“Not even Riel? I’ve seen him looking at you. Maybe he likes flat-chested women. Lita says there are men who prefer women with small breasts.” Lita and Enricua are Oneila’s eldest daughters, glorious teenagers maturing before our eyes. “Riel is only fifteen.” Josepha props up on one elbow, meeting my eyes. “I heard our aunts talking about him in the kitchen. ‘A baby! No one that age should be holding a gun!’ I’d kiss him. His brother is ugly, and Señor Guevara is old, although if I were old I’d probably think he was cute. Lita and Enricua say he is.”
I have never thought about men in this way. “Riel is not looking at me. I’m not even thirteen.”
“Kings used to take brides at twelve. Have you started your period?”
“Yes.”
“Then, you’re a woman.”
“Have you?”
“Barely. I’ve only gotten it once. I’m hoping that’s why my breasts haven’t grown yet.”
Josepha drops back down, and we stare at the sky in silence, small stones prickling our backs. I want to tell her about Alfonso, about what happened and how sickening his hand felt between my legs. The first day we met, she said we had to tell each other our darkest secret. “That’s the only way we’ll ever really trust each other,” she said, squeezing my hand as if trying to wring blood from it. She told me she’s learned to rub her finger between her legs until there is a bursting feeling that makes her whole body shiver.
“Now, I do it every night, but I’m sure it’s a sin. I also stole my cousin Maria’s gold-leaf barrette out of her suitcase when she was packing for Miami. She’s Uncle Bebo’s daughter, two years younger than me and full of herself. I know I should feel badly about the barrette, but I don’t. Okay, what’s your darkest secret?”
I told her my darkest secret was sneaking Señorita Perron’s tequila. Now, lying in the heavy air with the imprint of her hand on my breast, I wish I hadn’t lied. I want to tell her my darkest secret. I just don’t know how.
The wind picks up, the branches of the ficus so heavy they barely shift under the force.
“Storm’s almost here,” Josepha says. “I hope it’s a big one.”
* * *
It is a big one. Whole branches are torn from trees, and the rain slams down sideways, hitting the windows like pebbles. The road becomes a river, fat frogs and snakes careering down it on palm leaves, the yard swirled up with mud and sticks and leaves like a witch’s brew. From the window, you, Mom, sit with Josepha and me watching little green frogs twirl away in the current. You swear the roof won’t rip off, but Josepha and I are not so sure. The wind sounds like bones cracking against the tiles. The roof has seen worse, you reassure us.
Tucking your feet under you on the sofa, you tell us about a storm that landed a tree on the house and another when you and Aunt Danita snuck out at fourteen to meet two boys in town, but the boys never showed.
“My Sergio was one of them.” Aunt Danita leans against the doorframe on her way to the kitchen. “Imagine your father scared of a little wind! I tease him about it to this day. And you, Estelita, you never looked twice at that other boy. Too proud to date a coward, you said.”
“Not true,” you argue. “That boy had horse teeth and pimples, and I never liked him in the first place!”
Danita swats her hand at you. “Liar,” she says laughing and continues down the hall.
So much about you makes sense to me here: your big laughter, your over-the-top energy. Your sisters might not be movie stars, but they match you in this, laughing and fighting, dancing and singing and crying, all four of you boisterous and dramatic. Your sisters’ stories of you, your stories of them, of your brothers, the ones given privileges you all envied, all becomes a rich and colorful past I envy. My life back home pales beside all this grand aliveness.
* * *
For days we are not allowed outside, and the house is chaotic. Mercedes’s boys, Tabo and Victor, cherubic little devils, toddle around stabbing sticks into the furniture and throwing fantastic tantrums. Mercedes’s daughter, Marta, follows Josepha and me like a puppy, begging to be included in whatever secret plan we’re devising. She’s only seven and, in the hierarchy of cousins, still a baby. Josepha tells her to shove off. “We are too old to play silly games,” she says with an upward tilt of her chin.
