Free Jubana! by Gigi Anders Page A

I’d say, “Out where? ” After all, I’d just been all the way up past the firmament with a dead girl named Karen who suffered, really suffered, even worse than we did for Castro, all for having red shoes:
    â€œThe bright sunbeams streamed warmly through the windows upon Karen’s pew. Her heart was so full of sunshine, of peace and happiness, that it broke; her soul flew upon a sunbeam to her Father in heaven, where not a word was breathed of the red shoes.”
    It’s hard to go from that height down to kids with unpierced earlobes fighting over who’s safe and who’s out on the street. Who cared?
    Unlike me, my parents would always have problems moving between Spanish and English. As recently as two years ago, when a raccoon found its way into their suburban house, my broom-wielding father chased it through the living room yelling “¡Vamos! ¡Vamos!” while my mother shouted, “Speak to eet een Eengleesh!”
    What happened to our old life? The balmy days of ease and Mami pushing me in a stroller on Saturday mornings with the tropical sun freckling our skin as we squint along the beach. Stopping at a café and kissing and hugging her girlfriends, Estela, Berta, the drop-dead beauties Anitica and Nedda, all with their babies, the sun sparkling off the women’s bloodred fingernails and smiling red lips. Somewhere the handsome, strapping men were off playing clickety-clack dominós, puffing masculine clouds of earthy tobacco, punching the air with the pungent bouquet of cigar smoke. I sucked on the nipple of my guava nectar con vitaminas and drifted off to the song of surf, golden bracelets,and women’s laughter; the perfume of Agua de Violetas, espresso, L’air du Temps, and imported cigarettes.
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    The American snow and ice were cold and bitter affronts in winter. “Ees like a constan’ eensohlt,” Mami said, shaking her head and looking heavenward from behind her big black Jackie Kennedy sunglasses as white snowflakes fell on the lenses. She furiously flipped the bird at the wan, gray sky.
    â€œ Los Americanos deal with it,” I told her. “Their children make snowmen with carrots in the nose and scarves around the necks. Then they drink the chocolate caliente. With the mini marshmallows on top. Can we get those marshmallows?”
    â€œLeesehn,” Mami said. “Een de first place, dey do dos theenghs because dey are peasants! Dey theenk deyr Eskeemos! Dey don’ know any better. Ees like de Wahndehr Brayt. Gross! An’ dos marshmellons, dey are totally deesgohsteengh, so forget eet. Everytheengh here ees so WHITE! De brayt, de weather, de people, de melons. White, white, white, white! ¡Ay, Cuba!”
    â€œYo, bitch,” I said. (I’ve always called my mother “bitch.” Term of endearment.) “It wasn’t MY idea.” As in, to come here to this charming foreign albino country.
    â€œFohk Fidel! Okay? Say dat weeth me. Loud an’ proud. Go ahead. Fohk Fidel!”
    I removed one ever-present caramel-colored pacifier from my mouth. I say “one” because I wore an entire string necklace of rubber tetes, or pacifiers, each one in a different state of attrition. It was sort of like a security charm. One tete was designated solely for stroking my forehead, for example, and another was strictly for the right eyelid. We called the necklace la gindaleja (gheen-dah-LEH-hah), a phrase that has no real meaning and therefore can’t be translated.
    â€œI want that hot chocolate,” I told Mami, twirling my pinky into the hole of the pinky tete. “And no more elephant ears. And I want peanut butter. Crunchy. Why don’t you ever buy that?”
    â€œÂ¡Coño!” she cried. Dammit! “I told joo. Peanut butter ees made for de peegs! Joo know?”
    â€œWell, I like it.”
    â€œNo. Joo don’. Peanut butter ees