Read Online Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia - Free Book Online Page A

my heart jumped when I heard he’d been hurt. I cried when I saw him bandaged in white, his arms taut in midair like a sea gull. His eyes apologized for having disturbed me. Can you imagine? I discovered I loved him at that moment. Not a passion like ours, Gustavo, but love just the same. I think he understands this and is at peace.
    I’d forgotten the poverty of the countryside. From the trains, everything is visible: the bare feet, the crooked backs, the bad teeth. At one station there was a little girl, about six, who wore only a dirty rag that didn’t cover her private parts. She stretched out her hands as the passengers left the train, and in the bustle I saw a man stick his finger in her. I cried out and he hurried away. I called tothe girl and lowered our basket of food through the window. She ran off like a limping mongrel, dragging it beside her.
    Yours,
Celia   

A Grove of Lemons
    Pilar Puente
    I t’s hot as hell when I finally get off that bus. The sun is burning my scalp, so I duck into a luncheonette. Everything looks antiquated, like the five-and-dime counters in New York. They’re the best places to get a BLT, so that’s what I order here, with an orange soda.
    If I call my father’s parents, forget it. I’ll be on the next plane to New York. Abuela Zaida, my grandmother, would crow for days about how Mom can’t control me, how I’m running wild like the American kids with no respect for their elders. Those two hate each other from way back. Something happened between them before I was born.
    There’s one cousin down here who’s not too bad. His nickname is Blanquito because he’s so white he has to wear a hat and T-shirt even when he’s swimming. I got to know him at Abuelo Guillermo’s eightieth birthday party two years ago in Miami. I figure if I can get hold of him, he’ll hide me for a dayor two, then take me to Key West, where I’ll get a boat to Cuba. Maybe he’ll even come with me.
    It’s Saturday so I’ll have to go looking for him at home. The only problem is that the entire Puente tribe practically lives at his house. Blanquito’s parents have one of these ranch-style jobs in Coral Gables with a pool in the back. The rest of the family lives in apartments, so on weekends my uncles gather there to watch football and eat themselves sick.
    I look up the number in the phone book. Blanquito’s mother answers so I hang up. I’d recognize her breathy voice anywhere. She’s always on the verge of collapsing from one imaginary illness or another. Last I heard, she thinks she has lumbago. That’s nothing compared to some of the other diseases she says she’s suffered from—tetanus, malaria, sprue, typhus. You name it, she’s had it. Her diseases are usually tropical and debilitating, but only occasionally deadly.
    I stop in a church not far from their house. I swore I’d never set foot in anything remotely Catholic again but it feels good to get out of the sun. It’s dim and cool, and blue and red dots float in front of my eyes like after somebody snaps a flash picture. I remember how the nuns got upset when I called the Spanish inquisitors Nazis. My mother pleaded with the nuns to take me back. Catholics are always dying to forgive somebody, so if you say you’re sorry, you’re usually home free. But this time, they said, I’d gone too far.
    Our neighborhood was mostly Jewish then and my mother was always saying, “They killed Christ! They pushed in the crown of thorns!” I felt sorry for the Jews getting thrown out of Egypt and having to drag themselves across the desert to find a home. Even though I’ve been living in Brooklyn all my life, it doesn’t feel like home to me. I’m not sure Cuba is, but I want to find out. If I could only see Abuela Celia again, I’d know where I belonged.
    The last time I got kicked out of Martyrs and Saints, the schoolnurse recommended a psychiatrist whose name was Dr. Vincent Price. “Tell me about your urge to mutilate the human