Sometimes we think that because someone hasn’t got much to say that they must not have a story to tell. The truth is, sometimes those who stay quiet have the loudest stories. Stories that need to be told.
After a few Coronas my dad might get chatty. But he is – and always has been – a man of very little words.
Most, if not all, of my previous boyfriends were terrified of him. “I don’t think your dad likes me very much.”
And my response was always the same, “He’s just not much of a talker.”
My dad is a man of little words. He doesn’t brag or share his story unless he’s asked. And even then, I, who have asked, have pieced it together over thirty-seven years. Decades of stitching together small details, open conversations, short answers, candid retellings, and a lot of my mom filling in the rest.
I am the talker that my dad is not. But telling this story, the story of my dad leaving Cuba, has brought me a lot of anxiety. How do you tell a story that changed not only one life but that altered the life of a whole family for generations after?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference. —RoberT FROST
For many of us, we could point to a time in our life, mas o menos (more or less), when our lives – our path – entirely changed course. But how many of us could pinpoint a specific day and say This day. This solitary, single day was the day that changed my life and every life hereafter.
November 11, 1966 was my dad’s day
Five decades ago, on a Friday night — when others were deciding what to wear out dancing or what bar to meet their friends at — my dad was preparing to leave Cuba for the rest of his life. He would leave Cuba, his home, and his mother only 20 days after turning 16 years old.
My father, as a 16-year-old boy in Cuba, was turning the legal age to be involuntarily recruited to the servicio militar obligatorio (obligatory military service). This didn’t mean you had to serve but that you had to register and be ready to serve. What this really meant was that at 16, you were stuck. Once you were registered, you were in the military’s service for the next 10+ years. His age made him an anchor. Cuba would never let him leave and my grandmother would never leave without him.
Many of my dad’s relatives were defecting or had already. I can only imagine that this decision for him was no decision at all because if you know him, you know he “ain’t no kind of military man” (another chapter I’m working on). A military guy? My dad? He once threw a stapler at someone who gave him an attitude.
In Cuba, each neighborhood or block had a vigilante known as the Comittee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in charge of “guarding communism’s enemies.” There are stories of people playing American music quietly in fear of being reported. People threw scraps of their meal in a distant garbage, away from their house, to avoid the CDR knowing what they ate for dinner. You didn’t want to explain where you got that “extra” steak from. People learned to keep their doors closed and their mouths shut. Anything you said could be used against you and you never knew who you were talking to.
My dad was from Caimanera, a small fishing town in the province of Guantánamo that, in this instance, had many perks; the biggest being the proximity to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay. The base was so close that if you lived in Caimanera, the joke was you were either a fisherman or a Base man.
On the afternoon of the 11th, my father along with 2 other friends, went to another companion’s house where they would begin their escape. They arrived one by one to avoid rising suspicion from the neighborhood CDR. Yes, a group could raise suspicion. And the last thing they wanted was attention for what was to come.
TO BE CONTINUED…
P.S. The Trinity of Cuban Drinks and my mom’s Black Bean Mambo
