Broken Paradise

by Cecilia Samartin

  “What are you staring at?” she mumbled.

  I waited a few moments longer and then released her, and walked away without saying a word.

  After a brief silence, I heard one of her friends call after me. “The greaser doesn’t understand. Hey, you’re in the U-S-of A now, so learn English, why don’t you.”

  I kept walking until I reached my homeroom class. Jeremy sat at his desk and smiled up from his work when he saw me enter. I set my books down in front of him and wasted no time. “Am I a greaser?” I asked.

  He seemed confused and a bit annoyed. “I hate that word.”

  “Some people just called me greaser.”

  Jeremy’s concern became tinged with shame. “It’s an insulting term fools use to describe people with a Spanish heritage.”

  “Then I am a greaser,” I said delighted and smiling with the warm knowledge that Cindy said Jeremy liked greasers. I was almost positive that’s what she said.

  “I don’t like hearing you say that, Nora.”

  “I am a greaser,” I replied quiet satisfied. “I am Spanish like you say. And Spanish people are greasers, so I am a greaser.”

  Jeremy shook his head, half smiling at me and swallowed his amusement. “OK, if you say so, but you don’t have to keep saying it over, and over, do you? How about referring to yourself as Latina or Hispanic or just…Cuban?”

  12

  Dear Alicia,

  Papi finally found a job at a bank in downtown Los Angeles. He has to get up at four thirty in the morning to catch the bus and make it to work on time. It’s not a prestigious job like he had in Cuba. He’s a low-level accountant, and I heard him tell Mami that he reports to a man with a fraction of his education and experience, but they say that’s no reason not to be grateful. When he came home with the news Mami was outside hanging laundry, and she got down on her knees to thank God as the wet sheets flapped in her face. Later she told me that if Papi hadn’t found this job he would’ve had to take another job in construction laying tiles with someone he’d met on the bus who offered to teach him how. I wanted to ask Mami if she considered chopping sugar cane in the fields to be more dishonorable work than laying tiles, but it took me several days to get the courage. When I finally did she answered without getting upset or breaking down as I feared she would. She said, “Neither type of work is dishonorable, but if your father’s going to break his back for a living, it should be to feed his family and not for that man.”

  I must begin my homework before it gets too late, as I have an early morning English lesson with Jeremy.

  Every day I check the mail hoping there will be a letter from you, and every day I’m disappointed. Please write soon.

  Nora

  “What are you doing?” Mami asked me early one Sunday morning. I was settled on the kitchen table, the only writing surface in our tiny apartment.

  “I’m writing to Alicia.”

  Mami raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You can write if you want, but she probably won’t get it. They’re intercepting the mail, cutting it up, and censoring it so that sometimes there isn’t anything left.” She yawned and shuffled across the kitchen, two shuffles would get her to the coffeepot. I shuddered to think she was starting to get used to the watery American coffee that she claimed helped her digestion.

  She beckoned that I follow her back into the bedroom where Papi was snoring peacefully, and pulled out a large cardboard gift box from under the bed. Inside was a disorderly array of photographs and envelopes. I took one, held it to my nose and the homesickness I’d been feeling since we left rolled over me like an enormous wave. I could smell garlic and onions and sweet tobacco and lilac perfume and the sea itself. I felt I might stumble, so I sat on the bed with the letter still held up to my face. How could our home, be over there and we be over here? How did this absurd thing happen?

  “I thought we weren’t allowed to bring photographs with us?”

  Mami sat down next to me and lowered her voice. “Your father got so mad at me when he saw them. I smuggled them inside the lining of the suitcase.” She shook her head. “I know it was a risk, but I couldn’t leave without taking some memories with me.” She reached for a photograph and showed me. It was their wedding picture that had always lived in an elaborate silver frame on the shelf by the window. The line where the sun had faded the picture was clearly visible. Their smiles, once innocent and beautiful now inspired sadness.

  Then I found the picture I’d been looking for. I could kiss Mami’s feet for including it. It was of Alicia and me, hand in hand, the ocean swirling about our ankles on the day we celebrated Alicia’s twelfth birthday. The whole family had gone to Varadero beach for the day, and we’d just completed our swimming lesson with Abuelo. We looked exhausted, but elated as we smiled into the camera. I looked closer: our skinny limbs were still shiny from the sea, my hair was plastered against my cheek in an unflattering mess, but Alicia looked beautiful, as always, chin up and golden hair lifted by the wind. I wished I could dive into the picture and never come back.

  “You can keep it if you like,” Mami said softly.

  “I’d like that, thank you.”

  “Actually, this is what I wanted to show you,” she said, holding an envelope out for me to examine. I could see by the signature that it was a letter from Tía María, but it was peppered with square cutouts all through out so if you held it up, it looked like the snowflake decorations I’d seen hanging in the American classrooms. I tried to read it, but it was difficult to understand and I kept falling into those little holes. The only message that came through loud and clear was that Tía’s arthritis was getting worse.

  “The Communists are censoring practically everything,” she said with palpable disgust. “Even letters from little old ladies who complain about aches and pains and not having enough coffee for their breakfast.”

