Broken Paradise

by Cecilia Samartin

  We drove a roundabout route that passed by our small parish. We knew it well, the little fountain in front where we’d thrown our pennies, and the corner where the man usually sold ice-cold mangos we enjoyed after mass on Sundays. “You’re going to stain your Sunday dresses with mango juice,” Mami would say.

  “We’ll be careful, Mami. We’re not little girls anymore, you know.”

  We drove by the church and Mami was raising her right hand to make the sign of the cross as she always did, when she choked on an agonizing scream. Papi slammed on the breaks with such force that Marta and I flew against the back of the front seat. I looked to see if we’d run someone over or if we’d hit a dog. They sometimes ran loose through this part of the city.

  “No! Dear God!” Mami wailed, her hands flying to her face. At first, I didn’t understand what I saw. The black people in the church courtyard looked so happy, and they danced and laughed as though they were having a big party, the kind we often saw in the country when the drums pounded their infectious rhythms and smiles flashed like beautiful crescent moons. Perhaps they were happy because Castro was gone and Cuba was free again. My heart jumped at the possibility.

  I hung out the window to get a better look. Young men swung on the carved wooden doors wearing the rich colored robes of the priests and tossing them up into the air and pulling them off of each other in a frenzy. One man in bare feet pretended to be a matador as he waved the drape used on the altar during communion at his companion who sported two crucifixes on his head like horns. Several women wrapped their bodies in embroidered capes and gyrated their hips to the sound of the congas being played from the sacristy so that the pounding, spilling out onto the street, echoed with mystical and evil enchantment.

  My own heart beat with rage at the sight. This was our family church, the place where my parents were married, where Marta and I were baptized. This was the place where I’d learned about God and his benevolent and unchanging ways. I expected a lightening bolt to rip open the sky and incinerate these blatant sinners for their blasphemy. But the sun was out and the breeze was as warm and sweet as always.

  Marta’s face was streaming with tears. “Where are the priests, Papi?”

  “They left,” he answered shaken, but composed. “Some of them went back to Spain. I don’t know where the others went, but they’re not here anymore.”

  “Why can’t there be any religion? It doesn’t hurt anybody,” Marta asked.

  “A communist state is an atheist state,” Mami whispered with spit and venom in her voice. “The only thing that can be worshipped in this country now is that man.”

  9

  SCHOOL HAD BECOME OUR SANCTUARY, THE ONLY PLACE WHERE we could pretend things hadn’t changed. Whenever we passed underneath the Sacred Virgin clutching her rosary, I knew I could look forward to a few hours of peace and sanity. We went to the chapel at the same time every day and ate lunch at the same time. The sisters expected behavior and academic performance to be absolutely perfect as if the world weren’t falling apart outside the school’s wrought-iron gates. We all pretended together, and when the large paned glass rattled with the explosion from somewhere deep in Havana while Sister Roberta read Shakespeare to the class, she didn’t flinch. She just kept reading in her sweet even voice, and we all listened harder than we ever had before.

  The prayers in the chapel were heavy and long, and for the first time it seemed everybody was truly praying for something that mattered. I prayed that life would return to the way it had been before, that I could graduate from El Ángel de la Guarda, that Alicia and I could go to the University together, and go shopping by ourselves for the first time at El Encanto. I prayed that my mother would stop crying everyday, that Papi would come home and read the paper in his chair like he always did and not just sit there silently as if he was waiting for his own death. I prayed that we could buy food at the market, fresh beautiful food, enough to feed an army of friends and family so, that Papi would never have to go to the black market and secretly trade for food and risk being arrested. Most of all, I prayed that my home would always be right here and that I could be close to all the people I loved.

  Within the solid walls of El Ángel de la Guarda it seemed right that God should answer our prayers and that our previous way of life would continue as it always had. It was only when Papi came to pick us up at the end of the day and we passed under the gates of the Virgin back out into the world that I’d begin to feel the cold dread creep into my body again. Outside of the gates there were no longer any rules we were familiar with. We had to be watchful constantly and scramble from school to home in case the unforeseeable should happen while we were out.

