It was an old nursery rhyme. Arroz con leche was a man seeking to marry a young widow from the capital, one who knew how to knit and embroider. Juan thought of Sharon, who hated handicraft. Fat chance of finding a woman who loved the art of thread and needle nowadays, fatter chance of marrying her.
“Mijito, when are you going to marry that sweet girl?” Abuela had asked him the last time he’d seen her, a week before his one-way trip.
“Not anytime soon,” he’d replied, laughing. “I’m too young for marriage.”
“You’re never too young to find true love,” she had retorted.
“That sweet girl” was Rosita. Abuela had insisted that Rosita was the one Juan would marry, to the point that he’d stopped protesting and simply dodged the topic. Unfortunately, Abuela had also come up with a nickname for Elsa; she’d started calling her “that little whore.” “Esa putica.” “You should get rid of her. She’s trouble.”
Elsa had turned out to be the trouble indeed, leaving him and Camilo stranded that night. But Rosita wasn’t the right one either. She had courted Abuela as she had courted Juan, with a humble, dogged perseverance that had won the old woman’s heart but put him off. He didn’t like to be chased.
Well, at least she hadn’t had a baby. The thought of a child of his growing up in Havana without a father had tortured Juan for years. He had even dreamt of him: a young man with Juan’s dark eyes and hair. Abuela would have probably taken care of him, though. She loved children.
He evoked his grandmother’s curvaceous figure, her preference for flashy dresses and bright colors, her loud laugh that exploded into a thousand arpeggios. What could age and illness have done to her?
He walked faster and came upon the main house. The young woman sitting at the reception desk didn’t look like a nun. She was petite with short hair and wore a modest gray dress. He told her that he wanted to see María Antonia Muñoz.
“Ah, Tonita!” The woman smiled. “Are you her grandson?”
“Yes.”
“Your sister told me that you lived in Miami.”
“Well, I—”
“How wonderful that you’ve come to see her! I hope she’s having a good day. As you probably know, she has good and bad ones. Just like with all of us, isn’t it really?”
The mention of a sister puzzled Juan at first, but he realized she must have meant Victoria.
“That’s right,” he agreed.
She used an intercom to call an assistant. While they waited, Juan examined the room. There was a white wicker sofa, three chairs, an old credenza with a marble top, a wooden crucifix and a painting of Our Lady of Medjugorje. Everything was spotless.
The assistant was a sixtysomething woman with a no-nonsense attitude. Her uniform, a blouse and pants, was also light gray.
“Please, Rita, take this gentleman to Tonita’s room,” the receptionist said. “He is her grandson.”
“Yes, Sister. Come with me, Señor.”
So the girl was a nun after all. Juan looked at her once more before following Rita to a hallway. She avoided his eyes.
“Tonita was asleep a while ago when I brought her breakfast,” Rita said. “She sleeps a lot; most of our residents do.”
Sleeping was the best thing to do when you were ninety years old and had no family around. But Abuela had Víctor. Victoria, Juan corrected himself. He had been like family to her. She had. Ah, he would never get used to calling him “her.” Víctor would always be Víctor, the scrawny kid Juan had played baseball with, no matter how many wigs or hats he wore.
Rita opened the door to a small room. The pungent smell of ointment wrapped itself around Juan. The room was sparsely furnished, with a single bed, a nightstand and a wheelchair parked in the corner.
A wrinkled sketch of a woman with a few strands of white hair and skeletal arms lay on the bed. Though he had been prepared for the worst, Juan had to look away. He would have never recognized her. This was what twenty years and Alzheimer’s had done to a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound matriarch. He approached the bed gingerly. Abuela opened her eyes, the only part of her body that hadn’t changed much: they were still bright and beady, though her eyelashes were now gone.
“Is it you, Chino?” she croaked.
His father’s nickname. People had called him El Chino Oscar. His grandfather had been Chino too. But not Juan. Abuela had always called him mijito or Juanito.
“Look who’s here to see you, Tonita!” Rita said loudly. “Your grandson from Miami!”
Everybody assumed that he lived in Miami. As if it were the only place in America! But he didn’t bother to correct Rita.
“It’s me, Abuela,” he whispered, touching her hand. Her skin was loose and cold.
“You’re in luck, Chino,” Abuela said. “You’re my last client tonight.”
“Your last what, Abuela?” he asked.
“The damn madam.” She pointed at Rita. “She doesn’t like it when I let you stay longer, but I don’t care. Carajo with her.”
Abuela had always had a foul mouth. But what was this about a madam?
“It’s me,” he repeated. “Juan.”
“How come?” Abuela said. “You’re dead.”
He shivered. “I’m not Oscar, Abuela. Look at me.”
“I saw you in Oyá’s arms this morning.” She closed her eyes. “She came with the rain. I asked her to let you go and take me instead.”
Juan couldn’t make out what she had said and bent over her body. They were so close he could smell her breath, slightly acidic, and that peculiar old folks’ odor.
“She talks a lot,” Rita explained. “But I don’t always understand her. The only one who can communicate with her is your sister.”
Juan wished Rita would leave. He simply nodded in her direction.
“In whose arms?” he asked in Abuela’s ear.
“Oyá, mijito,” she said.
Then she did know it was him. She wasn’t making a fuss, but she had never been the gushy type.
“Oyá laughed and said, ‘No need to hurry, old woman,’” she continued. “‘You’re next. You had very sweet flesh, but it’s all withered now. You used to have a big ass, but you’ve turned to skin and bones.’ That’s what she told me, la cabrona, when she is the Queen of Bones!”
Abuela went on muttering phrases that were more and more incoherent until the flow of words dried up. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth. A string of saliva dripped onto her chest.
“You may want to give her time to rest,” Rita said. “She’s more lucid after a little nap.”
Juan followed Rita back to the hall. It was also squeaky-clean, with rustic benches and rocking chairs scattered around. There were images of saints in niches on the walls. Juan recognized the statuettes of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Saint Joseph. Abuela was a devotee of Saint Thérèse, but she also called the saint Oyá. Juan had never been interested in Santería, but now he regretted not having paid more attention to something that was so important to his grandmother.
“You can wait here,” Rita said. “Would you like a cup of coffee? Water? Anything?”
“No, thanks. Do tell me, please. Is she totally gone?”
“Oh, no, no! I think she knew who you were.”
Rita looked around and added in a conspiratorial tone, “Sometimes she remembers my name; others, I’m ‘the madam.’” She struggled to suppress a laugh. “The worst part is when she calls Sister Yuleidi a pretty putica. The poor thing gets so red in the face!”
“My grandma always said whatever came to her mind,” Juan said, thinking of Elsa. “She liked to call . . . She would use the p word freely. Is Sister Yuleidi the girl at the reception desk?”
“Yes.”
“I thought nuns had to wear habits and stuff to cover their heads, veils or something.”
“Not all of t
hem. The congregation has changed a few rules.” Rita lowered her voice as she spoke. “Adapting to the new realities, like everybody else. You can’t live in the fifteenth century forever.”
“I guess you’re not a nun yourself, Rita?”
She slapped her thigh.
“Me?” She cackled. “No, hombre, no! I’ve had three husbands. I mean, three I married with papers, a wedding and all that jazz. Altogether, I would say twenty and counting.”
Juan smiled, grateful that Rita was taking care of Abuela. They probably got along well.
Abuela took a short nap, but when she woke up, it was only to ask for orange juice, which Rita brought, and then Abuela went back to sleep right away.
“What if you come back around five o’clock?” Rita suggested. “That’s our social time, and sometimes she joins us.”
“Where?”
“Outside. We take the residents to the front yard, play music and give them snacks. If she feels like it, I wheel her out, and boy, does she know how to have fun! Once, she even tried to dance to Buena Vista Social Club’s ‘El cuarto de Tula.’”
“I’ll be back,” Juan said.