  I placed the photo in the drawer of my nightstand, and looked at it every night, wondering how long it would take for Alicia to receive even one of my letters. I planned to show this photograph to Jeremy. We’d been meeting regularly for our tutoring sessions, and I knew he’d be fascinated to see Alicia, whom I’d told him about, and to see us at the beach that I tried to describe with my limited English. “It is so beautiful and warm and my words are not enough. I can only say it is the place where my heart belongs.”

  Dear Alicia,

  Of all the letters I’ve written so far, I hope this one reaches you more than any of the others. Perhaps that isn’t quite true, but I’m so upset right now that it feels true and the only thing I can think of is to write to you, and pretend that you’re here, or better yet, that I’m there.

  There’s serious trouble with Marta. It started when I noticed her leaving for school a good fifteen minutes earlier than necessary saying that she wanted to get to school early so she could get a “jump start” on her studies, whatever that means. She likes using American phrases like, “get off my back,” and “see you later, alligator,” and she tries to act as if she was born here which I believe only makes her look foolish.

  I always walk the same route to school, but one morning they were digging up the road so I had to take another. That’s when I spotted Marta sitting on somebody’s porch, and she wasn’t alone. She was with a boy. In fact, I’d seen him at my school, so I knew he had to be at least a couple of years older than Marta.

  They didn’t see me even though I was stomping so hard I could feel the soles of my feet tingling. I can’t begin to imagine what Marta was doing with that boy. She knows she shouldn’t ever be alone with a boy. But I could see by the familiarity in their eyes that this was not their first meeting.

  I called out her name just as he was bending down to kiss her, and she jumped, obviously horror-stricken to see that I’d caught her in the act. But when she stepped off the porch and walked toward me, she looked just like the little girl I’d known in Cuba. I wanted to whisk her away back home and hide her under the bed and slap her cheeks until she came back to h
er senses.

  She told me his name was Eddie and that he was her boyfriend. Can you believe that? And then she told me that things were different here and that people don’t follow strict rules like they do in Cuba.

  And I said, yelling right in the middle of the street, “I don’t care what people do here. You can’t change the fact that you’re Cuban even if you change your hair and clothes, kiss every boy you see and eat hamburgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can’t change it.”

  Marta stared at me for a few seconds, and I thought she might cry, but I know she was only worried that I’d tell Mami and Papi about what I saw. I thought long and hard about what I should do. And I finally decided not to tell them because I didn’t want them to send her away like your parents did to you, but I might change my mind.

  We walked wordlessly the rest of the way to school. And when we parted at the corner, I didn’t answer her when she said good-bye. And I refused to speak to her after school as well.

  Perhaps you will read this and think I was too harsh with Marta. But the way I see it, she’s betraying who she is, and for what? An American boy whose life revolves around football. I bet he doesn’t even know where Cuba is on the map. If you were here and living in this place, I know you’d understand. I miss you now more than ever.

  Nora

  I mailed the letter to Alicia the next morning and arrived to class one or two minutes late, to find Jeremy not waiting for me as usual, but talking with Cindy. She glanced at me, then at the clock on the wall, annoyed that I’d interrupted them. But she was the one interrupting us. Jeremy and I met daily for our Spanish/English lessons, and he was learning quite rapidly. He always told me what a good teacher I was and that I should considered taking it up as a profession. He said this while his hazel eyes softened with appreciation and his hand seemed to move just a little closer to mine. Our hands had been accidentally touching quite a bit lately as had our knees when we fumbled to get comfortable around the little table we shared during our lesson.

  But Cindy was leaning on our little table and sticking her backside out while she continued chattering and laughing away, oblivious to me and my heated glances. I sat at my desk and pretended to be absorbed in my books and papers, turning the pages of my notebook this way and that. How long was I expected to wait? Jeremy hadn’t even said hello to me yet.

  I glanced at him once again and my heart broke, just like that. The softness in his eyes when he looked at me had intensified into a smoldering heat and he was slightly flushed. She probably didn’t notice because she hadn’t memorized the creamy tones of his face as I had. She didn’t know that when he didn’t shave in the mornings there was a delicate bridge of hair that appeared just above his jaw line and that it rippled like the sea when he chewed gum. And he loved to chew gum in-between classes, the only time it was allowed. Spearmint was his favorite. And he’d probably treated me to three or four packs during our lessons.

  Still, I couldn’t deny that Cindy was beautiful in the way American girls were considered beautiful. She always wore her hair loose around her shoulders, like a golden shawl. It glistened spectacularly in the sun as well as under the glare of florescent lights, and she swung it around as often as she could, under the most unnatural of pretenses. When searching for a book under her desk she’d have to swing her golden mane. When raising her hand in class, when entering a room and deciding where to sit, swoosh would go her hair and the effect was like a red cape on a mad bull…all the boys were transfixed, just as Jeremy appeared to be at that moment.

  Yet, if you examined her closely, you’d see that her nose was slightly ill shaped so you could see into her nostrils and although her smile was cute and her laugh infectious, her lips were thin and her teeth tinged yellow gray from the cigarettes she liked to smoke when she walked home from school. Had Jeremy noticed this?

