Our Dentist, the Toilet Cleaner

After my Saturday morning duties as a “Shabbats Boy” for the Ocean Parkway Moroccan Synagogue, I often biked over to Manuel’s house in Brighton Beach where his mother waited for me with a snack. Like in Cuba, condensed milk, crackers and “café con leche” were a great way to treat a child to a temporary heaven. Manuel, his sister Elena, his older brother Ricardo, and their parents where for a long time the only Cuban family we knew in southern Brooklyn. Manuel’s father Ruben Gonzalez was a successful dentist in Cuba, but was now, like my father, cleaning toilets, and moonlighting as a watchman at a warehouse by the port. Like us they had ended up in Brooklyn, and not Miami. But, our end of Brooklyn was far from Brooklyn Heights, where the majority of Cubans then lived, and our feeling of isolation was tangible, although we were surrounded by perhaps four million other Brooklynites. Sometime after we discovered the Gonzalez family, the elder Gonzalez found a better paying job as a handyman in a nearby apartment building, and kept plungers, electric snakes, buckets, brooms and a navy pair of overalls, his new tools of the trade, in a huge closet in their overcrowded apartment, a detail I’ll always remember. His mother Marta was a nurse in Cuba, but in Brooklyn was doing “piece goods” sewing at home for seven cents apiece.

In our neighborhood, no one besides us had any idea of our pasts in Cuba, and no one really cared, or attempted to find out. It felt to us like in the entire city of New York we were the only ones who knew who we really were, where we came from, what we had left behind, and why we were, where we were.

Prior to my parents’ divorce, Ruben and Marta were my parent’s only friends, because by then my mother’s relatives had become estranged from my father. While tensions between my parents were high, they would manage to put on a good front when we got together with the Gonzalez’s, and the get-togethers were always joyous.

For short periods during those get-togethers, we provided each other with a strong sense of worth, and lifted the curtain of invisibility, which was all around us. We were far away from home, penniless, in a strange society, but damn it, we were Cubans, and we knew we were important people, even if only to ourselves.

Following the custom from Cuba, where tragedy is always made into a joke or fable, my parents and Manuel’s used to invent jokes about the nostalgia and sadness of exile. One joke I clearly remember goes like this: One Cuban meets another, each from a different part of the island, and shaking hands, one says, “So, Pepe tell me, what did you do in Cuba?” Pepe, with great confidence and arrogance says, “Oh, in Cuba? I owned half the island. From the border of Las Villas, west it was all mine. And, here I am now, just like that standing here in front of you!” The other Cuban un-impressed says, “I knew we would met one day. Do you know that I was the guy who owned the rest of the Island? Everything east of Las Villas was mine!” They shake hands again and the other Cuban then says; “How much money do you have now? Maybe we can pitch in and buy a beer to celebrate this meeting?"

From time to time, Ruben would call my father to let him know of the arrival in Brooklyn of a Cuban family from the Puerto Padre region of Oriente. Often, word would get to Ruben or my father from someone who was a friend of a relative of an acquaintance, who had mentioned to someone that we were from the Puerto Padre region, and they would contact us to tell us that someone’s aunt or uncle was arriving from Cuba. In exile, this long chain of contacts extending ten or twelve people from one end to the other was considered normal, and when my parents spoke of the arriving family, they spoke of “Miguel and his wife, the niece of Raquel Perez from Gibara.” Miguel was considered almost family, even though my parents had never met him, his wife or Raquel Perez, and only knew of the existence of the Perez’s family from Gibara, from their childhood memories. Needless to say my parents and the Gonzalez’s would always find time to visit and welcome these new arrivals. With a few chickens, yuccas, rice and beans and Cuban spices, an impromptu dinner party was always put together in someone’s tiny apartment as fifteen or twenty “guajiros” would reminisce about Oriente and sad stories of life under socialism were exchanged.

After the initial jubilation of seeing people from back home, the parties would often turn melancholic. After playing music, and under the influence of two or three Cuba Libres, someone would play the Cuban national anthem, and in an incredible exercise of synchronized pain, many would burst into tears. If not for our ability to laugh at ourselves, our knack for making jokes out of tragedies, and generous amounts of rum, some of these parties would have resembled funerals. When no one could lift the sad clouds, the recordings of Alvares Guedes and Tres Patines always saved the day. Most of us were in the United States for less than five years, and although youngsters like my brother and I were quickly Americanizing, there was no doubt that in the minds of the adults, we were in the US temporarily, and we all missed Cuba very much.

