HAVANA, 1959

“How long will we be gone?” my sister Maria asks.

“Awhile,” I answer.

“Two months? Six months? A year? Two?”

“Quiet.” I nudge her forward, my gaze darting around the departure area of Rancho-Boyeros Airport to see if anyone has overheard her question.

We stand in a row, the famous—or infamous, depending on who you ask—Perez sisters. Isabel leads the way, the eldest of the group. She doesn’t speak, her gaze trained on her fiancé, Alberto. His face is pale as he watches us, as we march out of the city we once brought to its knees.

Beatriz is next. When she walks, the hem of her finest dress swinging against her calves, the pale blue fabric adorned with lace, it’s as though the entire airport holds its collective breath. She’s the beauty in the family and she knows it.

I trail behind her, the knees beneath my skirts quivering, each step a weighty effort.

And then there’s Maria, the last of the sugar queens.

At thirteen, Maria’s too young to understand the need to keep her voice low, is able to disregard the soldiers standing in green uniforms, guns slung over their shoulders and perched in their eager hands. She knows the danger those uniforms bring, but not as well as the rest of us do. We haven’t been able to remove the grief that has swept our family in its unrelenting curl, but we’ve done our best to shield her from the barbarity we’ve endured. She hasn’t heard the cries of the prisoners held in cages like animals in La Cabaña, the prison now run by that Argentine monster. She hasn’t watched Cuban blood spill on the ground.

But our father has.

He turns and silences her with a look, one he rarely employs yet is supremely effective. For most of our lives, he’s left the care of his daughters to our mother and our nanny, Magda, too busy running his sugar company and playing politics. But these are extraordinary times, the stakes higher than any we’ve ever faced. There is nothing Fidel would love more than to make an example of Emilio Perez and his family—the quintessential image of everything his revolution seeks to destroy. We’re not the wealthiest family in Cuba, or the most powerful one, but the close relationship between my father and the former president is impossible to ignore. Even the careless words of a thirteen-year-old girl can prove deadly in this climate.

Maria falls silent.

Our mother walks beside our father, her head held high. She insisted we wear our finest dresses today, hats and gloves, brushed our hair until it gleamed. It wouldn’t do for her daughters to look anything but their best, even in exile.

Defiant in defeat.

We might not have fought in the mountains, haven’t held weapons in our glove-covered hands, but there is a battle in all of us. One Fidel has ignited like a flame that will never be extinguished. And so we walk toward the gate in our favorite dresses, Cuban pride and pragmatism on full display. It’s our way of taking the gowns with us, even if they’re missing the jewels that normally adorn them. What remains of our jewelry is buried in the backyard of our home.

For when we return.

To be Cuban is to be proud—it is both our greatest gift and our biggest curse. We serve no kings, bow no heads, bear our troubles on our backs as though they are nothing at all. There is an art to this, you see. An art to appearing as though everything is effortless, that your world is a gilded one, when the reality is that your knees beneath your silk gown buckle from the weight of it all. We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel.

We try to preserve the fiction that this is merely a vacation, a short trip abroad, but the gazes following us around the airport know better—

Beatriz’s fingers wrap around mine for one blissful moment. Those olive green–clad sentries watch our every move. There’s something reassuring in her fear, in that crack in the facade. I don’t let go.

The world as we know it has died, and I do not recognize the one that has taken its place.

A sense of hopelessness overpowers the departure area. You see it in the eyes of the men and women waiting to board the plane, in the tired set of their shoulders, the shock etched across their faces, their possessions clutched in their hands. It’s present in the somber children, their laughter extinguished by the miasma that has overtaken all of us.

This used to be a happy place. We would welcome our father when he returned from a business trip, sat in these same seats three years earlier, full of excitement to travel to New York on vacation.

We take our seats, huddling together, Beatriz on one side of me, Maria on the other. Isabel sits apart from us, her pain a mantle around her shoulders. There are different degrees of loss here, the weight of what we leave behind inescapable.

My parents sit with their fingers intertwined, one of the rare displays of physical affection I’ve ever seen them partake in, worry in their eyes, grief in their hearts.

How long will we be gone? When will we return? Which version of Cuba will greet us when we do?

We’ve been here for hours now, the seconds creeping by with interminable slowness. My dress itches, a thin line of sweat running down my neck. Nausea rolls around in my stomach, an acrid taste in my mouth.

