The Long Way Home

Written by Sheila Uría Véliz

The day begins as it always does in Cuba: sweltering hot. 

That doesn’t stop my cousin Caridad and I from playing dolls next to the balcony, close enough to futilely hope for a breeze, but not too close that we risk one of the toys falling through the railings and landing on one of the bicitaxeros—bicycle taxi drivers found all over Cuba—parked on our doorstep, resting while they wait for their next fare.

At 11 years old, Caridad is the closest thing I have to an older sister, or a sister at all. This summer, like every summer, I dread the approaching deadline when my mom and I have to return to Spain, and I have to leave my best friend again.

Sheila and Caridad at 8 and 11 years old in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Sheila Uría Véliz.

But in that precise moment, as the bustle of pedestrians and housewives hollering to one another drifts in, Caridad is my sworn nemesis.

“Give it,” I say through gritted teeth, trying to wrestle the naked Barbie doll out of Caridad’s tight grip, but she’s older, thus stronger, and she simply won’t let go.

“Tía said we have to share!”

“No, it’s my doll!”

The bubble of heat in my chest burns as it grows and engulfs my ribcage, threatening to burst in my body, too small to contain it. 

“She said it’s both of ours!”

Until it does. 

“No, it’s mine,” I snap. “They’re my dolls. I brought them from Spain. My mom’s just forcing me to give them to you when we leave, but they’re still my dolls.”

At only eight years old, I know better. I know that my words sting. But I’m hurt and I don’t know what to do with the intangible and unnameable sensations overpowering me, so I lash out, even though I know what I say is in poor taste. 

It’s an unspoken rule that what is mine is Caridad’s and what’s Caridad’s is mine. We both get a scoop of chocolate at Coppelia, a popular ice cream parlor in Cuba, we both get to go to the lady down the street who sells makeshift popsicles made from frozen soda out of her house, and we both have to haul ass when the street lights turn off and our names echo in the night, beckoning us to come home. 

The difference in our upbringings appears almost nonexistent when we are together, like a fly on the wall. You notice it occasionally, but you mainly forget that it’s there. Until it starts buzzing. And this time, I am the one to agitate it and make it obvious that, although my mom buys us each one of everything, I eventually go home to Spain to share a bedroom with my 16-year-old brother in a working-class neighborhood while Caridad sleeps in a decayed 19th century, two-story house on one of the busiest streets in Old Havana playing with my hand-me-down toys. 

The house belongs to Abuelo Papi—my mother’s stepfather. That’s what I call him since everyone else calls him Papi and I already have a paternal grandfather living back home in Spain, where he relocated to as a Cuban political prisoner. Abuelo Papi is my uncle’s biological father, so he’s just Abuelo to Caridad. 

I spend most of the summers of my youth up on that terrace with Caridad, sitting on the railing and talking while we watch the world pass by below. Caridad has her quinciañera party on that terrace. I take my first steps at eleven months old in the living room. Caridad reads  La Edad de Oro—a children’s book by renowned Cuban author José Martí—out loud in her bedroom while she impersonates Fidel Castro, dropping her voice as low as it goes and wagging her finger as he did during speeches while I giggle uncontrollably. 

That house is our fortress.

It is also where Abuelo Papi dies.

Caridad and I are still 11 and 8 years old when it happens. My mom and I have just immigrated to the United States. We are closer to Cuba than we have ever been, but we can’t attend the funeral because we’re waiting for our green cards to arrive any minute now. We will only come to visit Cuba again four years later when I am 12 years old and Caridad is 15.

Soon enough, Caridad starts a family of her own in that same house. 

She cooks for them in the same crowded kitchen where we would sneak in to ask what was for dinner and Caridad’s mom would say, “Nunya.”

“Nunya?” 

“Yeah, nunya business.”

She bathes her daughter in the same open shower bathroom where we showered when we were younger, scooping the heated water out of a deep steel pot with coffee mugs, pouring it over ourselves, and squealing when one would splash water on the other. 

