La Americana Read online

  Chapter 47

  Nooks, Crannies, and Saying Adios

  Luis could have left Cuba the day after he got his visa from the US. He only needed a marked white slip on his end, simple enough to obtain. But he was nervous. He knew that he wasn’t going to see to his family for a very long time—it could be years—as he waited for permanent resident status in the US. Policy here typically does not allow a resident-in-waiting to travel abroad.

  By this time I had moved into the back apartment of my aunt and uncle’s home, as they had so generously offered the space to us, rent free for one year, as a wedding gift.

  I stood at the bedroom closet, the wooden door half-open, and pushed my hangers, clothes, and shoes to the right side of the narrow space. The left was open for Luis, and I stared at the emptiness for a good couple of minutes. What would he have with him when he arrived? And it was then, for the first time, that I allowed myself to think forward. I wondered what in the world he was going to do here. I couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t speak English and I didn’t know where Spanish and Italian could take him in my Southern city.

  In Havana, Luis set his mom up at home, hurricane prepping the windows and fixing nooks and crannies so that nothing was left undone. He tucked money into a cabinet she kept under lock and key. Then, one by one, he went to say good-bye to friends. Soon after he and his mom drove twelve hours into the deep countryside of Cuba where she had grown up and his grandfather, aunts, uncles, and loads of cousins still live today. With no running water and no electricity, he spent the next two months living simply.

  Luis worked the farm with his family every day, just as he had done many summers since he was a kid. Though, this time, as he pulled the tough, rooted yucca from the ground, he tried to imagine life in the United States. His thoughts mimicked mine. What would he do? Would everything be different? Though his biggest curiosity surrounded me. Would our marriage be what he thought, and what would he do if it wasn’t? And my family? If they were nutty, he was screwed.

  Chapter 48

  Miami-Bound

  On Monday, March 8, 2004, more than three years after we first met, Luis hopped a plane in Havana, bound for Miami. Barren landscapes shaped the view below, but as he crossed to the Florida coastline rows of houses appeared in cookie-cutter form.

  Luis passed through immigration without much difficulty and was directed to shuttles outside. After a short wait he boarded one for Sofitel Hotel, where I had made a reservation. He arrived before I did and opened the window of our room, watching the string of planes land one behind the other.

  “Y ahora?”

  What now? he thought.

  When all you’ve done is work toward a goal, which is to have a life together, where do you put all of that energy once you’ve crossed the line? Especially once you get there and in place of celebration for finishing a race well done, all you hear is the pop of a gun, signaling the real race that’s about to start.

  Luis put his forehead on the window.

  This is insane.

  The train was accelerating at 150 miles per hour, and he was going to be OK if he jumped on it. But how?

  The world’s been moving, but I was stuck in the same place.

  The elevator ride to the ninth floor of the hotel was the longest of my life. I knocked on the door and don’t think I took a breath until Luis opened it. It was so unreal I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

  Seeing him, I dropped my bag inside the door and gave him a long, tight hug around his neck. I must have sighed audibly. I pulled back, held his hands, and asked about his flight and his mom. It must have been wrenching for her to watch him go.

  It didn’t take long before we moved our conversation to the restaurant downstairs with two steaks and a bottle of red. Both nervous, excited, and without any road map for what was in front of us, we talked about where we started. It was mind-blowing to think about that first ride in his Cocotaxi where he pointed out El Morro, the very place we would later marry.

  Afterword

  The next day Luis and I pulled my green Honda Civic to the curb in front of my aunt and uncle’s red brick home on the calm Savannah street. We grabbed his bags and walked around the side of the house and up one level to our one-bedroom apartment.

  It was so quiet, he said. So quiet.

  Within an hour, my father, who was on his way back home to Vidalia from North Carolina, drove an hour and a half out of the way to meet his new son-in-law. He appeared in our living room, just opposite Luis and though they were standing still, the crush of curiosity and energy bounced between them like a real, physical ball. It was intense. My dad’s deep blue eyes brightened and grew in size, like I’ve never seen them, and reached for something familiar in Luis.

  I translated gentle and polite comments between the two most important men in my life, hoping the conversation would stay light. It did. Before my dad left, he handed Luis a business card.

  “You can get in touch anytime for anything,” he told Luis.

  But in Cuba there are hugs among family members and the business card felt cold. Luis told me later that he was offended. I explained that this was my dad’s way of welcoming him and the gesture was well intended. This would be the first of many cultural misunderstandings.

  Following, every Monday night Luis and I joined my father and grandmother for dinner, which Luis adored. My grandmother’s dementia had already set in and she flirted with Luis showing the innocence of a little girl, telling him weekly how handsome he was.

  In his own repetition, my dad asked the same three questions every meal: Do you speak English yet? To which Luis replied with a good laugh, “No, I’ve only been here a few days.”

  Have you found any work? “I’m looking. The problem is the language.”

  Finally, he wanted to know how Luis liked it here and if he was getting comfortable.

  Luis struggled with his new cultural settings and missed his family desperately, but he always said yes.

  After some time, we settled at our table at the Monday night restaurant, and before my father could say a word, Luis asked me to translate: “I still don’t speak English, I haven’t found work, but yes, I do like Savannah,” and my dad almost fell out of his chair in a howl of laughter. They had grown to understand each other, on instinct, just as Luis and I had before our language gap closed.

  We told him that Luis had picked up some work with my cousin finishing the exterior of a house, which led to questions about Luis’s ability to do that sort of thing. I married MacGyver, I joked, and Dad offered to help Luis with a project if he found one. Luis left so excited he nearly ran circles back to the car. Within six weeks we had closed on a fixer-upper in a neighborhood close to the one in which we were living.

  So began a string of DIY house flips and that same year Luis also started a small landscape company, buying the framework of an existing one with thirteen clients in Savannah. Today, more than ten years later, Simón Landscape has expanded to other communities in Georgia, as well as South Carolina.

  We had our first child, Marcos, in 2007, just about the time I began transcribing detailed journals I had kept in New York and Cuba. Those formed the base of this book, which I drafted over the course of seven or eight years in the wee hours of the morning and thirty-minute lunch breaks. And as much as I love New York, moving back there never seemed like a smart choice. I probably could have settled back into city life, but once Luis moved to the US, Savannah seemed like the better choice, with both my family and job opportunities around.

  Luisito moved from Guatemala to Houston with his mother and then with us in 2012, the same summer we had their little sister, Ana Luz. My dad and Luis talk about four times a day—in English—and my dad’s nickname for Luis is Hombre. Not only is it one of the few words he knows in Spanish, but it comes from one of his Western flicks he watches religiously. The moniker is used for the good, tough guys who get things done. They have become incredibly close.

  Luis became a US citizen i
n August 2014, and we are currently working on a visa for his mom to move here.