Find Me in Havana

by Serena Burdick

  Before we lost everything, Mamá’s plan was to send Danita and me to the Peyrellade Conservatory to study music. Now we can hardly afford the weekly lessons with Señorita Morales, a skinny woman with fallen cheeks and a chin that wobbles when she demonstrates our scales. Danita and I marvel that a voice so beautiful can come from a woman so ugly.

  It’s hard to tell if I’ll turn out beautiful. Mamá is pretty, but I don’t look or move like her. I am small for my age and skinny as a twig. Mamá says this will change when I become a woman, which is a relief.

  On stage in the nightclub, I try to imagine myself as full-bodied and sturdy as Mamá. The brass instruments of the band vibrate in my belly, and the drums pulse under my feet where new shoes pinch my toes. My sisters didn’t get new shoes. Neither did Mamá. I should feel badly about this, but I don’t. They are the loveliest shoes I’ve ever owned: white patent leather with brass buckles and tiny heels that tip me forward when I walk.

  I finish the song, holding my final note in the air like a dazzling object as the instruments halt, and silence fills the room. There is a moment of unbearable stillness before the audience erupts into applause. Dizzy with excitement, I curtsy and smile, the thrill of attention hot and satisfying.

  The applause quickly fades, and I disappear into the tumult of voices, clinking glassware and large bodies that rise up around me. A hand lands on my shoulder, and the cigarette pinched between its fingers sends smoke spiraling into my nostrils. I try not to cough. “Look at you, kid. Boy, can you sing.” A man grins down at me from a mouth filled with shiny, white teeth. I recognize him as one of the drummers. He wears a starched shirt as white as his teeth with billowing sleeves and gold cuff links shaped like cigars. His dark hair is swept up off his forehead, and a line of sweat glistens along his hairline. Even at nine years old, I understand he is wonderful to look at.

  Mamá appears in a rustle of fabric and a scent of jasmine, her perfume momentarily overpowering the cigarette smoke. She latches her arm around my shoulder, pulls me from under the man’s hand and clamps me to her side, my cheek bumping her breast. Held there, I feel small and ridiculous.

  The man flourishes a bow. “Señorita, your daughter is a gem. A pure gem! That voice!” He winks at me, and my cheeks grow hot. “Has she done any recordings?”

  “Not yet.” Mamá’s voice sounds curt, defensive.

  The man’s grin only widens. “What are you waiting for? You can’t hide talent like that. I have a band in Miami. She should come and record with us in America.”

  Squashed against my mother, I feel her intake of air sucked into her lungs and the slight expanse of her chest. America is all she needs to hear.

  “Desi Arnaz.” The man proffers a hand, and my mom takes it, releasing me. The heat and strength of her body moves away from me as the wealthy woman she once was returns to her shoulders.

  “Juana Maria Antonia Santurio y Canto Rodriguez.” She smiles a rare, flirtatious smile. “But, you may call me Señorita Rodriguez.”

  “It is an honor to meet you, Señorita Rodriguez.” He holds her hand, a playful glint under the rapt, seductive look in his eye. A cat with a mouse. It is the same look I saw Miguel Santo give Yolanda Farrar in El veneno de un beso, the only film I’ve ever seen. “What do you say?” Mr. Arnaz says this to Mamá but winks at me as if we are in on something together. “You want to bring this little gal to Miami, make her a star?”

  I expect an immediate refusal, but Mamá remains silent, her wide cheeks flushed. The air becomes electric with possibility. Am I to go to America? I curl my toes against the tight leather of my shoes and pitch forward, excitement and fear pressing into my throat.

  “She’s too young,” Mamá says, regretfully, as if my age is a sorry fact of life utterly out of her control.

  Mr. Arnaz shrugs. “She’ll grow.”

  Mamá squeezes my shoulder so hard it hurts. “And when she does, we will consider your offer.”

  Mr. Arnaz clicks his tongue and cocks his hand at me like a gun, saying casually, as if I am refusing him a dance instead of my future, “Well, then, we’ll be seeing you, kid.”