By 2021, the house is completely falling apart. Many of the buildings down her street have broken down, including the one next door, the mountain of rubble visible out of Caridad’s kitchen window. 

A view across the street from Caridad's house. Credit: Sheila Uría Véliz.

These types of collapses are commonplace in Cuba. Most of the homes were built in the 19th and 20th century, and without constant upkeep, cannot escape the erosion of time or the storm-prone climate on the island. Cubans have long asked authorities for help, but the Cuban regime claims to be too poor. Never mind that, as many Cubans point out, the government keeps investing in tourism, even when the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2017 reinstitution of the American travel ban impeded many from flying to the country. 

“It’s a total collapse,” says Tony, Caridad’s husband. “Things in Cuba are worsening. The system is failing.”

Homeland and life
July, 2021

Caridad, now 24, dabs the sweat dripping from her forehead with a handkerchief and shifts her weight from one hip to the other as she nears the third hour of waiting in line to enter the local grocery store. She strains to look over the heads of people ahead of her and hopes that the price for a can of beans hasn’t risen again. The week before, it had gone up from the equivalent of $16—an already steep price—to $20. Any higher, and she won’t have anything to feed her family. That’s if there are any cans of beans left to buy at all. These days, stores are increasingly bare, and Caridad doesn’t appreciate wasting another morning queuing only to come out empty-handed once more.

Meanwhile, an hour south of Havana, mask-clad Cubans march down the dirt roads of San Antonio de los Baños, a small municipality bordering the capital, peacefully chanting, “Liberty!” and “We’re hungry!” while the sun beats down their backs.

News of the protest spreads like wildfire via social media platforms, and by three in the afternoon, tens of thousands of Cubans take to the streets across more than 60 towns and cities in the biggest anti-government demonstration on the island since 1994. The Cuban people have grown tired of the constant blackouts, the spiking daily COVID cases, the slow vaccine rollout, as well as the rampant food and medicine scarcity. 

“Homeland and life!” is a rallying cry amidst the crowd—referencing the song of the same name released earlier that year by a collective of Cuban artists criticizing the country’s shortages, depreciation of the Cuban peso, and the repression of the Cuban people. The phrase is an inversion of the pro-regime mantra coined by Fidel Castro, “Homeland or death.” Some protesters roll over an empty police car and throw stones at it. Others yell, “Repressors!” at riot police. 

The Cuban government responds with an immediate and total crackdown. Black-uniformed police and plainclothes officers storm into homes and forcefully drag protesters while their families plead to let them go. They use pepper spray against the crowd and journalists, including a photographer working with the Associated Press. An image of a shirtless teenage boy draped over his father in the middle of the street, shielding him from being beaten by a police officer, floods Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. 

President Miguel Díaz-Canel appears on camera, walking down San Antonio de los Baños, where the dissent originated, with an entourage of security, no demonstrators in sight. He later denounces the protests as a counterrevolutionary measure orchestrated by the United States government to destabilize Cuba. 

“We are calling on all the revolutionaries in the country, all the communists, to hit the streets wherever there is an effort to produce these provocations,” he says. 

Like the rest of the Cuban diaspora across the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean, my mom and I join our compatriots in calling for a Cuba free of repression and communism. That Sunday, July 21, 2021, it rains on the gulf coast of Florida. I huddle under a small umbrella while the growing impromptu crowd of Cubans peacefully chants for a liberated Cuba off the side of a busy intersection in our seaside town. 

The Cuban community is small then—it has yet to face the booming growth it will see in the next three years—but undeterred. Through word of mouth, virtually everyone who proclaims themselves as Cuban has come out to share their support for their fellow countrymen left on the island. Rain or shine. And if there is one thing Cubans are good at, it’s being loud. 

I share a look of amusement with my best friend as my mother takes possession of someone’s microphone and yells effusively in Spanish, “Liberty!” over and over, rallying everyone to wave their flags higher and cheer louder whenever a passing car beeps its horn in support. 