  One morning as Papi drove us to school, I was beginning to feel the reassuring calm of the day come upon me when Papi stopped just outside the gate, underneath the Blessed Virgin. He cocked his head to one side, and his eyes filled with an unspeakable torment.

  “What’s wrong, Papi?” I asked.

  His face had turned from a light tan kissed by the sun to a chalky white, and his jaw was clenched tight, but he said nothing. I looked out toward the simple two-story structure of our school, the broad green lawn split in two by the path leading up to the double doors of the main hall. At this hour the doors should’ve been open, and girls of all ages wearing the same beige and brown uniforms would be buzzing about the lawn and steps waiting for classes to begin, but the doors were closed and not a soul could be seen anywhere.

  “Are we early?”

  Then I turned again to see that Papi wasn’t looking toward the school, but upwards. I followed his gaze, heard Marta’s weeping, and then wept as well. The Virgin with her rosary was gone. We saw her later on the side of the entrance road, broken in pieces, her severed hand still clutching her rosary. In its place, piercing the blue topical sky, was a strange angular metal crescent with a hammer in the center of it, looking heavy and ominous.

  Papi reversed the car with a screech of the tires and headed back for home. El Ángel de la Guarda was gone along with every Catholic school in Cuba. There would be no more sanctuaries.

  Every day we listened to Beba’s powerful golden voice defame the man who’d become synonymous with the devil. “He’s a lying pig who deserves to be shot in the head. He says he wants to take care of the black folks. Do you see any black man standing next to him up there? I sure don’t, and my eyesight’s pretty good. He says we were enslaved before and now we’re free. Shit, if this is freedom, then give me slavery any day of the week. I can’t even buy a piece of bread for my breakfast with all this freedom I got.”

  Papi was no longer able to work after he applied for our visas, but he was glad and said that he no longer worked in a bank, but a circus run by clowns who were controlled by the communist party. And we were glad he was out of the bank too because several employees had been imprisoned for counterrevolutionary activities. Papi described how one of the clerks entered the bank one morning with a Castrista soldier at his side. Slowly he made his way through the offices pointing his finger at those he suspected to be actively against the revolution. Each one was lead away for questioning and several had yet to return home. The jails were full of political prisoners, and everyone was a suspect.

  With our visa application in process we’d literally thrown off our red revolutionary bandanas and become “gusanos”, worms betraying their homeland and the revolution of their people for their own self-gain. “Gusanos” were publicly derided, and it was not unusual, if you were lucky enough to find a few precious gallons of gasoline for your car, to discover you could not drive it because your tires had been slashed or your windshield smashed. In this beautiful land where the sun shone everyday and the breezes called you to walk the shore at any time of day or night, we were forced to stay inside our apartment and avoid taking any unnecessary risks.

  “If we’re worms,” Mami said with her fists clenched and her eyes watering with fury, “then the idiots who support this godforsaken revolution are cockroaches,
and may they rot in hell!”

  Juan and his family were the first to receive their visas. They had plans to move to Miami, and they were already taking English classes to be as prepared as they could to succeed. But it was harder for the older people to consider leaving. We visited Tía Panchita at her house and tried to persuade her to apply as well. A few months earlier, the government had given her plantation to Lola’s brother, Pedro, saying that he worked the land, he should be in charge.

  Mami and Papi begged Tía to apply for her visa as well. Marta and I sobbed when we imagined her here by herself, but Tía wasn’t moved by our arguments or our river of tears.

  “I won’t leave my home,” she said resolutely. “I won’t spend my last days in some foreign place where they don’t speak my language, shut away in a one-room apartment where I can’t look out on my fields. I’d rather go hungry at home.”

