Queen of Bones

by Teresa Dovalpage

  The first week he was gone was the worst. Despite all my spells, my prayers to the orishas, Juan had left. Not left just me—which was reasonably within expectation—but Cuba. On a raft, probably forever. For most balseros, that was a one-way trip.

  But there was more. A few days before leaving, he’d told me to my face that he didn’t care for me. Not one bit. He didn’t want our child either. I’ll never forget the shock and horror on his face when I told him, “Juan, I’ve been on the pill, but something went wrong. I’m pregnant, mi amor.”

  “No jodas, Rosi! I asked you—”

  “It’s not my fault! I’m sorry.”

  He wouldn’t have suspected that I’d never been on the pill or that I’d carefully timed the few occasions we made love with the days I was ovulating. I had known he’d be upset, sure, but I had thought a child would change him. He would always be part of me, part of my life, whether he wanted to or not.

  He had abandoned me, yes. But at least not with Elsa. Because of what I did? Because I told her? If I ever see him again, I’ll ask for forgiveness, even if I’ve already been punished enough. I did it so she wouldn’t follow him to La Yuma, and for all I know, it worked better than any spell I could have put on him. She slapped me hard, which I deserved, but never said a word to anyone about it. She was probably ashamed that Juan had cheated on her with me.

  Not so long after that, she dropped out of college. What a relief, not having to see her curly hair every day in class. As if her absence (and Juan’s) was all I needed to blossom, I started getting more roles, the instructors saying often that they saw the spark of “it” in me. Nobody called me the Bride of Frankenstein anymore. I made a few friends. I got to play Kattrin in Mother Courage and Her Children. A month passed, and I was almost happy, despite having lost Juan. Happy even in my melancholy.

  I wasn’t showing yet. Nobody knew I was pregnant. After I had the baby—and what a beautiful baby it would be, with Juan’s eyes, hair and face, an exact copy of him—I would tell Abuela. I would ask her to be the baby’s godmother. His name would be Juanito, and she would forgive me for tricking her grandson. She would invite us to live with her. “What’s an old woman like me doing living here all by myself?” she had already said so many times. As someone outside the family, I had no business sharing her home. But as the mother of her only great-grandson, I would get a spacious room for me and Juanito instead of my tiny, stuffy barbacoa in my mother’s house. El Chino, Juan’s quiet, sweet father, would become a surrogate father to me as well, since Dad lived in another province and seldom called or visited me. I loved Juan’s family as much as I loved him.

  Abuela and I had become good friends, despite our age difference. She told me secrets that she swore not even Juan or her son had ever known. When she was a teenager, she’d had an affair with a married man, and her parents had disowned her. “I know that sounds ridiculous today, but in those times, especially in the countryside, it wasn’t uncommon,” she said. “My folks threw me out. I hitchhiked all the way to Havana, and without any means to support myself, I went to work in a brothel.”

  “What about the man? What happened to him?” I asked.

  “Nothing. He stayed with his wife.”

  One of her clients was Ezequiel, Juan’s grandfather. “Thank San Fancón and all the orishas he rescued me from that life,” she said softly. “He even married me. He was a sweetheart who never, ever brought up my past. I was lucky, because Chinese men, mijita, make very good husbands. Better than Cuban guys.”

  Juan was part Chinese—I could be lucky too. I knew that he had made it to Miami and, after recovering from dehydration and heat stroke, found a job in a supermarket. “Yemayá, the orisha of the ocean, took pity on him,” Abuela said. “I sacrificed two fat chickens to her, and she graciously accepted them. Alafia to her! But I also prayed to San Fancón and lit a lamp in his honor for seven days and nights. I called on the spirit of Ezequiel and all his ancestors who were buried in China. I fed them rice and coconut milk. They all protected him. Chinese witchcraft is as powerful as African, mijita, sometimes even more so.”

  It was then that I started praying to San Fancón, although I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I was doing. It was about intentions, wasn’t it?

