Uncle Armando’s Valentine

• By Zoyla Candela

Maybe the most expensive thing in my living room is a humongous oil painting of a glamorized, sexed-up “peasant” boy in a carved, gilded frame. Painted by my great Uncle Armando, it was my maternal family’s pride and joy. Indeed, it was the first thing you saw, hanging in the foyer, when you walked into my mother’s house in South Miami.

We assumed the pouting subject had been one of Uncle Armando’s paramours whose identity got lost in the  swirling mists of time in our native Cuba.

 When my mother died, we, her three children, fought over the painting because none of us wanted it. 

  Then we held a garage sale to dispose of my mother’s possessions, and all of the Cubans who came ooohed and aaahed over the painting. Even asked if it was for sale, so of course, we decided on the spot we couldn’t possibly part with such an fabulous heirloom. But my younger brother’s new gringa bride, the very same woman who’d bought a plastic lemon tree for their living room, thought Uncle Armando’s painting too tacky for her. So I ended up taking it back to New York City.

Now my cousin Mario thinks he should have it, since he has more of a claim to it by blood, but the painting has grown on me since. There it hangs, in my living room, an oddly comforting presence—like a beloved old relative. This, even  though I’ve seen Uncle Armando maybe a grand total of 3 times in my life.

I recall him sitting at Abuela Ñeca’s  massive dining room table, while my mother hollowed out cigarettes and stuffed them with $100 bills, for Armando to smuggle through customs. They were to be a crucial part of his flight to freedom—not only from Fidel Castro, but from his own family too.

My mother’s folks were a brash, cantankerous lot, always in each other’s business. They disliked and distrusted outsiders, didn’t even accept my two brothers and I ( Uncle Willy called us “these people”). My great grandmother ran a Cuban version of The House of Bernarda Alba, in reverse. She would not allow her five male children to marry and they didn’t, until she died.

Of course, Armando had no intention to marry, and it beats the hell out of me why his family couldn’t figure out he was gay. After all, he was the one who designed the Versailles Shepherdess and Harem Girl outfits my mother wore to the costume balls of her youth.

Lavish parties aside, life in Cuba could be oppressive.

Armando had to stay in the narrowest of closets, so he wouldn’t bring shame upon his family. His mother lived only to make her kids miserable: she scared off Uncle Willy’s bride, who fled back to her native Colombia. He never remarried. My great aunt Beba chose to stay with her mother over marrying a Venezuelan suitor who wanted to take her away—and also stayed single at a time when it was a social calamity for women (in later years, Beba and Willy would move in together) .My Uncle Josie was shot to death during a student protest against the Machado regime, which made my great grandmother even more anxious about her male children.

So later on, when it was time to leave Cuba to the Glorious Revolution and its acolytes, Armando saw a chance to make his big break. He moved to New York—NOT Miami like the rest of his family—took a job in textile design,  bought a big, shaggy dog, and didn’t give out his address.

The first time I moved to New York, I tried to track him down, to no avail. He didn’t want to be
found. Once a year, around Xmas, he’d materialize in Miami, laden with tasteful gifts, parcel them
out to his relatives, then go back to NYC and disappear for another year.

Boy, do I sympathize.

To me, happiness is, in large part, the absence of pain. And pain often comes from people who feel entitled to pressure you, disparage you or tell you what to do because they’re your relatives. I don’t see that as an excuse to hurt somebody gratuitously—I don’t do it to others. But it seems that respect for relatives is a concept alien to the Latino family. They think respect is for strangers, so the better they know you, the less they’ll respect you.

Then there are the adjuncts; the strangers who have married into the group and get in the way of your communicating candidly with your relatives. Sometimes, it becomes ridiculous: my ex husband wants me to be friends with his second EX, as though we were sister wives, or something.He wants us to exchange Xmas presents.

Moving from Miami to New York was the best thing I ever did.