La Unica

The car is cold and once Dad turns the key and the engine revs, I press the chair warmer button on the inside edge of the seat. I reach to the other side of the seat and toggle the seat adjustment. The seat creeps backwards until my legs are able to extend fully. Dad invited Jame, but he has a project for school he wants to finish. Mom has an open invitation, but never comes to La Unica with us. Generally, there is only one chaperone for activities categorized as errands. Shortly, I feel the warmth on my seat. There are coils on my lower back too, but my coat dulls their penetration. I like the toasty feel and tuck my hands under my thighs to warm them too. Someone, maybe my mom, told me that the seat warmer made them uncomfortable, felt as if they had just peed themselves, a warm something aggregating beneath them. While I get the comparison, the seat warmer has always been my favorite feature of the car.

As we pull out of the garage, Dad asks what music I want to listen to. I shrug in response. My options are limited. Dad has only two CDs he plays in the car, Buena Vista Social Club or Bebo y Cigala. Both good choices as far as I am concerned. Mom finds fault in his adherence to his roots, a rigidity to experiment with new music, but I have my doubts that Mom genuinely appreciates my rap, hip hop and reguetón selections she feigns tolerance for. Dad has a strong preference for traditional Cuban boleros. Most of the songs’ themes center on fractured loves. My favorite is Y tú qué has hecho, about an unrequited love. A girl carves her name on a tree and the tree protagonist gifts her a flower. Later in life, the tree thinks about the girl, he has been altered by their time together and still covets her name. He wonders what she has done with his flower, a dim hope that she dried it and keeps it in a box, cherished. The permanence and strength of an engraving, however, compared to the delicacy of a flower suggests her token was withered and forgotten. Dad sings with the song. I sing too. He asks me if I understand the words. I say I do, as a statement of pride, but really, I only understand the sentiment of the sentence, not the nuances of language. I don’t admit my shortcomings. Sometimes my dad accepts my response, but if he really likes a song, or there is a sexual innuendo that tickles him, he will translate despite my claims to language proficiency. During the next song, he powers through my decline for translation, he even pauses the song so he can elaborate on its meaning without competing for audio real estate.

“He’s saying that he can’t decide between the mistress and the wife, so he’s going to stay with both, but then they both leave him and he is left with Manuelita.” He is laughing and crying now, he can barely get out the words. “You know who Manuelita is, yes?” The car is stopped at a red light and he looks at me with his head tilted down and his eyebrows raised.

“A third woman?” I don’t think this is nearly as funny as Dad does.

“Like mano, the word for hand in Spanish?” He holds up his hand from the wheel and gives me a suggestive look.

“I get it.”

Dad is still laughing and crying, harder now than before. After his laughter wanes, he takes off his glasses to wipe away the tears with a Kleenex. He replaces his glasses and the light turns green. I unpause the disc and music floods the car once again.

“You didn’t like that huh?” He’s still smiling and chuckling as he eases onto the gas. I look out the front windshield and shake my head, but I’m smiling too.

The rest of the drive to La Unica we talk minimally, we spend most of the ride singing to Buena Vista Social Club. The car heats up to a comfortable temperature, an insulated pod traveling in a chilled Chicago November. La Unica is a thirty-minute drive from our house. It’s the only Cuban grocery store we know in the area. Before my dad’s parents died, when I was about five years old, I remember hearing Spanish in the house. There were frequent family gatherings with Cuban food and dominoes as night settled in. Attendees pleasantly buzzed on after dinner aperitifs. After my grandparents passed away, the weekend impromptus tapered off. José, my dad’s youngest brother, who had also lived in the Chicago area, died of AIDs in the early 1990s, before effective treatments for HIV had been developed. Maria and Miguel, his other siblings still Chicago adjacent, drifted into the routine of their own daily grind. Now, Choca family reunions are reserved for Thanksgiving and Christmas. These were the two times of the year I can count on Cuban food. To appease assimilation, we also have traditional American offerings like turkey, stuffing, and Mom’s delicious, homemade, cranberry sauce. What I look forward to though, is the Caribbean cuisine: platanos maduros, arroz con frijoles negros, croquetas de carne, and flan de coco. The maduros are my favorite, crispy on the outside with a carmalized, melted interior. The pairing with salted entrees seems misplaced, like a dessert somehow slipped through the cracks to a dinner plate and no one had told the parents. Aside from holidays we almost never fry anything at home or undertake a recipe that calls for more than a day of prep work. This is our exception.

