We are in Cuba, of course. In Guantánamo, to be more precise. My parents seem happy. Papi’s a public accountant. Mami, a frustrated housewife. Doesn’t she look beautiful in this picture? Mami doesn’t seem to age. Papi, too, looks as handsome as he does today (in spite of his black-bean potbelly); velvety hair, dark complexion, features he says he inherited from his Castilian father.
They quarrel. He plays dominoes for money, she says. And he loses and loses. She’s a watchdog, he claims. She spies on him, tries to control him. They hate each other’s guts, but they stay together for the children. We need to have a normal set of parents, right? A nice home, a real family. And one day we will need to be freed from the Communist tentacles.
You know how the story goes: This normal set of parents will have to leave their land to save their babies. And feeling fearful perhaps, or lonely, they will reinvent their matrimonial farce in the United States. Things will be better there, they think. They will have common goals and aspirations. He won’t drink anymore. She won’t be a bitch. And life will be a happily-ever-after.
But not yet. Not so easily. In a couple of years my brother Pedro is going to turn fourteen, military age. If they don’t get him out before that, he’ll never be able to leave. We can’t take a chance waiting for our turn to enter the United States. So, fate has an unexpected voyage in store for my brother and me. Yes, I’ll get to leave, too. But not to “America.” We’ll emigrate to Spain, thanks to a rich Spanish aunt who’ll pay our way there.
Typical tale of a Cuban family of Worms, a decent home being torn apart. Rosita and Pedrito Rodríguez, two little twirps from Guantánamo who kneel by their beds every night and say their prayers are suddenly thrown into the world without their loving parents to protect them.
Our maternal grandmother, whom later in life I would baptize “La Filósofa,” weeping and praying for our well-being, “May the Virgin of Charity protect you, children. May she guide your steps and keep you from danger. May she help you find your way back to us, some day.” Our parents looking up at the blue Cuban sky and asking themselves, “Will we ever see our babies again?”
Later, in Garden Shore, our widow grandmother will amass a fortune from her Welfare and Social Security checks and will rent a two-bedroom apartment where she’ll live by herself, free and independent, always a loving and faithful provider of cafecito and good old-fashioned Cuban wisdom. My parents will find assembly-line work in the aircraft industry, driven by the dream of buying a house with a garden, a swimming pool and a marble statue of the Virgin of Charity.
Yes, some dreams do come true.
* * *
Here’s a picture of me at school: Rosita with her clique. The one with the curly red hair, that’s Maritza. You can’t see her face that well in this picture but believe me, she had the most bewitching bedroom eyes. And this is her wedding invitation. Pathetic, isn’t it?
Maritza gave me little sermons about things that I couldn’t and shouldn’t understand: class struggle, the proletariat, Che, the capitalist pigs. She was a teacher’s aide, strong in history and literature. And she spoke English. One day she’d go to the Soviet Union to study Russian, that was her plan. She wanted to read Tolstoy in the original.
She deserved her bookworm reputation, yes. But she was able to descend to my level and chitchat with me about trivialities: tube pants, miniskirts, popular music and groups like Los Bravos and Los Memes. And she translated for me the hit songs I liked that were in English, “Black is Black,” “I’m a Believer,” “Words.”
I was a fairly good student. Good enough to have started high school a year earlier than I was supposed to. No, I wasn’t a genius like Maritza; I had to study hard to get my Bs (eights and nines in the Cuban grade system).
I knew my geography from the North Pole to the South Pole. Well acquainted with the Colonization period, I knew that when Christopher Columbus set foot in Cuba one day in 1492, he uttered the famous words THIS IS INDEED THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LAND THAT HUMAN EYES HAVE EVER SEEN. I could recite by heart many of José Martí’s Versos sencillos and name every single one of our Liberators, the men who fought for our (late) independence from the Spanish oppressors in 1898. (Too bad Martí had to be one of them).