  Then she poured herself another cup of weak coffee and stared out at the dusty road, rocking on the porch and blinking behind her thick cat-eyed glasses.

  Lola reached across from her rocking chair and patted her hand kindly. “Maybe you should think about it, dear. Don’t you want to be with your family?”

  “I have thought about it. I’m staying here with you.”

  One afternoon, Tony came by while I sat on the porch with Tía Panchita and Lola. He’d grown to well over six feet and was more handsome than ever. All that had occurred between him and Alicia seemed to have been long forgotten by the adults, but Alicia had never been allowed to return to Tía Panchita’s, in case memories should become inflamed. And I knew that Alicia still compared other men she’d see to Tony and invariably conclude that he was the most beautiful man of all. I could hardly disagree and when he bounded up the porch, two steps at a time, with that sparkling smile, my breath still caught a little bit in my throat, and my heart pounded a little more vigorously as it had on the first day I saw him.

  Under his arm he carried a thick book and his wide eyes danced with light and amusement. “I’m learning how to read,” he exclaimed proudly, holding out his book for our inspection.

  Tía put down her needlework and repositioned her glasses to get a better look at the kind of book communists would use to teach reading. Her face betrayed nothing, for she already knew as we all did that Tony fully supported the revolution. “You’re a smart fellow. You’ll learn fast,” she said severely and promptly returned to her needlework.

  “You’ll only learn what they want you to learn, boy,” Lola said to her nephew.

  “I want to learn how to read. This is my chance to do something better than just work the sugar cane.”

  “Sugar cane?” Lola laughed a dry throaty laugh that ended her up coughing more than laughing. “You don’t have to worry. Pretty soon there won’t be any sugar cane left to work.”

  “That’s the problem with you old people,” Tony said, inflating his muscular chest. “You’ve already decided the revolution is a failure. Maybe for those who never wanted anything to change it is, but for me, it’s a chance to better my life.”

  Lola got up slowly from her chair to go inside. “I’m just a stupid old woman. What do I know?”

  Tony turned to me with eyes pleading for sympathy. “What do you think, Nora?”

  I struggled to find the words to respond. I couldn’t imagine a life without books, and my heart went out to him. “I’m glad you’re learning how to read, Tony. That’s a good thing, if you’re happy with it.”

  Tony cocked his head to one side and smiled sadly. He was hoping for more support than this, and his eyes searched my face, causing me to blush and squirm. Then he jerked his head away as though ashamed for my lack of courage and stepped off the porch slowly this time, each step representing yet more miles between his world and ours.

  Lola came back out in time to see him leave, on foot this time, as his fine horse had been commandeered by the government almost immediately. None of us waved to him or called out, wishing him a good day. Never had there been such silence on the porch.

  Mami developed a bad case of nerves. She jumped if there was a knock at the door, convinced that soldiers stood behind it ready to search our apartment and take us all to prison because of our black market dealings and desire to leave the country. We heard that our downstairs neighbor had been recruited to spy on the other tenants for just that purpose, so Mami persuaded Papi to pour the entire box of cooking oil he’d bought down the toilet. Executions were also aired on television, but Beba was directed to scurry us away to our rooms when questionable television programs aired. She placed one strong hand on each of our shoulders and escorted us there while we complained. Then she’d rush back to the living room so she could watch it herself.

  What nobody knows is that, on one occasion, when passing from my bedroom to the kitchen in search of Beba, I saw that the rumors were true. Papi and Uncle Carlos didn’t notice me standing behind them, and in the gray light of the television I saw it all, the skeletons, already half dead, lined up against the wall, wearing prison uniforms, stained and torn. They were blindfolded, with their hands tied behind their backs even though they obviously lacked the strength to take even one step toward freedom. Gunshots sounded like a huge firecracker echoing on and on, and the men collapsed on their knees before spilling to the ground like half-empty sacks of potatoes. The revolutionary music played; the flag was flown, and Papi’s face was ashen when he turned around and saw me standing there.

