off into another room. I stood there, as stunned as I’d ever been, my body against the sink. Tía Celia’s vision of the future had obviously never included Tío Pepe. I shuddered.

  “It’s him again,” Tía Celia said, looking out the window at the cab that had pulled up, ready to take me to O’Hare. She bit into her pear with a loud crunch.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I pulled the blinds apart with my fingers, like she’d done, and looked outside. A yellow taxi hugged the curb in front of the house, its driver a nervous young man who paced on the sidewalk. He was handsome, Asian or Middle Eastern. He looked awfully familiar but I couldn’t place him.

  “Every time I call a cab, I get him,” Tía Celia said, amused, her mouth full.

  I laughed. “Maybe you tip too well,” I said. “Or maybe he knows you’re a beautiful widow and he has a mad crush on you.”

  Tía Celia waved me away, her face all scrunched up. “Ay, Juani, por dios, you’re so disrespectful,” she said, but she was enjoying my teasing, I could tell.

  I grabbed my bag, gave my Tía Celia a tight squeeze and a flurry of kisses, and trotted out to meet the cab. But as soon as the driver saw me, I swear all the air went out of him. His shoulders fell, his eyes misted and dropped. He was clearly disappointed.

  I gave him directions and climbed in the back while he circled around to the driver’s seat. As he settled in, punching mysterious buttons into the computer set-up that connected him to the cab office, I couldn’t help but notice his big round black eyes and the long strands of jet black hair that fell on his sad, ageless face. I glanced over at the name on his cab permit: Ali Ahuja.

  I decided to take a chance. “Excuse me,” I said to him. “Do you know my cousin, Pauli Gonzáles?”

  His head spun around to me, his eyes dancing. “Pauli, yes,” he said excitedly, nodding over and over. He has a very slight accent. With his face so close, his coloring so clear, I began to understand why Ali had seemed so familiar: He was the cabbie that had followed Patricia and me that night she was lecturing me about how the family had been treating Gina; he was the one blinking his lights behind us.

  “Look,” I said. “I think you’re scaring my aunt. She says you come every time she calls a cab.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, nodding wildly. “I’m trying to talk to Pauli. I need to talk to Pauli.” He was clutching at his chest, as if his heart were held in place by his fingers.

  “Yes, but she’s not here—she’s in Mexico.”

  “In Mexico?” For a moment, he seemed confused, as if he didn’t understand. “In Mexico?” He jerked, as if somebody had just hit him. “And…and her baby…?”

  I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Pauli lives there,” I said, lying a little, “in Mexico.”

  Ali turned around but I could see his face glistening in the rear view mirror. I wanted to reach over the front seat and squeeze his shoulder but I held back. He sighed.

  “Okay,” he said, pulling himself together. His shoulders straightened, his neck stiffened. “O’Hare, right?”

  I nodded into the mirror, where we were making eye contact now.

  “Are you from India?” I asked as the cab melted into traffic. I already knew I didn’t need to test this guy’s DNA, just his “impossibility.”

  “Yes, yes,” he nodded again. “And you are from Cuba, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Like Pauli,” he said, satisfied with himself. “Well, no, not like Pauli,” I said. “I was born in Cuba, Pauli was born here.”

  He nodded.

  “And you are Moslem, Hindu, what?” I knew I was being impertinent but his answer could be vital. Just how “impossible” was he?

  “Hindu,” he said, smiling with gleaming white teeth into the rearview mirror. He really was beautiful, almost too much so.

  “I’m going to Miami, to visit my sister,” I said, hoping to cut him off.

  I remember reading an article about Hindu attitudes toward female babies and I began to wonder if Ali would be disappointed knowing Pauli’s baby was a girl. I was curious as hell, bursting with questions for him, but I also knew I was out of my league here. I could only go so far before I might fuck things up with Pauli, whom I knew would be unforgiving if I did the wrong thing.

