by Rosa Jordan
Luis grimaced. “Liliana must be home.” He laid a hand on Celia’s arm. “Can we go somewhere?”
“I am going somewhere. To bed. To sleep. Goodnight, Luis.”
Seeing the desperate hope in his eyes, so like the eyes of hurting children and frightened parents she spent her day reassuring, she weakened just a little. “Thanks for the flowers. It will be wonderful waking up to them in the morning.”
She stepped inside and for a moment stood at the bottom of the stairs, gathering strength for the climb to her fourth-floor apartment. Even more than the tiredness, she felt a sense of weakness. The encounter with Luis—not his need but her own conciliatory words—had drained her.
The lights went out again and simultaneously the door crashed open to admit the boys who had gone for candles.
“Careful!” she warned, just in time to prevent them from bumping into her.
“You want a candle?” asked the younger child as the older one manoeuvred the bike through the darkness and into its customary parking place under the stairwell.
“No, gracias. I have some. Share them with the families on your floor.”
They bounded past her, a bit recklessly, she thought, given that it was pitch-black in the stairwell. She followed slowly. Living on the top floor was a great way to keep in shape, but oh, what she would not have given for a ground-floor apartment tonight!
By the time she reached the fourth level the electricity had come on again. As she walked along the corridor to her own apartment she noted the absence of disco music. Liliana must have gone to bed. She glanced at her watch. It was not yet ten. Stepping inside the apartment, she saw light coming from under the girl’s bedroom door and called, “Hola, Liliana.”
Getting no reply, she put her head into Liliana’s room. Liliana was in bed, wild dark curls splayed across her pillow, a textbook propped on her chest. She had not turned off her music after all but was wearing headphones. She slipped them off and smiled up at her aunt.
“You’re late. Tío Luis came by.” She glanced at the flowers in Celia’s hand. “Did he wait for you downstairs?”
“Yes. Pretty, aren’t they?” Celia reached down to stroke Liliana’s tumble of brown curls, a longer, wilder version of Celia’s own, and so like those of the girl’s now-dead mother. “Where did you get the CD player and headphones?”
“From a friend.” Liliana held up the chemistry book. “Want a bedtime story?”
Celia laughed. “That would put me to sleep for sure.” She touched the girl’s cheek. “Did you have a nice time at Playa Jibacoa?”
“Claro. I love that campismo. Have you ever stayed there?”
“Your mother and I and Luis and all our friends went there often,” Celia replied. “The swimming pool was brand new then. Is it still nice?”
“Terrific. The caretaker lives close by. His kids let us ride their horses.”
“Sounds fun.” She bent to kiss the girl’s forehead. “See you in the morning.”
“Not if you sleep in.” Liliana nestled the headset into her dark curls again.
“Oh, right.” Celia had forgotten that this was the last day of the pre-university students’ monthly week off. Liliana would be leaving early the next morning to return to boarding school. “In three weeks, then.”
She fell asleep almost immediately and could not have said, when she awoke, how long she had been sleeping. Or where she was waking to, and why there should be so many ghostlike people moving around in the shuttered dimness of a sickroom.
Fidel looked so tired, so very tired. If she was in her sixtieth, her last year of life, that made him what? Fifty-five? “You are young! You must go on!” she wanted to cry. But it was only a thought, a ragged intake of breath. He knelt by the bed and took both her hands in both of his; not callused now as they were that long time ago in the mountains, but soft, the hands of a man for whom everything was done but thinking, speaking, deciding. She did not want this clinging to her hand like a child clutching something fragile, something about to break. She wanted him to fling himself on her as he has done so many times in the past, not minding that her body was so much smaller than his or that his boots were dirtying the sheets. She wanted to tell him this, or better, show him, for had she not always had to show him? “Like this, my love. This is what I need. This is what you need. This is what our nation needs.” But she had no breath. Not even enough to whisper “Yes,” when he promised, “Our work will go on. The Cuba our people build will be your Cuba, Celia. Yours.”
Celia Cantú jerked up, gasping for breath. There was no man beside her bed, no ghostly figures lurking in the shadows. It was moonlight, not daylight dimmed by the drawn blinds of a sickroom, that had found its way into her bedroom. By the time her breathing returned to normal, she knew that it was not a dream, at least, not the kind she was used to. It was another attempt by her unconscious to take her back to a time she never knew. The same clarity of mind and strength of purpose she had felt in previous visions had infused her, but in this one the body had run its course. She herself was healthy as a horse, yet for the duration of tonight’s episode she had felt, as surely as Celia Sánchez had felt, the swift approach of a stone-hard end of time.
NINE
JOE knocked three times before the door opened. Celia stood there in bare feet and an oversized T-shirt, which, he recalled, was what she had always worn to bed—although not for long, once he got there. She was half-asleep, dark curls deliciously dishevelled.
“Sorry if I woke you. But, geez, it’s nearly noon!”
“It is?” she asked groggily and turned away, rubbing her eyes.
Joe stepped inside, glad to be out of the dingy hallway that to him appeared not to have been repainted in years.
“What do you want?” Celia demanded, backing away.
“Let’s go shopping.” He beamed.