  The dream played itself out in my head. When the time came, Abuela would be so thrilled that she’d call to tell Juan immediately. I would take little Juanito to spend time with his grandfather, El Chino Oscar, who had been depressed and lonely since Juan’s departure, and provide new purpose for the man. With love and patience, I could become a member of Juan’s family, even if he did get married in La Yuma and have other children there. Who knew? He could one day send for me and Juanito. But in a few years, I would be a famous actress with roles in all the international telenovelas, so I would decline. Until he begged me, that is.

  I continued to make offerings to Oyá, knowing she liked eggplant, chocolate, red wine and all things purple. I would cut an eggplant into nine pieces, fry them in lard and take them to the Havana Forest. I would drop chocolate chips at crossroads and scatter violets for her at the cemetery. Little did I know then that I would eventually end up working there. I bought small black coral branches at La Plaza de la Catedral (ay, they were expensive!) and offered them to her as well, because Abuela had once mentioned Oyá was fond of black coral. I spared no effort to get in Oyá’s good graces again. I knew that she was mad at me, rightfully so.

  Abuela’s health had begun to deteriorate after Juan had left, and she often forgot to eat. Forgot to take showers. Forgot where she lived. Eventually, she forgot her son’s name. She wouldn’t even tend to her garden. I would make tamales for her, with crispy bits of pork roast inside, and bring them to her house. I passed along important news and messages from others in town and prepared herbal teas and potions for her. “Make the sage tea strong,” she would say. “My head is like an open cage, and all the birds are flying out.” I offered to spend a few days with her. She said yes, but when I showed up with a suitcase and a pot of chicken soup, she didn’t let me in. She had forgotten who I was.

  That was the beginning of the end. I had sinned against Oyá by revealing a secret, and she would ensure I paid for my transgression, hitting where it hurt the most. She ended up being as harsh and vindictive as the Catholic God my grandmother prayed to.

  At first, it felt like a menstrual cramp. I was in the middle of an improv workshop with Corina Fernandez, a Teatro Estudio veteran; we were “playing panic.” Víctor, who wasn’t yet Victoria, was onstage. We were having a blast. The pain was so mild, I didn’t even go to the bathroom. It passed quickly.

  After the workshop ended, I walked to the dining hall. The ISA menu usually consisted of watery black beans, soy fritters and stale bread, but that day it also included a special treat, mortadella sandwiches. The cook, Tía Juana, was cutting the mortadella with a big kitchen knife. Thin slices, almost translucent. A throng of hungry students swarmed around her.

  “Hey, make those slices fatter!” someone yelled.

  She’s probably going to take home half of that mortadella, I thought. But at least I would get some protein. The baby needed it. I got in line.

  A girl I didn’t know whispered in my ear, “Aunt Flo just paid you a visit.”

  I didn’t know the expression.

  “I don’t have any aunts.”

  “Seriously, you’re bleeding,” she said. “Look at your pants.”

  I ran to the bathroom and exposed the crime scene between my legs. I watched my hopes and dreams disappear. My future with Juan, our permanent connection, Abuela’s home in Chinatown. My perfect imagined life. Gone.

  There was no toilet paper, so I used my socks to make a sanitary napkin. It looked like a tamale. When I scurried back to the dining hall, the mortadella was gone, and with it all the hungry students and Tía Juana. I took the knife and returned to the bathroom, where my tiny unbo
rn child lay spread on the floor. I wanted to join him.

  I should have known that a rusty knife from a college dining hall wouldn’t do the trick. Nonetheless, I was a mess when Corina Fernandez came in and found me. That was no “playing panic”; I can still hear her shrieks of honest-to-Oyá horror. There was blood on my pants, my blouse, my forearms—everywhere. Víctor and Corina took me to the hospital. They didn’t know that not all the blood had come from the same place.

  Mom made me see a psychiatrist, who said I was suffering from “obsessive love.” Ha! I’d never even thought my feelings for Juan might have a clinical name. The shrink recommended medical leave from school. It was supposed to be temporary—only a year—but I didn’t return to the ISA. I had lost my ambition, my interest in acting. I had lost “it.” I came to realize that Oyá had punished me. Abuela was right—Oyá holds her daughters to a high standard, and I had failed her.

