“I hope the stained glass doesn’t shatter.” The Mayor’s wife, whose name was, of all things, Cristál, said this to Inconsolada before Juan Carlos Medina himself shut the door. “Should it break, try to save the larger pieces,” she called out at the last moment.
A few seconds later, the youngest of Medina’s sons pushed the door open again, and begged Agustín, “Take care of my cat, will you?” He thrust a plump, white kitten into Agustín’s arms.
Soon, songs and the clink of dishes could be heard from within that fortified party. The others pressed their bodies against the wall of the patio as the shutters bulged with the force of the storm. Inconsolada and Agustín watched in horror as a bohío, one of those thatched roof homes found in the countryside, blew past, tumbling like a dry, dead thing. The slaves began chanting in their Yoruban language, while the cat mewled incessantly against Agustín’s chest. Inconsolada stood resolutely, her mouth a red line, her chest heaving. In her hand she held the galleon coin, and her eyes looked far away, perhaps all the way back to Spain, or deep into a murky sea where the possibility of another kind of life had been sunk.
Just at the moment that the eye of the storm passed, and the world grew calm and bright for a moment, Agustín heard the joyous squeal of Medina’s son inside, followed by Cristál’s tinkling laugh, which was, in itself, an homage to her name. Furious, Inconsolada whispered something into her son’s ear, so that Agustín opened the patio door and let out the kitten. Later, as the western wall of the eye swirled towards them, Agustín laughed as he watched the cat cartwheeling in the air, head over tail, past the windows and out of sight forever.
The mayor would later order Agustín to stand in the blistering July sun for five hours, holding up three bibles stacked on his open palms. Inconsolada would say nothing about it, pretending she had not seen her son put the cat out in the middle of a hurricane.
Like a good tyrant, Agustín was a storyteller, so that he remembered things in great detail, and what he didn’t remember, he made up. None of this may be true. But I recall it all with precision, as if I’d lived it.
What was I to learn from Agustín’s story? What did he mean for me to take from it? First, that vengeance could not be left to God or fate. A person had to act on his own, decisively. And second, that punishment should be suffered without tears or complaint.
“What about love?” I asked my father once in the middle of a jungle in Oriente, as we trekked our way towards shelter in the midst of a war. “Did you love your mother, even after all of that?”
“I did love her,” he’d told me. “Though I’m not sure she paid attention to any of that.” Then, putting his palm on top of my head, like a warm hat, he whispered, “Pay attention. Be a person for whom love is not lost, child.” It was a sweet moment between us, and I did try to mind the ways in which my father seemed to love me. But the truth is that I used to cry thinking about that kitten, and I prayed that its little soul haunted my father and grandmother, that he heard its tiny mewling in his ear like an annoying ring.
7.
A Minor Change in Scenery
When I finish, Susana leans back, exhausted. I realize she hasn’t sat comfortably all through my story. She throws her head back and stares at the ceiling for a moment. “Ay, María Sirena,” she starts to say, but is interrupted when the door to the room opens violently.
There, drenched to her core, stands Ofelia. Behind her, the world is alight in flashes of lightning, and water pours in around her feet, rushing towards us all. The women start to shriek, and Ofelia shouts, “¡Silencio!” We are quiet at once. Susana is standing at my side, clutching my hand.
“The first floor of Casa Velázquez is flooding. We are moving, in an orderly fashion, upstairs. All of you, line up!” she barks at us. Susana helps me to stand, and we keep to the back of the line. I hold my slippers in both hands, wearing them like mittens. Some of the women are holding eleventh century dishes, guarding them like babies against their breasts. We slosh through the water out the door, and up a narrow staircase that creaks with our weight. Susana climbs behind me, and behind her is Ofelia.
When we reach the top of the stairs, Ofelia yells, “To the left!” and the line snakes in that direction. Up here are a series of rooms; the doors are all wide open. There are people sheltering in all the rooms, and they stare as we walk past. I know what they are thinking. They are thinking that there are already too many people in Casa Velázquez. They are thinking of limited supplies in the kitchens, and of their homes floating away.
