La Americana Read online

  This support group, he said, was the only one of its kind, since very little information on AIDS was available at all in Cuba. Though rates were low, comparable to the rest of the world, cases grew every year by about five hundred on the island of eleven million.

  The journalists in the main room came in to speak with the Father. We said our good-byes a second time and headed back down the stairs. In the car, I asked Luis if his friend living with AIDS ever attended a group like that one. He shook his head no.

  Confirming the Father’s views: “It’s hard here,” he said. “There is a lot of prejudice. If you have AIDS, people where you work, people on the street, are going to point. People assume they are going to die and so they stay away.”

  Chapter 39

  Starstruck

  The next morning, Luis was gone, but he had left freshly squeezed orange juice in the fridge for me, as he had done various other times.

  He worked eighteen hours, but didn’t complain of anything. When he got home that night, he beelined for the shower. Crisp and cleanly shaven, he sat next to me on the sofa.

  “How was your day today, Princesa?” he asked sweetly. I found it ironic this was the name he latched on to for me. For one, I am anything but, and two, my mom also called me this.

  I felt guilty even talking about it, seeing as I had done little, but I said, “Good.” As with most days when he was away, I sat at the Nacional and wrote in my little, leather-bound book.

  “What did you write today?”

  I smiled without revealing anything.

  “You have a lot to write about here in Cuba, no?”

  “Volumes.”

  He smiled at me in a kooky sort of way.

  “Yeeesss?” I asked.

  He told me he never thought he’d find as much peace with anyone as he had with me. I felt the same way. He had a surprise for me.

  Out of his pocket came a thick, amber wedding band, much richer in color than modern gold. I don’t know anything about antique jewelry, but given the stateliness and elegance of the ring, I knew that it held a place in history. The story was that the ring had married five couples, all of whom stayed together. A good sales pitch or not, it was beautiful. Luis loved the ring and asked if he could cut my wedding band out of his.

  A very large grin spread across my face. “I love that idea. Thank you.”

  We had the next few days to ourselves, as Luis had rearranged his schedule. Two were spent in magical Veradero, a beach town two hours from Havana. We hired a car to take us and rented a moped once there. Legally, Luis couldn’t stay in a hotel, as those were for tourists only, and I created problems for Cubans who rent apartments, as they are not supposed to accept money from foreigners. We drove around for a couple of hours trying to find someone who could or would keep us both, but to no avail. Finally, I stayed out of sight while Luis paid for two nights at a petite, privately owned back apartment. If the landlady knew I was there, she never let on.

  By day, we cruised along the small coastal highways, one of which led us to the end of a paved road. Luis parked on the edge of an undeveloped thicket. Sliding off he offered his hand, then led me through the underside of a wild mane of brush. Just on the other side was the most beautiful, virgin beach I had ever seen. To ourselves, we settled in the sand and later, splashed and played in the crystalline waters. It was spectacular.

  Late in the afternoon, we headed for the apartment to shower and snooze, waking in the dark. Our evening was spent at Parque Josone, a sanctuary off the main strip, with a lake, rowboats, and a small walking bridge, which, strangely, intercepts an enclosure of ostriches, very Road Runner-like in their gestures.

  Luis egged on a grumpy matriarch parrot, who sat on the corner of a bar on our way to dinner, into complete disarray. She cussed Luis up and down in Spanish for having bothered her at all. Passing the more formal restaurant on-site, we chose outdoor seating at the pizzeria next door, overlooking the water. We sat under the stars, hand-in-hand, at a private table off to the side. I felt light in a way that I hadn’t been since my childhood.

  A waiter came for drink orders and a rundown of specials, but I didn’t take in a word: I was ensconced in the man’s face. His image was as clear as it had been on TV so many times at home.

  “That was Elián’s dad?” I asked in total disbelief, after he’d walked off.

  “Sí,” Luis responded, unaffected.

  To have the father of Elián González, splashed across our screens for the better part of 2000, wait on us, was unreal.

  Still very clear in my mind were the desperate pleas for his son to be returned, the court battles, Gloria Estefan leading the charge to keep him in Miami, and then finally, the dramatic gun-pointed end with our troops forcing him from his relatives.

  The dignified, mild-mannered Juan Miguel returned with our wine and water, followed shortly by a thin crust pizza. I never uttered a word, starstruck in a way I had not been by any celebrity sighting in Manhattan. I hadn’t had too much of an opinion on the matter before, but seeing him, how gentle and kind he was, I knew the little boy belonged with his father.

  Luis explained that since that time, Elián had become the figure of heroism in the Communist party, a favorite of Fidel’s, by winning the small but ferocious war against the US.

  “Give him a good tip,” I whispered to Luis as he paid. He did, but I threw in another several bucks anyway before walking off.

  Back in Havana, Luis took me to the National Theater to see native superstar Carlos Acosta, who is considered to be one of the world’s greatest ballet dancers. On break from his role with the Royal Ballet in England, he soared on the stage under the direction of another great legend, Alicia Alonso, the premiere ballerina, who since 1948 has run the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. In what became my educational and cultural tour of Cuba, the following night we attended an art auction at the Canadian embassy with Luis’s good friend, Alejandro Montesino, who is intricately connected to the government’s cultural ranks. We walked the lawn behind the prim marble mansion and viewed creative originals and reprints of some of Cuba’s most celebrated artists: Nelson Dominguez, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Fabelo, and Flora Fong while a Western-style auctioneer shot off prices.

