Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home

One

Cojimar, 1958

I awoke to the smell of boiling milk. Not 1% or 2% or soy milk or rice milk. This milk had never touched a cardboard box. It had been freshly drawn, hours before, delivered at dawn from my grandmother’s small farm just outside town. Every morning in our house was scented with the aroma of raw milk boiling with a little bit of salt.

If it were in my apartment now it would be contraband, a smuggled delicacy, but then, the foamy, silky, still-warm sweetness was a familiar part of every day. Once boiled, the cream would be ladled out and pressed into butter by our cook, Conchita, but at this early hour there was another priority. My grandmother Concepcion, along with Conchita, would be responsible for bringing life to a houseful of people, preparing the café con leche for at least fourteen.

It was the summer of 1958, and the Revolution was raging on. There was fighting in the Sierra Maestra and the surrounding provinces, far enough from our home for us to feel safe. But every night when Concepcion sat in the back of the house listening to the pirate radio frequency that Fidel Castro broadcast from, our sense of urgency and danger grew. There was an occasional bomb in Havana, and when I went to the city to go shopping with my mother, I would scan the storefronts and alleyways, making note of suspicious characters who could be the next martyrs for our cause. I sometimes feared that my father would go to work one morning and never return.

A quiet tension resulted. We were protected by the house, and we felt safe in our own little world. Still, I knew something was going on, but only because I listened. To the deliverymen who brought bright yellow bananas and pineapples. To the baker from town with his fresh bread and pastries. To the fishermen selling their early catches. And most of all to my grandmother Concepcion, whom we called Cuca, sharing the highlights of last night’s broadcast with Conchita as the milk bubbled away.

He said last night that he would stop the gambling casinos. Wouldn’t that be something? Cuca would say.

Get rid of all those mobsters. That’s why there’s so much violence, whispered Conchita.

Let’s pray he gets here soon.

Cuca was always the first one up. She took pride in her café, preparing it how everyone liked it, but always starting with the strong dark base of freshly brewed Cuban coffee. With all the fuss over the machinery we use to make the so-called perfect brew today, I wonder why we don’t just keep it simple. Cuca did without automatic drips, heatproof presses, or grind ’n brew options. Instead she relied on her minimalist, functional gadget, her teta, nothing but a piece of cloth stitched around a metal hoop with a wooden handle. She would fill the teta with a few spoonfuls of coffee, then pour recently boiled water over the top. The freshness of the coffee was important, so it was best when served immediately, but Cuca had to contend with fourteen people waking at different times. She’d brew large batches of coffee to make sure there was enough, and if it cooled even slightly she’d just freshen it up by adding piping hot milk to each cup.

It was the milk boiling, the coffee brewing, and the quiet whispers that woke me up every morning. I would leave my room, go down the hall and into the kitchen to sit at an expansive counter with twelve stools. My grandmother poured my coffee, topped it off with boiled milk, and added one, two, three teaspoons of Cuban sugar. Somehow she knew I was coming before I ever arrived, and timed it so that as I took my first sip of café, she would pop a piece of perfectly crisp, browned toast out of the toaster. She’d smear it with rich golden butter, then hand it to me on a little plate.

Café con leche with buttered toast is a true delicacy. It is so simple yet provides so much joy. Cuban bread has a thin crust, and though it may resemble a baguette, it gives sooner to an airy inside. Its melting richness owes to its key ingredient: lard, which it is most often made with. When you dunk the toast, the bread takes on a spongy texture, accentuating the nuttiness of fine coffee. The milk is warming, soothing, and nutritive, the coffee gently invigorating. To feel truly decadent one only needs to admire the droplets of shiny butter swimming on the surface of the cup.

I was only five years old, but I knew one thing for sure. All I had to do was dunk the bread into the cup. Chew, sip, and heaven in the morning was possible.

The rest of the house would take longer to wake up. One by one or in pairs, the kitchen would be visited by my aunts and uncles. They would emerge from their rooms, fully made up, perfumed and pomaded in silk pajamas or negligees with lace cutouts. My father and his brothers Fernando and Oscar would most often collect their café and return to their rooms with cups for their wives. While our parents woke up in private, my cousins Lupe, Maria Elena, Fernandito, and Oscarito sat with me in the kitchen. Sometimes our single uncles Pipo and Benito would join us, or they would meet up with their sister Maria in the French-style rose garden adjoining the house.