As soon as he’d spoken the words, the Saint Thérèse statuette against the wall fell to the floor and shattered.
10
Victoria’s Death
It was only eleven-thirty, far too early for his lunch date with Elsa and Victoria, but Juan didn’t feel like going back to the hotel and putting up with Sharon’s awful mood. It was still raining. What a day! He took another taxi to El Vedado and, in spite of the steady sprinkling, walked around the block occupied by the ice-cream parlor, an area known as “El Coppelia,” noticing the changes it had gone through in the past two decades. He stopped by what had once been a cheap, popular restaurant. There had always been a long line outside, and the employees were known for their unfriendliness. Now it had a different name, Sabor del Trópico, and there was no one waiting to get in. A printed menu listed more dishes than he remembered ever seeing there, from carne ripiada—shredded beef—to filet mignon. The least expensive item cost eighteen CUCs.
He glanced inside. A waiter lingering near the door greeted him.
“Good morning, Señor. How can I help you?”
“Just looking.”
There were souvenir stalls all around Coppelia, tourist traps selling necklaces made from spoons and forks, bongo-drum key chains, leather purses and Che Guevara memorabilia. Juan dodged the smiling, eager vendors who attempted to engage him.
A boom box played an old rumba, “Papá Montero,” a festive homage to a dead rumbero who loved women, dance and rum: A llorar a Papá Montero, zumba, canalla rumbero. So many songs had funeral themes! Juan recalled “Sobre una tumba una rumba,” in which a rejected lover asked people to rejoice on a woman’s grave, and “Bodas Negras,” a horrible bolero about a man “marrying” his dead girlfriend’s skeleton. Yikes.
The ice-cream parlor still had long lines at its four entrances, around two hundred people waiting to enter the peso-paying areas. But a separate space, reserved for CUC clients, had plenty of room. Juan went in and ordered a chocolate sundae. It was smaller than he remembered, but had the same creamy texture as it had in his youth.
Ah, all the ice cream he and Elsa had eaten together! Tres, gracias or three big scoops, with Elsa usually ordering chocolate, vanilla and pineapple; Copa Lolita, two scoops of ice cream with flan in the middle; and Pico Turquino, two scoops with a big piece of cake . . . Elsa licking her lips, stealing chocolate syrup from his dish, playing with her long curls.
He couldn’t wait to see her again. Yes, they were both married to other people now, but that didn’t mean old feelings were gone. And Sharon wasn’t helping her cause by acting like a spoiled American.
Close to Coppelia was the Yara movie theater, at the corner of L and Twenty-Third Street. It had been the most popular meeting place in El Vedado. Juan and his friends would usually agree to meet one another “in the Yara,” since it was easier to locate someone there than at the always-crowded ice-cream parlor. He wandered around outside the theater, feeling lost and somewhat out of place among the women in tight outfits and high heels and the guys yelling to one another over the noise of car engines, motorcycle revving, loud salsa music and street vendors hawking everything from shampoo to shoes. That was new too. No public bartering had been allowed in Cuba during the nineties. Things were changing, no doubt.
A young man in a red muscle T approached him and whispered in his ear, “Want Cuban cigars, good weed, pretty girls or boys? I’ve got all that and more, Mister.”
He spoke English, albeit with a heavy accent and a few mispronounced words.
“No, thanks,” Juan answered in Spanish, and added, “I’m Cuban too.”
“Oh. Sorry, bro,” the man said, embarrassed. “You look Yuma. No offense.”
The hustler went away. Juan smiled, amused. What exactly made him “look Yuma”? His clothes? The fact that he was healthy and, as Victoria had put it, well fed? But people around him weren’t particularly ill dressed or malnourished. Maybe it was something intangible, a change in his attitude, the way he carried himself when he walked around. The air of otherness he had acquired after living so many years away.