  He turns, claps his arm around a man in a shirt with wide, ruffled sleeves and bellows to the bartender for a rum on ice with extra mint and two limes, the two punctuated in the air with two fingers.

  The din of the room, the sharp smell I have already learned to recognize as alcohol and the choke of cigar smoke make me light-headed as I watch my luck slip away on the back of that white shirt drifting into the crowd.

  Mamá tugs me through the throng of bodies and out onto the cobblestone street. It is late, and the street is steamy and smells of gasoline. Boisterous voices spill from open doorways that illuminate the pavement like patchwork.

  “You’re a sweet-looking one,” a woman whistles from an open patio, swaying slightly, her arm latched around another woman’s shoulder. They wear dresses that are much too small, and I am sorry to think they’ve grown out of them and can’t afford new ones.

  Mamá pulls me along so fast the backs of my stiff shoes begin rubbing the skin off my heels.

  “Why didn’t Papa come?” I ask. He might have let me go to America. We need money. Danita and I could make money in America. Everyone in America is rich, at least that’s what I’ve heard Mamá say. If we don’t go soon, I’ll end up in a too-small dress with my knees exposed, like those poor women on the patio. “Why, Mamá?” I press.

  “He’s a busy man,” she answers sharply, and since we’ve hardly seen Papa after losing our land nearly three years ago, I think this must be true.

  * * *

  It changed overnight. One day Papa was living at home overseeing the plantation, the cutting and transporting of our fields of henequen to the mill to be crushed and made into rope, and the next day the peasants took over and Papa moved to Havana.

  I woke that morning with Danita standing over my bed, shaking my shoulder. “Hurry, get up, something’s happening.” Danita is only a year older than me but bosses me as if she were as big as our sister Oneila, who is eighteen years old and has a right to boss me.

  I hear shouting through the open window.

  “Come on.” Danita grabs my hand, and we hurry down to the kitchen where normally glasses of guanabana juice and great slices of warm cassava bread are waiting for us. This morning there is nothing. The air has a burned smell, but there is no fire in the stove. Not even the coffee is brewing. Mamá stands with her back against the counter as Mercedes clings to her full, bright skirt.

  When she sees us Mamá gives a nervous laugh and says, “I don’t know how to cook,” looking at the stove as if it is a great, black beast ready to attack.

  “Where’s Aayla?” Danita asks. Aayla is our cook.

  Mamá shakes her head. “She’s gone. They are all gone.” Mercedes starts to cry. Mamá does not shush her or lift her onto her hip. She stands perfectly still, moving her eyes around the room as if everything familiar has suddenly become foreign.

  Secretly, I am glad Aayla is gone. I hate her. Mamá says hate is too strong a word, but that’s exactly how I feel. Aayla is tall and bony, with arms wound tight as cording, her hand springing out and slapping me whenever she feels like it, especially if I try to take a slice of cake before my brother Bebo, who is her favorite.

  “Farah’s not gone,” I say, matter-of-fact. Farah is our Haitian nanny who loves me. She is the exact opposite of Aayla, and she’d never leave. She is plump and warm with the darkest skin I’ve ever seen. When she hugs me, her flesh is so consuming I am sure she has no bones at all. Every night she and I sing Haitian lullabies together after everyone is asleep. She is the one who taught me the mambo and the rhumba.

  “Farah is gone, too.” Mamá makes no attempt to soften the blow, and tears spring to my eyes. What will I do without Farah? I fly to the open window, wondering if she is out there whooping and shouting with the ot
hers, but the mist is so thick all I can see is a gray-green soup of clouds.

  “Get away from there.” Mamá yanks me back, pulls in the shutters and latches them with big, angry movements. Just then the outer kitchen door swings open, and Papa stomps in, his face grim. My two brothers are right behind him, shoving each other to see who will get through the door first. Bebo wins. He is smaller and quicker and beats Manuel at most things.

  “Where is my father?” Mamá asks, her voice high.

  Papa tosses his straw hat on the counter. Papa is thin and muscular with a wiry energy that makes me nervous even when things aren’t out of control. “He left for Havana early this morning.”

  “Is Mamá okay?”

