Navidades con Maracas—a Xmas miracle of sorts (By Juana Bimba)

It was almost Xmas. I was living in NYC and working in publishing when I received an invitation to my company headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was going there to receive my holiday gift: a bonus for my work as editor of their bilingual magazine in New York. Things went fairly well on that trip. Knoxville people were nice, the food was great and the place was gorgeous, with rows of blue mountains etched faintly in the background. But the days were cold, gray,windy and rainy. Nobody spoke Spanish, there were no fondas or bodegas, nobody knew what an empanada was. For me, a product of Miami and New York, it was like visiting another planet. Seeking out the familiar, I befriended the only Hispanic I'd met there, a young Puerto Rican woman who worked for the same company and resided in Knoxville year-round. I asked myself,How could she live there? In this exile of the soul that cities like Knoxville are for people like us? How could she exist in a space where nobody really gets her, where days are gray and cloaked in a drizzle that looks like tears, where she will never hear the sounds of spoken Spanish or rhythmic percussion floating in the air on a summer afternoon? In her shoes, I would pray for some random miracle to find me and brighten up my life. Perhaps that's what she did. She told me a story. Years ago, when she'd first moved to Knoxville, she had lost track of a beloved half brother.The Internet was not around yet, she had no way to search for him. It was as though the earth had swallowed him. This weighed particularly on her during Xmas,when she recalled the large family gatherings back home while outside, she heard the Knoxville rain and wind beating on her windows. Then, a Xmas Eve miracle. She was in the kitchen preparing that night's traditional meal when she heard a familiar voice in the living room. The voice was singing. She rushed into the living room where the TV was tuned to Don Francisco's variety show, and lo and behold: there on the screen, fronting a salsa orchestra, was her dear, long lost brother! Beats me how she could, for years, have missed the whereabouts of a well-known salsero. Maybe he wasn't as famous back then. Maybe she wasn't paying attention. Maybe she didn't watch that much Spanish TV,maybe Knoxville radio stations didn't play any salsa. And as I mentioned, there was no Internet just yet. None of that is important. What does matter is that one Xmas Eve, a loud and tacky variety show became the improbable Star of Bethlehem that reunited a Latina lost in Knoxville, and her salsero half brother.