Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

Splat.

The priest had given me the instructions the day before, and I’m loathe to carry them out. Nearly everyone watching knows precisely what I’m doing, having practiced macumbabefore. Nonetheless, my face burns.

Accidentally, I crack the second egg on my chest, and embryonic goo drips down my tank top. I hear a muffled giggle from one of the balconies and sigh: I’ve eight more eggs to go.

“It’s for protection,” the priest advised. “You’ve made a few enemies, and you’re about to make more.” The only enemigoI can think of is Walrus, my shadow companion. But Limón is most worried about the priest’s final pronouncement.

One that signals a time of unprecedented tumult for the entire country.

M y arms wraparound Camila. Our bodies entwine. Hips glide together in rhythmic circles.

Then I stomp down on her toes and she jumps back.

“Por favor!”shouts Camila, pausing the salsa music and rubbing her beleaguered foot. “Are you certain the priest said you’re Oshún’s daughter? I mean, chica,your rhythm is mierda!”

Great, I think. First dance lesson and my spiritual lineage is already suspect.

“The only dancing I know is this,” I say, bouncing like a hip-hopper and smacking my own rear.

“Don’t ever,” she says, horrified, “do that again!” Then, using a word devised for those who can’t dance, she shouts: “Patón!”

Limón bursts into laughter. “Look at her all jumping around like a flea in a hot skillet.”

Limón’s been sitting in a corner writing identical letters of love and longing to yumasin five different countries. His Cuban girlfriend, Osanay, is helpfully pointing out grammatical errors. Under the pretense of true love—a story Limón spins anew for each foreign girl—the romantic grifter is angling for one of his lovers to marry him and take him out of Cuba.

Limón and his legitimate sweetie are smoking a stick of cow-trampled grass mixed with negligible amounts of marijuana. It’s a rare drug in Cuba, as pro-government farmers in the lush interior guard against its cultivation. Drugs do, however, roll up on the beaches in bales, having been discarded by nervous drug-runners in boats and planes scuttling between South America and the Caribbean, or Central America and the U.S.

Limón tells me locals have formed alliances and claim strips of real estate along the coastline. Definitive lines in the sand. The precise point at which bundled drugs wash up determines which gang is the lucky recipient. It’s an honor system that works surprisingly well, as drug-related violence is uncommon.

He also says the main narcotic in Cuba is cocaine, and its demand comes from both tourists and locals lucky enough to line their pockets with dollars. It’s slipped covertly into the country on cargo ships and pleasure boats. But it’s a dangerous game. Drug dealers, if caught, are harshly sentenced.

El Prado, a marbled walkway from the Malecón to the Capitolio, is a stroller’s lane. But in the barriowest of El Prado, as any jineteroworth his salt knows, is where kingpins ply their trade. In the labyrinths of sectioned apartments and rooms and secret doors, police raids are rarely effective. The risks are profitable. An ounce of pure cocaine retails for $20 to $30, and jineterosresell it to their yumasat triple the price. One sale, and a hustler rakes in the annual salary of a hotel manager.

“Camila, take a rest,” Limón offers as Camila winces at her foot pain. “I’ll teach the guy part now.”

But Camila shakes her head. The most accomplished jineterasare also the island’s best dancers, and in Havana, music is serious business. A dancer’s feet are an instrument in the band playing cha-cha-chá,mambo, casino,and danzón.Knowing your moves is more than just art, it’s also finance. Top jineteradancers bring high rollers to clubs, and the musicians give them a cut of the night’s profit.

“On the dance floor you’re auditioning for the bedroom,” lectures Camila. “All men know that a woman who can dance is una buena hoja” —great at sex. “So you have to know your moves.”

Camila is prepping me for jineterismohome runs, but I can’t help thinking my dancing moves may also serve to impress Rafael. He’s been on my mind more than usual since I saw him yesterday, when I’d promised myself I would resume my habit of jogging. Though I’m thinner here than I’ve ever been, I’ve become determined to strengthen my muscles. My new profession requires that I can defend myself in a daunting situation.

Despite the emphasis on physical fitness, and the many athletes Cuba produces, few people jog in the streets or along the seawall, the way they certainly would at home. Runners are spotted occasionally, but are usually men, as women wouldn’t be caught dead outside a track or a gym with less than enough paint on their faces to forge a van Gogh. Despite the stares and cubanocommentary, I decided the custom was hooey, and worked up a sweat along the Malecón.

Ignoring the catcalls, I focused on my breathing, and my legs, and the way they burned as I pounded over uneven cement, and the strength I was beginning to feel in my body and mind. When I felt someone pinch my rear, I whirled around, only to see Rafael in sweats sprinting alongside.

“Girl’s got some cojonesto run here,” he said, smiling.

I was panting and sweating and paling in comparison to the sashaying mamacitaswho were pursing their lips at Rafael. I pushed myself to go faster; he kept up with me easily.

“How long am I going to have to run after you before you’ll agree to go out with me?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because the way I see it, you may be a sprinter, but I’m going to win the marathon.” To hide a smile, I ran even harder, but he jogged backward, easily keeping pace.

“Tell me, how does it work on a date with Rafael?” I asked.

We slowed and nearly stopped at an intersection near Old Havana. We walked around, catching our breath and taking a stretch in the silence. I tried to hide my disappointment when he put a shirt over a well-worked stomach.

“Dinner,” he said. “I make dinner at my house. You take a shower, put on a dress, show up at nine. Oye,how many Cuban men do you know who will cook for you?”

“Is that the tourist special?” I asked, realizing at once I’d blurted out an insult.

He retained his humored composure. “How about Saturday?”

But I couldn’t, as Camila had a yumacoming into town, one she was certain would fancy me. I knew she wouldn’t let me pass him up. When I told Rafael I was busy, he shrugged and squinted his eyes at the oncoming traffic.

“Say no all you want, muchacha.We’ll see who’s crawling at the finish line.”

Finding a break, he set off to cross the busy street, leaving me to admire him dodging the heavy machinery.

“HOLA. EARTH TOAlysia,” says Camila, holding up her arms. I give her my hand and drape an arm on her shoulder.

Even though I’ve relegated my jineterismoto the nighttime, ever since running into Rafael, I’ve made a conscious effort to dress with more cubaníain the day. Today, Camila and I are wearing corked platform heels, ultra-tight jeans, and silky crocheted scarves with tapered fringe, slung over our jeans and knotted at the hip. It briefly occurs to me that either of my known grandmothers would be horrified at my outfit, and even more so at the movement I’m forcing my hips to enact.

A real cubana’s hips undulate like a belly dancer’s, another of Arabia’s lasting imprints on Cuba, but my joints stubbornly won’t detach from the upper torso, much less perform the required figure-eights.

Camila adjusts my posture and removes my arm from her shoulder. “Let’s just get the feet down,” she says, “and we’ll worry about your hips later.”