In his bedroom, we pause, glancing at the bed and then back at each other. This is where the man took Mercedes, and I think we are both expecting some evidence of violence, but the embroidered coverlet is pulled neatly into place, the pillows fluffed, the boys’ small stuffed bears sitting upright, watching us with shiny button eyes. We witnessed nothing, they say.
Josepha goes to the closet and eases open the door. It creaks on its hinges. Our grandfather’s shirts and pants hang in a neat, ironed row. I think of the grandfather I’ve never met lying in a hospital bed, how I might never meet him now because he might not live. If he dies, it will be Grandmother Maria who will pull these clothes from their hangers and fold them into bags like she did with Grant’s clothes after he died. You left for Palm Springs because it was too painful for you. I didn’t want to touch Grant’s things, and so I did not offer to help my grandmother. I think of Josepha’s father, Sergio, and wonder if my grandmother will clear his things from his closet, too. Grandmother Maria, the Protector of Life and Death. The Guardian of Past and Future. In time, I will come to fully understand the scope of my grandmother’s endurance, but it is in Cuba where I first recognize her strength.
It is a strength neither Josepha nor I have yet.
Josepha stares at the clothes, her eyes red-rimmed. She is thinking of her papa.
“My stepfather committed suicide,” I say, knowing this isn’t the same but wanting to offer her something.
She nods, and a single tear tips over her bottom lid and rests on top of her cheek, a lone bead of sadness. “How?”
“Pills, I think. No one told me. They said he had a heart attack, but I saw him right before he died and knew they were lying.”
“Did he look sad?” Josepha’s face is earnest and perplexed, trying to work all of this out.
I nod, remembering Grant’s empty, blue eyes that day. Water-colored eyes. He drowned in himself, I think.
“I miss my dad.” Josepha’s voice quivers. “They took him a month ago, but it already feels like forever. I’m afraid I’ll forget everything about him.”
“You won’t.” I put my arm around her hoping this is true. There’s so much about Grant I don’t remember, but he wasn’t my real dad. If he was in my blood, I’m certain I would remember more of him. “At least you have a dad to love in your memory. My dad’s alive, but he means nothing to me.”
Sometimes, I wonder if I’d stayed in Mexico whether Chu Chu would have taken me to hear him sing after all, if he would have introduced me to his other family. I might have had siblings, siblings as nice as Josepha. Now, I’ll never know.
“I hate them!” Josepha suddenly cries, giving a little jump. “These bastard soldiers. I’m going to find that gun and shoot every one of them in the head.”
I know this is ridiculous. We are too young. We are girls. We will shoot no one. But I play the game. This is truth and dare rolled into one.
“You check the floor, and I’ll check the shelf.” Josepha pulls the desk chair over to the closet and climbs onto the seat, standing on tiptoe and sliding her hand along the shelf above the clothes. Dust scatters like pollen, sifting overhead as I drop to my knees and feel around under a pile of socks. Grandfather Manuel does not seem the sort of man to pile socks on his closet floor. Most likely Mercedes tossed them in here to make room in the dresser, which would make the chance of finding a gun under them slim. I search, anyway, uncovering balls of dust thick as pillow batting but no weapons. In the other corner I discover a shoebox, which is hopeful, but find only letters inside, each one slid neatly back into its open envelope. They are from Grandmother Maria, the date stamped into the corner going as far back as January 7, 1945.
“Anything?” Josepha looks under her armpit at me, her hand still rummaging.
“No.” I put the top back on and slide the box in its corner next to a pair of chestnut-colored leather boots.
Josepha climbs off the chair, kicks it away with one foot and starts going through suit-jacket pockets. None of them bulges with a gun.
“This one looks promising.” I pull out a brown military jacket with a row of bronze buttons down the front and two tiny, silver stars pinned into the collar. Above the left pocket is a pin of the Cuban flag with a round, gold medal hanging beneath. Josepha pats the coat down, shakes her head, and I hang it back up.
