I'm Wearing the Pants Around Here

Watching my father clean Mrs. Shapiros’ windows with ammonia water I wondered how he felt doing this for a woman that screamed obscenities at her husband in order to get him to take the garbage to the incinerator, while he watched a football game. “Yes, Mrs. Shapiro, I will clean the other window with extra care.” And, “Yes, Mrs. Shapiro I will also clean the toilet after we’re done with the windows.” The job of superintendent in a large residential building carried many responsibilities, most of which must have felt very degrading to a person like my father, since as time passed it became evident that many of the tenants in our building where of a lower social class than we, had we been living in old Cuba.

One day when I was helping my father paint an apartment, I asked for his opinion on our status within American society. Where do we fit in, I asked. He paused for a long while, and then gave me this statement. “Here we are at the lowest level of society, because no one knows us, and we know no one. We also have little money. Here, like in most places in the world, money is the only measure. Pigs with money are honored here. Look at the Shapiro’s, they are pigs, but they have been here for two generations and they have money!” A few days later I asked my mother the same question, and her answer was, “we are temporarily poor, but we are not mentally poor. Think about who you are, who your family was, and what we believe in, and you will know the answer to your question.”

Everyday after school I’d have a quick snack, and I’d head for the basement shop where my father kept his “little Cuba” radio shop. Here he had crudely reconstructed his old radio shop from Cuba, and in between unclogging toilets, cleaning windows, and vacuuming the halls, he built radios just like in Cuba, except here it was a hobby. Every day around this same time he would call my mother on his home built intercom that looked like a Toaster with an ice cream scoop, and would yell, “Rosa, donde esta el café?” or Rosa where is the coffee? My mother always had the same response, “dile a Joely que venga ha buscarlo,” or tell little Joel to come and get it. After bringing my father his fresh hot Cuban coffee, I was instructed to clean all the washing machines and dryers from the laundry room, to sweep the halls on all six floors of the building, and check the incinerator closets for any un-dumped garbage bags. Checking the incinerators was a task I enjoyed because I often found Playboy magazines and other adult periodicals kids of my age were not supposed to be reading. This was my job, and for this I was paid seven dollars a week.

Other Cuban superintendents who traded job related stories and discussed the eventual downfall of Fidel Castro often visited my father’s radio shop. Many of these men were dentists, architects, engineers, and lawyers in Cuba but now they were cleaning toilets just like my father. There were often discussions about one or another Cuban exiled group that was planning to liberate Cuba and was looking to raise funds to purchase arms and equipment. Usually, about six to eight months after a big fundraiser for one of these groups, word would circulate that the leader of the group had swindled everyone, or had purchased a mansion or an island off the coast of Portugal or in South America. After a few of these frustrating swindles my father and most of his friends stopped paying attention to these types of appeals. The “business” of liberating Cuba became a disappointment that let to disinterest years later.

Discussions of how American culture was changing us all were lively held. The men felt these changes were affecting their wives and daughters, and asked one another: Should they allow their wives to wear elastic pants that accentuated their buttocks? Should women who work be allowed to control the money they earned? Should young women be allowed to go on dates past nine o’clock, without a chaperone? Is it OK to let women take the subways by themselves after dark? What should be done if an American man “disrespects” a Cuban woman? What should be done if a girl shows up at home with a longhaired “hippie” boyfriend? And, a question that often prompted the old guys to ask me to leave the room after they lit up big cigars: What should you do if an American woman asks you to fix her faucet and when you show up at her apartment she’s naked and wants to have sex? Or, the one they all laughed about, and I never heard the answer to: How do you handle the fact that many American women believe Cuban men are sexual objects? Tough questions during a time when the reference points that were used to arrive at the answers where ninety miles south of Key West, and the men asking them were still in the process of learning how to pronounce the words “kiss”, and “keys”, which sound identical in Spanish, without getting slapped in their faces. A superintendent cannot go around asking his tenants for kisses!