Not true. While the sky boils overhead and the earth is chewed into a pulp, we nestle in our dark closet with a tapered candle playing truth or dare by a single flickering flame. Truths we exaggerate into lies, dares we play on poor, unsuspecting Marta. Smashed banana on the sofa or an upturned chair is blamed on Tabo or Victor. But our most calculated dares we play on Lita and Enricua, writing fabricated love letters from Riel and Alipio and slipping these under their doors, or sprinkling ash from the fireplace into their pot of rouge.
They find none of this funny. The storm has made them irritable. Because of the torrent, the soldiers have not crossed the road, and our teenage cousins are bored without the distraction. I don’t know why they aren’t frightened of these sharp-eyed, jumpy young men carrying guns. Maybe it is because the rebels keep their eyes on our mothers and take little notice of them.
When the men trail in at six to listen to Radio Rebelde, we are sequestered in our rooms. Half an hour later, when the soldiers make the journey from the living room to the dining room for dinner, Lita and Enricua sneak to the top of the stairs to watch them. They return sighing and whispering to each other, drawing Josepha and me down on their beds and making us choose which rebel we’d have. Once, Oneila came into the room as we were deciding and her face went shell-white. She dragged her daughters up by their arms, scolding them in the voice of a lioness. She is the quiet aunt, but when she roars it is mighty.
After that, Lita and Enricua no longer included us in their daring discussions.
* * *
Day four of the storm, Josepha and I huddle in the closet in flickering candlelight, the wind moaning in the background as Josepha reads aloud from an anthology of Cuban poetry she took from our Grandfather Manuel’s room. Josepha told me he moved in with her and her parents a year ago. “It’s terrible having him around. He’s the strictest. Never speaks to me unless he’s scolding.”
“I’ve had to live with Grandmother Maria my whole life,” I say, and Josepha says she’d take living with her any day over our grandfather.
Grandfather Manuel’s things are in the room where Mercedes sleeps with her children: a shaving kit, history books on the Cuban War of Independence and a military jacket that hangs on the back of the door. No one ever touches these things, and I wonder if we’ll get in trouble for taking his book of poetry.
From the closet, we hear a door bang shut. The soldiers are back.
We blow out the candle, slip into the upstairs hall and peer between the stair railing as Señor Guevara wipes his boots on the mat, politely, like a visitor, his hair falling damp and curly around his face. He is handsome, but so was Alfonso. I wonder if handsome men might be the worst kind. Alipio is right behind him with two more rebels I’ve never seen before. They are older, one slightly taller than the other, full beards on their faces and lines wedged deep around their squinty eyes. I don’t see Riel, which gives me a funny, worried feeling until the door swings open again and he steps in, slapping his wet hat against his thigh. He doesn’t look up. None of them do as they pass below us heading for the living room. Oneila steps out of the kitchen brandishing a dish towel. She, on the other hand, darts a look right at us, and we scurry back, but not before I see you through the living room doorway standing in lamplight, your hair down, your face clear and open.
Your beauty does not serve you here, I think, slipping back into the closet with Josepha. Here it is dangerous.
Chapter Twenty-Two
* * *
Men
Daughter,
Tonight, I want you to stay shut in that closet. I want your eyes and ears closed.
The men gather like wolves in a pack, circling, eyeing, assessing, the oil lamp sending ankle-deep shadows dancing across their legs. The radio is battery-operated so not affected by the loss of power from the storm, but tonight they are here for more than rebel news.
Che settles into a chair watching his comrades with the ease of one who knows his orders will be obeyed without question. He looks pleased with himself and with these new soldiers he’s brought. These men don’t have the youthful, soft eyes of Riel and Alipio. They are seasoned and arrogant.
We never learn their names. It doesn’t matter. Best not to put names to their faces.
Mercedes and Mamá are seated on the couch. I stand at the other end of the room with my hand pressed flat against my stomach. Riel and Alipio take their positions on the rug, legs crossed, boys at the feet of men. The older of the two new men steps up to me, his cigar breath nauseating, his greedy eyes searching me like a mangy, hungry dog. A small, white scar runs through one eyebrow, and there are pits in his cheeks like inverted gravel. He reaches out and strokes the side of my neck with a single, rough-tipped finger, running it over my collarbone to my blouse where he places his whole sweaty-hot hand over my breast. Humiliation shoots through me, and it is all I can do not to spit in his face.