  “Why did they shoot those men, Papi?”

  He took a moment to answer. “Because they’re suspected to be counterrevolutionaries. They’re martyrs, and they have their place in heaven.” Papi sat down in his chair, his eyes red and pained. He put his face in his hands. “Go to your room now, Nora.”

  I spent many long afternoons lying on my bed waiting—waiting for the visas to arrive, waiting for someone (especially Alicia) to come and visit, waiting for the silence and the dread to be interrupted by anything. One day I spent an hour watching a spider in the corner of my room spin its web. Where once I would’ve felt the immediate need to scream and have Beba squash it with her bare hands as she often would, I now felt peaceful watching it spin to and fro, up and down, swinging on its invisible tether. The revolution didn’t bother the little spider. It continued spinning and crawling around as it always had. Watching it, I could make myself believe that things weren’t really so bad. Even if the explosions continued to sound throughout the day and night, maybe it would all soon be over. Even if the Bay of Pigs invasion had failed and everyone had given up hope that the Americans would save us from communism, I still prayed that they’d try again. I prayed that the next bullet I heard would shoot straight through that man’s head, blowing off his green army hat so that it landed in the mud and was trampled by every man, woman, and child in Cuba. Spin, little spider, spin your web of dreams and hope.

  Months passed and we heard nothing of the visas. Food was getting scarcer, and lines formed all over the city for milk and bread and even toilet paper. Mami forced herself to stand in them with the hated ration book in her purse, and Beba still came over every day, even though we were only able to pay her in pesos that were worthless even if there was something to buy. She was willing to come for food and company and for something to do. We were grateful for her presence.

  Beba had just arranged the silverware on the table when there was an unexpected knock at the door. Mami nearly dropped the plates she held. When she set them down on the table and faltered on her feet as though she was drunk, Beba answered the door, and we all stiffened at the sight of a severe looking woman carrying a clipboard.

  “Are you the domestic?” the woman asked.

  Beba wiped her big hands on her white apron and eyed her suspiciously. “I am. I’ve been working for the García family for almost twenty years.”

  The woman was unimpressed. “I’m here to offer you reading lessons.”

  “Reading lessons?”

  “Yes. Don’t you want to learn how to r
ead, so you can improve your station in life?”

  Beba placed her hands on her wide hips and glared at the woman without shame. “What makes you think I can’t read?”

  The woman appeared shaken, but quickly regained her composure. “Well…can you?”

  “No, but that’s none of your business,” Beba replied in a voice loud enough to echo throughout the entire building.

  The woman’s face dropped, but once again she resumed her purpose with resolve. “The party is offering this opportunity….”

  “I don’t care what you or the party is offering me. I do what I please, and I don’t want to learn how to read. And when I decide I do, I’ll find my own teacher, and I’ll read the books I want to read.” And Beba slammed the door in her face and sauntered past all of us chuckling to herself and humming a tune. I imagined that she’d be able to render Castro a helpless little boy given an hour alone with him, and I would’ve let out a cheer if not for Mami’s slumped body on the couch.

  “What have you done?” she whispered. “What have you done?”

  “Don’t worry, Doña Regina,” Beba said, setting out the plates Mami had abandoned at the table. “They won’t do anything to me. They don’t do anything to colored people.”

  It was late Sunday morning when Papi managed to find a leg of pork on the black market. It was a bit scrawny and said to come from a pig that was too old to eat, but it was meat and we’d had precious little of it lately. He wrapped it carefully in many layers of newspaper and placed it in the bottom of a shopping bag, as he prepared it for its journey to Tía María’s house, where most of the family was assembled. Even though everyone did it, buying on the black market was considered a counterrevolutionary crime and Papi could’ve been arrested. But the gnawing in our stomachs made us courageous, and I felt like an underworld spy as we drove the five minutes or so it took to get to Tía’s house.