“Pardon me?”

She leans in closer, busying herself with wiping off the table. “Don’t mind me saying so, but a young, pretty girl like you deserves better than a man like that. I see them come in and out of here; all of them have a story, you know. Their wife doesn’t understand them, they’re just together for the kids, it gets lonely traveling so much, but someone has to provide for the family.” She makes a noise of disgust. “Creeps, if you ask me.”

“I’m not—he’s not my lover or anything. He’s an old family friend.”

“They’ll say that, too, in the beginning. They’ll say just about anything to get close to you.” Her eyes narrow. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Just be careful. This city can swallow you up before you even realize it. Lots of pretty girls like you come here looking for adventure and find heartbreak instead.”

Something about the waitress’s manner, her maternal concern, reminds me of my nanny, Magda. My father told my sisters and me that Magda left Havana and went to the country to stay with her family. While I understand her reluctance to leave Cuba and her family, it doesn’t feel right not having her in the United States with us.

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Would you like another drink?” she asks.

I order one more. The occasion calls for it.

* * *

? ? ?

The next evening, I peer out at Harlem from the comfort of a cab, the exterior of the Hotel Theresa looming before me. I spent the day exploring the neighborhood around my hotel, and now, the farther away we travel, the more my surroundings change. The hotel is a far cry from mine, the surrounding businesses anything but swanky. But the hotel is only one part of the picture, and at the moment, it’s far from the most dramatic.

I never realized how much I viewed America as a haven, how much I enjoyed the freedom from having to hear Fidel’s speeches, the absence of the yoke of fear we lived under those weeks before we left Cuba. Fidel’s presence is a constant reminder of all we’ve lost, all he’s stolen, and now, he’s here, and this is another thing he’s taken from us, as he invades our sanctuary, too.

Mobs of people carrying signs surround the hotel entrance, police barricades erected to maintain a semblance of crowd control. Except it doesn’t look controlled at all. It’s chaos, and the sight of those people takes me back to the streets of Havana in the days after the revolution, after President Batista boarded a plane for the Dominican Republic in the dead of night and left us in the hands of Fidel and his followers.

The energy here is palpable, the excitement and hope similar to the messianic welcome Fidel received when he marched into Havana. To these people he’s a hero, a Robin Hood figure who has taken from the wealthy and given to the poor. It likely doesn’t hurt that he is handsome in a rugged sort of way, his green fatigues heralding him a soldier, the beard exotic to some, the image he has so carefully cultivated designed to appeal to those rebelling against the old guard.

The sight of their fervor disgusts me.

These people don’t have to live under his regime. They are free here, are able to protest against their government. They celebrate the man who has taken such liberties away from us.

“They say Khrushchev came to see him,” the cab driver comments, a measure of awe in his voice. “Can you imagine that?”

I make a noncommittal sound, my attention on the scene before me.

Someone has hoisted up a Cuban flag, hanging it from the hotel, a symbol of defiance in a foreign land.

A few protestors are interspersed in the throng, their signs decrying the injustices in Cuba under Fidel’s regime. And still, so many—far too many—of the Americans cheer for Fidel, their ignorance and glee a slap in the face. What will it take to make them understand, for them to listen to us?

Artists flock to him, world leaders praise him, the intellectual set fawns over him, writers and poets dine at his table, but for all of their “enlightenment,” they do not bother to look beneath the green-fatigued facade. Is his uniform still so romantic when they learn how many men have seen those fatigues in the last moments of their lives, condemned to death without any semblance of justice? Would they still admire him if they heard the shots from the firing squads, the cries of the murdered, smelled the blood of their countrymen? Write a poem about that, our slow, never-ending death.

“Where would you like me to let you off?” the driver asks me.

“Up ahead is fine.”

“Are you sure? The crowd is growing rowdier.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He pulls over about a block away from the Theresa, and I pay him for the trip and step out of the car, wrapping my coat more tightly around my body, in part to ward off the late-September chill that the rest of the city appears immune to, and in part to cover my dress.

For the longest time, I’ve felt as though I hovered in the precipice between girl and woman. My mother has expected marriage from me—my little sister is a wife and mother—and society has pushed me into a grown-up state I am largely unprepared for, as though once I turned eighteen, I miraculously crossed some imaginary threshold that made me ready to go from my parents’ house to my husband’s house.

I’ve hovered in this in-between, staring at my reflection in the mirror and feeling slightly betrayed by the body that decided to grow curves and breasts somewhere along the way, that propelled me into this stage of life whether I was prepared for it or not.

Oh, I flaunted my newfound womanhood as soon as it came, because there was power in it. But still, I was always uneasy, as though my body belonged to someone else, never to me, as though it was a commodity to be bought and sold on my behalf.

Not tonight.

Tonight, I looked at myself in the mirror, and it occurred to me that perhaps adulthood had come not with a white gown and veil thrust upon me against my wishes, but rather in this moment, with this decision to claim my womanhood, to use it to get what I want rather than what everyone else wants for me.

Tonight, I feel powerful.

My heels click against the pavement, heads turning my way with each step. The crowd looks larger up close; a group of protestors shout at a pair of camera-wielding tourists. In my younger years, I would have stood beside them, holding a sign proclaiming Fidel a villain, shining a light on his human rights abuses for the world to see. I flash the protestors a quick, private smile, wishing I could commend them for the sense they have injected into this farce, the courage they’re expressing standing up for their convictions.

A policeman wades over to the protestors and yells at them. I duck my head to the side as a reporter raises his camera and snaps a picture of the interaction. In Havana, my sisters and I were forever captured in the society pages, our faces well-known enough that circumspection became a necessity.

Security personnel stand outside the Theresa, men in serviceable black suits that practically scream “U.S. Government.” A few more disreputable sorts are mixed in with the fray, bearded men in fatigues who must be part of Fidel’s personal security detail. I scan their faces quickly, but no one is familiar to me.

I remove my coat once I’m inside, and one of the security men guides me through the hotel. With each step, people stare, whispers in English and Spanish reaching my ears. A man laughs somewhere in the background, a comment about my figure causing my cheeks to heat.

We follow the growing crowd, over the threshold to another room, my heartbeat kicking up with each passing moment, a tingle running down my spine.

There are more men dressed in fatigues here, another horrible reminder of what the streets of Havana looked like in the aftermath of Fidel’s coup. The atmosphere is jovial, smoke in the air, fat Cuban cigars in hand. It’s the scent of my childhood, my father smoking on the veranda of our home in Miramar, Maria playing in the backyard, the chef making paella in the kitchen while Isabel hit discordant notes on the piano. Tears well, and not just from the smoke.

And then the crowd shifts, and my eyes adjust to the dim light, the haze, and I step forward.