Iliana Bernal slinks into the next
room and closes the door quietly behind her. She turns, slightly embarrassed. “I
don’t want anybody to hear us,” she explains with a short laugh. At fifty-two
she is still somewhat as shy as when she was a child. She is a short woman, just barely over five
feet. Her smile is as warm as the brown color of her hair, though slightly
nervous. She sits among the dusty crates of books and files in a now unused
office of Dana Library at Rutgers
University. She is the
supervisor of the Technical Services Department. She has been at this library
for twenty-six years. She has been in this country for almost forty.
Bernal was born in Havana, Cuba
1956, the same year a young Cuban
revolutionary named Fidel Castro planned to invade the country. General
Fulgencio Batista was in power at the time. He was considered a dictator and
those like Castro fought against him and his government. In 1959, when Bernal
was three and too young to remember General Batista and his government fell. Castro
came into power. Cuba
ended up trading one dictator for another.
Things would change drastically
for Cuba under Castro, especially
Havana which is
where Castro and his government were based. There were some who did not care
for the new government. One of those was Bernal’s father who under General
Batista had a government job.
“When Castro came into power, my father lost his
job,” Bernal says quietly. She pushes her thick prescription glasses up closer
to her eyes. Lines were drawn in the sand in the neighborhoods. You were either
for the old government or the new. Batista supporters, you were targets for
harassment or ridicule. “The neighbors gave my father a hard time. They gave my
parents a hard time,” Bernal said. Bernal’s
father would end up having to take odd jobs like working for an electric
company and as a bartender.
Bernal’s mother stayed home and
ran the household. She looked after Bernal and her younger sister. “My mother
was tough.” Bernal said balling up her fist. “Man, she was strict, both my
parents were but mother moreso because she had to take care of everything. She
had to make sure everything went the way it was supposed too.”
In Cuba, Bernal’s
mother worried about anything. As Bernal grew up she took on those worries.
Though, her parents faced its hardship Bernal and her sister did not. “To tell
you the truth, Castro being in power did not affect me and my sister the way it
did for my parents because for us it was the way that had always been she said.
“We didn’t know were missing anything at
the time.”
Actually, Bernal was missing a lot. Castro and his
government were grabbing utter control of the country by confiscating farms,
nationalizing industry and enacting policies that would ruin many middle and
upper middle class Cubans. Food was
being rationed; supplies dwindled, possessions taken away.
Some things were not
lost. Bernal remembers the big yard in the back of her house, the smell of the
water from the beach, her grandmother. “I loved my grandmother so much,” she said,
placing a hand over her heart. “All the time I visit her because she understood
me and she accepted me. My parents did too, but it’s different with grandparents,
you feel more connected to them. She plays all the Cuban records and that’s how
I got turned on to all the old songs.”
Bernal also had a place in her
heart for her country. “I loved Cuba,”
she said, sounding like a girl recalling her first love. In both instances it
ends in heartbreak. “My parents couldn’t take it anymore. My uncle who had
already left was here in New Jersey
preparing for us to leave. My father got all the paperwork together and we left
and came here to America.”
Bernal was ten years old when the family moved to Valisburg; a neighborhood in
the West Ward of Newark. “It was hard,” she says of the transition. “I had to
learn the language from Spanish to English, and we had no backyard,” she
grimaces.
There were good things too. “Oh my God!”
Bernal exclaims. “I remember going with my mother to get food and being so
shocked because I had never been in a supermarket before. It was crazy. All
this food in one place and you could buy whatever you want. That isn’t heard of
Cuba.
In Cuba
eating pizza is a luxury.” Suddenly, Bernal’s eyes fly open.
Bernal would attend Mount Vernon High School. It was during this time
Bernal would find herself having more of a role in the family. It took her two
years to learn the language her parents still could not speak. “I had to
translate everything,” Bernal said. She was responsible for going around and
paying the bills with the money her parents gave her. There were errands that
needed to be run, forms that needed filling out on top of school work and being
a big sister. “I took care of everything,” Bernal replies simply, just like her
mother back in Cuba
and now she worried. “I am definitely a worrier, not about myself but with
everyone else. I’m always looking out for people and things that might
potentially happen.”
