becausedey are een cahoots weeth de dehveel heemself! Anâ we are outnumber-ed by DEM. Johs like our poor Jeweesh ancestors een de Holocaust. De women preesonehrs deednât get der periods. Dey totally eh-stopp-ed, okay? Because of de cheer eh-stresses!
GIGI: Outnumbered. Stopped. Not outnumber-ed and stopp-ed. Gahd! HOW many years have you lived in this cute country now?
MAMI: Right, less focus on de American grammars anâ eenveesahbl eh-skohf marks right now as we are crahsheengh to death in de horeebl Mexico desserts!
GIGI (looking in her compact mirror and attempting to reapply Yardley bubble gum lip gloss without getting it all over her face): DEH-zurt. Dih-ZURT is what you eat after dinner. And you love Mexico. You and Papi honeymooned here, remember? Acapulco, Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Cancúnâ¦God, you know, my lips are so dry. I wonder if I brought my Kiehlâs [lip balm #1]? Thereâs nothing worse than trying to put lipstick directly on chapped lips. You have to have the moisturizing âtude going on first, and thenâ¦
MAMI (talking to the medallion clutched in her Revlon claws): !Ay, San José de Cupertino, ayuuudame! [He-ee-lp me!]
PAPI: Ana, por FAVOR.
MAMI: Coño, Dahveed. Joo are a FEESEESHEEAHN! Make eet EH-STOHP!
Â
Two weeks later in her private office on the mental ward, an unscathed Mami happily counted her cash profits from the Oaxacan black pottery. The psychiatrists and patients all really loved the stuff and coughed up huge big bucks for it. (Mami let some cash-strapped patients pay for theirs in packs of Kools.) Thewoman had survived the Mexican dessert storm and made out like a Cuban bandit. Works for her.
Â
Was everything bad that happened to us Juban refugees really all Hitler and Kennedy and Castroâs fault? The fact that my family and our friends had been scattered across the earth? Where was North Carolina? What was New Jersey? Where was my pretty ocean where Mami bathed me since I was five months old?
Miami and Miami Beach, I knew firsthand, were backwater honky pits. When my immediate and extended family arrived there in 1960 and 1961, these places were shitty little cracker towns with unbearable heat and humidity and no sea breezes and hideous pastel-painted houses ringed with shiny bushes where slime-green lizards lurked, ready to pounce and give you a heart attack. My parents and I lived in that charming setting for the first year of our exile. We three shacked up (sleeping together in one bedroom in a double bed, which I loved) with my abuelos, Zeide Boris and Baba Dora (they slept in a single bed in the broom closet); Tio Bernardo, my motherâs fiery younger brother; Tia Ricky, his Raquel Welch look-alike Sephardic wife; and Joel, their son and my eighteen-month-old first cousin (they slept in a double bed in the second bedroom). The eight of us crammed into a tiny, cheaply furnished two-bedroom house that was part of a complex of ancient houses on Fourteenth Place in Miami Beach. The rent was $125 a month. We nicknamed the place Las Casitas Verdes, the Little Green Houses, for their yucky, chipped pea-green color.
My grandparents and Tia Ricky, who never worked, took care of me and Joel during the day. Papi was a bottle washer at the National Childrenâs Cardiac Hospital, not far from Las Casitas. He also worked in their research department with rabbits and otheranimals. The people there treated Papi well and let him study for the foreign medical boards. Mami was a social worker in charge of medical eligibility at the Cuban Refugee Center. Tio Nano was a bank teller at the nearby Washington Federal Bank. They each earned about $65 a week, and gave all the money to Baba Dora, who paid the rent and bought the groceries (I use the term loosely, as we mostly ate eggs because they were nutritious and cheap). Tio Nano walked to work; the bank was only three blocks away. Papi and Mami needed a car, though, so they bought a $150
GIGI: Outnumbered. Stopped. Not outnumber-ed and stopp-ed. Gahd! HOW many years have you lived in this cute country now?
MAMI: Right, less focus on de American grammars anâ eenveesahbl eh-skohf marks right now as we are crahsheengh to death in de horeebl Mexico desserts!
GIGI (looking in her compact mirror and attempting to reapply Yardley bubble gum lip gloss without getting it all over her face): DEH-zurt. Dih-ZURT is what you eat after dinner. And you love Mexico. You and Papi honeymooned here, remember? Acapulco, Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Cancúnâ¦God, you know, my lips are so dry. I wonder if I brought my Kiehlâs [lip balm #1]? Thereâs nothing worse than trying to put lipstick directly on chapped lips. You have to have the moisturizing âtude going on first, and thenâ¦
MAMI (talking to the medallion clutched in her Revlon claws): !Ay, San José de Cupertino, ayuuudame! [He-ee-lp me!]
PAPI: Ana, por FAVOR.
MAMI: Coño, Dahveed. Joo are a FEESEESHEEAHN! Make eet EH-STOHP!
Â
Two weeks later in her private office on the mental ward, an unscathed Mami happily counted her cash profits from the Oaxacan black pottery. The psychiatrists and patients all really loved the stuff and coughed up huge big bucks for it. (Mami let some cash-strapped patients pay for theirs in packs of Kools.) Thewoman had survived the Mexican dessert storm and made out like a Cuban bandit. Works for her.
Â
Was everything bad that happened to us Juban refugees really all Hitler and Kennedy and Castroâs fault? The fact that my family and our friends had been scattered across the earth? Where was North Carolina? What was New Jersey? Where was my pretty ocean where Mami bathed me since I was five months old?
Miami and Miami Beach, I knew firsthand, were backwater honky pits. When my immediate and extended family arrived there in 1960 and 1961, these places were shitty little cracker towns with unbearable heat and humidity and no sea breezes and hideous pastel-painted houses ringed with shiny bushes where slime-green lizards lurked, ready to pounce and give you a heart attack. My parents and I lived in that charming setting for the first year of our exile. We three shacked up (sleeping together in one bedroom in a double bed, which I loved) with my abuelos, Zeide Boris and Baba Dora (they slept in a single bed in the broom closet); Tio Bernardo, my motherâs fiery younger brother; Tia Ricky, his Raquel Welch look-alike Sephardic wife; and Joel, their son and my eighteen-month-old first cousin (they slept in a double bed in the second bedroom). The eight of us crammed into a tiny, cheaply furnished two-bedroom house that was part of a complex of ancient houses on Fourteenth Place in Miami Beach. The rent was $125 a month. We nicknamed the place Las Casitas Verdes, the Little Green Houses, for their yucky, chipped pea-green color.
My grandparents and Tia Ricky, who never worked, took care of me and Joel during the day. Papi was a bottle washer at the National Childrenâs Cardiac Hospital, not far from Las Casitas. He also worked in their research department with rabbits and otheranimals. The people there treated Papi well and let him study for the foreign medical boards. Mami was a social worker in charge of medical eligibility at the Cuban Refugee Center. Tio Nano was a bank teller at the nearby Washington Federal Bank. They each earned about $65 a week, and gave all the money to Baba Dora, who paid the rent and bought the groceries (I use the term loosely, as we mostly ate eggs because they were nutritious and cheap). Tio Nano walked to work; the bank was only three blocks away. Papi and Mami needed a car, though, so they bought a $150
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