My parents found themselves in this environment between 1969 and 1971. My father affected by this type of disorientation entrenched himself in what he viewed as survival mode. As the “man of the house” he handled the challenge as best he could, which was disastrous. My mother on the other hand absorbed American culture and especially a washed down feminist approach to family life that was unparalleled among her peers, but later resulted in a complete transformation of her personality. The transformation to American culture set my parents in a journey that lead them in opposite directions.

“Let me understand this: You want to go to work in a factory in Manhattan as a Seamstress, because you want to make money, and you think you can work your way up to Designer in a year?” My father asked my mother. “Yes. Marta Gutierrez says they are looking for help in her factory, and with my flair for fashion I can probably work my way up to Designer as I learn English on the job!” My mother responded. “But, you never worked in your life. You don’t speak English, you don’t know how to get around, and you never studied Fashion Design!” Said my father. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “I know I can do it, and we can use the extra money.” Thinking for a minute while looking at my mother as if she had transformed herself into a strange alien, my father made his decision known. “No. My wife is not going to expose herself to that kind of thing. I forbid you to talk to Marta about this again. Things are hard but we can make ends meet.” “But, I think,” my mother tried to pursue the subject without success as my father interjected: “I don’t want to hear of it ever again. My wife will not cheapen herself in this way no matter how bad things are. You understand. No. No. No.” “For as long as I’m wearing the pants around here,” he continued, “that will never happen.” “Esta bien,” said my mother, “I thought the extra money would be helpful, but if you feel that way, I will not do it, for now.” “What do you mean for now?” He asked, and then clarifying as my mother carefully listened. “I mean not now, not tomorrow, next month, or ever. Your responsibility is here in the house, and that’s it.” “Esta bien chico no te exites mas.” She announced, meaning, all right dear don’t get so excited.

This spectacle was like the middle of the “Danzon”, a classic Cuban dance where the syncopated music reaches a point where the dancers pause for a second, and then change the direction they were going as in a role reversal. The shy insecure woman from Oriente somehow found a way to experiment with a more assertive attitude, while the Quaker businessman transformed himself into a clumsy macho man. As close observers to this dance, my brother and I could not help but see it as a painful fall down a mountain. Often stopped by attempts to put on a good face for public consumption, their public personas were those of a model happy Cuban couple, while privately it was the opposite.

Coming to America after years of political, economic, religious, and social impotence and persecution in communist Cuba was a cathartic experience for my parents. The family and social controls that kept their relationship in balance and their personalities functioning within a range of expectations based on early 1950’s Cuban society, was completely wiped away. The years of tension built up due to my father’s workaholic personality and my mothers’ insensitive family, finally found a wide boulevard of expression. By the time my mother walked out on my father, out of pure frustration with his behavior, I was 14 and my brother was 10. Three years in the US wiped away a lifetime of social controls. It would be years before we again felt a sense of balance with one another, as had existed in Cuba. Our ways of transitioning to American society was to disintegrate, and then build ourselves up again. But, when we reconstructed ourselves it was as individuals and not as a family. For us, the sense of family, that warm sheltering concept, has only existed in Cuba, and the United States, with all its wonder and generosity has symbolized a cold place where individuals achieve success but lack happiness and a sense of belonging. It was clear to me, somewhat clear to my mother, and denied by my father, that the divorce was the best thing that could have happened to them, given the circumstances. All in all, their marriage lasted fifteen years.

“Aqui no se le da comida a ningun Jipie,” or here we will not feed any Hippies, declared my father when I came home from Junior High School one day with my Paul McCartney style hair blown from the wind. He then proceeded to take me to a Cuban barber in Brooklyn Heights who gave “good Cuban style haircuts”, better known in English as Crew Cuts. When I came home one day with a red headed Irish girlfriend and proceeded to go to my room to do homework, he barged in after ten minutes and declared in Spanish, but in front of the girl, “en esta casa yo no admito putas. Recoge los libros y dile que se valla.” Meaning, I don’t admit any whores in my house. Gather up her books and tell her to leave. Apparently, the idea of a girl studying in my room, between 4:00 and 5:00 PM was considered risky, and in his view no decent girl could possibly do such a thing. When several Cuban women whom my parents knew managed to convince their husbands to allow them to work, my father criticized both the women and their husbands for becoming too Americanized. Then, he found an excuse to forbid my mother from talking to the women. His belief that we were in the United States temporarily, helped him hold on to the idea that adapting to American social manners, especially things dealing with family relationships was a waste of time.