I had read Don Quijote, The Iliad and Romeo and Juliet. I knew who Socrates, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Calderón, Marx, Lenin, Hemingway were. And I had definitely heard of the Communist Manifesto. I knew that Nikita was a good friend of Fidel’s and that Johnson threw black people to the dogs. And I chanted, like everybody else in town (before my family decided we would emigrate) that sing-song that went, “The Worms! (Feet thumping on the floor) Let’s crush the Worms!”
* * *
Papi told me to be tough. “Don’t let anyone intimidate you, Rosita. Your trip is not a crime.” But no one treated me badly at school when I announced that I had received the “exit telegram.” On the contrary, the principal had watery eyes when she hugged me. She told me to continue studying and not to let myself be trapped by the American vices. She was going to miss me, she said. And my classmates stared at me with puppy-dog eyes, as if I were traveling to a death camp and they were saying goodbye to me forever.
My only wish (I remember this clearly) was to stand in the middle of the school, right next to the flag, and to embrace Maritza, kissing her curly red hair and her lips. Telling her in front of the whole world that I loved her.
We walked to the park, I remember. And there we sat, in silence at first, then like two chatty parrots. And when it started to get dark, like two lovers saying Adiós, knowing they’d never see each other again.
My secret, impossible dream: that Maritza would come with me to the North, that she would abandon her communist family and escape to a land where dreams became reality. We would be free there. We’d go to school together and one day we’d buy a house at the beach and there we’d make our happy “nest.”
I wrote to her a lot from California. I tried not to make a big deal of my brand new typewriter, my camera, my tape recorder, my color TV set, my family’s car and the abundance of food. I told her of the music that was popular, Elvis, The Fifth Dimension, The Mamas and the Papas. I’d cut pictures of celebrities from the magazines and I’d send them to her.
There was little in my letters about Garden Shore, where we lived, about the gringos and about my classes. All of that seemed unreal, uninteresting, a boring tale not worthy of telling. Her letters, the few that I got, were literary jewels. In the last one I received, and which I didn’t answer, she sent me this wedding invitation ...
Pathetic, isn’t it?
Seeing her name printed over a red heart, on that cheap cream-colored paper and next to the name of a man, MARITZA GARCIA & DAVID PEREZ, I felt for the first time that Cuba was vanishing from my life.
* * *
Look at this picture. See that cute guy there, in the back, behind Maritza? He’s the one. My buddy. In my childhood story you have become that kid, Marito. Or rather, he has become you. And I can no longer remember his real name.
You live next door. We share a stereotypical biography: macho-father, puppet-mother. The Works. We help and comfort each other. You have a secret life similar to mine; we’re accomplices. Best friends. But our friendship doesn’t have a chance. My father has forbidden me to hang out with you because you’re obvious, Marito. Blatantly obvious.
The first time you came to visit, my father didn’t even greet you. Remember? And then when you left, his disgusting orders: “I never ever want to see you with that boy again! Can’t you tell he’s a pájaro?”
Pájaro. Bird. One of the words Cubans used in those days (still today?) to denigrate a gay man. What were some of the other ones? Ah yes, Duck, Butterfly, Inverted One, Sick One, Broken One, Little Mary, Addict, Pervert.
“I don’t want to see you with that boy again, is that clear? Don’t even speak to him!”
One day they started to pick up all the long-haired men, women in miniskirts or hot pants, the whores, the ducks and the dykes (Las Tortilleras). Helterskelter, chopped off the ground as if they were sugar cane. And you, my neighbor friend, were one of the first to fall. Or did you escape The Raid? Were you as lucky as me? No. I remember hearing the news at school, from Maritza: “They got Mario. For being queer.”
Even Julito Martinez, the macho dude who played the lead in the country’s most popular TV serial, Zorro!, had fallen. And two of the singers who formed one of my favorite pop groups, Los Memes, were gone, too. “What’s going on?” I asked Maritza, seeking comfort, some sort of affirmation in her wisdom. “Those people are sick, Rosita,” she responded. “And their sickness is contagious.”
