Broken Paradise

by Cecilia Samartin

  She tells me stories too. Last week she heard that one of our neighbors left the country in a small boat. He applied for a visa years ago, but he got tired of waiting. It’s amazing the things people say to my Lucinda, as if they believe her blindness will keep their secrets safe. Normally, plans to escape aren’t shared openly because anyone caught trying to leave can go to prison for many years. But more and more are taking the chance. Life for them here is more frightening than the possibility of jail, drowning, or even being eaten by sharks.

  People here have become desperate for things like soap and toothpaste and aspirin. A stash of soap under the bed is the best cure for insomnia. Last year I was able to get hold of a box. It was rose-scented and each piece was wrapped in very thin, almost transparent paper; so delicate. I used to count them every night, and feel the heaviness in my hand as if they were gold bars. I was forced to exchange the last few bars for medicine when Lucinda was ill recently, and then I knew how a millionaire must feel after he loses everything. It is a feeling perhaps worse than hunger; an emptiness that sours the heart.

  There are some who find this situation thrilling. The woman across the street leaves her house every morning with a straw bag hanging from her arm. You can see the excitement and spring in her step, like a hunter heading out for the kill. Her husband is not quite so animated. He hasn’t left the house for months and slumps around the front steps waiting for his wife to return. When she does, he sniffs out her bag as if he were an old hound dog looking for a bone. I’m not lying to you when I tell you that a few times I’ve actually seen her smack him on the nose when he gets too close to her bag, and he paws her all the way back into the house. It’s very sad to see.

  I sit in the dark after Lucinda has fallen asleep and think of how easy it would be, Nora. How easy to float to freedom…to paradise. I remember the splendor of my life before the changes. I had a new dress almost every week and the maid would brush my hair in the morning until it shone. The bread was always fresh and warm and the butter dripped off of it onto our plates, and there was meat every day and fish until it was coming out of our ears. There was a new bar of soap by every sink and bathtub. There was lilac water to splash on our hair after a long warm bath. There was music on every street corner, and the musicians were plump and merry and laughed along with their melodies. The children were as crisp as paper dolls new out of the box. I remember how good it felt right after a bath when I was going out to dinner with my parents. My skin was just a little tight from the soap, and my scalp felt cool in the breeze.

  If all of this was possible then, then isn’t it just as possible to find my way into a raft and float to freedom now?

  Enough. Tomorrow is a working day. May God bless you and Jeremy in many ways. Remember I love you.

  Alicia

  We were late for Sunday dinner because Jeremy had many papers to grade.

  Expecting to see everyone sitting around the table, we were surprised to find Mami still in the kitchen wearing her apron and sniffling into a tissue as she worked. She lit up when we walked in, and she almost dropped the salad in her excitement. She grasped my shoulders. “You’ll never guess who called.”

  I looked to Jeremy who shrugged, just as bewildered as I was, eyes still red from hours of reading term papers.

  “Aren’t you going to guess?” she asked, giving me a little shake as well.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Alicia. It was our little Alicia!” Mami dropped her hands, raised them, dropped them again, and then wrung them nervously. “And you could hear her clear as a bell, the connection was so good.”

  “Alicia…you actually spoke with her on the phone?” I felt Jeremy’s hand on my back.

  Mami nodded and swallowed hard. “We talked for several minutes about so many things. She asked for you. I gave her your number, and she said she’d try to call you at home.”

  “Does she have a phone?”

  “Apparently she does at the hotel where she’s working, but it sounded like she couldn’t talk for very long.” Mami didn’t seem to know whether she should continue with the salad or stir the beef stew. “She sounds just the same, Nora, just the same. She has the same little voice and…” Mami leaned on the counter and began to sob. I ran over to her, my own eyes watering, and held her as she spoke. “I could see her so clearly. That last time we said good-bye to them at Varadero, remember? She was a beautiful girl and so sweet and smart.” She turned to Jeremy and sniffed loudly. “She had golden hair, beautiful and curly. Nobody would think she was Cuban. And her eyes were green.”

  “Her eyes are probably still green, Mami. You’re talking about her as if she were dead.”

  Mami returned to her cooking. “People I know who’ve gone back to visit, describe it like a cemetery full of walking corpses, a living death.” She sniffed loudly.

  We spoke of little else during dinner. Mami recounted her ten-minute conversation with Alicia at least twenty times. Each recounting seemed to uncover one more detail or nuance of how her life was, and what she would do next. Of course, I already knew all these things, but I didn’t share what additional information I had. What Alicia had written in her letters was sacred and meant just for me.

  “She’s working in a fancy hotel,” Mami said. “Tony won’t get out of prison for a couple of years, but she’s hopeful it could be sooner. It seems she has a friend that watches out for him. She’s saving the money we send and that tourists give her. She says that with this money she’ll be able to leave once Tony gets out.”

  “So they’re definitely planning to leave?” Marta asked as she attempted to feed her new son, Michael, who was spitting out his black beans, behaving as American as he looked.

  “It certainly sounds that way.”

  “Are they planning to get visas?” Papi asked.