My father’s affinity for corporal punishment and strict obedience went overboard during this time, and increased the level of frustration and antagonism my mother already felt for him. His common sense and rationality as a Quaker, and his self-control also went out the window. This personality transformation completely erased whatever teachings my grandfather so patiently nurtured in him. His work frustrations and sense of dislocation could be measured by the look on his face, which often resembled that of a mad man facing a great catastrophe. He must have sensed that he was loosing control of my brother and I, and being that he could not complain to “American Culture” for “hechandolos a perder”, or making us go bad, he generously used a thick leather belt on us. My brother and I paid dearly as a result of my father’s bumpy adjustment to American culture, and the pain of exile. Had there been no Fidel Castro in Cuba, I know my father would have made every effort to return within two years of arrival. After all, when he kissed the ground in Miami, his proclamation to us was; "Don't worry, well be back in Cuba within a year".

His logic was simple; beat the heck out of my brother Jose Luis and I, so we could maintain good Cuban values and manners based on his interpretation of manners, and to remind us that change could only result in more beatings. When my mother intervened in these beatings, he would scream out that he was the man of the house, “Yo soy el que lleva los pantalones en esta casa”. This process achieved its logical conclusion. My brother and I learned to hate him in a most profound and creative way, and engaged him whenever possible in psychological warfare. His awkward attitude became predictable, and after a while we lost respect for him. The more discipline he demanded, the more we went against him. The more respect he demanded, the more we disrespected him. The more Cuban he wanted us to be, the more American we behaved. We found ourselves in a family situation where my mother, my brother, and I realized we were the family, and my father was someone whom we no longer loved, because his version of love was based on subservience, and we could not accept that. Especially in light of the freedom “El Norte” had given us. To me my father became a caricature, a sad angry man perplexed and dangerous, interested only in his interpretation of the world. I longed for the day when seeing him would be an accidental event. In the end, my fathers’ crude and insensitive efforts to control us became the major factor and reason why he lost us.

It became clear to me, as I became an adult that my father was run over by a monster he never clearly understood, and we didn’t clearly understand either. The monster of leaving behind every reference point, social, political, and financial he had known, of leaving behind his friends and family forever, of dropping from the top of the social strata to the bottom, of having his educational credentials ignored, of feeling perplexed due to not understanding the language, of knowing that his children were taking their cues from the very culture he could hardly understand, and the monster of knowing that no matter how hard he worked, he was never going to be understood by neighbors who could never imagine his past. When we came to “El Norte” my mother’s family awaited us, whereas my father did not have a single relative. In “El Norte” he became a very lonely man with no one to turn to but his inner insecurities.

The macho stupor in which my fathers’ mind boiled was so removed from the new reality in America that after my mother, my brother, and I left him and took refuge in my aunt and uncle’s house, he sent a letter with two Cuban macho friends, who announced to us that they carried a message from “the man of the house.” In his letter he proclaimed my mother’s wrongdoing for having left, demanded our immediate return, and threatened to change his mind and not forgive us, if we did not apologized to him within three days. He threatened that if we did not “come to our senses” there would be serious consequences. My mother’s response was to laugh in amazement and declare; “este hombre esta loco. Dile a Joel que la unica consecuencia que llo quiero es un divorcio.” Meaning, this man is crazy. Tell Joel that the only consequence I want is a divorce. The messengers were so dumbfounded by my mother’s response, that they were left speechless, finally one of them asked my uncle Rodolfo Obregon, “y que le decimos a Joel?” meaning, and what do we tell Joel? My uncles’ response was, “dile a Joel que se busque un abogado. Rosa quiere un divorcio”, or tell Joel to get a lawyer. Rosa wants a divorce. They then turned to my mother and said, “piensa en los ninos,” meaning think about the children. My mother with anger in her voice responded with, “si ustedes conocieran a ese hombre, entenderian que es por los ninos que llo lo dejo”. Meaning, if you knew that man, you would realize that I’m leaving him for the sake of the children!