How much pain we would’ve saved each other had we been there together, at the genesis, for real. How much strength we would’ve found in our friendship, Mario.
Truth is, I grew up alone in my lair, just like you.
No. It didn’t happen overnight. I remember feeling attracted to women since I was a baby. When I was seven I used to play doctor with a neighbor girl. She’d hug me and I’d touch her “sick” tummy and she’d touch the “bebé” I had between my legs and it felt so good. We closed our eyes and kissed each other on the mouth, kisses of tight and bumbling lips. We played house and I was the husband. And we had children.
My fantasies started early. In them I was usually a handsome knight in love with a princess. Or a tough militia man who carried two guns, one hanging from each hip. A virile and feared lieutenant (for some reason I never wanted to be a captain). Oh yes, and I drove a jeep. Everyone respected me and loved me. Especially the women. And I always managed to get the lady of my dreams.
I begged God to help me. Damn how I prayed! I’d kneel during Mass and I’d tell Jesus Christ and the Virgin of Charity: “Look, here, please, you guys, pretty please, you’ve got to save my body from temptation and my soul from eternal damnation. Tell you what, so that everything goes fast and easy, I’ll close my eyes and I’ll think real hard that I’m a normal girl and that I like boys. Then I’ll open my eyes, I’ll look at the statue of Christ on the cross and—Wham!—Rosita Rodríguez has been cured! She’s a new person! Is that a deal?”
But there were no miracles for me.
Papi and Mami did nothing but argue and insult each other and walk like zombies all over the house. He was drunk most of the time. She’d do whatever she could do not to break down. How could they possibly help me? And then there was my brother, Pedro, too much of a typical machito to understand how I was feeling, or for me to trust him.
Mami did try to teach me the Cuban birds and bees. Was she worried, perhaps, about my Tomboy look, my disdain for domestic activities, my total apathy toward the opposite sex? She was determined, I could tell, to drive out of me all traces of masculinity, to force me to be fragile, tender, womanly.
Lucky for me there were no beatings and no broken jaws, as I know there were in other homes. From my sinful hideaway I listened (I imagine now that I listened) to your cries. Things were much worse for you, because you had been born a man. Your crime deserved no forgiveness and no mercy.
Blows and kicks for you, The Butterfly. For me, advice: “Your behavior must be ... calmer, Rosita. You should lower your voice when you talk. You shouldn’t be out there hunting birds and climbing trees. You should play house with your dolls and not play war games with the boys. You must help me more around the house, and stay home more. You should start wearing skirts. And you should follow my advice ...”
Your mother threw a fork at you one day. She was having lunch and you kept pestering her. What irked her about you that morning? What were you bugging her about? I know, you wanted her to tell you why she cried some times at night, “Does he hurt you, Mima? Does he hurt you? Is that why you cry? Why do you put up with him, Mima? Why do we put up with him?”
So she threw the fork at you. She didn’t mean for it to hurt you; it was just an impulse, wasn’t it? The fork punctured your arm, hanging there like a dead limb. The next day she started to direct traffic in the neighborhood. Would you say she went crazy? You got ten stitches and then you couldn’t move your arm for a long time. Did seeing you hurting like that provoke her insanity? Was it remorse?
At the crack of dawn she’d put on your father’s baseball cap and she’d hang a whistle from her neck. And there she went, stopping every car or pedestrian that passed in front of the house, blowing her whistle and giving bizarre orders, “Show me your identity. You can’t go on unless you show me your identity.” And people just cracked up in her face.
“What do I have to do to show you my identity?”
“Anything that would prove who you are.”
The person (in most cases a man) would then make a gesture, sticking out his tongue or farting. “Very well,” she’d respond, feeling accomplished, “you can go on, but carefully, don’t forget that we are in the War Zone.”
The fantasy ended abruptly one day, weeks later, when your father found out that a man had opened his fly to show your mother his enormous identity. Your Pipo nearly killed the guy. But why didn’t he stop her from making a fool of herself from the very beginning? Why did he wait?