“Shopping?” She echoed the word as she had never heard it.
“Come on. I’ll make coffee while you get dressed.”
He crossed the small living-dining area to the kitchenette and opened first one then the other door of the single cupboard. It seemed impossibly bare for a functioning household.
Celia pushed him aside with undisguised annoyance. “Get out of here. I will make my own coffee.”
Joe’s impulse was to run his hand up under the thigh-length T-shirt to where he knew for a fact there would be no panties. But he was no fool. He backed out of the kitchen and sat down at the small table. Medical literature might be full of PMS studies, but in his experience, female moodiness was a morning thing. He’d never figured out if it was physical or emotional or, for that matter, if there was any difference, given how readily hurting women became excessively emotional and emotional women developed physical symptoms. All he knew was that until that pre-breakfast prickliness passed, a man who valued his body parts did not put them in harm’s way by standing too close.
Celia filled a dented aluminium percolator with water and ground coffee, slammed it on the stove, and lit the gas burner. “Shopping for what?”
“Everything. I don’t think Mamá has bought a single thing for herself or the house since I left ten years ago.”
As he spoke, Joe looked around the living room. In contrast to the public areas of the building, the apartment was clean almost to the point of sterility and freshened by a sea breeze blowing in through open jalousie windows. Apart from the ugly grey-topped Formica table at which he sat, the room held a sagging sofa facing a small TV set, one wooden rocking chair, a side table upon which was an old-style black phone and a cheap blue vase filled with three big sunflowers, and a bookshelf with a shockingly worn collection. Some of the volumes he recognized as dating back to college.
He was not aware that Celia had come out of the kitchen until she spoke. Voice harsh with scorn, she said, “Por Dios, José. You have become a Yanqui.”
Normally Joe didn’t mind being called a Yankee; on the contrary, he was proud of it. But coming from her, and in that tone of
voice! “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked in the aggrieved manner of one wrongly accused.
“The way you sit there judging the quality of our lives by how much or how little we have. That is how it is done up north, no? Stuff is joy. No stuff is misery.”
“Ah, Celia—”
“Cubans have not much stuff, so it follows that we must be miserable.”
“I never said that!” he protested. “It’s just, well, there was Mamá this morning, squeezing fresh orange juice with her arthritic hands and sending over to the neighbours to borrow toilet paper. Toilet paper, for Chrissake! How can things be that bad?”
“Things are not ‘that bad.’ They are far better than they were when you left.”
“Yeah, but Mamá says this change to the dollar economy has been brutal. Her pension is in pesos and Luis’s salary is in pesos and pesos don’t buy a damned thing anymore.”
“True.” Celia thumped a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. “And if her dear son had been sending her as little as fifty US dollars per month, she could have been living like a queen all this time.”
Joe held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay! So I’ve been a jerk. But believe me, it wasn’t easy to get by over there. Now that I am in a position to help, I want to make it up to her; I really do. Come with me, Celia. Help me pick out the things she really needs. Groceries, clothes, household items, whatever. You can decide.”
“You want her to have all the stuff your Miami family had?” she mocked. “The one that fell apart?”
Once again Joe was reminded of how on the mark her laser-sharp retorts could be, and how they had always surprised him, given her essentially compliant nature. But he wasn’t offended. On the contrary, he enjoyed the challenge. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to disarm an angry woman. Lowering his eyes like a chastised puppy, he said softly, “I never said possessions make families happy. But with people who’re already happy, I don’t see how a few presents can hurt. I mean, that is the Cuban way, isn’t it? Sharing?”
He took a sip of the coffee, and although he had long since begun to drink coffee black, like an American, he smiled. “You remembered just how much sugar I like.”
His looked up in time to see her anger turn to red-faced embarrassment. Without a word, she picked up her cup and marched into the bedroom. A dresser drawer slammed, and there was the sound of water running in the bathroom. Moments later she emerged dressed as she had been at the airport, in jeans, T-shirt, and sandals.
“Vamos,” she snapped.
He leapt ahead of her to open the door. She ignored the pseudo-servile gesture, turning back for the sunflowers. Joe wondered why she chose to bring them but didn’t ask. He had got what he came for.
• • •
A handful of commercial billboards along the Vía Monumental jolted him; certainly there had been nothing like that when he lived here. Supposedly there were dollar stores selling consumer goods all over the island now. However, from what he had seen so far, Habana still had fewer commercial venues than you would find in a heavily restricted residential neighbourhood in the States.
He drove through the tunnel under the Bahía de Habana and followed the Malecón. It was thronged with midday traffic made up of late-model rentals and pre-1960 cars that had become a Cuban symbol. Cyclists and pedicabs crowded a bike lane along the seawall. In some places waves splashed up and over, leaving sidewalk, bike lane, and the right side of the street drenched in salt spray.
They passed a plaza hung with strange bird-looking metal sculptures, new to him yet somehow familiar. Ah yes, he’d seen it on TV. This was where they’d held the largest of many mass rallies to demand the return of the child Elián. According to network news, half a million Cubans had turned up to demand that the five-year-old, whom the mother had opted to take to Florida in a small boat, be returned to his father. The mother had died en route and Miami relatives had fought sending the boy home. Media coverage at the time made it appear as if all Cuban Americans were in favour of keeping the kid in the States, but privately Joe was pleased when US courts ruled against the relatives and allowed the boy to return to Cuba with his dad. A girl, maybe not. But damn it all, a boy belonged with his papá.
Joe glanced over at Celia, who had not spoken since they left the apartment. “Where’s the nearest shopping centre?”
“Turn here,” she said abruptly.
He swerved into the left lane and headed down Avenida de los Presidentes until she directed him to turn right on La Rampa. He did as he was told, although he recalled that the commercial part of La Rampa was the other way, nearer the Malecón.
Celia appeared to have her mind on other things, as her fingertips lightly caressed the petals of a sunflower. “Who’s the bouquet for?” he asked.
She gave no sign of having heard. Joe thought, uneasily, It’s as if she’s not here.
“Celia!” he said more loudly.
“What?”
“I asked you, what are the flowers for?”
“Her grave.”
“Whose?” To his exasperation, a bus had stopped ahead, making it impossible to pass or to escape the noxious exhaust.
“Celia Sánchez.”
Surprised, he asked, “Why her?”
“Is there something wrong with remembering her?” she asked testily. “Or does one have to have a beard to be a hero of the Revolution?”
He thought, What’s wrong is that I thought we were going shopping. But all he said was, “Nothing. It’s just—”
“Fidel would never have survived in the mountains without her. Let alone the next twenty years. She was the one who got things done.” Celia’s voice dropped so that he barely heard the last sentence. “If I could be like her . . .”
Joe laughed aloud. “You? Like her?”
Celia gave him a poisonous look. “What is so funny?”
“She must’ve been hard as nails. A commander in the rebel army—”
“She was more than a commander. A true leader! But hard? No! Not before the war, or during, or after! It was to her the people always turned when they needed help. She was the very soul of the Revolution!”
Celia’s declaration reminded Joe that the woman he considered little more than one of Fidel’s paramours was honoured in Cuba as the island’s equivalent of the Blessed Virgin. Having read several published-elsewhere histories of the Cuban Revolution, he felt confident in stating, “History doesn’t seem to remember her that way.”
“You think she wanted any credit?” Celia cried passionately. “She devoted her entire life to making things better for ordinary people on this island. At least we have that in common!”
Although he could not have said why, the subject made Joe uncomfortable. But at least he now knew where they were going. “I take it she’s buried at Cementerio Colón?”
They were nearing the big midtown cemetery that dated back to colonial times and contained some of the world’s most unusual memorials. If they could find a parking place, dropping the flowers off shouldn’t take long. She’d owe him for the favour, which might make her a little less fractious.
They had played in the cemetery as children, he and Luis and Celia and Carolina and other kids, delighting in the more outrageous statuary. A favourite had been the tomb of an old lady, who, for her love of dominoes, had been memorialized with a slab in the form of a giant marble domino. Luis, who took baseball seriously, always paid homage to the life-sized statue of a muscular baseball player, naked to the waist. Celia, Joe recalled, spent a considerable amount of time puzzling over why the families of plane crash victims felt it appropriate to top their tombs with marble aircraft zooming toward infinity.
As they walked along the cemetery’s shady paths he felt Celia slip into a mellow mood. She even smiled and nudged him to draw his attention to the statue that had always given them the giggles when they were kids, a larger-than-life hermaphrodite angel.
“Celia’s tomb is farther back, in the Armed Forc
es mausoleum,” she told him.
“You have to wonder why El Lider Maximo chose her, when he could have had anybody,” Joe mused.
“Not anybody. His wife left him.”
“True. When a man gets jailed for trying to overthrow the resident dictator, I guess you can’t blame his wife if she figures he hasn’t got much of a future.” Joe recalled something he had read and snickered. “Did you know that the first woman Fidel got involved with after his divorce—not counting that one-night stand with Natty Revuelta that she claimed gave them a daughter—was a Mexican debutante?”
Celia gave him a disbelieving look. “How would you know that?”
“It was in a book written by an American. He discusses the women in Fidel’s life.”
The skepticism in Celia’s voice turned to disgust. “Don’t you find that distasteful? Pawing through people’s personal lives just because they happen to be public figures?”
“I don’t see anything wrong with it. It sheds light on the man.”
“And the woman?”
“Sure. Not that anybody cares who she was. Just some eighteen-year-old he fell for when he was living in México. She broke it off. Apparently Fidel came calling one day and found her by the pool in a bikini and went right out and bought her a one-piece suit. She probably lost interest in her dashing revolutionary when he turned out to be more fashion-conservative than her mother.”
“I have never heard anything about it.”
“Because they don’t have tabloids here. Anyway, that must’ve burned him out on the young and restless, because a year later he was back in Cuba, shacked up with Sánchez, who was what—five years older than him?”
“Shacked up? ” Celia flung the phrase back at him as if it were a personal insult. “Is that how you see a relationship that lasted twenty-three years?”
“Sánchez certainly wasn’t the only woman in Fidel’s life,” Joe countered.
“She was the one he loved,” Celia said, as if that settled it.