I Was Never the First Lady

by Wendy Guerra

  “I can’t bear one more problem, Lujo. Paolo B. is here. I’ve just come from his hotel. Things are worse than I thought.”

  “Paolo B. is here? Mmmmm. What happened to his peasant fear of planes?”

  “He told me you knew everything . . .”

  “No one knows less than me. I don’t have a radio, I don’t read the papers, and I disconnected the antenna in my room since we moved here. I don’t watch TV, even in the living room. My neurons are taking a break, and I avoid getting upset and having one-way arguments with the mustachioed man on the news. And in any case, what’s done is done.”

  “What’s done is done because of my parents and all of you—I’m the result of this dysfunctional family.”

  “God forbid we should start using such pedagogical terms in this house . . .”

  “I’m going to put Mami to bed, and then you and I can talk . . .”

  I tuck my mother in like a child every night. I sing to her. I read something she likes so she won’t forget my voice. I know all is lost, that she came here to die, that she thinks I’m her sister.

  I turn off the light when she falls asleep. I go out to the living room and write in my diary until I can’t anymore.

  The house is dark, and the amber glass lamps flicker until dawn. The Malecón ruminates on its fears, and frightened, I check on my mother two or three times a night, just to make sure she’s breathing.

  I’ll have to watch her die. I won’t be able to avoid it. This is us: my mother at last, me taking care of her. The roles have been reversed, but it’s time to admit it: I’m not an ordinary woman; I never will be.

  I don’t know whether to argue with Lujo. He’s the only person who sustains me, who feeds me and makes my life better. Lujo is my stepmother.

  My mother never said who my real father was. Did she know? Why was she expelled from art school? Was she in love with my father or with Paolo? There are so many unanswered questions! The worst part is that I don’t need answers anymore. Those libertine lives at camps, with trova music as a soundtrack, those were the hallmark of the ’60s and ’70s. I’m the saga. I made advances like an untrained animal on one of my mother’s lovers. What did she do to compel me to look for him? Was it a ridiculous calling of blood or a simple list of names? I hate lists. Trembling crowds. Groups, collective affiliations. Like in mathematics, we’re facing a problem with no solution.

  It’s real life, and I’m putting an end to this long break, to our sunny summer. I sweep away this hangover, launder the dirty linens of her irresponsibility. I throw away my mother’s soiled diapers and wash her clean. I teach her to eat when she forgets.

  The Living Wake

  They all arrive as I am cutting the corn from the cob. The sofrito, with pork and shrimp, is ready, but I still need to stir and wait for the sauce to set. My friend Dania was passing through Havana. Since she’d graduated from the School of Letters, she hadn’t wanted to know about the city until today, when she came from Cienfuegos to defend her doctoral thesis. Now she’s obsessed with aesthetics and only talks about meta this and meta that. Definitions and concepts that hurt and confuse. Anyhow, I love her the way she is. Her home is far away, and we can never talk other than on the phone. It’s a known fact: you create something and critics dismember it, dissecting the soul of things. They turn artists into hospital patients, especially if we’re talking bodies in performances, like mine. Dania loves me, but she’s my worst critic. She’s the only childhood friend I have left in Cuba. I have to take care of her like an heirloom.

  For Dania, my mother’s a mystery. She can’t believe she’s still alive. She’d always expected that, on one of our collective birthdays at school, my mother would show up with a huge doll and sing together with the other classroom parents: “Felicidad, felicidad, felicidad, ehhhhh!”

  Poor Dania—life was so simple for her. If she sees aesthetics that way, we’re all lost.

  I leave Dania on the computer reading Diego’s letters. After all the time we’ve spent together, there can be no secrets. Dania loses herself in the liquid crystal of the screen.

  Old friends are talking at the round table. I cook for them. Mami stares blankly. They all speak carefully, as if she were foreign or deaf.

  The dialogue is stilted. I thought we’d get together and it would be like the old days, as if no time had passed, but no. Time passes, unforgivingly.