  He must have whispered that he had to help this Spanish girl with her English, and I noticed him glance at her rear end, tightly packaged like a pair of oranges when she left. That was another thing: American boys preferred skinny women, while in Cuba Cindy’s figure would’ve been rejected as unwomanly. They even had butt pads for people like her, I heard Beba telling Mami one day when they were chatting in the kitchen.

  I focused on the English lesson that followed more intensely than ever. I made absolutely certain that our hands and knees never touched accidentally. I had planned to show Jeremy the photograph of Alicia and me at Varadero beach. I’d told him about it the day before and how dangerous it was for my mother to smuggle it out of the country the way she did. He was very interested to see it, as I knew he would be.

  “So where’s that photograph you were going to show me?” He asked once we’d settled in for our lesson at the little table.

  I avoided his gaze and pretended to look for a particular page in my book. “The photograph…I forgot to bring it.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “How could you forget, Nora?”

  I felt a surge of indignation. The photograph was tucked into my Spanish/English dictionary. I could’ve opened up to the page and shown him the splendor of my previous life just as I longed to open my heart, but I quickly dropped the dictionary into my bag instead.

  “I think I may have lost it, because it wasn’t where I left it.”

  “So you didn’t forget it?”

  For the first time since I’d met Jeremy I wanted to run away with my books and never return. These Americans can’t get a subtle hint to back off. They hunt you down with their questions and wide-eyed curiosity as if they have a right to know everything.

  “I just didn’t bring it,” I muttered. “That’s all.”

  The next day I was relieved to find Jeremy alone, but I felt my mouth and eyes tighten as I avoided his gaze. He was watching me with certain concern. Even out of the corner of my eye I detected a smile playing about his lips and this unnerved me even more. He hadn’t even opened his book, and we’d decided to begin with his Spanish lesson for a change as I’d concluded I was moving along with my English more quickly than he was with his Spanish.

  “Something is wrong?” I asked as he sat twirling his pencil in his fingers.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  I felt my ears go hot and a flush spread towards my cheeks. Once again, I had to fight the sudden urge to run out of the room.

  He placed the pencil on the desk and leaned forward so he was near me, so near I could count the fine gold stubble on his upper lip. “Nora, I may be only a few years older than you, but I’m still a teacher here and there are certain things a teacher shouldn’t do….”

  “I know what you do here.”

  Jeremy appeared flustered too now, and he pushed his long hair out of his eyes. “The girl you saw me talking with yesterday…”

  “Cindy.”

  “Yes, Cindy.” He nodded. “She’s a student, and I’m a teacher. And you’re a student….”

  “And you’re a teacher,” I said, acting as if we’d just begun our lesson. “We learned the words last week.”

  He smiled with me, but placed his hand on the dictionary I was preparing to open. “If I wasn’t a teacher…” His eyes searched my face as he summoned the courage to say something, but then thought better of it and sighed. “I think we understand each other, don’t we?”

  I matched his smile and nodded. “You are a very good teacher, Jeremy.”

  13

  Dear Alicia,

  The other night, I heard Mami and Papi talking when they thought I wasn’t listening. Our apartment is so small that the only place for privacy is in the bathroom or outside the kitchen on the back step. The window over the sink was open, so it was easy for me to hear them. Papi said that he’d heard your father had disappeared, like he did before. He was trying to keep Mami from worrying and I was worried too for a moment, but I felt better as I kept listening.

  Papi also said that he was certain whatever happened with Batista before would happen with Castro now, a
nd there was such hope and affection in his voice. Papi has always been very realistic about the revolution and the possibility of our going home and not at all like the rest of us who constantly wish for the impossible. If Papi says that things with Castro are going to change then I believe him, and I salute your brave Papi for helping this to happen. You must be very proud to be his daughter.

  I have a wonderful feeling that this Christmas we’ll all be together again. Don’t be surprised if the next time you hear from me, I’m standing at your front door with a car waiting at the curb to take us to the beach. I suggest you tell Abuelo that next time we go swimming I’m going to beat him to the platform and back again.

  It’s late and I must get up early for my English lesson with Jeremy. I never thought I could like an American boy as much as I like him, and if I let myself, I could even fall in love. But Jeremy, as all American boys, prefers skinny girls with blonde hair. I’m still skinny, but last time I checked my hair was blacker than coal. Nevertheless, I’m learning English very quickly, and I’ll put it to good use when I return. I’m certain the new government will need plenty of translators. Perhaps you can investigate this for me when you have time.

  This is the happiest I’ve been for a long time.

  Nora

  “Eddie and I broke up,” Marta announced on her way to school a few weeks later.

  I was so surprised to hear her speak his name so casually, that I didn’t say anything right away.

  “Don’t you want to know why?” She kept her eyes on the sidewalk. “He told me I was a prude, and he didn’t want a prude for a girlfriend.”

  I searched my memory banks for the word prude, but it was nowhere to be found. I hated to ask Marta what it meant; it made me feel small and unworthy to show her she was learning better English than me. Anyway, I could ask Jeremy what it meant later.