Adrian Castro 
Adrian Castro 
WHAT NAME IS IN/ ÌKOSÈDÁYÈ
Red earth grounded in blood
long sacrifice
Along with constant oil palm trees
arms outstretched dripping
dripping sonorous words into soil
paving a path to the source-
this where word, witness, & creation meet
There are histories spinning on carousel
revealing origins in circular dance—
incantation in name
amulet for future
guardian like cervical erected
in your person
shadow like a name
When you've forgotten where
& amongst you came
more a problem of illness
more like
like incomplete thought between
flesh & blood not
not quite fetus
a bastard bone
For us likely to come from ikin seeds
ikin can speak of origins
sights unseen on the way to creation
marks of birth
at the kneeling of creation
choosing the calabash containing ingredients to shape your destiny
Marks on the face map—like
etched at birth
For us
likely to describe spirit residing in head
this is
what name is in—
a text to call your own
complete clear
like the tonal drum
stretched & beaten
at your naming ceremony
Ìkosèdáyè
To Begin
…Home now
Furniture hugging walls
Chairs wooden in the embrace
Impressionists spine the bookshelvesThere is a fat thorough way in the middle—open
I am open now
Anyone possibly knocking
I stand from window to window
cloth drawn
span the back doorway licking
the wind open
flora flipping conversations
The offering placed below
the bedroom window last night
now drunk with rainThis morning over
I could see you
all over againLove—
MARIO'S JACKET
Two years had passed and I still couldn't find work. After Batista put a new tax on the tanning industry, a lot of factories went out of business; including the one I had been working at for the last year or so. I had nothing to do. And it wasn't that I didn't want to work. It was that at the time in Cuba the old colonial Spanish mentality towards work pervaded. Old people had priority in jobs. Once you got hired you could not be fired unless you were caught stealing or something like that. No one would hire young people until an older person either retired or died. And there was usually a long long waiting list of people waiting for a position to open. This was especially true in the shipping docks, which was the principal industry in Regla. A lot of people made good livelihoods from loading and unloading those huge cargo ships. So being un jovencito I was stuck. ¡Imaginate! Two years without working! I was desperate. So I said, bueno, me voy para los Estados Unidos.
I managed to get my stepfather Mongo to loan me $100. Oye, $100! Cien pesos en esos tiempos! That was for many people a month's salary. And Mongo, although obviously not a young man, was also unemployed. He made a living in the meantime hustling and trading boxes of rum (usually stolen) for contraband American cigarettes. So he gave me the money to come to the u.s. under the condition I pay him back when I could.
There was a black -and- white passenger flight cargo ship that departed every Friday from the port in La Habana to Miami. She was called the "Florida." Forty dollars would get you across the Florida Straits. So that day, January 18, 1954, I packed my little maleta with all my clothes— two pants, four shirts, five or six underwears, a couple pairs of socks, and a sport coat. That was it. I said goodbye to Mirna and Mongo, to my brothers and sister, some friends; snuck away from Rosa my ex-wife who was still after me, and went aboard the ship. It was just about sundown. Six o'clock or so. Si six o'clock because I remember the ship departed at six sharp. And as luck would have it a cold front was setting in so the seas were going to be rough.
This boat was no dinghy. We're talking pasajero y de carga. And I tell you the "Florida" was diving in and out of the surf at the mercy of the waves. I gotta admit, I was a bit scared. A bit no. ¡Tenia un miedo del carajo! I remember even singing un cantico to Yemayá hoping she would calm the seas. But in any case, el barco made it to the Port of Miami, which in those days was on the Miami River, just upriver from Government Cut, at about six in the morning. No one was hurt. Just a lot of seasick individuals. I, gracias a Díos, didn't get sick. Although I had never before been on a ship, I had been on many boats before, especially the ferry boat brom Regla to La Habana
6:00 A.M. January 19, 1954. The day I first stepped on United States soil.
The breeze was kind of cool. The cold front was already settling in. The sky was very cloudy. Like rain, como un día de lluvia. There I was literally just off the boat and standing on the docks like in a hex wondering what next. I spoke no English. And in 1954, nobody spoke Spanish in Miami. This was a cracker-town. And I mean a town: Miami was very small in those days. There was hardly even a downtown. The only thing I knew how to say was "I go to Cuba." And this I said when I wanted to tell someone where I came from. So that's to give you an idea of the extent of my English. I wanted to get something to eat but I didn't know where to go. I didn't know how to go to downtown or anywhere for that matter. Not only that, the food that was available was food I didn't recognize. And I wasn't going to risk spending that little money I had on something I didn't know whether I was going to even be able to eat, not to mention the possibility of indigestion. I walked around the dock for a little while, trying to talk to people, to see if I could find some work. But it was too difficult to try to communicate in sign language.Keep in mind nadie hablaba español. No one could direct me to where I could find work. I realized real quickly that Miami was not somewhere I should stay. So I decided to find a way to get to New York.
I found out there were two trains running from Miami to New York City. The "Champion" and the "Silver Star". The " Champion" arrived in New York City in something like 22 hours, while the "Silver Star" took a couple of hours more. But more important, the "Silver Star" was cheaper—$41. So I caught that train that evening. It was to arrive in Penn Station at midnight the next day.