  They drink, chatter, raise their voices, laugh, cry. Little by little they warm up, but I notice something. They can’t bring back their former selves. They can’t catch the rhythm of being among trusted friends. I’m the observer, the cook, the host; I’m the daughter.

  PAOLO B.: It’s not enough to survive—you have to live every minute.

  ADRIANA: Given the number of people who have died at our age, fuck politics and fuck the past. To life.

  They toast with a fruity French wine Paolo B. brought for the occasion.

  PAOLO B.: To this reunion, and to our health, which is the most important thing.

  He says this smiling like a provincial undertaker while looking right at Mami.

  MAMI: Health comes and goes—just look at me. The important thing is money.

  The friends make an effort not to laugh, but it’s impossible.

  PAOLO B.: See what politics does!

  He says this once more nodding toward my mother.

  LUJO: Politics is like salt—we wouldn’t be able to cook our daily meals without it. We wouldn’t be able to take sides and support this or that candidate, or take a position . . .

  ADRIANA: Lujo, that’s you, who went for a walk and came back twenty years later; there’s no salt here. Politics is only one way here, and not very entertaining, I must say.

  ALINA: Oh, guys, why don’t we stop talking about him? I came here to talk about her.

  She says this looking at my mother.

  MAMI: Good evening. Are we going to listen to my show now? Can I get a radio, please?

  NADIA: We’re here to share a meal. The program’s over.

  MAMI: I told you to let me know. I don’t know anyone.

  NADIA: Look, I’ll introduce you to them one by one.

  MAMI: No, no, they’re crazy and talk about things I don’t understand. Don’t count on me to make friends with them; they’re conspirators.

  ALINA: Oh, I can’t handle this (cries). Don’t you remember me, your best friend? How could this happen to you?

  MAMI, making a dismissive gesture while staring at Alina: I told you no, to leave me alone.

  PAOLO B.: It’s politics that did this to her. This system drove her insane.

  ADRIANA: But she’s spent half her life out of the country.

  PAOLO B.: Running away, running away from the system. It drove her crazy.

  ALINA: Nadia, my dear . . . how was it for you to see her come back like this?

  NADIA: She’s here. It’s a relief.

  ADRIANA: But, look, we’re not all like this; that’s a false notion of what we’ve experienced.

  JOSÉ RAMÓN: Nadia and . . . If it’s not too sensitive a subject: did she ever publish her novel outside of Cuba?

  NADIA: No, it’s a very sad story. She only brought back notes with her, just fragments of a draft . . .

  ADRIANA: I read it in full, then that madwoman who was with your father stole it. She thought your mother was an upstart; there was nothing wrong with the novel at all. She wrote it for Celia, as a tribute. In the end, no one remembers her now except maybe once a year, on the anniversary of her death. Otherwise, no one even mentions her.

  PAOLO B.: She was crazy too. You can mess with the monkey’s chain, but don’t mess with the monkey.

  ALINA: But was there retaliation? Did they arrest her? It’s just not clear to me what’s been going on since that incident with your mother and Che at the art school.

  JOSÉ RAMÓN: Whoa, stop right here. There was no incident.

  ADRIANA: C’mon, let’s not do this . . . Nadia, I don’t know if what I’m going to tell y
ou is fair or not. I’m two years younger than your mother, but she (points at Mami and nudges her with her finger) was called the First Lady because either Che was looking for her to go for a ride or Celia was on the phone for her.

  MAMI: No, I was never the First Lady. If only . . .

  Everyone laughs.

  JOSÉ RAMÓN: That’s so unfair, Adriana! Don’t speak so lightly. These lies go down in history and then become myths. It wasn’t like that, and I’m not going to let you tell it like that, because it’s unfair. Che used to visit us all—don’t speculate like that. The novel was taken away because that woman wanted something to hold over Mami . . . She tipped off the authorities, and the world came crashing down. And by the way, that woman reaped what she sowed. She’s home, saying goodbye to her children as they emigrate, and making sweets to sell for dollars.

  ALINA: Who was that again?