So much of Cuba’s economy relies on the remittances of Cubans living abroad, that is, money and basic materials they send or bring with them to the island when they visit. Many Cubans, like my mom, pay a mula—a mule, or a person who sells baggage space so Cubans living abroad can send non-perishable food, medications, and clothes to their families and friends on the island. The going rate is about $10 per pound. It’s because of these remittances that so many Cubans left on the island can barely survive. Those unlucky enough to not have family or friends abroad have to go without. 

Maybe that’s why Caridad doesn’t join the protests. 

Whatever small show of dissent has taken place in the country is not enough for her to risk endangering her family’s safety. Not unless all of Cuba has decided to rise against the regime.

That day, the Cuban government arrests approximately 2,000 people and charges at least 790 protesters with sedition. By nightfall on Sunday, the protests have fizzled out. The internet on the island has been indefinitely restricted, and there is a preexisting curfew of 9 p.m. because of the pandemic.

In some ways, Caridad is right. Though July 11, 2021, remains in history as a day of unprecedented resistance from the Cuban people, the protests don't amount to any significant regime change on the island. Just more repression and more hunger. 

In the cards
July, 2023

It is the middle of summer, and for Florida, that means indiscriminate light showers. I am sitting at the circulation desk of the public library where I work when my phone starts ringing in my pocket. I fumble to turn my ringer off, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment as I mutter an apology to my coworker and the patron she is tending to. I don’t bother checking the caller ID. Nobody but my mother ever calls me. 

In my head, I am planning the angry text message I plan to send her for calling me during work hours. But then, my phone vibrates again. My mother is nothing if not insistent. 

“Excuse me,” I say apologetically but hurriedly as I rise from my seat and head toward the back room. “What?” I snap in Spanish as I answer the call. “Mom, I told you to stop calling me while I’m at work. I’m at the front desk, for God’s sake!”

“Sheila,” she says quietly, deliberately choosing to let my disrespectful tone slide this one time. “Tony’s here.”

I blink, confused. “What Tony?”

“Tony Tony,” my mom says. “Caridad’s Tony. He’s in Texas. He crossed the border.”

My eyes feel like they’re bulging from my sockets. “He what? When did he even leave Cuba?”

“A month ago.”

“What the hell? They didn’t tell us anything!”

“Never mind that, Sheila. He’s in a detention center right now, but Customs and Border Protection is about to move him to a shelter. Can you get him a flight to Florida?”

“Erm, yeah,” I stutter. “I’ll do that right now.”

I hang up the phone and begin fumbling through the browser. My fingers are shaking. It’s hard to navigate, but I do it, ignoring my work responsibilities, which feel distant and unimportant at the moment. The soonest flight is twelve hours out, so Tony has to wait at the airport in Texas.

I go to welcome him myself, wanting him to see a familiar face when he steps foot in The Sunshine State. I scan the faces of travelers stumbling out through the automated doors, and as an elderly couple steps to the side, I spot him. Tony’s brown and gaunt face surfaces, breaking into a bright grin as his eyes meet mine.

“Prima!”

He engulfs me in a warm embrace. It doesn’t matter that we don’t share blood, that I’m his wife’s cousin and not his. He always refers to me as his cousin. That feels particularly important to recognize at this moment. 

I bring him back to our home and give him my room. I’ll share my mom’s with her for now. While he eats the plate of rice and beans my mom serves him, Tony tells us all about his daunting overland, first flying from Cuba to Nicaragua, which doesn’t require a visa, and then paying coyotes—smugglers—to take him into Mexico. 

The entire trip costs about $3,000. Even after selling many of their belongings—a computer, speakers, and Tony’s motorcycle, which he used for his job as a tourist guide—and borrowing money from friends, he and Caridad didn’t have enough to get him to the United States. But Tony does have a cousin in Cancún, Mexico, who works at a circus with his wife, so they decided that Tony would join his cousin, and then they would figure out what to do next from there.

