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“MANOLITO, CHICO—don’t do this to me.” Somewhere in La Cubalina, Isabelita gave Manolito a restless glance. A small spray bottle in her hand squirted water on his hair. They were out back in the yard, next to a giant avocado tree. Isabelita couldn’t fathom cutting hair anywhere else. The avocado was something special. It knew its stuff, she always thought. It was a vegetable dressed as a fruit, and she liked that.
“Paris is where it’s at, mi hermana,” Manolito said. The back of his head turned to Isabelita’s scissors.
“Prepárate,” she said. “I’m giving you the cut of your life. Longish all around, and longerish on the back. Didn’t Brad Pitt have a cut just like it in that film?” She tapped her head with the scissors. “What was the name of that film with Brad Pitt? Manolito, coño, I can’t remember... the one with the car.”
“The one where the two women drive off a cliff? The one we watched with La Gorda’s VCR?”
“Ay, solavaya,” she said, her scissored hand in the air, flicking death away. “That one.”
“Telma and Luis,” Manolito said.
“That’s it!” The snapping blades of her scissors nearly missing the top bend of Manolito’s ear.
“Coño Isabelita, concéntrate, vieja. You almost took my ear off,” he said, shielding his right ear from Isabelita’s tonsorial sword.
“This isn’t easy, my brother. Your hair is not exactly Brad Pitt’s, okay?”
There was a subtle wave to Manolito’s hair—but truly, so much more manageable than anything else she’d been dealing with lately, which usually involved no shampoo (because there was none), no soft tresses (no conditioners or relaxers, either), and lice colonies to boot (an island-wide epidemic). But if she told him his hair was soft, with or without a decent shampoo, it’d go straight to his head—and who could stand him then?
“And you’re not Vidal Sasón, vieja. Just finish up, so I can get the hell out of this chair. My back’s cramping up already.” He shifted his weight, and Isabelita saw no choice but to tap his head with the stiff end of her hand.
She went on shearing, clipping, and evening out the ends of Manolito’s hair. Gold iguanas hung from her earlobes, as she darted from one end of the chair to the other. She circled Manolito and leapt back to gain perspective on the job.
“Wherever we go, it has to be near the beach,” she said, suddenly.
“Because you’ve never been to Paris. Remember Antonio and Lula?”
“The one with the lame foot?”
“Yup, cojones. They’re in Paris, lame foot and all—C’est la vie, vieja. We gotta get the fuck out of here. There’s nothing here, mi hermana.”
“Ay, mi hermano, I don’t know. Any reason in particular you want Paris?”
“It’s freaking cold in Chicago, did you know that?”
“Cold? Ay, no.” She frowned. “And Paris?”
“Beaches galore. Antonio told Cuqui that he swims in the Seine at least once a day.”
“And the bread?”
“All you can eat.”
“I don’t know, Mano, Paris is far. Anyway, you can’t freaking float all the way there, you know. Mami and Papi are not in Paris.”
“I know—It’s something to think about, I guess.”
“Don’t think about it for too long—Niño, I’m getting older by the minute.” She turned, taking in his warm eyes, his high cheekbones, his clean-shaven face. She had been just a girl when he was born. Fifteen years they’d lived together in Oriente, until Isabelita came back to Bauta. She hoped that, being closer to Havana, she’d get a full load of clients, perform a number of tricky perms, y rayitos, lots of rayitos, with impeccable skill; and she would prosper, damn it. For once, she’d finish each day with her feet up, un cigarro, and a highbolito in her hand. Club Tropicana all the way, right in her back yard. Because if the economy was bad in La Habana, it was caquita in Santiago, and the rest of the east. But her clientele never materialized, so when a job at the textilera became available, she took it. She’d been in Bauta for four years, when Manolito decided to join her. And so now every week they headed out to Baracoa, or La Habana. They talked. They talked a lot. Isabelita knew he was never going to change his mind about Paris.
After the Maleconazo riots earlier that year, Manolito wasn’t the same. He came back from Havana a different person. He walked in through the front door shouting “Liberté!” as if she, too, was holding him back. Freedom? Isabelita wasn’t sure what that was. She’d grown up with the Revolution, and she only knew repression, scarcity, and conformity. Everyone was leaving, Manolito had told her, and why shouldn’t they leave too? Because life could throw some shit your way, and if you weren’t ready to pick up and start up, you were gonna get left behind to turn out the lights. Mami and Papi were in Miami—it had to be Miami. So close to Cuba she could backstroke and wash up in Baracoa in a day’s time, if she wanted to. How come no one ever thought to build a bridge from Miami to Cuba? Oye, they’d thought of so many things—why not that? She pursed her lips. Miami.
She had saved the one hundred dollars Elio gave her. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Enough for supplies and whatever else Manolito came up with. She loved that kid.
