by Achy Obejas
“Guapón!” Frank gushed, smiling broadly, suggesting Usnavy was even more guapo than the average guapo: a super guapo. Frank slapped him on the back as Usnavy chained his bike to a nearby fence; he flicked the ashes from his cigar.
In reality, Usnavy was thin and gaunt; as he grew older, his previously reddish hair had turned white as sea foam and topped his now sunblotched face. Since his diet had been reduced to rice and, frequently, sugared water for energy during the day, he’d grown even skinnier, with his cheekbones accentuating his face and his fingers long and bony. He knew he had never been handsome, and knew too that, penniless and still steadfast, his friends pitied him too much to think him brave. Guapo, he knew, could just be ironic; indeed, he thought as he took a position in the shade under the tree to watch the game; it probably was something of a jeer.
Frank smirked, threw down a handful of crowded dominos, and declared himself out of the game with a nod toward Usnavy. “Go ahead, guapo, go ahead,” he said, surrendering his spot to him. Frank always had a rough but gallant air about him, like the Mexican movie star Anthony Quinn. His departure from the game paired Usnavy with Mayito, the group’s best player and Frank’s best friend, who liked to keep silent during these informal tournaments. (One of the things Usnavy most liked about dominos was that it was played in teams and required collaboration. But, as far as Usnavy was concerned, to play with Mayito and his silence, you practically had to be a mind reader!)
“Ah, the mute,” Usnavy said, a bit reluctantly but still amused. As he settled in across from his wordless partner, it occurred to Usnavy that, in spite of everything, he was content. A bike ride, dominos, his family; it was enough for him.
“Yes, the mute’s game,” said Frank, nodding in Mayito’s direction and lighting a cigar while standing under the tree overlooking the tournament, which was being played on an old card table that wobbled with each turn. The autistic boy to whom Usnavy had given his TV sat stiffly in a nearby chair, staring expressionless at the domino pieces scattered on the tabletop. It was unclear whether he understood that the object of the game was to get rid of one’s pieces as quickly as possible; what was certain was that the boy could count. After several outbursts in which he’d given away who had what, or what was still in play, they’d had to threaten to not let him watch in order to get him to keep quiet. Now and then you could still see him moving his lips, but he never spoke anymore, and so the players tolerated him, even grew to think of him as intrinsic to the scene.
At one time, Usnavy’s friends had played with one of Gerardo Galbán’s beautiful, original bone-and-ebony sets but, in time, the pieces had gotten chipped, then lost, and now they played with a plastic set, black on the back, yellow on the front, brought down from Miami, though rumored to also be made by Galbán himself, now exiled. They had loved to play with that original set, matching the numbers head to head in the light, knowing the pieces would stay put, each game a masterpiece of lines snaking around the table. The problem with the plastic one was that as soon as it got hot and the players began to perspire, the pieces became slippery and would fly out of their hands unexpectedly, or slide out of position at the slightest bump. They had no gravitas. Somebody—usually the autistic boy—had to be watching, making sure the lines were neat and the game was on course.
“I know, I know it’s the mute’s game,” Usnavy said with resignation. “Dominos was invented by a mute, I know.” This was a standard introduction to one of Frank’s reveries, whether domino-related or not.
“A Chinese mute,” Frank affirmed from his perch.
“So now it was the Chinese who invented dominos?” asked Obdulio as he stirred the soup, quickly plucking his ten pieces and lining them up on their sides so they wouldn’t tumble. Obdulio was squat and solid, a crown of tight rust-colored curls on his head. “Last week it was the Egyptians.”
“See? You’re not paying attention,” said Frank, letting the cigar smoke out in rings from his mouth like a kid. “I said, the Egyptians played pre-dominos.”
Mayito whacked a double nine into the center of the table to start. Diosdado dropped a nine-two next to it, aligning the nines.
“Dolores,” Usnavy said, and he meant it: What a pain! He loved to play dominos as much for the commentary as for the game itself. And in this particular group, he was the play-by-play guy, the one who knew what to say after each move, how to name the circumstances of the game.