“You have to start with what you have,” Tony tells me in Spanish. “If you wait to have everything, paths won’t open up for you. This is the card you were dealt; you either take it or leave it.”

The journey, as Cubans like to call the popular migrant pathway, only lasts a month for Tony, but it is not without hiccups. 

Tony recalls the four days he spent in a small room locked from the outside behind a religious goods store in Tabasco, Mexico, while he awaited for the next coyote as the longest four days of his life. 

He recalls walking out of the airport in Matamoros, a town at Mexico’s northernmost tip and the closest town to the point of entry in Brownsville, Texas, and feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. The place is deserted, and the person who is supposed to pick him up—a friend who happens to live in that city—is nowhere in sight. He is 1,4000 miles from the border, and he doesn’t know what to do. He knows only what he’s heard—that Matamoros is dangerous narco territory. 

Migrants hiking in groups amid their international cross-country journey to Mexico. Credit: Tony.

“I felt defenseless in that empty airport with nothing around,” Tony says. 

He recalls finally getting on a bus that takes him to his motel in Matamoros a few days before his appointment with border agents. A week into his life in Mexico, Tony had applied to the Customs and Border Protection app – an online tool for migrants known as CBP One – to petition humanitarian parole and officially enter the United States of America.

As Tony applies for a work permit his first week in the United States and starts two jobs working as a Wendy’s cashier and a gardener, I move to New York City and start my master’s program at the Columbia School of Journalism. The first few months are a blur of never-ending reporting and writing and learning from Pulitzer-award-winning journalists. I don’t worry too much about Caridad and her children. My mom still sends food and clothes for the kids via mulas and Tony sends money home every chance he gets. The situation is not ideal, but they’re managing to survive until Tony becomes a permanent resident in a year and sponsors the family to join him here. 

Unbeknownst to me and my mom, Caridad has decided to take matters into her own hands. Just surviving is not enough anymore. 

Migrants cross a river on makeshift boats made of plywood and bus tires. Credit: Tony.

On the mountainside
September, 2023

The first thing Caridad notices when she and the family land in Nicaragua around three in the morning is the heat. It is unbearable, more so than it has ever been in Cuba. To top it all off, there is no air conditioning in the hostel where their coyote takes them.

It is full to the brim with Cubans making the same voyage, and they’ve all been split into groups that communicate by WhatsApp. If they are ever separated, they are to use the app to reconvene. 

The border-crossing operation is well-planned and organized, spearheaded by a coyote named Yordanis. Caridad never meets him. Yordanis works remotely, coordinating other coyotes to ensure everything runs smoothly. If a traveler ever has a problem, they message Yordanis on Whatsapp, and he takes care of it.

Caridad stays in Nicaragua for three days. Luckily, she and her family have a room to themselves with a private bathroom, and they are fed three meals a day. After the third day, Caridad’s group of 40 people, including the kids, Tony’s mother Amara and cousins who are making the same voyage, are all packed into a caravan and driven to the border where they cross into Honduras.

That’s when the hiking begins.

Every time Caridad looks down the steep mountainside they are climbing, her heart leaps into her throat. Caridad’s calves burn and her arms are heavy from holding her daughter Mely, one wrapped around her while the other carries their bags. Amara holds the baby, Yoni, who is only eleven months old.  

They walk for hours before Caridad’s group arrives in Guatemala at a new hostel. There, they meet another group that has been there a week – longer than usual. The political atmosphere in the country is tense with anti-government protests and fighting on the streets, so the coyotes are waiting for things to ease up before moving their customers on. 

A world of people
September, 2023

“C’mon, move it! Move it! The buses are outside!

Caridad is jolted awake by an incessant pounding piercing her ears. It takes her several seconds in her semi-conscious state to process the source of her disrupted sleep – a coyote banging on the door. Her children and Amara stir next to her on the bed. Tony’s cousins, Rafael and Sergio, share the other bed in the room. 

