Queen of Bones

by Teresa Dovalpage

  Juan wondered briefly if he would see his mother, even though he knew these “ghosts” were only figments of his imagination. When he was a child, he used to repeat his mother’s name, Lila, softly, invoking her presence, hoping to receive a sign that her spirit was around him. He never got one, though.

  He didn’t get one this time either. Instead, there was Víctor, his best friend since childhood. Slightly built, blue-eyed and smart-mouthed, a charmer and sometimes a pest. His sidekick. You could always count on him for everything. That was why, when Camilo had proposed that they all leave together, Víctor’s tepid response had surprised Juan. He had been worse off than any of them economically and hadn’t gotten along with his family.

  “You think it’s so easy,” Víctor had said. “You think you’ll get to Miami, and a Hollywood agent will be waiting to sign you. You’re delusional! There are thousands of people like you, or better than you, waiting for a chance. We have less competition here.”

  “Ah, cut the crap,” Camilo had answered. “There are no opportunities here. Making a movie in Cuba and shit are one and the same thing.”

  “No, they’re not,” Víctor said. “Cuban movies win tons of international awards.”

  “Please. Since Fresa y Chocolate, nobody has paid any attention to us.”

  “And you think someone will pay attention to you there? You all dream too big, with your obsessions with Al Pacino or that Almodóvar guy in Spain. Good luck. I’m happy to work with Gutiérrez Alea.”

  They had discussed it for several days. In the end, Juan, Camilo and Elsa had made up their minds to go. Víctor could stay behind if he wished to do so. He would one day regret it. But it was a friendly agreement. They were like family, after all. Juan still didn’t understand why he and Víctor had had that absurd argument or how it had escalated to a fistfight that had ended with Víctor on the floor, clutching his throat.

  It had surprised Juan that Víctor had taken such good care of El Chino when cancer had struck. For free, because El Chino had had no money and Juan hadn’t been able to send much. He had assumed his former friend would no longer want anything to do with him or his family. But Víctor had been with Juan’s father until the end, after Abuela, bedridden and in a nursing home, was no longer able to help her son. Juan owed him big. A true friend to him, even after their angry parting.

  He climbed another step and faced Camilo Ceballo, the third musketeer. Camilo and his wild locks. (“Who do you think you are, an American rock-and-roll singer?” an ISA instructor had once growled at him.) It was Camilo who had instigated the trip on which he would lose his life. “It’s now or never,” he had said when the government first announced that rafters were free to go. “This is cyclical. In the 1980s, they let people go out through the Mariel boatlift. Before that, in the sixties, there was Camarioca. When the pressure gets too high, Fidel opens El Malecón, lets some dissenters escape and carries on. If we don’t take our chance now, we’ll have to wait another twenty years, and then we’ll be too old.” Juan was tired of scarcities and dreamed of a different life, maybe as a singer in Las Vegas. Elsa wanted to go to Hollywood and work with Steven Spielberg or, at the very least, with Argentinean director Eliseo Subiela. Everything was possible in America, wasn’t it?

  It was a pity that Camilo had never gotten to live his dream. Juan heard again his friend’s last whispered words: “Forgive me, Juan. I love you.”

  Forgive him for what? They were in dire straits, adrift on a small raft, but they’d both known how dangerous the trip was. They had discussed it many times and agreed that Miami was worth the risk. And yes, they cared for each other. They were best friends, but Cuban men never used the word “love” when talking to each other, no matter how close they were. He thought again of The Three Musketeers. All for one, and one for all. Now he was living out its sequel, Twenty Years After. And one of them was gone.

  Juan welcomed the distraction that came in the shape of a flesh-and-blood young man. Rushing down the stairs, he rapped to the staccato rhythm of a guaguancó. It was a song older than he was, older than Juan too, maybe a century old:

  Anabaná, el Asilo de Torrens

  fue la escuela de mi vida.

  Aprendí que no existía

  la palabra amigo fiel.