Isabelita teared up just thinking about those one hundred dollars. She suspected Pepe didn’t mean for her and Manolito to end up with them, but she missed him, anyway—even if he’d never really missed her. Though she’d moved on a long time ago, she regretted not getting the chance to tell him. But who the hell knew he was gonna end up drowned and washed up on the beach?
One thing was certain, she was totally and irrevocably ready to start over. Ready to see Mami and Papi, after all these years. She missed them, carajo. She missed their caritas. Maybe they all could get an apartment near Miami-Dade College—everybody went there, didn’t they? Then she could go to school. Wait, she’d need a job first. She’d clean rich Cuban women’s houses. Or pump gasoline into rich Cuban women’s Mercedes. Or she could up-do rich Cuban women’s hair, or give them highlights. Do their nails, do their husbands. No, not that. She wasn’t a homewrecker. In any case, once in Miami, the possibilities were endless. But it was sad, wasn’t it? She might be half starving and half losing her mind, but she still had some dignity left.
What was certain was that neither Paris nor any other city Manolito could come up with would ever compare to Miami. Because everybody said Miami was the Cuba that Cuba should have been. What Cuba was that, she thought? Perhaps if the whole island hadn’t left for Miami, maybe Cuba would have been what it should have been, and it wouldn’t have needed Miami for any of it.
“Oye, are you done yet—or did you leave me bald?” Manolito turned sideways to look at her.
“Ay,” she said, realizing that it’d been minutes since she’d last said a word. “I was at a Gloria Estefan concert.”
“Dale with the same song—feet on the ground, Isabelita. We gotta figure out how the hell we’re gonna leave this treasure island first.”
“I know, Puki—just taking a flight, with a layover at Calle Ocho. Oye, what a pepillo!” She said, her hand flopping in the air like it’d caught on fire. “Go to the bathroom and take a look. Brad Pitt would be jealous.”
“Pepillo? Where the hell did you get that word from? Nobody talks like that anymore.”
Then she looked over at him, tipped back her head, and laughed.
“Jesú Cristo, papito. You look like a movie star!” Isabelita told Manolito, who was on his way toward the door.
“Je t’aime, mi hermana. Mua! Jooar noomber juan,” he added in English, as he entered the house.
Isabelita swept her small patch of concrete floor. “Pelos be gone!” she said. The avocado tree cast a light, breezy shadow over her. She had learned—from decades of gossip, photographs, letters, cassettes, flash drives, and paquetes—that anything was possible in Miami. Because Miami was more Cuban than anything else, and because to be Cuban in Miami was better than to be Cuban in Cuba, and better (much better) than being Cuban anywhere else. Who knows, maybe she could be a gardener or a florist in Coconut Grove, care for people’s yards, and show up at funerals, weddings, and baptisms in Coral Gables with bouquets in her hands. Talk to their orchids and Casablanca lilies, like they were her own. “Ay, mimi, you look so pretty today,” and “What an inteligente flower,” and “Aren’t you all ready to pintar the town red?” she could hear herself saying. No carnations, carnations were not a thing there. All summer long she’d watch their plants, singing to them, if she had to. They’d take off to Punta Cana, or San Juan, or both, and they’d leave her the key to the beach house, so pleased were they with the way their flowers grew. She’d let herself in, test the soil and water the orchids, and sleep in their bed, and eat their Manchego cheese. If Cuqui’s cousin, Nena, had done it, why couldn’t she? Or maybe, she’d start cutting hair in Hialeah, and move her way up to South Beach, for real. Like she meant it. Like she’d been trained in cutting hair. After all, hadn’t cutting hair gotten her this far?
Then it occurred to her that she wasn’t thinking big enough. Word would get around that she was doing a hell of a job, and it would eventually reach... yes, Andy Garcia’s ears. Now you’re talking, Isabelita, she said to herself. This is something you could sink your teeth into. God knows she wouldn’t mind Andy Garcia one bit.
Some weeks later, while Andy (she’d call him that) was away, his wife would have friends over for a poolside brunch. Isabelita wouldn’t have to hide to listen—water would carry sound like Maria’s phone cables. She’d be in view, ravishing in white capris, and scantily clad in one of those crop tops, with a knot above the belly button.
The women would look around the garden and see her trimming rose bushes, and they’d say, “Look at those roses, as big as plates—is she the one who does your garden?” Then they’d point at Isabelita, because she was in view, in case they cared to look. The women would turn to the wife and say, “When you’re ready to let go, we’ll scoop her up in a heartbeat.” The wife would say, “No way, she’s priceless,” and right away she’d walk over, as if to stake her claim, offering Isabelita more pay, and a personal assistant’s job inside their Miami palace—right next to Julio Iglesias’s, and across the street from Gloria Estefan’s. And when Gloria came to visit and offered her a job, Andy’s wife would say, “Fair is fair,” and Isabelita would leave in a flash. Because God only knew she loved Andy, but who could say no to Gloria.
The most important thing is that she’d have no regrets. She’d let her unbridled determination prevail. Because when it came to unbridled, and determination, no one could compete with Isabelita.