With so much happening in Bernal’s
household she did not have much of a social life as a teenager. “I was not
social at all. I’ve always been quiet and shy and my parents were still very
strict. We’re Roman Catholic. We (she and sister) were not allowed to go to
parties of kids that my parent’s did not know very well. We did not go to any
dances, because my father did not want us to be with boys because we we’re too
young.”
Not surprisingly Bernal enjoyed
college much more than her high school. She attended Rutgers
University in Newark. It was there Bernal was able to come
more out of her shell. She majored in history because according to her “I like
to know everything.” She also began to interact with fellow students. “I joined
the Cuban club and the Hispanic club because it was a great way for me to make
friends.” Bernal did not just end up getting a few close girl friends out of
the experience but also her very first boyfriend.
“I met Julio out on the
campus plaza,” she said. He was also in The Spanish club. It was our sophomore
year.” Julio a fellow Cuban was also a bit quiet like Bernal. He majored in
Sociology, minored in Spanish and wrote poetry. Every weekend he came to
Bernal’s house to court her properly. “We courted the exact way we would have
if we were in Cuba.
He come over along with my sister’s boyfriend at the time and my mother would
make everyone dinner. After dinner we’d go out in the living room and talk.
Everybody would be there, and then when it was time for him to go he left. It
was tradition.”
Julio and Bernal graduated
together and got engaged. They married three years later. “We had to save for
our own place,” she said. We couldn’t get married until we could provide for
ourselves.” Bernal also admits that making her father happy played a factor.
After graduation she worked full time at the
Newark Public Library. The job paid nine dollars an hour not nearly enough to
help support two newlyweds. Luckily, an old boss of Bernal’s heard about a job
opening at Dana Library. She referred Bernal for the job. “I was able to get
it. I couldn’t believe it because it was a supervising position,” she said. I
had never supervised before. I had no experience, luckily I was able to learn.”
Twenty -six years later, Bernal still seems slightly amazed she was able to
snag the position. She does not give herself credit for much, not even for
supervising her family household when they came to America. She does not consider that
experience but duty. “I listened to my parents,” she said. I wanted to make
them happy.”
Making people happy is something
Bernal still strives for in her work environment. “Iliana is always willing to
help out,” employee Fatima Cunha explains. She is a petite Portuguese woman who
has worked along side Bernal for twenty three years. “If I need help with
something like a project I’m working on, she’ll sit with me and figure it out.
She’s very lighthearted, honest, and funny.” Bernal, unlike her mother, is
anything but strict despite being a supervisor. “I have to say I am very lenient,”
she admits. Cunha agrees. “Sometimes
people try to take advantage of that. She’s a very loyal person.” Cunha feels
that two of them work well together. “Iliana worries a lot about everything, so
I’m always here to tell her to calm down. She still worries afterwards but not
as much. We balance each other out.”
Henry Anderson also works alongside Bernal
everyday. “Iliana is a great boss,” he said. “She’s not mean. She’s very
friendly and understanding. She doesn’t get on people’s cases. Bernal is
motherly toward her co-workers. She inquires about people’s health, and their children
and spouses. When someone comes in late she tells them “no problem.” When Anderson
spills some ink on the white table Bernal quietly cleans it up as soon as he
leaves.
There is no one but her husband to
clean up after at home. Their son, an only child, is away at college. He, like
his parents, attends Rutgers
University. Bernal only
wanted one child and was happy that he was a boy. “I always wanted to be a mom ever
since I was little.” Bernal admits that she is incredibly motherly. “I worry if
I don’t hear his voice,” which is why she has him check in with her daily. She
also has him visit once a week. Despite the check-ins her son is getting as
much freedom that she did when she was in college. “He’s much more outgoing
than I was. He’s very in the know of things. He has strong beliefs and is about
his causes.” Bernal’s son is also encouraging his mother to follow politics
better particularly the upcoming election.
Bernal has lived under the
American government three times longer than the Cuban one. She has yet to go
back. “I still have few close family and friends over there. We send packages
with things like medicine over there for them. I would like to go back but couldn’t
until things are no longer the way they are over there.” Until then Bernal
still has her memories along with the music she first heard at her
Grandmother’s house in Havana.
She sits down at her desk and turns the speaker on her computer up. It is quiet
enough that only Bernal can hear.
Genise Clark is a journalism major at Rutgers-Newark. Posted January 2009.
