Queen of Bones

by Teresa Dovalpage

  I guess I could be interested in Armando, but still, if Juan were to come back to me, I’d take him in a heartbeat. Yet I know that won’t happen. No matter what Oyá promised, it won’t. And I want my life back. I don’t want to spend another twenty years waiting for a guy who’s probably forgotten my name by now.

  Armando Bacallao is known around here as Armando del Arroz because he has a small paladar called La Casa del Arroz. “House of Rice” is a fitting name—all the dishes he makes are rice based. Rice with chicken, rice pudding, fried rice, cream of rice and a dish he invented called arroz con todo. I’d like to try it and find out what “everything” means. Carlota says that it is like fried rice on steroids. Mmm.

  Carlota also says Armando’s smitten with me. Smitten, bah! But at least he isn’t a pláfata, one of these people who ask one foot for permission to move the other. Not only has he opened a successful paladar, but he’s also bought an old Chrysler, one of those orange ones that used to be government taxis, and is going to start taking orders to his clients’ homes and workplaces. He says he got the idea from the American movies. “You always see the pizza guy doing deliveries,” he told me. “Why can’t I do the same here? La Casa del Arroz will be the first paladar with delivery service in Havana. It’s gonna be a hit!”

  I like his attitude. Positive energy. Maybe some of that will rub off on me. He isn’t bad looking either. Ten years younger than me, but that isn’t really an issue on my end. At first, I told Carlota he wasn’t my type. But what exactly is my type? Juan? Armando doesn’t look like him at all. He’s short and a bit chubby, but with a handsome face and earnest eyes.

  Carlota has a small business too. Bellísima, a beauty salon next to La Casa del Arroz. She handles everything from nails to hair, and now she wants me to start helping her. I could do makeup, cut hair and put acrylic nails on. Same thing, minus the acrylics, that I’ve been doing forever. The difference is that my current clients don’t complain, I told her. “They don’t tip either,” she retorted. “I need a partner here. I’m tired of working by myself and having to turn people down because I don’t have time to take care of them. That’s money I’m losing. We both could be making it.”

  We’ll see. I’m not sold on the beauty business, but I promised Carlota I would think about it. Frankly, I don’t want to be sixty years old and still working at the cemetery. Well, at least that didn’t scare Armando off. I’ve learned to say to most people, “I have a job with Necrological Services.” But they usually keep asking and figure out what it means. It freaks them out. They always want to know how I ended up making such an “unconventional career choice.”

  My mentor at the funeral home was Celeste, an old woman. Or she looked old, though she was the same age then as I am now. After I had my “little problem,” as Mom started calling it, at the ISA, I had to register for group therapy sessions at Calixto García Hospital. Celeste had a sister in the therapy group—a basket case who thought she was a reincarnation of Mona Lisa—and picked her up after our sessions in a beaten-up Oldsmobile. It was raining one afternoon, and Celeste offered me a ride home since Mona Lisa and I were the only patients still waiting outside the hospital. It was better than walking two blocks in the pouring rain to the bus stop, so I took her up on it.

  “Do you know how to make funeral wreaths, by any chance?” she asked me. “I’d pay up to three dollars for a good one.”

  I didn’t know, but three dollars during the Special Period was the equivalent of a hundred and fifty pesos. I said I could try. She gave me the materials—fresh flowers, ribbons, glue and discarded wire hangers—and I made a passable wreath. She ordered seven more.

  Though funerals and burials were free, the wreaths had become black-market items. Mourners paid for them in dollars, which had just become legal. I soon began working alongside Celeste, who shared with me her secrets for funeral makeup. I attended embalming workshops and learned about the business. When she retired eight years later, I inherited her job, just like that. I had apprenticed under her for long enough. And I’d had no competition. It wasn’t like I was asked to take an aptitude or personality test.