“Not her” I hear and look over at Che who watches, nonchalant, as if his friend is choosing a side dish. The hand falls, and the man moves to the couch and plants himself next to Mercedes, who has gone stiff and white as sun-bleached driftwood. Her hands fold and unfold in her lap. I think of how she used to play with paper dolls under the low, wide branches of our manchineel tree, how she’d spend hours cutting them out, little pieces of paper trailing everywhere she went. Mercedes, now twenty-seven. Mother of three. Mercedes the Gatherer. Mercedes the Cheerful.
The man says, “We are missing the news,” his voice silkier and more cultured than I would have expected, given his coarse exterior.
The other man—slightly younger, openly hostile—goes to the radio and clicks it on as Danita appears in the doorway, fists balled at her sides. I give her a quick, warning look. Go back. Retreat. Hide. But her eyes fall on the couch where Mercedes’s small, plump hand has been placed on the man’s wide thigh.
“What’s going on?” Her voice bristles as she steps into the room. Mamá rises quickly and puts a hand on her arm, but Danita shakes it off, her eyes flint-hard, steadily moving from one rebel soldier to the next. The man at the radio straightens and turns. He has not found the station, and static buzzes into the room like a swarm of bees.
“Señorita,” he says with a smile, his teeth crooked, “we were going to listen to the news, but the station isn’t coming in.” His words are genial, everyday, like a husband home for the evening. “What should we do now?”
It is not a question. A gust of wind drives the rain against the window. The man on the sofa draws Mercedes up by her arm as the other man strides over to Danita, swift and agile as a lynx. Her body stiffens in his grip, her face stone. He leads her from the room, the other man yanking Mercedes in front of him and kicking the door shut with the heel of his boot.
Static continues to crackle in the air like the end of a movie reel going around and around. Mamá and I look at each other, our fear twisting expressionless inside us. “Don’t let them see your fear,” Mamá had said to me that first night we arrived.
“They haven’t touched us,” Oneila had reassured me then.
“Doesn’t mean they won’t,” Danita had answered.
“They would have already. Don’t scare Estelita,” said Mercedes the Cheerful, squeezing my arm.
Fear crawls over every inch of me now, and I wonder where you, Nina, and Josepha are. At least us and not our daughters, I think.
Riel and Alipio scramble to their feet as Che directs a firm, fatherly tone at them. “You two, go wait in the dining room for dinner.”
Riel glances at me, his face flushed with embarrassment, while Alipio looks thoughtful, as if he’s considering his options for the future: dinner, or a woman first?
When they have gone, Che says to Mamá, “You go on and finish the cooking.”
Mamá doesn’t move. She stands looking at him with cold pride, and for a moment they are equals, matched in authority, him over his men, and she over her daughters, but that is where their equality ends. He is a man, and she is a woman, and she will do what he says.
“What do your men prefer tonight?” she stalls, knowing there is little choice other than a pot of beans and cassava bread.
“Roast pig.” Che gives a sardonic smile, and Mamá returns it with a genial, pleasant one.
“Wouldn’t that be nice? Pork is my favorite. John Wayne served a whole roasted pig at his last gathering, didn’t he, Estelita? The look on Jayne Mansfield’s face when it was set on the table, head and all with an apple in its mouth. Does Señor Castro like roast pig on a spit?” She is reminding him who I am, and who he is, a man below Fidel Castro who should watch his step if he doesn’t want bad publicity with the Americans.
This amuses Che. “Señor Castro prefers vegetable soup,” he says, draping an arm over the side of his chair, legs apart, looking as if there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
“I’m sorry he’s not here, then. Vegetables are more plentiful than meat, these days.” Mamá turns abruptly to me. “Estelita, there are two decks of cards in the cupboard. Why don’t you and Señor Guevara play a game of canasta while I get dinner on the table?” She faces Che. “Estelita is excellent at canasta. She beats me every time. You do play, don’t you?” Her brows rise questioningly, a skilled hostess directing her guest exactly where she intends for him to go.