A week after we moved in with my aunt Georgina and uncle Rodolfo, my mother found a job as a seamstress in Manhattan. Three months later we had moved to a small apartment in Flushing, Queens. After a year of legal separation, during which my father acted like a Neanderthal fighting my mother on every possible legal issue, they were granted a divorce.

For the next four years my father had visitation rights and provided child support for me, doing that for another four years in my brother’s case. While my mother claimed that she never wanted to interfere between my father, my brother and I, she could not help but do it in subtle ways that later my brother and I resented a great deal. My father on the other hand, kept to his clumsy macho ways and although rarely directing his anger at my mother through us, he used us to get at her during his phone calls, or by passing lies to mutual acquaintances about how carelessly my mother was bringing us up. He would say to friends that he was paying twice as much child support than he actually was, and that if not for our visits to him, we would be completely undisciplined, and would grow up to be wild boys.

We visited him every other weekend, and those visits were usually spent watching TV, visiting some of his friends, or going for a drive while he discussed news from Cuba. His interest in our daily needs and school necessities was nil, and his expression of care, love, and fatherly warmth must have been locked up in an icebox somewhere, because my brother and I never saw it. We went to see him in a mechanical way, because we had to, and he demanded to see us, but that too was mechanical. This was the type of parental guidance he claimed was keeping us from turning into delinquents, and according to his friends was giving us a chance to see a good positive male role model.

The truth, and something most of my parents acquaintances never found out, was that my mother as a single mother, with poor English, little knowledge of American culture and an erroneous understanding of business, stood up to the challenge and worked extremely hard to make ends meet. I don’t know how she did it, but she found a tremendous amount of strength and focus, and out of thin air re-constructed her life in a way few around her expected. In order to survive, my brother and I learned to fetch for ourselves in ways never imagined in Cuba. As time passed, we realized the sacrifices my mother was making for us, and we admired her, knowing that she was improvising our lives as we moved forward into the unknown. One day I found myself thinking, “wow, my mother is both Mother and Father to us”. Then, I felt an uneasiness come over me, as I heard a little voice say inside my head, “and, we are all alone”. As a little child, my superhero was El Zorro, until my parents divorced and I began to see my mother do heroic things before our very eyes.

But, as hard as she worked and as focused as she was, and as nurturing as she was, the fact could not be denied that we lived on a seamstresses’ meager salary, plus the minimal child support payments we received from my father. In a period of four years after the divorce, we moved four times. From Flushing, Queens, to Flatbush, Brooklyn, and twice around Flushing, Queens. It seemed that whenever the rent in our apartments was increased, which on a monthly or year by year arrangement was regularly, we moved. While my mother worked, Monday through Fridays, from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM, my brother Jose Luis and I lived pretty much by ourselves, miraculously staying out of trouble, attending school, doing homework, and keeping the apartment clean.

I remember this period as a time when making friends was almost futile because as soon as I’d get comfortable with anyone, we moved. My brother and I went to four different schools during this time, and I got my first taste of work as a delivery boy for a grocery store on Church Avenue and Westminster Road in Brooklyn. From the grocery store I went on a succession of jobs too numerous to count or remember, but there was never any doubt that extra money was needed. When kids my age headed to the park to play, or to bike around the neighborhood after school, I headed for work. When I noticed that one of my acquaintances had three pairs of Keds sneakers, I thought to myself, “wow, his parents must be rich.”

Our only form of entertainment during this period occurred on weekends when my mother, my brother, and I would stroll to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. We learned every corner of the park, and loved to picnic near the Japanese garden where my mother would daydream about visiting the Orient, a fantasy that came true for her years later. The Prospect Park Lake, with its pedaled boats was a thrill the three of us looked forward to, and my mother was able to sometimes afford. Later when we moved to Flushing, we replaced Prospect Park with Flushing Meadows, and the Queens Botanical Garden, which was tiny, compared to the garden in Brooklyn, but nevertheless had a similar ambiance.