You might think living with so many people would be chaotic, but if anything it was more like a perfectly planned and executed garden party, every morning, day after day. Sometimes I wonder why I tend toward living casually as an adult: I am barefoot whenever possible and refuse to touch an iron. I used to think it was a California thing—absorbed from twenty years of West Coast living—but more and more it seems like a form of rebellion against a childhood where formality was always present, even at eight in the morning.

Still, beneath all the composure lay a tumult of conflict. Four different families living under one roof makes for a dangerous cocktail of competition and emotion. My father’s sisters-in-law, who had been poor growing up in Guanabacoa, now had to vie for Cuca and Fernando’s attention and money. They did their best to remain poised while scraping and scrambling for a compliment or a handout from the heads of the family, but it’s not easy to hide desperation. My mother always felt superior, proud that neither she nor her son would have to beg for anything from her husband’s parents. We had her parents, Oscar and Manuela, and they were always just a few steps away.

Before breakfast was over, Cuca would already be peeling root vegetables. By eleven A.M. at the latest, you could hear the sound of her knife chopping up the malanga, yuca, and pumpkin for a staple of her kitchen, Newspaper Soup. The preparation of this tropical vegetable potage ushered in a different set of sounds, another group of familiar smells that could only mean one thing: lunch.

In my family, you didn’t rush in to or out of anything having to do with food. Especially when it was lunch. Our whole family was on a different schedule, and the midday meal was our opportunity to be together. We’d have our leisurely morning, then as the men went off to work and we children went to school, the women went and did what they did—start preparing lunch. Lunch was really a three-hour break during the hottest part of the day. If we had been served a plate of rice and nothing else, I’m sure we would have taken just as much time to enjoy the break. But the thing I liked the most about lunch was that it was the meal when the most choices were available. What to eat depended first on where it would be eaten. Would I dine at the table of my puritanical grandmother or down the hall with her wild-eyed husband? Perhaps I’d take the less dramatic option and cross the street to the home of my other grandparents.

Manuela and me at her house, Cojimar, 1953

In my grandparents’ house on my father’s side there was a civil war of culinary ideology. The house was large enough to have two dining rooms, and each one was presided over by a different grandparent. Though they had been married for thirty years, Cuca’s and Fernando’s personal tastes could not have been further apart. The distance between their separate dining rooms enforced this idea, as did the fact that neither one dined in the other’s space.

The middle dining room was Cuca’s domain. To understand her particular taste, you must understand something else about her. She was thin, even by today’s standards. And then, in 1958, in comparison to the other voluptuous women of Havana, she was like Twiggy. On a diet. And what about this Newspaper Soup? The story goes that it was from a recipe printed in the newspaper in the 1930s. When Cuca ripped the recipe from the paper, she missed the topmost portion that contained the actual name of the soup. So, adapting accordingly, the soup was christened.

And what a soup it was. I am sure that if a health guru tasted it today it would quickly be declared the newest fountain of youth. Rich in fiber and nutrients, Newspaper Soup walked the line between the delectable and the medicinal, making me dread it and crave it all at once. The flavors of the roots were both blended and distinct. The waxy starch of malanga, the nutty thickness of yuca, and the sweetness and color of pumpkin all combined to produce a complex heartiness, not unlike the best chicken stocks or veal broths. What was so great about the soup, though, was its adaptability. There was always a pot bubbling away, which meant that an array of garnishes to accompany were not far off. Chopped ham, hard-boiled eggs, and crispy croutons added accents of texture and overtones of saltiness that further emphasized the strength and depth of the thick soup.

Beyond this nutritive starter, the other familiar presence at Cuca’s lunch table was, of course, beans and rice. But Cuca’s beans were different. I guess she had a thing about pureeing because her bean dish was more the texture of the Newspaper Soup, thick enough to coat a spoon, without a bean in sight. The dish was hearty but not heavy, with a mild smokiness and sweetness. Cuca’s smooth puree, served over bowls of flaky white rice, managed to elevate a staple to a culinary treasure.