“Where would he hide a gun?” she mutters, going to the bureau and looking through each drawer.
I don’t want to look anymore. The smell of food coming from downstairs makes me hungry, and the idea of spending Christmas searching for a gun now seems silly and impractical. Game over. I quit. “I’m hungry. Let’s go downstairs.”
Josepha ignores me. “Come on. Don’t just stand there. Help me look.”
“What would you do with a gun, anyway? You aren’t actually going to shoot a soldier.”
“Yes, I am.” She’s moved on to the mattress. Her hands are jammed under it, and I can just see the tip of her pink nose and her wide eyes over the top of the bed. There’s a manic look to them, her cheeks flushed red. She looks as if she really means to shoot someone.
A prickle of fear goes up my neck. This is a game, right? Thinking what you, Mom, might do, how you would make it playful, I take Grandfather Manuel’s military jacket from the closet and pull it on, buttoning it up to my throat. The jacket hangs past my knees, and the sleeves flop over my hands, but I raise my arm and point a finger gun at Josepha. “Freeze,” I say, furrowing my brow into a hard scowl like the men in Western movies.
Josepha pulls her hands from under the mattress and stands up. She smiles, amused, and I think I’ve succeeded in pulling her back into a world of make-believe. “Put on his boots,” she orders.
I pull the heavy boots from the closet, the rich leather soft under my hands, the laces dragging. When I slide them on, my foot hits something cold and hard.
Josepha comes over, securing the last button on the jacket like a mother sending me off to school. I flatten my toes over the metal object, and Josepha gives me a suspicious look. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re keeping a secret.”
“No, I’m not.”
The lie burns in my belly. Lies have always been easy for me, small ones directed at nuns (Of course I said my prayers) or at Grandmother (Yes, I ate all my dinner, and Mom said I’m allowed a second bowl of ice cream). Lying to Josepha is different, a breach of loyalty.
“Kill me an enemy,” she demands, and I cock my finger and pretend to shoot the bedpost. “Your technique is sloppy.” She flaps her hand at me. “We’ll work on it after dinner. I’m starved. Do you think the beans are ready by now? Our mothers are going to skin us for not helping.”
I haul my feet out of the boots, slide them back into the closet, unbutton the coat and hang it up, meekly enduring my guilty knowledge.
At the door, Josepha says, “I dare you to wear that outfit when the rebels come. Can you imagine their faces?” I think she’s joking, but she stops me with a hand on my chest. “I’m serious. It’s a dare. Or do you want truth?”
She knows I lied. She is insulted and determined to find out my secret. She’s going to ask me what was in that boot. “Dare,” I say quickly.
“All right, then.” She drops her hand, looking at me with the thrill a dare brings on. Maybe I miscalculated. Maybe she doesn’t suspect anything. I hope she’ll drop it, but she presses me. “Next time the rebels come, I dare you to wear that coat around the house as if it’s any old thing.”
“I’ll get in trouble.”
“If you do it, I’ll give you the gold-leaf barrette I stole, and it will be worth it.” She links her arm through mine as we head downstairs to the smell of roast garlic and fried oil and the prospect of rum cake.
* * *
After, I will try and remember every detail of that night, the sunlight sliding from the window
, the smell of wood smoke and the low crackle in the hearth, flames dancing like finger puppets on the walls. I will think of the Christmas carols you and Auntie Danita sang in English, my aunt’s lips trembling around the words of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” How, when she started to cry, Josepha leaped up and put an arm around her mother and sang with her, the notes so tender and graceful they hurt. I will remember how you stood on the other side of your sister with your arm around her, too, and that I was jealous. I wanted to have a beautiful voice, to stand beside you and sing and be held.
Most vividly, I will recall sitting next to my grandmother, how that powerful matriarch laid her hand over mine, her finger pads soft and wrinkled as boot leather.
