Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

“I know something about fathers,” he says quietly. Rafael is wearing a black silky shirt that offsets his Galician face. He lights up a Hollywood cigarette, and the tip glows in the darkness like a firefly. “Mine, like yours, was a translator. He insisted we learn three, four languages when we were young.”

“Don’t you have a degree in linguistics?”

He nods. “All it’s good for is hustling tourists. In the early 1990s, during the período especial,tourism really started up, supposedly to save the economy. Before that we hardly saw tourists. I didn’t speak to a foreigner, really, until I was twelve or thirteen.” He pauses and takes another drag. “You want to hear this?”

“Dale.”

“My father started to go crazy. There wasn’t any food, and he had us four boys, all of us growing, and we were strong, real strong, even without enough food. My father went into the woods and caught jutiasand we ate them. Rodents. Tasted awful. My father would always give us his portion, so would my mother. They were so”—he uses the Cuban symbol for “skinny,” a pinky finger—“so flacas.He wasn’t eating, and watching us boys go hungry, it played with my father’s head. Started to slip, go crazy. I never told him, but I went with the tourist girls when I was thirteen. First one was an Italian, about thirty-five years old, and she took me all over, to discos and restaurants I’d never been, and you know, it’s only recently that I’ve been old enough to think about how…how extrañoit was. Me thirteen and she thirty-five…Well, at the end I stole all her money, and I brought a stack of Italian lira to my mother, and then I’m sure my father started to suspect, and it was all too much, he went mad. He traded the lira and bought food for us, but he wouldn’t eat food bought with the lira. After a while, he just shut down, he wouldn’t eat a thing at all. One day they say he walked into the ocean. He didn’t swim into it, he walked and disappeared into it. He was a swimmer, a great swimmer, mira,he taught me to swim, and I’m a lifeguard.”

He pauses and studies the sky, and I hold my breath, not wanting him to stop.

“I was in a hotel when he died. In Varadero with a tourist, I was fourteen and singandoher brains out for money but it wasn’t going to matter, because my father wouldn’t eat anyway. I was happy with the women then, even though they were so old, ya tú sabes.I enjoyed feeling new sheets and seeing my first buffet—imagine a buffet in a time like that, dios mío—and not having to worry, just for a few days.”

At this, he stubs out his cigarette and continues. “He didn’t write a note, my father. He didn’t say good-bye to my mother or us boys or anyone. He just walked into the sea, walking straight for Miami. Like if he could take one step after another he’d arrive there somehow, and there everything would be okay. When I came home from Varadero that night, I didn’t sleep. None of us did. We thought maybe he’d drowned on accident, and we played out the scenarios. We couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t until the next night any of us could sleep. When I crawled into my bed, I felt something at my feet.”

A self-conscious pause. He continues. “You’re sure you want to hear this mierda?”

I lean and touch his forearm.

“There was this thing, there was something in my bed, at the bottom. I felt around, it was this…” Rafael pulls a thick, 24-karat gold chain from around his neck, one that ends in a long cross in the middle of his chest. “It was my father’s—he was never without it. Never, it nevercame off. But he’d put it in my bed. Not my brothers’, not my mother’s, but mine. I didn’t show anyone that first night, I just held it in my hand and curled around it, like it was him. I knew it would give my mother peace, somehow, to know he’d done it intentionally. But I couldn’t tell her right then. I kept it a secret that night. I needed my time alone with him. My father left this to me, m’entiendes,his only real possession, it was like he was saying. He was saying…he knew what I was doing, where I’d disappear to and why, and how I’d get the money from the old women, and that it was all right, he didn’t hate me for it.”

The giddy neighbors erupt on the patio, still swapping exclamations of incredulity. It’s nearly an hour before the rowdy crew leaves, and amid the din Rafael and I exchange secret, bittersweet glances. When we’re finally alone, he motions me to follow him into his room.

“Let me show you something,” he says.

Carefully, I sit on the edge of his bed. He picks up a shoebox and gently shakes off the lid. Then he hesitates and replaces it on the shelf.

“No puedo.”I can’t.

“Lure a girl into your bed and you won’t show her the goods?” But my joking doesn’t dissipate a somber mood.

“ Mi corazón,promise you won’t be mad.” He’s shy and his hands tremble when opening the shoebox he’d been holding moments before. Kneeling above his bed, Rafael gently dumps its contents onto rumpled sheets.

They fall everywhere, like angels from the sky. Sweet cherubic faces lying in a mosaic on that bed in that small apartment in that small town outside of Havana. Girls.His girls. The foreign women he’d romanced, banged, chiseled. Extranjeraswho fell for la estafa.

Polaroids. Snapshots. Portraits. There are tacky bleached blondes in G-strings smiling seductively. Plain ladies with hopeful smiles and legs crossed at the ankles. Aging women, time having claimed their beauty.

He goes through, one by one. Naming names. A week. Ten days. A month. Italians. Canadians. Spaniards. Return visits over one year, two years, five. Cash they’d given him. Gifts and offers of marriage and escape. Undeniable and physical evidence, these photos make it impossible to wish away the past.

He looks at me expectantly but I can make no comment, wondering if I’m to reveal my own recent history and the nighttime duties I’ve undertaken. He must interpret my hesitation for pity, because he falls into the bed and rolls on his back, atop the photos, crushing them, and looking up at me.

“Don’t ever feel sorry for a Cuban. We’re smarter than the extranjeros.We let them believe they have the upper hand and are in control. But it’s really the Cubans who are in charge.”

Extranjeroversus native. It’s a distinction crucial to all cubanos,and I wonder how, in his private mind, Rafael sees me.

“Will you marry one?” I ask.

“My brothers are all here, in university and jineteando.We’ve all promised my mother we’ll never leave. This is my country.” He raises a fist. “I want to live in my country, coño.” We don’t speak for a few moments as Rafael meanders through the private corners of his mind. Then he pulls me into focus. “What about you? Are you going to marry one of those rich boyfriends you always seem to have?”

I’m chilly in his room, suddenly conscious that we’re on the bed together.

“Dios mío,”I say, checking my wrist. “Five in the morning.”

Rafael motions me outside, onto the patio, and we sit and listen to the cacophony of birds reporting the sun’s imminence. There’s an uncomfortable silence between us, as I’m taking in what I’ve heard. He studies me with a mixture of defensiveness and vulnerability and so I go to him, settling onto his lap and curling myself into his chest. Thinking about his father and his life of jineterismo,I press close to his heart, as if to compress the wound. I feel his father’s cross and chain dig into my ribs. Rafael’s arms engulf me and soon our breathing is in sync, like lovers’, and it’s this way that we find ourselves hours later, stealing some peace, the sun blessing us anew, a son and a daughter left alone with the ghosts of their fathers.