The rest of the menu wouldn’t be health conscious by today’s standards. Most of it was fried. Bistec Empanizado, or breaded steaks, was a favorite of mine. Like the Cuban version of Veal Milanese, it is made from the top round or palomilla portion of the cow. The steaks are portioned and pounded thin, dipped in egg and crushed Cuban crackers, or galletas, then fried in lard or oil. Cuca also liked to use this method when preparing fish.

No matter the protein Cuca made, it was always served with rice, pureed beans, Newspaper Soup, and sweet plantains. And that was it. Every day. The same thing. If we were very lucky, we might get a little sliced avocado with lime or (heaven be praised) homemade croquetas with chicken or ham.

How did Cuca stay so thin? For her, everything was portioned out in relation to the size of the dish. While the rest of us got big plates with hearty servings, Cuca herself dined only on demitasse plates. One ounce of steak, one piece of banana, a tablespoon of rice, and a teaspoon of beans. Every day, with lots of coffee and boiled milk. Looking back, I can see that maybe she was just ahead of her time. How many ladies who lunch finish everything on their plates? Cuca simply took what she needed, although I’m sure she could have done with a little more. Still, she practiced this self-restraint every time, even though she wasn’t all willpower. In fact, Cuca had a dark little secret, one that is shared by well-heeled women the world over: She was saving herself. For dessert.

It is the sweetness that I remember when I dream of Cuca’s table. More than the Newspaper Soup. More than the Bistec Empanizado. Meringues float before my eyes, baked gently in the oven until dry and crisp. They were brown, which I marveled at, not white like the ones at the bakery in front of the convent where my mother went to school. Those were sacred meringues, made by nuns, pure and clean. Cuca’s meringues had something of the earth in them, but the simple sweetness was still the same. Cuban sugar and fluffy egg whites, holding the shape she gave them, only to dissolve on my tongue and become more a part of me than I ever thought possible. Truly, that is the sweetness I remember.

Sweet was never the word to come to mind when talking about my grandfather. Fernando was stubborn, stylish, or witty, maybe, but nothing so helpless as sweet. Lunch with him was never subtle, and compared to Newspaper Soup, his staples would have turned any saint to sinning. The spread in his kitchen, and on plates in his dining room, was more like a nightclub than a convent. Exotic imports from Spain like Serrano ham, manchego cheese, and big juicy olives were piled lasciviously on top of one another. There was always cigar smoke, wine, and Pedro Varga or Nat King Cole on the record player. It was never guaranteed that he would actually cook and serve lunch in his dining room. Sometimes he would eat whatever Conchita made him—hearty Eastern European fare like Chicken Kiev or Beef Stroganoff—but never, ever would he eat my grandmother’s cooking. If he were to write a review of the food in Cuca’s dining room, he might have used words like bland, tame, or frigid. But then he probably would have written the same review for his marriage. Divorce was never an option. They had to act out in other ways, so neither one ever ate what the other cooked.

I remember the first time I decided to eat with Fernando. Cuca asked, Don’t you want Newspaper Soup?

No, I said, I want lobster and shrimp and a little taste of brandy. I walked toward the smell of the sea, and I was never hers again.

For, where Cuca was divine, like a vestal virgin tending the hearth, Fernando was like a demon, tempting with delicacies impossible to refuse. He was an official at the docks in Havana and he made a habit of visiting the cook on every ship that came to port. He would make the rounds and come home with armloads full of the finest delicacies. In addition to the ham and olives from Spain, there were fine French cheeses, apples (which were rarely seen in Cuba at the time), and, best of all, bittersweet dark chocolate from Switzerland. It was because of Fernando that, long before I ever came to New York, I got to try my first taste of a truly American treat. Bagels. With lox and a schmear. Although then it was still called crema de queso—cream cheese.

