Outside, I would close one eye and squint the other and count the bulbs in English while everyone stood for tickets. Inside Sarita Montiel awaited without subtitles. Always the semi-nude scene: Sarita in her porous eggshell skin, a perfect sienna mole, eyebrows penciled like Japanese ink strokes on silk, the soft balls of her feet and strawberry toenails seeping from under the edges of sheets swirled around her contours like icing, propped on her breasts and elbows and crying with aGallegolisp into a gross of satin pillows, believing there would be justice for her undeserved suffering. Justice because...

Para la santera, Esperanza, who makes me open new boxes of candles so she can pick out the red ones, the color ofChangó, her protector spirit, and tutors me in the ways of all the spirits:Eleguá, Ochún,Yemayá,

ParaJosie on welfare, who sells me her food stamps for cash because she can’t buy cocoa butter soaps, Coca-Cola, or disposable diapers with them,

Para laSeñora Vidal and her husband who came early in the 50s beforela Revolución, own the famous Matador Grille on Eighth Street, helped those who came later, who give me two-dollar tips when I...

Pescado grandewas number 14, whilepescado chicowas number 12;dinero, money, was number 10. This wasla charada, the sacred and obsessive numerology myabuelaused to predict lottery numbers or winning trifectas at the dog track. The grocery stores and pawn shops on Flagler Street handed out complimentary wallet-size cards printed with the entirecharada, numbers 1 through 100: number 70 wascoco, number 89 wasmelón, and number 61 wasmango. Mango was Mrs. Pike, the lastamericanaon the block with the best mango tree in the neighborhood.Mamáwould coerce her in granting us...

This is for the $1.98 flip-top box of crayons we buried in my mother’s shopping cart and coerced her into buying for us; how we capitalized on sympathy and the pitying looks of the cashier and customers behind us, embarrassed her at the checkout with ourfuchsiapleas until she gave in. This is for the thunderstorms and the after-school afternoons—cartoons rioting in the screened Florida room while we sprawled on the floor and warmed the cold tile, tested all sixty-four crayons on junk mail scraps and blank newsprint. Even the colors we didn’t understand—sienna brown, peach, and...

At herQuincesball, my cousin Susana was presented to society as a lavish pearl, unveiled from a giant enameled oyster rolled right into the center of the festivities. The commemorative portrait of the fifteen-year-old debutante—caped in feathers, coyly posed with cherubs at her feet on the marble staircases of Vizcaya Palace and wisping an Andalucian fan—hung conspicuously in our living room, competing with the velvet furniture, the avocado marquise curtains and crême chiffon sheers.Mamáalso hung flea market oil paintings of palm tree landscapes and ink sketches of La Habana Vieja—La Catedral, El Capitolio, El...

A saving quarter from a linted pocket, a week-old number on a napkin I had by now memorized like the taste of water. I dial you. My voice crackling with the static of the pay phone. You answer the Sunday call with“hola,”italic> a homonym for wave—ola—in our language of silenth’s and a silent beach where we meet as if we could resolve something; as if by staring at the vastness of the universe icing the Atlantic anything could become less important by contrast. Tonight Gemini is two fireflies hovering about my fingertip and I could be...

In the beginning, before God created Cuba, the earth was chaos, empty of form and without music. The spirit of God stirred over the dark tropical waters and God said, “Let there be music.” And a soft conga began a one-two beat in background of the chaos.

Then God called upYemayáand said, “Let the waters under heaven amass together and let dry land appear.” It was done. God called the fertile red earth Cuba and the massed waters the Caribbean. And God saw this was good, tapping his foot to the conga beat.

Then God said, “Let the...