  “She says they’re going to try, but if they can’t they’ll get out however they can.”

  The table was quiet at these words. More reports of drowned rafters were being confirmed every day.

  “Did she say she’d call me?” I asked for the tenth time at least.

  “She took your number down and repeated it twice. She said she’d call you as soon as she could.”

  Papi was quiet during dinner. He couldn’t hear about Alicia without thinking of his brother. He ate very little and left the table early saying he needed to finish some reading before Monday. Mami apologized to Eddie and Jeremy. “You see, he had a terrible loss. Actually, we all did…”

  “They know, Mami,” Marta said. And Mami was silenced, relieved to be spared the recounting of Tío Carlos’s death. We all were.

  I waited for days and then weeks. Every time the phone rang I snatched up the receiver hoping to hear the thin crackle of static and Alicia’s distant voice balancing precariously on the wire. Would I recognize it after so many years? I heard a child’s voice when I read her letters, a lovely flowery voice full of clear light and possibilities. The kind of voice that could only belong to a beautiful girl. But she was now a grown woman, and she’d suffered so many things. It would be different; it had to be.

  Jeremy teased that my desperation to hear from Alicia was starting to make him feel like a jilted lover. And my desperation fueled my dreams that came almost every night. I’d wake up clutching Jeremy, his tee shirt moist with my tears. I was looking for Alicia with Tony at my side. We were walking along the beach and he told me how much he loved his wife and his green eyes glowed as he stared out at the sea wondering where she might be. We were both saddened by her absence, and I placed my hand on his shoulder to express my compassion. Suddenly, we were both naked and twisting into each other like snakes embracing in the sand.

  Jeremy always wanted to hear about my dreams, but I didn’t share this one. He’d never been a jealous man and he’d probably turn a curious smile if I told him. In the darkness his eyes would penetrate me and he’d smile and hold me with a chuckle because I looked so damn guilty.

  “I love you so much,” I
said as I laid my dampened cheek on his chest and felt the comforting rise and fall of his breathing.

  “Don’t worry. She’ll call,” he whispered, half asleep.

  23

  Dear Nora,

  Your last letter was tucked unopened in my purse for many weeks before I had the heart to read it. Please forgive me, but my life has taken another drastic change. If I’d written to you earlier you would’ve wondered who that strange person was signing my name. Perhaps you’ll still wonder, but I have no choice but to be honest with you. I know now more than ever why Tía Panchita needed to sit on her porch before she died. It is the same for me when I write to you.

  I go to church, and I talk to God amidst the silence of the statues covered with dust and cobwebs. Lucinda and I pray together, and I suppose our prayers make it to heaven, but it’s been a long time since I heard God’s voice. I used to hear Him all the time, loud and clear in the wind and in the roar of the sea. Now all I hear is noise, noise that keeps me from my sleep.

  Berta has been teaching me about her work. She comes home with beautiful things almost every day. Last week she had a bottle of lemon-scented shampoo. The week before that, a big square box of tissue paper for blowing your nose. The week before that, two pairs of brand new stockings as sheer as glass. We laughed as we threw them up in the air and watched them float down to the ground like feathers. You put just one toe into them and you feel like Cinderella when that beautiful feeling travels all the way up your body.

  For some time now I’ve known that Berta is one of those ladies Abuela wouldn’t let us talk about. She wears her best clothes and sits in the lobby of the hotel or in the bar smoking cigarettes and crossing and uncrossing her legs until a man buys her a drink or asks her for the time even though she doesn’t wear a watch. I often see her working from my place at the door. She throws her head back and laughs the way I used to remember doing when in the company of admiring young men. She tugs on her tight skirt so the men can’t help but stare at her legs that are bare all the way up her thigh. Before long she leaves on the arm of one of them. Sometimes they go to a restaurant and a show, but the younger ones take her straight to their rooms.

  Berta says this is the only way to make real money. Did I tell you she has a degree in engineering? She studied in Russia for a while and can order a drink in three languages, not including Spanish.

  About three months ago, a man approached me and whispered in my ear. A week ago I would’ve stormed out and left him with his words hanging in his mouth, but on this day they sank into my soul. I’ve become the worst thing a woman can become. And I do it as easily as I swam to the platform so many years ago. I just close my eyes and dive in. I don’t feel the men touching me, I don’t hear the ridiculous things they say. I’m doing my job, taking advantage of an opportunity that allows me to go home to my Lucinda at the end of the day or night with a bag full of milk and toothpaste and soap and meat and cans of vegetables and fresh fruit.

  I still love only Tony and nothing changes that. Others may possess my body for a short while, but it’s only with Tony that my spirit has danced. I continue to send him packages every week with Ricardo, but I’m thankful he no longer requires additional payment as I believe he’s taken up with someone else.

  I’m now able to save money to escape, and when we leave I’ll erase everything from my mind and heart. This is the one thought that keeps me alive.

  I will wait for your letter as I wait for news from Tony every day, with one hand on my heart and the other raised to heaven.

