In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd

“The Last Rescue” takes place in a single night, during which Anselmo tosses and turns in bed, worried that his wife Meegan is having an affair with Mark, an American pilot.

Anselmo needs to sleep. In the morning, he will be flying rescue missions to look for Cuban rafters, who mostly no longer appear because the United States has stopped accepting them. He tries to empty his mind but struggles as he reflects on his relationship with Meegan. His father had warned him that an “Americana” (89) could never understand a Cuban man; she would expect him to do housework. Anselmo was surprised that Meegan did not, but he chooses to help. When his parents come over for dinner, however, he lets Meegan do the cleaning up alone.

Her deep sleep bothers him; he sees it as “a space that was hers alone” (89). That she never shares her dreams also frustrates him. Meegan wakes up complaining that she is hot, but Anselmo feels cold. She gets up to stand in front of the air conditioner. When she returns to bed, she snuggles against him.

Anselmo is used to men admiring his wife for her beauty but is alarmed by what he saw at a party the previous night: his wife sitting close to Mark and talking about the embargo against Cuba. Anselmo supports it, but Meegan believes it is time to “let it go” (92). Later, Mark revealed that he and Meegan plan to play tennis while Anselmo is on his flying mission. That Meegan never told Anselmo about these plans haunts him. He obsessively runs through every instance of Meegan mentioning Mark.

Anselmo gets out of bed to turn off the thermostat. Returning to bed, he tells himself that he is overreacting to Meegan’s conversation with Mark, but then continues obsessing about it. She wakes up, complains that it is hot, and gets up to check the thermostat. When she returns to bed, Anselmo thinks he will finally be able to sleep, but he feels a chill, “like fingers crawling up from his toes” (96).

He is afraid that Meegan will let him leave for his flying mission without mentioning her tennis date with Mark. He remembers a morning when his passion flared out of control, and he broke a glass and accused Meegan of not feeling anything. He wants her to respond passionately to his jealousy, but she remains placid. He is afraid that “something had broken and it was his fault and it would never be the same again” (99). He thinks of his father’s warning, “Two people rarely love each other equally” (99).

In this allegorical, magical realist story, a first-person female narrator describes her family in Miami and their “old uncle in Havana” (100). As a child, the old uncle ran “through the streets with a loaded gun, screaming, ‘National pie and friendliness!’” (101). The family keeps a scratched picture of him in a black closet. Her aunt Julia bites people. Her grandmother will only cook outside to ensure “the food spirits can escape” (100) and eats lunch from the bird feeder in the mango tree. Her grandfather has a radio growing out of his ear. The narrator’s mother tells her the family is cursed and haunted by the ghosts of the dead. Her grandmother poisons her mother’s coffee, so her mother grows an extra mouth, saying, “We have such deep love in this family” (103). Aunt Julia bites the mailman after he steals a letter from the old uncle, screaming, “Family is sacred!” (103).

The narrator brings a boy she likes home for dinner. He smiles and nods. Later, he tells her that perhaps the old uncle “wasn’t so bad,” adding, “Maybe the way your family tells it is wrong” (106). Perhaps he kicked out the family because they were “contagious or something” (106). The narrator imagines the old uncle “sad and alone in his big house” (106), sitting on the roof smoking a cigar. She wonders if he ever thinks of them.

At night, when he thinks the family is sleeping, the grandfather phones radio stations. One night, he tells a story about the old uncle. His problems stem from a family curse. Robbers broke into the family home and tried to steal jewelry and money, but the old uncle apprehended them. He shot them repeatedly, and then forbade anyone in the family from leaving. When they became hungry, the old uncle roasted the robbers’ bodies for food. After Aunt Julia was the first to eat, she cried for a month. After four years, the old uncle allowed anyone to leave, and the whole family left “through the back door, leaving everything behind” (105).

The narrator tells her grandfather that she has spoken with the old uncle. The family house is falling apart. He wears his old railroad company uniform, giving orders to the four walls during the day and shooting lame animals to help them because he “is the most tender of men” (106). Her grandfather grabs the narrator’s wrists and whispers, “Bastard!” (106).

That night, the narrator goes into the closet and speaks with the old uncle’s photo. She says, “Everyone is wrong” (107), including the boy who loves her. She and the old uncle agree that no curse exists; rather, “He is crazy because of us and we are crazy because of him” (107).

The narrator sits with her grandmother in the mango tree. Her grandmother says they will never be free of the old uncle, even when he is dead. The narrator nods, adding, “they say he is very sick” (108). The grandmother says the devil will take him. The narrator tells her grandmother about the sinkhole that she believes will consume everything. They will have to live underground, “each generation more blind than the last until a thick layer of skin covers our eyes” (108). The rest of the family gathers under the tree to scream up at the narrator and her grandmother. The grandmother’s eyes are closed, and the narrator cannot get her to open them.