“I’m going to be sick,” I murmur to Beatriz.

She squeezes my fingers. “No, you’re not. We’re almost there.”

I beat the nausea back, staring down at the ground in front of me. The weight of the stares is pointed and sharp, and at the same time, it’s as if we exist in a vacuum. The sound has been sucked from the room save for the occasional rustle of clothing, the stray sob. We exist in a state of purgatory, waiting, waiting—

“Now boarding . . .”

My father rises from his seat on creaky limbs; he’s aged years in the nearly two months since President Batista fled the country, since the winds of revolution drifted from the Sierra Maestra to our corner of the island. Emilio Perez was once revered as one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Cuba; now there’s little to distinguish my father from the man sitting across the aisle, from the gentleman lining up at the gate. We’re all citizens of no country now, all orphans of circumstance.

I reach out and take Maria’s hand with my spare one.

She’s silent, as though reality has finally sunk in. We all are.

We walk in a line, somber and reticent, making our way onto the tarmac. There’s no breeze in the air today, the heat overpowering as we shuffle forward, the sun beating down on our backs, the plane looming in front of us.

I can’t do this. I can’t leave. I can’t stay.

Beatriz pulls me forward, a line of Perez girls, and I continue on.

We board the plane in an awkward shuffle, the silence cracking and splintering as hushed voices give way to louder ones, a cacophony of tears filling the cabin. Wails. Now that we’ve escaped the departure area, the veneer of civility is stripped away to something unvarnished and raw—

Mourning.

I take a seat next to the window, peering out the tiny glass, hoping for a better view than that of the airport terminal, hoping . . .

We roll back from the gate with a jolt and lurch, silence descending in the cabin. In a flash, it’s New Year’s Eve again and I’m standing in the ballroom of my parents’ friends’ house, a glass of champagne in one hand. I’m laughing, my heart so full. There’s fear lingering in the background, both fear and uncertainty, but there’s also a sense of hope.

In minutes, my entire world changed.

President Batista has fled the country! Long live a free Cuba!

Is this freedom?

We’re gaining speed now, hurtling down the runway. My body heaves with the movement, and I lose the battle, grabbing the bag in the seat pocket in front of me, emptying the contents of my stomach.

Beatriz strokes my back as I hunch over, as the wheels leave the ground, as we soar into the sky. The nausea hits me again and again, an ignominious parting gift, and when I finally look up, a startling shock of blue and green greets me, an artist’s palette beneath me.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba, he described it as the most beautiful land human eyes had ever seen. And it is. But there’s more beyond the sea, the mountains, the clear sky. There’s so much more that we leave behind us.

How long will we be gone?

A year? Two?

Ojalá.

Marisol

JANUARY 2017

When I was younger, I begged my grandmother to tell me about Cuba. It was a mythical island, contained in my heart, entirely drawn from the version of Cuba she created in exile in Miami and the stories she shared with me. I was caught between two lands—two iterations of myself—the one I inhabited in my body and the one I lived in my dreams.

We’d sit in the living room of my grandparents’ sprawling house in Coral Gables, and she’d show me old photos that had been smuggled out of the country by intrepid family members, weaving tales about her life in Havana, the adventures of her siblings, painting a portrait of a land that existed in my imagination. Her stories smelled of gardenias and jasmine, tasted of plantains and mamey, and always, the sound of her old record player. Each time she’d finish her tale she’d smile and promise I would see it myself one day, that we’d return in grand style, reopening her family’s seaside estate in Varadero and the elegant home that took up nearly the entire block of a tree-lined street in Havana.

When Fidel dies, we’ll return. You’ll see.

And finally, after nearly sixty years of keeping Cubans in suspense, of false alarms and hoaxes, he did die, outlasting my grandmother by mere months. The night he died, my family opened a bottle of champagne my great-grandfather had bought nearly sixty years ago for such an occasion, toasting Castro’s demise in our inimitable fashion. The champagne, sadly, like Fidel himself, was past its prime, but we partied on Calle Ocho in Miami until the sun rose, and still—

Still we remain.

His death did not erase nearly sixty years of exile, or ensure a future of freedom. Instead I’m smuggling my grandmother’s ashes inside my suitcase, concealed as jars in my makeup case, honoring her last request to me while we pray, hope, wait for things to change.

