Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

A miserly pallhas been cast over the streets of Havana. The police force has seemingly tripled overnight. Under the new uniforms are farm boys freshly shipped in from the Oriente, the nation’s eastern region, and put on counter- jineterismopatrol.

My Cuban friends just shrug and say they’ll deal with the springtime crackdown. I’ve no energy to worry about guajirocops, because it’s Walrus who tirelessly follows, if not anticipates, my every destination. Many times, having thought I’d shaken my perennial tail, I round a corner and there he is, like a puppy, waiting anxiously and smoking a puro.Everyone advises me not to speak to him, for fear of further inflaming his dubious interest in my Havana wanderings. But today, I’m feeling brash and wanting to visit my childhood home without Walrus on my tail.

“La princesa,”he says, standing up from the perch he’s taken up across from my home.

“Why are you following me?”

He laughs a long while. Only extranjerosget to the point so quickly, without first developing a rhythm of conversation.

“Should I be following you?” he asks, puffing on a puro.

“Am I in trouble with the authorities?”

“Tranquilo.If you were in trouble with the authorities you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”

“So what are you doing then?”

He jiggles a sweaty arm over my shoulder. “Let’s just say, princesa,there are people out there who want to know how you’re faring. Let’s just say it’s protocol, following certain extranjeras.Special extranjeras.”

Nodding at the horizon, I think for a few moments before looking Walrus square in the face. He’s sweating from his pate, and his skin is acne-scarred and reddish. I can’t help but feel sorry for him.

“May I ask a favor?”

He shrugs.

“Take the rest of the day off. There’s somewhere I need to be.”

He laughs. “Nice try, princesa.”

RAFAEL’S 1956 BEL Air Chevy in brush-painted green motors up to my landlady’s door, and the driver lays on the baritone horn. Rafael’s Chevy is further proof of his jineterismoplundering, as few Cubans can afford the luxury of car ownership. A good portion of the rural population, in fact, has never even ridden inside one.

Instead, most wait in long lines for packed buses, known as guaguas,or are forced to ride camels, the two-humped train cars lugged by flatbed trucks. In the stuffy, crammed containers the riders suffer pickpockets and roaming hands on body parts. The joke is that a ride on camels, known as camellos,is like an R-rated movie: there’s swearing, sex, and crime.

Rafael toots the Chevy again and kills the engine. It’s early morning. My mother’s diaries are out, and I’m conferring with the map that hangs above my modest desk. Little red stars are drawn over the places I know for certain: the U.S. Interests Section, where John worked, and the hospital in Centro, where I was born. The third star is scrawled tentatively over the home in Miramar, one that Victor believes I lived in while young, and where I’m afraid to visit in case Walrus, my perpetual companion, follows me there and links my Cuban family to me or my illicit nighttime dealings.

It seems a futile effort, staring at this map. Victor had sworn just yesterday he would have my father’s address locked up by April, now a mere few days away. But I am losing faith.

A sweet redolence fills the room, and I feel a rush of energy in the staccato of his footsteps on the stairs. Rafael wears khakis and a ribbed white tank top that shows off his massive shoulders and arms. Arms I could easily climb into for safety. He hands me a potted plant blooming with pink flowers.

“There are seven hundred varieties of orchid in Cuba,” he says. “This one’s special.”

“How so?” I say, unable to meet his eyes. What I love about Cuban men—as opposed to many back home—is that both flowers and dancing are considered to be macho interests as well as feminine.

“It blooms for only one day. And today,” Rafael says, “today is that day.”

I touch the tender leaves and breathe in the fruity scent.

“One day,” he repeats.

“That’s a short bloom,” I say coolly, too shy to meet his stare. Rafael takes my hands and pulls me out of the chair.

“One day together,” he says. “Muchacha.”Rafael’s is the rare kind of charm that provokes envy and frustration in many who know him, or who want from him, and it’s his entitlement that makes me reluctant to give in. I shake my head.

“I’ve got work to do—” I motion to the map.

Rafael says Camila has phoned him and told him about Walrus, and how I’m afraid to visit my family home in the event he follows me there. I can tell when he says this that he thinks I’m being ridiculously paranoid.

“ ’Ño,”he says. “We’ll go to your house together. I’ve a plan to lose the G-2 caballero.” His scheme to outwit Walrus sounds feasible, and so I relent, grateful for Rafael’s help.

As we leave, my landlady, under her yellow, sallow skin of depression, shoots me a smirk, one that suggests my handsome suitor is more interested in my passport than my heart. She reminds me in a stern voice that there are no visitors allowed.

EAST OF HAVANA lie long stretches of playaand tourist hotels, and further still, empty beaches, the water pristine and calm. Limited investment in Cuba has preserved much of the island’s fragile ecosystems and, away from resorts and crowds, the country remains lush and heartily in bloom. Rafael stops his Chevy near a deserted section of the beach and we swim four hundred yards into the sea. My mask is leaky and fills with water, and just as I start to get nervous about the distance from shore, an oasis appears through the foggy lens. The reef is massive and shows no signs of human detection. It’s as breathtaking as any tourist-magnet underwater park in the Yucatán. Yet we’re the only ones diving, and it feels like a discovery worthy of Cousteau. We spend the morning chasing eel and barracuda and brilliant yellow and blue fish around pristine brain coral. Back on the beach, Rafael and I rip into mangos with our hands, chattering like the blackbirds in trees above.

Finally convinced Walrus has not followed us to the lonely outpost, I suggest we pack and head for my childhood home. I’m nervous and excited about seeing the place I lived in the first year of my life.

The home’s occupants confirm what Limón discovered: no one remembers a towheaded Yankee girl and her American parents having lived there so many years ago. We make the rounds to the neighbors, all of whom invite us in for coffee or orange juice. As exhausted as we are, and even though I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, Rafael pushes me on, to every door on the street, to ask everyone and anyone what they know. In the end, it’s nothing much, but I feel victorious nonetheless.

At my doorstep, Rafael leans in to kiss me, and the passion I feel is strange, and I realize it’s because I’m not pretending or forcing myself to have false urges. Panicking, I wonder if I’ve forgotten how to have an authentic romantic experience. But I’ve little time to think, because his mouth lands on mine and it’s no less dazzling than our first kiss in the crowded disco nearly eight months before, and as I leave him behind and return to my room and my papers and my map, my mouth on fire, I know that I’ve complicated my life in a way I never intended.

M y bikini ison the hook.

I’m in the bath. It’s a luxury, and I linger longer than necessary. I think about my family’s house in Miramar, the flowers that wind around columns, the latticed patios and Spanish mosaic tiles. It failed to elicit memories when Rafael and I found it yesterday in the evening darkness. I’d been just a toddler when I lived there, if it had indeed been my house. What settled it, for me, was the scent. A deep breath, and the notes resonated, convincing me that somewhere in Cuba I belonged.