When I met Marielito I had just turned 16 years old and had recently moved back in with my mother because I couldn’t handle my stepfathers idea of rules and guidelines. I was used to running wild and doing whatever I wished because my mother was more interested in her weird relationships with her various and assorted ex-convict/drug addict boyfriends.
At the time Mom was with her boyfriend who called himself Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo was only about 29 years old, very slim with Hershey chocolate brown skin, a Geri curl, never worked, stayed high and tried various times to feel me up. Why any child would move back into that type of situation was baffling. I missed my mother even though she had no clue as to how to be a mother and I wanted to protect my younger sister so that she wouldn’t become Monte’s next victim. I was never scared of Monte and for some reason I wasn’t even mad at him for what he tried to do to me. I was madder at my mother for not protecting me. I mean, that’s what mothers are supposed to do, right?
I met Marielito while walking to the local “quickie-mart type” store. That day I had on my silky, lime green and white stripped short shorts and a pink tube top. I loved wearing loud colors. When I was nearly halfway to the store I noticed a man standing just outside of one of the three-story, brick apartment buildings in my apartment complex (Greenbriar East). He was very slim, only five feet six inches tall with long, straight Indian like hair, olive skin, and a large nose that turned down like the beak of a Toucan. He was wearing a white Karate Ghee and with a black belt tightly wrapped around his tiny waist and was practicing his Karate moves.
I grew up watching Bruce Lee and Kung Fu Theatre with my cousins and stepfather and always thought it looked like it might be a lot of fun to learn. As I stood on the sidewalk watching Marielito practice his Karate moves, he looked towards me and stopped doing what he was doing to say hello. He then asked me my name and we began to converse. He told me he was a Karate instructor and that he taught women self defense. The conversation was really amusing because he could barely speak English.
He asked my name and then told me his (Lazaro). He told me he was 32 years old and then asked me how old I was. I lied and told him I was going to be 18 soon. I told him I had just moved in right around the corner from him. He gave me his phone number and asked me to call him. His face looked very familiar and after I walked away I realized that I had seen him during a school field trip to his Karate studio a few years ago. I was intrigued by his accent and his look. He had told me he was a Marielito from Cuba. At the time I didn’t even know where Cuba was and I certainly had no idea what a Marielito was.
The following day when walking to the store again I spotted Lazaro outside practicing Karate again. This time he was training a young boy. I stopped to watch for a minute and thought that he seemed to be really good with children, which led me to believe that he was a good person. When he noticed me watching he stopped to come over to speak with me and then decided to show me a couple of self-defense moves. We spoke for a little while and then I asked him what he meant when he said he was a Marielito. He told me that he came over to the United States during the Mariel boat-lift from Cuba when Castro sent thousands of Cubans over to the United States. I was still confused about what a Marielito was and later found out that “the Mariel boat-lift was a mass emigration of Cubans who departed from Cuba’s Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980”. (Wikipedia, 2011) Many of those exiles had been released from Cuban jails and mental hospitals and were referred to as Marielitos.
Lazaro and I began seeing each other off and on. Monte, my mother’s child-molester boyfriend, found out that I was seeing Lazaro and proceeded to tell him that I was only 16 years old. Lazaro then informed me that he could no longer see me because he didn’t want to get into any trouble with the law. We had just come back from him taking me to dinner when he told me. I cried and pleaded with him not to break up with me. At the time, I felt like he was the only person in the world who really cared about me. Somehow he was my escape and comfort.
