THE ABC'S OF AN AMERICAN BORN CUBAN
By Vanessa Garcia

"Where are you from?"

"I'm Cuban; well, my parents are Cuban."

"Where you born in Cuba?"

"No, I was born in Miami…I've never been to Cuba."

"Then you're not Cuban."

"Yeah, well, sort of, I mean…Yes, I am Cuban…I was raised Cuban…I'm from Miami."

What is written above is the oft-occurring dialogue that an ABC has with the world. "ABC," is an anthropological abbreviation for American-born-Cuban. And I fall completely into that category. How it is that I am Cuban without ever having seen the island? You must think it's a kind of act, that I'm pretending - that I'm a "Cubanita poser." But I'm not. Not having ever been to Cuba does not mean, in any way, that I am not Cuban. I kind of grew up on an "island" myself. Everyone on my island spoke Spanish, on every corner there was a bodega, there was even a Little Havana, and there were old men that smoked Cuban cigars while they played dominos in the park. There was Versailles, a restaurant where the waitresses spoke almost no English and where they make the best yucca frita anywhere-it's all in the sauce. There were even palm trees on this so-called island where I grew up. Miami.

Miami is kind of like Cuba. Actually, it's not like Cuba at all, but everyone likes to tell themselves that it is. That's one of the things about being first generation Cuban-American (er .. ABC) - you're whole life is surrounded by stories; you long for the places you've never seen; you long for the pictures in your head. You're memory contains memories that are not your own and your life becomes like a mosaic - chips of tile that are some combination of sharp, jagged, and melancholy. The nostalgia of your parents and grandparents is a contagious nostalgia, and sometimes you aren't quite sure where their memories end, and your own begin.

Being Cuban is having your mom read you Jose Marti (that end-all-be-all Cuban Patriot) before you go to bed when you're little. Los Zapaticos de Rosa is my mom's favorite poem of his. It's the poem she used to read to my sister and me the most. My favorite line is, "Vaya mi pajaro preso/ a buscarme arena fina." It means, "go my small caged bird, and bring me back fine sand." I still have the book she used to read to us from (an old copy of La Edad de Oro). It's all worn and sad and its pages are torn, but I love this book. It's in this book that I keep a letter my mom wrote to me when I was one year, two months, and twenty-one days old (I know my exact age because my mother wrote it in the letter). I know my mother because of this torn book, because of this letter.

Being Cuban-American is speaking Spanglish and discovering that you have an accent when you go away to college, "up north." It's sitting around with old friends when you return to Miami, still able to speak this made-up language of yours, this mixture of English and Spanish and of words that don't exist. This is a language you speak with ease, and which feels like syrup on your tongue. It's eating lechon on Christmas. It's knowing how to make Cuban Coffee, explaining to Americans that the cups for Cuban Coffee are small for a reason. It's talking with your friends about your favorite Spanish words, like petit-pois (which is what we call peas, even though the real Spanish word for them is guisante. Actually, petit-pois is French). It's growing up with your grandparents. It's having your grandparents call your one American friend in high school, "La Americanita [The little American] ." But it's also realizing that no matter how Cuban you feel, how Cuban you're family is, that you are also an American - that now you are more comfortable writing English than in Spanish, even though your parents taught you Spanish first.

Thinking about Cuba makes you sad because you don't really know it, your parents don't really know it anymore, and your grandparents wouldn't recognize it if they went back. It's wearing Violetas cologne. It's being little and standing next to your grandmother in line at the store, or sitting with her at a restaurant and having the clerk or the waitress say to your grandmother, who still hasn't learned English, "For God's sake, you're in America now, speak English." It's having your history teacher in middle school get the facts all wrong about Cuba, and about who you are.

Being Cuban-American is having every family dinner revolve around a conversation about Castro (no first name necessary). It's having your parents hate Kennedy. It's having your grandmother stuff your face with food (OK, EVERY grandmother does that).