I will blame the boots. For years they will walk through my dreams without anyone in them. Empty. Soulless. And I will blame my grandmother. I will hate her for protecting me. I will try, unsuccessfully, to erase the sound of skull against wood, the sight of bright red blood and a face turned white and empty as paper.
Chapter Twenty-Four
* * *
The Sins of Our Husbands
Daughter,
On January 1, 1959, I gather with my sisters and Mamá around the wireless in Guanajay as a boisterous voice announces that Che Guevara blew up an armored train in Santa Clara and took the city. Batista has fled. Castro’s rebel army has won.
The voice on the radio continues, but I stop listening. Out the window, the sky is silky black, the stars sequins. The air is pleasant and cool, and I can see you and your cousins running around in light sweaters playing a game of hide-and-seek.
“What does this mean?” Mercedes looks frantically from one blank face to the next. Since that night with the soldier, she carries a slight tremor.
Mamá gets up, clicks off the wireless. “It means the rebels did not empty the barracks for Christmas but were gathering to march to victory while Batista ate roast duck with his family.”
“Will they come back? Are we still prisoners of war? Will they execute us?” Mercedes’s rising hysteria echoes my own fears, and I sit bewildered and silent.
“Calm down,” Danita snaps at her. She has been subdued since news of her husband’s death but still willful. She has a daughter to protect. “They don’t execute women. We pose no threat. We’re their candy.”
“Estelita and Nina are American citizens,” Mamá says. “Castro will need good relations with the United States, which means nothing will happen to us.”
“Do you mean to all of us? We’re not American citizens.” Oneila, derisive, waves her hand in a wide circle in front of her sisters as she sits on the couch between Mercedes and Danita, old resentments rising. I sit alone in a cool, leather chair that Danita took such care to purchase for her modern home, Mamá standing behind me, the configuration of our bodies summing up our family history.
For once, I have nothing to say.
Mamá clips over to the window, throws open the screen, and shouts for everyone to get inside and help set the table for dinner. When she turns, her daughters are all looking at her, the three on the couch a solid body of accusation, but no one risks voicing the bewildering questions. No one asks Mamá to explain why she left Oneila to raise Mercedes, why Danita was left behind even though her voice is as beautiful as mine. They don’t ask Mamá why she never came back for their weddings or when their children were born, why I was more important than all the rest of them combined.
Instead, our formidable, clamorous, enduring family sits in uncomfortable silence watching the cracks between us widen.
* * *
The next day a jeep comes for Mamá. It is early morning, the sky grayed over. I am heating pan tostado for breakfast when I hear the distant grind of the engine. Mercedes and Danita don’t notice. They sit at the table drinking coffee and discussing what it will be like when they get to Miami. Danita assures Mercedes that she’ll stay long enough to see her settled before heading to California.
“You can come to California, too,” I say, and Mercedes nods, the reality of leaving Cuba still unimaginable.
Oil spits in the pan, and the engine outside grows louder as I see a jeep grind to a stop outside the window.
“Who is that?” Mercedes leaps to her feet, coffee splashing over the rim of her cup.
“Rebel soldiers.” I keep a steady tone, my stomach tightening as I watch them climb from the jeep and walk toward the house in an easy manner, no guns drawn.
There is a knock, and Mercedes jumps, spilling her entire cup, a dark stream running off the side of the table. “The rebels don’t knock,” she cries, frantically trying to wipe up the coffee with the palm of her hand.
“Este, toss me a towel,” Danita says, and I throw her a towel which she hands to our baby sister. “Stay here.”
Mercedes nods, sopping up the coffee, her fear of the soldiers written all over her face. The dark circles under her eyes are carved so deep into the tops of her cheeks I wonder if she sleeps at all. Danita squeezes her arm. “It’s all right. Estelita and I will take care of it.”
I am not sure what we will take care of, but I follow Danita out of the kitchen.
