Dreaming in Cuban: Going South Summary & Analysis

Lourdes wakes up at four a.m. beside her exhausted husband, Rufino. She puts on her large white uniform and rubber-soled shoes. She likes the feeling of authority her uniform gives her, and she thinks that her lazy eye, which slightly skews her vision, enables her to see what others don’t.

Lourdes leaves a note demanding her daughter’s help at the bakery after school, and then she walks to the bakery in Brooklyn’s early morning dark. She loves the order and the calming aromas of her bakery, which she purchased five years ago, deciding that working with bread would not be a sorrowful task.

Lourdes unpacks and organizes the day’s cakes and pastries, reserving some sticky buns for herself. As she’s brewing coffee, Sister Federica from the hospital calls. Sister Federica tells Lourdes that “Your father is a saint.” She describes finding Jorge fully dressed, his head and hands aglow. He had thanked Sister Federica for her kindness, put on his hat, and passed through the window without saying where he was going.

After this call, Lourdes spends a flustered, distracted morning trying to deal with customers. When she gets a reprieve, she sits down with her sticky buns and thinks about how much her appetite for both sweets and sex had increased after Jorge’s arrival in New York. Lourdes had been a skinny child, but in the last few years, she has gained over 100 pounds. She rigged up a bell in her husband’s workshop so that she could demand sex from him at any time, even though it wore him out. She is “reaching through Rufino for something he could not give her,” but she doesn’t know what it is.

After Lourdes closes her shop, she goes to the Sisters of Charity hospital to see Jorge’s body. She remembers her father’s impeccable hygiene and his misery in the hospital, until Lourdes emptied her savings so that he could be privately attended by the doting Sister Federica, who carefully shaved Jorge twice a day. She figures he would have been happy about dying clean-shaven.

Lourdes’s daughter Pilar doesn’t come home that night. Lourdes bakes and eats sticky buns while calling the police and hospitals. She yells at Rufino and envisions horrible fates for Pilar. Finally, she covers herself with Pilar’s turpentine-scented painting overalls and lies on her daughter’s bed.

Pilar was born 11 days after El Líder’s triumphal arrival in Havana. None of her nursemaids lasted very long, all claiming that Pilar was bewitched. At dawn, Lourdes walks across the Brooklyn Bridge, headed south. She thinks about the sad family memories associated with Cuba. In 1936, Celia was in an asylum. Lourdes had ridden all over the island, accompanying Jorge in his big, black car.

Pilar Puente. Thirteen-year-old Pilar is trying on garters and bras in a department store when she overhears her father, Rufino’s, voice. She looks out and sees him laughing with a large blond woman. Pilar follows them down the street and, when she sees the two kissing, makes up her mind that she’s going back to Cuba. She withdraws her savings from the bank and buys a one-way bus ticket to Miami. Pilar figures that if she can get that far, she’ll catch a boat to Cuba.

Pilar remembers everything that’s happened to her since she was a baby. She remembers sitting in her Abuela Celia’s lap when Lourdes announced that they were leaving Cuba. Celia called Lourdes a traitor to the revolution, while Pilar clung to Celia and screamed. Jorge intervened, telling Celia to let go of Pilar. That was the last time Pilar saw her grandmother.

Lourdes has always said that Celia could leave Cuba if she wanted, but that she’s too obsessed with El Líder. Lourdes hates communism and sees leftist conspiracies everywhere she looks. Pilar thinks that Lourdes survives by viewing the world in black and white. Pilar knows that Lourdes reads her diary—that’s how Lourdes found out that Pilar was masturbating in the tub. For that, she beat Pilar and forced her to start working in the bakery.

On the bus ride, Pilar sits next to a woman from Richmond named Minnie French. Pilar tells Minnie about her memories of riding horses on Rufino’s huge ranch in Cuba. She remembers her father telling her stories about Cuba’s early history. It makes her wonder why history books only record stories of men who fought. Who decides what’s worth knowing? Pilar decides she needs to figure that out for herself.

Pilar has learned a lot of important things from her grandmother Celia. Sometimes, Pilar hears Celia speaking to her before she falls asleep at night, telling stories of her life. She also encourages Pilar in her art. Lourdes, however, thinks Pilar’s abstract art is morbid and forbids her from attending a prestigious art school—but Rufino persuades her to change her mind. He also builds Pilar a painting studio in the back of the big warehouse in which they live.

Minnie French, who’s 17, explains to Pilar that she’s traveling to Florida to get an abortion. Pilar holds Minnie’s hand until Minnie falls asleep. She can’t stop picturing Rufino with his blond lover. Pilar knows her parents aren’t getting along, partly because her dad doesn’t like the way Lourdes runs her business. Lourdes tends to hire down-and-out immigrants for cheap wages, then fire them for alleged stealing.

Pilar saw her grandfather Jorge when he came to New York for stomach cancer treatments. He slept in Pilar’s bed, and she slept in a cot beside him. Sometimes he’d fight a “good-for-nothing Spaniard” in his dreams. Jorge complimented Pilar that she reminded him of Celia. For a while, he wrote Celia romantic letters every day. When Celia wrote back, her letters only contained facts about her daily life.

Minnie gets off the bus at Jacksonville; no one meets her there. Pilar falls asleep after that, dreaming of people surrounding her on a beach, praying. In the dream, she’s wearing a white dress and turban and sitting on a throne. The people march toward the ocean, carrying Pilar’s throne. Pilar doesn’t understand their language, but she isn’t afraid. She can see Celia’s face.