homesickness

Here, on our weekend trips east of Havana, we go from bus to plaza, plaza to store, store to bus, bus to hotel, hotel to plaza, plaza to bus, bus to statue to ruins to store to bus. Fed two square meals a day. Put up in rooms with two full-sized beds and towels sculpted in the shape of little men. There are views of the mountains in Trinidad. A balcony looking out on the ocean in Caibarien. Slatted window blinds filtering the shouts of the center of Cienfuegos. A friend or a tour guide always speaking in Spanish to explain what this building signifies (one of the five oldest theaters in Cuba!) what that monument means (Ché liberated this city!). People to translate if I’m confused.

Bus back to the Residence in Havana. Rickety service elevator with the rectangular gap in its roof, up 13 or so flights to Maria, with her glossy calves and the burn mark down her right arm. Yesterday she told us she would rather live on a lower floor. She changes our sheets and mops our bathroom floors, but still hugs us when we return and feeds us breakfast. Rotating schedule of scrambled eggs and boiled eggs.

Here, in Havana, I can go back to another hotel to read in the most quiet that’s available. But at the Melia Cohiba, named for the Cuban cigars I can smoke here but not at home, the piano music is distracting and so are the older white European men sitting with the younger Cuban women of color. The only other Cubans here are the ones waiting on us and guarding the doors. The rose-colored soft chairs, the butter colored couches and butter colored walls should be soothing, but they remind me of the butter at the residence.

The other students slather it on our soft white bread. I haven’t tasted it yet. At home I hardly even buy butter. My parents only keep butter for baking. They teach me to use olive oil instead; it’s better for you. At home, there are people always wanting what’s better for me. Or maybe that’s my nostalgic construction of home, which isn’t even one place anymore. It could mean my old bedroom with the blue curtains, sandwiched between my parents’ room and my little sister’s room. Or the basement room there that we call George. It could mean Ann Arbor, where there is no room for me anymore, only faint impressions of the love I’ve made and had, like body prints in memory foam, like the way old sweat smells inside my shoes.

Celia is inside each of these places. But I didn’t come to Cuba to escape from my dead sister. I don’t think so anyway.

The winter, real winter, is in each of these places. I know I was somehow trying to escape from the person I become when sun fails me.

But here I am, a bit of that person nonetheless, even with plenty of sun and Maria’s scrambled eggs. Nobody to tell me not to eat the butter but myself.