Spirits of Questionable Origin

  It is easier to leave Cuba when you are older.  This is what my father told my brothers when his uncle Jesús, his mother’s brother, finally came to the United States.  He was in his sixties. My father and most of his family were able to escape in 1967 under some legal crapshoot called the Lottery, in which a family name is drawn and that family is allowed to leave on a plane rather than a makeshift watercraft with the American Coast Guard nabbing you out of the water in the shallows of the Florida Straits before they send you back to Fidel’s prisons.  I do not know how Jesús got to the United States, though there are rumors that he was released from the country and traveled up through South America.  One day he simply sauntered into my father’s shop, dressed head to toe in white, and my father gave him a welcoming embrace.  Both patted the other on the back of the shoulder in some DePaula gesture of emotional discomfort.  I imagine the details; I was not there. 
     I have been told that he was a bus driver in Havana, and that he accidentally killed a pedestrian while on his route.  I have heard of no governmental punishment, only penance of a personal kind.  This was when he began to wear all white.  He dressed in that way for twenty years, for forgiveness of his sin or to ward off the evil eye.  Superstition carries equal weight to religion in Cuba.  He also had a gold chain with a medal, La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba, Our Lady of Charity.  When he came to the United States, he was balding and in possession of an ample gut and slim, dark limbs.  He quickly found a lover, a young man that my father said was kind and made his uncle happy.  I have seen photos, both mustachioed men posed on the hood of an old convertible, smiling.  Jesús’s gold medal rests on his white undershirt.  I imagine that it matches the gold in his teeth but I do not remember.

  He joined a Santería community in Miami, continuing his spiritual practices and rituals from the old world.  He was a healer of some sort, not quite a priest.  He sacrificed chickens and performed other such rites, involving curative herbs and a deep connection to the good and evil spirits of the world.  He came to my parents’ shop to bless it, and my father was very grateful.  

  I do not remember meeting him though my family says that I have, many a time as a child.  I remember that he was to come for my brother’s wedding, he was to drive other members of the family and attend the ceremony.  He did not come, and this deeply affected my father.  Perhaps he wanted the marriage blessed; my father does not practice Santería, but he believes very strongly in spirits.  They did not speak for over ten years, when Jesús finally died.  I was there when my father received the phone call.  He stopped for just a moment before he returned to his repairs.