Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

“There’s a joke,” Limón once told me about the population’s employer, the government. “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”

“You think the rest of the world is the same way but with higher salaries,” I scolded, and his shrug confirmed the myth.

“What was your job?” he asked.

“I’d just finished school, remember?”

“ Jineteandois your first official job?”

We laughed together. “The plan wasforeign service, if I scored on the test. If not, then consulting,” I said, perhaps too wistfully.

“Consulting?” he asked brightly. “Tell me about that.” I loved the way Limón conversed as artfully as he drove. Reacting quickly. Steering the lumbering machinery effortlessly around potholes and avoiding crashes. What style, to maneuver our talk away from feeling sorry for myself. From missing my comfortable life.

“Consulting. Well,” I answered. “You have clients, you listen to their needs, resolve their problems, make them more powerful. Like jineteando.”

“Like jineteando.”

“Yeah, but without the cute outfits.”

SASHA SNAPS ME from my reverie with his fingers, but it’s the cigar barista he’s summoning. He chooses a few Diplomaticos No. 2, empties the bottle of seven-year Havana Club, and nods as his friends walk in, puffing on cigars with ring sizes 49 and up. The Russians are flanked by the latest round of jineteras,all of whom arrive in a gust of Jean-Paul Gaultier perfume and jeans so taut they need to be washed with Valium instead of soap.

Cell phones, as is the trend, are clipped to the women’s belts and dangle dangerously close to pubic bones. (“Talk about dressing to the left,” I once said to Camila.) Fashion accessories, fundamentally, the phones are otherwise useless, as connection fees are beyond a mortal’s reach.

“La jinetera norteamericana.”

I hear her voice, but I don’t want to believe it.

When great boxers size each other up, it’s with an appreciative eye for stature and aplomb. But rarely does a lightweight become rattled by a heavyweight. With divisions as safeguards, they’re not to compete. But for Modesta, divisions don’t exist, and I’m thrown into the ring with the mightiest. My jaw locks at the sight of her towering over us on the couch. Sasha pauses midsyllable, taking in the mythic curves of her body and a face with the precise symmetry of a work by da Vinci.

“What did she say?” asks Sasha quite slowly, turning to me. “Did she say you’re American?”

When Rafael steps next to Modesta, he delivers a customary greeting of a kiss on the cheek, first to her and then to me. My internal organs freeze. Rafael’s eyes radiate fury—again he’s found me cozy with a foreigner. Yet he offers Sasha a gentleman’s handshake.

Rafael introduces himself as a translator to Sasha’s fellow gangsters, and the two chat briefly. But my Russian’s eyes remain transfixed on my face.

“Did you”—Sasha points his cigar at Modesta—“did you say Alysia is American?”

Modesta smirks. Rafael pipes in. “She might be part Cuban, but I’m starting to doubt it,” says Rafael cryptically. “ Oye,I have to get something for—” He gestures toward one of the Russians.

“You’re American!” screams Sasha, jumping up so fast I fall into his impression on the couch. “You liedto me! You said you were Cuban—”

“Sasha, wait. I’m both!” I plead. “I’m both! I’m—I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.” He’s pacing now, his pallid face nearly red. The group has hushed and everyone is staring. Modesta glowers, unflinching.

Sasha seethes. “You said you would never lie. I am to payyou to be with me. You said you do not lie.” He addresses the room. “The cunt lies. I payher and the cunt lies!”

Then Rafael says it quietly, stealing no thunder from the Russian. It’s a slow realization, an accusation that springs naturally. More shock than malice. Rafael says this: “You’re a fucking jinetera.”

A corner of Modesta’s lip curls in triumph.

Light gleams off the Havana Club bottle as Sasha swings toward my head.

One-two punch.

Knockout.

Five

T here is nopain medicine at the hospital, not even aspirin, so the boy nurses wet my throat with peso rum and stitch up the mess on my head with thread and needle. I’ll be fine, but they’re keeping me overnight, in case of concussion. I can’t feel anything. The real damage is internal, and hemorrhaging. Wondering if Rafael will ever forgive me. And how I’m going to get home.

Modesta carries a pungent bundle of mariposas and an expressionless face. She tosses the flowers at my feet. I have no idea why she’s here, and I’m terrified by her presence. But I resolve not to show fear.

“Radio Bemba says Camila is away.”

“They don’t know where she is,” I reply coolly. Camila’s mother is sick with worry too, but I don’t tell that to Modesta.

Modesta rips open the window, lights a Marlboro, and perches on the second-story ledge. I wish I could push her out.

The heady perfume of the mariposas nearly sets me adrift into a sleep the nurses forbid. From the window, a fresh burst of tropical breeze is soothing, and fuses with Modesta’s burning cigarette. On an island that grows the world’s greatest tobacco, imported Marlboros are inferior but expensive, and a jinetestatus symbol. Leave it to Modesta to light up in a hospital.

From the streets come deep rumblings—a collective susurrus of anger in this poorer section of town over the ferry hijackers’ deaths. My nemesis, on her second cigarette, hears them, too, but doesn’t say a word. I’ll wait. Newly unemployed, I’ve got all night.

Finally, she speaks. “When I was seventeen, I married an Italian. He charmed my mother. I wasn’t so enamoradawith him, but I didn’t want to work Varadero anymore. He made such promises. Never date an Italian, they’re the worst, tacaños.”She tosses the glowing tip out the window. “I lasted three months. It was a small village near Naples, he was into some kind of crazy work, the whole neighborhood was nervous around him. Actually, they hated him more than they were nervous. I think I knew he was a bastard. But here, we were starving here. Período especial.I caught my grandmother eating a paint peel—imagine seeing your abuelitaso hungry she eats paint.”

I have no clue why she is relaying this. Out comes another cigarette. With nowhere to go, I wait until she’s worked through the tobacco. It’s another long while before she continues, and I’m fearful of falling asleep in her unsettling presence.

“The Italian said I could go to university and then we would have babies and a new house, and I could send money home. There was none of that. There was a house. But I wasn’t allowed to leave it. I was his wife but he sampled me to every one of his comemierdasfriends. Everyone had a taste. El sabor de Cuba.Sometimes it was two at a time, or three. I snuck out of my own driveway in the trunk of a Fiat owned by a boy too stupid to be afraid. I made it to Spain on twenty dollars and it took me two years to earn enough fulato see my mother again. When I did, she made me swear I would never leave Cuba.”

“Lucky me,” I mutter in English.

But she’s not listening. “When I returned I studied architecture, and came out with the highest marks. I have a medal for it, from Havana. Not metal, though,” laughs Modesta. “It’s a wood carving. Six years and I get a wood carving. But do I have a job? Yes, ajob, but not a realjob. I roll an eraser from one end of the desk to the other, and then back again. I was hired to relieve my papalónsupervisor’s boredom and give him someone new to jerk off to. In Havana, there’s everything to construct, no? So many plans to be made for the future! But we have no materials. We have nothing, and it’s all thanks to your embargo.” Angry now, she stares out the window until a calm overtakes her.