“In here,” Ofelia says, pointing to a large bedroom. There is a bed in the center of the room, the mattress sunken and covered in cat hair. There, sitting in the dip in the mattress, is a gray cat, and it eyes us maliciously. One of the women in our group, the one named Asela, starts to sneeze and can’t stop. “El gato,” she says, pointing, and Ofelia leads her away to another room. We watch her go sadly. Already, we are bound to one another.
“We’ll be fine here,” Ofelia says, and her eyes fall on the eldest woman among us, who is weeping silently, her back curved like a sliver of moon, having seated herself on a corner of the bed.
“We’ll be fine, compañeras,” Ofelia says again. “I’ll go find blankets and pillows. It’s late, ladies. I suggest you all try to sleep.” Ofelia leaves again, and we settle in the room. Some sit on the bed, others make their way slowly to the floor. I hear the creak of old bones in every corner of the room.
“There,” Susana says, pointing towards a large window flanked by a pair of wingback chairs upholstered in midnight blue.
“But the window,” I warn, thinking of the big conch that had flown into my room that morning.
Susana shrugs, as if to say, “Who cares?”
I dip my hand into my pocket, feel Mayito’s portrait, and shrug, too. So, we take our seats, away from the others like last time. The room is dark and no one comes to bring a candle or flashlight. Ofelia does not return, having forgotten all about the blankets and pillows. In the corners of the room, and on the bed, the women huddle, and slowly, snores begin to break through the sound of rain and rushing water.
Susana has leaned her head on my shoulder, and her scarf feels soft against my cheek. She takes my hand in hers while her head jerks softly against me.
“No llores,” I tell her, though I know she’s been saving her tears for this moment, when all is dark and the room is noisy, so that no one notices.
“Another story then, Señora Carvajal,” she whispers, “to distract a dying woman.”
“Mañana,” I tell her, leaning back in my seat. I close my eyes but cannot sleep. The weight of Susana’s head on my shoulder reminds me of Beatríz, who would fall asleep beside me each night, her skinny legs thrown over mine, her breath sweet on my neck.
In the darkness I can pretend I am not here, in Casa Velazquez, among these seven strangers. Susana, Noraida, Estrella, I think, reciting their names to myself. Dulce, Rosalia, Celia. And Mireya, yes, Mireya. Except for Susana, they are old, like me. I don’t care for the reminder that I am more fossil now than flesh. If I try, I can imagine that I am young again, my daughter close to me, safe beside me. But a memory comes unbidden, of Beatríz in the days after her father’s death, weeping into my neck, and every once in a while giving me a hard pinch, as if to punish me for his death. I let her do it until my own anger got the better of me.
“Basta,” I told her, peeling her arms away from me. Gilberto’s heart had stopped one morning while he was cutting Beatríz’s hair, a task he’d taken up because his hands were steadier than mine. The scissors had clattered to the floor, Gilberto uttered a small sound, like a sigh, and fell to the floor. It had been that fast. I’d been in another room, sorting laundry, when I heard Beatríz’s scream. I found her sitting on the cool tiles, her father’s head in her lap, saying, “Papi, Papi,” as if she could call him back. She was small, no older than three. The first World War had fin
ally come to a close and it all seemed like springtime. I’ve learned since that it is in those moments, when one is lulled into hopefulness, that the sword drops onto one’s head.
Ay, Beatríz, how I wish she were here instead of Susana. Her face blooms bright in my imagination. I remember her dressed in white at her First Communion, how she later admitted that she’d kept the Host lodged between her cheek and molars until it disintegrated, afraid to bite into the doughy body of Christ. I consider her at fifteen, bookish and romantic then, writing poems on broad hibiscus leaves and floating them in the canals behind our apartment. At eighteen, she fell in love with Mireya Peña’s son, Alejandro, a poet, too, and her appetite for him was so crushing that he became all the food she needed; she lost the plumpness in her arms and dark circles shadowed her eyes. “He is the best poem I’ve ever written,” she gushed to me one night, and I called her a little fool, and warned her about poets. I told her a story about a poet, who died facing the sun, and she laughed and called me ridiculous. She regained herself—her weight, her senses—when she left Alejandro the night before their wedding. I got my daughter back, but in trade, I lost Mireya’s friendship and earned her dagger eyes for the rest of my life.