  I took a book out of my bag and pretended I was instantly absorbed into its pages. Ali tried to keep the conversation going once or twice, but I didn’t respond. I counted on his confusion, and a bit on the formality of his culture, to keep him from pushing me. As I sunk back in the seat, I realized I was going to have more to discuss with Nena than I’d ever imagined.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE RIDE FROM THE AIRPORT WITH NENA was terrific. It was so wonderful just to be with her, to feel her close by. Nena looked great too: brown and firm, her eyes bright and her hair a luscious, wavy black. When I saw her at the airport, I was momentarily taken aback: She was so beautiful. Could we really be from the same gene pool?

  We rushed out to her new red Mazda Navajo truck that I would have never imagined my sister driving. We dashed from the air-conditioned terminal through the humid tunnel of cars and vans spewing exhaust to her big truck sitting in a fire lane, a ticket flapping under the wipers. She grabbed it and cavalierly threw it into the back seat, where it joined what appeared to be a collection of tickets. I was struck by what an unlikely act that was for her, so free and optimistic. Then Nena sealed us in with a touch of a button, immediately cranked on the AC and strapped on a pair of mean-looking sunglasses. With a flick of her hand, she had bouncy reggae coming from the speakers. As she drove along, she sang with the music, perky and alive. This was my sister?

  Within seconds we were on the long, curling freeway, speeding toward her place. While Nena chatted it up with me about how happy she was to see me, and how I didn’t look bad at all considering the circumstances, I stared out through the greentinted glass at the tall palmettos, the huge American cars honking and cutting each other off, and the unending landscape of new apartment buildings and shiny strip malls. Everything was so bright, images came through bursts of white. I’d forgotten my sunglasses and squinting so much was giving me a headache.

  “God, isn’t anything old in Miami?” I asked as we passed yet one more new glaring glass-surfaced building.

  “No, there aren’t even old Jewish retirees in Miami Beach anymore,” she said. “It’s all Miami Vice, European models and Gloria Estefan’s restaurant.”

  Everyone talks about the flatness of the Midwest, but Miami makes Chicago look like the rolling hills of San Francisco. Miami is an arid pancake with splashes of neon, even in daylight. And because of the swamps underneath, there’s not much height to the construction, so the city has a kind of stunted look to it.

  “Welcome to Havana, U.S.A,” Nena joked.

  “No way, no way!” I protested. “Hey, I’ve seen photos—there’s no way Havana’s this ugly!” And I’ve heard, I thought to myself, not just from Patricia, but from Gina and her friends: Cuba’s green and lush and majestic, no matter how badly it may be crumbling. Te quiero verde, I remembered.

  This looked like as good a time as any to tell her—about my proposed trip to Cuba, about what actually happened between Gina and me. I was thinking at the very least it was a good setup, it would create context and make it easier to explain later. But just as I was getting my story together, just as I was rehearsing it in my head, Nena pulled abruptly off the road.

  “Listen,” she said, suddenly so serious it was frightening. She kept her sunglasses on, making eye contact nearly impossible. “We’ve got to
talk.” The engine was still running. The air was blowing ice cold. I felt myself shiver.

  “Okay,” I said. But this wasn’t how I wanted to do it. I’d hoped it would be more casual, even if it was in the car, but not in this hermetically-sealed silence stopped dead at the side of the freeway. I glanced over my shoulder, afraid a state trooper might drive up and ask if there was trouble. I was convinced there were warrants out for me somewhere, somehow.

  “Anything wrong?” Nena asked. I shook my head. She took her glasses off. “Okay, listen, I mean…you probably know…”

  “Know what?” I was jumpy again, sweat on my upper lip. I felt the way, I’m sure, bombing fugitives from the sixties must feel when, even after a lifetime of peaceful underground exile with good deeds and community work in the peace and hunger movements, they’re finally caught. Even if all that turns out to be worthless and they draw a twenty-year sentence, at least they can be themselves, sign their real names to letters, make phone calls, and beg for forgiveness. It had only been a month or so for me but it already weighed in as a lifetime. I was ready to give up, relieved to surrender.

  Nena looked at me. “Give me a chance, okay?” She took a deep breath, then bit her nail.

