libertad miami part one

        Teresa Reyes, like Penelope, had many suitors. And like Penelope she awaited her huband.
        With the cash spirited out of Cuba she financed a white stucco shoebox along the Tamiami Trail. Before long, Southwest Eighth Street became known as Calle Ocho. She was hired by Burdines and worked her way into Cosmetics. After two hard-fought battles she won two promotions, and could speak English fluently. Then she and Tomas moved to a rose-colored ranch house with a roof of red Spanish tile in Miami Springs. It was clean and spacious and Tomas could have baseball buddies over to watch American Bandstand. Whenever one of them asked about his father Tomas told the story with added flourish, and as Truth evolved into Myth he larded his tale with the stuff of dreams. Legendary deeds of an imaginary father.
         His math skills were poor. So Teresa enrolled him into Jesu, downtown and not far from Burdines.
         Algebra and other abstract thinking continued to be a disaster. He passed Euclidian Geometry by the skin of his teeth and went on to finish his math requirement with Business Math. He could add, subtract, divide and multiply. He could run a cash register and balance a ledger. An accountant he would never be, but he was qualified to work in Uncle Gaspar's sandwich shop.
        History was a breeze. It wasn't just a matter of memorizing dates. It was a story-line. And he loved stories. English was his favorite subject. It required him to read literature. His Papi had whetted his taste for great literature by buying him Classics Illustrated in Spanish. He smuggled them out of Cuba and now Tomas horded them in his room.
        Grammar came naturally to him. Two teachers at Jesu saw that he could easily diagram sentences and parse nouns. They encouraged him to write essays, and as he mastered English he soon developed a more masterful Spanish. He had a true knack for languages.Eventualy he was thinking in tongues. Something Teresa failed to notice, so obsessed she was that he become an engineer.
         Every night she watched Huntley and Brinkley report on the Space Race.