I felt uncomfortable sitting at the table, my back to the wall. The sound of the clock’s second hand was deafening, tick, tick, tick, as if to remind me how slowly the time passed. I squirmed in my seat, the silence interrupted only by the intermittent squirt of an automatic air freshener. The windows and doors were decorated with bars, a necessity in this neighborhood. In front of me, multiple small statues were carefully positioned on the floor and on the shelves of a large armoire. They looked over those sitting at the table, keeping watch. My abuela has a particularly large statue on the floor; it was her favorite, Saint Lazarus. I had no idea why Saint Lazarus was special to abuela, but he was everywhere, in and outside her house. My abuela was a well-kept petite woman, her nails perfectly polished, her eyebrows drawn on with pencil, and her light skin wrinkled, even though she spent most of her days working inside a factory. She waddled when she walked and when she spoke it was as if she wanted the neighbors down the street to hear.
Every summer we traveled across the country to visit my abuelos, who live in the only city they have ever known in this country. They left Cuba in the early eighties when Castro allowed those who had gone against the government the freedom to leave. My father was nine years old when he crossed the border from Mexico into Laredo, Texas. The federal government ultimately apprehended him and my abuelos. My family does not discuss this trip or their life before the United States. It is as if it never happened, as if they want to forget. I have always been curious, but as a high school student now, I’d become much more aware of my family’s complicated and mysterious past. abuela and abuelo had overcome countless obstacles, my abuelo being a political prisoner, having already been caught once trying to escape. I wondered what it was like for him to be so desperate that he would leave Cuba in the middle of the night on a raft made of old truck tires only to be caught and sent to jail. My abuela’s father, my bisabuelo, was the bodyguard to Batista, the dictator before Castro. I only know him through his picture that hangs on the wall in my family room, as he passed in a tragic car accident shortly after arriving in this country. He had a chiseled face with high cheekbones and an angular jaw. His muscles could be seen through the guayabera he wore. How did he become a bodyguard? Did he practice martial arts? I had many questions and stories I needed to hear, but my Spanish was not proficient enough to get answers.
I sat at the kitchen table, my abuelo to my right, looking at me with anticipation of something spectacular about to happen. I rested my arms on the kitchen table, the protective plastic covering stuck to my skin, making a crinkling noise when I moved. The statues looked at me as if they expected something of me, too. The eyes of the large statue of Saint Lazarus seemed to follow my movements. His clothes were mere rags draped over his body. My mind was empty, trying to conjure any word I could remember. I had studied this. I knew how to put sentences together and even write but in the face of my grandfather’s quiet pressure and my own desire to communicate,— nothing. My abuelo was a dark-skinned man with little hair, multiple gold necklaces, and a bracelet. He wore a starched cotton white shirt, pressed jeans, and a leather belt around his rotund stomach. His skin showed the many years behind him, wrinkled from the sun. His hearing was failing him after years of driving a truck, the constant hum of the engine taking a toll. He waited eagerly for me to talk to him, he hoped this summer visit would be different, this would be the summer we would have our first conversation. Clearly disappointed, he looked at my Father, his face sagging as a defeated expression overcame his countenance. He blamed my father for my ignorance, as did I.
I wondered why my father never spoke to me in Spanish. It would have been easy to learn had he made the effort to speak in Spanish when I was young, but he rarely made the effort. Maybe it was too hard, being the only native speaker in the house. He said he wanted me to speak in English, but now I can only speak in English, and I can’t talk to my abuelos. It was as if my father wanted to erase that part of his life and with it, our family history. When my father came to this country, he was placed in special classes for children who couldn’t speak the language. He faced discrimination, sometimes so subtle he didn’t even realize it was happening. Maybe he didn’t want me to experience what he had lived through, maybe downplaying Spanish was his way of protecting me from the world.
Studying Spanish in high school was a challenge from the very start. It was hard, it was easy, it was up, it was down. Here I was, half-Cuban, and I couldn’t even keep up with my classmates.
Summer after summer, during our yearly visit, I sat at the kitchen table in that tiny two-bedroom house with my abuelo to my right, always wanting more from me. Couldn’t he see? It was not my fault that I could not speak Spanish. I reminded myself of this routinely so as not to feel that guilt. To not feel like a disappointment.
As the years passed, I progressed in Spanish, and in my understanding that I had blamed my father for so long for my inability to speak to my abuelos, I forgot I had a part in my success and my failure. One thing I knew was that a part of me needed to speak to my abuelos, I needed to hear their stories, their struggles, their triumphs and disappointments. My time was running out, they were both in their eighties, and I feared they might die before I had the chance to have a conversation. I wanted to know why Saint Lazarus was everywhere; maybe he was important to me, but I just didn’t know it yet.
This day, I sat at the kitchen table, my back to the wall, my abuelo to my right. He was waiting for me, as he always did, every summer when I came to visit. The sound of the clock’s second hand filled the silence, the automatic air freshener squirting mist into the air, the statues, the plastic-covered table, the steel bars on the windows and doors, it was all as it always was. The only difference was that today my father sat to my left. He was a particularly tall man, much taller than my abuelos with large, inquisitive eyebrows. His cologne was a bit overwhelming, and he sat with his arms folded across his chest, in a somewhat defensive posture. I had always turned to my father for help, asking him to only speak to me in Spanish. My requests were well received, but he would always revert back to English within a few minutes. It was clear that if I wanted to understand my grandparents I needed to make my own effort; no longer could I expect my father to do it for me. I turned to look at my aging abuelo, and in that moment I felt a renewed sense of purpose.
I noticed the large statue of St. Lazarus on the floor, with rags covering his body and two dogs at his feet looking up at him. My abuela was in the kitchen cooking. The smell of freshly fried empanadas filled the air. She brought the empanadas to the table and sat across from me. Her drawn-on eyebrows gave her face an expectant, somewhat surprised look; I wasn’t sure if that was the look she was going for or if she just ran off course with that eyebrow pencil.
I began to speak to my abuelos in Spanish, not perfectly, but with an understanding I had never had before, and while not every word was correct, they understood me. The words flowed out of me, question after question.
Saint Lazarus is the patron saint of the poor and sick, who some say Jesus raised from the dead. He was a beggar with wounds on his feet and two stray dogs that traveled with him. He embodied the struggle of the impoverished, the struggle of my abuelos. For this reason Saint Lazarus was everywhere—the most sacred saint in all of Cuba. Now I understand.
Andres Gil is a first generation Cuban American. He is a junior attending public high school and is interested in the assimilation of minority populations in the United States. Most of his writing is non-fiction centered on the complexities of cultural identity, family history and his own path to understanding his roots. This particular piece is about his personal struggle and desire for connection. It touches on the different views of a multi-generational Hispanic family in the United States.
