I have heard that racist Cuban expression from my mother so many times.

My grandmother turns to face me. “Do you see what Cuba is becoming?”

I decide to avoid Maydelis until the moment of our walk to Yosmany’s house. I wonder if she really intends to go, or if she plans to confront me. For hours I hole up in my room and pretend to nap. I creep to the door to listen for bits of conversation but I hear nothing about the book or about the neighbor. When I do leave the bedroom, there is no one in the hall.

So I slip the book from my bag and place it back on the bookshelf in its original enclosure, where two books now slant toward the void. I consider saying I just borrowed it, I wanted to read it, but it’s too late for that. Besides, my grandmother and Maydelis know I can barely read Spanish.

I scour my hands as if I can wash away the ugliness eating at me. I scrub and scrub until my hands are raw, and I remember that water comes every other day here in the campo, that my grandmother doesn’t have a tank to store extra gallons, as Maydelis does in her home in La Habana.

When I leave the bathroom, Maydelis stands in the hallway, looking at me. Her hair is plastered to her wet forehead. She wears tiny shorts and flip-flops. One hand is on her hip in that very Cuban back-of-the-hand pose that betrays her real emotion. “I guess Abuela didn’t look too carefully at the bookshelf,” she says, not taking her eyes off me.

“What do you mean?” I can hear the catch in my own voice.

“The book is there.”

“Oh,” I turn my back to her, already heading to my room. “That’s good news then. We don’t have to look for Yosmany.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Good news for Yosmany.”

I almost add, And Abuela—but I can’t bring myself to say it.

I can hear her, Abuela Dolores, humming to herself in the kitchen. She is making my favorite, fricasé de pollo. Maydelis and I will return to La Habana tomorrow. Then a few more days and I fly back to Miami. And for no real reason, what I think about in that moment is that photo that came out in some of the Miami newspapers a little while back, Fidel Castro’s son Fidelito, beaming, a beard like his father’s, arms around Paris Hilton and Naomi Campbell at some grand celebration or other in La Habana.