  Elegguá, get off that table! Some people think that naming a cat after an orisha is disrespectful. But I don’t see it like that. Elegguá is playful, almost childlike, and so is my cat. Besides, he has Elegguá’s colors, red and black. His coat is black, and his nose is dark pink, almost red. I bought him a cute red collar to match it. I’d better feed him soon, or he’ll get into the offerings. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  There he is, sniffing the honey. Elegguá!

  2

  Two and Two Equals Five

  Sharon returned to the hotel shortly after encountering Elsa and seeing her husband handcuffed and led into a police cruiser. The sight had terrified Sharon, and she hadn’t dared to intervene. What if they took her too?

  The comments she had heard in the park had confused her even more. Someone had been found dead, but she couldn’t figure out if it was a man or a woman. Maybe it was two people? “She was a good neighbor.” “He fell in the bathroom.” “She wasn’t breathing.” Was “she” the blonde Juan had gone out with the day before? If not, why had he been arrested? What about the other guy?

  Then there was Juan’s former girlfriend, that Elsa. Why had she shown up just then? And where was Víctor? Did he even exist? Sharon tried to piece things together, but nothing fit. She took an alprazolam she had brought for Juan and slept for a few hours. When she awoke, a red-and-yellow sunset filled the window. The morning rain had cleaned the sky, and the day died swathed in a soft shade of purple. The Morro Castle lighthouse looked as if it were on fire.

  Sharon went down to the cafeteria, ordered a sandwich and returned to her room to eat. It had occurred to her that the American embassy could help Juan if he was in trouble. If there was an American embassy in Cuba. She called the front desk to ask—there was still no working Internet on her phone—but the person who answered didn’t know either.

  “There is a US Interests Section,” the receptionist said. “But I don’t have their number.”

  Hours passed. All night long, Sharon had visions of Juan in a cell without food or water, interrogated by the Cuban police. Her resentment dissolved into tears. No matter what he had done or been accused of doing, she needed to help him get out. Yes, there was still the question of the blonde the day before, but that would have to wait. At least, she repeated to herself as a weak consolation, it hadn’t been Elsa.

  At 8 a.m., the hotel room phone rang.

  “Ma’am, this is Lieutenant Marlene Martínez,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m calling about your Cuban husband, Juan Chiong.”

  Sharon froze at the mention of his nationality. He’d been an American citizen since 2010. But he had entered the island with his Cuban passport, according to the law. Cuban law.

  “Yes, where is he?” Sharon asked in Spanish after a moment, reminding herself that the police had no idea she’d witnessed his arrest.

  “At the police station.”

  She tried to sound surprised and offended. “Why would that be?”

  “We’ll explain that when you arrive.”

  The idea of setting foot inside a Cuban police station frightened Sharon, but she wrote down the address with a shaky hand.

  “I’ll be there as soon as possible,” she said and hung up.

  She made sure to take both of Juan’s passports with her when she left the hotel.

  The cabdriver looked perplexed when Sharon directed him to Unidad 15, but said nothing. It took only ten minutes to get to the police station. Sharon got out of the car and hurried to the unimposing two-story building. The guard who stood at the front door made no attempt to stop her. She entered a brightly lit lobby and told another uniformed young man that she had come to see Lieutenant Martínez.

  “She’s waiting for you.”

  He hadn’t asked her name. She thought they might not have foreigners there often, and she was clearly not Cuban. She hoped that would work to Juan’s advantage.

  Lieutenant Martínez was a tall woman with a big behind, the kind of colita Sharon would have wanted for herself years before. Martínez led Sharon to her office, a cubicle furnished with a metal desk, two chairs and a file cabinet. She explained that Juan had been brought in to explain his relationship with Víctor Pérez Díaz, a transwoman who had been killed the day before. “He was right there when—”

  “Wait a minute,” Sharon said, recovering from her jaw drop. “Víctor was a transsexual?”

