An American Son: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

resentment toward anyone. He had learned to cope with adversity as a boy and conceal his emotions. Some people who bear painful memories in silence appear aloof and unfeeling. My father was just the opposite: he was kind, considerate and friendly to almost everyone he met.
    I never saw the scars he hid. The evidence of his pain wasn’t apparent in the things he said, but in all the things he left unsaid. Yet his behavior often hinted at the insecurities hidden beneath his stoicism. If he felt he was being made fun of, he could get easily offended.
    I learned much of what I know of his childhood from my aunt and my mother. It wasn’t until shortly before his eightieth birthday that he finally shared some stories from his boyhood with my sister Veronica—stories my mother said he had never shared with her.
    He remained on good terms with his father during his teens, but he never lived with him again. My father lived on the streets and was raised by the streets, as his father had been. He became a man without a very good example of what a man should be, and eventually became the father he had never had. He was nineteen years old when his father contracted pneumonia and died. After that, he was truly on his own.
    Working as a street vendor, my father searched for opportunities to get ahead. In 1947, twenty-one years old and looking for a little excitement, he joined an ill-fated military plot to overthrow Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, known as the Cayo Confites Expedition. Twelve hundred men were detained by the Cuban navy before they reached the Dominican Republic. A young law student, Fidel Castro, had joined the plot as well, although I don’t believe my father met him.
    When the commotion over the expedition subsided, he found work asa security guard in a cafeteria. He lived in a storage room in the back of the cafeteria with several young coworkers, and slept on wooden crates.
    Later that year the cafeteria was purchased by the store next door, La Casa de los Uno, Dos y Tres Centavos. The new owners kept my father on, and allowed him to continue sleeping in the storage room. He met a girl there, one of the cashiers, Oriales García, and they started dating. My mother bragged to her sisters that her new boyfriend looked like the famous film star Tyrone Power. Less than a year after they met, they married on April 28, 1949, in a small civil ceremony attended by close friends and my mother’s family. My father was twenty-two, my mother eighteen.
    My mother’s parents embraced their new son in law as one of their own, and for the first time since his mother died, he experienced the happiness of a loving family life. The newlyweds moved into a small apartment of their own, and continued working in the store where they had met. A year later, my older brother, Mario Víctor Rubio, was born.
    My father worked hard to provide for his family on his meager salary as a security guard. He tried desperately to improve their circumstances, but these were difficult times in Cuba, and opportunities for a kid from the streets were scarce. He took a correspondence course to learn how to repair televisions and radios, but he struggled because he still had a very limited reading ability. By all accounts, he had a wonderful singing voice, and was especially fond of singing tango. He got an audition for a popular radio talent show, but his nerves got the better of him. After three failed attempts to hit a high note, he got the hook. My mother also loved to perform, and dreamed of becoming an actress. She competed in several talent competitions, and won one of them. But both of their personal aspirations gave way to the immediate needs of providing for their child.
    With no education and no connections, my father’s prospects for escaping a life of poverty were poor. They were even worse after he injured his leg by stepping into a hole while playing baseball with friends. The injury caused severe nerve damage, and he would walk with a