Autobiography With One Lie

Written 06-06-14
My father was born in Guanajay, in Pinar del Rio Province, East of Havana, the part of the island that would be the heel if Cuba was actually a woman's shoe.
I used to worry that he came from a place that means turkey, or is similar to the word for turkey, guanajo, in the same way I worried that my name Maritza was already a diminutive, and what would I be called when I grew up?
I worried a lot about things that I thought might mark me as odd, or reveal me as odd.
Later in my Cuban high school boarding school I had a math professor who would walk in the aisles of the classroom looking over our shoulders at our work and when he didn't like what we were doing he would bellow, "Guanajo, in our ears. He did not help my math phobia.
There were many comparisons to animals and plants in that school. One disliked professor was called Melon con Ruedas* because of his round shape. I felt embarrassed for him. It was a scary childhood to be potentially attacked by dangerous turkeys or melons on wheels.

*His nombrete was Melon con Patas.