Did he want to laugh at her, too?
The school sent out a van to pick us up and take us home. You and I rode together the whole way, because we were in the same grade, and we were neighbors. I’m sure all the kids thought you and I were an item. Little did they know.
Why am I remembering this, Marito? Is it because ... there was something peculiar about you? Something I need to remember? Yes, you didn’t like to go to the bathroom at school. How you managed to hold it all until you got home is beyond me, but you did. Until that afternoon, when we were sitting in the back and ... there was that nauseating smell. “What is this?!” asked the driver when he saw you getting out of the van. “This kid took a shit in his pants!” Everyone laughed and called you Shit Head and Dirty Asshole (or whatever the Cuban equivalents were, all of them having to do with the word Mierda).
You didn’t go to the restroom at school because the prospect of exposing yourself in front of the other boys horrified you. (The toilet stalls didn’t have doors.) But why? Was it because the ogre you had for a father punished you by making you take off all your clothes and then had you sit in the living room, stark naked? Was that the reason? Did you associate your nudity with punishment and pain?
I saw you there once, on the floor, in the middle of the living room, covering your parts and begging me with your eyes to end your torture, to leave perhaps, or bring you a blanket.
I’m sure I saw you naked once.
* * *
True, in most of my fantasies I was a man. But then there were those few occasions when I felt totally fern. When I would become LA MUJER.
My idol and role model for that fantasy was Rosita Fornés, the glamorous television queen, the greatest artista, the one and only Cuban star. Rosita was blonde and sexy and she sang heart-rending songs. She could dance and crack jokes and she had the body of a goddess.
It occurred to me during one of those fern fantasies that I should do Rosita Fornés’ variety show in my backyard. Why not. I mean, wasn’t it like destiny, like a mysterious fate that we both had the same name? (I asked Mami once if I had been named after the famous TV star, since Papi liked her so much and she was so famous and beautiful and maybe they wanted me to be famous like her some day. But Mima said absolutely not, that I had been named after Rosa María Fernanda Lucrecia Virginia, my great-grandmother on my father’s side. Coño!) I could get some of my friends involved in the show, give them parts and songs to sing and funny things to say. And we could invite all the neighbors and charge money.
This artistic enterprise, I was sure, would be more profitable and far more successful than the lemonade sale, when there were so many lemons falling from the tree in our backyard that we didn’t know what to do with them. “Make lemonade and sell it,” Papi suggested. And I did. And I made enough money to buy three Vanidades and two Bohemias, all of them including lyrics of popular songs. But the ROSITA SHOW would top the lemonade sale; it would make neighborhood history. Or so I thought.
“Sing all you want,” said Mami. “Sing Rosita’s songs and do her dances. But no smooching. Understand?” What was she talking about? Rosita never kissed anybody in her TV show, or at least not that I’d noticed. And besides, did I have a tainted reputation? Quite the opposite, I was clean! But Mami’s advice backfired. Yes, she put an idea in my head and in my heart, a wonderful idea for the show. We’d make it a love story, just like one of those Mexican movies that they showed on TV every day, where people talked about El Amor all the time, unrequited love, drunken love, betrayed love, sublime love. El Amor!
“And one more thing,” Mami went on, “make sure you include Pedrito in your show. Just because he’s little doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a right to have fun.” My brother would eventually find his way into a thrillingly fun experience of his own. His wild awakening would come much later, in Spain. But that’s another story.
We rehearsed outside, in the backyard, and Mami would spy on us through the kitchen window. We’d notice the tip of her nose, supervising, who knows if bored or fascinated, the rehearsal for our great melodrama, CARNIVAL QUEEN.
I’d play the female lead, of course. And you, Mario, would be my beloved and broken-hearted boyfriend Amor. You were a short and whitish boy, with light brown hair and unusually fine features. Perfect for the part of leading man. What I liked about you the most were your hands: impeccably white fingers, rosy nails; your dove hands, Amor.
