I was ignorant. In high school, I saw a documentary about the Buena Vista Social Club, and before that I hadn’t known there were many Black Cubans. And then I asked my mother, “How come there are so many Black Cubans in Cuba and so few in Miami or are there more but they live somewhere else?” and she looked at me like the question wasn’t a question at all but bordered on insult. (Don’t ask my mother about her curly hair. Don’t ask my mother about some of her features. Don’t ask her why she hates to tan.)

I say nothing to my grandmother. Maydelis talks about how she wishes she could travel, maybe even live somewhere else for just a little while, so she could make some money to bring back to Cuba, or maybe just get a visa to visit so she could buy stuff to sell. She reiterates for the millionth time that the average salary for a Cuban government employee is ten dollars a month. “Ten dollars!” she says.

My grandmother pays Maydelis no mind. She cuts her off. “I know you’re probably wondering about your mother and me, Jeanette,” my grandmother says, abruptly.

Another fact: I want to look as effortless as these women. It isn’t until Cuba that I realize how uncomfortable I am in my neatness. It seems to me the classier the outfit, the more it hides. I am neat and a thief, recovering from a substance-use disorder, a term I didn’t know until rehab. Straight out the airport, in La Habana, I marveled at the women in their tiny sequined jeans shorts, their bra tops that exposed dimpled stomachs. Effortless. Here I am in all my imperfection, motherfuckers, their sweat-glistened skin proclaimed. Maydelis in her bootleg polo shirt. My grandmother in a satin housedress, her cone-shaped bra peeking through the armholes, her cone-shaped bra barely containing the skin that seeps over its elastic.

“I know it’s about politics, Abuela,” I say. “I don’t care about that.”

“It is sad,” she says, “that I haven’t spoken to her since she left. It is sad that I didn’t know you until now.”

Maydelis exhales a wisp, sucks an ocean. “Very sad,” she adds.

I flap my fan. Flap, flap, flap. Then I set it down. “She doesn’t know I’m here,” I say after a long pause. “I mean she knows I’m here, in Cuba, but she doesn’t know I came to see you.”

“Will you tell her?” Maydelis asks.