further unwanted pity or attention.
I was only seven years old when Saul moved into our house. From the very beginning, the struggles between me and Saul mounted and grew more spiteful with each passing year. Just as Saul hated to have me around, I also despised the idea of Saul coming in and taking over our home and our lives. From the very beginning, when Mamá first introduced Saul into our lives, my anger and revulsion for the man burned like acid being forced down my throat, and I was helpless to do anything about it. Would he try to be my father, telling me what to do all the time? What could a young boy do to prevent a desperate, lonely single mother from marrying a man who had offered promises of stability and comfort? I figured my mother had the right to make her own decisions, to feel safe and protected, to not have to work so hard or worry so much. But I was not going to fall for Saul or any phony-bologna fathering. No one was going to tell me how to live my life!
Soon enough, I started getting into trouble in school. Some of it was intentional on my part. As they say, even negative attention is still attention. But as the years passed and I grew older and more resentful of Saul—and Saul’s drinking grew more insufferable—I purposely blew off my studies, preferring to spend my free time hanging out with my buddies, my best buddies, at the beach flirting with the mulattas (the best-looking girls in all of Cuba, as far as I was concerned!) or playing my conga drum at the park. By the time I entered high school, I had almost been held back two times.
With his respected status in the community, Abuelo had needed to call the principal of the school on my behalf on several occasions. My grades were the lowest in the whole class. The lowest in all subjects, except math. It’s not that I was stupid, but who had time for school? I was going to be rich and famous and admired without all that studying and those ridiculous rules.
Most of my early troubles at school were just bits of silly mishaps. Like the time our teacher fell right on her ass in front of the whole class. We had been practicing for the class spring performance, and Señora Vaulkner yelled out for all of us to clear the stage and get ready to rehearse the first act of Cyrano de Bergerac. How was I supposed to know that she meant for us to clear everything except the one chair she was going to sit on? Didn’t she learn anything from de Bergerac about the importance of clear communication?
This time, it didn’t matter what my excuse had been for pulling that chair from under Señora Vaulkner or how many phone calls Abuelo made begging for the principal’s consideration. I was suspended for three days. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” they’d said, and all the apologies in the world didn’t help either. Truth was, I wasn’t very sorry. Señora Vaulkner was una idiota, an idiot, as far as I was concerned.
The calls from school became more and more frequent, though, and the incident with Señora Vaulkner was just one more perfect opportunity for Saul to deepen his wrath and misgiving for me. Being home was more of a problem for me than going to school. Saul Posternik had become a permanent thorn in my side, a harsh and abusive intruder in our home. He had no place in our little family, and I would forever feel the sting of Saul’s cold, interfering, and abusive presence there. Even my smallest fiascoes were Saul’s pleasures, and he relished in making me feel as worthless as he could. “One of these days,” he would warn me over and over again.
Yes, Saul. One of these days.
To everyone else, Saul appeared to be an upstanding man in La Colonia Hebrea, a childless widower himself. What a godsend this man is for Mimi and Max. Imagine Saul coming along just in time.
Others never saw what I saw or what really happened behind our closed doors. I knew Saul and my mother’s marriage was one of convenience and not love, so I kept an acquired silence about my true feelings for Mamá’s sake and did everything—anything—to not be at home when Saul was there, which is what eventually really kept me out on the streets more than I needed to be. And so the years passed in silence and escape.
Saul and I continued to do battle whenever I was home, leaving poor Mamá in the middle of our hateful bouts and me looking for more trouble on the Havana city streets. I didn’t know which of us put up a more stubborn fight—Mamá, the old man, or me. I clearly remember the last night I spent in that house. It was way past midnight when Saul had come home, stumbling and stinking of cheap rum.
“Where have you been until now?” I asked quietly. “It’s the middle of the night.” Mamá had fallen asleep on the sofa waiting for Saul to come home—as she routinely did in those days.
“None of your business,” Saul slurred. He swaggered toward me like a bear tip-toeing clumsily on its hind legs.
“Mamá was worried about you, Saul. Why do you do this to her?”
“What I do is none of your goddamned business, you little pedazo de mierda, you little piece of shit!” Saul roared. Standing there stinky and sloppy, pummeling me with insults, a string of saliva driveled down his chin. “You’re not even worth un centavo! Not a single cent!”
He was brutal with his tongue, but I was growing callous to Saul’s insults. Everything I did was a chance for Saul to belittle me. But that night, the old man came at me with his fists poised, scowling and drooling, rum reeking from his every pore. He was clearly looking for a fight. Before I knew it, Saul lunged at me and hurled his right fist at the side of my head, knocking me clear off my feet. My vision blurred and, in the darkness, I saw nothing but blinding stars. A lucky punch.
I fell backward, crashing into the glass coffee table in the middle of the living room. My eyes puddled with tears, and the room spun and flickered like one of those old silent movies. A huge, throbbing purple knot rose immediately on my temple where Saul’s fist had connected with my head. I was drowning and couldn’t catch my breath.
Mamá jumped off the sofa, suddenly jolted awake by the crash of my body against the table. Before she could even rub the slumber from her eyes, I bolted for my room, ashamed and humiliated, and slammed the door. The next morning, I packed my backpack and my drum and walked to my grandparents’ house. I could only assume that Mamá worried about me in those hot moments between me and Saul, but her complacent silence spoke volumes to me. She never insisted that I return home, nor did she mention the fight with Saul ever again.
My mind raged with the mere thought of Saul Posternik. One particularly starry night after I had left my mother’s house and found a bit of respite in my new home at my grandparents’ apartment above the factory, I heard the unrelenting wind rattling through the window drapes and that feathery whisper that I had been hearing more and more often over the years.
“Paciencia, mi hijo.” Patience. “Él no sabe mejor…ser fuerte en mente y espíritu.” He doesn’t know any better…be strong in mind and spririt.
Ultimately, I did let go of the load of remorse I felt for leaving Mamá at home with Saul, even knowing how volatile he could be. After all, it was my mother’s choice to stay with him. I moved in permanently with my grandparents in their apartment above their shoe factory. I spent my days daydreaming on the salty beaches and breezy parks of Havana and my nights hanging out in the pool halls and saloons with my buddies. In fact, much to my grandparents’ added worries, I stopped going to school altogether. Yes, it was growing more and more dangerous to be out on the streets—the political situation growing tenser every day in Cuba—but Havana was my wonderland, and I was living my life my own way.
I had more girlfriends than I could keep up with, I had my music and my friends, and I was learning more on the hot and steamy streets of Havana than I ever did in the classroom. What more could I ask for? And so it was that I was forced to grow up between homes and priorities—taking care of myself. No one was going to
