by Wendy Guerra
CELIA: Pucha told me your sister left the country.
ME: I tried to see you to tell you what happened.
CELIA: Why did she leave? I thought she wanted to finish her degree and become a specialist.
ME: She was working long hours at the morgue because she said it was too hot in the guesthouse. She was tired, and my parents asked her to join them. My sister was going crazy, Celia. She only talked about tumors, instruments for cutting cadavers; she was all alone with her microscope. It was time, and now she’s gone. I feel guilty she stayed to take care of me; no one can take care of me.
CELIA: It’s a shame. But even my own family members have left because of this or that. We need to be present here and now.
ME: I can’t take it anymore. I’m next.
CELIA: I don’t think so. You’re here because you can be.
ME: Since I was expelled from the ENA because of that incident, I can’t stand or approve of questioning people’s intimate lives; it’s outrageous. No family can survive that. There’s no respect, I don’t want my daughter—
CELIA: How is your daughter?
ME: The girl’s perfect. Children are very strong, and they encourage you to go on in the midst of everything you can’t deal with by yourself. We’ve been through a lot. I can’t stand it when they get in my life, violate our privacy, or question me.
CELIA: Do you know what they say about me? Even if you know, you’re not going to tell me. But I know what they say about me.
Celia stared at me, with her piercing black eyes. She coughed, smoked, breathed heavily.
ME: The people love you very much. You know that.
CELIA: I’m not stupid. They love me because I’m with them all the time, I see them, I touch them, I’m on the streets every day. But for that very reason, because I’m here, I know there are others who don’t like me much. Things aren’t black and white. They say I’m a witch, or that, because I protect homosexuals, I might be one too. I’ve never married and that provides fuel for the fire. This is like in Manzanillo, the old women who remained single like me—there was always a story about them. They talk and I play dumb. They say I’m married to . . . Well, my nieces are my daughters. So many things have been said about me! They even said I supported the executions. But the only person you have to please is yourself. You can’t live waiting to see what the rumors are. You have to have your own integrity and not be led by what others say. Ah, but if you leave because of what they say, then you’re not who I think you are. Forgive me.
Celia wanted to leave and walked out to her car. She asked me to go with her. On the way, for a moment, as if we were thinking about it at the same time, we both said my sister’s name, and I suddenly missed her a lot. Not the crazy pathologist but the straight-forward sister who stared at Celia on the way out of the Habana Libre, back in the days when we’d just arrived in the capital as literacy teachers.
CELIA: Why do people leave us like that, huh?
ME: It’s not because of a rumor, you can be sure of that.
CELIA: The other day I had some tests done. I was talking to a pathologist. I thought so much about your sister. She would have told me the truth. She didn’t mince words. She reminds me of Griseda, my sister—she’s like her, unstoppable. She has a great sense of humor.
We laughed and then we were silent until we reached the city, the only sounds her coughing and the windshield wipers. It was drizzling very lightly, and once again, Havana looked like a miniature model before us. Whenever I was with Celia, I felt as if the city could change, modify, move, improve. And I saw everything quietly, from above.
ME: Celia, you never liked the idea of being First Lady?
CELIA: You say such crazy things! When, my friend? I was never the First Lady. That’s not for me. I’ve never thought about anything so sublime; there’s too much to do down here. You can’t deny you studied at a Protestant American college. Get out of the car. We’re here.
I stayed at the Once Street house until dawn. She wouldn’t stop coughing; she could barely breathe. We called her doctor. Waiting for him, we talked about others who’d left. She didn’t have the strength to argue anymore, but she argued anyway. She had a bad cough and wouldn’t stop smoking. If I stayed a few more years, it was only because of my daughter and because of Celia. Because I didn’t want to upset them, although Celia and I never saw each other again. That was the last night.
Ideas/Notes
Celia’s fundamental nature: an absolute abandonment of individual interests in service of others.
Her attitude: a conscious vocation of surrender. Service as a natural duty that doesn’t require recognition or encouragement.
How it manifests: going unnoticed.
The conflict: the Revolution as a way of life, and once in, you can’t get out. Stopping equals death. You can only go forward. But that struggle claims lives. Each step demands its share of blood.
Her pain: Celia was part of a group of wholesome young people, educated for noble causes, who voluntarily assumed the possibility of martyrdom: Abel, Renato, Juan Manuel, Alomá, Tey, Frank and Josué, José Antonio, Lidia, Clodomira, Ramos Latour, Ángel, Gustavo and Machaco Ameijeiras, El Vaquerito, Paco Cabrera, Camilo, Che, San Luis, and many others. There were also those she recruited or she knew from Manzanillo who signed up: Ignacio Pérez, Beto Pesant, Braulio Coroneaux, Ciro Frías, René Vallejo, Piti Fajardo.
Of all those young people who sparked the Revolution and participated in all the battles, only four survived: Fidel and Raúl Castro, Juan Almeida, and Ramiro Valdés.
Haydée Santamaría was overwhelmed by so many deaths and took her own life. The difference between her and Celia is that, in the long run, Celia could have overcome all possible deaths, except one.
Her religion: We don’t know if she kept her faith in the Sierra thanks to Father Guillermo Sardiñas, chaplain of the Rebel Army. With the triumph of the Revolution, she underwent a drastic change. According to her, when the clergy announced that churches would be used as a political platform against the Revolution, many Catholics abandoned their religion. Celia chose to stop attending mass because, being a figure so high up in the political hierarchy, her presence in the pews would have been controversial.
Her daily routine: sticking to the three basic principles of guerrilla life as articulated by Che—constant vigilance, constant movement, constant action—and working at night, sleeping infrequently, discarding the superfluous, eating only to fulfill biological needs, dressing quickly, valuing personal items only for their utility, and being self-sufficient.
Her magic: she had no military rank or relevant positions, yet she embodied the noble aspects of the Revolution.
There is talk of a possible love affair between Fidel Castro and Celia Sánchez. There’s no real evidence, and nobody wants to dig any deeper into it. If it’s true, it’s such a secret that anything that might be said about it would be fanciful, not serious. And it’s not relevant. To make Fidel and Celia a couple would be to vulgarize the story.
When Fidel was in Mexico organizing the guerrillas, Celia hadn’t met him yet, but she’d already carried out an enormous amount of work, recruiting a vast network of collaborators to support the landing of the yacht, the Granma, which transported rebels exiled in Mexico back to Cuba. And when this finally happened, under the most adverse conditions imaginable, she committed herself to sending reinforcements and the means of subsistence to the decimated guerrilla group, thereby guaranteeing their survival.
Celia met Fidel in person in February 1957—that is, almost four years after the attack on the Moncada barracks. After this meeting, did her devotion to Fidel increase to an unthinkable degree? Yes. But she wasn’t the only one. Fidel enthralled both men and women. The difference was that, being a woman, she was closer to him than anyone else and had the power to do what no one else would have been allowed to do.
And for these reasons, after the Revolution triumphed, Celia—without military rank or an important position in
the government—became the female figure with the highest moral and political position in the country. No one questioned it; she was surpassed only by Fidel and Raúl Castro. That’s how it was until her death.
How Fidel Found Out Batista Had Fled
New Year’s Eve, 1958, Camp Columbia. The General Army of the Rebel Command arrived at the camp after having stayed late in Palma Soriano. Rumors were circulating that Batista’s family fled. Fidel kept pacing restlessly on the porch. At eight in the morning came a TV newsflash from Radio Progreso. They reported that journalists are currently waiting for updates on the situation at Camp Columbia . . .
Fidel shot to his feet. Indignant, he rushed to the dining room door and then turned around.
Fidel ordered, “We can no longer wait. We must attack Santiago as soon as possible. If they are so naive that they believe they’ll stop the Revolution with a coup, we’re going to show them how wrong they are.”
Luis, who was in charge of the ammunition and other war materials (as well as the Commander’s dental hygiene) asked for fifteen more minutes.
People came and went, offering new bits of information.
The radio announced that Cantillo had taken over army headquarters. The new president was Piedra, a Supreme Court magistrate. Batista fled to Santo Domingo.
In the midst of all the hubbub, according to José Pardo Llada, Fidel leaned against an armoire and took out a notebook—the kind that sell for five cents at Woolworth’s.
Ten minutes later, he read his instructions to all Rebel Army comandantes and the people.
INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE GENERAL COMMAND TO ALL THE COMANDANTES OF THE REBEL ARMY AND THE PEOPLE
NO MATTER the news from the capital, our forces must continue their operations against the enemy on all fronts.
Agree to talks only with garrisons that wish to surrender.
Apparently, there’s been a coup in the capital. The Rebel Army is unaware of the conditions in which that coup has taken place.
The people must be very alert and heed only the instructions of the General Command. The dictatorship has collapsed as a result of the crushing defeats suffered in the last weeks.
How We Got the News (I)
That Tuesday I was filling the tub. I hopped in, thinking there might be enough water. It was better to take advantage of it and use what I could. Days when we had water: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
If the schedule was altered, then towns fell behind, ended up owing one another, and we could go five days without water. This is a country where practical things are not in the service of the people, and so we live focused on practicalities. It’s incredible. We might dedicate a whole day to the water problem. Opening the faucet and letting water run isn’t a fact of life in Cuba.
I was with my daughter in bed. There was nothing to do; I was in a daze, rereading my radio scripts, smoking.
Everybody steals my ideas. My programs on the old soneros are taken out of the country and become collectors’ items, even when they’re only annotations, sound logs. That’s what I was thinking when I grabbed the bucket and went to deal with the water.
The veins on my hands have popped out from raising and lowering the damned buckets of water. I’ve picked so much coffee in my life and today there was nothing for my coffee pot, neither water nor coffee. It was awful! An empty stomach nauseates me. I go up and down, up and down 328 steps to fill a tub built in 1936. I was half finished when Pucha showed up, crying, and sat on the lacquered end of the bathtub.
“You see? This is over. I knew she was dying. They told me she wasn’t, but look,” she said.
