Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

“Good night?” asks Rafael with a smirk.

As if it could get any worse.

The Canadian, who speaks little Spanish, asks who I am. Rafael introduces me. “Alysia. Mi prima.” My cousin. I roll my eyes. Cousin is a euphemism for sweetheart, the lie every Cuban tells a foreign lover when their real paramour is present.

“No way I’m your cousin,” I say in Spanish. “I’d rather die.”

“You couldbe my cousin,” says Rafael, enjoying himself. “But you’d have to return my calls first.”

“I don’t get it,” says the Canadian. “Are you his cousin or not?” Rafael’s eyes are locked with mine. “Sweetheart?” she implores.

“Ask her,” Rafael says.

The Canadian woman turns to me, and in an English only we understand, beseeches some advice. “I’m not sure I believe anything that comes out of his mouth. How do you knowif Latin men are lying?” she asks.

“If a Cuban male says anything more than once, it’s a lie.”

The Canadian looks up accusingly at Rafael.

“What?” he says defensively. “She’s my cousin.”

THE BUSY STREET along the Malecón is replete with sponge-painted Ladas, horse-drawn buggies, Russian motorcycles with sidecars, converted Chinese bikes rigged with chainsaw motors, and 1950s American classics with more natural curves than even a cubana.From among these choices, I scout for a peso taxi heading south.

Behind me, I hear Rafael’s voice. “ Mira,this one here is just business. When her plane takes off, I’m coming to see you.”

I hold my breath and keep walking.

But nothing.

He only says it once.

D ahling, I wanther pussy shaved.”

Richard is calling from England. He’s to arrive in the evening, and I’m charged with having his va-va-voom teenage Caribbean princess toned down. No glitter. No Flashdance-inspired slashes in her jeans. He’s sent in bags from Harrods: strappy heels, Yves Saint Laurent lipstick, and a tailored gown of red sequins.

Daya lives in a dirt-floored shack with fourteen cousins, uncles, and aunts.

“They do have such places, for waxing one’s privates?” Richard asks. “Certainly, considering the hirsute nature of the Latin female.” Richard roars with laughter.

Hair sprouts from every pore, but a cubana’s idea of shaving is stopping the blade midthigh. Many, when naked, look as if they’re wearing biking shorts. Havana follicular fashion dictates el cerquillo,a bushy thicket that falls a few inches below the hem of a miniskirt. It’s an unfathomable trend, and I resist the compulsion to offer its followers a blade and foam.

“We’ll have it taken care of,” I say to Richard, eager to hang up. “See you tonight.”

I spend the morning at a lawless beauty parlor, my teen charge howling through the pain. When Daya’s family invites me to lunch, and places me at the table’s head as guest of honor, I’m nervous. What will they think of me, playing Mary Poppins to their thumb-sucking teen in Christian Louboutin pumps and a fresh bikini wax?

But my fears are allayed. Daya’s grandmother weeps when she meets me, grateful for my tutelage. The dollars Richard wires Daya mean the family has won the boleto,and her neighbors don’t hide their fascination with the round of televisions and stereos and dead pigs delivered to the crammed hovel.

Daya’s mother—whom Richard refers to as la tiñosa,the vulture—takes me aside after lunch and presses a caramelo,a hard candy, into my palm.

“For Oshún,” she says, indicating I’m to make a donation to the saint of love and seduction. “We pray today Richard will continue resolviendoour problems.”

“Richard asked that Daya be waxed,” I say, fumbling for a delicate way to tell her that his fantasies may be more pre than pubescent. Instead, she smiles and waves away any darkness from the warning.

“We’re all so proud of Daya,” she says, ignoring my comment. “Imagine! A real millonario!”

“Daya says she’d like to study architecture,” I counter, “and that her dance teachers think she’s talented. But being with Richard is distracting her from—”

“Daya’s future is not in Cuba,” she interrupts, speaking a bit too loudly. “An architect is hungry as a janitor.”

Daya and her family are palestinos,the slang term for émigrés from primarily eastern provinces to Havana, the only city with fula—dollar—opportunity. Those wishing to move to Havana must first request a permit. But long waits and the usual rejection force those seeking a life of dollars to settle in illegally. For Daya’s family, the potential for their daughter to snag someone like Richard is the very reason for their sacrifice.

“But the system could change one day,” I say, knowing I’m overstepping bounds. “And then she will need a marketable talent, especially when the culo”—I grab my rear—“goes suave.”

Daya’s mother shoots me a sad, pitying look—one seen often—and says I couldn’t understand.

Each trip to Cuba, Richard takes several rolls of photos of vultures circling overhead, or feasting on felled rodents. In comic punctuation, and just before he leaves for London, Richard hands Daya’s mother the pictures, along with a graciasand a large wad of cash.

Daya’s mother is 4'10" in shoes, and so from my relative height I look down at her and sigh. Richard is wrong. What oozes from her depths is not manipulation or greed but pride. Pride that her daughter is succeeding in the most profitable career available.

LIKE THE ISLAND’S other residents, I find myself lost in the long stretches between eventful moments. Having empty hours to fill is not a phenomenon to which I’m accustomed, and the slow pace of things teaches me to live fully in the moment. In Cuba, a three-hour line for rice is nota three-hour line but a chance to gossip with neighbors and tell stories dreamed in the night.

With a glut of time, and anxiety over my future, the punishing sun does little to soothe me. What I quickly discover is the salving effect of movies. In Havana, nearly sixty theaters, many with 1950s facades and neon, run classic films from the U.S. and Latin America. Each film is carefully screened by the censors, and only titles with suitable politics are shown. But some of the best make the cut, and for just two pesos—about eight cents—a ticket may be purchased and an afternoon may be spent in the coolness of an old-fashioned movie house.

This is how I spend my days, how I spend my waiting.

Today, I’m at Cine Yara, at the busy La Rampa intersection. The long, sloping theater is empty of popcorn but full of cigar smoke. Cubans creep into the theaters in the middle of a showing and spend most of the movie chattering excitedly to one another.

But today, the show is Bread & Roses,a Ken Loach film about Mexican janitors in the U.S. attempting to unionize. In one scene, a woman breaks down crying, having admitted that she prostituted herself in order to help her family settle in to their new country. I realize something odd is happening in the audience: I turn around and see nearly every cubanawiping her eyes. A few minutes later, as if on instinct, I turn around again and in a seat a few rows behind me I see Rafael.

He’s sitting alone, and he winks at me, and I want to think I see a tear in his eyes as well.

I turn around again a few moments later, but he’s gone.

HALFWAY UP THE escalator at Terminal 2 of José Martí International, I realize I’m talking up a storm—to myself. Whirling around, I see Daya at the bottom of the escalator. I motion for her to hurry along, but like a mule before a stream, she refuses another step.

Daya, the hayseed in her Harrods red sequined dress, is sobbing. My tasteful makeup job has melted into a charcoal stream down her cheeks.