***

When I die, take me back to Cuba. Spread my ashes over the land I love. You’ll know where.

And now sitting on the plane somewhere between Mexico City and Havana, armed with a notebook filled with scribbled street names and places to visit, a guidebook I purchased off the Internet, I have no clue where to lay her to rest.

They read my grandmother’s will six months ago, thirty family members seated in a conference room in our attorney’s office on Brickell. Her sisters were there—Beatriz and Maria. Isabel passed away the year before. Their children came with their spouses and their children, the next generations paying their respects. Then there was my father—her only child—my two sisters, and me.

The main parts of her will were fairly straightforward, no major surprises to be expected. My grandfather had died over two decades earlier and turned the family sugar business over to my father to run. There was the house in Palm Beach, which went to my sister Daniela. The farm in Wellington and the horses were left to my sister Lucia, the middle child. And I ended up with the house in Coral Gables, the site of so many imaginary trips to Cuba.

There were monetary bequests, and artwork, lists upon lists of items read by the attorney in a matter-of-fact tone, his announcements met with the occasional tear or exclamation of gratitude. And then there was her final wish—

Grandparents aren’t supposed to play favorites, but my grandmother never played by anyone else’s rules. Maybe it was the fact that I came into the world two months before my mother caught my father in bed with a rubber heiress. Lucia and Daniela had years of family unity before the Great Divorce, and after that, they had a bond with my mother I never quite achieved. My early years were logged between strategy sessions at the lawyers’ offices, shuttled back and forth between homes, until finally my mother washed her hands of it all and went back to Spain, leaving me under the care of my grandmother. So perhaps because I was the daughter she never had, yet raised as her own, it made sense that she charged me with this—

No one in the family questioned it.

From her sisters, I received a list of addresses—including the Perez estate in Havana and the beach house no one had seen in over fifty years. They put me in contact with Ana Rodriguez, my grandmother’s childhood best friend. Despite the passage of time, she’d been gracious enough to offer to host me for the week I’d be in Cuba. Perhaps she could shed some light on my grandmother’s final resting place.

You always wanted to see Cuba, and it’s my greatest regret that we were unable to do so in my lifetime. I am consoled, at least, by the image of you strolling along the Malecón, the spray of salt water on your face. I imagine you kneeling in the pews of the Cathedral of Havana, sitting at a table at the Tropicana. Did I ever tell you about the night we snuck out and went to the club?

I always dreamed Fidel would die before me, that I would return home. But now my dream is a different one. I am an old woman, and I have come to accept that I will never see Cuba again. But you will.

To be in exile is to have the things you love most in the world—the air you breathe, the earth you walk upon—taken from you. They exist on the other side of a wall—there and not—unaltered by time and circumstance, preserved in a perfect memory in a land of dreams.

My Cuba is gone, the Cuba I gave to you over the years swept away by the winds of revolution. It’s time for you to discover your own Cuba.

I slip the letter back into my purse, the words blurring together. It’s been six months, and yet the ache is still there, intensified by the moments when I feel her loss most acutely, when she should be beside me and is not.

The sight of the merenguitos she would make me on special occasions, their sugary taste dissolving on my tongue in a cloud of white powder, the sound of my childhood—our musical icons: Celia Cruz, Benny Moré, and the Buena Vista Social Club—and now this, the wheels of the airplane touching down on Cuban soil.

I miss my grandmother.

Tears spill onto my cheeks. It’s not merely the absence of her; it’s this feeling of connection as the airplane taxis down the same runway that carried her away from Cuba nearly sixty years ago.

I stare out the window, treated to my first glimpse of José Martí International Airport. At first glance, it looks like the countless Caribbean airports I’ve flown through on vacations in my life. But underneath it all there’s a sense of recognition and a thrill that runs through me. A sigh that escapes my body as though I’ve been holding my breath and can finally exhale.

It’s that sensation of being away for a long time and returning to your house, the sight of it greeting you—both familiar and changed—stepping through the doorway, dropping your bags on the ground next to you with a sense of completion, your journey over, and taking in your surroundings, surveying all you left behind, and thinking—

I am home.

Chapter two

I step off the plane, heading through the airport, my bags clutched in hand. All my life Cuba has been this mythical entity, at times tangible, at others an ephemeral presence removed from my grasp. But now it’s real, and while there’s nothing romantic or glamorous about the arrival hall, excitement fills me.