As we strolled through these parks, which at that time were still frequented by upper middle class families wearing their best weekend clothes, my mother often philosophized about our situation saying, “it is better to eat a small sandwich in a decent place, than to gorge on a big steak in a place full of bums and low class people.” Here, my mother’s “temporary poverty” views were supported by the ambiance, and no one could tell that her weekend budget for all three of us was five dollars, and sometimes she’d go without eating lunch during the week, in order to provide for my bother and I.

The only helping hand we had during this time was my mothers’ sisters, Georgina and Ana, and their husbands Rodolfo Obregon and Fernando Corella. Since we did not believe in welfare or any type of public assistance, my mother occasionally took loans from them when things got tough. My mother’s pride also meant that we never told anyone how difficult things really were, and since she dressed us up very neatly on weekends and when we visited anyone, the perception was always ahead of reality. My mother’s two brothers living in New York did little to help us and ignored our situation. Having arrived in the United States in the late 50’s and early 60’s these guys had accumulated the resources to help us, but instead visited us on rare occasions to provide lip service to family togetherness and enjoy my mother’s Cuban coffee. While they bragged about their expensive suits and the interesting restaurants they had frequented, it never occured to them that we were in despair. Later on when we least needed it, they occasionally invited us to their homes for dinner, showing us their fancy china, crystals and nice linen. It is no wonder that my mother often says that her real brothers turned out to be Rodolfo and Fernando, her brothers in law, who were always there when we needed them. The difference between her communist brothers in Cuba, and the capitalists ones in the US, is slim. Both are experts at taking, and have never perfected the art of giving.

Thanks to my father, his friends, and my Pupo uncles, I became familiar with the clumsiness, stupidity and rudeness of Cuban men who out of choice or by unconscious inheritance incorporate macho behavior in their personalities. The thing that accentuated this issue to my young mind was the realization that my father and his friends were completely oblivious of their insensitivity and were living in a fantasy world. But, to them the problem seemed to be that the world was maladjusted. Women and children were somehow placed in this world to serve macho men, and that was the natural order. How stupid it is to believe that masculinity is measured by how rude and imposing a man can be towards women and children. This type of behavior was the antithesis of my grandfather Pedro Font’s Quaker beliefs, and had he known that my father had adopted it, he would have condemned it on the spot. However I think that my father always had these beliefs, except that in Cuba due to my grandfather’s sphere of influence he did not dare to express them. In an incredible twist of irony, my father had to come to a foreign country at the age of 36 to become a clumsy Cuban macho man.

My mother can write a book about abuse at the hands of Cuban machos. Some of her brothers have tried to break through their inherited macho behaviors and arrogance, but their insensitivity towards the women in the family is deeply ingrained. They do not know how to handle the fact that they’ve hurt their sisters, and a lifetime of poor communication, apologies not given, and ignored hurt feelings have taken a huge toll. The habit of not telling the truth has also worked against all of them. The idea that men need to apologize to women for insensitive behaviors does not fit in their scheme of life, and such a possibility probably conjures up fears of castration.

During my first year in college I argued with my father about what I viewed as his obsession with sending money and parcels to friends and relatives in Cuba, at the expense of our own needs, and we stopped talking to each other for ten (10) years.

At year ten, I received a call from my mother saying he had been struck by a car and was dying in a hospital. When I went to see him he looked like a mummy all covered with bandages as a result of seven bone fractures cause by a drunk driver running over him. At the edge of death, I decided to forgive him. I listed all the parking tickets I had mentally given him: 1) Beatings for no reason. 2) Crew cuts against my will. 3) Scared off girlfriends due to his insults. 4) Pain and suffering caused my mother. 5) Lies told to acquaintances about his child support. 6) Money he never lent me, because he preferred to send it to Cuba. 7) Lack of affection and support in the face of teenage challenges in school. 8) The feeling that when he was around, only his body was there, and not his soul. 9) A feeling that when in need of help or advice for something important, he would be the last one on the list. 10) His insensitivity to my brother. Etc, etc.

