According to Greek mythology around 1,200 B.C the Greek goddesses rescued the souls of all women brutally murdered by invaders and gave birth to a race of women warriors, The Amazons. The Amazons lived in Pontus, modern day Turkey near the shores of what is known today as the Black Sea. In a more recent version of the myth, one soul was left behind and Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons and owner of the magical girdle given to her by her father Ares, the Greek god of war, infused this soul to her first offspring born. Perhaps my fascination with the Amazons is an attempt to understand the complexity of the character of my mother, Ada Mina Garcia Masque, a Cuban Amazon, who out of her volition grew a great devotion for San Giving.

On December of 1941, William Moulton Marston’s character, Wonder Woman, appeared in All Star Comics. It was not until the week of Thanksgiving of 1962 that I came across one of this comic books. While waiting at the Freedom Towers in Florida for our weekly food allowance as refugees, a young Cuban boy left a Wonder Woman comic book on the chair next to mine. In the sea of gray, the flashy colorful cover grabbed my attention. Curiously, I plowed through its pages while waiting for my mother and instantly grew a fascination for this character wearing what to my six-year-old self resembled a Cuban flag (note that the Cuban flag features the same colors as the U.S. flag).

Suddenly, a commotion rose. My mother argued in Spanish with the woman behind the counter.

”No es justo,” she said fervently referring to the portions allowed.

One by one, all the women in El Refugio united to her plea. I looked at my mother and back at the page and smiled. Mami was very aware that Castro’s revolution had taken place to extinguish the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator supported by the U.S. She was also aware that the pendulum had merely shifted from one patriarchal monolith on the extreme right to one on the extreme left. Wonder woman was alive, and I happened to live with her.

Becoming a refugee at the age of five traps one inside the Temperance card of the Tarot deck. One grows up with one foot on the earth, and one on the water – an apparent balancing act until one digs deeper. A refugee never intends to grow roots or stay away from her or his homeland. I learned that while flipping through the pages of Mami, my real Wonder Woman. We think of all the heart-shredding and soul-plucking chaotic confusion of exile as something temporary.

The sun always shines after a category five tropical storm. Right? Let’s make sure that our children are alive, out of danger, and well feed this moment, and then we think about how to go back. You long to return to your parents, your children’s grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts, your culture, your language, your wedding pictures, the avocado tree in the backyard, and the homeless and skinny orange cat you named Mango who you fed religiously after dark until it grew fat.

As a refugee, nostalgia gnaws your bone marrow to the point that you start missing odd things: the way the roaches fly during hurricane season; the way mosquito bites sting in the spring; los batidos de mamey from la bodega de Juaquin; or the arguments Mami had at the fruit stand with Arnaldo. “Oiga, por dios, que estas bananas don’t play the piano,” Mami would reason trying to get him to lower the price. Too soon everything you witness prompts an “ay por tu vida, esto no pasaba en Cuba!”

Our first San Giving, as my mother called this U.S. holiday, not knowing the English language, had nothing to do with pilgrims stealing the land from Native Americans. We did not know about Plymouth or the Mayflower. We had no historical content for this celebration as we had no historical content for anything at all in this land we called exile. We were displaced from our history, our roots and our stories, trying to adapt and gain force to return home where we belonged.

The CIA detained and interrogated my father at the Opa Locka military camp in Florida for an entire year. My mother cleaned houses, cooked, and did manicures for a living. And my aunt Nina, picked me up every day from my misery at the Merrick Demonstration School in Coral Gables. There, I struggled with the language barrier, was forced to wear skirts, and navigated the sea of embarrassments – like the time I rose my hand because I needed to go to the bathroom. By the time Ms. Emeris paid attention, I already had peed in my pants and had received the flamboyant titles of Spic and clown of the class.

Happy to return home, I browsed through the pages of my Wonder Woman comic book – the one and only I had since we could not afford to spare 12 cents to buy a new issue. I felt lucky to have my mom and spent my nights praying for my dad and for our return to Havana to take care of Abuelito Papo, who struggled with bone cancer.

Our first San Giving in the U.S., Mami had just returned from cleaning a house in Key Biscayne, I packed my Peter Rabbit book, a very dull story I had to read for school, and my comic book. Holding Wonder Woman’s hand, I walked to Nina and Bobby’s home where my aunt heated turkey TV dinners with mashed potatoes and brown gravy for the four of us.

“Mira pa’ eso, Nina,” Bobby scooped the white creamy paste off his plate at dinner time, “quien se come esta miasma, por tu vida?” The six-foot tall mulatto stared at his lumpy meal brown eyes popping from their sockets.

“Oyeme, Antonio,” my mother called Uncle Bobby by his real name holding the fork up with her usual hoy no estoy pa’ cuentos tone.

My uncle, Antonio Maceo, was the grandson of the Titan of Bronze, who led the independence war and abolished slavery in Cuba. Before he left the island, Uncle Bobby was the surgeon general of Cuba. The great expatriate Mambi lowered his head and shot the fuck up.

“Es San Giving, Viejo. We are lucky that this country has a Santo we can thank. It could be worst. We could be dead. Tenemos que dar gracias,” she said, tasted the food and offered a grimace.

“We need to be thankful that we have food on the table. Cuantos Cubanitos no tienen que comer,” Aunt Nina added.

As is the case with most refugees, my family never gave up returning to Cuba. I never saw my grandparents again. They died on the island.

The extended family got spread all over the world. I buried Papi in Coral Gables; Aunt Teri was buried in Mexico City, Uncle Hector in Buenos Aires, and my Cuban Wonder Woman’s ashes I threw in the sea at Miami Beach in 2012 the week after San Giving to allow Mami to fulfill her life dream, to return to her island. Mami actually died during her favorite holiday, San Giving day.

And I, her surviving offspring, hike Pusch Ridge in the Sonoran Desert on every San Giving, the sands of mi isla bella still lingering from my feet. In this San Giving, I give thanks to that Santo of Cuban mother’s invention, for the journey that brought me here and for the gift of an Amazon mother who made Wonder Woman pale. Forget grizzly bears. Thanks to Mami, I never had one doubt that Cuban women are the strongest creatures on earth!

Like Mami would say, “there is always something to be thankful. If you don’t like your problem, pick up someone else’s problem. You will want your old problem back in a blink.”

Happy San Giving!

Mariel Masque – Copyright 2015 – All Rights Reserved – Including International Rights

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