Jubana! Read Online Free PDF Page B

No one would know the difference.”
    â€œI don’ agree,” Mami always replied, even though she knew it was true. “La niña ees very Benes. Her hair ees rayt, like mine an’ Bernardo’s.”
    No. My hair was and really is auburn, with golden-red highlights. But my mother has always considered redheads as well asher side of the family infinitely superior to everyone else. Certainly the Beneses were richer and more refined than the Andurskys, but none of my grandparents had ever had more than an elementary school education. Papi’s parents were comfortable, middle-class. They’d emigrated as newlyweds in 1927 or ’28 from Zalnik, Poland. It’s an obscure village like Kraisk, that no map shows. Papi was born shortly after they’d arrived, in 1929. Zeide Leon owned Cuban American Textiles, in La Habana Vieja, Old Havana, at #557, Calle Compostela. He and my grandmother, Grandma Zelda—“Baba Zoila” in Yiddish and Spanish—sold upholstery fabric for sofas, chairs, and curtains. They also sold fabric for men’s suits and women’s dresses. The store had no a.c., just two huge standing fans. Mami says in the summer the heat in there was unbearable.
    Zeide Leon was short and strong, wiry, well-built. He smelled like steam, from his freshly pressed white short-sleeved shirts, and Aqua Velva. On Sunday afternoons we’d stroll through El Jardín Botánico in Miramar or El Parque Central in La Habana Vieja. I’d pick flowers to bring home to my mother while Zeide Leon kept an eye out for stray cats. When he’d see one he’d pummel it with stones and laugh maniacally. I’d scream and run under Baba Zoila’s full skirts to hide, which only made Zeide laugh harder.
    Baba Zoila was bossy, critical, and dyed her beehived hair a matte black-brown. She wore heavy red lipstick, covered her furniture in plastic sheeting, and made a lot of boiled chicken and Jell-O. She doted on my father and held him responsible for Tio Julio, Papi’s brother who was five years younger. Baba Zoila held Mami in medium esteem at best. She thought Mami was self-centered and spoiled rotten. On our Sunday outings, Baba Zoila would tell me, “Your Papi is the most handsome, smart, giving, wonderful person in the world! The best son, brother, doctor, father, and husband! That’s why he’s named after a king. You know King David?”
    â€œUh-huh. What about my Mami?” I’d ask, shaking the dirt off the roots of my filched hibiscus or jasmine or frangipani or gardenias.
    â€œYour Mami?” she’d reply. “She’s…she’s good, too.”
    Good? She was way more than good. She may not have been a biblical monarch but she was a goddamn goddess. And the fact that you didn’t like it didn’t change it; even I knew that. That’s why I thought it was mighty big of Mami to give me the floor, if only fleetingly, at her sophisticated soirées. Here was a deity who could share the spotlight sometimes. I could never compete with her beauty, grace, and charisma, of course, or make Papi pay attention to me, but I could be funny, smart, charming, and una pícara, a cheeky girl.
    So I pressed on with my thunder and my lightning.
    â€œÂ¡Y entonces hay un choque!” I said, clapping my tiny hands together once very loudly to illustrate the fury of el choque, the shock, as the two forces collide. That always gets their attention.
    â€œCalor y frío,” I continued. Hot and cold. I’d squeeze my eyes shut, turn my head away from the impact, and slam my palms together again. “¡Ay, que escándalo!” Oh, what a scandal!
    Exhausted from my educational performance art, I’d drop backward and faint.
    â€œCoño, super-mona, pero demasiado café con leche, tú,” was my audience’s unanimous verdict. Shit, she’s super-cute but too much café con leche, man.
    â€œA ella le