  Little by little, as with everything in life, my faith came back. I had cursed Oyá and all the orishas after losing the baby, but once I healed, I turned back to them and asked for forgiveness. Abuela had already been taken to a nursing home at that point. On one of her good days, she told me to contact Padrino, the babalawo who later became my godfather. He formally initiated me into Santería ten years ago.

  By that time, my mother had died of cancer, and I was working at the cemetery. I was surrounded by death constantly and gave myself over to Oyá. My poor mother had been dying inside, slowly and painfully, ever since Dad left her and moved to Oriente with his new wife, who was close to my age. La titimanía, that’s what they call the sudden urge that overcomes middle-aged men to abandon their longtime wives for younger, prettier girls. It was a national phenomenon that inspired songs and movies. My mother kept waiting for him to come back, which never happened.

  Are we doomed to repeat our parents’ mistakes? Now that I think of it, I’m living her life, except without a child—all alone, waiting for a man who doesn’t love me anymore. But I won’t become her! I’m going to give Armando and his rice business a chance. And give myself a chance as well.

  I pray the orishas show me which path to take because this one . . . this one’s getting old. Sometimes, I’m even tired of being the Queen of Bones’ handmaid. That can get old too.

  8

  A Funeral Transaction

  Juan knew he should return to the Meliá Cohiba. Or at least pay another visit to his grandmother, as he’d told Sharon he would. Today might be a better day for her. He could spend a couple hours at the nursing home. It would be interesting to talk to Rita again and to see that young nun, Yuleizi or whatever her name was. Why would such a pretty girl choose to be a nun, especially nowadays? There was probably a secret behind her decision, he mused. Maybe one having to do with love. Everybody had secrets, even the people you thought you knew best. Look at Víctor. Look at Camilo! Juan had always seen himself as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy, but he too had kept secrets, from his wife. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to fully trust someone again.

  As he stepped out of the Art Deco office building, a hearse drove by. The usual black limousine with tinted windows, followed by a Lada and two almendrones, one blue and the other red. Juan tried to imagine what his father’s funeral had been like. Besides Víctor, who else had attended? El Chino Oscar hadn’t had many friends. How many people would attend Víctor’s funeral? He should go, shouldn’t he? If he was still in Cuba when it took place, he certainly would. Ah, the Three Musketeers! All for one, and one for all. But now he was the only one left. How short-lived the happiness of reuniting with his old friend had been. He shouldn’t have left Albuquerque for this. But this was more than Víctor—it was also Elsa.

  He felt his skin tingle. Would she call him? But he had left his cell phone at the hotel, turned off, so as not to bother Sharon. He didn’t dare to go back for it now. That could make her suspicious. He would stop by Elsa’s office again in an hour or so. In the meantime, he could visit his father’s grave. After all, the Colón Cemetery was only a short walk away.

  It took him a good half hour to get there, when it should have been fifteen minutes. He could have traveled faster, but the places he had passed had brought back memories and faces. Elsa’s above all. There was the pizzeria they’d gone to during the Latin American Film Festival, when they would watch five films a day and subsist only on pepperoni slices and Coppelia ice cream. Their favorite movie was Eliseo Subiela’s Man Facing Southeast, in which Rantes, a psychiatric hospital patient, claims to be an alien visitor, with most people failing to believe him despite the miraculous feats he performs.

  “Would you love me if I were an alien?” Juan had asked Elsa.

  She
had smiled. “Of course. I would love you even if you were a little green man.”

  Now he was an alien, a visitor in the foreign landscape of his own country. Would she still love him? He wished the answer didn’t matter. It was like el diablo, the devil himself, was tempting him, making him forget all obligations to his wife. Sharon was the sweetest, most level-headed woman he had ever been with. The most mature too. In his youth, he’d been attracted to women who were a little—if not a whole lot—crazy, but he didn’t need that drama in his life anymore. And yet . . .

  By perverse association, thinking of Sharon reminded him of Rosita again. What had Víctor said about her working at the cemetery? Rosita, mortician. It was almost like a bad joke, and yet it seemed a more natural job for her than being an actress.