  “Yes. That means—well, you know Spanish, don’t you?”

  Sharon’s pulse raced. “What exactly is my husband accused of?”

  “He isn’t accused of anything. We just need him to cooperate with us. And he’s done so, up to now. He’s free to go back to the hotel, but I want him to be available while the investigation takes place.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “I can’t say.” Lieutenant Martínez looked her in the eye. “We’ve just opened the case. But the National Revolutionary Police are very efficient. We don’t have many violent crimes here, and the few we deal with are solved quickly.”

  Lieutenant Martínez’s straightforward manner put Sharon at ease. Somewhere—had it been Yelp? Travelocity?—she’d read that the probability of being a victim of violent crime in Cuba was low. She’d read nothing about the possibility of being involved with a violent crime, though.

  “We called you at your husband’s request,” Martínez said. “I also want to find out what you know about Víctor Pérez Díaz.”

  Sharon’s first thought was to claim that she didn’t know a thing, but she changed her mind. She didn’t want to contradict anything that Juan might have said.

  “Not much,” she answered cautiously. “Just that he and my husband were longtime friends. They went to college together. He never mentioned that Víctor was trans.”

  As she talked, she remembered the tall blonde in the apartment, the man who had followed them and Juan’s reserved, aloof attitude during their argument. The pieces were fitting together properly at last.

  “I don’t think he knew,” she said with a sigh of relief.

  But, she thought, why didn’t he tell me?

  She met Juan in the lobby of the police station, where he had been brought while she talked to Martínez. He didn’t look much worse for the wear. She waited while he signed a document and picked up his driver’s license, then kissed him on the cheek and walked with him outside the unidad.

  “Thanks for coming,” he muttered.

  “How could I not come?”

  “I know I have a lot of explaining to do,” he said apologetically. “But I want you to know something first: I didn’t kill Víctor.”

  Sharon caressed his hair. “Mi amor, I’ve never for a minute believed you could kill anyone.”

  She flagged a pink convertible almendrón. They got in the back seat together. As the car returned them to El Vedado’s heart, with its tree-lined streets and clean sidewalks, Sharon felt her faith in mankind and her husband restored. She remembered Martínez’s co
nfident demeanor, and for a moment, Sharon also had faith that the National Revolutionary Police would handle everything.

  3

  The Matriarch’s Story (II)

  The apartment belonging to Pepito’s extended family smelled of sandalwood incense and black beans seasoned with cumin. The living room was furnished with two overstuffed blue armchairs, a plasma TV and a set of three double-headed, hourglass-shaped drums. Magdala sat in an old wicker rocking chair. At sixty-two, she was plump and heavyset, with Frida Kahlo eyebrows and smooth mocha skin. Padrino had always thought she looked like an African matriarch.

  Next to her was an altar dedicated to the Virgin of Charity, Cuba’s patron saint. The dark-hewn, placid-looking statue of the Virgin, linked in Santería with the orisha Oshún, wore a bright yellow dress with tiny rhinestones embedded in the fabric. There were nine golden bangles on her right wrist and a small copper crown on her head. Her regular outfit was a simple blue tunic, but in view of the circumstances, Magdala had attired her with the regalia usually reserved for September 8, the saint’s feast day. She had also sprinkled the altar with cinnamon.

  Padrino, sitting in an armchair, listened to Magdala.

  “It was my fault!” she sobbed. “I should have told Pepito to borrow the screwdriver from someone else.”

  “Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Padrino said. “Now, what exactly did he steal from your neighbor’s place?”

  Magdala’s face turned red.

  “He didn’t steal anything, Padrino!” she exclaimed. “He only took the cell phone and the pork leg because . . . well, because they were there. Like I said, when he went back to return the screwdriver, the door was open. He went in and didn’t see anybody. The pork leg was in the oven, almost burnt. I could smell it all the way from here.”

  She stopped to adjust her Santería necklaces. They were yellow and gold, Oshún’s favorite colors.