She looks at her phone. It’s four in the morning. A lull hangs in the air as realization settles, and then everything breaks into chaos. Everyone rushes to gather their things, racing to not get left behind. After three days stuck in a hostel in Guatemala, they are finally moving. 

Caridad moves slower than everyone else, still groggy from being abruptly woken up.

“Dale, Caridad!” Rafael rushes her, clapping his hands for emphasis. “Let’s go!”

Caridad fumbles trying to put Mely’s shoes on, the 4-year-old’s brown doe eyes watching quietly as her mother struggles. Caridad sucks her teeth in frustration and grabs the shoes in one hand and Mely in the other, hurrying after her family and making it just in time to board one of the 20 yellow school buses waiting outside. 

The bus ride is supposed to last 20 minutes but turns into an hour and a half. 

With police checkpoints on every corner due to the protests, every time the driver sees a police car or hears sirens, he turns around and finds a hiding spot to wait for ten minutes before moving again. Eventually, the buses come to a stop. The coyotes tell the passengers to get off and walk three blocks, where they will meet and board the bus again. 

A world of people, as Caridad calls it, climb out and walk down the street for about three miles before boarding the bus again.

De Guatemala a Guatepeor
September, 2023

Caridad can barely see through the pitch-black veil of the night. The eerie sound of crickets chirping comes from all directions where she stands in a clearing. 

Her group has been dropped off just outside the next meeting point in a narco-dominated area of Guatemala. The travelers have strength in numbers, but the group is at a crossroads. They are supposed to have been picked up by cars already, but the cars are probably unable to get through the police checkpoints. So they have a decision to make: they can either muster the courage to walk to their next meeting point with narcos nearby, or they can wait. The group splits up. Caridad chooses the wait.

But the longer she waits, the more she regrets her decision. Almost an hour after the first half of the group leaves, Caridad and the other half follow.

When they finally reach the next meeting point, another set of buses drive them to the next location. 

The streets are packed with protesters. It’s impossible to get through in a car, let alone a bus. Caridad has to pay $15 per person to hop on the back of motorcycles and weave through the crowd until they make it through and load into a taxi, paying the driver up front to take them to the next point where they will finally cross into Tapachula, Mexico.

The car has air-conditioning, and the only passengers are Caridad, Amara, the children, and Tony’s cousins. Caridad is more than content. She can finally breathe. They are almost out of there. 

Then five minutes into the drive, the car screeches to a stop.

A group of men jumps in front of the vehicle, holding rocks and cans lit on fire.

“Turn around, or we’ll light your car on fire!” they yell at the driver, pounding on the car windows. 

God, we’re going to be burned alive, Caridad thinks as her heart pounds. It’s like a horror film.

“Out!” the driver tells everyone over his shoulder. “Everyone, out! Now!”

Caridad holds Mely tightly in her arms as she and her family step out, shielding her head full of brown curls, afraid that one of those rocks is going to hit and split her child’s head open. She keeps her gaze down, avoiding any eye contact with her assailants, but she can hear her driver give the fare Caridad paid him to another driver. They haven’t left the area yet, so there are plenty of other taxis around. 

As they all transfer into the second car, Caridad doesn't stop to wonder why the men who just threatened the first taxi driver let the other pass through. She’s just glad to leave Guatemala behind.

“I thought I’d never leave,” Caridad says.

The final stop
September, 2023

The taxi driver drops them off by a river right outside Tapachula, Mexico. There, they have to cross the river on makeshift boats made of plywood and bus tires, each raft holding up to ten people. A coyote rows with a long sugarcane stalk, the water calm while they cross. 

Once on the other side of the river, Caridad and her family stumble through a small jungle. She bats away the mosquitoes gnawing at her and Mely’s skin and keeps on walking. The soft ground underfoot changes into asphalt as they reach a road where pickup trucks await them. They hop on the back of one of the trucks, packed in like sardines with other migrants.

