Heartbreak for Dinner: It's Kind of a Long Story (2 page)

My imaginary romance with “Yohnee” ended that fateful afternoon
of ill-timed sharting and pesky bowel movements. Much to my dismay, the whole fiasco
only deepened his bond with she-who-I’ll-no-longer-mention. I developed new crushes
that year and each subsequent one after, but I never shared my food with anyone
else nor did I ever exact revenge on guys who did me wrong. I figured that if someone
took the time to hurt me on purpose, I’d better stay put and let the universe do
its thing.

(I also held back the urge to slash their tires in the middle of the
night, as they’d surely die in a car accident or something as a result of my childish
fury.)

My parents and I eventually moved to the United States and started
a new chapter of our lives away from Castro and boiled eggs. I stayed abreast of
all the town gossip via telegrams from my Grandma Blanca and letters that left Cuba
in January to reach my hands in May. As was to be expected, Johnny married his beloved
right after high school and moved to a city close to Havana soon after. Last I heard,
they had two daughters and a boy on the way they would naturally call Carlos or
Ricardo.

I guess sometimes, try as we might, we all lose our battles against
destiny. At the end of the road, I couldn’t pry those two apart even if armed with
all the
media noches
in the world. Johnny and Dumb Dumb ended up with each
other, I ended up with habanero sauce, and there’s not much left to say except,
true love will always find its way if you let it.

The bride wore white and the groom was super hot.

Some people are crippled by terrible high school experiences
in which something so catastrophic happens,
they’re reduced to sweat pants
and reruns of Friends while eating flavored popcorn for the rest of their lives.
My younger years as a schoolgirl surprisingly went by without a hitch. A devoted
teacher’s pet who typed her notes and never touched drugs, I somehow managed to
be popular. As I look back, I can’t exactly say anything of great significance took
place in my high school world other than the mandatory accomplishments every girl
must check off their teenage list before adulthood: graduation, loss of virginity,
cat fight with a girl in the cafeteria.

All senior year I went steady with a gorgeous boy we’ll call Ricky
due to his uncanny resemblance to Ricky Martin, homosexuality excluded, of course.
Football player adored by the hoes and admired by the bros, my guy was pretty stellar
if I do say so myself. He called when he said he would and picked me up in his Mustang
every Friday night for a make-out session at the local drive-in. He bought me a
peach corsage for homecoming and lent me his Nautica jacket if I ever mentioned
feeling chilly. He looked like he walked off an Italian perfume ad on most days
and his smile was made for the wet dreams of Colgate marketing executives everywhere.
Why was it, then, I felt absolute nausea every time he mentioned how romantic it’d
be to get married and be high school sweethearts for the rest of our lives just
like his parents?

Sidenote: It is my belief that women are the most contradicting
of creatures and are never happy with the cards they’re dealt. We claim to want
a sweet and handsome man who takes care of us and caters to our wishes. Yet it’s
guaranteed that as soon as he arrives, we treat him like bird poop at the bottom
of our shoes and leave him for a guy with tattoos on his elbows who only calls on
Tuesdays when his other girlfriends are busy.

For prom, my guy planned a perfect evening that, like most things
in life, went nothing as envisioned. Rumor has it this was the evening my
Livin’
La Vida Loca
darling intended to propose. This chapter is not about prom or
Ricky or his untimely demise right after that night, so I’ll keep the backdrop short
and sweet and get to the goods sooner than later.

• Ricky rented a room in the hotel where prom was held for us.
  
• My mom refused to let me stay in a room with my boyfriend because, “I didn’t raise you like that,” so
  she slept in the room with us on a blow-up mattress she placed on the floor.
  
• As a result of the aforementioned, Ricky didn’t get lucky.
  
• He then planned another romantic evening in an attempt to remedy that and it failed more than prom as he
  couldn’t get it up due to nerves.
  
• We broke up three days later.
  
• And this is where the story begins.
  

A few weeks into my first semester of college and still very
single, I decided I wanted to study abroad the following summer. My parents were
on board with this idea as long as I promised to fly to Cuba immediately after because
God-forbid-I-go-one-summer-without-going-to-Cuba-and-melting-half-my-face-off-in-hundred-degree-weather-to-visit-family.
I reluctantly agreed to this plan since I knew we wouldn’t be able to afford both
trips, therefore letting time pass and never bringing up my Spanish getaway and
subsequent trip to the motherland right after. Once April rolled around and I could
taste the tapas and red wine in the air, my parents began to understand that a trip
back home might be a bit heavy on their budget and succumbed to the idea that I
wouldn’t be going.

Two months before my departure I contracted bronchitis and was suffering
from volcanic fevers as I simultaneously hocked up mini Shreks every time I coughed.
Fifteen days of suffering later I began to recover, only to trip on a boot I left
lying around my room and twisting my right ankle, which grew to the size of a Thanksgiving
ham for a party at the White House in a matter of hours. I was still on crutches
by the time my trip rolled around, but that failed to dampen my excitement of visiting
Europe for the very first time. Being an only child of the female persuasion with
two intense and overly-worried parents is rough. Leaving the continent unsupervised
at the age of 18 multiplies the crazy factor of said parents by Mel Gibson to the
square root of Courtney Love.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” my mom whined over coffee a few
mornings before my departure. “I hear Spain is full of lazy people. Plus, they smell.”

“Of course, mama,” I patted her hand reassuringly and secretly basked
in the impending glow of being all alone for two summer months.

