My 14 year old niece and I don’t have the best relationship. Even since the first time we met, we’ve circled each other with instinctive caution. For me, she’s a malcriada: her mom and grandmother let her get away with everything. She’s a picky eater, so they let her eat cake for dinner. She wants to hang out with her friends, so they let her stay outside until after 10 on a school night. She wants a third earring, so she pulls Francisco aside when I’m not around to ask him if he’ll give her money to get her ears pierced again. She hasn’t gone to school in two days because she feels sick, but come noon, she feels fine and wants to go out and play. She comes home from school and throws her bookbag on the middle of the living room floor; she has no chores whatsoever, and she never offers a helping hand to anyone. She’s mouthy and disrespectful, and no one else in the family can get away with her kind of behavior. Until now, my strategy has been to avoid her as much as possible, and she’s adopted the same posture towards me.

But this trip, I decided I really wanted to try to be more patient with her. Last night, I decided I’d use the computer to try to connect with her. She’ll be turning 15 next year and is already thinking about her “quince” celebration, so I asked her if she wanted to see some photos I took of the 282 girls who celebrated their quinceanera together in Mexico, attempting to break a world record. She was enthralled and we finally began to connect, our past conflicts eased, if not erased. She asked if she could insert her flash drive into my laptop so we could listen to some music and play video games. We sprawled out across the bed and I listened to her sing the lyrics of every reggaeton song on her flash drive, every word precise, even though she doesn’t know what half of the lyrics are suggesting. She showed me a cartoon someone had made—definitely not from Cuba—about a man with a drinking problem and a host of other vices. She giggled at the animation as someone sang in a raspy voice about “sirrosis.” “Do you know what cirrhosis is?” I asked her. “No,” she said, and I explained. The cartoon went on to show “poor Matue” sleeping with prostitutes, snorting cocaine, developing AIDS, and ending up in the cemetery. If Fidel is dead, as some believe he is, he must be rolling over in his grave. Say what you will about him, but the man didn’t want a country of malcriados.

As we shut the computer and got ready to go to sleep, I couldn’t help but think how much so many things have changed here since September. I always say this, but it’s an interesting moment in Cuba. Flash drives are spreading “culture”—the high and the low—like a virus. Friends at school find ways to swap music, games, and films that family members abroad have sent—often with bad taste and, in my opinion, without much thought about their appropriateness or their effect. The world will be different for Viviana than it was for her mother. Everything is changing and only a 14 year old malcriada can keep up with and absorb all the developments, even if she doesn’t understand what they signify.