In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd

A third-person narrator follows middle-aged Matilde. The story alternates between her reflections on her marriage to Raúl and motherhood, and her attempts to prepare dinner for her son Anselmo and his American girlfriend Meegan.Anselmo was born two months premature in Cuba, when Matilde was 21 and waiting for her visa to join Raúl in Miami. When Anselmo was one, he and Matilda finally made it out. Raúl glanced at the baby then patted Matilde on the back. In Havana, she had read poetry to him; in Miami, they were rarely intimate. He was gone 14 hours a day.

Late one night, the phone rang; when Matilde answered, the caller hung up. Matilde believed she needed to “make Raúl’s secrets her own” (46). She awoke the next morning with a desire to cook and began experimenting. As Anselmo grew, Matilde gradually began to forget. She felt overwhelming love for Anselmo but suspected that her happiness with him was “like a gauze that wrapped around her heart to keep it from spilling out” (44).

During a recent visit with Anselmo, Matilde complained that he had lost 15 pounds since moving in with “that woman” (39). Privately, she finds Meegan pathetic for thinking that she knows Anselmo when she just walked “into the middle of his life” (39).