The soldier who raped Danita has returned many times. It doesn’t look like rape anymore. When he’s done eating our food, Danita walks up the stairs ahead of him with mock complicity. Danita the Mighty. Danita the Merciless. She made a deal, she told me, but I’m not to say a word to our sisters or Mamá. “It’s just sex, and he’s promised me he’ll keep the others off Oneila’s girls. They’re too young. They’d never recover. At least he’s not violent. He pretends he cares, and I pretend he doesn’t repulse me.”
A practical arrangement, and she has still never told me his name.
I think of Che, his raptured eyes and quick breath, how instantly an act of sex can turn vile. He has only been here a few times in the last month, but when he comes my gut clenches to a fist. I pretend indifference, but the carelessness with which he runs his hand under my skirt, the pompous, prideful smirk on his face fills me with hot shame and astounding meekness. Knowing he has been ordered not to drag me down under him does not mean he won’t.
At the door, Danita hesitates and looks at me. “We’re in this together,” she says. “No matter what, we keep them away from Mercedes.”
There are two of them. They wear M-26 armbands and fatigues and are unnervingly polite, clean-shaven with hair trimmed around their ears. One steps up, removes his hat and asks after Mamá, which startles us.
“She’s sleeping,” Danita answers quickly.
“If you’d be so kind as to wake her.” Never mind his courtesy, it’s an order.
Danita heads slowly up the stairs, leaving me waiting in the doorway. The men move to the edge of the porch and lean against the rail with their backs to me, their eyes on the road. Mamá wasn’t really sleeping, and within a few minutes she is descending the stairs, Danita a step behind her.
She walks to the threshold, polite, alert, dressed in a clean, lavender skirt and white blouse. “How may I help you?”
The men turn, and one extends his hand. “Señorita Juana Maria Antonia Santurio y Canto Rodriguez?”
Danita and I look at each other, impressed. No one uses Mamá’s full name.
Mamá is not so charmed. She raises her chin with a look of condescension. “Yes?”
“You are to come with us.”
There is a dry buzz in the air, wasps or mosquitoes, a windless moment, the tree branches motionless. It is the man’s gentle tone that frightens me. Up until now we’ve been demeaned and rough-handled, but he is courteous, tactful.
“What is this concerning?” Mamá asks, reasonable, but sounding tired, as if she knows it doesn’t matter how they answer.
“I am afraid I cannot say.”
Danita shoves her way between the man and Mamá. “If you can’t say, then she’s not going anywhere with you.”
&
nbsp; “It’s all right, Danita.” Mamá steps around her, and my mind scrambles to think what leverage I have as the two men lead her to the jeep and help my mother into the back. I am struck by how frail she looks, how old. The engine kicks to a start, and she reaches out and holds the side of the door as the vehicle lurches forward, hard sunlight reflecting off the green metal like shiny armor. She does not look back, and I watch until the plume of dust and gravel settle onto the empty road.
* * *
It is an interminable day. Heat lies still, insects smack against the screens, and ants soldier across the floor. The boys throw tantrums, and Mercedes retreats to her room. Oneila and her daughters keep to the kitchen, while you and Josepha escape outside. I talk a blue streak to Danita, who listens patiently. I will get us out of here. I will get word to my manager, to John Wayne and Herbert Yates. I prowl back and forth over the living room rug, grasping for solutions. “I’ll write a letter directly to Fidel Castro. I will tell him I am friends with Desi Arnaz. Maybe I can contact Monte Poser.”
“Estelita, stop.” Danita’s voice slices through mine with singular clarity.
I stop. Silence, then. We sit and wait...for what we do not know and cannot imagine.
That night, I can’t sleep. Danita is restless beside me and Mamá’s empty bed taunts me in the dark. Where did they take her? Why? Three times I get up and check on you in the next room. You are curled beside Josepha, your limbs entwined with each other as if you both belong to a single body.
Eventually, I put on a robe and slippers and go out to the porch, the building across the street a lump of black against the stars. There is no moon, and I search the dark road for a beam of light, listen for the sound of a jeep, but there is only the croaking of frogs and the buzz of insects.
Find Me in Havana Page 19