Masticate and Swallow

     Even though I was chunky, as a kid I hated to eat. First off, in Cuba eating meant

sitting in front of a plate of mashed malanga.  Have you ever even heard of malanga?

No. There is a reason. You’ve heard of potatoes, right? There is a reason. Potatoes taste

good. Malanga is the ugly tasting cousin. You mash it but it never looks right. It comes

out gray. That is actually possible. Gray food.  I ate gray food in Cuba. Now imagine

 mashed malanga without butter and barely any salt. My mom would sit my cousin Sara

and I for lunch and she would have to shape the mashed malanga into the body of a man

 or a ship or an alien.  Edible malanga sculptures.  Anything to take our minds and taste

 buds away from the reality, the cold hard crushing truth, that because we lived in Cuba

 and this was a communist country where each family had a ration book, we would eat

 malanga. There is reason you’ve never heard of ration books and trust me you want to

 keep it that way. The communist motto in Cuba was Socialism or Death.  More like

 Socialism or Malanga. Better: Socialism is malanga.

     My mother also had a motto: “Masticate and swallow”. She would stand over me

her commanding will ready to force the malanga down my windpipe if I resisted the other

pathway beginning at my mouth. I hated to eat. “Masticate and swallow”. She didn’t

scream. She just repeated the slogan. I cried; It never stopped her. She wanted me healthy

and fat and full of malanga because the only other choice of a meal was sugar-water and

that is tastier, but far less nutritious than malanga.

     I hated my cousin Sara. She would lie about eating her malanga and heap it on my

 plate while my eyes filled with tears.

            “Mom, she put her – “  

            “Maticate and swallow!”

     Sara did other shitty things to me like placing a nail on my seat, and pushing me

 around at school, and spitting water at me at restaurants. She’d call me pissboy when I

 wet the bed and make fun of me because I wore glasses and big shoes two sizes too big. 

 But this malanga gift was unforgivable.

     You are wondering why my mom would use such a complicated word like

 masticate – couldn’t she simply say chew. But in Spanish masticar is the word for chew.

And masticate is masticar. My mom wasn’t building my vocabulary, she was just

mposing her will on her son. My mom was big on imposing her will. She had another

motto which she enjoyed throwing around on the occasion I would ask the obvious

 amid sobs.

            “why do I have to eat malanga? I hate malanga.”  .

            “Do you want to know why?

     I’d fall for it. Walk right into it.

            “Why?”

            “ Because, aqui la que manda es menda”

     That meant that here she was the boss. She was handing out the orders. I just had

 to follow the orders and eat the malanga. 

     So I lived out most of my childhood in Cuba being force fed. It wasn’t just

malanga. I was forced fabada – a Spanish style white bean soup, liver, horse meat,

Russian canned meat, and boiled boniatos. And above all, I had to like these foods

 because after my mother would order me to masticate, to swallow, and inform me she

was the boss of me, she would say “After all, the food tastes good so I don’t know what

 your problem is.”

      My cousin escaped her food obsessions because my mother wasn’t her

mother and could not very well impose her will on a child who was not hers, but my

 mom swore that if she had it her way Sara would be eating malanga just like me.  So

 would Fernandito and Israel and Griselita and the rest of the neighborhood kids.

“That girl is so skinny. If somebody does not do something soon, something will

 happen to her”. Please God, don’t let malanga happen to her. Anything, starvation, skin

 boils, not malanga.

     My mother was obsessive about foods and about medicines. She was obsessive

 about taking walks and going to churches to pray by touching the feet of the saints; she

 was obsessive about holding my hand in the street so I would not get run over. She

 obsessed with my school – I was in first grade at age five.

     I do have to admit, that her obsession is what got us visas to leave Cuba and move

 to New Jersey when everyone else in the neighborhood was left behind in Cuba drinking

 sugar water and eating malanga.          

Dance a bit, Minguito

I read this to my English IV students this past week. It's from my collection of stories from my Cuban childhood. I've been waiting a decade to finish this collection and publish it. I can't seem to finish it so I'll just begin to publish it as a blog...

“Dance a bit, Minguito”

            The great thing about Cuba in 1976 was that to be famous you did not have to be on television or be the guy throwing touchdown passes, you just had to be willing to eat glass.  Minguito was one of the legends of my Lawton neighborhood in La Habana.  Old as hell and wrinkled enough to prove it, Minguito shuffled into Lawton once or twice a year.  And when he did, all children games would halt.

            Forget freeze tag, running bases, hopscotch – that was all crap.  Forget making out under your bed with the neighbor’s daughter, while the other kids thought you were hiding or seeking.  If you were a kid in Lawton in 1976 and Minguito shuffled in, the world stopped.  We’d bumrush and beg him, “Minguito, baila un poquito.”  Dance, Minguito, dance.  And this heap would shake, rattle and roll.

            But Minguito was best loved by us for eating glass. We’d scourge the block for shards as Minguito shuffled by. Kids flying up and down the block looking for a piece big enough so we could see it while it was masticated and swallowed down.

            Hurry.

            Find glass.

            Minguito is going to eat it.

            Pandemonium ensued as a dozen barefoot children feverishly flew around Minguito trying to slow him down, looking for glass. Would he eat a pebble? No. Throw that away. Keep looking. Divert Minguito’s attention. Slow him down. You know what happens if he gets to the end of our block by Tejar Street.

            Yeah my mom would tell us to leave Minguito alone. But, did we listen? It was all fun and games until somebody got hurt and apparently Minguito could eat glass without getting hurt.  So find that glass. Now if he shuffled past our block you could never get him to eat glass. Never. He must have had another specialty for the kids in the next block. Maybe he juggled or played a guitar.  Where would he keep a guitar, though? More likely, he sang old boleros. I tried to imagine Minguito in his rags singing “dos gardenias para ti”.  No. He should stick to glass, I thought.

            So we’d bring him a shard and Minguito would eat it.  Oh, the glory. The sheer thrill of that moment when Minguito would stop and accept the glass in his dirty bloated hands.  Then up to his mouth.  We’d see it. No sleight of hand. No homeless trying to make a buck trick routine.  He was eating the glass. Seems like adults wanted to see him dance, but we kids wanted him to eat glass so badly. After all, any idiot in Cuba could dance.

            Who was Minguito? We did not know where he lived or where he was going. Did he have a family? Was glass eating something they all did? It didn’t matter. When you are a kid you don’t need a lot of explanations and especially from an old guy willing to eat glass. And he did with such joy.  It’s not every day a person eats glass. Willingly.

            I remember the last time we saw him. He didn’t want to talk to us. He was mad at something. And we begged for dancing or glass eating. His face was darker, more black than the usual shade of Minguito-brown. He looked confused. I remember stepping in front of him.  Minguito looked past us and said something about shitting on our mothers.  Insults about our mothers were not going to deter us from the glorious moment of seeing Minguito eat glass. So we pressed him and we pressed him.  He got mad, pulled down his pants and threatened us while only wearing his too-big and browned tighty-whities. I still remember Minguito hopping around with his pants down to his waist and shaking like it was his last line of defense. We ran home and watched him from the safety of our front steps. He didn’t want to eat glass that day.