Habaname

Chapter One: Heroes in the Hood

January 1990 La Habana, Cuba

He has packed so lightly, observed Chela, with an emptiness that made her stomach ache. We must not weigh
very much in his heart. She watched her father take the last of the stairs two at a time and then disappear out the
front door of their apartment building and down into the street. She heard an enthusiastic roar from the assembled
neighbors, signaling his arrival before the crowd, and she knew that she should hurry down to join them. She
couldn?t move. Perhaps if she were very still, the wrinkles on her shirt from where his hands clutched her
shoulders in a desperate hug goodbye would not straighten out, and if she stayed in the stairwell a breeze would
not come to violate the residual warmth left by his cheek upon hers. Then a hunger for one more look at him got
the better of her and she dashed up into the flat, across the large common room and threw open the windows of
the balcony.

The street was overflowing ? Chela could see that the bordering blocks of Chinatown had joined with the
neighbors of El Monte to see off Cuba?s delegation to the Winter Games at Albertville, Asian faces punctuating
the mulatto and dark-skinned tapestry of the throng. In the middle of the pulsing celebration a flatbed truck was
paused, its side graced with a gaudy banner emblazoned with one of Che Guevara?s favorite sayings: ?Let us be
realistic! Let us do the impossible!? The impossible ? for a Caribbean country to medal in the Winter games ? had
already been attempted by the Jamaicans in the previous Olympiad. Now Cuba would try its luck. On the back of
the rusty vehicle rode four smiling young men in red athletic suits, and their newly painted bobsled, the Alma de
Marti. They waited before the residence of their trainer, Martin Stevens, while the older man bent down to hug
and kiss his three young sons before throwing his tote bag onto the bed of the truck. As the athletes reached
down to pull Martin up, the crowd began to applaud, and soon the chant of ?Bala Blanca!? reverberated up and
down the street, echoing between the row of crumbling buildings.

Chela cried quietly upon hearing her father?s nickname taken up by the multitude. The name ?White Bullet? had
been applied innocently enough to the blonde man in his privileged youth in the United States when he had
excelled in the two-man sledding events, then the moniker took on an ugly turn as it appeared on the FBI?s
?Wanted? posters during the heyday of the Weathermen?s bombing campaigns in the turbulent late 1960s. Chela
knew that the name was about to take on still more deadly accuracy for - like a projectile suddenly set free -
Martin Stevens would not be returning from the Winter Games in France, and he would be leaving a gaping
wound in her heart. She saw him turn from the crowd to look up to her and gaily wave, and suddenly conscious
of the many eyes dissecting the exchange between the national hero and his firstborn, she quickly wiped away
her tears, forced her chin and chest forward and smiled at her father. I can make it look good. I can do this for
you, just as you have given me life ? and when you remember us, don?t let it be the bitterness of last night.
~~~~~~
Chela knew she had stumbled upon a worse fight than usual because her parents were battling in the quiet,
quickly hissed English they reserved for mortal combat, the better to protect their privacy given the thin walls and
the insatiable curiosity of the neighbors. She started to back out of the common room, the need for a bedtime
drink quickly dampened, but her mother snaked out a hand and grabbed her roughly by the elbow.

?No! Don?t go! This concerns, you! Go on, Martin. Here is your daughter who is to start university next year.
But of course, once you leave, that will be over for her, won?t it? Just as it is for the children of all the worms
who turn their backs on their country ? no more school, no more jobs ?..?

Her voice became a litany of incoherent explosions in Chela? mind. He?s leaving us. Then her father?s voice
broke though her gathering panic.

?There are people with university degrees cutting cane and whoring themselves, Maritza. If I can establish myself
in France and start sending for them then they might have a future but it is over here. Maybe my family can help,
my trouble was so long ago??

?Your family who was so happy that you married a Spic and gave them brown grandchildren that they have
never answered my letters.?

HABÁNAME (Havana [Verb Transitive] Me) by Ana Ortiz Copyright © January 22, 2002 Ana Ortiz All Rights Reserved

		Escuchando a Matamoros desde un lejano lugar La Habana guarda un tesoro que es difícil olvidar y los años van pasando y miramos con dolor como se va derrumbando cada Morro de ilusión.
	Mirando un album de fotos de la vieja capital desde los tiempos remotos de La Habana colonial mi padre dejó su tierra y cuando al Morro llegó La Habana le abrió sus piernas y por eso nací yo