The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  An hour later he saw her bike turn the corner at the far end of the street. He went back into the living room where Liliana lay on the sofa, headphones in place, her expression calmer than it had been earlier. He waved a hand in front of her face. She lifted the headphones off her ears. “What?”

  “Adios. I’m leaving.”

  “Tía Celia’s not back yet.”

  “So?”

  She gave him a little smile that was half feigned hurt, half challenge. “What if I get depressed and fling myself off the balcony?”

  He leaned down so that his face was just inches from hers. “Your T-shirt will fly up and you’ll land with a terrible, messy splat. People will come running from all over and everybody will get a good gander at your bloody naked ass.”

  She gasped, and he added as he headed for the door, “So if that’s what you decide to do, better put on some bloomas.”

  “You’re crude!” she shouted after him.

  “Yep,” he said cheerfully and closed the door behind him with a click.

  He met Celia in the foyer. “How is Liliana?” she asked anxiously.

  “Listening to music. Let’s take a walk.”

  “I haven’t got time—”

  “Oh, sorry. I thought you wanted to know what’s going on with her.” He reached for the door to let himself out.

  “Well, of course! I mean, did she talk to you?”

  “Probably nothing she hasn’t already told you . . . about why she did it.”

  He stepped outside. Celia was right behind him. “José! Wait!”

  It had begun to rain, a soft drizzle. He made a dash to put up the top on the convertible. When he turned around, Celia was standing under a nearby bus shelter. He waved for her to get into the car, but she motioned for him to come there. He went.

  It was early afternoon. They were alone in the shelter except for a man on the far side making a repair to a shabby bicycle. “What did she tell you?” Celia demanded.

  “That she’s going to leave Cuba or else.”

  “Or else what?” Celia asked, but before he could answer, her expression turned to horror. “Or—? No! She could not have said that!”

  “I’m afraid she did.”

  “She does not know what she is talking about! She has never been anywhere! She would hate the States! I know she would!”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Cuban kids have never been anywhere. They don’t get a chance to compare island life with life anyplace else.”

  “Can I help that?” Celia hugged herself. She was damp from the drizzle and there were chill bumps on her bare arms. “Oh, José! What should I do?”

  The man repairing his bike cast a discreet glance in their direction and even though it was still raining, wheeled off, probably to give them privacy.

  “Let her figure out what she wants. She is at that age, you know.”

  “Let the person I love most disappear from my life? No!”

  “It doesn’t have to be forever,” he tried to reassure her.

  “Oh? Maybe just a decade?” she said sarcastically.

  “Dammit, Celia! I wish you’d believe me when I tell you I wanted to come back. But it was all so ‘us and them.’ I felt like I had to choose. You forced me to choose, all of you!” Joe swung his arm in a wide arch, to take in everything from Cojímar to Habana.

  She glared at him. “And so you did.”

  “Yeah,” he said bitterly, looking down at the cement and grinding his heel on an already ground-out cigarette butt. “I chose. But only because it took me ten fucking years to figure out that the us-and-them thing is just a mindset. Lots of Cubans go back and forth all the time. From now on that’s what I intend to do.”

  “You are an adult! Liliana is a child. You have money. We do not!”

  “Ah, Celia.” Joe softened his tone and tried a different tack. “I know you want what’s best for her. Which, you’re probably right, is here in Cuba.” He paused to let it sink in that he was in agreement with her. Then added with deliberate harshness, intended as the verbal equivalent of slapping a hysterical woman, “But it’s not going to do her any good if she kills herself.”

  It had the intended effect. Celia collapsed on the bus stop bench and sat shivering as if she had contracted some instant form of malaria. “Do you really think she might?”

  “A kid that age might do anything.”

  “What should I do?” she asked again, this time in a smaller voice.

  Joe squatted down beside her and took her cold hands in his. “Cut a deal with her. Offer her a trip to Miami if she promises to come back and finish school.”