When he recovered we reached a détente. My mother’s wishes were that I find a way to love him because he, after all, is my father, and it had been many years since the big black painful leather belt was used. So, the parking tickets were thrown in the garbage. And, I treated him like a man who had died, and somehow had come back. I visited him on weekends and saw him recover from his injuries, slowly re-learning how to be kind to him in his weakness, and seeing him completely vulnerable. In this process I think we both put away years of anger and frustrations, and saw each other for the first time as simple men. Not a father and son, but two men naked without pretense, fear, chauvinism, and not in competition with one another, and I very cautiously saw and realized that I had seen things in him, that he himself had never noticed. Perhaps things he had never allowed anyone to tell him. And, I told him without fear. From that moment on our relationship grew to one of affection, to eventually one of love between a father and son. For most people, reaching this point with a father occurs almost at birth, for my father and I, it occurred when I was 30 years old. My father's macho-ness and my reaction to it, caused us his absence in my, and my brother’s weddings, his absence during the birth of his granddaughter, ten Christmases apart, many vacations we should have taken together, and innumerable family events we should have shared. It is possible that if he did not get struck by a drunk driver, and brought to the edge of death, I would still not be talking to him. It's amazing how sometimes the worse disasters can bring about a silver lining.

Prior to the ten year rift, between the time I was in my teens, when I used to visit him because it was court mandated and my mother used to make me, to my early 20’s in college, there were many memories I was able to later classify as funny. Some of these memories later helped me reconcile with him. Without his knowledge, one of the things he used to do was very un-macho, and that was his cooking! My father's cooking is a menace to society! I adjusted to his cooking during my visits, but have always been amazed at how he used to ruin perfectly good food by over cooking it, under cooking it, or splashing it with strange spices that guaranteed indigestion. As a result, I promised myself that I would do better, and in my twenties I seriously learned the art of cooking.

Even when faced with a horrible dish, I learned to pay him compliments because I realized that in life everything is relative. His over cooked Dutch noodles smothered with Heinz Ketchup with a side of pork grinds is as close as a Cuban guajiro is going to get to “home made” Italian food. Sitting on the table with him I often remembered my grandmothers’ elaborate and famous Catalan style banquets, the delicious side dishes and deserts, and realized how far we were from those days, and how much our lives had changed since leaving Cuba. Here we were, in the richest country on earth, with huge supermarkets full of delicious foods, and we were sitting there eating terrible food, looking at each other and saying, “good stuff hey?” So, I found myself volunteering to cook during some visits, clearly for survival reasons, and he reluctantly allowed me to experiment, as if he was doing me a favor! After many disastrous experiments in the kitchen, we both felt equally defeated and he brainstormed a solution. In Cuba, restaurants used to deliver food to people’s homes in tin containers called “cantinas”, and he remembered that several Cuban restaurants in Brooklyn Heights were offering the service. After getting pricing information, which turned out to be quite cheap, he decided to have real Cuban food delivered to his apartment every day for dinner. He thanked me for having “stimulated” this enlightened solution, and I thought to myself, “well this guy is not such an animal after all, at least he can show gratitude”. During this time, any sensitivity that digressed from his tense behaviour would surprise me.

My father’s choice of clothing after the divorce can only be described as completely hilarious. In Cuba, my grandmother, and then my mother “helped” him with his wardrobe, but when he found himself single he was free to dress, as he liked. Again, in this case he was better dressed in old Cuba than in “El Norte”. My memories of him in Cuba are of a man wearing light weight tropical suits, nicely pressed Guayaberas, and never giving the impression of sloppiness. Since I am colorblind, I can only describe what I was able to perceive in terms of his dress style in New York, but countless neutral observers have confirmed my opinions. He was a clown, with sprinkles of a Cuban hillbilly all over him.