On the days Fernando decided he felt like putting on an apron, the choice of where I would dine was clear. When Fernando cooked, his tastes were less exotic but by no means boring. Though he appreciated the treats from his foreign ambassadors, he preferred the essential flavors of the sea. He loved lobster cocktail and fried shrimp; anything with shellfish really. He had two specialties; the first was Camarones Enchilados (Shrimp in Spicy Tomato Sauce) served over white rice. He would make it with special care, chopping the ingredients with precision and consistency. And when he seasoned the dish, it was like a wizard tending his cauldron. The flavors he produced were sweet, salty, and tangy, with the brine of shrimp freshly caught the same day. The savory aroma was perfectly calibrated to satisfy your hunger and leave you wanting more. But no matter how good his camarones were, nothing and no one could beat his Arroz con Pollo (Chicken with Rice).

Fernando’s Arroz con Pollo is legendary in my family. Everyone’s personal recipe is some small variation on his, and at family gatherings to this day, great arguments arise over what exactly should go in, when, and in what quantities. I think every family has a recipe like this, and if they don’t, they should. The tricky thing about Arroz con Pollo is the texture. How do you make it creamy but not heavy? Soupy, but not watery? Firm but not crunchy? And how do you cook the chicken so it’s moist? So the skin isn’t gummy? So the whole thing just works? I have my opinions, of course, but I don’t pretend to know. Wise chefs might forget everything they’ve been told and just start over from scratch. But for me, no matter how backward, making Arroz con Pollo will always start with Fernando’s recipe.

There as one more choice for lunch. It was a place filled with excitement and the comings and goings of all sorts of people, like a café, or a truckstop diner. Only it was closer to home; just across the street in fact. Even better, the owners of this fine establishment were my mother’s parents, my grandparents Oscar and Manuela.

Oscar was a hard-working Cuban. He started his professional life selling fruit on the streets of Guanabacoa when he was just eight years old. With hard work (not to mention the pinching of a few pennies), he rose to a position of power, working first as a cab driver, then investing in several small businesses before eventually starting a bus company that covered all the routes between Cojimar and Havana.

In both size and style the house reflected his social standing. It was like a Frank Lloyd Wright knockoff, all one floor, and bracingly modern compared to the homes around it. There was room enough for my mother’s whole family, which was sizable given that my grandmother Manuela had six brothers. Three of these brothers had lost their wives when their children were young, so in total there were six women living in the house. The motherless daughters, Yolanda, Rosa, Barbara, and Dulce, along with my mother, Gilda, and her sister Chichi, were all raised together by Manuela and my great grandmother Maria.

This many mothers and sisters under the same roof no doubt had its problems, but the presence of the women was a boon for me. It was given that the men in Manuela’s house were forbidden to cook, and God help us all if they so much as picked up a plate. Even though there were maids, it was the girls in the house who had the business of running the kitchen to attend to, an operation with importance equal to the running of the bus company.

There was always something going on in the kitchen, usually involving seafood my grandfather had brought home from the pier in Cojimar. Bloody swordfish heads, translucent shrimp skins, or gutted snappers lay about, torn apart with surgical precision by the fairest and most delicate hands. The piles of discarded odds and ends were clues of what lay ahead at the lunch table.

And although I would take whatever I could get, I was most excited if I heard the clacking of claws from the direction of the sink. To see little beady eyes staring back at me was a guarantee that we would be dining on Harina con Cangrejos, or Crabs with Cornmeal. This middle-class dish had a first-class flavor. It began with a sofrito, a mixture of aromatic vegetables and tomatoes, then became a broth by adding water, along with crab bodies and claws, bay leaves, and oregano. Cornmeal was added, and the whole thing blended together to create an aromatic dish with a flavor similar to a traditional New Orleans crab boil. The corn gave it a porridgelike consistency, but the crab elevated the dish to an exercise in refinement, coasting along on waves of flavor like the sea.

The rest of the menu often came from the fertile grounds of the house. My great grandmother Maria loved to garden, and she was very proud of the roses she cultivated in the consistent heat and humidity. Leafy banana trees shaded the back, while the front was cooled by coconut palms. Yuca was planted next to boniato and malanga, and all of it was pulled from the ground immediately before cooking. Maria also kept chickens that roamed freely and left the yard dotted with white and brown eggs.