  Why did people still remember it? The lyrics weren’t particularly uplifting: “The Torrens Orphanage was the school of my life. There, I learned that the words ‘loyal friend’ didn’t exist.”

  “A la mariconga, la mariconga va!” the young man yelled.

  Juan glared at him. What the hell was a mariconga? Or had Juan just been called a maricón?

  The guy exited, and Juan hurried upstairs. He found himself in front of two doors. One was open, and he saw a set of three drums, a big plasma TV and a plump woman watching it. A sweaty man was holding a pair of maracas and saying to another guy, “This Pepito, always leaving in the middle of things!”

  The woman replied, her eyes still glued to the screen: “Now, don’t start that. He’s a busy kid. Cut him some slack!”

  Juan knocked on the other door.

  “Come in!” The voice was at once familiar and unknown. Juan took a deep breath before going in.

  5

  Victoria Sunrise

  A woman waited in the living room, sitting on a faded green leather sofa. She smelled of Oscar de la Renta and had cantaloupe-sized breasts that looked fake. Her hair was thick and platinum blonde. She wore golden eye shadow, dark mascara and red lipstick. Juan hesitated. Had Víctor gotten married? Did he have a girlfriend? Why hadn’t he mentioned it?

  “Hi,” Juan said.

  The woman stood. She was almost as tall as Juan.

  “Is Víctor here?” he asked, her silence making him uncomfortable. “We talked this morning. I told him—”

  Instead of answering, the woman walked to the balcony and closed the door. She turned to face Juan and looked at him without a word. It was then that Juan recognized in her heavily rimmed eyes the beady blue irises of his best friend.

  The room instantly shrank, becoming dark, almost oppressive. Juan gulped and stared at a Marilyn Monroe poster on the wall, then back at the woman. How could Víctor—goofy, skinny Víctor—be the one hiding under all that makeup?

  “Is—is that you?” Juan stuttered.

  She nodded.

  Juan took a step back. “Why are you doing this, Víctor? What kind of game are you playing?”

  “This isn’t for your benefit,” the woman replied. Her voice was still Víctor’s, just an octave higher. “This is me. The real me, Victoria Sunrise.”

  Juan was grateful that Sharon hadn’t come along.

  “Sit,” Victoria said with a sly smile. “You’re going to fall on your ass.”

  Instead of sitting down, Juan walked toward Victoria and hugged her. He felt his friend’s arms draw him in closer. Her Oscar de la Renta fragrance enveloped him.

  “Twenty years, cabrón,” Victoria muttered. “It has been twenty years since you left. I’ve counted every one.”

  They sat in two rocking chairs polished by time and use in front of the sofa.

  “I miss rocking chairs,” Juan said. “Americans don’t like them. Or they have these hard, uncomfortable ones.”

  He stopped midsentence.

  “Sorry,” he said, fumbling for words. “I didn’t come all the way from New Mexico to talk about furniture.”

  “You can talk about whatever you want. We have a lot to discuss. Who goes first?”

  “You, please. What’s this all about, Víctor? Why are you dressed like that?”

  “You can’t wait to find out, eh?” Victoria answered with a teasing grin. “And people say we maricones are the gossipy ones.”

  “You maricones?”

  “Gays, mijo. Isn’t that the politically correct term in La Yuma?”

  La Yuma.
Juan had almost forgotten the way Cubans referred to the United States. Practically speaking, he was now a Yuma too.

  “Are you gay?” he asked.

  “No, I’m just wearing this crap to make myself more appealing to you.” Victoria laughed. “Of course I am, comemierda! I always was. I came out ten years ago.”

  To disguise his unease, Juan pretended to look around the room. Under the Marilyn Monroe poster was an oval table with two red candles, a silver handheld mirror, a vase with four roses and an old flip cell phone.

  “My little sanctuary,” Victoria said. “Do you like it?”

  Juan turned his attention back to her.

  “You can go outside like that?” he whispered. “And the cops don’t bother you?”

  “They don’t care. Things have changed. I told you they would, remember? I even have my own show now.”