His frugality was amplified as a result of the exile experience, and he always made it the key to his decision-making. It was never, “which shirt looks better,” or “which pants have a nicer fabric,” but which one is cheaper. Completely mismatched when it came to “ropa de sport” or casual clothing, and uninterested in dry cleaning because he was too cheap, he adopted the wrinkled look with a vengeance. I remember coming to see him on weekends after getting a phone call from him letting me know that he planned to visit some friend, and asking me to dress “como persona decente”, or as a decent person; and finding him wearing polyester blue/green plaid pants, with a wrinkled white cotton shirt, white socks, and black patent leather shoes. I never counted the number of times my jaw dropped from the amazement of having seen him in one of those outfits. I suspect it was in the dozens. The funny part was that after a while I noticed that all divorced Cuban guys of my father’s generation turned out to dress in similar fashion. Thank goodness that I have some pictures from this period, to prove my point.

A few years after the divorce my parents tried to move on with their lives. I noticed that my father was dating a succession of women from a myriad of nationalities whom he usually met in the Brighton Beach area. He seemed to be successful, from a purely quantitative perspective, and I was impressed with his ability to attract both younger and older women to his bed. The Cuban stud myth worked well for him.

My mother attracted a variety of intellectual and professional Cuban-American men who she dismissed with ease, usually by the second or third month, by telling them that “my children are uncomfortable with our relationship”, which to my amazement, the men always accepted and then backed off never to be seen again. After becoming aware of her “Men Repellent” my brother and I began to take bets on how long each new guy would last. Most of the men my mother attracted where very nice, very handsome, and always behaved very decently towards us.

If my mother engaged in any sensual activities with any of her suitors, she did it so discreetly that my brother and I never suspected it, and for a long time we felt she had become celibate. But, the truth appears to be that she just never allowed herself to get close to those types of feelings. Her motto became “I live for my children” which in the beginning appeared as her only alternative and a form of therapy, but it may have been a scapegoat and an excuse for not moving past the pain, depression, and hatred built up during the divorce. The scars created by the divorce and later re-woven by my mother as a result of her introverted personality kept her from ever again experiencing intimacy with men regardless of how good and handsome the man may have been.

My mother became a one-woman army. The world against her, and she set out to prove that she had the strength and astuteness to overcome any challenge. This was her crusade to prove to her brothers, relatives, and her ex-husband that she, the underestimated poorly educated country girl could do anything they could, and she could even do it better than they. In this crusade male companionship became a nuisance, the opinions and views of others were discounted or ignored, and slowly she created a unique world where only her, my brother, and I dwelled. Her comfort level in this private and lonely world has always been high, and in spite of multiple attempts to help her out of it by many well-intentioned people, she remains in it to this day. I’m alone and I’m happy is her motto.

Regardless of the artificial world she created around herself, she was able to succeed in most endeavors. She managed to pass to my brother and I a strong respect for capitalism, hard work, the value of private property, entrepreneurship, a love for education, and a keen understanding of certain group behaviors that often go un-noticed by most Americans. She worked for over twenty years in the fashion industry, on Seventh Avenue in New York City, which was her dream since the day she arrived from Cuba. She worked her way up from a piece goods Seamstress, to Pattern Maker, to Assistant Designer, and finally during her last eight years in the industry, as a Designer for an active sportswear company. While she worked as a Designer she entered into a partnership with a well-known fashion entrepreneur who opened a successful sportswear company with her designs. These endeavors provided her with a modest income, which she smartly invested in Real Estate, which later significantly appreciated in value. By the time of her retirement and later move to Miami Beach, Florida, she was well off, and able to continue living independently, and “without caring what anyone thinks, or says about me”.

My mother was changed by “El Norte”. Transforming herself into an independent woman in a way that would have been impossible in Cuba. Her divorce gave her the independence she wanted. But, she moved on with her life at great psychological expense, and by numbing a part of herself that now appears to be too late to recover. When she philosophizes about how better her life could have been had she come from a more “civilized” family where women were given more opportunities, I wholly agree with her.