The pride of Maria’s garden lay nearby: three enormous guayaba (guava) trees stretching high into the sky. Once the trees started dropping their tart and tannic fruit, Manuela would get everyone to help gather the goodies. The guayaba would then be boiled in syrup, slowly, until the insides turned to candy and the syrup became a rosy pink. The cascos de guayaba, as they are called, were to be eaten with cream cheese and crackers, like a very tropical marmalade. When the guayabas rained, they truly poured. We would have cascos for months, and I can remember many days when I would eat them until my lips and fingers were stained pink and my stomach was swollen with sweetness.

The food at Manuela’s house was decidedly Basque in its flavors. This Spanish influence wasn’t limited to the tapas of Serrano ham, manchego cheese, and juicy olives. There were exotic main dishes like roast lamb with rosemary and filet mignon with a garlicky sauce rich in olive oil. We had offal like liver, pan-fried with onion and green pepper, or brains, made into fritters and deep-fried. We ate tiny fish like smelts and sardines, lightly breaded and fried, served with lemon. Larger fish was at its best when smothered in fresh laurel leaves and olives. Saffron was used liberally, in main dishes as well as sides. It gave its yellow hue to roast potatoes or simple white rice. Other rice dishes were made, with chopped okra or squid ink added for texture and flavor.

Unlike at grandmother Cuca’s table, Manuela didn’t serve black beans, instead opting for lima beans, peas, or garbanzos, sautéed with onions and chorizo, or dressed simply in a salad with olive oil and minced red onion. She loved to make Spanish tortillas from the fresh eggs in the yard. She filled these fluffy, omelettelike discs with sliced boiled potatoes or leftover plantains. And for dessert, nothing could beat Manuela’s churros, crispy fried donut sticks rolled in cinnamon and sugar.

Meals were always accompanied by wine, especially when seafood was served. This was, in its own way, a salute to our Spanish ancestry, honoring an old wives’ tale that stomachaches would follow seafood unless wine was imbibed. The women of the household also claimed that swimming within three hours of dining was sure to be calamitous. Three hours? A bit much. But traditions don’t hold up unless you believe in them, no matter how ridiculous. Anyhow, I wasn’t one to complain about a little wine over lunch. It was tasty, a grown-up thing to do, and what’s more, it made sleep come quicker for the nap we’d all have before returning to work or school.

Whichever house I dined at would influence my disposition for the rest of the day. Cuca’s lunch left me feeling like I’d accomplished something, a duty of sorts. I was sated, nourished, and ready for the next challenge before me. After lunch with Fernando, I dreaded returning to school, preferring to be swept away by pirates on the open sea, or whatever fantasy was most appetizing to me on that day. After lunch with Manuela, all I could do was sleep. I’d leave her table stuffed to the breaking point, a little woozy but all the more joyful for it. I would find myself truly thankful for food, for home, for the ability to enjoy…everything, really. The one commonality between the two houses (and three dining rooms) is that almost every day during my nap I would be awoken by a vendor in the street.

"Tamales, fresh tamales!"

No matter what I had just eaten or how full I was, I would grab the closest quarter and run into the street to purchase the little pocket of goodness.

The vendor carried two tin pots filled with hot water attached to a stick that rested on his shoulders. When he lifted the lid and the steam poured out, my mouth would instantly begin to water. I’d take my booty into the yard and unwrap the corn husk under the shade of a guayaba tree. Piping hot cornmeal, the saltiness of pork, all heightened by the bits of fatback throughout. The skin gave texture while the fat delivered the taste of corn and the pork in swirls of steaming flavor. I loved tamales. So much that I ate one every day. So much that my cousin Hugo would tell me that my head was going to get bigger and bigger with each tamal I ate, and that eventually it would explode in a mess of corn and pork bits. I never shared my tamales with him.

With lunchtime (and the afternoon snack) all over with, I went back to school. My education had started at age three. I went to a kindergarten across the street from my father’s house every day to learn how to read and write. I remember the pretty young women from the neighborhood who taught us there.

Once I entered the first grade, school became a different animal altogether. No longer was it a simple hop, skip, and jump across the street. I had to take the bus. And instead of pretty young neighbors, I was taught by the stone-faced men and women of the cloth. Because in first grade, I started Catholic school at Los Escolapios in the nearby town of Guanabacoa.