And so there I was, a Cubanito just off the boat, hadn't eaten in over a day (I didn't eat on the train because I couldn't order anything and didn't know the prices, and again I didn't want to risk spending what little money I had; all I drank was a pint of milk), speaking no English, in Penn Station, at mid-night, mid-january, and only a sport jacket to keep me warm. I asked some people how I could get to 1057 Bergen Street. I would show them the wrinkled piece of paper where the address was written. But in Manhattan no one that I asked, or could understand what I was saying, knew where Bergen Street was. Finally someone suggested I take a taxi. This man charged me $19 to take me to Bergen Street in Brooklyn. That left me with just a few dollars; less than 10.
Bergen Street was the home of some distant cousin from my mother's side. My sister Nilda was also in Brooklyn but I didn't know where. So Bergen Street was my only haven. I arrived around 12:30 A.M. at my cousin's house. Needless to say he was very surprised. He let me in. I told him my situation. That I needed a place to stay until tomorrow. That I hadn't eaten in over a day and only had a few dollars left 'till I found a job. His wife graciously prepared me something— I think it was arroz con ropa vieja. I knew he owned a restaurant so I asked him if he could hire me to do dishes or mop the floor or what ever. He told me he had sufficient help. And just as easily, without even blinking, told me I couldn't stay with him for the night. ¿Tu te imagina eso? ¡Ni una noche me pudo hospedar! Pero bueno, at least he referred me to some people from RelIa who in turn knew where my sister was staying. I slept there for the night and the next day I met up with Nilda. Turned out she was renting a room in an apartment that belonged to an elderly Cuban man. And she would cook and clean for him aside from the factory job she had as an undocumented alien (she would later get deported back to Cuba). I stayed with her until I got settled in a job.
The very next day I went into Manhattan to find a job; wearing my only sport jacket. Can you picture this Cubanito going into Manhattan on train y solo? I got so lost! It took me all day to get back to Brooklyn. But nevertheless the next day I went at it again armed with my residency card. Ya yo era residente. (In those days all you needed to get your residency was to go to the American Embassy in La Habana, say you wanted to go to the u.s. to work, say that you had some money saved up— I said $1,200 and you wanted to put it in a bank account or invest it, and they would promptly give you your residency card. That was it. No proof required.) I couldn't tell you how many places I asked for work. I would ask, "Chob fo' mi?" Every factory turned me down. There were times when I thought, "Coñio, is this country as difficult as it seems? Isn't this the land of opportunity? Because if it is, opportunity is not knocking at my door."I figured if I couldn't find a job soon, I would simply go to immigration and ask to be deported. But someone thankfully referred me to a General Electric cable factory. They, gracias a Díos, hired me. I was reaching the end of the line as they say. Tenía la soga en el cuello. By the way guess what was the first thing I bought with my first paycheck.
¡Claro que sí! A long thick green coat with fur on the collar. So anyway I stayed working there for 8 or 9 months. I received several monthly promotions in salary. Me fue bastante bien. I always made more cables than the quota. You see, I always worked more than necessary.
Two years after being in New York City I went back to Cuba for a visit. I offered to pay Mongo the $100 he loaned me. But he refused to accept it. He had a job already, las cosas had changed. He refused to accept it.
OFUN TWICE, AGAIN
I II I
0
I I
0
"The work will be in the realm of the imagination as
plain as the sky is to a fisherman— "
—from Spline And All, William Carlos WilliamsOmodé
tó iku—murmured el negro viejo after his spirit mounted
someone's head (Egungun). The spirit from another
era, tiempo de la colonia, tiempo de senseribó, de los
negros Kongo, negros Lukumí (Egungun). He said
he knew the story—Perhaps these were the last words he ever heard
before the new pact was made. They said said it
would be of utmost importance for him to observe
the taboo of not blowing out candles. The candle
would be the measure, the vehicle of communication
between Iku & himself—blowing out the flicker
would sever the dialogue. There would come a day
when he would see (through mystical vision) a can-
dle burning at someone's bedside. As an herbalist &
~diviner he could not heal that person. Iku would
need that life; probably so that another one could be
born somewhere else.There was actually a time, maybe this is still going
on, when a person's ori inu, (that is, literally the
"head inside," the entity within that says "do this" or
"do that" that says "follow this path" or "follow that"),
would choose where & when it was going to be
born, to whom, who would be the patron
deity /orisha, what Course his life would follow, and
finally when will he breathe his last sigh. This of
course would be contingent on what kind of destiny,
what kind of head the ori inu chose-ori're or ori
buruku, god or bad head. But then sometimes a head
chooses to be born & to die soon after & born & die
& continue this- cycle-the head of an abiku.There was actually a time, maybe this is still going on,
when before burying the abiku, someone (El Niño's
parents, priests presiding over his ritual) would clip a
piece of ear from El Niño's corpse or cut half a pinky.
The idea was to identify him as abiku when he
returned. If he had such markings his history, the
paths he's traversed, the heads he's petitioned, would
be known. The proper amuletos can be prepared, the
taboos observed. Somewhere along the lines though,
the ori inu in conjunction his Orisha & Egun/ances-
tors must all make a pact with Iku.El Niño actually wants to live.
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Web Author: Joseph D. McNair Copyright © 2004 by Joseph D. McNair -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED