Экспат в Нью-Йорке ностальгирует по балкону в Майами, где бабушка делилась историями о местном бандите

The Balcony Where my abuela told me stories By Jaquira Díaz September 02, 2026 I left Miami Beach four years ago, determined to make a life elsewhere, to find another city to call home. South Florida, the place where I’d grown up and spent most of my life, had become unrecognizable to me, with Tesla-driving crypto bros crowding all our South Beach hangouts, skyrocketing rents pricing my working-class neighbors out of the community where they’d lived for decades, MAGA hats worn proudly at the Publix checkout line, the laundromat, the gas station. When I decided to leave, I knew I never intended to come back. Despite all that drove me away, those last few years, my days in Miami Beach had been idyllic. Most mornings, I walked on the beach, just two blocks away from my apartment. I’d be out there right after sunrise, just me and the seagulls, running into the occasional jogger or dogwalker—the regulars—while I worked out the plot to my novel or listened to an audiobook. Then I’d head back to my apartment and have coffee on the balcony, watching the boats on the Tatum Waterway. I was surrounded by water on both sides—the ocean, the waterway—and I’d never felt more at home. What I miss most about those days back home in Miami Beach is the balcony, where everything happened. Where I had my morning coffee, where I wrote, where I had my virtual therapy sessions. Sitting out there at all hours of the day or night, watching the sun setting over the water or the iguanas perched on the branches of the overgrown gumbo limbos, I understood that balcony as a liminal space, a doorway to other worlds, a window into other lives—my neighbors sitting in their own balconies, passersby heading to the beach with their coolers and their folding chairs, a boatful of spring breakers sunning themselves on a deck, their radio blaring Bad Bunny or Shakira. On that balcony, I found a portal to other balconies, other homes: Our first apartment in el Caserío, where I’d sit on the hammock waiting for my father to come home, listening to the coquís until the night broke. My abuela’s house in Fajardo, with the large balcón overlooking the plaza, all the men hanging by the tamarindo tree, knocking back canned Budweisers they’d just bought at my father’s liquor store. How everyone knew the plaza was off limits, the block was hot, and how at seven, eight, nine, I already knew to pretend, to say nothing, to keep my father’s secrets. The second-floor corner balcony in Dos Marinas, where I had a view of the pool and the marina, watching the boats come in, the seagulls circling, lunging towards the water. How in Dos Marinas I learned to forget, to stop waiting for my father. And all those years later, our eighth-floor apartment in South Beach, with its exterior corridors and shared balconies overlooking Biscayne Bay, where I spent my teenage years fighting depression and dreaming of flying off the balcony like a fledgling shorebird. In each of these homes, the balcony was where my abuela told me stories, leaning against the railing, a cigarette pinched between her fingers. As a teenager, I’d come out to the balcony and catch her smoking, try to snatch the pack from the front pocket of her housedress, take one for myself before she gave me a talking to. Chain-smoking was Abuela’s only vice—she never took drugs, never drank alcohol—and she always did it on the balcony. It was with Abuela that I discovered the pleasure of an early-morning cigarette while catching the sunset over Biscayne Bay. I was seventeen and had just rented my own studio apartment in Southgate Towers, and Abuela spent the weekend with me, helping me clean and unpack. Years later, in grad school, during a girls’ weekend spent drinking and smoking on a friend’s second-floor terrace in Wynwood, I thought of the two of us on that balcony, Abuela and me, sharing a pack of Salems. Abuela telling how, years ago, when she lived in el Caserío, she had left food for Rey el Chino on the balcony. Rey, who was known around the neighborhood as a real-life Robin Hood, who stole from the supermarket down the street and from the Caserío drug dealers, was wanted by the cops. He’d been on the run for weeks. Abuela had fed him, leaving covered plates of arroz y habichuelas, sandwiches, mugs of café con leche for him to find whenever he came looking. He came and went with the sunrise, never knocking, and left behind gifts for her. A few crumpled twenty-dollar bills stashed in a planter or underneath a plate. He was generous, she told me. Always generous. I recently took up smoking again, after more than ten years without a cigarette. Abuela died in 2009, and I hadn’t thought of those days we shared out there, telling stories, in a long, long time. It wasn’t until I moved to New York, where I have only a fire escape, that I found myself longing for that space, that balcony in Miami Beach, all those other balconies, all those other lives. I say smoking, but it’s really vaping. I sit on the ledge of my open window, feet hanging over the fire escape, and inhale, think of my father, think of Abuela, all her stories. Of those idyllic mornings walking on the beach, all the people I’ve been in all those other places. This isn’t home—that I know. But someday, I’ll find it again. THE HOME MAKERS SERIES IS A COMPANION TO THE SUMMER/FALL 2026 HOME-THEMED DOUBLE ISSUE. Order Your Copy Now! Jaquira Díaz Jaquira Díaz is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, an Indie Next Pick, a Library Reads pick, and finalist for the Discover Prize. Her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.