  The next day we visited Nelson Dominguez’s gallery, the only self-owned in Cuba at that time. In Plaza San Francisco, one of five squares in Old Havana, his self-portraits ran the length of expansive walls; their power grabbed hold of me and tossed me violently around the room. Picasso came to mind; this man is a genius, I thought, and longed to fill my home and American museums with them. He wasn’t ordinary and as Luis explained, he is, to my credit, referred to as the Picasso of their country.

  The meal with Nelson was interesting, if not strange, with his much younger, silent wife by his side. Midway through, a young fan approached Nelson for an autograph. A good hit to his healthy ego, he pulled an unused napkin from his lap, dabbed a fork into his half-consumed cup of coffee, and streamed a drawing with a few more dips. He signed it and sent the kid on his way. Before we left, he handed me a small drawing with a personal inscription.

  Later that night, we entered the front gate of Luis’s former stepfather’s home where we were to visit for the night and poof, I was doused in a wash of white powder in the dark. Startled, I laughed.

  “What in the world was that?” I asked Luis.

  With a rather large, empathetic smile, he explained: cascarilla, a white powder prepared by santeros, is made from eggshells.

  “He thinks it protects you from bad spirits.”

  “I guess we can all use that,” I said, wiping the musty mess from my face. I laughed again on my way inside, wondering what in the world I had gotten myself into.

  Chapter 40

  Lockout

  I returned to Savannah, only to plan my next trip within weeks. I was still living at home with no rent to pay, yet all the cash I made headed straight to savings for my next trip and telephone bills, which were mounting quickly. At almost one dol
lar a minute and one to two conversations nightly, the bills were creeping into the hundreds each month, but I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t put the phone down.

  Between the calls and regular bills, it would be a couple of months before I could get back to Cuba. By November I was delirious to see Luis and again flew directly from Miami, on the wing of my individual license, but not before putting in an official request for paperwork from DC. Luis and I had a lot of information to piece together on this trip.

  As we sat at his dinner table, I painstakingly filtered through each line with him, filling in appropriate items regarding his family. On paper, our convergence appeared to be an accident. Names like Abelardo, Macho, Felicia, and Ana Luisa dot his Cuban lineage while Ralph, Margaret, Henry, Fannie, Martha, Lorraine, and James paint mine.

  This was the first time that he had made real mention of his father’s side. His dad’s sister he knows, but nothing about grandparents or beyond. On my dad’s side, my grandmother spent tireless hours—forty years plus—tracing our history to the 1300s, with a master book that now sits in the Georgia Historical Society library and includes original documents on our Germanic and British ancestors she tracked in courthouses throughout Georgia, South Carolina, and Europe.

  I never questioned the connection between Luis and me, but there were times that these sorts of differences were striking. Never in my childhood had I created this scenario.

  Just before I left, he gave me an official copy of his birth certificate and two passport photos. Each time I left was harder than the time before, not understanding why we had to be separated. I sat on the plane with uncontrollable streams running down my cheeks. I wiped them away, only to have identical trails follow in their footsteps.

  Once back, I sent paperwork off and waited. And waited. I had accepted a full-time day position, which would give me more stability and a consistent salary, but also created structure to which I needed to adhere. Without being able to take off on a moment’s notice or go to Cuba for weeks at a time, every day was a challenge to stay put, to focus, and to be responsible. Luis and I had to have long-term vision, as we both knew it was the only way we could be together.

  A routine began on my part, rather strict in its form. Monday through Friday, I got up, ate breakfast, and packed exactly four small meals to carry me through my workday, from nine to six, as well as a gym bag. At the six o’clock mark, I headed straight for the gym, worked out, and then headed home to make my small, healthy dinner. I then sat and watched TV, savoring my one limitless treat that I allowed myself—strawberries with mounds of Cool Whip.

  Every night I called Luis and ached. It took everything in me to get off the phone, even after an hour. Always uncomfortably aware that someone could be listening to our phone calls on his side of the world, our conversations swayed mostly to our personal, daily lives. It was rare that we touched on politics or censorship in Cuba.

  On occasion, I crossed a line, angrily reacting to something I heard or read in the news, about how Castro and Bush were ready to take one another’s heads off, or some wacko new law on the island. Sometimes Luis would comment, but mostly he went silent, and I knew I had said something I shouldn’t have. After a long pause, he suggested that we talk in person.

  It was so difficult for me to bear the weeks ahead of us, a contributing factor, certainly, to my almost vigilant daily regimen. I was desperate to break free and sprint to Cuba, so I leaned hard on my newfound schedule, a way of reigning myself in so I wouldn’t be tempted to follow my instincts and run, run, run to Luis.