A friend of mine says that you can always tell when you're in a Cuban house because they always have the first communion pictures of their children hanging on the wall, in gold Baroque frames. And most of the time, there is a really bad Chinese replica ornament somewhere in a Cuban house. Being Cuban-American is having fights with your family about the fact that all of them are Republicans and you're a Democrat. It's not understanding the coldness of Americans, or trying to explain to your friends in college that friendship isn't just a thing you go around doing, that it is a bond of blood. It's feeling fierier than everybody else at school. It's having your college friends think your family is "funny" and "crazy."

I used to want to be an actress. If you've heard that Cubans are dramatic, I'll tell you that it is absolutely true. I've never had a conversation without using both my hands. I talk louder than most of my friends. I exaggerate. And Miami. I love Miami because I am Cuban. I also hate it for the same reason. I love that if I can sit on the beach whenever I want to, and see the ocean. Or that I can speak Spanish pretty much anywhere, and I can roll my R's (almost everybody in Miami can roll their R's). I love that we understand where we came from - that we know how sad it all really is for our parents to have lost their homes. But I hate it because no matter how much we pretend that it's Cuba, it's not. I hate that I can't talk about certain things without being accused of being a communist, as if Miami were a forgotten capsule of McCarthyism. I hate that half of Miami is frozen in a time warp that not even the Miami heat can thaw. I hate that an entire generation of Cuban-Americans, the sons and daughters of the men and women that fled to Miami from Cuba in the sixties, are materialistic brats.

I know that the generation of Cubans that had to leave Cuba for Miami at the beginning of Castro's regime is going to die out soon and that makes me sad. It makes me feel like I'll lose a part of myself when those old men on Eighth Street (Calle Ocho), the men that sit around and talk about Cuba with cigars hanging on their lips; the ones that sit outside bodegas or inside the Domino Club Park; the ones that I meet while I'm walking the dog; the bag-boy at Publix, who's really an old Cuban who has to work because his retirement check just doesn't cut it; my own grandfather; my own grandmother, pass on. The Santera who wants to throw the shells and tell me about my life, who wants to sing to me an old Yoruba song for Yemaya; the woman who does my mother's nails and talks about her daughter who is still in Cuba and about her son who arrived just five years ago; the old men and women who lived through Castro's prisons, who have so much to tell me. Who will tell their stories when they die?

More than ever, I feel the need to tell the tale. Now, when we find ourselves at the beginning of Castro's imminent end.

Just a few months ago, Castro Ceded power and Miami burst at the seams. The night Miami heard the news, went something like this:

"Gorda, come now! Come now!" yells Gianfranco, my boyfriend, from the bedroom of our small Miami Beach Apartment. He is rarely explosive, so a raise of tone in his voice is always urgent - he's Uruguayan, not Cuban. Were he Cuban I would have walked over, knowing a yell means nothing special. But he's not Cuban, so I ran.

When I got to the other room, he said, "look," pointing at the TV. Anchorman, Ambrosio Hernandez, animated, breaking every rule of journalism, was showing sweeps of emotion.

Castro has ceded power. Since 1959, El Comandante has never done this - which means, never - he's never done this. Did I mention how infrequently he's done this? The Hernandez said that Castro had been hospitalized, will undergo surgery, and had ceded the reigns to his brother Raul. I am flushed with heat, and goose bumps begin to arise on every inch of my body and I think, "could this be it? Could this be the moment my parents and grandparents and every Cuban in Miami has been waiting for?" Could this really be it? Could it really be, "this year in Cuba," instead of, "next year in Cuba?"

"There has never been a plan for his demise," says another commentator on TV. Fidel, the invincible, doesn't seem to plan for a Cuba beyond his death. Cuba is Castro and Castro Cuba, only, Cuba is also my parents and my grandparents, and my cousins, and my neighbors.

"We have to go to Calle Ocho," I tell Gianfranco. "Everybody's going to go to Calle Ocho. I have to see this."

"Let's go. You want to go. Yes, let's go," he says, understanding.

I call my grandparents from the car. "Have you heard?"

"Heard what?" asks Maman, my grandmother.

"Turn on the TV," I say anxiously.

"It's broken," says Maman (yes, more French), "Why what's happening? Is it a terrorist attack, what's going on?!?!?"

"No, it's Cuba. Castro's sick. He's ceded power."

"Papi, ensiende la radio," Maman calls to my grandfather to turn on his hand-held radio.