  Juan felt an ill-timed need to use the restroom. All that orange juice at breakfast! A flowered curtain separated the living room from a bedroom. Was there a bathroom inside?

  “A TV show?” he asked.

  “Almost as good. A grand show at Café Arabia, the best nightclub in town. You should visit, see me in action.” She became serious. “But enough about me. You want to know about your dad, right?”

  Juan looked through the shutters and saw a small park across from the building. He was glad that the balcony door was closed. His disconcerting feeling of being spied on had returned.

  “Well, that too,” he said. “Last time I talked to Abuela, she said you had been taking care of him, and that you visited her often. I wanted to thank you.”

  “You don’t have to. El Chino Oscar was like a father to me. Better than my own. Remember how my dad used to beat me?”

  It all came back. Víctor running away from his apartment, hiding inside Juan’s bedroom. El Chino lying to the big hairy guy next door. No, they hadn’t seen Víctor, had no idea where he was. The swollen blue eyes. Víctor with an arm in a sling, muttering that he’d fallen from a tree.

  “Did Dad know about your . . . transformation?” Juan asked.

  “No, I never told him. Abuela did, though.” Victoria winked.

  “How is she doing?” Juan asked. “I called the nursing home last week, but the nun who answered said she was too sick to leave her bed.”

  Music came from the apartment next door. Not rumba or salsa but . . . what were they calling that new stuff? Reggaeton?

  “It depends on the day,” Victoria said. “Sometimes she’s razor-sharp. She knew, by the way. About me. Ages before I came out. She told me it was fine with her. She was—is—a wise woman.”

  Juan swallowed hard. His mouth was dry, and his urge to pee hadn’t gone away.

  “I want to see her,” he said. “And Dad’s grave.”

  “I’ll take you there. Do you want any coffee?”

  “Cafe Cubita?”

  Victoria cackled. “Qué Cubita ni un carajo? The one you buy with the ration card. Mixed with chicory, mierda and café.”

  “The ration card.” Juan shook his head. “That still exists?”

  “Some things never change.”

  Victoria walked into the kitchen, which was adjacent to the living room, and Juan peeked in. It didn’t surprise him to find a four-burner iron stove and a round-edged refrigerator, an old Frigidaire. On the counter he saw a contraption to make coffee—a metal stand with a cloth filter called a teta—a granite mortar and pestle, a huge copper pot and an iron skillet. The kitchen was painted a light blue, like the rest of the apartment.

  “I always tell my foreign friends to bring good coffee from La Yuma or wherever they live,” Victoria said, starting to boil water. “Unless they’re staying in a swank hotel like Meliá Cohiba, where they get only the best. Remember the tourism industry slogan: ‘CUBALSE, Cuba at the service of the foreigners’? And the Cubans? Ah, que se jodan. Let them eat shit.”

  “Now you’re talking like a gusano,” Juan joked. “A counterrevolutionary.”

  A second later, he wanted to slap himself. What was he thinking, bringing up politics? It was just nerves. His mouth running faster than his brain. But Victoria hadn’t heard him or, if she had, didn’t mind the comment.

  She poured the boiling water over the ground coffee in the teta and let it drip. Then she served it in two demitasses, offering one to Juan. Her fingernails were painted the same shade of red as her lipstick.

  “Good coffee,” Juan said eagerly, though it was only so-so. “Tastes just like home.”

  He was thinking of Abuela’s coffee. She would “cut” it with a bit of condensed milk to make a cortadito. But the best café con leche he’d ever had was at Elsa’s house, where you could always find fresh milk from the dollar store. Juan was poised to ask about his former girlfriend when Victoria spoke.

  “Now, for really good coffee, go to the homes of the nouveau riche. They don’t want for anything.”

  “You mean businesspeople? Like the casa particular owners and the almendrón drivers?”

  “No, those are small fish. The big sharks are the foreign investors. They’re making a killing. Elsa is probably one of the richest women in Cuba today.”

  Juan flinched. “Elsa, as in my Elsa?”

  “What other Elsa would I be talking about?”