“Nosotros estamos aqui temporaneamente nadamas;” We are here only temporarily, my father would say, and everyone else would agree. When Fidel falls, we are all heading back the following day. This reminder was repeated often, especially after someone would compare Cuba with the US by saying: “Este pais es maravilloso, pero no es Cuba”. This is a marvelous country, but it's not Cuba! The comforts of America were good, but the love of a Cuba free of Fidel Castro was still overwhelming. For the adults, the thought of any of us staying in the US permanently was unimaginable! It was believed that the nature of the Cuban soul was contradictory to communism, and it would only be a matter of time before those confused into supporting Castro would wake up and return to their normal selves!

While our parents welcomed new arrivals, worked at menial jobs to support us, and experienced the pain of exile, most of us exiled kids began to unconsciously adapt to the America of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. At age 9 and 13, my brother and I became more interested in hamburgers, Star Trek, model airplanes, American Music, American girls, and Bugs Bunny, than the poetry of Jose Marti, pictures of the Morro Castle, the songs of Beny More, or stories about Miami Cubans.

Because of the marital problems between my parents, and my father’s attempt to forcibly re-create Cuba on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Voorhees Avenue in Brooklyn, my brother Jose Luis and I were psychologically paddling away from our Cuban identities as fast as we could. Early on we knew an artificial Cuba was impossible. By the time I reached 14, I began to feel that Cuba was no longer ours, and it belonged to people we didn’t like, and had little intention of liking. Unlike our parents, we saw the misery, to which Cuba had already sunk, as a payback to those who had tormented us and turned our lives upside down. Although, I did not think of it in terms of justice versus in-justice, I remember telling my father, “let them eat garbage, they deserve it. And, stop saying we are going back next year, because we are not.”

I began to notice that although my father continued to laud the official “we will return next year” line, he began to add qualifications to “how” we would return. We will return if Fidel leaves along with all his cronies. We will return after elections are held and a new government is in place. We will return when all the private properties and businesses are returned to their rightful owners. We will return when there is stability, and we can be sure there will be no vandalism and bloodshed in the streets. We will return when all the murderers who have blood in their hands are punished, and, so on.

I think my father’s deep dive into depression began when he started to add qualifications to how we would return to Cuba. I think his past and social links in Cuba, his view of himself, and the peer pressures of exile kept him from seeing the international political web, which made us exiles into pawns in the Cold War. My father took many years before he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that the United States was going to be his new country. When that happened it occurred as a result of a visit to Cuba to see my ill grandparents in the late 1980’s, and experiencing deep pain, dissatisfaction and realizing that many old friendships were irreparably torn because of politics.

Manuel’s father Ruben on the other hand seemed to have assessed the Cuba situation much clearer than my father, and as a result for a long time, he was the black sheep in the group. He was the guy who went against the current. The guy who did not believe in the viability of the “we will return next year to Cuba” song, and questioned how we could all be sure that the Cuban soul was by nature anti-communist? To everyone’s chagrin he would say, “Castro is there because the majority of the people support him!” “You are crazy,” my father would say to him, “it’s the other way around. People support him because everyone is at gun point!”

Ruben would point out that if the United States wanted to take over Cuba, it could do so in probably less than two days. He was never comfortable with the authenticity of stories about bungled CIA attempts against Castro, and used to put the Cuba versus United States conflict in local New York City terms, which always resulted in everyone getting upset and in a shouting match. He would say; “Cuba has less people than the city of New York. To the Americans, the problems of Cuba are like a garbage strike in Brooklyn.” He used to say that half of the bungled CIA attempts against Castro were actually stories fabricated by Castro himself to make it appear as a David versus Goliath conflict. He would ad that as long as the people in Cuba lived in fear of an American invasion, Fidel will be in power. “Fidel needs the Americans more than he needs the Russians. And, because of the Cold War chess game, we exiles are nothing but accidental players in the game.”