Unfortunately, the romance of the moment is dimmed by the tedium of time. Minutes pass, nearly an hour going by before I near the front of the immigration line. I take note of the number of immigration officers sitting behind counters, the ease with which the tourists in front of me are processed. Officially, I’m here on a journalist’s visa, writing an article for the online travel magazine I freelance for in Miami—an article on tourism in Cuba now that restrictions have eased. I pitched it to my editor as a multi-part series focusing on introducing Americans to Cuba and sealed the deal with my offer to finance my own travel. Unofficially, of course, my grandmother’s ashes are in my suitcase.

There’s a process for returning an exile to Cuba for burial, but after speaking to family friends who faced the same challenges—denials, red tape, and government intervention—this seemed like the easiest route, one undertaken by many Cubans each year. As I smuggle my grandmother back into the country, I swear I can feel her looking down on me and smiling, thoroughly delighted to slip something past the regime she loathed.

All my paperwork is together, visa in hand, as I shuffle forward in the immigration queue, praying my makeshift urn makes it through without any issues.

I present my documents to the official, my heart pounding as I answer his questions in Spanish, in the language I’ve spoken my entire life. There’s a strange divide here, the sense that we are connected—countrymen—and yet, not. Despite the Spanish American mother, I’ve always considered myself more Cuban than anything else, and in Miami it’s never been an issue. My grandparents are Cuban, my father Cuban, therefore I am Cuban. But will it matter here that my skin is lighter than many of the country’s citizens, that my blood is not fully Cuban? Am I an outsider here or is the ancestry I claim enough?

He waves me on, and I head through with my bags, nerves filling me as I slide my carry-on and my grandmother’s ashes through the X-ray machine while the Cuban officials ensure I’m not smuggling contraband into the country. The belt heaves and sighs as my bag sails through. I hold my breath—

I make my way through the X-ray machine and wait, sure this will be the moment when they flag my bag, images of being led to a windowless interrogation room tucked away in the airport flashing before me. The sheer fact that tourist travel to Cuba is still prohibited for Americans hammers home the unpredictability of this situation, the reality that I am venturing into murky waters and uncharted territory.

While no one questioned my grandmother’s wishes to have her ashes spread in Cuba or her decision to entrust me with the task, my trip has been met with caution within the family, especially those who had firsthand experience with the regime.

Never forget where you are, Beatriz warned me. The rights you enjoy here will vanish once you land in Havana. Never take that for granted.

My great-aunt Maria sent me daily emails filled with news articles and travel information from the State Department in the weeks leading up to my departure, the State Department’s words emboldened in my mind . . . may detain anyone at any time . . . if you violate local laws even unknowingly . . . arrested . . . imprisoned . . .

Nothing like the potential of capricious imprisonment to instill fear inside you. I don’t doubt Cuba is different from any place I’ve traveled before, but at the same time, I can’t quite reconcile the images I’ve seen on TV and in the news over the years—brightly colored antique cars, crashing waves, and romantic architecture—with the stark portrayal my great-aunts warn of.

My great-aunts are protective of me and my cousins, but when they speak of Cuba there’s another level of fear present, one that hints at unspoken horrors whose impact has not lessened with time. I’ve tried to explain to them that things are different now, that it’s not 1959, that the revolution is over, the U.S. Embassy reopened in Havana, and we’ve entered a new dawn in Cuban-American relations.

Nothing I said lessened the worry in their eyes, and when Maria insisted I carry her rosary tucked away in my bag, given the risk I’m taking with the ashes, I didn’t protest. I can likely use the extra luck.

I shuffle forward in the line of travelers.

Just let me get my grandmother through, and I promise I’ll stay out of trouble for the remainder of my trip.

My gaze is riveted to the X-ray machine.

Another officer gives me a cursory nod, and I grab my bag from the belt once it has sailed through, a chorus of hallelujahs filling me as I make my way through the airport.

I pick up the rest of my luggage from the baggage area and make my way through customs, the nerves subsiding with each step I take, my unease making way for excitement akin to the night before Christmas. I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.

I exit the airport and get my first true glimpse of Havana, take my first breath of Cuban air. There’s a slight breeze in the air, but beneath it the humidity hits me full force, my hair beginning to stick to the back of my neck. January in Havana feels a lot like January in Miami. I reach into my bag and pull my sunglasses out, sliding them onto my face.