  He passed a busy bus stop. How many times had he waited there with Elsa? She’d had a driver’s license, but her father had seldom given her permission to use his Jeep. She needed to learn to use the brakes first, they’d joked.

  “Elsa has no brakes” was something people had frequently said at the ISA due to her notoriously hotheaded, daring nature. It had been Elsa, not Juan, who had suggested they have sex only three weeks after getting together. They had sneaked out to the Almendares River, to a desolate area near El Bosque de la Habana favored by young couples who couldn’t afford a hotel. Unlike Rosita, Elsa had been experienced and proud of it. Though it was implied that she had been with several guys before, Juan hadn’t asked how many, feeling inadequate and nervous during the early stages of their courtship. She had taught him a few things while he was still relatively unskilled, only a brief affair with an older divorcée in his “repertoire.”

  In the early months, he had been unable to believe that Elsa, the prettiest girl on campus and the pincho’s daughter, had chosen him, a garden-variety guy from Old Havana. But she had—for a while, at least—though her father hadn’t liked him. He wasn’t half the man his daughter needed, he had said. “Dad says that musicians, actors and artists in general are ideologically deviated,” Elsa had explained, laughing.

  Juan thought of the old Spaniard and everything else: the golden nameplate, air-conditioned office and snobby receptionists. He wondered what the pincho thought of Elsa’s husband. Was he man enough for her? Or was he “ideologically deviated” as well?

  The Colón Cemetery’s main entrance was a Romanesque triple arch. Juan had to tiptoe around a string of Santería offerings: flowers, rotten bananas, eggs with names written on them, coins, an ear of corn and even a dead chicken with a red ribbon tied around its feet, feathers strewn all over. He shook his head. The deities his grandmother worshipped had always struck him as suspicious. After being taught at school that religion was “the opium of the people” and after his early attempts to communicate with the spirit of his dead mother had failed, he had rejected Abuela’s attempts to induct him in any kind of Santería ceremonies. But she had kept harping at him. “If you visit the cemetery, always leave an offering by the gate,” she used to say. “A plum, a black hen, some chocolate pudding . . . anything to show respect to the Queen of Bones. You don’t want Oyá angry with you.” Absurdly, he thought he should have brought something, just in case. But he waved the idea away with a sweep of his hand.

  He stood among the elaborate tombs and statues of angels, engulfed by an ocean of marble, blistering white in the sunlight. Though he had vague memories of visiting his mother’s grave when he was a child—his paternal grandfather had been buried in the Chinese cemetery—he didn’t remember where it was. But he knew it was called “the Lasalle mausoleum”—it had belonged to his mother’s parents, who had died before he was born. He thought it shouldn’t be too difficult to find.

  An old man was going around selling gladioli, marigolds and roses. Juan asked him about the Lasalle mausoleum, and though the flower vendor didn’t know where it was, he was able to direct Juan to the information office.

  “Someone will help you there,” he said. “Was it a recent burial, the one you’re looking for?”

  “No, my dad passed away fifteen years ago.”

  “That’s fresh, man!” The vendor cackled. “Foreigners come here all the time asking for loved ones who died sixty or seventy years ago. I have the sorry job of telling them that those graves probably belong to someone else now.”

  “I’m not a foreigner.”

  “Fine. Just ask them to let you consult the registros book. The information office is left of the main entrance; you can’t miss it.”

  Juan thanked the vendor and walked off. At the information office, a young man dressed in all black—black-blue jeans, a Grateful Dead T-shirt and an unmarked baseball cap—offered Juan the services of an English-speaking guide. “The admission fee is five CUCs, Señor. You can pay here. We also have a horse and carriage tour—”

  “I’m not a tourist!” Juan blurted out, fed up with the constant confusion. “I just want to see my father’s grave.”

  “Sorry. Just go to registros. Here, let me show you on the map.”

