Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

He studies my expressions. After a moment, I ask a question I don’t actually want answered, and it comes out in a resigned whisper. “What did you mean about John?”

My father takes a long breath and calls to the waiter for more water. He takes a long drink and a deep breath. He leans over the table. “John raised you, I know this,” he says. “So I don’t want to speak badly of him. But the truth is this. The truth, Alysia, is that when I settled in Miami, I eventually found your mother in Washington. It took me a long time before I had a job and could afford to find you two. But you all were in and out of the country so often…I had to wait until you’d return to your apartment—”

“At the Watergate?” I ask, imagining our long-term Washington residence and the place where my things have always had a permanent home. “You went to our place?”

He nods. “I flew to D.C., hoping to speak with your mother. To discuss a way, at least, for me to see you. But John intercepted, and ordered me to leave. When I came back to Miami, two of his men came to my door saying I had to keep away from your mother and you. And if I didn’t…” He shakes his head sadly. “Well, John would make a big deal about my Interior records, embellish them, and see that I got deported. I was stuck.”

“Completely stuck.”

“I couldn’t ask your mother to let me see you, and I didn’t want to be forced back to Cuba, where it would be nearly impossible to find you, ya tú sabes.So I made a career as a translator, married a wonderful woman. Went on and hoped your mother would soon tell you the truth. I guess I naïvely believed John would tell your mother I was looking for you, and where I lived…I don’t know. I was just dreaming. My wife and I, we never had children—she couldn’t. So, Alysia, you are even more special to me.”

I’m stunned, and find myself disbelieving that John would leave me to rot in Havana, broke and homeless, knowing I was looking for a man living on American soil all along. I can’t believe it, and I find my face flush with anger. John couldn’t have been so cruel. I need to believe this.

We leave in a taxi and ride in silence. There’s a lot to process.

José Antonio is to have an emotional, long-overdue reunion now with his mother and family. I’ve insisted on giving them privacy. He and I make arrangements to see each other in a few days. When I get out of the car at Camila’s house, he hugs me with a ferocity I never felt with anyone, much less John.

“You know, you can come back and forth between the U.S. and Havana. But the U.S. will only allow one brief visit every three years. It won’t be the same at all as if you’d just live here with us.” He backs out of the hug and pleads. “We’ve lost so many years already, my beautiful daughter, I can’t stand the thought of spending our future apart as well.”

Sadly, I watch the taxi zoom off. Rather than being a blissful denouement, meeting my father has churned up more confusion about my family and my past. Not to mention my future.

I n the houranyone will answer their phone—at four A.M., too comatose from sleep to screen calls, too stunned to let it slide into voice mail—I phone my other father, the one who raised me.

John’s voice is thick and groggy, and I hold back a torrent of accusations.

“Alysia,” I say, in answer to his question.

“Wait a minute, let me splash some cold water.” A woman’s voice in the background surprises me, though it’s been years since my mother’s death. I can’t help but be happy for John, hoping he has found someone to soften his edges.

“I’m glad you phoned,” John says. “I’d thought of sending one of the staff down there to bring you home. We have some financials to sort out. Are you still in that rotting city? How are you faring?” It takes all the calmness I possess to not burst into an angry tirade. How does he think I’m faring—broke and trapped in a country where it’s impossible to work?

Instead I say this. “Yes, I’m still in Havana.”

John sighs. The water stops running. “I hope you’re ready to come home and start a career now. I think there’s been enough gallivanting.”

“I’ve found José Antonio.”

“He’s gone back to Cuba, has he?”

I sigh. “Do you miss me, Dad?”

“You know, there’s no real proof. That he’s your biological father. Your grandmother is convinced of it, but I’m not so sure.”

“When I come home, can we have a real relationship? You know, maybe have breakfast once in a while? Spend holidays together?”

“We can get you a nice post in foreign service, forget all about this.”

He doesn’t even get it, I think. He doesn’t understand what he’s put me through in refusing to help me out of Cuba, when all the power to do so has been easily within his reach. And how cruel, I think, not to tell me José Antonio had been in the U.S. all the while.

“Alysia—” he says tentatively.

“Do you miss me?” I repeat quietly.

He says nothing.

Sighing, I start to say good-bye.

Then he interrupts. “Wait, Alysia?”

“Yes,” I say.

Another long silence. “Um…Never mind.”

“Good-bye, John,” I say, my voice cracking. Then I whisper it one last time. “Good-bye.”

Gently, I click down the receiver. Looking around, I find myself in the lobby of the Hotel Nacional, an empty phone card in my hand. Standing at the same pay phone I used twelve months ago to call for John’s help. This time, the jineterasgliding through the lobby don’t faze me. I touch my face and tug at my tight clothes. The girl who stood here one year ago is gone forever.

R afael greets mefrom behind the wheel and I slide onto the bench seat. Tito licks my face and I squeal over his affections. Shyly, I kiss Rafael’s cheek. In the back sits a tourist couple from Canada, and we exchange greetings. They’ve hired Rafael to chauffeur them to Three Kings of El Morro, the prominent castle and fortress atop a cliff overlooking Havana Bay.

Walking through its hallowed grounds, Rafael scoops me up and sets me on la cortina,the curtain wall blunting a steep drop into the harbor. Soldiers in red uniforms pump gunpowder into a cannon pointed at the sea. Each night’s cannonade is at nine P.M., the ritual hour Havana’s city walls were locked and barricaded three centuries before.

Paranoia is running high over a putative U.S. attack. But the only heavy artillery raining on Havana now is the cannon’s friendly fire.

“You have to trust me,” Rafael says, instructing me to stand tall on la cortina.“Everyone jumps when the cannon goes off. But I’ll grab you so you don’t fall backwards into the bay.”

The Canadians are safely on the ground, their fanny packs unclipped and held tightly to their chests, and the fire’s glow flickers on their bodies. I lean over and whisper in Rafael’s ear.

“My father is staying in Cuba for good,” I say. “My visa runs out in a few weeks.”

“So renew for another year,” Rafael says simply. But my face twists at the suggestion. He sighs.

I stand up straight and feel the night’s rippling breeze through my hair. Below the precipice churn dark waters. Fishermen on inner tubes float through the darkened bay with string and hooks.

Rafael sends me a grin, but I’m frightened, and so he grabs my other hand. The fuse is slow and languorous, and when it goes boom, I jump, but Rafael keeps his promise and catches me, and I slide down his body. It’s a good move, and I tell him so, though wondering if it’s been perfected on the countless women before me.

We drop the Canadians off at a disco, and Rafael uses the money earned shuttling them around to treat me to dinner in Chinatown. It nearly feels like a real date back home. Rafael wants to know how things went with José Antonio and what my plans are—what ourplans are. I love how he hangs on my every word and lets me speak without interruption. I recite a Reader’s Digestversion of yesterday’s conversation with José Antonio.