Last Seen in Havana by Teresa Dovalpage

Author:Teresa Dovalpage [Dovalpage, Teresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

I left the National Library with three photocopies of the Granma page after thanking the librarian profusely.

“Tell your mom to come by someday!” she said.

How I wished I could do so! There was a bicitaxi outside. The driver was a young man who sported a Miami Marlins cap.

“Need a ride, lady?” he said in English. Obviously, I was still channeling my inner American.

“Miramar?”

“Yes!”

A portable radio had been attached to the vehicle handle, and I was treated to a reggaeton concert on the way home. The lyrics, about a cat that finds a bunch of mice and skinny rats dancing in its territory, were downright nonsensical. The chorus kept repeating the nonword bajanda.

“That’s Chocolate MC,” the bicitaxi driver informed me officiously. “You must have seen him on TV many times, eh?”

“Sorry, but I’ve never heard of him.”

“Don’t you live in La Yuma? He’s super famous there!”

During the bumpy ride, I took out one of the pages and examined it again. There was a clear resemblance between that tall blonde and me. I touched my own hair, which was a few inches longer than hers, and traced the contour of my face. Her posture was straight and she looked at ease—I wouldn’t have appeared so self-confident in the same situation, so close to Fidel Castro!

I added years and wrinkles to the woman’s blurred face and envisioned our meeting. Would it be emotional? Awkward? Painful? Could a long-lost mother-daughter bond be restored? I let many scenarios run through my mind (in some, we had slid backward in time and I was still a little girl) until it occurred to me that without a real name, I wasn’t any closer to finding her than before.

Or was I? If she had a Facebook account, or any social media presence, facial recognition technologies could help me track her down. It might be difficult but not impossible. I wouldn’t give up now that a tangible image of “Tania” had finally come to my hands.

I thought of the card with the bars. This was, perhaps, Mamina’s way to “release” what she knew about my mother. The orisha deck had helped, and I was grateful to Candela. But the fact that Mamina had waited so many years to tell me about this write-up still hurt. I could have started looking for Tania much sooner had I known!

As the driver pedaled through the Havana streets, the resentment I felt toward my mother for having abandoned me began to melt. I saw myself again in our backyard under a mango tree, at the ashen hour. “Tania” approached me quietly, her feet not quite touching the gravel path. A smell of roses engulfed me . . . The voice of reason interrupted my reverie. Wait until you find out for sure. It may not be her after all. But my heart said it was. Everything matched Mamina’s story: the date, her presence at the military unit and our similar looks.

I caressed the page and realized I wasn’t angry at Tania anymore for having dropped me “like a hot potato.

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