  It was then I realized Nena was far more nervous than I was. She didn’t know my secret, didn’t even suspect it. As I stared at her, I realized Nena’s eyes were red, tears brimming. Whatever the secret was, it was hers.

  “Nena, what’s going on?” I was scared. I reached over to touch her, to hold her, but she started laughing.

  “God, Juani, you really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what? Know what?”

  She pulled me to her, laughing into my shoulder and wiping her tears with her wrists. “I’m in love! I’m in love! I’m in love!” she shouted, pulling away, her face flushed. “And it’s incredible!”

  I know I had a huge grin on my face. I was happy for her, of course. “When did this happen? Who is he?” I asked. “What’s his name? Does he love you too?” I had so many questions—Nena in love! This was big news, huge news! Nena had dated, she’d had quite a few admirers, but she’d never been seriously interested in anybody, much less in love.

  “His name is Bernie, Bernie Beck,” she said, “and, yes, he loves me too, he loves me very much.”

  “He’s Jewish,” I said, registering the name. “Well, Patricia and Ira will get a kick out of that. You guys can start a support group for Cubans and Jews who love each other.”

  She was supposed to laugh but Nena got a little quiet instead. “Yeah, something like that,” she said, then stopped, but it felt unfinished, like a pause instead of a period. “Bernie’s half Jewish…”

  “Yeah?”

  Nena sighed. “Listen, Juani, he’s a great guy,” she said. The air got heavy again. I was getting cold, really cold.

  “Of course, if you love him, he must be,” I said, but I had no idea where we were going now.

  “Yeah, I’m crazy about him,” she said.

  Traffic was whipping by. I was sure we were begging for trouble just sitting on the shoulder of the freeway. If not the cops, then a carjacker, a rapist, something awful for sure. “Nena, I want to hear all about him—what he does, how you met, everything,” I said. “But can we go somewhere? Anywhere, really—your place, a coffee shop, a park, whatever. I want to be able to savor this a little, okay?”

  But Nena was still. She stared out to the freeway blurred by the traffic and heat and reached across the seat to touch my thigh. “He’s black,” she said.

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “So?”

  Nena turned back to me, grinning. “And he’s gorgeous,” she said, pulling the car into gear.

  “Mami’s gonna die,” I said as we dove into traffic, both of us laughing all the while.

  As it turned out, Bernie was amazing. The son of a Jewish literature professor at NYU and a black Puerto Rican poet I recognized—Amparo Maure, who wrote Plena Voz, a classic of modern independentista literature. He was a handsome, chocolate-colored man with an easy smile and dreds down to his waist.

  “You really know my mother’s work?” he asked, surprised and pleased when Nena introduced us.

  I spouted back a few lines I’d learned from Gina and her friends. Bernie was impressed: He clapped his hands and hugged me close. His body was warm and he smelled naturally sweet. “I love you already,” he said, all smiles, laughing it up.

  His mother, it turned out, is a lesbian. His parents divorced long ago but they’re friendly, like Tío Raúl and Tía Zenaida (I remember thinking, It must be a New York thing…) so he was pretty unfazed about me. But, as much as Gina and her independentista pals yakked up Amparo Maure, they’d never mentioned a word to me about her sexuality.

  “Yeah, well, the independentista movement doesn’t do well with lesbian and gay issues,” Bernie said over a dinner he’d cooked in my honor: pumpkin tortellini in a white cream sauce with nutmeg, cold shrimp in some sort of spicy mango chutney. “They’re in solidarity with everybody but gay people. They’re like Spartacists—they’re not anti-gay per se, they just think homosexuality’s a product of a capitalist society. As soon as the revolution comes, men will stop being narcissistic, which will put an end to male homosexuality. And they’ll stop being sexist, which will dampen lesbian ardor, since, obviously, women only turn to women ‘cause men are dogs, right?”

  Bernie laughed. He had a great laugh, deep and robust, and he squinted his eyes when he smiled. He and Nena were constantly giggling, gazing at each other, and touching. I’d never seen her like this in my life. It was wild to watch my normally tense and serious sister so playful and happy, as carefree as a co-ed during the first few days of school.