Caridad doesn’t register the rain at first. 

But then a second drop falls. Then another. And another. Before she knows it, a torrential wall is coming down on them. 

“Here you go,” the man sitting across from Caridad says as he removes his jacket and drapes it over Mely and Yoni.

It is no use, though. The rain seeps right through, completely drenching them.

They sit in their heavy, wet clothes while the truck drives in the rain for over an hour until they reach Tapachula. The final stop. This is as far as the coyotes go, but Caridad’s trip is far from over.

She still has to get to Mexico City where Tony has rented his family an apartment in a building predominantly inhabited by other Cubans. Caridad and Tony have heard that applying to CBP One from the capital is faster and safer. Tapachula, on the other hand, is on the U.S. and Mexican governments’ radars as a migrant crossing town, and Caridad doesn’t want to risk deportation by applying from there. 

Tony hires another coyote—at a much steeper price—to drive Caridad and the family four hours to Mexico City.

Safe and sound
October, 2023

Caridad is stunned into silence the moment she steps into a Mexican grocery store for the first time. Her eyes scan the full shelves greedily, bewildered by the variety of products. She can’t believe it. There are strawberries in September. More than anything she had ever seen in Cuba. 

If this is what Mexico is like, she thinks, she can’t imagine what the United States will have in store for her. She has already applied for a CBP appointment. It’s just a matter of time. 

The experience does not come without downfalls, though. Their treacherous trip has made both of Caridad’s children sick. Mely has to be hospitalized for an asthma attack. She had already been hospitalized earlier that year in Cuba after suffering a seizure from dengue fever, a viral disease spread by mosquitoes. As it is common in Cuba, the hospital didn’t have medication. It was a neighbor of the family who had painkillers from abroad who supplied the medication to the hospital to treat Mely.

But unlike Cuba, the hospital in Mexico has medicine to spare to treat Mely’s asthma attack, and within a few days, she is homebound. 

It is around this time that we find out that Caridad is in Mexico. My mom started to suspect it after not hearing from Caridad for a couple of weeks, but I assured her that Caridad wouldn’t do that, not with the kids, and she would surely not leave them behind. Maybe she lost power, as it is so common in Cuba. Besides, Tony, who had moved out into his own apartment by then, would have said something. 

Two days after my mom’s birthday in early October, Caridad calls her and apologizes for her delayed felicitation. 

“Where are you?” my mom asks with all the authority she has honed as Caridad’s aunt, godmother, and namesake. 

Caridad hesitates, and my mom knows. Caridad has left Cuba. 

There’s no point in lashing out, though my mom gives her an earful. The hardest part of the journey is over. She’s safe. She’s almost home. That’s what I repeatedly tell myself. At this point, I’m finishing my first semester at Columbia and grieving the sudden death of one of my roommates earlier that month. I look at the altar my other roommates and I set up for her in the living room every day, and I can’t help but notice the similarities between her and Caridad. Both are outlandishly beautiful with light brown skin, captivating eyes, and an easygoing personality. 

The thought of Caridad having died on her way to us chokes me. Our cousin died in a car crash two years earlier, and I can’t bear the thought of losing someone else I love. 

She’s safe. She’s safe. She’s safe. 

The affirmation doesn’t sink in until my mom sends me a photo of Caridad, Tony, Amara, and the kids at the airport, holding balloons and a makeshift sign that says: Welcome home. 

Tony welcomes Caridad, his mom Amara, and the kids at the airport in Florida.

Three Kings’ Day
January, 2025

Early afternoon on January 6, 2025, I lay back on the recliner in the living room, napping. The sound of woodpeckers chirping and wind sifting through the leaves of the big oak tree right outside the window behind me is joined by the jingle of keys and muffled voices. I keep my eyes closed as the door opens.

“Will you look at that?” I hear my mom say amusedly. “The princess is lounging.”

My ears perk up at Caridad’s voice. “Aw, she looks so peaceful.”

