Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

“Hey now, honey,” she said, fumbling in the semidarkness. “I’m here, it’s all right. The surgery went splendid.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“He…He says he’ll try and make it, darlin’.” She gave me a hug as tears flooded my eyes. For the next week, knowing my father was only a short plane ride away, I watched hopefully each time the door swung open, praying he’d walk through any moment.

But he never did.

My mother, though, was rarely far away. As I wrestled with the healing and pain, I’d feel a touch on my forehead, a caress on my cheek, and as my body got stronger, the olfactory senses picked up notes long forgotten in the thicket of my memory—the jasmine and the lilac, the sick and the antiseptic—and then I heard it again, her voice whispering in my ear.

They’re expecting you.

José Antonio.

Your real father.

AUNT JUNE SAUNTERED in after breakfast. “Monkey bait,” she said, tossing a banana on my tray. “Phlegm cutter.” Orange juice in a Styrofoam cup.

“Why haven’t we ever spoken about Havana?” I blurted out.

Aunt June looked at me a long while and went right for her purse. She opened a Chanel compact, inspected her morning face, and made a big production of creaming her hospital coffee.

“Been a-waiting and a-waiting,” she said finally. “For you to say something.”

“How do I know she was telling the truth?” I asked excitedly, pulling myself up. “You were there, she was talking crazy. Was is just a hallucination? Is there any proof?”

“Proof? Look at yourself lately?”

Instinctively, I touched my face and felt the contours of my lips and nose. Aunt June pushed her compact in front of me.

“You look about as much like John as Buddha does Christ,” she said, laughing. “You got all the proof you need right here.” She looked at me as if in disbelief, and lurched to her feet. “You mean you and John never talked about it all these years?”

“Never.” My aunt paced in her pajamas, the red silk between her thighs rustling in the quiet room. She was furious with my father; I could tell by the way her fist clenched into an alabaster ball.

“That man’s cold as an old ice box,” she said.

“Tell me,” I said, motioning for her to sit on my bed, “what you know. Please.”

“John,” said my aunt, exhaling a long sigh and handing me my orange juice, “wasn’t able to have children. Your mother told me.”

“Well, she managed to get pregnant.”

“Precisely,” she said softly. “And John knew that you weren’t his. But he couldn’t admit to his family, or to himself, or to your mother, that the marriage had broken down. That’s why his name’s on your birth certificate.”

“For appearances.”

“For appearances. That’s all that counts with that fool family of his in Connecticut.”

“My grandparents, they don’t buy it for a second,” I said, the pieces starting to fall into place. “I can tell, the way they look at me.” Then it dawned on me: the undercurrent in my relationship with the Briggs family had always been precisely about my paternity. Their accusatory demeanor had little to do with the imperfection of my performance as one of their grandchildren, as I’d always assumed. It had everything to do with their son accepting me as his own, when clearly—to everyone but me, it seemed—I was biologically not.

“You’re lucky they don’t buy it,” she said, throwing her head back and laughing the way my mother would. “I mean, do you really want to be accepted by them?”

Looking out the window, I realized she was right. Slowly, I raised my Styrofoam cup to meet hers in a toast. In the clarity, I felt a burden released, and also an empathy gained. If I, as a grandchild, had been tormented by the expectations of the Briggs family, how much more had my own father suffered under them and their demands? And what of my mother, did she, too, endure his torn loyalties?

“Why didn’t she leave my father?” I asked my aunt. “If she was so in love with the Cuban?”

“Perhaps because our parents dug it into our heads to do the right thing. And whatever was pleasurable was definitelynot the right thing.”

“You got over it,” I said, laughing.

“One does,” replied June, with a secretive smile. “Given enough time.”

“Well, I guess I’ll never know,” I said wistfully. “About José Antonio.”

“Nonsense,” said June. “You can go down there to Cuba and look him up, see what he has to say. I’m sure he’d love to see you.”

I shook my head vehemently. I was overwhelmed by the idea of searching for my mother’s former lover in a country I was not even allowed to travel in. “It’s illegal to go to Cuba. If I’m going to be a diplomat like I promised Dad, there’s no way I can risk getting caught.”

Aunt June shrugged and looked out the window at the cherry blossoms that make springtime in Washington a sensory treat.

“It’s illegal,Auntie,” I said, exasperated. “And Dad will killme if I go looking for José Antonio. Oh my God, what am I saying, it’s too ridiculous.”

“We all make our own path in love and in life,” said Aunt June. “All I know is our daddy, your grandpa, was the greatest man who ever lived. Imagine my life without my father, without your grampa? Nothing would’ve been the same.”

Remembering my grandfather, I smiled. I studied Aunt June, suspecting there was much she wasn’t telling me.

“Do you knowthis José Antonio?” I was leaning so far forward I was nearly falling off the bed.

“No, no, I don’t know him. What I do know is how your momma talked about him. She said he was good-looking and strong and quick.” Then she lowered her voice. “He was the great love of her life.”

“Did he know about me? Or did he think Dad was my… dad?”

“I don’t know.”

The whole concept was difficult to wrap my mind around. If José Antonio was indeed my real father, it would’ve been tricky for him to find me, and, as I learned in school, Cubans are rarely allowed to leave their country. On the other hand, he may not want anything to do with me. And the risk of hurting my one living parent was too much.

“Forget it,” I said. “I’ve got graduate school in London this fall, and then a job to worry about. I don’t have time for this.” But as I lay in the hospital bed, I couldn’t help but remember what I’d promised my mother when she lay in hers. Promised I’d find José Antonio.

“Too bad,” said Aunt June coolly. “Because I was thinking dancin’ and rum and a few weeks in Havana would make a real nice graduation present.”

“Oh, no,” I replied, shaking a finger. But I knew I couldn’t refuse my aunt. “What about Dad?”

“If John finds out, you blame it all on your old Aunt June.” She cackled wickedly. “Your chaperone,Aunt June. ’Cause I’m going too. So, whaddya say?”

O ur plane landsjust before daybreak.

Inside the airport, officials wear fatigues as if at war. Women officers, lovely and tanned and quick with a smile from behind bulletproof glass, sport micromini skirts in army green. Officers wear military jackets with a thread count so low we see skin through cloth.

“First time to Cuba?” asks the customs agent.

“Absa-too-da-loo-tely,” says June. I nod and hand him my double-thick passport filled with stamps. He checks a computer screen.

“Want to give me another answer?” he asks, his eyes narrowing.

Aunt June shoots me a look of support, and I answer him. “Ah, yes. I was born here. It’s my first time back.”

“Welcome home, m’ija.”

While we are waiting for our luggage, the habit of childhood travel prompts me to study a map of Cuba. I trace an index finger along the page in my guidebook. I like looking at maps, and I can’t help thinking it’s the same perspective my mother shares, one from above, looking down on it all. Cuba, with its archipelagos and satellite islands, mountain ranges and rivers, claims the biggest landmass in the Antilles. Sharing its latitude are Haiti and the Yucatán; on longitude is the United States. The tapered fingers of the Florida Keys stretch longingly toward Cuba, but fall a mere ninety-two miles short of the Caribbean capital.