Guanabacoa should have been familiar enough; everyone in my family who wasn’t in Cojimar was there, so I had already spent enough time in Guanabacoa to feel at home. Still, every day while passing through the school’s iron gates hedged by forbidding, high stone walls, I’d catch the faint, sickly smell of incense leaking from the cracks in the schoolhouse and would be reminded: This was not Guanabacoa; it was another world entirely.

The footprint of Los Escolapios took up several blocks. Its walls were large chunks of stone, mortared together, so that no matter how hot it was in the sun, inside was cool and damp. There were two courtyards in the center, and all the classrooms faced inward toward the light.

It was an all-boys school, of course, and I would tell you what everyone was like, where they were from, and what their families did, but it is hard to say. The school taught students from first grade to the end of high school, so there were plenty of kids. Students came from all the towns and villages in and around Havana, and we all wore starched uniforms of the traditional Catholic homogenized kind. The younger boys had shorts, the older wore pants, and we all had white shirts and ties of one sort or another. So while the usual signs of class or locale were not easily distinguished by the way a boy looked or dressed, let’s just say that very few kids arrived at school without the accompaniment of a uniformed driver and a very nice car.

There was a small cafeteria for those kids who didn’t go home for lunch. Some of their parents were working; others, I’m sure, were perfectly happy to eat at school. I, on the other hand, was horrified at the thought of dining in the cafeteria. On the rare days I didn’t lunch in one of my family dining rooms, I refused the school’s food with the resolve of a protestor on hunger strike. It may seem dramatic, but I thought it perfectly practical at the time. For, you see, just a few doors down from the school’s cafeteria was a museum of exotic taxidermy. Mounted on the wall and preserved in glass cases were stuffed lions and tigers and birds, mid-flight, or poised to pounce on some unsuspecting prey. Their glass eyes held an equally fixed stare, as though they were trapped in their glass cases, frozen in time forever. In my wild imagination, I was convinced that the meat they served in the cafeteria came from the stuffed animals. Birds or bunnies or wild cats were bad enough, but there was no way I would take a chance on eating anything that may or may not have been a crocodile or, worse, a snake.

Fast-held opinions of this sort were not exactly encouraged by the priests who were our keepers. I remember all too well the corners where I knelt, the stinging of rulers on my hands, and the ache of my arms, having held them out like Jesus on the cross for what seemed like hours at a time. I’m still perplexed that these dealers of pain and punishment were supposed to be our role models of good Catholics. Something about being beaten by the men who taught us math, history, and French didn’t quite sit right, especially when their teachings encouraged us to live by the lives of the saints. Now, some forty years later, I am happy to say that I don’t remember a single one of their names or their faces.

For better or worse, I know it is their aura that keeps the early mysteries of Catholicism alive in me today. Some deep part of me still stirs at the memory of those quiet corridors filled with incense, the timid shuffling nuns visiting from out of town, the rumors of ghosts in the eaves and courtyards, and a church filled with relics like the woman in the glass coffin who had never decomposed.

Every day school let out around six, and I would return to the safety of the bus, where one of my great uncles was always either driving or collecting the fares. If I was lucky and my grandfather Oscar was there, I knew for sure I would get something sweet for a late-afternoon snack. After we finished the route together, he liked taking me to a Cuban bakery that specialized in French pastries. We shared a napoleon or an éclair, so silky and luscious, filled with custard or pastry cream. Sometimes we bought those pure white meringues from the convent. They were crisp and dry on the outside and chewy on the inside. I always marveled that they stayed so white.

Eventually we returned home, usually to my mother’s house. By the time we arrived, my grandmother and great grandmother had already set into counting the money that the bus drivers would drop by in big sacks. Bags and bags filled with nickels, dimes, and quarters: my inheritance. One of my many cousins would be playing the radio, maybe rock and roll, maybe something Cuban. Café was made and snacks served in place of dinner. They’d serve croquetas or empanadas, sometimes sandwiches or little salads. Usually it was more Spanish imports, hams and olives and little hunks of cheese. At that point no one wanted a full meal, and the rich, salty offerings, while delicious, were really fuel for the fire, energy for those who did the counting and those who got paid afterward.

