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The Day I Cried at Starbucks
- University of Nebraska Press
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41 The Day I Cried at Starbucks ruth behar It could’ve been blissful, my four-month visit to Miami Beach in 2009 to escape the dreariness of a Michigan winter. I was on my own. David was teaching in Michigan and Gabriel had already graduated from nyu and was living in Brooklyn. I’d rented an apartment in a historic Art Deco building a block from the ocean. As soon as I got organized , I planned to invite my uncle Miguel and aunt Reina and their children and grandchildren, as well as my mother’s cousin Anna, for Sunday brunch so they could admire the lovely view. But in February, a gorgeous time of the year in Miami, an essay I’d published in Hadassah Magazine demolished my family plans. Originally, I’d given the piece an innocuous title, “The Yiddish Book from Cuba.” I told the story of how, with Baba’s help, I’d come into the possession of my great-grandfather’s handwritten memoir. “I’m glad we were such good thieves,” I’d written. The editor at Hadassah Magazine saw the dramatic potential of this line and changed the title of my essay to “Such Good Thieves.” I feared the new title would be misunderstood and read as a statement of fact by my family and tried to change it back to the old one. But it was too late. The magazine had already gone to press. It was my first time publishing in Hadassah Magazine. Just before her death, Baba had made me a life member of Hadassah, a Jewish women’s organization in which she’d been active after retiring and Note: Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of family members. 42 Behar settling in Miami Beach. I thought it would be nice to honor her by publishing my essay in the organization’s widely circulated magazine. What I hadn’t anticipated was that “widely circulated” meant that my family, as well as many friends of my family who form part of the Cuban Jewish immigrant circle, saw the essay. Worst of all, they actually read it. And they hated it. Among those who hated it most was my uncle Miguel. He phoned me and said, “Can you meet me at the Starbucks on Lincoln Road tomorrow morning?” “Sure, okay.” “Eleven o’clock. I’ve got to talk to you about your article in Hadassah Magazine.” My uncle was asking me to meet him at Starbucks? I didn’t remember any occasion when I’d been alone with him. My aunt Reina was always with him. Often their three children and their spouses and grandchildren were also around. They’re a tight-knit family and live within a few blocks of each other in Miami Beach. Miguel was the baby; my aunt Sylvia was ten and my mother was eight when he was born. The family had just moved to Havana from Agramonte. By a stroke of good fortune, Zayde had won 5,000 pesos in the Cuban lottery in 1944. With that money he and Baba were able to move from the countryside and buy their lace shop on Calle Aguacate . When I was born, Miguel was twelve—too young to be an uncle. There’s a yellowed photograph I keep in a frame above my desk in Michigan. I’m a year old, decked out in a sailor dress and perched on Zayde’s lap in the balcony of our old apartment in La Habana. Mami sits in the rocking chair next to us. Miguel balances on the arm of Mami’s chair. In his short-sleeved shirt and tailored pants, he’s no longer a boy, but neither is he yet a man. Afterward, when we all left Cuba and settled in the United States, I felt that my uncle Miguel didn’t approve of the kind of woman I’d become—too intellectual, too independent, too liberal. I was married and a mother, yet I traveled by myself on return journeys to Cuba, a place we weren’t supposed to go back to. [34.234.83.135] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:59 GMT) 43 The Day I Cried at Starbucks “I didn’t realize there was a Starbucks on Lincoln Road,” I say. “It’s there. You’ll find it.” I hear a jittery edge to his voice. The next morning, a Sunday, I’m up early and take a walk on the beach...