  JOSÉ RAMÓN: Alondra, the journalist, whose grandfather was the minister of—

  ALINA: Yes, yes, a crazy bitch. She was lovers with the entire diplomatic corps.

  JOSÉ RAMÓN: The Alondra case . . . If you saw her now, you’d die. She’s my neighbor. And she looks like she could be my grandmother.

  ADRIANA: This woman here (points to Mami) could have been first in everything. She painted and wrote very well. She was a marvelous researcher . . . She was, past tense, because she’s nothing now, having laid down like a carpet to be stepped on.

  PAOLO B.: There are no snitches among you, are there, people who just want to fuck with you? Because I’m looking at that little friend of yours, for example, and watch out. She hasn’t taken her eyes off your computer all day.

  NADIA: From what I can tell, we might be a little healthier than you. For me, everyone is innocent until proven otherwise.

  ALINA: Paolo, you’re so bad! And as sour as ever.

  ADRIANA: Look, Paolo, nobody here is going to call you in to force you to give an account of anything. So relax, sit down, and enjoy your tamale casserole.

  NADIA: It seems you guys never came to any kind of agreement. I thought at this age you might have reconciled.

  MAMI: There’s no reconciliation on the island, just war. Lujo, our husband, did he go out? Where is he? Did he go to edit?

  There is silence for a few minutes.

  ADRIANA: Oh, girl, with all you’ve been through and you’re still so stupid . . . Look at your mother: even out of her mind, she’s clearer than you. Put your feet on the ground. This story has three murders to go, a bombing, and a happy ending with a hug and a smile for the camera.

  ALINA: Happy ending? You really are optimistic.

  PAOLO B.: I wouldn’t bow my head even if I was dead. I came to see you. I want you to know that . . .

  I get up from the table so as not to listen. Lujo jerks me back down. I get up again.

  NADIA: I don’t like soap operas. I’m going to the kitchen. I don’t discuss my life at round tables.

  LUJO: Nadia, c’mon, come back. Maybe he’ll tell us he came to return all the paintings he stole to pay for his travels.

  Collective laughter.

  They talk about my mother in front of her as if she were dead. I can’t stand it. I ask Dania to get off the computer so she can jot down some of what they’re saying. I can’t take this bunch of dilettantes anymore.

  Although they’re hard to follow, Dania takes notes of the fundamentals. This is nothing more than a living wake.

  Dania’s Notes

  Alina says Lujo didn’t have to hand the other house over to the government, but Lujo knows you can’t have two properties in Cuba. He prefers inheriting his mother’s house, facing the sea, than living in an apartment full of resentments.

  Adriana talks about Catullus’s presence in the Epithalamium lasciuum, by the Dutch poet Johannes Secundus, and certain discoveries she and my mother made during those hours of sublime readings on the grass at the art school, just days before they were both expelled. All for one and one for all. They were kicked out for having an intolerable, immoral friendship. There were accusations of bisexuality. These stories all began and ended with Catullus.

  Alina asks—not on her behalf, no, but on behalf of Maricela and Aleida, who write to her from Miami—if we’re going to bury my mother in my father’s fabulous family pantheon.

  There are astonished expressions at the unexpected comment. Alina grabs her purse and goes outside to smoke. (Lujo is now American and doesn’t allow smoking at home.)

  Paolo B. enjoys being morbid and, all of a sudden, claims to be Nadia’s father. José Ramón compares the news to the plots in nineteenth-century Cuban novels, and as if reaching a tacit agreement, they all opt for silence until some other important matter pops up. That’s when Alina decides to say she’s leaving for Miami, now, almost in her sixties, to start over. She doesn’t want to be a radio or television presenter anymore; she says she wants to be “a person.” Alina says she spends hours staring at the stove like someone detailing an abstract painting, with nothing to cook. Her life is a carbon copy of the one that ended with her mother’s breakdown. She’s terrified of an identical, immovable, screwed up ending. There’s too much inner turmoil, yes, to be wearing darned underwear, saving detergent, walking for hours looking for transportation. So much longing without having yet turned sixty. “I’m leaving because I want to be one more person walking in the world.”

