Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

He’s on his way to see us now. To see me.

He said I’ve gone far enough, and booked a charter flight to Havana. His voice was gentle, and he said he couldn’t wait, that he’d been dreaming of meeting me again. I’ve plenty of questions.

Just hearing him speak with relief and happiness at hearing my voice is more thrilling than I’d ever imagined. He’s alive! He knows about his daughter! And he’s coming back home.

I am Alysia Vilar, née Briggs, and I’ve found my father at last.

Filled with a new confidence, I storm out of the Calle M house to confront Walrus, who is standing under the mango tree, playing outfield to the children’s game.

“Well,” I say indignantly. “I’m not going to be here much longer.”

“Don’t be so certain,” Walrus says, chucking a mango to first base.

“Don’t you hear me? You can stop following me around,” I say, trying to play tough, although our size difference makes my scorn more than comical.

“ Mi niña,you’ve been quite entertaining,” says Walrus. Holding a battered mitt, he doesn’t need to watch as a mango whizzes near his head and lands with a smack in his waiting palm. “But I promised José Antonio I’d keep an eye on you until he arrives.”

“My father?” I ask, my eyes narrowing. “You knowmy father?”

“ Disculpe,but I’m sworn to secrecy.”

At first, I’m perplexed that my father may have known all along that I’ve been in Cuba. Then I’m angry that Walrus had likely been aware of my family’s whereabouts all along. When I question Walrus, he again refuses to clarify.

“ Mi vida,I have not told your father everything. What we say on the telephone is listened to by many. There are ears everywhere.” I look carefully at him, and he lowers his voice further. “I knew he was doing everything in his power to get back home. I did not want to worry him with…with the details of your misfortunes.” Walrus tosses the mango overhand and turns back to me. “I will leave it up to you to be the first one to tell José Antonio about most of what’s happened with you.”

For a few minutes, I hang my head in shame, wondering what he will think. But I realize it’s fruitless. I’m not afraid anymore of his judgment or anyone’s. I’m a kin of this land and we all do what we must. A lo cubano.

Things will change, I think, watching the breeze jostle the military notices that are tacked to doors. Cubans are waiting for Washington’s bombs. I’m waiting for a charter flight to arrive. Looking up at the empty sky, I’m hoping for the best.

C hinese pistols arecocked. Young men and women run drills in the streets. Public weapons stashes are unlocked, checked, and relocked. Underground tunnels built to withstand a U.S. attack are cleaned and readied. Cuban flags glued to rough wooden posts wave proudly in shop windows and homes. A sense of urgency seizes even the desultory.

If Yankee soldiers are going to show up, they’ll be in for a surprise.

In the streets, a rendition of Picasso’s antifascist mural Guernicais unveiled defiantly in front of the Spanish embassy—where my mother first met José Antonio all those years before—and protests loom over Madrid’s agreement to join in the bombing of Iraq.

My Cuban family ignores the signs of brewing trouble. For here on Calle M the news has been longer in the making, and tonight there’s to be a fiesta in honor of a daughter’s return to Cuba. Cousins drag a wooden cart down the street, one carrying the pink shell of a butchered pig, head attached, gutted and skinned and wrapped in palm leaves for roasting.

At Calle M, there’s been no sparing of expense, under the orders of my abuela.The same abuelawho taught me dance moves twenty-three years ago, and on the same chipped and faded Spanish-tile floors. I’d recognized their patterns immediately, on some level, a morsel rousted from the memory of childhood.

I help in the kitchen as the women prepare rice and beans—known as cristianos y moros,Christians and Moors. We mash and salt and fry green plantains into mariquitas.There’s shrimp in red sauce, baked beets, and a salad of cucumbers and tomatoes tossed in vinegar and salt. Boiled yucca is smothered in a garlicky mojosauce. Cuban bread, so light it transmutes into air on the tongue, is toasted and drizzled with butter and garlic and parsley.

Outside, the men turn the pig on a spit, and down the Belgian-inspired Cristal beers, one dollar a can. As they sit on wood stools and rock on stoops, I watch the new men in my life, and the women who cook for them. In all, I have three uncles, two aunts, and fourteen cousins of both sexes, and of various sexual persuasions. Most of my family is blanca,but the most beautiful are my mulatocousins, their skin adding a heavenly shade to the family tree.

My father’s sister is telling me that my father is a mango,a sweetheart, and how she, too, can’t wait to wrap her arms around him.

“He never got over you,” she says wistfully. “You can’t imagine how happy we all are to have everyone here, in Cuba, where we all belong. Gracias a dios.”

The phone is for me. My abueladoesn’t look me in the eye when she hands me the receiver. It’s José Antonio, and his trip has been postponed, and there’s a hint of anxiety in his voice, but he offers no reason. Just promises to arrive shortly. Although I’m able to leave in six short weeks, he again insists on meeting me in Havana.

Camila bursts through the front door bearing gifts of her mother’s caramelized flan and coconut cakes and flummery. She takes me aside in the fresh coolness of sunset.

“Something’s strange,” I say, relaying my conversation with Walrus. “And why could it be so difficult for José Antonio to get here? Why does he insist on meeting here, and not back home? It’s just weird…I mean, he’s gone twenty-three years without even coming to Cuba to see his family. They’ve missed him somuch.”

Camila looks concerned, and tucks flyaway hair neatly behind my ears. “If you expect nothing, you won’t be disappointed. But it worries me how you’ve built this up so much in your mind.”

“Eso es.”But it’s all I can do not to get my hopes up.

“Whatever happens to your father, you can’t forget that you already have what you came to Cuba for.”

“Them,” I say, nodding my head toward the house.

“A wonderful family, mi vida,you are superlucky.”

“Alysia!” Daya struts around a corner, giggling and holding hands with a boy whose eyes are so green they radiate from a block away. She’s hooched up in a red stretchy miniskirt and rhinestone-encrusted heels. It’s a rebellious, anti-Richard ensemble, and Camila and I offer a guttural howl.

“If the termites haven’t fallen on the piano!” laughs Camila, shaking her head.

Daya introduces the teenage cubano,Diego, and then pulls me aside: “I broke it off with Richard.”

“Mentira!”

“I told my mother, no more yumas.I quit. I’m through. Nada mas.”

“ Mi amor,what happened?”

“My dance teacher happened. I told her about my first letter, the one the police gave me in Morón. She said if I didn’t stop with the yumasI’d lose my place in the troupe. I would dieif I lost my place in the troupe.” She mimics a knife across her throat. Then she flips her hair and winks at Diego. “He’s my new boyfriend, isn’t he guapo?”

I nod vehemently. “And your mother?”

“ Ay,she’s angry.” Daya shrugs and flicks her fingers with a snap of the wrist, a common posture that means “dios mío”or “en candela”or “you wouldn’t believe.” “But she’ll get over it.”

“That’s wonderful,” I say proudly. “Felicidades.”

She lowers her voice. “ Coño,if this boy learns about Viagra, I’m dumping him!” Daya grabs her crotch and grimaces. Diego looks at us and sports the wince of a male who’s accidentally wandered into the scary hinterlands of chicatalk. A blush burns his cheeks.