Dolores really couldn’t have been more appropriate: When he finally looked down at his pieces, he had nothing but a bunch of doubles. This was a disastrous hand, the doubles halving his possibilities of matching and connecting. He knew he could have called for a new game—he had more than the five doubles that would have allowed it—but he hadn’t been paying attention, didn’t call it in time, and understood all too well that to say anything now, after two full plays, was to set himself up for ruthless harassment from Frank not just today but for days to come, maybe weeks.
He tried to cover by placing a nine-seven—one of his few nondoubles—on the other end of the domino tail. “Caracol,” he said.
Obdulio put a seven and two in play, leaving both ends of the dominos exposing twos. Frank leaned closer, chewing noisily on his cigar. Mayito, as enigmatic as a Buddha (and just as bald), pushed in a two and six at his near end.
“The Egyptians, I don’t know what they played,” said Frank, leaning back and taking up his philosophizing again. “It was maybe almost dominos but not quite. That took the genius of the Chinese. Don’t you agree, guapo?”
Usnavy was hardly paying attention to him, trying to stay focused on the game. Diosdado, who seemed almost professorial with his bifocals and his thin goatee, had just released a six and four (“Gato,” Usnavy grumbled, imagining the four dots as cat’s paws) in an effort to see if Usnavy had any twos (he didn’t). Usnavy used his only four—the double—and frowned while Obdulio spun a single domino in a playfully threatening fashion next to his hand. He left the domino to whirl and picked another, the four and five. Nobody had touched that two at the other end, except the autistic boy, whose index finger slid it into place when it seemed like it wanted to float away.
The doubles in Usnavy’s hand stared up at him, as beautiful and ineffable as feline eyes.
Under the tree, Frank suddenly stopped his story, engaging in a whispered conversation with a greasy young man. Monkish Mayito gave up a two and five, having presumed that his partner was in trouble and trying to give him a way out. But Usnavy was still distracted, watching Frank laughing and exchanging a few dollars for a huge wad of pesos. That Frank was being so conspicuous was proof of their friendship—and maybe a kind of boast too—but Usnavy couldn’t get used to it.
“Hey,” Diosdado reproached him, nodding at fives on both ends of the domino trail. To Usnavy, Diosdado seemed even more professor-like at moments like that, when he acted as if he’d caught him daydreaming in class.
“No comment,” said Usnavy with a shake of the head. Double five for him, not much choice. Two cats dragging their tails. Mayito’s brow arched.
“Ah, yes, the Chinese,” Frank said, picking up his story, Cuban bills bulging in his pockets. “You know how they came upon dominos?” He tapped the ashes off his cigar with dramatic flair. Diosdado inched in with a five and eight. “You guys listening? This is important stuff,” Frank continued as Usnavy threw down a double eight.
Cats squared. Mayito winced. Obdulio screwed in the eight and two but Mayito came to the rescue with a two and seven.
“Por dios,” mumbled Usnavy, and everybody laughed except the autistic boy.
Diosdado left the seven alone; his eyes distorted on the bottom half of his bifocals as he plugged a five and nine on the other end. He was the picture of arrogance, which made Usnavy want to tell him how ridiculous he looked. But he said nothing—why pick a useless fight?—and groaned at his hand, which only brought on more laughter.
“The Chinese used dominos as a way to divine the future,” Frank lectured.
>
Somebody offered Usnavy a thimble of freshly brewed coffee and he downed it. It was bitter and sharp and caused him to grimace involuntarily. Then he tapped the table with his finger, passing.
“Damn, man, you’re salao,” said the delphic Mayito, meaning the worst kind of unlucky.
“Salao?” asked Frank with a cackle. “My friend here can’t be salao—he doesn’t believe in that!”
“In what?” asked Diosdado, but he had a little gleam in his eye, making a rare pact with Frank.
“Why, in luck. Usnavy doesn’t believe in luck or fate or any of that,” Frank continued. “Unless it’s the destiny of the whole nation—the ultimate fate of our transcendent Revolution!”