  Alicia

  Mami collapsed on the couch sobbing, and Papi stood glum and stoic beside her. It was exactly as I expected, but still my palms were sweaty and I felt a new fear gurgling in the pit of my stomach. Jeremy stood next to me, a few steps back. Even after more than five years of marriage, he wasn’t used to these emotional outbursts, and he’d learned the hard way that it was useless to respond like an objective anthropologist studying a strange tribe somewhere in the jungle. Whether he liked it or not, he was one of us now, a bit more cerebral and contemplative than the rest, but one of us nonetheless.

  “Do you know how I feel?” Mami asked, lifting her tearstained face from the cushion. “I feel like my country was taken away from me and now my honor as well because my own flesh and blood is going back to pump American dollars into that criminal system. Every penny you spend will end up in the pocket of that man.”

  “Regina, please calm down,” Papi said placing his hand on her arm and she flinched it away, but shifted her gaze downward like a scolded child.

  Papi cleared his throat. His eyes were unwavering, but as sad as they’d been during the worst moments of his life. “You know how we feel about this, Nora, but you’re a grown woman now and we can’t tell you what to do. Maybe one day you’ll have children and you’ll…” Papi stuffed his hands in his pocket and shook his head as tears swam in his eyes. “One day you’ll understand.”

  We left Mami and Papi without our Sunday meal warm and heavy in our bellies. Instead, we had sushi at a little place near the oceanfront and took a walk on the pier afterward. Few words passed between us, and Jeremy held my hand snugly in his coat pocket while the wind blew cold.

  “So are you still going?” he asked when we’d almost reached the end of the pier.

  “I’m still going.” We stopped for a moment and leaned against the railing as we gazed at the sea beneath us. The wind was full of mist and filled our noses and eyes, washed us clean and blew us dry at the same time.

  “Good,” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me toward him so that I was standing only on one foot. “You’re sure you’ll be all right alone? I can try to get away, but it’s just hard in the middle of the semester.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  We stood watching the waves rolling forward in rounded symmetry, continuous bands of unimaginable strength pounding at the foundations of the pier. It was a deep and ominous green, opaque and glossy, like very thick glass, its edges sharp and pointed, lifting huge crags up toward the sky and swallowing them up again in violent spurts. How different from the ocean I’d soon be seeing in my homeland. I tried to explain this to Jeremy as we stood covered in the mist, and as I spoke, it was as if the sea’s jealous roars were trying to drown me out.

  “It’s quiet for one thing.” I said. “The waves don’t pound, they glide over you like a soft breeze. And you can see all the way down to your toes even if you’re standing in water up to your shoulders. Sometimes when you’re suspended in perfect warmth, a rain cloud will float by out of no where and it’ll start raining thick warm drops of water right on your head. Alicia and I liked to pretend we were washing our hair in the middle of the ocean like mermaids. Or we’d dive under the surface, thinking ourselves so clever to escape the rain for the few seconds we could hold our breath. Just as suddenly as it started, the rain stopped and the sun would shine even more brilliantly than before. In this way we experienced several mornings and nights in a single day.”

  He was watching me, smiling that curious smile that makes my heart melt every time. “Really? So then you only need to go for one week instead of two. After all, if you have several mornings and nights in one day…”

  I threw my arms around his neck and whispered in his ear that was chilled from the wind. “I’m going to miss you too, Jeremy. I’m going to miss you so much.”

  Jeremy passed the phone to me half asleep, and when I heard her voice on the line I bolted straight up in bed.

  “Listen to you answering the phone like una americana,” she said.

  “Alicia, is it really you?”

  She laughed. “Of course it’s me, silly.”

  “I don’t believe I’m actually talking to you. I don’t believe it’s you.”

  “I can see you haven’t forgotten your Spanish. I was afraid I’d have to talk to you with the little English I know and that would make for a very boring conversation.”

  “You sound
just the same, Alicia. Your voice is…is the same.”

  She sighed. “If only everything was the same. You know me, I have a tendency to wish for the impossible, but then some of my wishes do come true. Are you really coming home?”

  “I’ll be there in a few days, just like I said in my letter.”

  “It’s too wonderful to imagine.” I heard noise in the background, and then a pause. When she spoke again, Alicia’s voice was muffled. “I hear someone coming, and I shouldn’t be using the phone.”

  “Is there something wrong?” I asked, sensing the fear in her voice.

  “Not a thing. All that matters is that you’re coming home. I’ll be waiting for you at the airport. I love you, Nora.”

  “I love you too, Alicia.”

  HAVANA

  24

  TWO HOURS INTO THE FLIGHT FROM LOS ANGELES TO MIAMI, I forced myself to drink a glass of red wine to calm my nerves. Liquid tranquility and finally sleep overcame my anxiety, and I found myself standing with several others in a circle of light.

  The fire is brilliant, almost licking our toes and caressing our bodies as we move into and away from it like the shifting of the tides. Our hips jerk to the rhythm of the drums. It’s Beba who plays them and she smiles with big beautiful teeth, even whiter than her snowy turban. She beats the drums so hard, I’m concerned she’ll grow tired, but she’s glowing like an angel.