  Apparently, they met days after Nena moved to Miami. Bernie was a bicycle messenger running a package to her office and he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her. It was love at first sight, they both say. Within a week, they were living together in an old warehouse off Biscayne Boulevard. Bernie and some friends had converted it into a fairly livable loft. Although it wasn’t air-conditioned, the concrete and the breeze off the bay kept it pretty cool. There they’d set up house, a rehearsal space for Bernie’s band (Garvey Way, the tape Nena had popped on in the car; they play everything from reggae to souk, salsa to soca), and a bank of computers from which Bernie and his pal George run the messenger service. That explained the half dozen bicycles which hung from hooks in the ceiling. Both he and George still pedal now and again, Bernie explained, because they cover emergencies, it keeps them in shape, and helps them stay on top of what clients think as well as what the messengers actually have to put up with.

  “It was total luck he ran the delivery that day we met,” Nena said, laughing.

  “Nah, not luck,” said Bernie, beaming at her, “fate—it was fate.” He reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

  Watching them together, I was really happy for Nena. But their unabashed love only underscored the emptiness in my own life. I felt ugly and envious. And miserably alone.

  I stayed with Nena and Bernie for a few days before I decided to go down to Key West. It was sweet to be around them, but suffocating. Besides, I wasn’t getting any time with Nena. There didn’t seem to be even five minutes to say anything about Gina, or to tell her I’d met Ali and what I was thinking about him and Pauli. Bernie was always around, working with his partner George or at the computer, rehearsing with his band, or cooking for us. The guy couldn’t seem to stop chopping and blending, sautéing and blackening. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, but I just didn’t know him that well—and I wasn’t used to Nena having a lover. I wasn’t used to not having her all to myself whenever I wanted.

  I borrowed Nena’s truck and sped down south, to the one place in the U.S. where, on a clear night, you can see Havana. In Key West, I rented a room at a gay guesthouse where I was one of only two women in the entire place. The rest of the clientele were sinewy red-skinned men from up north who wore tiny Speedos to
show off their equipment. The guesthouse used pink napkins, pink towels, pink curtains—they played up the faggy stuff just for fun. I hung out by the pool, drank mojitos (the Cuban influence was still very intense), played dominos at the pier, went to Hemingway’s house, and checked out the places where José Martí used to talk to Cuban cigar workers back in the 1800s.

  Even though I’d brought a bathing suit, I couldn’t get it together to go to the beach; it seemed too much like pleasure and I was sure I didn’t deserve any of that yet. Besides, I was convinced I still looked like an accident victim, no matter how much Bernie and Nena had assured me to the contrary, so my attitude was to keep my body covered. Even by the pool, I stayed in my clothes, ordering drinks from the bar and reading, writing in my journal now that my arm didn’t seem to pull on my chest muscles so much anymore.

  In the last month, my journal had become a nightmare. Not writing about “the incident” right away had been a terrible mistake. Now, every time I began to jot down my story, it got confused with Jimmy’s mess. I’d be right at the place where I hit Gina when suddenly, I’d look down at the page in horror: And then the guy grabbed the chair and hit Gina in the back, like on a TV show. And the chair broke into pieces, so I grabbed a leg to defend myself and sparred with the guy. But I knew that wasn’t what happened! Or was it?

  I’d flip through the pages and find this: I kicked the guy in the balls and made him run out of the place. But none of that was true, none of it. So what was it doing in my notes? How had it made its way into my journal?

  One night I strolled down to the pier, hoping the few clouds of the previous nights had lifted and I might get a glimpse of the lights in Havana. I thought the view would free my head. I’d bought a pair of binoculars but I knew I didn’t really need them if the skies were clear. This night was spectacular: a swash of stars seemed to create a bridge between the Keys and Cuba, and the sky was a deep blue velvet. I closed my eyes, breathed deep and held the salty air in my lungs. I’d bought an ice cream cone and it was melting right through my fingers.