  She looked into his eyes, her own all but hopeless. “How can I? Permission to travel abroad, I mean, it is possible. I do it every year. But it is complicated.”

  “Luis could arrange it.”

  “He would never do it.”

  Joe grinned. “Us Yanks have an expression: ‘never say never.’ Just give the word, Celia, and I’ll talk to him. Maybe I can sell him on the idea.”

  She rose and walked to the edge of the shelter, seemingly unaware that she stood under the drip from the edge of the roof and was getting wetter than if she had been out in the rain. She gazed across the choppy grey water in the direction of Florida, which, Joe was sure, must seem incalculably distant to her.

  He put an arm around her shoulder and drew her back under the shelter. “My place is right over there,” he said, pointing across the water. “As close as Viñales.”

  For a moment she allowed his arm to remain, then moved away. “This is not something I can decide this minute. I have to go, now, or we will miss the train.”

  “Go pack,” Joe said. “I’m going to make a run into Cojímar. Back in fifteen minutes. Be ready and I’ll drive you to the station.”

  Celia smiled wanly. “I have Liliana to pack too. Give us half an hour.”

  • • •

  “When are you coming back?” he asked when they reached the station.

  “Sunday, on the overnight train. We should get in early Monday morning. I would stay longer, but that was all the time off I could get.”

  “Wait here,” Joe instructed and went inside to get the tickets.

  The three o’clock train to Santiago was gone, and tickets on the six o’clock express were sold out. He made a phone call, then went back to the car.

  “No seats,” he told Celia. “The best I could do were these for return on the Tren Francés.” He tossed the tickets into her lap. “How about the Viazul bus?”

  “The Viazul? But—”

  He knew what she was going to say. Viazul buses were primarily to accommodate tourists, who couldn’t be expected to ride overcrowded local buses. Naturally the Viazul fare would be in dollars, which Celia naturally did not have.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he interrupted. “The bus to Santiago is leaving right away. Not sure we can make it, but I’ll give it a try.”

  SEVENTY-ONE

  CELIA felt that she should have protested José buying their tickets, but she did not. Maybe she was tired of protesting, or maybe she had forgotten why she should. She watched him fork over one hundred dollars for their tickets as easily as she might have paid the ten centavos for a bus into Centro Habana, and wondered what difference it made anyway.

  They hurried to the bus, which was already boarding. José seemed surprised at how little luggage they had; Liliana only a book bag and Celia an oversized shoulder bag in which were two changes of underwear, one shirt, a notebook, and a few toiletries.

  “Wait!” José said to Liliana as she was about to board. He ran to the car and returned with two large paper bags.

  “What is that?” Celia asked, as he handed them up to Liliana.

  “Road food. There’s a dinner stop, but it’s going to be a long night.”

  “This is not food,” said Liliana, nosing into one of the bags.

  The chofer urged them up the steps before José could reply. They found their seats an
d Liliana, who had taken the one nearest the window, promptly slid open the window and called to José, “A sweatshirt ? What for?”

  He came to the window. “A jinetera I met in a bar told me they keep Viazul buses air-conditioned really cold. She had just come from Santiago and said she almost froze to death.” He grinned. “Of course, she wasn’t wearing as much as you are.”

  Without looking at him, Celia could imagine the self-satisfied smirk that was making Liliana smile as the bus pulled away. Celia tried to hide her uneasiness as Liliana dug through the bags. The smaller one contained two bottles of water, four cartons of Tropicana juice, and a dozen packets of crackers and cookies. Celia imagined José striding into the little market across from Hotel Panamericano and without checking the price on anything, grabbing some of every kind of junk food within reach. Then, as was apparent from the contents of the other bag, he had gone across the street and bought two jogging suits.

  “They’re huge,” Liliana exclaimed. “For fat people!”