  Juan placed his demitasse on the table, not wanting Victoria to see his hands shake.

  “I heard she got married,” he said.

  “Yes. Her husband’s a shrewd Spaniard who started dealing with Cuba when everybody else was too afraid to. Now they’re well positioned—ahead of the Yumas, the other Europeans and everybody else.”

  “Do you still keep in touch with her?”

  “We talk once in a while. She’s helped me through a couple of hard times. She’s a capitalista now, with real money. And me . . . well, an artist’s life is feast or famine.”

  Juan began to sip his coffee again.

  “I always assumed you had a crush on her,” he admitted. “I thought you hated me because she had chosen me over you.”

  Victoria laughed out loud.

  “You were so naïve! We hated her because you chose her over us.”

  Juan’s face turned red.

  “Don’t blush,” Victoria said with an exaggerated flourish of her manicured hands. “I’m not hitting on you. I’m engaged now.” She giggled. “His name is Lázaro. And he—”

  “Wait a minute,” Juan said. “What do you mean, ‘We hated her’? Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Camilo and I, silly.”

  Camilo. His decomposing body. His last words.

  “Camilo?” Juan asked.

  Victoria sighed. “We had to mention him, didn’t we? Tell me about it.”

  “Not now. Maybe later.”

  “Did he suffer?”

  “He—yes.”

  She looked at him expectantly, and though he didn’t feel like it, Juan continued.

  “The day we left . . . when we got tired of waiting for Elsa, he brought some food. Canned hot dogs, Spam, two loaves of bread. But we lost it when the waves overturned the raft. The tires that he brought were a godsend, though. I believe they’re the only reason I’m still here. We grabbed on to them when the biggest waves came.”

  They remained silent for a few seconds. Juan couldn’t help recalling that last night again. Though he would have waited until the next day, Camilo had insisted on leaving right away.

  “Either the Americans will get tired of it and refuse to receive more people, or Fidel will stop it for fear of being left alone on the island. We can’t waste time.”

  “What if Elsa is sick?”

  “She doesn’t want to go, man! Hasn’t she changed her mind ten times before? Elsa is a spoiled girl, the daughter of a pincho. What’s more, she has no talent. And she knows it. She knows that outside of Cuba, she’d
end up working in a factory. Where’s she going to go where she’s worth more?”

  “Did Elsa ever tell you why she didn’t come with us?” Juan asked. His shoulders sagged as he uttered the words. “Not that it matters anymore, but I’d like to know.”

  “She never talks about it,” Victoria answered. “At first, I thought it was because she was pissed off at you. She didn’t even want to hear your name.”

  Juan straightened, glowering.

  “Pissed off at me?” he said. “When she was the one who left us high and dry?”

  “Yeah. It didn’t make sense to me either. But after we found out what had happened, Camilo’s death and all that . . . she got really depressed. Dropped out of college and married the Spaniard a month later.”

  Juan swallowed hard. The aftertaste of coffee sat on his tongue, mixed with chicory and God knew what else.

  “Good cure for depression,” he said.

  “And a smart move. She’s a Spanish citizen now. Dual citizenship, you know—travels all the time. Things turned out all right for her. But poor Rosita . . .”

  Ay, Rosita. That small house where she’d lived with her mother in the Marianao area. Her father lived in another province, she had told him. She had taken Juan to her bedroom, a barbacoa—a tiny makeshift attic—and he’d felt obligated to make love to her. He remembered the stifling, windowless space, the way the plywood floor had creaked and moved, his fear that it would give, and they would come crashing, bed and all, into the middle of the living room. Then his surprise when he found out she was still a virgin at twenty-one.

  “Rosi, why didn’t you tell me this was your first time?”

  “I didn’t want to scare you away.”

  He looked down and tensed a little. “What happened to her? Did she have a baby?”

  Victoria shook her head. “A baby? What she had was a nervous breakdown. Tried to kill herself. Someone found her in the ISA bathroom just after she’d slit her wrists. I still remember it; there was blood everywhere—it looked like a murder scene.”