Dreaming in Cuban, the play (excerpt)
- Dreaming in Cuban, the play (excerpt)
CAST
Cuba
CELIA DEL PINO, matriarch, ardent Communist, 60s
JORGE DEL PINO, Celia’s dead husband, 70s, wears a white linen suit and Panama hat
FELICIA DEL PINO, their excitable, moody daughter, disaffected hairdresser, 40s
IVANITO, Felicia’s son, 11 years old, whose sailor suit grows too small for him
HERMINIA DELGADO, santera, spirit guide, always dresses in white, 40s
New York
LOURDES PUENTE, older daughter, feisty anti-Communist bakery owner, 40s
RUFINO PUENTE, Lourdes’ mild-mannered playboy husband, 40s (also Chorus Man #2)
PILAR PUENTE, Lourdes’ defiant artist daughter, late teens
MAX AGUILAR, Pilar’s boyfriend, lanky, handsome, Latino Texan, early 20s
Others
CHORUS WOMAN #1 (Rufino’s mistress, Graciela Moreira)
CHORUS WOMAN #2 (popsicle vendor, Lieutenant Rojas)
CHORUS MAN #1 (Jorge del Pino, peanut vendor)
CHORUS MAN #2 (Rufino Puente, El Líder’s voice, Amelio Moreira) [End Page 145]
________
(Barging in wearing paint-spattered overalls)
Hey, Mom.
You’re late. Again. Today, the new employee stole fifty cents from me. Fifty cents! If you’d been here, that wouldn’t have happened.
Jesus, Mom. How about a hello?
Hello? You want a hello? Hello I say to a good daughter. A daughter who helps her mother. A daughter who doesn’t always think of herself first. A daughter who doesn’t give her mother a book for Christmas with that murderer Che Guevara on the cover!
Oh, I forgot. No one is more American than you.
Why do you think I named this place?
The Yankee Doodle Bakery. Ugh, could you get any cornier? You make food only people in Ohio eat. Like Jello molds with miniature marshmallows. You think this means you’re living the American dream?
That’s enough, Pilar. Now sweep. [End Page 146]
(Pilar reaches for a sticky bun and takes a bite.)
Maybe you’re mistaking me for slave labor? None of your employees ever last more than a day or two. You hire immigrants who don’t speak any English, figuring you can get them cheap.
Nothing wrong with giving people a chance—
Then you scream at them half the day because they don’t know what you’re saying.
They steal from me!
Yeah, like what? A butter cookie? A French bread? You think you’re doing them a big favor by giving them a job and breaking them in to American life? Hell of a welcome wagon you are! This is Brooklyn. Uh, 1979?
I should have never left you with your grandmother when you were a baby. She put all those crazy ideas into your head. Comunistas! Comunistas las dos! That’s the problem here.
No, the problem is YOU.
And don’t think she was any kind of mother either. Pining her life away for some lost love in Spain. At least you have a mother who— [End Page 147]
I. Am. Nothing. Like. You.
You can’t compare yourself to me! I work fourteen hours a day so you can be educated. And now you turn your education against me!
I want to see Abuela Celia again.
Are you crazy? You can’t go back there!
You should’ve left me behind, with her.
Never! I’d prefer death.
For me, or for you?
How dare you?! You say this to me after my father died? Ingrata! You’re a dangerous subversive, like her! A leftist hypocrite! Red to the bone! Those nuns were right to throw you out of third grade.
Those nuns were neo-Nazis! They were waxing nostalgic about the Inquisition, for Christ’s sake.
More blasphemies! Comunista!
(Storming off)
Nice talking with you, too, Mom. [End Page 148]
People are dying trying to escape that . . . that island-prison and you want to return?!
Descarada. How dare she? And with me still in mourning!
(Lourdes locks up and heads home. It’s a sullen dusk, the streets shifting with shadows. The Brooklyn Bridge is visible in the distance. Jorge...