“Wake her up.”

Do not wake me up, I think, my eyes determinedly shut. 

“No, let her rest,” Caridad says.

Yes, let the princess sleep. 

My mother mumbles something I can’t make out. The scuffle of light footsteps and the rustle of jackets being taken off fill the space. I think I have finally been left alone to sleep when I feel the firm but gentle pressure of a finger pressing into my cheek. 

“Prima,” Caridad says lightly, barely above a whisper. I can feel the warmth of her presence radiate next to me like the atoms in our shared blood are recognizing each other. 

I don’t want to open my eyes—it’s too much effort—but I want to see Caridad. I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks. She and the family live a ten-minute drive away, but we’re all so busy with work. A little over a year since her arrival in the United States, Caridad and Tony have settled in nicely. They live in a two-bedroom apartment with the kids and Tony’s mother. Mely and Yoni go to school and daycare while Tony, Caridad, and Amara work during the day. The days are long and arduous, but they don’t complain. 

When my eyes flutter open, Caridad grins. “Hi, beautiful.”

A soft smile tugs at my lips. “Hi,” I say meekly, pulling her into a hug and pressing a quick kiss to her cheek before leaning back, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

Caridad shifts, then pulls a gift bag from behind her. “Merry Christmas.”

“Aw,” I say, taking the bag from her hands. “You didn’t have to.”

I knew she was up to something—she asked my mom about my clothing and foot size weeks ago. At the time, I panicked about getting her something in return, but between the blur of the holidays and my focus on learning how to drive and saving up for a car, I had forgotten. Now, holding her gift in my hands, a pang of guilt settled in my stomach for my lack of reciprocity. 

“I wanted to!” she insists as I pull out the tissue paper. 

“It’s Three Kings' Day,” my mom chimes in from the kitchen, referencing the Catholic holiday commemorating the Magi’s visit to infant Jesus. “We should be the ones giving you gifts. Godchildren visit their godparents, and the godparents give them presents. That’s the way it is.”

“Oh shit, I forgot it was Three Kings’ Day,” I mutter, pulling out a white box from the bag. When I was growing up in Spain, kids my age didn’t believe in Santa Claus. We knew what he was, given the spread of its popularity in American media, but who we wrote our Christmas letters to were the wise men—Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar—who traveled from the East to worship the newborn Jesus. I’d try to stay awake the night before January 6, determined to catch them in the act, but inevitably fall asleep and wake up to find my shoes filled with gifts, as is customary. But after living 17 years in the United States, the holiday has faded into the background of our lives. 

I open the box on my lap, finding a pair of pristine white boots nestled inside. “Aw, I love them! Thank you so much!”

Caridad beams. My face falls as I start to put them on and struggle to get my feet inside. My toes manage to squeeze in, but the sides are too tight. I flash Caridad an apologetic smile. “They don’t fit.”

Disappointment floods her features. “Really?”

“That’s the problem with these Temu and Shein sites,” my mom quips. “The sizing isn’t accurate.”

“It’s okay!” I assure Caridad. “It’s the thought that counts.”

“I’ll get you something else.”

“Caridad, no—”

“Yes, we’ll go to Burlington!” 

My mother, a frequent visitor and fan of the off-price department store, perks up. “Yes, let’s go today! Sheila, go get dressed.”

Give and take
A few hours later

“What size are you?” I ask Caridad as we survey the racks of shoes. 

“An 8,” she answers casually as she moves down the aisle.

I grab a pair of beige heel sandals and hold them out. “Aren’t these so cute?”

She smiles. “For you?”

“What? No, for you.”

“We’re here for you,” she insists. “Choose whatever you want.”

“Yeah, yeah, but look how cute these are! They’d look great on you.”

I do think the shoes fit her style, but I’m also hoping to distract her from buying me something. Nothing is catching my eye anyway. Caridad spares the shoes an interested look. “Hm, maybe.”

We keep looking around, splitting but staying in the same general area. 