  Following Grateful Dead’s instructions, Juan passed by the imposing Central Chapel and turned toward the northeastern quadrant. He walked quickly by a succession of mausoleums, iron grilles and glass windows—some intact, others broken—but didn’t stop until he saw a small gray building. A faded sign on the door read registros. The door was half-open. He went in without knocking and found himself in a windowless room. There were two large wooden benches with a Formica table in the middle. A picture of Fidel Castro watched him from the wall. Juan had forgotten how ubiquitous El Comandante had always been in Cuba.

  A faded blue curtain acted as partition between the main office and another area from which Juan could hear the murmur of voices. When he approached, he was hit by the scent of withered flowers. It wasn’t a horrible smell—not rotten exactly, but reminiscent of decay. He fought the desire to run as fast as possible from the pungent aroma of death.

  Once he resolved to stay (It would be childish to flee, he told himself), he couldn’t help but eavesdrop. Two women were talking; one said, “The whole-body price, please?”

  “One hundred CUCs,” another voice answered. “But I’m willing to give you a discount because of your special circumstances.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “It will be only eighty. Price includes a suit, shoes, tie, the whole shebang. Plus hair and makeup.”

  Juan stopped to listen. This couldn’t be what he thought it was, could it?

  “That—that’s still a bit steep for me,” the other woman stammered. “How much for just the hair and face? We’re having a closed casket, with a small glass portion on the upper part.” She cleared her throat. “His body was completely crushed.”

  Juan felt like vomiting and again considered leaving. But he stayed, unable to move without hearing the outcome of the negotiation.

  “Just face and hair, then,” the first woman said. “And what’s the condition of the face?”

  “Bad—very bad. Head-on collision with a truck. And he was on a bicycle. Even I had trouble identifying him.”

  “That means I’ll have to do facial reconstruction. Let’s say thirty-five. It includes eyes and a wig if needed.”

  There was a pause. And finally: “Okay. I’m sorry to be such a cheapskate; I just don’t have much money. But I can give you this as payment too.”

  Juan heard the thump of a metallic object placed on a hard surface.

  “Oh, that’s a beautiful San Lázaro! But no, I can’t accept it.”

  “Please, take it. It belonged to my husband. He was a devotee of Babalú Ayé.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to keep it? I’m fine with the thirty-five CUCs, really.”

  “No, no. It reminds me too much of him. I must tell you, the medal and chain aren’t made of gold or anything too valuable. It’s some kind of alloy.”

  “But it’s so elegant!
A man’s piece. Tell you what—I’ll give it to my godfather and ask him to pray for your husband’s soul. Now, you have to make sure they bring the body with enough time for me to do a good job. When’s the burial?”

  “The day after tomorrow at noon.”

  “Then I’d like to see him here tomorrow afternoon. Based on what you’ve told me, he’ll need some serious work.”

  “I’ll call the hospital and let them know. The body is still there.”

  A quiet sob.

  “Which hospital is it?”

  “Calixto García.”

  “Ah, you don’t need to worry. I know all the guys there. I’ll handle it.”

  “Thank you so much!”

  There was another pause. Juan heard the click of a purse, then a movement of chairs. The curtain parted, and the two women entered the office. One was dressed in black and didn’t even look at him. The other smiled in recognition.

  “Hello, Juan.”

  9

  Confession at the Cemetery

  He had expected Rosita to look haggard and uglier than he remembered after so many years, but she had improved with age. Her hair was pulled back in a French twist, and a few gray streaks gave her a distinguished air. She had gained weight, making her figure more proportionate to her height. She looked poised, her smile brighter, and she had a twinkle in her eye.

  “Good . . . good afternoon,” he stuttered.

  Rosita led the other woman to the door, closed it behind her and turned to Juan. He didn’t know what to do. Hug her? Shake her hand? And why didn’t she seem surprised by his visit? It was as if she’d been expecting him. Maybe Víctor had told her he was back. Yes, it had to be. Did she know Víctor was dead?

  Rosita pressed her left cheek to Juan’s mouth.

  “Better late than never,” she whispered. “I had given up on you.”