  “One more exile, one fewer friend,” says Lujo, who’s back. Everyone understands, this will now be an inner journey. Some leave; others come back.

  They talk about where to buy shrimp, the official price of meat (pork), corn, Chilean wine, their fear of the coming hurricanes, and food spoiling in the refrigerator.

  According to Dania’s notes, my mother interjected more lucidly than the others. She said the following:

  Common sense is the least common sense.

  With friends like these I don’t need enemies.

  The tongue is the enemy of the body.

  I feel guilty even when I’m not.

  Nadia was born in 1970, and Che died in 1967.

  I’d done my best. I’d dressed the round table with a linen tablecloth illustrated by Lujo more than thirty years ago. The tamale was exquisite, a dish I learned to cook by my father, who is apparently not my father anymore (but still is). Just like my house, which isn’t my house, and the country that isn’t my country (but still is). Or like my mother, who ran away and couldn’t be my mother.

  Dania and I sit at the bar that looks out a corroded window. On the high 1950s stools, we can fool ourselves into thinking we are if not bigger then at least taller than my guests. We watch them from here, like birds in flight. They look like horses at the trough, thirsty and tired from so much walking.

  I’m not hungry anymore. My plate is untouched. We’re no better; we no longer hope for anything. Coming in and out of the country is just a change of scenery. Cienfuegos, Paris, Havana. Not even displacement satisfies us. Traveling is another illusion.

  They organized our lives and infused us with a dream of happiness. It was so real that, even though it never existed, we missed it. Were they free? Were they happy? Should they have stayed like my father? Left like my mother?

  One by one, my friends leave. Paolo B. kisses me on the forehead. I feel dazed and used.

  Dania and I go to bed with my mother, singing “La cleptómana.” According to Lujo and my father, one of her favorite songs. While we sing, she falls asleep. We talk about recording her with us, as a trio for my show, but she couldn’t follow the lyrics. We cover her and stare as she breathes, tucked between the sheets.

  The Kleptomaniac

  She was a kleptomaniac with beautiful baubles,

  stealing for fun, for kicks, for looks.

  Cute, fascinating, her misdeeds

  never met a serious Court of Instruction.

  I saw her one afternoon in an old shop,

  stealing a whimsical little glass vial

  filled with rare essences, and in her ambiguous ga
ze,

  I got a hidden flash of the ideal.

  She became my comrade for secret things,

  things only women and poets know.

  But her irresistible hobby reached such a point

  that it wrecked my peaceful days.

  She was a kleptomaniac with beautiful baubles

  and she wanted to steal my heart.

  “If we lived during the sixties and we were caught lying around like this, what would have happened to us?” Dania asks, yawning.

  “I wouldn’t have been able to take all that. My mother’s a martyr.”

  “You love her?”

  “We’re just getting to know each other.”

  Dania falls asleep. I look at the notes she wrote on a piece of a grocery bag. Paolo B. was right: my friend was trained to take notes in shorthand. She’s quick, sagacious, and a snitch.

  I can’t sleep. The phone rings; a phone ringing at dawn, the worst noise in the world. It’s José Ramón, who can’t sleep either. I invite him to breakfast tomorrow. He wants to tell me about my mother’s book. He’s the one who can help me, he says. What an unusual inheritance of friends she’s left me! In each of them I discover what I’ve lost.

  Breakfast, the Fishbowl, and My Mother’s Death

  The sea looked like a steaming bowl of soup.

  That morning I set the table on the terrace that faces the Malecón; the white linen tablecloth flutters beautifully along the blue shoreline. People always pass by and look, which is why I don’t usually like to eat here, because of the looks. But in a struggle between the sea and these witnesses, the sea always wins. I don’t want to deprive us of breakfast in the open air.

  Café con leche and bread with butter. Guava jam and mango juice. José Ramón arrives while I am settling Mami.