If not because everyone knew Ruben well and liked him personally when not talking politics, some of the exchanges he would instigate would have exploded into fistfights. I used to watch these exchanges and think to myself that Ruben was the only one in the group who was actually listening to the news and analyzing American society. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think the Americans are telling us all there is about Cuba. If they were going to fix the problem, they’ve had plenty of opportunities. President Johnson went to the Dominican Republic in the blink of an eye and fixed that problem. Why not Cuba? The new president here, this Nixon, is not going to do anything about Cuba either!” Poor Ruben, his political opinions were never welcome.

One Saturday afternoon, after I was done with my duties sweeping and vacuuming the Beth Shalom Yeshiva, a job I obtained thanks to Mrs. Winthrop, I went to visit Manuel and his family. While visiting I overheard Ruben and Marta talking about how they could improve their lives and perhaps regain their professions in the United States. Ruben and Marta had concluded that a return to Cuba was unlikely, and they needed to focus their minds on a future without Cuba. There was a conversation on the phone with relatives in Miami, but it appeared to be an offer to move to Miami, which did not satisfy Marta. Later there were tense discussions, full of disappointing conclusions, ending with one realization: As a family they did not have enough money and time to implement any plan that required that they first learn English at a college level, and that they enroll at a University part time, in order to be accepted in a Dentistry or Nursing program. Their desire to re-start their careers was strong, but the obstacles huge.

But, that day there in Brighton Beach in 1972, while we kids played with new American toys, and quized each other on esoteric questions from the encyclopedia, and a scratchy record of Orquesta Aragon played “Virgen de Regla”, Manuel’s parents were tormented by the undeniable reality of their options. In order for them to recover and re-build the standard of living, and class standing they had achieved in Cuba in the late 1950’s, they would have to scrub floors, clean toilets and hold menial jobs until the early 1980’s. Then I witnessed one of those things whose significance did not register in my mind until years later.

Ruben and Marta sat in their kitchen table, had some Cuban coffee, and without commotion simply began to speak to one another as if they were two people with one mind. “Lets create an outline first, then we can fill in the details as they come,” said Ruben. Marta with a pencil and writing pad in hand began to list things as Ruben elaborated on each item. “And, how long do you think that will take?” And, “Lets create another list of the things we are not sure about, but we need to know before we start.” This process lasted about four hours, and it looked to me as if time was standing still for Ruben and Marta that Saturday.

When Ruben realized it was 6:00 PM and we kids were hungry, he proclaimed to Marta, “We are on our way now. Lets make some “Picadillo” otherwise we’re all going to drop dead from hunger”. After dinner my father came by to pick me up and as usual a brief conversation ensued. Before my father could start on his usual Fidel Castro is a pig discussion, Marta announced to him with great jubilation, “Ruben and I have decided that he is going to get his dentistry license here, and we are going to make every sacrifice needed to do it”. Ruben standing in front of my father with a half smile on his face said; “Well, don’t you think I can pull American teeth?” My father’s response was, “Usted sabe bien que nosotros estamos aqui para alludarlo.” Or , you know very well that we are here to help you. As my father began to react to the news, the phone rang and Marta picking up could not contain her excitement, and began to tell who ever it was, about their plans. Her response to the questions on the phone went something like this. “Yes, we have little money.” And, “Yes, it will probably take 8 or 10 years.” And, “Yes, if Fidel falls it will probably all be a waste of time and money.” And, “Yes, he will not have free time for anything”. And, “No, I’m not afraid of the sacrifices we have to make.” She finally said, “Look here he is, let him tell you the good news.”

That evening Manuel’s family did one of those hard to describe things that keeps Cuban exiles believing that they are somehow different than other immigrant groups in the United States. It is a propensity to do things that are either suicidal, or of heroic proportions. The exiles have adopted this “Cuban man with bare hands kills the dragon” type of thing, and since this belief is admirable, behaviors have been adopted to propagate it. If something is difficult to do, and there is a group of people in a room who may opt to do it, and one of them is a Cuban, that one Cuban will feel something in his bones that often irrationally, makes him think that he is more qualified than the others to undertake the challenge. There are high failure rates, as a result of this belief, but at the same time, there are enough success stories to nourish the belief and continue to create the psychological and economic supports needed to pass it on to the young.