  “We are going to need fat people clothes if we eat all that,” Celia remarked dryly, although she saw that the big sizes would be perfect for pulling on over their jeans and T-shirts if they got cold. The air conditioning was set to such a low temperature that it was already beginning to bother her.

  What was really bothering her, though, was Liliana’s animated response to the gifts and a feeling that they were both being “bought.” It wasn’t only the gifts that seemed to be co-opting her feelings. It was that they showed thoughtfulness as well as generosity. Would it be so wrong to let him look after them like that on a regular basis?

  Perhaps Liliana was thinking similar thoughts because later, as they were rolling swiftly along the autopista, she asked, “Was Tío Joe always like this?”

  “I suppose. Although before he went to the States he did not have the kind of money he does now. He and Luis have always been good to us,” she added loyally, not wanting to leave the impression that José had ever been more generous than his brother.

  Liliana was silent, sucking on a lollipop. Then asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

  Celia looked over at her. “What do you mean, ‘What’s wrong with him?’”

  “Why didn’t you marry him? Or why don’t you now?”

  “For one thing, he never asked me. Not then and not recently. I was his novia as in going steady, not as in engaged to be married. Our families just assumed marriage would follow.” She did not add, And so did I.

  “Oh.” Liliana looked reflective—or as reflective as was possible with a lollipop sticking out of her mouth. “He’s after you now, though.”

  “He is looking for an available woman. Not necessarily me.”

  “Yes, you,” Liliana insisted. “He really cares about you.” She cut her eyes at Celia. “He told me so. In Pinar. Only he figures he hasn’t got anything you want.”

  Celia looked past Liliana to the cane fields swishing past. “He is probably right about that.” She said “probably” because she was not altogether certain he had nothing she wanted. She wanted Liliana to be happy, happier, at any rate, than she had been in recent months. She doubted that such happiness could be found in a Celia/José/Liliana trio, but maybe she was wrong. It certainly would not be the first time she had been wrong where Liliana was concerned—or herself, for that matter.

  “So?” Liliana persisted. “What else?”

  Celia stirred around in the food bag until she found a packet of bread sticks, the only non-sweet thing in the bag. “I was ‘José’s girl’ for two years and I admit I was loca for him. It was only later that I noticed a few things about him, things that hurt me at the time but that I didn’t register then as being part of a pattern.”

  She nibbled on the bread stick, recalling painful episodes and trying to put them into words that did not sound bitter. “Some men want one woman who is theirs alone. Some like to play the field. José wanted it both ways, all the time. There would be his Number One woman, who for a time was me, and there would be the others.”

  Liliana shrugged. “So? As long as you’re Number One.”

  “Only in a situation like that you aren’t,” Celia tried to explain. “Because the passion, with José, anyway, would be focused on whoever he was chasing, not the one he had already caught. He has never said why his wife divorced him but I will bet you this bag of junk”—she nudged the bag of snack foods with her foot—“that he was playing around on her.”

  “You think that if you married him he’d play around on you?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “Even if you lived with him in the States, so you could be together all the time?”

  “Even if.”

  Liliana made no further attempt at conversation, but fell into a state of apathy, sprawled in the seat much as she had sprawled on the sofa in recent weeks. The only difference was that instead of refusing to eat, which had resulted in a thinness that was almost anorexic, she was munching steadily, and apparently miserably, on junk food.

  It bothered Celia that Liliana seemed not to have factored in cultural differences between Cuba and Miami. Cuban television regularly showed slum dwellers in the States, people doing drugs in public places, unemployment lines, schoolchildren being frisked for weapons, race riots, and police swinging clubs into people’s heads. Those images seemed not to have registered. Nor were they the things that Miami relatives chose to talk about when they returned. Cuban Americans, as well as other sources, supplied different images.

