Una Cara De Palomilla

A palomilla steak a la cubana, usually served with papitas (skinny French fries):



They who laugh last laugh loudest--not what you expect, eh? What follows certainly caught Ninina by surprise:

UNA CARA DE PALOMILLA

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

Although it was pouring Friday, I was like a woman possessed. I just had to find a hard copy of the latest issue of New Times. I was also looking for a bottle of wine to take to Carmen’s that night.
So, unkempt as all get out, I ran to the car and decided I’d find everything I needed on or around Red Road.
Bypassing the liquor store where I’d bought Francis Ford Coppola’s Sofia in its pretty pink packaging several weeks earlier, I figured I’d try Milam’s. So I turned onto Bird Road.
Yes? No. I continued down Bird to my Target. I was running out of my eye drops. Might as well kill as many birds with one stone, on this torrentially gloomy day.
After entertaining my friendly pharmacist in her even more somnambulistic state than I found myself (having tackled a new—and obviously—ineffective sleeping aid), I returned up Bird Road. This time I turned into the Red Bird Shopping Center, and headed straight for the Milam’s.
Might as well continue killing more birds with that stone.
Alas, no. No New Times.
It continued to pour. And I was hungry. So I decided to try Gilbert’s Bakery, which is supposed to be very good.
The wine purchase could wait.
A small group of people were lined up inside. How do I order, I inquired. Take a number. Where. Just inside the door. Oh.
Quickly glancing at the contents of the vitrina, I decided a tamal would not kill my dinner party appetite. I also ordered a small café con leche. Not a cortadito, this, but a bona fide small café con leche.
Spotting some empty tables outside, I took my food, sat down, ate the very respectable tamal a la cubana, and grimaced my way through a still too dark small café con leche. I won’t regret the higher caffeine levels, I told myself.
Several older men were sitting next to me. A younger man was standing, talking with them. Upon spotting me, they switched to English. Aah, a gringa, they appeared to tell themselves.
I’m used to it.
One of the men addressed me. I politely, yet resignedly, informed him I am cubana. My usual: the Cuban daughter of a Cuban father and a Hungarian mother. The conversation switched back to Spanish. Where in Cuba? My father was from Santa Clara, I said. Aah, Las Villas, one of the older gents exclaimed.
Yes. Las Villas. Un isleno. That produced even more of an aah.
And I’m a humorist. There. That should get them, I thought.
They were ready, however. Before he departed, the youngest made a comment about una cara de palomilla.
Una cara de palomilla? Yes, when una senora cubana de cierta edad goes to a restaurant, asks what’s good, and the waiter recommends la palomilla, he said. He continued, “She says, ‘Pues, bueno, una palomilla.”
Evidently she’s supposed to make a face expressing something in between resignation, curiosity, and some actual level of desire to eat that palomilla. Oh.
More than anything, it’s the shrug, he said. A three-way shrug, among her face, her voice, and her shoulders: a little, imperceptible… twitch.
So he repeated himself. Including the twitch. His friends nodded in approval.
I howled. You have your material now, he said, as he left.
The older men and I continued to hash this over, among other things. It turned out one of them had been a prisoner of war at Playa Giron, which immediately places him in his own league within our Cuban-American world.
The other works in the barbershop next to Gilbert’s. He’s been in the States for fifty-two years.
I told them about my mandados. They recommended Top Hat Liquors further down the mall. They couldn’t help me with New Times, though.
No one could. Red Bird has become a Hispanic mall.
US 1? Sunset? Miracle Mile? Yes, I knew where to go.
It took me several attempts on Miracle Mile, illegally parked, sprinting through charcos, but I finally got my New Times.
Later on, I showed up at Carmen’s with a lovely pinot noir.
But only those three cubanos could have provided me with una cara de palomilla.
Copyright, 2005 by Georgina Marrero All Rights Reserved