It had finally stopped raining. At La Dulcinea—a paladar with a street counter featuring an assortment of delights: guava pastries, bizcochitos, meringue and chocolate cakes—Juan bought a golden-brown flan for ten CUCs. He didn’t want to arrive empty-handed. He hoped Elsa wasn’t on a permanent diet like Sharon and her friends. The smiling clerk put the flan in a cardboard box with the name of the paladar printed on top.
“Enjoy, Señor,” she said.
It was twelve-fifteen when he headed to Victoria’s apartment. Still early, but that would give them time to talk. He might be able to find out more details about Elsa’s life before she arrived. He couldn’t believe she’d had a son with the old Spaniard. Though there was nothing extraordinary about it, he told himself. She was no longer the young woman he had been in love with. And he wasn’t the same young man.
He flagged a cocotaxi. It wasn’t all that far, but he was getting tired and was carrying something perishable. The blocks stretched interminably. Hoofing the Havana pavement wasn’t, he admitted, as easy as using a treadmill.
He rang the doorbell several times, but no one answered. Maybe Victoria had told him to come at one o’clock because she had to run some errands first. Maybe she had gone to get Elsa! He would sit in the park across from the building and wait for them.
A hand landed on his shoulder with enough force to make him lose his balance. Fortunately, he didn’t drop the flan. He turned around and faced the guy he’d met before the mariconga had started. It was Lázaro, Victoria’s boyfriend, still wearing blue overalls and a menacing expression.
“I’m going to cut your dick off if you keep this up!” he yelled.
Juan was scared, more so after comparing the guy’s muscles to his own. Lázaro didn’t have a gym-sculpted body; he had gotten his biceps honestly, probably lifting cement blocks.
“Calm down, please,” Juan muttered.
“You calm down, cojones. What are you doing here?”
“I came to see Víctor,” Juan said, making sure to use his friend’s old name. “We’ve known each other since we were kids. I’ve been out of Cuba for over twenty years. I didn’t even know about his . . . change until yesterday.”
Lázaro looked at him suspiciously. “And you came all the way to Havana just to accompany her to a mariconga? You expect me to believe that?”
“I didn’t come to accompany him anywhere. He asked me to go. I don’t usually get involved in these things.”
Lázaro gave him the evil eye before taking a key out of his pocket and opening the front door. Juan attempted to follow but had the door slammed in his face.
He waited a few minutes
, hoping the smoke would clear before lunchtime. If not, he and Elsa would sneak out together, leaving Victoria and her partner behind. He imagined himself and Elsa sharing the flan, like in old times.
It was then that he heard the screams, so loud they hurt his ears. The words “bathroom” and “fall” came from Victoria’s apartment. He waited, terrified. A woman rushed out of the building and exclaimed, “Ay, he’s already dead!”
“Wh—who’s dead?” Juan stuttered.
“The maricón next door!” she yelled.
Against his better judgment, Juan moved past the woman, who had left the front door open, and hurried upstairs.
When he got to the apartment, Lázaro held Victoria’s limp body in his arms. Five people were already in the living room, discussing what to do.
“Call the hospital!”
“No, the police!”
“Don’t worry. I already phoned Unidad 15.”
“Why? It was an accident.”
“So? A dead person’s a dead person. We have to notify the authorities, just in case.”
At first, Juan didn’t see any wounds, but when Lázaro gingerly placed Victoria on the green leather sofa, her head fell to one side, and Juan noticed a gash in her scalp, very close to the crown. There was blood around it, and something whitish too. Brain tissue? Horrified, he headed for the kitchen, looking for a place to put the flan that he was still carrying.
The kitchen smelled like pork roast. The copper pot he had seen the day before, now filled with rice and beans, was on the stove. The teta for coffee and the iron skillet were still on the counter. He left the flan there too, next to a rusty screwdriver. His mouth was dry. He was going to reach for a glass of water but changed his mind. Better not to touch anything. Had Víctor really had an accident? Or had that crazy Lázaro guy . . . ?
Juan returned to the living room. Lázaro was kneeling by the sofa and caressing Victoria’s hand.
“My girl,” he sobbed. “The woman of my life.”
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