“Caridad,” my mom calls out loudly.

“Mom,” I whisper-yell. “We’re not in Cuba, lower your voice, please.”

She ignores me. “Caridad! Where are you, Caridad!”

“Here,” Caridad says, walking down the aisle towards us.

“What shoes are you getting?’

“Tía, I told you I’m not getting anything. We’re here to get you your Christmas presents.”

I leave them to their back-and-forth bickering and make my way into the purse area, mindlessly scanning the different designs with disinterest until my eyes snag on a brown leather bucket backpack. I reach for it and start inspecting it when Caridad pops up from behind me. 

“You like that, prima?”

I hesitate. “Nah, just looking around.”

“C’mon, I’ll get it for you!”

I secretly check the price, deciding that the price is reasonable enough before reluctantly giving in. “Okay, thank you.”

She smiles, satisfied.

“Let me at least get you something, too,” I try, gesturing toward a jewelry display. “A bracelet or earrings?”

Caridad shakes her head firmly. “No, this is for you. Let me do this.”

She walks with an easy-going gait as if this is just a common shopping trip, an everyday moment. In some ways it is. But to me, it signifies something much bigger. A shift. For so long, she was the only one in our family left in Cuba after all of our uncles and aunts and her dad immigrated to Spain and the United States. It is as if, for decades, we spoke to her through a prison glass wall, with a measly phone to communicate. Smuggling in food, clothes, and medications with mulas, doing whatever we could to make her life a little easier under dictatorship. 

And now, here she is, on the other side of that barrier. No ocean between us.

Caridad has always been a self-assured woman—educated, bilingual, and ever so kind. But now she has the things she wasn’t able to have in Cuba—a driver’s license, food security, and the ability to spoil herself and her family without going hungry. So, as much as it feels unfamiliar to be spoiled by her, as much as I fight the urge to be the one to give even when I don’t have a lot myself – because, for so long, she had less – I take what she gives me. 

Caridad and Sheila on January 6, 2025. Three Kings' Day. Credit: Sheila Uría Véliz.

Blowout
January, 2025

It’s late in the evening at my brother’s house, and my nephew’s birthday party is in full swing. I groan internally as I scan my tiles of dominoes. Not a single matching piece to play. With a resigned sigh, I knock on the table, signaling that I have to pass. 

“Nothing?” my brother asks, and I shake my head. We are teamed up against Tony and Caridad—a cousins’ round—and so far, they’re winning. When it gets to Tony’s turn, he grins like he’s already won. 

“Where I put one, I put two,” he says smugly, placing down another domino with flair, leaving only one in his hand. 

“What does that even mean?” I laugh. 

“It means, where I put one, I put two,” he repeats with a more boastful tone, biting down a laugh of his own while the rest of us snicker at his smack talk.

In the background, the kids are playing in the bedroom, their laughter ringing throughout the house. But little Yoni, too young to keep up, sits on my lap, his tiny hands resting on the edge of the table, watching the game with wide eyes. I catch him grabbing a tile from the pile of spare dominoes in the corner of the table and setting it on my rack. 

“Woah, woah, what are you doing, buddy?” I chuckle, gently picking up the misplaced tile and setting it back. “We’re trying to get rid of the dominoes. What are you, a double agent? You trying to help your mom and dad win? I thought you were on my side.”

Tony and Caridad laugh, giving the two-year-old a knowing look. He stays put, his little fingers tapping on the table as he continues to watch, content to just be part of the moment, and giggles when I kiss him on the cheek. I lean back comfortably, feeling the straps of my brand-new backpack hanging from the chair, and I feel grounded by the warmth of family, of home. 

Sheila Uría Véliz is a journalist and musician passionate about storytelling. She was born in northern Spain to a Cuban mother and Spanish father but has lived the majority of her life in Florida. Sheila has written for The Brussels Times and has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University where she covered a myriad of stories including the recent exodus of Cubans leaving the island in the largest migration wave in history.