And so the evenings would unfold, my relatives sitting with our extended family of bus drivers, usually talking politics. There were stories of customers from that day, a good-looking woman on one driver’s bus, a popular singer that another recognized, and always the whispered jokes, full of innuendo, prompting chuckles or clucks of disapproval from the elder women, buried in their counting.

I would sit nearby and drink a glass of water, always observing, admiring my grandmother Manuela and her mother, Maria. They were all strength and beauty and quiet confidence as they literally counted every nickel and dime. The men looked on, waiting for their decrees: How much had been earned and how much they would be paid. These older women seemed invincible, like steel drums, especially when compared with my own mother, young, frail, vulnerable, a porcelain vase filled with red carnations just before they bloom.

Sometimes my mother would come to me during the counting, as if such a coarse activity were too much for her fragile sensibilities. She’d take my hand and we would walk around the backyard with my baby brother Jesus. There we’d sit on the porch, swaying back and forth in the rocking chairs, and she’d tell us the stories of our birth.

My brother was born on Christmas day, and while he was supposed to be named Othon, like my father, there was a problem at City Hall when they tried to register his name. One of Batista’s officials informed him that the devoutly Catholic dictator had passed a new law saying that every newborn in Cuba had to be named after a saint. Since there was no saint Othon, my father spouted the most obvious choice, with no small amount of resentment. So Jesus it was. Still, we called him Othin, the diminutive of my father’s unholy moniker.

My father and me with baby Jesus (Othin) in front of Manuela’s house, Cojimar, 1956

What about me, Mama? I’d ask.

When people said how hard childbirth was, I believed them. But you proved them wrong.

I was born in a clinic run by nuns. They massaged my mother’s belly as she prepared for the worst, but I came out, simple as can be, just a few hours later. When my relatives found out that I was a boy, my grandfathers descended on the room with all their friends, my father, and uncles, and I’m sure plenty of cousins.

The men started smoking their celebratory cigars. I imagine it must have annoyed my mother to have her birthing room turn into a barroom so quickly, but in those days Cuban babies were never separated from their mothers when they were born. So when the men started smoking their cigars, there was no one to stop them and no one to take me away. I thank God and the nuns for giving me my first taste of Cuban cigars on the day I was born.

My mother and me at Cuca’s house, Cojimar, 1956

My brother and I listened to these stories, again and again, on the back porch in the early evenings with my mother. Breezes carried the ocean salt mixed with the smell of night-blooming jasmine and earth that rose up from the slowly cooling ground. My mother, my brother, and I would be bathed in the rosy glow of the evening sun. If I listened closely, I could hear the Caribbean calling. One of the men inside would light a cigar, and I could once again smell my beginning. There we sat, waiting for night, and as the sun finally set, it seemed that there was nothing at all wrong in the world.

[ Newspaper Soup ]

This is my grandmother Cuca’s infamous recipe. I remember eating it nearly every day in Cuba, although my mother claims I refused it on many occasions. There is an interesting chemistry at work here: The water from the pumpkin thins the soup out while the starch from the malanga thickens it up in the second cooking. This vegetarian soup is certainly healthy, but it’s also quite tasty. The sunny color and hearty warmth make it perfect for lunch on a chilly day, but this comforting cure-all works its magic any time of year.

3 celery stalks

4 carrots, peeled

1 Spanish onion, peeled

1 green pepper, stem and seeds removed

2 pounds malanga*

3 to 4 pounds calabasa pumpkin**

²/3 cup olive oil

4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

½ cup Goya tomato sauce (from one 8-ounce can)

¼ gram saffron (about 1 big pinch)

8 cups water

Up to 2 tablespoons salt

Up to ½ teaspoon ground black pepper

Prepare the vegetables: Cut the celery stalks into 1-inch pieces. Cut the carrots into 1-inch chunks. Slice the onion in half, then cut each half into chunks about 1-inch square. Slice the green pepper in half, then cut each half into chunks about 1-inch square. Peel each malanga with a vegetable peeler, then slice in half. Cut crosswise into chunks about 1-inch thick. Peel the tough skin from the calabasa pumpkin by slicing close to the flesh with a sharp knife. Remove any seeds with a spoon and cut the pumpkin into chunks about 1 inch