The sidewalk outside the airport is cheerfully chaotic, friends and families hugging one another, loud voices yelling in exuberant Spanish, people placing luggage into the enormous trunks of brightly colored cars. Most of the cars are nearly sixty years old, some even older, but their age is reflected more in the style than in their condition, as paint shines, chrome gleams, pride of ownership evident in many of the vehicles.

I scan the sea of people, some holding small signs with names scrawled upon them, looking for Ana Rodriguez. I’m eager to meet the woman my grandmother told me about, her words filled with nostalgia and affection.

We were inseparable from the time we were little girls. Her family lived next door to ours, and we used to play together in the garden. Did I tell you about the time I tried to climb the wall separating our houses, Marisol?

I always envisioned the friendship between my grandmother and Ana as a Cuban version of Lucy and Ethel—with my grandmother in the role of Lucy given the stories she told me.

“Marisol Ferrera?”

I turn at the sound of my name and come face-to-face with a man leaning against a bright blue convertible with a massive chrome grill and white accents running down the sides.

“Yes?”

He pushes off the car, the hem of his white guayabera fluttering in the breeze as he walks toward me, all long-limbed grace.

He greets me in smooth English, holding his hand out to me. “I’m Luis Rodriguez. My grandmother asked me to pick you up. She’s sorry she couldn’t meet you, but she wasn’t feeling well.”

I take his hand, his calloused fingers rubbing against mine, his handshake firm, his skin warm. His thumb grazes the inside of my wrist as his hand releases mine, and a tremor slides through me.

I blink, my gaze narrowing slightly as I study him, wishing I’d paid more attention to what Beatriz told me about Ana’s family.

He looks to be about my age or a couple years older—mid-thirties, perhaps. His hair is full, a few shades lighter than mine—more brown than black—his skin a deep tan, his eyes a dark brown. Crinkly lines surround his eyes, adding character to his face. A close-trimmed beard covers his jaw.

He’s handsome in that way some men are—as though the sum of their parts while individually nondescript creates a charisma about them that makes you stand up and pay attention.

“Is she okay?” I ask, responding in Spanish, ignoring the flutter of nerves taking residence in my stomach.

His full lips curve into a smile, the punch of which I’m not altogether prepared for, and I get the impression I’ve amused him.

“She’s fine,” he replies back in Spanish. “She tires as the day wears on.”

My grandmother was seventy-seven when she died. Ana is nearly a year older.

“She’s excited to meet you, though. She’s spoken of little else these past few weeks.”

He leans forward, lifting my large suitcase in one hand, grabbing my carry-on with his other.

“Are you ready? Is this everything?”

I nod. He ignores my protests that I can carry my own bags, and I follow him to the car, unable to resist the urge to slide my hand over one of the sleek curves.

“First time in Cuba?” he asks as he sets the smaller bag down and opens the passenger door for me.

“Yes.”

I sit on the giant bench seat, my gaze running over the car’s interior. The seats are covered in leather that looks like once, long ago, it was white and has now turned to cream. I imagine my grandmother sitting in a car like this, wearing one of the dresses I’ve seen in the few photographs that remain from her life in Cuba. For a moment, I time-travel.

I wait while Luis loads the bags into the trunk and makes his way to the front seat, firing up the old engine. I reach instinctively for the seat belt, freezing mid-motion when I come up empty.

Right.

I truly have time-traveled.

“This is amazing. Did you restore the car on your own?”

“I have a cousin. He’s good with his hands.” He gives the dashboard an affectionate pat. “She’s temperamental, but if I treat her right, she doesn’t let me down.”

I grin. “Your car is female?”

“Of course.”

He navigates back onto the road with a honk and a wave out the window for the car behind us.

A mix of classic cars and boxy, more modern-looking vehicles pass by us on the road. Some are in near-pristine condition like Luis’s; others appear to be held together by ingenuity and prayer. The car accelerates, and I grip the doorframe as palm trees pass us by, the vehicle surprisingly fast for its age. The wind blows my hair around my face, the breeze somewhat alleviating the heat.

