Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

“Last dinner,” says Morty as the stew takes our plates. “We’re pulling out tomorrow for Gustavia.”

“What I would do to go to St. Bart’s.”

“Glad you mentioned it,” says Morty clasping his hands over a walking cane. “I’d like to offer to take you with us, as I know you can’t leave by traditional means.”

Surprised, I consider the option.

“I know you’re looking for your family here, but if you’d like, I believe we can arrange for a stowaway. Of course you can take your passport, and I’d have my plane fly you from St. Bart’s back to the U.S. If that’s what you want, Alysia.”

I’m overcome, knowing Uncle Morty risks the ire of the Cubans in taking me out of the country. I also know that if I leave with him, and violate the terms of my visa, I likely won’t be allowed back here at a later date. Briefly, I fantasize about a juicy steak au poivre in St. Bart’s. I imagine myself afterward flying to Washington, being greeted by friends, and recovering from the whole ordeal. But I don’t let myself indulge too long, because I know I must stay. I’ve come too far to quit.

“You’ll find him soon,” he says. When the stew leaves, Uncle Morty unveils his second idea. “I’m a businessman and as a businessman, I’d like to make a proposition. I’m going to give you a thousand dollars.”

A thousand dollars.More than enough to pay Camila everything I’ve borrowed. But I can’t accept. “No way, Uncle Morty—”

“Don’t interrupt!” he says sharply. “You’ve given me your time and I always compensate people for their time.” Truth is, talking to a fellow American has been a godsend, and I refuse again.

“What I want is a few hours together,” he says. “Down in the stateroom.”

“No, I can’t take your money. And,” I say, smacking his leg lightly, “Camila would be very jealous if anything happened between us.”

Uncle Morty raises his cane in the air and snorts. “Alysia, sheesh. Can’t make an old blind man happy? You’ve told me about your life down here with the tourists. If you go with these tourists, why not me? Tell you what. You consider the thousand dollars a grant, and your time with me friendship.”

Reluctant, I can barely muster the image of Morty naked. But I know a thousand dollars will buy me more time and information. The old man issafer and kinder than the majority of yumasI’ve faced.

I think about John, and part of me is certain that the man who raised me—the diplomat who understands precisely how things work in the world—knows I’d have been forced to take up the oldest profession in order to live. John would conclude there’d be no other choice. Perhaps he didn’t think I could handle anything so squeamish. Perhaps he believed in a day or two I’d phone him back and call off this fruitless search. But I don’t want to do this. As tempting as a luxury-yacht ride out of the Havana underworld may sound, I’m resolved to prove John wrong. To prove to him, and to myself, that I understand what is important in this life.

UNCLE MORTY SETTLES his gentle frame on the pink-and-gray bedspread with embroidered palm trees. I run my hand over the faded cloth, nervously, not wanting to offend the man who’s become my friend. I’m grateful he’s blind, so he can’t see the sour look on my face. I fear the taste and feel of geriatric flesh.

Uncle Morty folds his dinner jacket over a chair, his chin stretched high. I, too, look up, half expecting a disco ball dangling underneath the ceiling’s mirror. Uncle Morty is calm and relaxed. I’m wondering if it’s kosher to suggest Viagra, or if I’m expected to perform miracles.

“You don’t have to be nervous,” he says.

“I’m not nervous!”

“You cracked your neck,” he accuses, pushing the PLAY button on a cassette deck. Although we’re in Cuba, it’s not Latin music that blares from tinny speakers. Frank Sinatra and Count Bassie croon “Fly Me to the Moon.” To it, I’m asked to remove my clothes.

Slowly I begin undressing. Though he is afflicted with blindness, I can’t shake the sensation that Uncle Morty can see what everyone else cannot. My thoughts feel invaded by his prying sensory perception, and because of this, I’m unable to call on the memory of Rafael to get me through. My top is off, as is my skirt. Bra and panties now.

“Keep going,” says Morty, his directing finger shaking slightly.

Taking a deep breath, I unhook my bra. A thousand dollars is a million in comparative economics. Down goes the underwear. Morty’s face beams and radiates in my presence, like Mercury before the sun. I lean over to take his hand, but he shakes me away.

“All I want is for you to dance,” he says. “I won’t touch you. Just dance like no one is looking.” Relief floods my face. I slowly move to Frank and the Count and lose myself in the strangeness of it all.

Morty tells me I have a beautiful body. “Beautiful,” he says. “But you dance like an American. You may want to work on that if you are to find success at your new profession.” Shaking my head, I manage to crack a smile.

For an hour or so I sway before my blind date, seductive in my own skin, feeling the adulation of a man who appreciates my spirit, and reveling in the new pleasure that if you’re open, you can find connection in the most unlikely of places.

Morty roots through a nightstand and slowly counts ten hundreds, and throws in a few more for good measure. Then, fumbling in the drawer, he comes out with a prize. A thin gold chain is slipped around my wrist. The bracelet will become the only piece of jewelry I refuse to hawk.

“Bon voyage,”he says, happily satiated.

On my way out, Uncle Morty’s chef is in the galley, spreading creamy American peanut butter over toast. He watches me stare as my thoughts shift to Limón. The chef offers me a sandwich and I decline, instead asking for the whole jar. A get-out-of-jail gift for the inmate, a gesture based on a hopeful wish that Limón will be released. And when he does, he’ll have a taste of what he’s missing.

50

M y first danceteacher was my grandmother. As it turned out.

She favored earrings with faux gemstones, unfashionable but available, and always clip-on, as her own mother believed piercings to be disrespectful of one’s maker.

She made cakes, massive constructions of inedible density, topped by baroque whips of frosting in pinks and yellows. She gave hair barrettes the shape of lambs, belly-baring shirts and shorts, and diaper pins fastened into the mouth of a smiling, happy plastic pig.

They were the gifts of an impoverished family. Impoverished of money but ricowith love. Crazy love.

On Wednesday afternoons, my mother would leave me with her, so that she and José Antonio could find solace in the government-sanctioned love hotels— posadas—for ten pesos a day. A thoughtfulness of the revolution for those who suffered in crowded environs.

My mother’s was the most claustrophobic. At home, she and John had all but stopped speaking, and he made no attempt to hide the nature of his preference for long hours in the office.

My mother made sure I spent Tuesdays with my father. Wednesdays were for my grandmother. And every other day, in chunks of time stolen from her chores and duties, my mother would escape the heat and confusion in her own home, and take refuge in José Antonio’s. I know now that she must have kept his address and last name out of her journals in the event its contents were disclosed. But in the safety of the future, where I reside, I regret her lack of detail, which would have illuminated the path to my family’s home.

Though the visits with my Cuban family were short in duration, they proved long in happiness. This is what my mother wrote. She took me there for dance lessons. For frijolesand leche.For the special affections one can only find in the arms of a grandparent.