Suddenly it all goes quiet, and the news fills my grandparents through the radio. They're calm. Calmer than I could have imagined. "They're in shock," says my mother, who has walked into the room they're in and taken possession of the phone. "They're just staring at the radio."

"Let's see what happens," I hear my grandmother say in the background, in uncharacteristic calm. And then I realize. I realize how many times my grandparents have gone through this rollercoaster of emotion before. How many attempts on Castro's life have been executed right here from Miami, or from an Everglade swamp. I look back to how the Bay of Pigs failed them; how America, in many ways, failed them (though God-knows they love their adopted country). We hang up and Gianfranco and I continue towards 8th Street. I'm anxious to record it all, to jot it down and photograph this moment in history.

Willy Chirino's Anthem "Ya Viene Llegando" blares on the car radio. Chirino, a Cuban-American songwriter, wrote the song from Miami, just as communism was falling everywhere else around the world in the late 20th century. The song is about Cubans seeing that fall of communism in Cuba as well - Ya viene llegando. "Our time too is coming," the song says. The song starts with lyrics about a boy dressed as a sailor, his father venturing with him to a new land, learning a new language, relocating their song, their sugar cane, their drum-beat…the song ends, optimistically, with a free Cuba.

It's 10:53pm and we're stuck in traffic. Conspiracy theories are arising from the callers. "He's dead," Miami Cubans are saying on the radio. "He's dead. They're just saying he's sick to give us some transition. The SOB is dead! Hooray! It's time to celebrate." It goes on and on. Some journalists try and calm the radio callers down. Some can't help but join in the frenzy. Calls from Cubans all over the world ring into Radio Mambi. One call from Alaska. "I bet you didn't know there were Cubans in Alaska. Aha! We're everywhere! We support you Miami!" he screams into the phone. The DJ responds, loudly, patriotically, "Who says the exilio is divided. Go to Calle Ocho, see if we're divided or not. From Alaska to la Ocho."

When we get to Calle Ocho, we can no longer hear the radio because of the screams. "Viva Cuba Libre," people are crying. Versailles is packed. Flags are waving from every corner. Cuban flags. Even Venezuelen flags - from those who are currently fleeing Chavez and support the Miami exile community.

…And here I am, recording it all, but my camera too is waving because I still have the goosebumps and I can't stop smiling and my hands are a little shaky. And when I see the pictures they're blurry, but that's all a part of that day.

A quarter of an hour later, we're still in a parking lot of excited flag-waving Cubans banging spoons on pots and pans, hanging out of Cars, crying, laughing, screaming in exultation.

Gianfranco and I finally manage a U-turn and return home. We go to sleep, half anxious, and half exhausted.

In the coming days people go about their business as usual. Walking down the street, a garbage man calls out to me in a Cuban accent, "Cubanita, I know you're a Cubanita, look at that smile on your face. Isn't this a wonderful day?" He yells out to me as he continues to load the trash into his garbage truck. Everybody goes to work. Everybody stays in Miami. Nobody gets on a raft to Cuba. Nobody does anything dramatic. There isn't much news from our relatives in Cuba. Phone lines are hard to get through. There is a seeming lack of excitement on the island from what they say on TV. "But who knows the truth," says my grandfather. "They're repressed. They can't talk. What can they say? Nothing,"

Change must come from within the island, people are saying. But no change comes. No sudden or student revolt. Days later, Castro is shown alive in the newspaper, then on video. He's with Chavez. "The beginning of the end," turns out to be just more empty hope. Or so it seems. For now, anyway, just for now. But history works in steps, more than leaps and bounds. And history is not circular as some would have you believe. History is like a negative - a long string of images where light is dark and dark is light and is seemingly as flammable as the film itself.

I'm very far from a place that is so close - and it's hard for me sometimes to tell which part of it all is really mine. And then I realize that what is mine is Miami - that second-Cuba - and that it is this city that makes me Cuban - this place ninety miles from where my parents grew up and had to flee, where our roots falter in waves, sometimes fading, sometimes gripping.

Vanessa Garcia is a freelance writer in Miami, and the founder of THEKRANE.COM.