I turned on the radio, but they hadn’t said anything yet. Nothing at all.
I tried to wake Nadia so we could go with Pucha. The girl was exhausted, and we let her have five more minutes in bed.
I got into the tub full of water and lathered myself. Scrubbed my skin hard with good shampoo and soap. I rinsed, contaminating the clean water. The next five waterless days didn’t matter anymore. “Now it’s started,” I told myself. I was thinking of Celia’s dead face, her eyes closed. Butterflies around her, people crying. Everything that would come hit me like a flash. It was wild, but I saw her floating like Ophelia on the water, butterflies hovering above the surface, the same butterflies Raúl Martínez had painted for her. The foam kept me from seeing the gnawed bottom of what once had been white; nothing was white anymore. There was an orange mist all around my feet. Something was rusting down there. Nothing would ever be the same again. Pucha’s face said it all. Tears, rust, and soap.
Part IV
I Was Never the First Lady
Dirt or Blood?
Heartbroken, I finish reading what the customs agents left of my mother’s papers.
Now I’ll be the one to research Celia. I’m going to write my mother’s novel, though I know that today, in Cuba, it’s going to be hard for me. Even if I get through everything in her inaccessible office, I won’t know much more. There are stop signs, traffic lights, in there. Everything has been sealed. That office is about others; she took her body and soul elsewhere. What they treasure no longer contains her.
We think we know everything about the lives of others. We think we know everything about our own lives, but it’s not true. They keep us vigilant, trained for life as part of the herd. Hunting other people’s gestures and symptoms. We explain without being asked. Not being exposed is suspicious in a society where surveillance is entrenched even in urban planning. We believe we know everything about others and, furthermore, that we know every aspect of ourselves, perhaps because here the light leaves no possibility of mystery, but that’s not true. When we get close to the lives of others, the ignorance of our own universe is exacerbated. It’s fascinating: you lose yourself and begin to embody the character you’re tracking. Celia has sealed her shelves, closed the fire exits; her secrets have been burned forever.
Her work was dedicated to the preservation of others’ stories. She kept every piece of paper, wrote down what was important, even if no one else could see it in the moment. She was absolutely transparent. She was sure any trace of her would disrupt the existence of others, that any infringement would spoil her intention. Her footprints linger in their history. In that, she’s like my mother, who preserved what seemed lost then and today can only be re-created by others.
Celia’s Wake, My Mother, Butterflies, the People
I remember almost all the parades I went to. I also remember my mother keeping quiet so she could skip certain parades. She had complicated reasons for not going, and every time she explained them to me she would cry, and then I would stop understanding what she was trying to tell me; I’d just obey. I would swallow hard because I couldn’t stand to see her cry, especially over a simple parade my friends were going to with their mothers. We always went to the same parade. It was just one parade, but it was very loooong.
I can’t find anything about Celia’s funeral in the black cardboard box, nothing about when my mother took me to see her and we left a flower for her. We spent hours in line on Paseo Street. Finally, we entered a large room with marble floors, a flag, and many flowers. I didn’t see the body; I kept my eyes closed. My mother picked me up so I could blow her a kiss. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and blew.
I was scared; I don’t know what I might have actually seen, and I decided to forget the images. My mother said she was a friend. To me she was a dead body.
I hate the smell of Butterflies (a Cuban cologne) because it makes me go back to the scene with my mother’s dead friend, to her sadness. I thought she would die from crying so much.
I’ve never gone to a parade again. Parades are where my country celebrates its great events, but I always relate them to my mother’s pain. Seeing the Plaza de la Revolución and sensing the smell of Butterflies is the same for me.
I see people crying as I walk by, my mother crying . . . I lose myself in the sea of tears, I stop being me and turn into my mother, tears scattered on the ground, tears that dro
wn me in nostalgia. It’s a decision: I don’t go to places where death rips me apart.
The Dust-Jacketed Library
My childhood home was partitioned—the space I shared with my mother measured less than forty square meters—but in spite of this, we had two libraries. I was little when Mami left, but I still remember the two libraries.
One could be viewed easily, with a front row of shelves jammed with biographies, diaries, novels, poetry books, and behind it, camouflaged, a library with books in homemade dust jackets in a secret space, our friends’ favorite labyrinth.
When someone spoke in the past tense about someone else who’d once visited and had coffee in our living room, it was because that someone was no longer with us. When this person was quoted in a low voice, with nicknames or surnames that became unspeakable, when the only copy of a book was opened before the eyes of another friend, it was because that book came with a homemade dust jacket. It was a book “illuminated by hand.” Renamed with harmless titles like: Crafts. College of Friends. How to Learn Without Suffering by J. J. Almirall.
These books ended up in the back, in the deep darkness, disappeared into an invisible architecture, into the labyrinth where the most desired readings rested. These were damp books that served us like the tools of the Count of Monte Cristo. Each one arrived at my house via a different means. These were “the rough years,” and so we had to hide rough texts.
This list of titles wasn’t shared with everyone, nor were the books loaned to just anyone; they actually never left the house. They were read standing up between improvised meals and coffee made from recycled grounds.