  Celia suspected that the sudden mood shift was the result of her having pulled the plug on Liliana’s fantasy in which the three of them lived in a pretty house with a parklike lawn or in a high-rise condominium with an ocean view like the ones pictured in glossy magazines. That fantasy would entail beautiful young people flirting on the beach or skimming the waves in expensive boats, plus trendy clothes, elegant dining, nightlife, parties, and dancing. Perpetual fun and perpetual happiness.

  As Celia fretted about the unrealistic notion of life in Miami that Liliana had pieced together from movies and magazines, she was unconscious of the attraction those same images held for her—images of a life they might live if she let José lure her to Florida. Not that such a superficial, entertainment-focused existence attracted her; in its own way it seemed as revolting as the more violent side of life portrayed in CNN news clips rebroadcast on Cuban television. For Celia, the hook was one small detail: those happy teenagers cavorting with their friends. Once she had had such a child—or imagined she had. Now what she had was this depressed lump of a girl next to her.

  Hoping to jolly Liliana out of her moodiness, she said teasingly, “Of course, you could marry José. He wasn’t bad in bed.”

  Celia expected a wry smile and wrinkled nose, or banter of the sort they used to have when discussing “girl stuff.” Instead, Liliana turned scarlet, not merely her face but her ears and all the way down her throat. “That’s disgusting!” she hissed. “He’s old enough to be my father!”

  “I’m sorry,” Celia said, and she was. Oh, how she missed the saucy, lighthearted girl who less than a month ago could prance in and gloat about having gone dancing with her tía’s “two fiancés!” Celia wanted to put her head down and cry.

  Liliana pulled the jogging suits out of the bag and examined them. She pushed the blue one at Celia and kept the red one for herself.

  Celia kicked off her sandals in order to get the sweats on over her feet. “My feet are so cold they hurt. Yours probably are too.”

  “There are socks in here,” Liliana said, retrieving them from the bottom of the bag and handing one pair to Celia. “Tío Joe thought of everything.”

  Maybe it was Celia’s imagination, but she thought the comment carried a hint of rebuke for what Liliana seemed to feel was a lack of appreciation on Celia’s part. Celia said nothing, just pulled the socks on and drew Liliana’s head against her shoulder.

  “You are in for a surprise when we get to Santiago.”

  “W
hat?” Liliana murmured.

  “Franci and Philip have a little girl.”

  “What!” Liliana jerked up so suddenly that the top of her head collided with Celia’s chin. “They had a baby ?”

  “Not a baby. A little girl. We are not sure how old she is. Ten, maybe. Possibly even twelve or thirteen, but quite small. She is Haitian and speaks only French.”

  “Where did they get her?”

  “It’s a long, sad story. But with a happy ending, I think.” She pulled Liliana back against her and told her all of it.

  When she finished, Liliana was silent for some minutes. Then she asked, “What about Josephine’s mother? Where is she?”

  “Philip thinks she was killed back in Haití, before they escaped to Cuba.”

  “Then she knows too,” Liliana said in a voice so low Celia wasn’t even sure that was what she said.

  “Knows what?”

  “Sooner or later everybody disappears on you.”

  Celia’s arm tightened around the girl’s shoulders and she whispered into her hair, “Not everybody.”

  SEVENTY-TWO

  CELIA had asked José to call Franci to let her know that they would be arriving by bus rather than on the train. He apparently had done so because Franci was waiting at the Viazul station. Philip was not with her but Josephine was. The child watched intently as passengers descended. The minute Celia’s foot touched the steps leading down from the bus, Josephine tugged at Franci’s hands and cried, “C’est Tía Celia!”

  “And Liliana,” Franci added, nudging Josephine forward. “Are you going to say hello to them?”

  “Bonjour, Tía.” Josephine turned her cheek shyly up to Celia for a kiss and whispered, even more shyly, “Buenos dias, Liliana.”

  Celia knelt to greet the little girl, first in French, then in Spanish.

  Franci hugged Liliana. “It is so good to see you, you big, beautiful thing, you!”

  “I’m not all that big,” Liliana protested.