Oye What I'm Gonna Tell You - Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés

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      MORE PRAISE FOR OYE WHAT I’M GONNA TELL YOU

      “With Oye What I’m Gonna Tell You, spellbinding storyteller Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés delivers on that you-must-listen-up promise of her title, gifting readers with a pitch-perfect array of characters and voices that captivate, enthrall, and illuminate. The world spins on, yet in varying ways Cuba has left a mark on each of these individuals—the island a sun around which they will forever orbit to some degree—and to read these unflinching stories is to feel the poignant truth of actual lives and actual struggles. A collection that is as important as it is engrossing.”—Skip Horack, author of The Other Joseph, The Eden Hunter, and The Southern Cross

      “Oye, What I’m Gonna Tell You gives us an urgent glimpse into the lives of people yearning to fully understand their place in the world. Through these myriad voices, Milanés evokes a sense of the vital oral traditions that have shaped our community. These stories enrich and complicate an important, relevant conversation about what it means to exist on the hyphen—be it that of Cuban-American or any other truly American experience.”—Jennine Capó Crucet, author of How to Leave Hialeah and Make Your Home Among Strangers

      “To be of color in America is to know difference in a profound way. In Oye, What I’m Gonna Tell You, Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés writes a risky, remarkable, and necessary story collection. Milanés creates extraordinary characters each of whom is striking out for territory unknown, both geographically and personally. There is a resilience of spirit in her Cuban-American characters, who make a home that is a hybrid of two worlds. Fresh and evocative, this is the story collection you’ll want to read this year.”—Nina McConigley, author of Cowboys and East Indians, winner of the 2014 PEN Open Book Award

      Copyright © 2015 by Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés.

      All rights reserved.

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      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquires to:

      Ig Publishing

      392 Clinton Avenue

      Brooklyn, NY 11238

      ISBN: 978-1-63246-008-0 (ebook)

      “The Law of Progress” first appeared online at Guernica and republished in a slightly different version in the Guernica Annual 2014 volume. “Love and Punishment at the Clerk of the County Courts Office” first appeared online at Literary Mama as was “Dr. Cubanita” at Kweli Journal. “Other People’s Homes” was first published in Seeds, The Biannual Literary Journal of the Sisters of Color. “What Remains of Max” was previously published in The Free Press and “Barbie Doll” was first published The Albany Review.

      For familia, especially the cousins y todos los que han llegado.

      CONTENTS

       Who Knows Best

       Big Difference

       Other People’s Homes

       Dr. Cubanita

       What Remains of Max

       Like a Dog

       Barbie Doll

       Love and Punishment at the Clerk of the County Courts Office

       Tall Dark

       Offerings for a Capricious God

       El Chino y La Rubia

       Poor and Unhappy

       Patron Saints

       Afterword

       Acknowledgments

      Getting ready for work at the dollar store, Celeste pulled a loose fitting khaki shirt over her dark blue pants to hide a small waist that gave some men the wrong idea about her. Like the day manager, a sweaty heavyset Americano who always snuck up behind her when she was stocking shelves or taking a quick bathroom break. “Oh, I was worried. I couldn’t find you,” he would say, brushing his soft body against her in the corridor between the back and the front of the store. She avoided his pale eyes as much as possible; they seemed to unclothe and dissect her at the same time.

      She had had to get a job to help the family when her brother brought home his pregnant seventeen-year-old girlfriend. To Celeste, it was a tolerable job compared to the other intolerable “offer” to work in the hot, grease-covered kitchen of the burger place Papá had been at for years before he’d moved on to a real sit-down restaurant next to the mall. Enduring embarrassment and even discomfort at the dollar store was bearable because it was walking distance from her family’s apartment and the hours were flexible enough that she could keep going to vo-tech school at night and complete her nurses’ assistant course within a year.

      She had arrived in this country from the island as an awkward, pimply preteen with her parents and older brother Camilo. He’d had a more difficult time adjusting to the U.S. than she did; he left behind a big circle of friends and a novia while she only had one dear amiguita from school. At fifteen, Camilo was too old to fit in and he didn’t seem to try too hard either, always getting suspended for fighting. But she, being the compliant girl that she was, respected her teachers and elders, dedicated hours to learning English and earned good grades from middle school on. She even went to catechism though she was the oldest girl to make her first holy communion among the more than 200 little children.

      Celeste’s naturally long nails fingered the gold cross and religious medals on her chain as she stood before the mirror remembering that day. “I’m so proud of you, mi niña; it’s so good that you stuck with those classes,” Mamá said, putting her sunstained hands on her face before tightly embracing her. Celeste loved Mamá’s smell and breathed deeply to take in the mariposa perfume made from Cuba’s national flower. Papá had handed her an assortment of rainbow-colored carnations; he was wearing the ill-fitting suit the Catholic agency had given him in Miami years earlier. They were there all four together as a family. But soon they would be six.

      She wondered if her almost-sister-in-law Kati wanted her to be godmother to the baby; they liked each other, were about the same age, had attended the same schools but had already had two very different lives. Kati had a rose tattoo above her left breast and was violently thrown out of her house after Camilo got her pregnant, and then she dropped out. Celeste wasn’t against babies, she just wanted to do all things right, at the right time.

      The last time Celeste went to church, she found herself at the altar, in a coffin, dressed in white for her funeral mass. The store manager had cornered her one too many times in the break room. The last time, he took and broke her, a good girl, una niña buena de casa. Choked to death by thick alien fingers, she was never to nurse or hold her new niece. Not even nineteen, she will always be eighteen in her senior photo with a blue crystal rosary hung around the frame and assorted santos’ candles beneath. Some of the family’s mighty grief was spent convincing Kati to name the baby after their niña. But Kati refused. Even so, they dedicated themselves to raising another good girl just like their Celeste.

      For

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