Dressed in pink with a fur coat I am La Rosa, a delicate, ephemeral and desirable flower. I sing a song and then a fat old man gives me jewels and I accept them. Why not, all he wants from me is that I let him admire my beauty. Besides, the fatso’s right: those jewels make me look radiant, more gorgeous than I am already.
We live in a village and it’s Carnival time. I meet him one night, while I stroll through the plaza, watching the masquerading crowds. His name is Mario but I will call him Amor. We’ll become sweethearts and he’ll take me to his home, to meet his parents.
I walk in looking humble and average, wearing a simple summer dress, no jewelry and no fur coat. And his folks greet me. I am a decent girl and they are so pleased that their boy has met me, because I go to Mass on a weekly basis. The sign of the cross and God bless you my child.
But then. Oh then. Amor finds out that I have a secret life, that I am the Carnival Queen. (How could I have possibly volunteered to play such a total fern?) He discovers me one night, half-naked, dancing my butt off on a majestic float.
Another dress, another song.
He cries because I’m not the decent girl he thought I was. I catch his glance full of sadness and rage. He runs, I jump off the float and run after him. I must tell him the truth! (I didn’t know what that truth was, but I knew I had to explain it to him.) He runs to the pier and there he stops, and there I see him. He’s thinking of jumping in; he’s going to take his life! I scream, “No, Amor! Don’t do it! Wait! You must listen to me, I am not who you think I am!” (But I really was, know what I mean?) Then there’s a wave, a tidal wave that swells up and swallows him in one gulp. Amor! My love!
Another dress and the last song, From the moment the day is born, to the moment when the sun dies, Amor, my love, I think of you. Amor, my love, you live in my heart...
“How about a happy ending?” you asked. And you were right, Marito. We couldn’t just leave the story hanging there with such a revolting, unoriginal Fin. So you came up with a great idea:
I’d go back to my glamorous float to dance my pain away and then one night, many years later, you’d show up. I’d see you smiling down below, in the crowd, still in love with me. You’d embrace me, and now we’re both dancing on this magical float. And the float stops and the people gather around us. They listen to your story:
“A pirate ship picked me up and saved me from the sharks. I became a pirate and I sailed around the globe. I burned many houses and I stole many treasures. But then I repented from all those crimes and I came back searching for my Rosita. And now that we have found each other, I will no longer be a pirate. And she will no longer be The Carnival Queen, but only the Queen of my Heart. The End.”
One evening, after our daily rehearsal, you brought me a plate of mercocha, that wonderful gooey stuff that Cuban mothers made from cooked sugar and cinnamon. “Here,” you said, “my mother just made this ... for you.” And right then and there you asked me timidly if you could give me a kiss, just a little kiss, you said. And I responded, “Of course, Marito, but not on the mouth, okay? Because that’s for older people and, besides, I don’t like to kiss boys.” And you said, “Fantastic, Rosita, because I don’t like to kiss girls but I’d love to kiss you, because you’re my sister.” And so you gave me this breathy kiss on the cheek and then I saw you blushing.
You shared your secret with me that evening. And I shared mine with you. You told me that you didn’t like playing the handsome Amor, that who you really wanted to play was the Carnival Queen. I told you that if you ever played the Queen, some day, I’d play the leading man for you. Because deep down inside I didn’t want to be her, that who I really wanted to be was Amor. And so you said, “Why do we have to wait? Why can’t we do the show for ourselves, being the person that we want to be?” And we performed for each other, didn’t we? And we fulfilled our wish.
The next day we announced to the “cast” that our show had been cancelled. The reason we gave our disillusioned friends was that the rehearsals were taking up too much of our time and we weren’t doing our homework or studying enough. The real reason? You and I had already had our spectacular debut.
* * *
Here’s a picture of me at the farm, which the Communists called “La Cooperativa.” And that’s my clique again. Don’t I look like I’m having the time of my life?
