Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

She’s striking, early thirties, with an air of easy sophistication and skin the color of caramel flan. A nurse introduces the woman as Dr. Fernandez de Valle, head of cardiology at the Instituto Cardiovascular. I’d soon know her as Camila.

An icy stethoscope slides over my chest and back. I breathe deeply. Camila dismisses the nurse, unfolds her glasses, and reclines in her chair.

“You’re Cuban.”

“How can you tell?”

She arches a brow. “You’ve had a panic attack,” she pronounces. “Your chart says you’re only twenty-three. Now, what on earth does a lovely young rubiahave to be nervous about on holiday? The boys and their piropos?” She smiles. “They areoverwhelming, all that whistling and carrying on in the streets.”

I study my feet. I’d never had a panic attack before, but I was certain I was going to die. The palpitations started just as the family of doctors—my landlords in the home where my money had been stolen—proclaimed frostily that I had to leave by the weekend, as it was nearly July, and tourism was on the upswing. As it sunk in that I was homeless and broke, I couldn’t catch my breath. First, my heart beat quickly, and then more rapidly still, until it felt as if it would burst from my chest.

“Well, muñeca?”

The adrenaline makes me feel confessional, and the whole story spills from my mouth. I tell her about my mother and stepfather, the robbery, and my search for José Antonio. She listens carefully. When I’m done, she jumps from her seat.

“Ay, candela!How could you live with those ladrones?” Thieves. “They took los mangos bajitos! All your money was gone?”

“All of it…I’d only left the house for a few hours.”

“The family robbed you. No question.” She thinks for a moment. “You need to get out of that house prontito.A woman I know owes me a favor. Pack your things.” She scribbles on paper. “Meet me here around seven tonight. You’ll be having dinner with my family.”

I grab for my pile of clothes. “Thank you,” I say meekly.

“No pasa nada,”she says. “Some of us Cubans are lucky enough to have a bit of Arabic blood in our veins. And that means we’re obliged to help travelers. Besides, it’s been a long while since we’ve had a norteamericanain the flesh. This will be fun.”

THAT NIGHT, ON the patio of Camila’s family home, neighbors and friends and cousins gather to hear for themselves the story of a norteamericanalooking for her Cuban father. In a country where time and chisme—gossip—are the only items in copious supply, I quickly give up any notions of privacy.

I’m the new neighborhood telenovela.

The soap opera everyone will follow.

Camila negotiates a tiny room for me in the Vedado home of the woman who owes her a favor. A few days later, I meet my new landlady. Our arrangement is black-market and illegal. I’m warned to keep in the shadows, away from the police.

R ed paper lanternsswirl in a tropical gust. A tiny block of Chinatown, with its raucous cafés and curio shops, forms an oasis of bobbing lights in a darkened city. Under the scarlet glow, preteens in silky China-doll dresses giggle seductively at aging tourists.

Like them, I’m waiting for my black-market job to begin, and I check the time on my watch. Ten-thirty.

Consulting my map, I walk a few blocks along Calle Zanja to a deserted square, near the former Shanghai Theatre—a rollicking stripper’s cabaret and dirty-movie house made infamous in a 1950s Havana known for its gambling palaces and whorehouses and peepshows.

When drugs, money, and thugs ruled the streets.

On these same streets now, violent crime is rare, and women walk alone without apprehension. Still, in the dark, as I wait at the appointed corner, my radar is in overdrive.

The black 1951 Studebaker Champion screeches to a halt, and both doors swing open. I jump a little, but breathe easier when the driver introduces himself as Mario. I squeeze between two cubanoson the burgundy bench-seat, its springs underneath long retired, and we take off. After each successful pass through an intersection, Mario pounds the roof twice in lucky exclamation. A man next to me launches into a heated argument about an umpire’s call in a World Series game—one played thirty years ago.

As we drive through Centro, I stare out the windows, fascinated. Front doors are flung open. Old mansions have been quartered into apartments, and their inhabitants bunch inside, or spill onto streets. Music tumbles from every balcony. The flickering of fluorescents illuminate interiors and the lives inside: old men hover over chessboards, women scrape at pans, and young children toss jacks with grandmothers.

Mario drives out of the poorer Centro, and we arrive in a ritzy section of Miramar. The bullet-nosed beast slides into a driveway. Mario guides me by a large banyan tree that obscures the main entrance and hides the mansion’s bustling interior.

A woman named Blanca greets us and ushers me past the warm lights, antiques, and roomfuls of foreigners dining at small tables. Blanca clarifies that it’s a paladar—a private restaurant—and hers is run illegally.

“We don’t make enough money to pay the monthly tax,” she explains. “So we just take our chances.”

“If you get caught?”

She laughs and nervously waves off my question. We take a side door and climb a sumptuous, curving staircase so old that countless footsteps have worn arcs in the marble. Blanca sits me down in a small room and instructs me to wait. Several people, she says, will come in with a list and cash, and deliver their requests. She smiles at me funny.

“It’s on Camila’s word that we trust you,” she says. “Good luck.”

Pedrín is the first to enter. His lashes are long and curled at the tip, but his body is masculine and strong. His skin feels like leather as I brush his cheek with a kiss. Pedrín sits down, awkward in the small chair, and looks me over.

“You’re Cuban, verdad?”

“Creo que sí,”I say. I guess.

He laughs. “ Mira,you’d know if you’re Cuban.”

“How?”

“You’d be intelligent and inventive and you’d die for your country. Or—” he leans in with the punch line—“you’d die trying to leave it.”

Smiling, I ask: “What’ll it be?”

“A microwave.” He pulls out a paper from his wallet and reads from it. “Sheets, two sets. Rice cooker. Some Advil. Multivitamins. Cough syrup for children.”

I write this down. He pulls out some twenties from his wallet.

“Your markup is twenty percent?” he asks.

I feel embarrassed. “I wish I could say it was zero.”

My advantage, one worth a twenty percent commission, is that I’m carrying a foreign passport. With that, I can walk into the diplomercado—diplomats’ market—and buy items off-limits to locals. Oftentimes, the same items are available to Cubans in dollar stores, but Blanca tells me there’s been a shortage for weeks now and the habaneros—Havana residents—are getting desperate.

“Don’t worry,” says Pedrin. “The habaneroswho work at the diplocharge a hundred percent markup, if they can sneak the stuff out. This”—he gestures at my list—“is a deal.”

“Can I ask…” The question is too personal. I hesitate.

“Dale,”he encourages.

“How do you get dollars? I thought everyone was paid in pesos.”

“My wife has a yuma.”

“A what-a?”

“A yuma.A foreign boyfriend. The yumasends money pretty regularly, and we need it; we have two kids, plus my wife’s mother.”

“You don’t mind the boyfriend?”

He says nothing, and looks down at the desk. “He’s gordo, viejo, y feo.” Fat, old, and ugly. “Why should I mind?”