Delia

I met Delia at work many years ago. She was a tiny, dark haired woman with a bubbly personality and a red hot temper if you crossed her. We liked each other immediately and in time became more like sisters than friends.

Delia came from Cuba when she was little more than a teenager. Sent ahead by her parents to find a job and a place to live she was scared to death but very determined. She frequently boasted of the fact that she had no accent. Oh! She had a very pronounced accent! I loved her malapropisms. “Jet lash” instead of “jet lag” and “like a bull in a Chinese shop” were two of my favorites.

Delia and I spent hours talking about Che, Fidel, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson. We talked about our childhoods. She told me of Havana Vieja, El Malecon and El Morro Fortress. She described the courtyard of her childhood home, the synagogue next door and the laundry that flapped from balconies in the hot sun. I told her about the house I grew up in, the mighty Chattahoochee and rainy summer days in Georgia.

I learned to speak Spanish with a Cuban dialect from Delia. She often thought it was funny to tell me the wrong word and stand back and watch. I once told a woman from Nicaragua that her “chango” was cute. She was furious that I had called her baby a monkey.

Delia loved to cook and I loved to eat. She made me arroz con pollo (chicken and rice) fried platanos (bananas) and my all time favorite, fried yucca. She tried to teach me to cook. We giggled at the inedible creations I turned out and in time she gave up the cooking lessons.

I once rode with Delia to the eye doctor to pick up her new glasses. She blatantly ran a red light. I clutched the seat and squeaked, “Delia! That was a red light.”
“I didn’t see it,” she said. “I’m legally blind without my glasses. Sit back, relax and don’t worry. I won’t kill you! But just in case, say ‘Pio!’ You don’t want to die without a pio.” (peep)

A quiet week day afternoon found us alone in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Las Vegas church, looking for a statue of “La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre"
… "Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, the patroness of Cuba. Delia loved her and wanted me to see her. As we searched toward the front a priest came from seemingly nowhere, moving quietly in his sock feet. “May I help you?” he whispered.
“Where is El Cobre?” asked Delia.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre,” she replied.
“We do not have one in this church. We have a lovely bas relief of Our Lady of Lourdes in the apse.”
“Bas relief? You don’t have a statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre? You don’t have a statue of ANY of the saints?” Okay. She was a little loud but she got that way sometimes and there was no one there but the three of us.
The priest pointed furiously at the door.
“Get… Out … Of … My … Church!” he hissed through clenched teeth.
We collapsed in the car in the parking lot, laughing and gasping for breath.
“I wonder what was wrong with him,” Delia said.
We went to the closest botanica and bought a statue. She is lovely, soft blue, carrying her child and floating above a small boat with three men in it. She stands in my house today along with yellow sea shells and a green scapular that a friend gave Delia when she had melanoma some forty years ago.

I don’t really know what happened. A few years ago some small, inconsequential (and they are all small and inconsequential) annoyance came between us. She didn’t call me and I didn’t call her. The annoyance fed on itself and we both became proud and in time we lost touch.

There were days when I thought to call her and didn’t, times when I remembered the love we had for each other and wondered if she missed me as I missed her. I missed her but I was stubborn and fearful of rejection.

Last week a mutual friend called. I knew the moment she said, “I have sad news,” that she was calling about Delia. “She had cancer again,” she said. “She was only sick about three weeks and she left us today.

I am left with the statue, some pictures, and a hole in my heart where Delia used to be. I always thought I would see her again. I always thought we would talk and laugh and eat yucca again. But for pride and fear of rejection, we might have. I will never know.