Papi and Mami made such a fuss about my having to go work at La Cooperativa. Unfortunate little angel who never had to lift a finger in her entire life, having to go break her back and soil her hands, working for the Bearded Serpent. Baby Rosita was going to be cleaning out furrows of sweet potato and cutting sugar cane for forty days! What an insult, what a slap in the face for my family.
But I loved the country. We had to work, yes, but not much; and we got slim and good-humored and playful. The saddest girls seemed to bloom at La Cooperativa.
We bathed together in a large hut that was ironically and properly named Los Buenos Baños, The Good Baths. My legs wobbled every time I went in there, I won’t deny that. Tits tits tits. A room full of tits. But later, alone, I thought of someone special. Always about Maritza.
I know you didn’t do anything “bad,” you swear on it. But you were tempted. Oh how you were tempted! I imagine that the worst, the very worst torture you went through was the Cocks’ Parade, El Desfile de las Pingas. How were you able to resist the temptation when you saw those giant chorizos willing, available, anxious and wasted? All those boys comparing each other, boasting about the shapes and sizes of their powerful erections; exploring each other to see who had the biggest, the thickest, the circumcised ones, the ones with more foreskin. Competing with each other by squirting their “milk” the longest distance. Or by breaking through a watermelon and parading around the barracks with the fruit hanging from their sex. Let’s see who can hold it up the longest!
The most difficult test was the one you endured with Paquito, wasn’t it? Paquito, the barber’s son, had a habit of offering you tidbits of wisdom for survival: “Never be a tattletale. Never. Be anything you want except a tattletale. Be a cocksucker, a ball-licker, a Duck, a Little Mary. Bend down and spread your cheeks, but don’t be a tattletale. No one here’s gonna treat you bad for being a queer. But if you’re a tattletale you’ll get killed, we’ll cut you up with a machete.” Minutes later he opened his fly and displayed a long and dark and wrinkled pecker. “Suck it, I won’t tell anyone. I’m not a tattletale.”
You said no, trembling inside, resisting the temptation like a true hero. “Suck it, I know you want to,” the barber’s son insisted. But you didn’t.
You didn’t dare.
Maritza and I had a reunion at La Cooperativa. It was kind of magical, if you can believe that. She had been distant and aloof at school. Afraid of me, maybe. Afraid of being picked up or contracting my contagious “illness”?
She smiled at me again when we got to the country. And we ended up talking a lot about music. Our latest idol was Armando Manzanero, the Mexican singer-songwriter. He had a hideously romantic voice, an unbearably touching falsetto. And his words, oh his words! He sang of rainstorms and lonely crowds and forsaken lovers and adoring lovers and forever-ever-lovers.
I knew every one of Manzanero’s songs. I could imitate his high-pitched voice, the exact modulation of his notes, the violin part, the piano solos. Inevitably, I ended up serenading Maritza whenever I had the opportunity. One morning, much to my surprise, she asked me if I would sing for her in private, “Where no one can hear you. Sing only to me.” My mouth dropped.
I suggested we go to the plantain field after dawn. And we did. And as soon as we were out of sight I kissed her. Then we walked holding hands, laughing, discussing her favorite books (War and Peace, Don Quijote), my favorite movies (Fantomas, Jotavich), talking about us, about being friends forever. And about my singing. She said I had a pretty voice, that I should try to sing professionally. But I couldn’t, I said, I wouldn’t want to sing anymore if she were not around to hear me.
We were far from the barracks when I asked her to sit down, to lean against the trunk of a tree and relax, close her eyes and just let herself dream. Softly I said, “We’re alone. And I’m going to serenade you.” And then I saw that from behind the tree appeared this woman, this woman who sang, entranced, We are sweethearts, who whispered, because we feel this love, sublime and profound. She hummed, she sang, This love that makes us proud. She cried, This love so weary of goodbyes. She pleaded, Come hear, come hear my sweethearts lullaby.