We hit a few bumps in the road, the terrain rough, my body tossed around without the security of a seat belt. The landscape changes to giant signs proclaiming the greatness of the Cuban Revolution, the supremacy of communism. Fidel Castro’s face stares back at me, followed by images of Che Guevara, his hair billowing in the imaginary wind. These are the monsters of my childhood, and it’s strange to see them in this context, venerated rather than vilified.

“So you’re a writer?” Luis shouts over the sounds of the wind and the cars rushing past us.

“I am,” I shout back. “Freelance, mostly.”

It’s taken approximately a decade of writing magazine articles and blog posts for me to consider myself a writer, and part of me still waits for someone to call me out when I use the moniker. Writing is not a profession anyone in my family respects or understands—my salary has too few zeros, my schedule is too erratic, the prestige of my career choices not nearly enough. They view it as an eccentric hobby, an anecdote trotted out at parties, a source of bemusement rather than something that—mostly—pays the bills. They would have been much happier to see me working at Perez Sugar—well, besides my grandmother.

Life is too short to be unhappy, Marisol. To play it safe. To do what is expected of you rather than follow your heart. Look at us. One day we had everything, the next it was knocked over like a castle in the sand. You never know what life will throw at you.

She bought forty copies of my first magazine article, handing the periodical out with a smile to anyone and everyone that crossed her path, proclaiming that her granddaughter had written an excellent piece about organizing your closet that had inspired her to transform her own spacious dressing room.

“What do you write?”

I’m surprised by the genuine interest in the question rather than the disinterested politeness I’m used to or the quips about when I’m going to get a “real” job.

“Lifestyle pieces,” I answer. “Travel, fashion, food, that sort of thing. I’m working on an article on Cuban tourism now that relations are opening up.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

It’s funny, because I think he’s the first person to lead with that question. Typically people want to know where I’ve been published, if I’ve written for a “big” entity, if I’m successful by whatever metric they’ve decided matters—money, fame, notoriety. I like him better for getting to the heart of it—the reason behind why I write.

“Most of the time. It’s fun. I like traveling and seeing new places, enjoy meeting new people. It’s usually a puzzle—I know where I’ll end up, the words I’ll use to get there, but the magic comes when I sit at my computer and string sentences together to reach the heart of what I’m trying to say. There’s always a new challenge, a new surprise waiting for me when I begin researching.”

And I like the freedom it brings, but I don’t say that. I grow restless if I’m in one place too long, and while I always return to Miami, the familiar itch springs up after a month or so. An itch that has infected other areas of my life since my grandmother died, her loss and the memories she left behind making me examine my own legacy—thirty-one, unmarried, childless, driven by a career I like, but don’t love.

“So it’s the quest you enjoy?”

I never really thought about it that way, but—

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

We pass by a wall decorated in a mural of Cuban flags, and I sneak a sidelong glance at Luis. His arm rests on the seat next to mine, inches between us.

Has he ever left Cuba? Do the Cubans who remained resent those who left? Are they worried we will attempt to retake the things we lost when the revolution came? Would he leave if he could? Does he wonder about the world beyond Cuba’s shores? It’s strange to be in a place that is so cut off from the rest of the world, to realize we likely view life through such different lenses.

“You can just ask me.” A smile plays on his lips as his gaze flicks to the rearview mirror. “I can practically feel all the questions in your mind pushing to get out.”

I open my mouth to object, but he shakes his head, his gaze back on the road.

“Journalists.”

There’s a sort of indulgent affection in that word.

“What do you do?” I ask instead of responding to his statement.

“I’m a history professor at the University of Havana. I teach courses on Cuban history. If you have questions about the city for your article, I’m happy to answer them.”

“That would be great, thanks. I have a list of places I want to see—the Malecón, the Hotel Nacional, the Tropicana—but I’d love to visit sites locals frequent as well.”

“I’m happy to show you around, then.”

I didn’t expect a built-in tour guide when I accepted Ana’s invitation to stay with her, but I’m grateful for his help. Besides, it’s not exactly a hardship to be shown around Cuba by a handsome, intelligent man.

“How much do you know about Cuba?” he asks.

“I was raised on it,” I answer proudly. “My grandmother’s favorite pastime was to tell me stories about Cuba, the house where she grew up, trips to Varadero, attending dances in the squares. Cuba was part of my everyday life. In the food we ate, the music we listened to. It still is, but now that my grandmother is gone it feels more removed.”