  “She’s fine. She said she’ll stay put until your father comes back.”

  Despite the pandemonium, Papa doesn’t look at all out of sorts. His black hair is slicked back, his mustache neatly brushed. Standing at the counter, he taps the jar of coffee beans grimacing as if the absence of coffee is the most disturbing prospect ahead of us. Resigned to this difficulty, he sits mugless at the head of the long wooden table fisting his hands in front of him. “Sit, all of you,” he orders.

  My brothers sit on either side of him, my father’s parallel shadows. I realize Oneila has been sitting silently at the table all along. Her white blouse is pressed, her black hair parted and pulled away from her face so tightly I can see the white line of her scalp. How did everyone else have time to put themselves together? Danita and I are still in our cotton nightgowns.

  Despite this indiscretion, we scurry to our seats. If not for the loss of Farah, I would find this all very exciting. It’s the same feeling I get before a storm, when the warm wind picks up as the sky turns wild and tints everything a shocking orange.

  Mamá sits at the opposite end of the table from Papa, and Mercedes climbs into the chair next to her, sucking on her fist. All we need now is something to eat, I think, pressing my hand into my stomach to quiet the grumbling, wishing tragedy had struck after breakfast.

  Glancing around the table Papa meets our eyes with deliberate soberness, speaking as if he is broadcasting the news over the wireless. “There has been an uprising. The student-run Directorio has taken over.”

  I give Danita a what does that mean? look. She shrugs. Outside there are pops like fireworks and a clanging as if spoons are being banged against pots. I feel like I am missing a party.

  Oneila, generally timid, startles us all by saying, “We’re entitled to know what our family has done to deserve this,” as if three-year-old Mercedes, Danita, my brothers Bebo and twelve-year-old Manuel and I are entitled to anything.

  I stare at Oneila leaning forward in her chair trying on a new expectant expression. She said we but means I. If her questioning is a test of maturity, she passes it in a single leap. Instead of scolding her for being insolent, Mamá looks her directly in the eye and says, “Nothing, Oneila. Our family has done absolutely nothing to deserve this.”

  Papa, ignorant of the momentous exchange taking place between mother and daughter, says, “That is not true, Maria.”

  Mamá starts. “What does that mean?”

  “That we’re not innocent.”

  “What have we done?”

  “Exactly what they accuse us of.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind yet. These are our people. They have a right to fair wages, fair labor, education, a modern university.”

  “They are Negroes. Haitian. Jamaican. They are not Spanish.”

  “We are all Cuban!” Papa bangs the table, charged with an energy that springs off of him in quick bursts. “This—” he waves his hand in huge circles over his head, conjuring a storm “—is your world. Your father’s land. Your father’s money. Did you know—” Papa’s eyes flash around the table, the you now directed at all of us “—that your mother’s people and mine all come from Asturias, from the exact same region in Spain? Our backgrounds are identical, our people no different. But here, here in Cuba we are different, and do you know why?”

  We quickly shake our heads, no.

  “No, of course you don’t. My father gave his life so that you would not know. Before the Cuban War of Independence, the only difference between your mother’s people and mine is that her father was born in Spain and mine was born in Cuba. This made my father a creole. It made me a creole.” His voice dips down right before he spits out, “We were nothing. Dirt!” He then falls silent, letting the unjustness of it sink in as he eyes each of us in turn.

  Before this, we’d heard very little of Papa’s people or the war. His parents died before any of us were born. His two brothers and one sister seem no different than Mamá’s brothers and sisters. It doesn’t appear that anyone thinks Papa is dirt. Grandpa lets him run the plantation, and Grandma kisses his cheek when she greets him.

  The vigor returns to Papa’s voice. “My father was an heir to Spanish greatness. Born of dignity, fortitude, courage, pride. When I was a boy, a Spanish general rode up to our front door. General Weyler Valeriano. The Butcher, they called him.”

  “Manuel,” Mamá says, in a warning tone, but Papa silences her with a raised hand. She sighs and pulls Mercedes onto her lap. He is going to tell us what he is going to tell us. Discreetly, I press my fingers in my ears and pretend his nose is the dial on the wireless that I can turn up or down with my eyes. He speaks so loudly, however, I cannot turn him off.