Usnavy was too tired—and this was all such old territory for all of them—to get into any kind of discussion with Frank, with whom no one could ever win. He stared down at his hand and examined the table, noticing how every time Mayito had tried to rescue him by providing connections, the game had turned before it got to him.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Diosdado hurried him.
“Well, you’re right about one thing,” Usnavy said, calling it quits by turning his pieces over, “at least in this game, I’m absolutely salao!”
The group howled, the laughter rising sharp and clear. Every single piece in Usnavy’s hand was a double, including the double zero, reflected in the autistic boy’s impervious eyes.
A few days later, Usnavy returned to the Old Havana civil registry by himself. There was no point in dragging Nena along, he conceded. Now the walls stood half-painted and a new fluorescent tube hung from the ceiling. The clerk leaned limply against the counter. At Usnavy’s insistence, he took down all the information and, after a long, suffocating wait, explained that there wasn’t anything he could do for him.
“You need to go to the hospital where she was born,” he said with a twitch in his eye. “What we need is the number of her birth certificate.”
Usnavy pulled the ruined copy of the original from his pants and searched to see if by chance the numbers might still be decipherable, but neither he nor the clerk could be sure. A weary Usnavy pedaled to work, figuring he’d go to the hospital the next day and take care of the problem.
Maybe, he thought, he should have left Nena out of it from the beginning and taken care of it all by himself.
That evening, before washing up and heading out for his game of dominos, Usnavy watched as Lidia served up a sandwich for Nena that he recognized as having what looked like a reddish-brown meat. His immediate fear was that it was cat flesh. As a delighted Nena ate—complimenting Lidia, savoring the little bits of what looked like onions—Lidia kept busy, avoiding Usnavy’s eye. She had not served him a sandwich, only the usual rice with a little bit of black beans. Of all people, of course, he knew that the only ingredient she’d gotten legally for that sandwich was the bread.
“Want a taste, Papi?” Nena offered.
His daughter was a naturally skinny kid, long-limbed and slightly awkward, but he knew that given half a chance she’d grow into her body, that she might even be elegant someday. She had charcoal eyebrows, skin as lustrous and perfect as an apple.
Usnavy shook his head. “Nah, already ate,” he muttered. Was she being ironic too? He couldn’t tell.
He reached under the bed, next to the piles of books, to the dresser drawer with his clothes, and pulled out a clean pair of underwear. (Lidia and Nena had their own drawer, which was a little bigger.) Usnavy had three pairs and there was a strict cycle to their usage: There was always one on, one drying on the line, and one in the drawer. Lidia and Nena had a few more, four or five each, and they were better at the daily washing than he was so they were never caught off guard. Lidia would have washed his underwear too, but Usnavy had been well-trained by his mother to launder his briefs and undershirts as he bathed, a skill that came in handy during his bachelor years, and which probably helped convince Lidia of his worth as a husband. Usnavy would never be a hero or a star, but he would never be a burden either.
As soon as Nena had finished her meal, she placed her plate in the plastic pan used to soak the dishes, grabbed her toothbrush and the plastic bottle filled with boiled water, then stepped outside. Usnavy could hear her beside the water barrel, brushing and gargling as she greeted passing neighbors.
Lidia handed him a tiny cup of coffee with a head of brown froth. Luckily, she’d drowned the bitterness with enough sugar. “Rosita across the courtyard had a little meat, a little steak she shared with me, in exchange for, you know, the ironing I did for her,” Lidia said apologetically.
Often, because Lidia was one of the few people in the world these days with a working iron, they could earn a few extra pesos that way, or barter for goods. The ironing never produced dollars because tourists had their ironing, if any, done at the hotels, and, frankly, neither Usnavy nor Lidia would have known how to approach them anyway.
Now Lidia was fidgeting with the refrigerator, rearranging its meager contents. She was a lean, sienna-skinned woman with narrow hips, younger than Usnavy by a decade, but more fragile. Since Nena’s birth, after twenty-two hours in labor, she’d become even shyer than when Usnavy had first met her. Communication seemed like such an effort to her that, as far as Usnavy was concerned, the mere fact that she wanted to explain something made it instantly forgivable, whatever it was. He could barely stand the thought of her discomfort. He sipped his coffee—it was sickly sweet—and handed the cup back to her.