I cannot sleep. It is a restlessness of the spirit, and I start counting my breaths, a habit I’ve long had, and wait for that curious feeling of suffocation to descend, the notion that there is not enough air, and this, finally, crowds out thoughts of my daughter and Mireya. After a while, I drift off and do not dream.
8.
The Listeners Gather
It is still raining in the morning. Ofelia has rejoined us. She is still wet, and now she is sniffling. I am sure she’s going to catch a cold, maybe pneumonia if she doesn’t get dry. The women are chatting like old friends now. I’ve learned their names. They, too, are worried about Ofelia. We’ve cast our fears out among us—fear for our homes, for our own safety, for faraway relatives—and found Ofelia on whom to anchor our worries. “M’ija,” I tell her, “sit with us a while. Let your hair dry.”
But Ofelia laughs at me, young as she is. “I don’t shrink when I get wet!” she says. “Or melt, like a witch.” None of us laughs, not even Susana. Good health, we know, is not guaranteed. Ofelia leaves, returning moments later with a basket full of stale bread and a pitcher of water. “It’s all we have for now. The storm is stalled out over Oriente Province.”
“And the flooding?” one of the women asks.
Ofelia fidgets with the basket. “We’ve lost the first floor for now.” She says something else, but a sudden hammer of rain makes her hard to hear.
Dulce asks, “Are the waters still rising?”
“You’re safe here,” she says, and tries to smile.
So, we’re trapped. I turn to look out the window, and see, through the wavy, leaded glass, that the water line is high. Yesterday, the tops of cars were visible here and there. Now, I don’t see any. In the distance, an unmanned rowboat rocks on the water. In it sits a mangy dog looking north. A billboard erected across the street is peeling, flapping in the stiff breeze. On it, a faded picture of Lucille Ball holds a box of cigarettes. I’m surprised the advertisement still stands after the triumph of the revolution. Perhaps it is because Lucy is married to Ricky, and, Yankee or not, Desi Arnáz is one of ours. My stomach goes sour thinking of the United States, and my lost son, and all that I’ve lost, so that I have to lean against the wall and take deep breaths to steady myself.
Soon, women, pushing to get a view of the outside, surround me. “Dios mío,” one says, and then they’re all talking, shouting at Ofelia, asking about the foundations of the house, the life vests, the rest of the island, whether anyone can swim, and making so much noise that Susana yells, “¡Cállense!” again, and they quiet at once.
“Con calma, por favor,” Ofelia says more quietly. “We will be fine. They will take care of all of us. Worry not, compañeras.” Ofelia’s whole body is tense as she talks, and leaning towards the front door, as if she cannot wait to leave. She looks as though she needs to sit somewhere alone, quietly, listening to the rain. Her uniform has a small stain just above her left breast, and her frizzy black hair is wilder now, escaping her small olive-colored military cap. She crosses the room, placing a hand on Mireya’s shoulder briefly as she walks past her, then peers out the window. Her nose touches the glass, and her breath fogs it.
I watch as she purses her mouth and brow. When she leaves at last without another word, she takes the basket of bread with her.
“Our bread,” one of the women says miserably.
“She just forgot,” Susana says, defending Ofelia.
“What do we do now?” asks a woman, whose name is Noraida. Her hair is dyed an unnatural shade of red, and it is so frizzy that she looks like she’s caught fire. Her nails, too, are red and long, and they click together when she speaks.
