Anita Cabrera

Unclaimed

Again, looking again for collaboration, a stitch of validation. Our father never copped to being part Cuban, or Puerto Rican. Only Ecuadorean. Almost fifty years after his death, a DNA ancestry kit and legal papers proving his mother got divorced in Puerto Rico before marrying our grandfather tie loose strands together.

I text my brother, who, despite living in a ramshackle decaying shelter often without electricity, heat, or major working appliances (the only time I visited, stacks of papers, cassette tapes and records, and tools and gun stuff surrounded a refrigerator and stove, both unplugged and rusted in the middle of the room), has revealed himself to be an occasional family archivist, the one sibling out of six who must have stolen into the attic after our last surviving parent’s death and absconded with yellowed documents and photos or, more likely, as the only son, did not enter the fray of sisters arguing and deliberating over the distribution of linens, silverware, teak furniture or jewelry, but consoled himself with items unclaimed after the others scavenged the remnants of our parents’ lives; yes, more likely, he walked away calmly in broad daylight with a shoebox of old photos or a worn manila folder with documents nobody else noticed, wanted or had room for in their car. 

I message him from the West Coast. Do you recall dad ever saying he was part Puerto Rican? Or Cuban? He always said he was Ecuadorean, didn’t he?

Two hours later he texts back: You couldn’t be more mistaken! OH MY GOD! He couldn’t have given a fiddler’s fuck what his lineage was! He was too busy to worry about crap like that. Your father came from a spore. In [my] 19 years he never made mention of his ancestry, nor did he ever mention or speak about either of his parents to me and that’s no bullshit.

Confirmed.

My father moved through the crowds inconspicuously, omitted telltale cultural traits from a standard uniform of rayon shirts, chinos and loafers. Was it softer and warmer, more effortless, to melt together with everyone else, surrendering to the mixture, yielding to the convergence? Everyone jumping into the melting pot, the cauldron soup of divergent heritages that elementary school textbooks explained was what made us an “Us”? 

Born to immigrant parents, was he not simply claiming that which was his to claim? Or, was he just another teenager programmed by hormones, acculturation and socialization to fit in, completely unfamiliar with the term assimilation as we know it today? Did he enlist in the air force not as a display of patriotism but to have a college education paid for? Maybe both; one does not preclude the other. Did he make friends with so many Italians in the New York suburb where he purchased his first home because it was easy to blend in with them? Inspired by Pancho Gonzalez, did he hone his tennis game, put on white shorts and a cable knit V-neck tennis sweater trimmed with bold red and blue stripes to cement inclusion? When walking into the Rye country club back in the day, probably the only dark Hispanic businessman on the court playing doubles, did it occur to him that he looked different? Did he feel like a trespasser? A traitor?

Why did he never mention those people who birthed him? 

The only story I did hear about my father’s parents (besides the fact that his father was a merchant seaman) was from our mother, and even that was only peripherally about the unknown grandparents. More than once our mother regaled us with her account of attending our grandfather’s funeral. She sounded like someone reading a fairy tale about being swooped away on a white stallion when she described how the young men from our father’s old neighborhood, yelling in a language she did not understand, hopped onto the running boards of the hearse leaving New York’s Spanish Harlem for the cemetery, honoring them with a sendoff. It’s easy to picture our svelte green-eyed, platinum blonde mother, youthful and impressionable, in the back of the dark sedan laden with that mystery ancestor’s coffin, next to my father waving, despidiéndose al pueblo. 

The image becomes clearer. Our father enters Brooks Brothers in Manhattan, about four miles southwest of where he grew up, a recent college graduate, having landed his first job in marketing, being fitted for a dark pinstripe suit, conservative but altered enough to highlight his athletic physique. Did the tailor, cloth tape measure draped around neck, pin cushion strapped to wrist, eye the trim black-haired stranger suspiciously before having him remove his clothes, sizing him up to be just another Puerto Rican gangster punk trying to look legit? Or, might he have tried to place him, wondering which Latin cinema heartthrob happened into his shop? Was he warmed by our father’s relaxed greeting, the voice polite and charming in tone, no matter with whom he was speaking -- younger, older, richer, poorer -- enunciated English without a trace of an accent? (Afterall, he refused to teach us anything in his first language, even when we begged.) Did our father pause at the selection of ties, run his fingers over silk patterns in maroon with a cream paisley motif, or midnight blue with small red and gold medallions, hold them up against his face, checking if somehow they made his complexion less brown? What did our father see looking back at him from the mirror in grey wool trousers hanging perfectly, the fine Pima cotton shirt, layered with fitted vest and suit jacket, the tie matched by the handkerchief folded in crisp angles, peeking out of the breast pocket? 

The father who returns from work each night, who gets off the train and drives back to the house, is unknown, frighteningly foreign. I am shy in front of him. But still, I don’t want to get lost in the crowd of kids in the family. So I follow him to our parents’ bedroom when he changes out of work clothes, where it is quiet and calm. I want to occupy the same space, share in the ritual. His hat is already off and must be placed in its own box on the top shelf of the closet. He removes his shoes, and then the tie, if it has made it this far. The gold tie clip, sometimes with a diamond chip, comes off, then matching cuff links, all returned to the engraved wooden trick box with secret compartments that sits atop his dresser. Then the suit jacket, vest and pants. My father’s hangers are bulkier than the other hangers in the house, made of solid smoothed wood with rounded edges, with extra metal parts to secure the pants, maintain creases without inflicting dents. He unbuttons his shirt, but does he hang it up? All his shirts are dry cleaned; on weekends he brings them home protected in thin plastic or wrapped in paper and smelling of starch. When he is finally down to undershirt and baggy cotton boxers, he sits and unfastens the garters holding up his dress socks (the same sock garters I wore as a teenager for several years after he died). Finally, my father puts on his chinos and a corduroy shirt or polo. Maybe soft brown loafers, or slippers. I am less shy by now. I tell him a story about school, or tinker with the wooden box, trying to open the secret compartment. Because now he is home. 

No, not once did our father mention Puerto Rico or Cuba. But we found the photos from Cuba. Legal documents from Puerto Rico. No, he did not don Puerto Rican fence climbers, a term I heard never from his mouth, but from strangers after he died. He wore fine-leather lace-up Oxford dress shoes (that he shined, seated at the foot of the bed, with polish and buffing brush before inserting cedar wood trees). Not to bury one identity, but to claim another, perhaps.