Dad and I get to La Unica and park on the street in front. They have a skinny parking lot on the neighboring property, but it is small and usually full. The grocery store has a familiarity; tellers greet us in Spanish when we come in. Because my dad has white complexion and the majority of latinos in Chicago are Mexican and morenos, he is almost never assumed to speak Spanish, despite his accent. A few times he has even been complimented on his Spanish proficiency. He is ready now with a rote response, “Gracias, tenía una maestra maravillosa en el colegio”—thank you, I had a marvelous teacher in high school. He winks at whoever is in on the joke as he says it and we all laugh. Even my mom finds that joke funny and laughs with the rest of us. At La Unica, the employees are almost uniformly Cuban immigrants; Dad and I are assumed to speak Spanish. Even though my Spanish is rudimentary, I revel in my membership to the Cuban ex-pat community.

I walk the aisles with my dad. He buys what he needs for Thanksgiving and stocks up on whatever else he thinks he might want. He has no list and doesn’t follow the order I am used to when shopping with Mom, who collects produce last so that the fruits and vegetables don’t get damaged by heavier packaged items. Dad goes to the plantains first, I think mostly because they are in the first aisle. The plantains are separated into two piles. Green plantains sit on one side. They look like children’s beauty pageant contestants, on display too early in their infancy. The other option is a stack of blackened and bruised plantains, one week away from growing mold. It is these trash bananas that make the best maduros. My dad picks six, bags them, and puts them in our cart.

The next aisle has Malta, Yerba Mate, and Jupiña. Yerba Mate and Malta taste like an earthy, molasses soda, nothing I have any interest in, but the sweet pineapple soda, Jupiña, I approve of, and add a six pack to our cart. Dad gets a few Yerba Mates and Maltas, though he only consumes them infrequently. I think he drinks them more for their sentimental value, transporting him to a memory of a place and time, a reality that is no longer his. I’ve seen him sit in his study at his desk. He takes a sip and then inspects the label, as if something may have changed. Maybe the production plant is in Miami now. He takes another sip, leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, escaping for a minute before exhaling forcefully, rocking forward again, and placing his Malta on a wooden coaster to continue writing on his desktop.

We pass by a couple aisles of dry and canned goods, nothing that interests me particularly. Dad picks out some Goya black beans and a few large cans of Conchita coconut in heavy syrup for the coconut flan. The last aisle is sweets: Maria cookies and turrón de almendra y yema. While Maria cookies sometimes show up unannounced in our cupboard, turrón de yema only comes over for holidays.

The back wall of La Unica has a butcher counter and bakery display. Men in white aprons busy in their gated off community an arm’s-length away. There is a red spool mounted on the wall with numbers printed on paper triangles. No one else is waiting, but I take a number anyway, enjoying the novelty of it. One of the men, without asking for my ticket, approaches me. “Y tú señorita? Te puedo ayudar con algo?” I place my paper triangle on the counter. There are two types of white in the world. The first is the pristine, untouched, status symbol white, which stays white because of privilege and careful sheltering. The second white is an imitation. It picks up stains from use which remain as ghosts even after repeated attempts with bleach. Now that I am closer, I can see that this man’s apron is the latter. I wonder why La Unica has decided to put their butchers in white. I smile at him, trying to ignore the rust colored stains on the front of his apron. “Seis pastelitos de guava por favor.” He nods and flaps open a brown paper bag using tongs to place the pastelitos in before twisting off the end of the bag.

“Are all of those for you or are you planning on sharing?” Dad is standing next me now as the butcher packages my pastries.

