The Exile

On a corner in Little Havana off SW 8th Street live two heavy and scared oak trees whose limbs stretch out over and across the street. Under the old oaks shade sits a restaurant with a counter window at which business men, mothers to be, or one of the old men sitting close by might greet someone with a handshake or a kiss, and order a Cuban coffee.

Inside the restaurant, tiled in blue, walls covered with black and white photographs of young baseball players and graduating classes, passed the counter behind which a barrel-chested man shouts, laughs, and cuts slices off a cured pork leg, five small square tables, made of dark brown laminated wood, have been brought together making one long one.

The table, unlike the restaurant, is uncomfortably crowed with extending family. I sit at the far end, the head of the table. On my left, my mother, light blond hiding her roots. My right, my father’s blue business shirt and his heavy breath of fried steak and black beans. Next to him, his wife, black hairspray, is rhythmically tapping the tips of her finger nails on the table.

My father smiles at my mother, Gloria, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out his old lucky coin engraved with the face of Jose Marti, his poet/warrior hero. “What is that” she asks, “deja me ver”, and he reaches across to hand her the coin. Gloria stretches her arm to take the coin; her hand crosses the divide between my parents, I can smell my father’s shirt, their hands stop, suspended, on the coin.

They might touch.

The point of touching.

Outside, an old man’s sand paper skin irritates a baby’s chubby hand.

A waitress lightly runs her fingers across the barrel-chested man’s shoulder blades.

Another slice of pork slowly slides off the knife. A neon sign floats in the window.   

My hands lie flat on the table, disturbed by the illegal trade,

Holding on.


written February 2004