  “It was February 24, 1897, the height of the rebellion. Valeriano had been sent over from Spain to suppress the insurgency. I was standing in my front yard dissecting a frog under our algaroba tree when he rode up to our house.” Papa’s voice drops a notch, serious as death. “The horse startled me, but when I looked up, I wasn’t frightened. The general had a mustache that curled down all the way to his chin, and he wore a white jacket with silver buttons that flashed in the sunlight. I thought he looked very fine and noble and that my mother would be pleased to have such a visitor. When he asked where my father was, I pointed to the door of the house. I didn’t know to lie. When my father stepped out and saw me pointing, there was fear in his eyes, and this froze me where I stood. I’d never seen my father afraid. At first, I thought he was afraid for himself, but after, I understood that he was afraid for me, too.” Papa pauses, clears his throat and continues. “The man slid from his horse and shoved my father to his knees. ‘Hail to the king of Spain!’ he ordered. My father said nothing. ‘Hail to the king of Spain,’ the general ordered again, and this time he drew his sword. It was long and thin with a marble handle and a blade as shiny as the bright green underbelly of the dead frog I still clutched in my hand. The sword looked heavy. Too heavy for me to lift or wrestle away from him. I didn’t look at my father’s face, which was cowardly of me. Instead, I stared at the puddle he knelt in. Mamá was washing clothes down at the river, and I worried she’d have to make a second trip to wash the mud from his pants. I didn’t know how much harder blood was to get out. You think this is bad?” I jump in my seat as Papa flings an arm toward the window, drawing our attention from the story to the ruckus outside. I don’t understand what is going on out there any more than I understand why he is telling us this story.

  As if suddenly regretting the retelling of this moment, Papa abruptly ends with a single sentence. “I was five years old when I saw my father quartered in front of me for not hailing to the king of Spain.”

  The room is silent. Quartered? You quarter an avocado or a coconut. How do you quarter a human? With a sword, it would seem.

  I am no longer hungry. The house feels eerie and still without the servants. Under the table, I reach for Danita’s hand. Her palm is as sweaty as mine. Bebo starts to whimper. No one comforts him. Even a story of our grandfather being hacked to pieces is no excuse for a boy to cry. Glancing at our terrified faces, Mamá says soothingly, “Nothing like that is going to
happen here. That was a different time and a different war.”

  Papa, intent on holding our terror, presses his knuckles into the table and stands. “This is no different. It’s the oppressed fighting back just as they did with Spain. Machado changed the constitution so he could maintain power. Por amor de Cristo, he ran for reelection against himself!”

  “Manuel!” Mamá cries. No amount of injustice is worth taking the Lord’s name in vain.

  Papa ignores her. “Machado’s closed the high schools as well as the university. Students and professors have been beaten and arrested. They’re left with no choice but to fight back. Armed action is the only thing that’s ever proved successful at ridding this country of corrupt power.”

  Mamá shakes her head vigorously. “The Directorio is not an army or a government. It’s a reckless, irresponsible, student-organized rebellion.” I picture kids in military jackets swinging swords on a playground. “They demand economic and political reform and then go and use the same violence and corruption as Machado’s regime to get it. It’s hypocritical. Politics in this country has always been about ascendency. There’s no heroics in it. No national unity, no purpose. It’s just men vying for power.”

  I understand none of these big words, but Mamá’s confidence is reassuring. No one is going to chop us up with a sword, I tell myself.

  “The Directorio is not really in charge, Maria.” Papa sounds patronizing, as if Mamá has simply misunderstood the situation. Didn’t he tell us the Directorio had taken over? “Fulgencio Batista’s low-level army is rising to power. They’ll be the ones in charge soon. Batista is a powerful man, from what I hear, and an admirable one. A laborer who rose up out of nothing. A man who will no longer be forced to the bottom of the pile, and I say hurrah for him.”

  Mamá stands up so fast Mercedes tumbles to the floor with a wail. “I know perfectly well who Batista is. I will not have you revere this man in front of our children!”