Painful Ghosts: Cuban Reflections on the Confederate Flag

"No sea faino, usted nunca molesta." That's what abuelo said whenever I came into his room. My grandfather always said I never bothered him. He wasn't sleeping, although it was siesta time; he pushed aside the copy of the Journal of the American Diabetes Association, and it slid on the bed sheets and off the bed. I picked it up. I also found and picked up the cane he had lost that morning. He only dozed on and off during siesta time; mostly he caught up on his reading of medical journals: the journal of the AMA, Contact, and the journal of the Diabetes Association, an association he had helped found back when he was a young doctor in Cuba. "Pero abuelo, estabas leyendo." "What am I going to read for," he answered, alternating as he always did with me, his old fashioned Camagüey Spanish, which made him sound like the 19th-century Spanish novels he loved to read, with his English, equally incongruous with its old Georgia accent, "para qué, si soy una mierda aquí donde me ves." "Don't say you're shit, abuelo." I remembered the lady who had approached us on Flagler Street days before and had kissed his hand, saying something about how he had saved her son's life and she would never forget him. He dismissed her with the same gentle wave of the hand and the same phrase he had just used for me, "No sea faina." Don't be silly. Faina, a word I've never heard any other Cuban use, but then again, when he was born the King of Spain ruled Cuba. I always thought of him as my bridge to the 19th century. I would think, abuelo is my 19th-century friend.

"Abuelo, what was it like in Georgia when you lived there?" Then he would switch to English; stories about his stay in Oxford were always in English. "It was hot, it was poor. I lived at a Methodist minister's house. We had become friends in Cuba, and he had invited me to live with his family and study at Oxford College back home in Georgia. When I left Camagüey, he promised my father I would have everything his children had and eat what they ate. And I sure did. Most of the time we ate greens and, when the onions came in, we ate onions. Boy, were we happy when apples came in; then we had them pan-fried with onions. Until we got sick of eating apples. And we always had grits, which is like tamal en cazuela, but without any seasoning, you know. I remember the parade on Decoration Day. No, these weren't veterans from the World War; this was before the Great War: I returned to Cuba in 1918, I had almost forgotten Spanish, and the priest in Camagüey almost pitched a fit when I confessed I had been a Methodist for eight years. He had to ask the bishop for permission to absolve me of my Protestant sins. The veterans? Yes, they were veterans from the War of Secession. Most of them were missing limbs, and they were old; they wore their uniforms and there were speeches. There was hardly a house I used to visit that didn't have a uniform jacket or a saber displayed over the mantlepiece; often the jackets were bloodstained, 'badges of honor' they called them. What were they like, the veterans? They were proud, they'd tell stories about the war, the battle of Kennesaw Mountain. I had seen a recreation of the siege of Atlanta at the Cyclorama, so real I felt a soldier had touched me; some of the veterans would do the rebel yell for you, I can't do it."

Half the year abuelo lived with us, the other half with his other daughter in Rome, Georgia. When we visited Rome, we stayed at an old hotel, the General...