My father, the man obsessed with wearing the pants, grabbed on to his pants so tightly that he lost sight of where he was. After several years of experimenting with carefree sex with women from all over the world, one of the few good things he has found in “El Norte”, he decided it was time to find a “good woman of values” and re-marry. A “good woman of values” to my father means a woman brought up in a family and culture that unquestionably accepts the predominant control of a man over all family and social issues, and “serves” the man because such “respect” brings “happiness” to the woman. Since these types of happy women cannot even be found in the Cuban exiled community anymore, and an American woman is completely disqualified because they don’t know how to experience this type of happiness, my father searched far and wide and found a qualified candidate in a very nice Colombian lady. My stepmother is a nice woman who shares his values and understands many of his views. In essence, my father reached back to his past to a system of values my grandfather did not allow him to adopt as a young man, values he viewed as "typically Cuban" and non Quaker, and he used them to re-construct himself. He then went out and looked for a mate that shared those values. Even though, he has made many of the same mistakes he made with my brother and I, with our stepbrother and stepsister, from his perspective he’s moved on to a new life based on his rules. And, since everyone involved shares those values, there is peace and contentment.

Even though it has been a long and arduous voyage, both of my parents have succeeded in “El Norte”. But, my father’s excessive frugality (cheap as hell) has prevented him from fully enjoying the fruits of his labors. As a superintendent in Sheapshead Bay, he saved every cent that passed through his hands, he took on all kinds of odd jobs, refurbished and sold old furniture to antique stores, chauffeured senior citizens around Brooklyn, ran a parcel service to Canada for exiles that needed to send medicines to Cuba, and became a partner in a house painting company. Echoes of “El Flaco” could be seen, and just like in his 20’s, he hardly had time to sit down for a peaceful meal.

Like my mother, he built wealth via sweat and Real Estate. He would purchase run down apartment buildings in Brooklyn in order to meticulously improve them, and then raise rents. After his equity in the building increased, he would purchase another apartment building in order to repeat the formula, raising rents as often as the law allowed. While becoming a Real Estate baron, he told no one of his financial success, and kept working as a superintendent. Completely devoted to the wrinkled un-coordinated dress style previously described, few acquaintances ever suspected that he had become wealthy by the time of his retirement.

Succumbing to the primal call Florida has for all Cubans, my father purchased property in Miami years before moving there. Now, he lives in the super Cuban city of Hialeah, just north of Miami, because according to him, Miami is not Cuban enough for his taste. He has Mangoes, Papayas, Avocados, Fruta Bombas, and a wide variety of Cuban plants and garden flowers in his yard, along with a specially built radio shop full of Ham Radios, antennas, and other electronic gadgets that only he knows how to operate. In the mornings, his neighbors’ chickens and Cocks can be heard welcoming the day. On his fence he has a sign that says, “Soy Guajiro y Orgulloso”, I am a Cuban hillbilly and proud of it!

My father now in his mid seventies continues to send parcels to relatives in Cuba, but after a sad and frustrating visit to my grandparents in 1980, when he saw how communist relatives mistreated and stole from my grandfather, he now says he has no interest in returning there. When we talk about Cuba, and the current situation, my father points out that he stays in regular communication with some acquaintances and relatives, but that the communications are always the same: “send us money, send us medicines, send us clothes, and send us food.” Most of these people, he says, are communists who still sign their letters to him with, “Patria o Muerte, Venceremos”, which is the communist defiant motto against the Miami Cubans, and the USA, meaning “Fatherland or Death, we will win”. The “we will win” part means “we here in Cuba, will win our battle against you traitors over there!” He says he knows he is sending aid to people who had the roles been reversed, would probably never send him an ounce of help. But, in a strange way this process is a vindication of things that happened more than forty years ago. For it was us the exiles the ones who were supposed to live in object poverty and misery when we were cast off Cuba by the communists! Instead, it's those who cast us off into the wilderness that are today pathetic beggars.

Both now retired in Miami, my parents are content with their lives. When I last visited my mother I asked her if she was happy living in an upper class gated beach community, where there are hardly any Cubans, and the nearest relative is ten miles away, and she said; “its what I always wanted, and I am very happy because I can do as I please, and no one bothers me.” When I visited my father in Hialeah later that same day, I asked him a similar question and he said; “Well, the crooked politicians we have here want to increase the price of water, and they’re all a bunch of womanizers. But, at least, in my house, I am the one who wears the pants, and as long as no one challenges that, the rest seems minor.” Then he said, “lets go to the back yard and grab a Papaya”.

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