Che leans forward, a man who likes a game. “We need four players.”
“It’s the same as four-handed canasta, only each player plays for himself.” Mamá glances at me as if to say Let him win, every time. “Estelita will show you.”
Not believing for one second that this man will be distracted by cards, I bring them from the cupboard, Mamá giving me a last, hard look before leaving the room. Che scoots his chair to the edge of the coffee table and rubs his hands together. “You shuffle and deal.”
I sit on the sofa, my stomach pulsing. The house is too quiet. I try not to picture what is happening upstairs as I shuffle and deal, terrified you and Josepha will hear or see something you should not.
Che fans his cards in one hand, concentrating as he rearranges them. “You go first.”
I pinch my mouth into a smile, thinking cards might be all he wants after all as I place three queens faceup and discard a three of clubs. Che snatches up my discarded club and sets down seven cards of the same rank. “This is going to be fun.” He grins like a schoolboy. “Every time I make a meld, you’ll remove a piece of clothing. Go on, then. One meld, one article of dress.”
Revulsion rises in me at the look in Che’s aggressive eyes, at his slimy, self-assured smirk, and I think of all the things men have told me to do, where to stand and what to wear and how to smile. “No.” I bite the word off.
“No?” he repeats dumbly, my disobedience momentarily disarming him.
“Rip them off if you choose, but I am not playing this stupid game with you.” I toss my cards down, my defiance a taste like metal in my mouth.
Che’s anger is instantaneous. He springs to his feet, his face frightening as he grabs my arm and in one swift motion drags me off the couch. I knock into the coffee table, cards scattering, his hand ripping at my blouse. The fabric tears easily, the edges hanging ragged, my brassiere exposed. A vein pulses in my neck so hard I think it’s going to burst through my skin. Che’s lips are close to mine, but he doesn’t kiss me, just breathes hot in my face, his jaw set as he grabs my breast with one hand and tries to yank down the side zipper on my skirt with the other. It sticks halfway, and he shoves me backward into the couch, reaching up under my skirt while unzipping
his pants.
I want to fight. Kick and spit and bite, but for some reason I go completely limp, squeezing my eyes closed as if this will somehow make it stop. His damp, clumsy hand is between my legs, and I wait for him to rip my underwear off, for the pressure of his detestable body against mine, his stink and wet. But it doesn’t come. The hand slides away, and when I open my eyes Che is standing in front of me with his pants around his ankles, his hand moving up and down the shaft of his penis, the tip bobbing in the air, bulbous and red and grotesque as the swollen nose of a drunkard. There’s a twisted look of ecstasy on his face that repulses me. Acid burns in my throat. He’s at that point where a man’s mind goes wildly blank. A point of weakness.
Holding my tattered blouse closed, I say, “Don’t trip over your pants,” and get up, leaving him grunting.
I drag myself to the kitchen, not wanting to face anyone, but not daring to go upstairs. I pray you and Josepha are distracted in the closet, that you have seen and heard nothing.
Oneila is spooning black beans into bowls. “Dear God, your blouse,” she says, and Mamá turns, cutlery clutched in her hand.
“This wire contraption stopped him.” I snap my bra strap and give a sharp, fake laugh.
Mamá drops the silverware on the counter, takes a cardigan from a hook by the boarded-up kitchen door and tosses it at me. “Cover yourself, and help me set the table.” Her voice is angry, her look reminding me of the time I confessed my pregnancy, how disappointed she was at my lack of self-control. Does she think this is my fault? She arranged an innocent card game, and I went and exposed myself?
Oneila diverts her eyes, ladling soup with deep concentration, and I remember a night when I was a child and Oneila came home with blood on her lip, my almost-grown sister, crying in the hallway. It was the Diazes’ eldest son, she said. He shoved her into a bush, ripped her underwear off and ran away with them. Mamá had looked at her just like she’s looking at me now, as if Oneila was at fault. She told her to wash up, go to bed and not say a word to Papa. The incident was never mentioned again, and when the Diazes’ boy came over for dinner, Mamá served him a second helping of coconut cake.
Find Me in Havana Page 17