“I thought it was best to give the meat to Nena, but it wasn’t very much,” Lidia continued. “There really wasn’t enough, I didn’t even have any myself, just a taste.”
Usnavy sat on the bed, quietly tossing his underwear from one hand to the other, like pizza dough. The light from the lamp above them was too bright, the feline eyes like sapphires embedded in their yellow sockets. He noticed a small puddle on the floor, the result of a barely visible but rusty streak that now ran down the wall.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said, embarrassed for both of them. “Don’t worry about it.”
It was he who was worried, however. He now realized what his little girl had just eaten. Lidia probably wasn’t aware that the sandwich she’d bought—he was sure it was not a gift, not an exchange—did not have any meat at all. Most people hadn’t figured out the scheme yet but Usnavy was sure he knew the secret behind those tasty treats.
The week before, Rosita had been selling those very sandwiches on the street—she’d even offered him one. But no sooner had Usnavy pulled up the bread and seen the flat layer of pith covered in seasoning, than he recognized its true provenance: These were pieces of a blanket normally used for mopping floors which Rosita had beaten and marinated in spices and a little beef broth. The texture of the wool had been transformed into what they all imagined steak was like, something tender and chewy. The success of her enterprise had come as much from her ingenuity as from the tricks memory plays.
Needless to say, Rosita had sold out of the sandwiches and quickly come back to the bodega to get the blanket due on her mother’s ration book. Rosita’s excitement that day, he knew, didn’t have anything to do with the potential gleam of her floor. Still, he didn’t say anything to anyone. Who would believe him anyway? Who would admit they’d been fooled by the sheer force of their desire?
If the enterprise went well enough, he presumed, she’d soon vanish from the bodega’s line, acquiring a limitless supply of blankets and dressing from god knows where …
The ingredients for the tangy sauce must have been illicitly acquired, Usnavy mused after a minute—and his daughter had just eaten it with pieces of wool. At least it wasn’t cat meat, he thought.
Then he bowed his head in dismay and disbelief.
A few nights later, Usnavy and his family were startled by a thunderous rapping on the door of their room. Both Lidia and Nena shot up, Nena reaching with her foot to the cot where her father lay to poke him awake. His mattress was thin and spread on top of a la
yer of old Granma newspapers that crinkled when he moved (Granma, in English, after the boat the rebels took from Mexico to Cuba to spark the Revolution).
“Usnavy,” came the hoarse whisper from outside. “Usnavy, please, I need your help.”
Usnavy felt his way to the door in the darkness, cracking it open a sliver. Outside, there were only shadows but he recognized the tight curls on the head of his friend Obdulio, squat and solid, standing there nervously.
“Usnavy, you’ve got to help me,” Obdulio said.
“What happened?”
“Everybody’s leaving,” he said.
Last spring, a few people had jumped the fence at the Belgian embassy and Obdulio had said the same thing: Everybody’s leaving—but it wasn’t to be. And then in a matter of weeks, there were nearly a dozen Cubans in the Chilean embassy and a bunch who smashed through the fence with a truck at the German mission, all waiting for the authorities to relent and give them a way out of Cuba. But after weeks of delays, they all trickled back to the streets of Havana, hungrier and more distraught than ever. And in spite of the risks and the drama, nobody left.
“What do you mean?” asked a groggy Usnavy. He was shirtless, standing in the doorway in his underwear. The floor was wet and slippery and the sour smell of the tenement invaded his nostrils. By now both Lidia and Nena were beside him wrapped in the bed sheet.
“In Cojímar, it’s like Mariel,” Obdulio said, swallowing hard.
Usnavy felt both Lidia and Nena tense up next to him. “What does that have to do with me?” he asked wearily.
Not again, he thought, not again. Back in 1980, during the leakage from Mariel harbor, how many had left? How many had disappeared? How many had never been heard from again?
“I’m leaving,” Obdulio said. “My family and I, we’re leaving. We’re building a raft right now, my daughter and my nephews. They’re already there, on the beach.”