“Keep busy,” says Mireya, who has fished eyeglasses out of her purse. They are so thick that her eyes look like dinner plates. When had her sight gone bad, I wonder. She used to have such clear eyes, could see ships in the distance before anyone else, pointing to them and saying, “Come get us! I want to see the world!” There was a spirit in the Mireya I used to know, the one who would bring over her little son, Alejandro, to play with Beatríz. How sour it had all gone. So far, we have been successful in saying nothing to one another.
“Pray to la virgen,” says Celia. Her fingers have been knotted in a glass rosary since I boarded the bus.
“To San Judas Tadéo,” says Dulce, who is the oldest in the room, bent over like a shepherd’s hook. “He’s the saint of lost causes.”
“Changó. God of lightning,” says another, Estrella, who is wearing white from head to toe. Her dark skin glows against the fabric. White shells, beaded tightly together, are wound twice around her neck. A few of the women nod knowingly at her. She’s a Santera, that’s obvious. Perhaps the African gods are most useful against storms.
“A story,” Susana says, looking at me significantly. “María Sirena was a lectora. She tells wonderful stories.”
The women look at me expectantly. They sit, arrange their dresses, and wait. I start to say no, but Susana squeezes my hand. I hear the faint rumbling of someone’s stomach. Mireya sniffs, and pushes her glasses back up her nose. A fly buzzes in front of my face, and I wave it away.
“We don’t have all day,” croaks Dulce, and I know Susana wishes to grow as old as she is, older than one can imagine being, and I send up a quick to prayer to la virgen, San Judas, and Changó, for all of the women here.
“Bueno,” I begin, then pause. Where to pick up the thread of memories? Should I start at the beginning, telling the story of the mermaid, or the gold? I feel my father’s ghost again, cold on my neck, pushing me forward; I think of heavy bibles; the corner of Mayito’s framed photo pricks my thigh from within my pocket. Like a crab, I think, I’ll move forward. Never back. I plumb my memories for the first stories I ever heard, the ones my mother told me of her own youth and mine.
“This story happened just after the second war for independence,” I say. “There is a man in the story named Agustín, who was a hero and a monster. And a woman, named Lulu, who loved Agustín sometimes, hated him other times, and loved herself more. To me, they were mamá and papá . . . ”
9.
The Threats of Men
Lulu only remembered the two men conversing in the distance, far from the dock where the ship had come to rest. I was in her arms, squirming in the heat, my small cheek sweaty against her damp breast. The men were arguing, and both of them had dark manes that gleamed in the bright Cuban sun. One was Agustín. The other, the Spanish captain of our ship, the Thalia, had a whistle dangling from his neck. Lulu looked at me for a moment, dipping her pinkie into my mouth to quiet me. It was then that she heard the shrill whistle, and looked up in time to see the Spanish captain backing away rapidly, his lips puckered around the m
etal thing, trilling and trilling like a panicked bird. At once, men in uniform surrounded Agustín. Lulu screamed with me in her arms as they hit her husband repeatedly. The whistleblower went on whistling, but beneath that sound was the sick thud of fists on flesh and bones.
The captain of the Thalia sidled up to my mother later, saying, “When it comes time to inscribe this one,” meaning me, “do yourself a favor and tell them she was born under a Spanish flag. Maybe name her María Cristina, in honor of the queen, eh?” he said, and jokingly nudged my mother.
“Her name is, indeed, María, Capitán,” my mother said, leaving out the Sirena part. Already, she was thinking of survival, even while Agustín was being beaten.
“Good girl,” the captain said. How much did he know about Agustín’s role in the war against Spain? Lulu shook her head wearily, images of Agustín setting fire to the carriages of Spanish officers in Havana sweeping through her memory. She could see him still, torch aloft, his cheeks blazing. Did the Spaniards know that she and Agustín had met with Cuban rebels in America? That there were plans afoot to launch a third war for independence? Lulu watched the men as they dragged Agustín away, his body limp, his feet twitching, which she took as a sign of life.
“Viva España,” she whispered as she passed the captain, and he smiled again. I chose that moment to sneeze for the first time in my life, and then I began to cry.
The Distant Marvels Page 4