“I suppose you can have one.” I smile coyly, but the truth is, I had not taken into account other mouths squirreling off my prized pastelitos. I planned on eating two in the car and having four saved for later. “Maybe we should order some more,” I suggest. Dad laughs.

“Quieres algunos de carne?”

Dad switches into Spanish to humor me. I shake my head no. Dad nods and then turns to the butcher as he is packaging up the last of my pastries, “Dos más de guava y dos de carne.” The butcher hands my dad the bags he has already made and then reopens the display to fill my dad’s order.

I investigate some of the bread products packaged below the display window and I can hear Dad talking in familiar Cuban tones about holiday plans, being married to an American. Dad likes chatting with strangers. The butcher’s name is Yunior. He has family in Miami and plans to go there in December for a week. His four-year-old daughter lives there with her mom. They continue talking even after Yunior has relinquished the pastries and my dad has stowed them away in our cart. My dad makes a joke about something having to do with Miami politics, I don’t catch the whole thing. I’m getting a little impatient. I check my watch. The punch line laughter subsides and my dad thanks Yunior and wishes him a safe trip to Miami in December. We walk up to the register to check out.

The register belt doesn’t work, so we shuffle our items forward as they are rung up. I watch the items get scanned and intercept a brown bag with two of my pastelitos de guava and Dad’s two pastelitos de carne that I know he wants to eat in the car. La Unica always has the same bagger, a middle-aged man with cerebral palsy. He uses his able right hand to bag our groceries. He doesn’t make eye contact or speak to us directly, but insists on bringing our purchases out to our car. The right side of his body responds to his brain’s direction, but the left side is an unwilling participant staging a sit-in. I watch him, trying not to be overt or disrespectful, as he loads bags into our trunk. He uses his atrophied arm as a bag hook, placing the plastic handles in the crook of his elbow with his right arm. As he walks, he drags his non-cooperative left leg. He tip-toes a little on his right foot to facilitate larger steps. His left shoe is worn on its front inside edge. He pauses for a moment in front of our trunk after all of the bags have been placed inside. Dad palms him a five-dollar bill and thanks him before we get into the car.

We close the car doors and strap on our seat belts. “Nothing ever changes here.” My dad pauses and catches my gaze. “That same guy has been working here as a bagger for the last twenty years.” I can hear pity in my dad’s statement. La Unica has a cafeteria contingent to the grocery store. From where we are parked, we can see patrons seated there. My dad nods in the direction of the cafeteria. “See those men at the back of the cafeteria?” I look into the restaurant. In the foreground, there are a few families seated for lunch. Further back in the restaurant, two groups of older gentleman are seated at tables. Four of them play dominoes. Six sit at a nearby table chatting over food.

“Yeah?” I look back to my dad.

“Those guys come here every day to eat and play dominoes and reminisce over what it was like living in Cuba all those years ago. It’s like they’ve never moved on. Same thing in Miami. Whole groups of older immigrants living as if they never left.” He shakes his head. “Sad really. It’s like they could never get over being up-rooted.”

My dad casts an unfocused gaze through the front of the windshield. After a moment, he shakes off the thought, puts the key in the ignition, and starts the engine. Buena Vista Social Club plays again from the speakers. I hand him one of his pastelitos de carne and help myself to one of my pastelitos de guava. The buttery puff pastry melts in my mouth as the warm guava paste oozes out of the center. Divine. I lick the guava filling as it leaks out, hoping to avoid a mess. I try to make my bites smaller in order to draw out enjoyment. As I move on to my second pastelito, I consider my dad’s dismissal of refugees who stay in a new country, but decline assimilation. Those who hold fast to the culture they had never intended to leave. Perhaps it is a denial of circumstance, a snubbing of opportunity, but perhaps more simply, it is an act of self-expression.

My dad makes a defeatist grunt and I look over to see that little pieces of ground meat have escaped and rest sprinkled on the front of his jacket and probably in the crevice of the seat. He shrugs and keeps eating.