  For all of my life, my mother had been credited for my personality, which is largely an artistic one, but not enough credit, perhaps, had been given to my dad, who is the most disciplined human being I have ever come across. He is all heart and loves to laugh, but he will always do what he is supposed to do, including the most tedious of chores, before playing. I am not as capable as he, but when I needed to access that part of me that resounds fully in him, I can grab it. And I did. I stuck to work and exercise, with an occasional outing on the weekends with friends, and by December, in my much slimmer silhouette, I began shopping for a wedding dress.

  At night, Luis got daily updates on the status of our visa, which was the same every day—nada. Absolutely no information. Every morning and every afternoon at work I called the US Visa Center hotline to check the status of our case, typing in the unique set of capital letters and numbers given to us by Homeland Security, which I had committed to memory. It was a quick call and response. I came to hate the voice of the recording on the other end. Had she a soul, she would have been my real-life nemesis. I would receive something in the mail within four to six weeks, she told me.

  At times, I waited hours to speak with a live person, who offered no more assistance or regard for human feelings than the she-bot. Four to six weeks, she reiterated. This would become months.

  To further complicate matters, President Bush pushed even tighter restrictions with Cuba. In a near lockout, the visas I had coasted on previously were unavailable; the verbal wars between the two countries were far more aggressive.

  Still, at the end of December, I escaped via Cancun on a quick three-day trip to Cuba. Like representatives of our countries, Luis and I were increasingly agitated. Our future was on hold indefinitely until we got that hot little visa in our hands, a fact that any number of people at home were all the more ready to point out.

  Repeatedly I was asked by friends and strangers alike, bouncing my predicament around like cocktail party conversation: “What will you do if he can’t get here? If he can’t get his visa?”

  I offered only one response. “He will.”

  “But what if it doesn’t work?”

  “It will.”

  “But?”

  “It will.”

  “But?”

  “It will. It’s going to work.”

  I believed it. The idea that the visa wouldn’t go through never entered my brain, not even once. I only had to forge ahead and stay on top of the system that would allow him to come.

  One night out, however, I bumped into an old school friend who worked for our local congressman. She suggested I contact a woman in her office named Trish, who might be able to dig and find out what was taking so long. First thing Monday morning I called.

  Trish had worked with the congressman for years, but there was no sense that she had been in politics that long. She had a great sense of humor and immediately put me at ease. Instinctively, I trusted her when she said that she would do anything she could to help me. I was asked to put in writing what I lacked and fax it to her.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

  To this stranger, who assisted people like me, day in and day out, I wasn’t an anomaly. Nothing peculiar about it, I was just a young person in love with someone who happened to be from Cuba. I shared with her as much.

  “It’s OK, honey,” she said. “You call me anytime, even if you just need to talk. Or if you need a hug, just come in the office!”

  I didn’t get by the office for a long time, but I did call her from time to time, for as much emotional support as legal advice. Shortly after my first call to her, I received a notice of approval, which allowed us to move to the next step. It was a baby step, but it was important, logistically and psychologically. This was something tangible that Luis and I could hold on to. We were integrated in the system and, in theory anyway, moving forward.

  We were on to the next set of paperwork. I filled out information and collected more of whatever they needed. Shoe and sock size, check. What Luis liked to eat for breakfast, check. Was he a member of Communist Party? No, check. Whatever they wanted, I did it and sent it in with the next check payable to the United States.

  Once again, to the land of waiting. Daily, I continued to call the visa hotline and daily, I was rebuffed. There was one particular day, standing outside my office, that I almost smashed my little, black cell phone into the Savannah Grey bricks in front o
f me. I just wanted to scream bloody hell, why was this so f**!$!**!! difficult! Godddddddddddddddddddd!

  Trish was going to see what she could do. Though I trusted her efforts more than mine, I didn’t expect miracles. Still, I held out hope.

  I was agitated as it was, because my brother and I were about to head to New York to bury our mom.

  Chapter 41

  To Mom, Love Princesa

  Early January 2003

  I saw you today at the gym. I wanted it to be you. She had your hair and your cute celestial nose, your nonathletic stance on the treadmill, your pale reflection, your softness. I tried to leave, but you pulled me in. I needed it to be you for just a few moments. The blond fifty-something was unaware of my focus, but finally, I pulled myself away before she was.

  Tonight I came home and found two checks—one for Walter and one for me. It was money from one of your accounts that Jim should have kept, but didn’t. Recently, all I have been able to think about are phone bills full of calls to Cuba, flights both to Cuba and to New York for your service, and car payments. But you stepped in and took care of that this month. Thank you.

  I miss you so much and I still think of you every day. I want to talk to you every day. I wish you could see my wedding gown. I think you would love it. I think you would love Luis. We all miss you terribly, but we’re hanging in there. We still need closure so we’ll have a service on your birthday. I can’t believe it’s been two years. Jim said you don’t want a headstone, which I don’t entirely understand, but respect.

  Walter’s doing great and I’m so proud of him. Jim’s going to his fiftieth college reunion and I’m getting married to the most wonderful man. But I guess maybe you know all of this. Or do you? Where are you, anyway?

  I love you, Mom. Wish you were here.

  Love, Princesa

  Chapter 42

  Graveside