When faced with a major undertaking, seemingly insurmountable, a group of Cubans will simply ask each other, “Somos Cubanos, o que?” Meaning, are we Cubans, or what? This without further elaboration is all that is needed to motivate people into action. Those who dislike us describe this behavior as “that Cuban arrogance”. Fidel’s supporters hate us for it, because it’s behaviors like those that have kept us from sinking to object poverty, as they expected and told the world would happen. Every time a Cuban exile succeeds in business, culture and society, we see it as a victory against Castro and his regime. Like Castro needs the United States to stay in power, we need Castro to keep us motivated!

Manuel’s parents after a long time of painful reflection did not decide to give up. Instead at a crucial point when things looked very bad, they somehow found an inner strength that allowed them to act outside the norm, and were able to dream about a possibility, that although difficult, could be made into a reality. Their strength came from within because the thought of looking for an external solution did not even figure in the equation. And, because of their sense of self worth, they did not sit down to plan a scheme to rob a bank, cheat local merchants, run a prostitution ring, or distribute illegal drugs. Although, they were cleaning toilets, they knew that they were not really toilet cleaners. As they and my parents would often remark, “we’re Cubans, and we need to get ahead.”

A few months after the incident at Manuel’s house my parents separated and I moved away from Sheapshead Bay losing direct contact with Manuel and his family for more than fifteen years. From time to time my mother and I would hear stories about Ruben and Marta’s struggles, how Ricardo had managed to win a scholarship to a prestigious university in Chicago and was studying engineering, and how Manuel and Elena where both working part time to help the family and pay for their studies in New York’s City College. I learned that my father and other friends had helped Ruben with small loans and other things that nowadays seem insignificant, but are important when you are a struggling exile with three children, a wife and a limited income.

In 1984 after a long struggle Dr. Ruben Robles Gonzalez reclaimed his license as a dentist and opened a private practice in Manhattan Beach where he provided dental services until his death in 1998. My friend Manuel became an architect, his sister Elena is a clinical psychologist, and his brother Ricardo is an engineer. In fourteen years Dr. Gonzalez brought his family from the social level of toilet cleaner, to the middle classes and beyond.

During a recent visit to my father in Hialeah, I found to my great pleasure that Marta and Manuel were visiting Miami, and my father took me to see her at a friend’s house in Coral Gables. She is a wonderful woman in her 70’s with a sharp mind and a most dignified demeanor. I spoke to her about our times in Brooklyn and I asked her why she and Ruben decided to take such a hard road, when there were probably easier things they could have done to survive in America. Her answer was, “We could not have lived in peace if we didn’t at least try to achieve success for ourselves and our children. What were we to do, accept that we were now floor sweepers and dishwashers when we knew we were not?” She then gave me a very serious look, and pointing her finger at me said; “We cannot allow others to tell us who we are. When we do that the game is over.” With those words of wisdom in the air I looked around the room and found my father, and four other old Cubans in their 70’s looking at me as if they were thinking: “What else did you expect to hear?” I then thought to myself, "Old Cuban exiles are wise, because they’re old and they've seen a lot and because they've had to remake themselves from scratch a few times with little but their pride to lean on. Like my grandfather Pedro, they've been to hell and back."

Stories of perseverance and success abound in our community, but from time to time I also wonder how many doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, professors, accountants, businessmen and simple honest workers have struggled quietly without anyone knowing of their failures; how many became disheartened and were eaten by the melancholy and depression of exile. How many our jokes could not comfort, and Alvares Guedes could not fool into a sense of happiness?

When my father and I were ready to leave, we walked out the house with Manuel who was eager to show my father his new $64,000 Mercedes-Benz. In front of the car, Manuel said to my father, "We've come a long way from cleaning toilets in Brooklyn. I only wish my father was here with us." Looking at the car, my father turned to Manuel and said, “Dame un habrazo muchacho, que usted se ha ganado esto como un verdadero hombre.” Meaning, come and give me a hug my boy, you’ve earned this like a real man! After they hugged, my father said to me; "If Ruben was here I know he would not like this car!" Manuel perplexed asked, "why not?" "Because this is a metallic color, and your father hated metallic colors! He liked strong manly colors, like a tomato red." "No me jodas," or stop busting my chops, said Manuel and then we all burst into laughter.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
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