The next day at work was my last, and my coworkers threw me
a little going away bash before my leave-of-absence began. I was still reeling from
the excitement of a prolonged period of doing nothing as I carefully shuffled out
the building with a piece of cake in my hand, when I almost choked as I encountered
this by my left crutch:

I’m assuming spending my life surrounded by animals helped me
cope with the aftershock, because I wasn’t so much frightened of a dead pigeon lying
merely inches from my toes, as to how it got there in the first place. I’m sure
pigeons die all the time and birds dropping from the sky is a phenomenon that occurs
not only in Hitchcock movies, but the odd part was how it was placed, perfectly
still on its back like an angel that happens to feast on insects and human eyeballs
for fun. Also, where was the blood? My first instinct after bringing my heartbeat
back to a human pace was to take the above picture and show it to my mom as soon
as I got home. She examined it closely for a few moments and shook her head, giving
me a concerned look as she uttered her simple explanation:
brujeria.

For reasons beyond my comprehension, my mother became convinced someone
was trying to poison my well-being with black magic, hence the bronchitis and twisted
ankle and dead pigeon situations all within the span of weeks. Apparently the only
pragmatic way to combat
brujeria
is with its most potent nemesis,
santeria
(rhyming names purely coincidental). It was clear at that moment I would be going
to Cuba after all, even if my quest there no longer had to do with family and more
with personal protection.

I could sit here and talk about Spain all day and how it closely
resembles Narnia in its various degrees of perfection. How it’s beautiful, mythical,
and so vast three lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to discover all its wonders. How
the sound of its guitars seduce me to a place I only allow myself to visit when
I’m feeling melancholic and thinking of him (more on that later). And how I still
hold some hope that one day I’m wealthy enough to have a summer home there with
a cabana boy that’ll fan me on hot days and feed me strawberries dripping in chocolate.
But let’s not stray from the subject, this isn’t a public service announcement for
the land of bull fighting and why you should totally go there if given the chance.
This
, is about Cuba, and how batshit crazy its people can be when faced with
the possibility of being threatened by the power of black magic.

After eight weeks that whizzed by faster than a skate boarder on crack,
I landed in Santiago to the welcoming arms of my aunt and grandparents. Nothing
was initially mentioned of my brush with death in the form of a resting pigeon or
what exactly they intended to do about it. I mostly spent my days sipping mojitos
at the beach and perfecting my tan while eating enough fried food to cause 12 heart
attacks with my uncle Tico, who was 10 years older and knew all the cool hang-out
spots. Although a bit of a rocker who always wore black and dripped in sarcasm I
didn’t appreciate to its full capacity at my tender age, I enjoyed his company and
that of his cute weird friends. I told him I was harboring a suspicion my aunts
were planning something in collaboration with my mom and he told me to, “Watch your
back, because your
tias
are crazy.”

The day before I returned home, my aunt made me an amazing breakfast
consisting of eggs over hard with homemade French fries and a huge steak. As she
picked up my plate and wiped my area, she casually inquired if I was ready for the
night.

“What’s happening tonight?” I asked while momentarily being snapped
out of my food coma.

“
Tu despojo,
” she replied matter-of-factly and went to do the
dishes.

Despojos
, or “spiritual cleansings,” are something you know
of straight out of the womb if you’re a person of Caribbean descent. Most people
don’t know exactly how they’re performed or what they entail, but I was fairly certain
pixie dust and repetitive African chanting were part of the ritual. My apprehensive
state of terror must’ve been clearly visible because my aunt returned and placed
a hand on my back comfortingly. “Don’t worry,
mija
,” she said. “It’s nothing
extreme. Just a simple cleansing to ensure you’re safe.”

In true Cuban fashion, my aunt’s
santera
was late that
night, forcing my people and I to sit around staring at each other’s faces while
my grandmother smoked a tobacco in the living room as she watched her
novela
.
Half an hour in the phone rang, and our santera’s pimp informed my aunt she wouldn’t
be able to join us that evening, as she was suffering from a painful bout of arthritis
and couldn’t find a ride to our house (spotting a taxi in Cuba is like snagging
yourself a straight man during Gay Pride Weekend in South Beach). I smiled internally
and let out a sigh as I watched my aunt nod and say, “Yes, I understand.
No hay
problema.”
She promptly hung up the phone and clapped us to attention, “She
will do it over the phone so everyone get ready! Grandma Blanca, you’ll be the translator.”

Thirty minutes later, I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen
wearing all white, four ladies donning the same virginal attire around me in a squared
circle of trust. Grandma Blanca inhaled from her pipe peacefully as she held on
for the call, proving that in life we only hurry while young and patience is a virtue
we begin to possess only when we’re dying. The phone sounded promptly at nine and
I could feel my stomach doing flip flops in nervous protest as the ringing echoed
throughout the house. I hardly had a chance to marvel at the absurdity of it all
when Blanca requested everyone to turn off all lights and strike a match. It was
reasonable to think maybe a piece of my hair needed to catch fire as the induction
to this phenomenal ritual, but my aunt walked past me and lit 12 candles, which
she and the rest of the helpers set down in a circle around me. Helper No. 2 grabbed
scissors and began to walk in my general direction.

“Cut the cloth and wrap it around her head,” my grandmother commanded.
“None of her hair should be visible.” After my head was wrapped like a white burrito,
I was ordered to drink a cup of hot tea that tasted like sewer water as quickly
as I could. “This will help clean you from the inside out,” my aunt offered. I wondered
if drinking shit was a means of cleansing but just nodded and drank while I thought
of puppies and cupcakes from my favorite bakery in South Miami.