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.