“Monserrat, that’s French, right?”
My dad was born somewhere in Cuba to a huge, loving family.
No, scratch that.
His parents were both dead before he was five
And he was raised by a loving uncle.
No, scratch that.
My father’s parents were dead and he was a slave, forced to work in the fields
With the other unfortunate Cuban boys.
One day, he escaped to a nearby village to the north.
The mayor took pity on him and the community raised him like their own son.
Or so I am told.

“Monserrat – Isn’t that French?”
Thank God my dad wouldn’t let me learn Spanish
So I could understand the secrets passing between my parents
Right in front of me.
Thank God I can’t write a beautiful bilingual love poem
And exponentially increase my chances of getting laid
By some Latina hottie.
No, Spanish would not have been helpful at all.
When I go to Lottaburger, I might actually get the very same burger I ordered.
I might have slept through Spanish 101 instead of getting my ass kicked by French 101.
“Ohhhh, Andre Monserrat, eh?” said my merciless French professor.
“Don’t think you won’t have to work in my class, because monsieur, I’m going to make sure you work.”
So for a semester I Je vaied, I accent agued, I com ci com caed.
But, folks, my parents could have named me Fred Astaire
And I’d still be a skinny white boy who can’t dance.
In short, Je ne parle pas Francais! Comprende?
Naming an Hispanic kid “Andre Monserrat” is just plain cruel and unusual.
It’s like naming someone Hans Olafson and telling him he’s not Norwegian!

Like I said, my father was raised as a community service project in some nameless Cuban village.
The country lavished opportunities on him like the generous uncle he fabricated to hide the truth.
Many years later, he found himself as one of Castro’s bodyguards.
Standing behind the little dictator in his booth at the baseball game,
My father thought, “I worked so hard for this?
I trained for this?
I bear an automatic weapon to protect this man?
I smell treachery on him
I am so close and he trusts me implicitly.
I am so close and his eyes are fixed on the batter.
I could end him here.”
But then there would have been no Andre.
My dad did not assassinate Castro.
Instead we have a missile crisis and Elian.
Instead we have one more poem.

“Monserrat, like the island?”
That was cool for about three months because of that Beach Boys song:
“Martinique, that Montserrat mystique.”
Oh baby, yeah that’s my island all right.
Everyone there speaks French, the language of love.
On my island, we reach up and squeeze the sun to make Mai Tais
Which we drink all day long.
But last I checked there was a big volcano ejaculating all over the jungle
Straight up on the Pompeii tip
While a bunch of Rasta-looking guys ran screaming past the CNN camera crew.
Folks, that is not a piece of real estate I want to have anything to do with.

So my dad bided his time.
Let Castro give him an education.
Let Castro groom him to step into a place of power.
Let Castro send him to East Germany to study with all the other promising young Cuban men.
Now was his chance.
But there was a wall.
Castro was far away; he may as well have been on the moon,
But there was a wall.
He pressed against it to feel the warm promise glowing from the other side,
But there was a wall.
Through shrewd dealings and whispers through cracks, he made friends on the West side.
The appropriate documents were created and placed in my father’s hands.
If this were a Jerry Bruckheimer flick, there would have been searchlights and a suspicious commandant at the gate.
If this were a Jerry Bruckheimer flick, a sniper would have accidentally put a bullet through the head of my dad’s best friend as he happened to step in front of him at the proper dramatic moment.
But this actually happened and my dad silently passed through the Berlin Wall like the last gasp of air fleeing a closing tomb.

We used to live in Mexico, when I was very young.
In Mexico we had a mansion, shiny cars and servants.
What were Mexicans for if not to cut our lawn, cook our food, and wash our clothes?
Walt Disney taught me not to question.
I mean, Goofy is a dog and Pluto is a dog,
But when Goofy throws a stick, Pluto goes running after it
And what is up with that?
But clearly one wears a collar while the other does not.
That is an important difference.
Yes, I was justified in looking down on the poor Mexican beggars on the corner
While I rode around the neighborhood on my Fisher Price big wheel.
They were to be pitied, even though there was more culture on that street corner than I would see in my home my entire life.

When my father was awarded citizenship, the USA asked him,
“Alfredo, by what name shall we know you?”
In Cuba, everyone had like 15 last names.
In America, if you had a name like
Alfredo Rodriguez Monserrat Ramos Bauta,
It made it difficult to fill out the Columbia House Music Club membership card.
He had been going by Rodriguez, but he picked Monserrat so his future children would not be discriminated against.
“Monserrat, that’s French, right?”
In America, it will only take you a short while to become a citizen,
But it will take the rest of your life before they’ll let you live here.
So my father found out.
My dad thought he could become a Spanish teacher
Until he discovered you had to take 100 tests in English
To prove how well you knew Spanish.
Then he thought he could become a lawyer
And perhaps fight against discrimination.
But you had to take 100 tests in English
To prove you knew what discrimination was.
Later he got involved in computers.
The computer didn’t care what language he spoke.

“Monserrat – That’s like a movie star name!”
My sister is white as Britney Spears on the outside
But black as Moesha on the inside.
She may act black, but her kids are black.
Mostly black.
My niece Dominique may begin to question
Why she is not as light as Mommy
Or as dark as Daddy
And she may ask me
“Uncle Andre, what am I?”
Am I qualified to answer? What am I?
A Gringo Cuban American? A Gringican?
Hispanic boy whitewashed in Ohio?
No one told me what I was.
My family legacy is a scrapbook of stolen newspaper clippings,
Pasted together in a way that is aesthetic and perhaps even historical.
No one passed me a flame to keep lit.
No one handed me a golden flask filled with the echoes of ten generations, or five or even one.
How will I account for these things?
Even if I cannot answer these questions, I can still answer my niece.
I will not say, “You are bi-racial.”
I will not say, “You are an amalgam of Cuban, Finn, and African American.”
I will not say, “Your heritage is lost forever so shut up and finish your Coca-Cola.”
I will not say, “Your identity is bound up in varying quantities of melanin, and you better get it sorted out quickly.”
I will say to her, “You are beautiful. Go be beautiful.”