Marielito’s in the Midwest
I was 16 years old when I met Marielito, and had recently moved back in with my mother because I couldn’t handle my stepfather’s 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 addicted boyfriends.
At the time Mom was with her boyfriend who called himself Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo was about 29 years old, very slim with Hershey chocolate brown skin, a Geri curl, never kept a job, stayed high and tried various times to touch me and did grab my ass while I was going up the stairs twice.
Why any child would move back into that type of situation was baffling. But I missed my mother even though she was clueless when it came to the responsibilities of being a mother. I also wanted to protect my sister so she wouldn’t become Monte’s next victim. I was never scared of Monte. And, for some reason, I wasn’t mad at him for what he tried to do to me. But I was angry 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 silky, lime green and white stripped short shorts and a pink tube top. I loved wearing loud colors. When I was halfway to the store, I noticed a man standing just outside one of the three-story, brick apartment buildings in my apartment complex (Greenbriar East). He was slim, about five feet six inches tall with long, straight, dark 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 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 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 asked me my name and we began to converse. He told me he was a Karate instructor and that he taught women and children self-defense. The conversation was amusing because he could barely speak English.
He told me he was 32 years old and then asked how old I was. I lied and told him I was going to be 18 soon. He asked me if I was from the neighborhood and I told him I had just moved in right around the corner. He gave me his phone number and asked me to call him if I wanted to learn self-defense. His face looked very familiar.
After I walked away, I realized I’d seen him during a school field trip to his Karate studio years ago. I was intrigued by his accent and his look. He 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 next day when walking to the store, I saw Lazaro outside practicing Karate. This time he was training a young boy. I stopped to watch for a minute. I thought to myself he seemed to be good with children, which led me to think he might be a good person. When he noticed me watching he stopped to come over to speak and then decided to show me a couple of self-defense moves. We spoke for a little while and 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 boatlift from Cuba when Castro sent thousands of Cubans over to the United States. I told him I didn’t know where Cuba was or what language they spoke. He laughed and asked if I was serious. I laughed and admitted my ignorance. So he told me he would show me where it was on a map, and that his first language and language of his country was Spanish.
I was still confused about what a Marielito was so I decided to research it myself later on that night. I found out that “the Mariel boatlift 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.
Lazaro was different and I guess this is what reeled me in. He had his own Karate school, owned two hot-dog vendor carts, came from a strange country, and spoke Spanish, English and even knew sign language. He also played the guitar and told me stories of how he was a performer in Cuba. He was a great singer. He was funny and had even had articles published in Cuba’s newspaper. He had a socialist attitude and missed his family and country very much. When I say he had a socialist attitude; what I mean is that he thought that everyone should share and that everyone should have the same. And he was rebellious. All these things I admired in him. These were things I was familiar with. I loved music, difference, writing, rebellion, sharing and what I considered to be a fair world.
Lazaro loved Castro and he explained to me how Castro came into a country full of corruption where only the rich had everything. How children sold their bodies in the streets for their next meal. And how he, Castro, started a revolution so that everyone would have food, shelter and an opportunity to be educated. How could this be wrong? While I relished in his so-called beliefs, I often wondered why he would leave such a place and I even asked him why. He told me that he made a big mistake, and this was due to the propaganda he was exposed to by the United States. He said that the United States was nothing like he was told it would be and that he hated everything about it.
As a confused, teenager growing up in poverty and strife I could certainly relate to Lazaro and his idealism. We became a couple. Lazaro took me out to eat all the time; brought me flowers and offered to take me to the local mall stating that he would buy me anything I wanted. I never took him up on the mall trips, but I did enjoy going out to eat and hanging out with him at local clubs.
A few weeks after becoming a couple I came to find out that he was extremely jealous and that he was dating a married Peruvian woman who owned a local bridal shop. Her name was Vilma. Vilma was the reason Lazaro owned a Karate school and two vendor hot-dog carts.
I found out about Vilma when she showed up at his apartment one day while Lazaro and I were sitting on his couch, and he was playing the guitar for me. His apartment was on the first floor and his curtains and door were always opened during the summertime – anyone walking up to the building’s entrance could see right into his living room and this is where we were sitting.
I saw Vilma walk up to the window and look in. I tapped Lazaro to stop playing the guitar and pointed towards the window. He then looked up and saw Vilma. She began furiously shaking her hand at him and ran into the building to his apartment door. He jumped up and ran over to shut the door, but it was too late. She ran in the apartment and lunged at me. He grabbed her and managed to push her back out the door.
I ran into the back room while they fought and screamed at each other in Spanish. I had no idea what they were saying or who she was. But when the hot-dog carts and the Karate school ceased to exist, I was able to put the story together. Lazaro told me that they were just friends, and he had no idea why she was acting crazy since she was a married woman.
So here he was with no Karate school, no hot-dog carts, and no source of income. He began teaching more of his students in the front yard of his apartment building, but his income was quickly drying up. He had already started showing signs of extreme jealousy and insisted that I stop hanging out with my friends. He said that they were no good for me and explained to me how everyone was bad or was doing something wrong. I became pregnant and stopped going to school. My two best friends and my mother encouraged me not to keep the baby and I ended up having an abortion. Lazaro cried and laid out in my mother’s living room for two days moaning and whining about “killing his baby” and how he had no family. He was so dramatic and somehow, I felt guilty.
My best friend was livid with my mother for allowing me to be with a man who was so much older and couldn’t believe that she (my mother) wouldn’t do anything to stop what was going on. Shortly thereafter, Marielito, asked me to move in with him and told me that he would protect me and take care of me and be my family. I was really fed up with watching my mother being used and hurt by Monte, so I decided to move in with Marielito. He lived around the corner from my mother’s apartment, and I knew I could continue to keep an eye on my sister from there…
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