by Carlos Eire
“Next time you do this, you’re in for a big surprise.”
I’d heard that one before, and the surprise never came. I knew she was bluffing.
But the surprise finally came one day. It was at the Plaza de Marianao, that awful, stinking hellhole with all the butcher shops where they slaughtered animals right in front of your eyes and the air itself seemed soaked in blood. I always found myself breathing through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell the blood. I also walked around with my fingers in my ears to block out the sounds emitted by animals as they are turned into food.
So different the meat at the Plaza, so unlike the silent, odorless hunks of flesh wrapped in plastic at the Stop & Shop or the Piggly Wiggly. Freshly slaughtered animals, cut up or whole, hanging from hooks, dripping hot blood.
My mom really liked one butcher shop at the Plaza, and we went there too often.
There was a toy stand at the Plaza, tucked away in a corner on the upper level that actually received some sunlight and didn’t smell too bad. The toys were awful, like the rest of the place, but they were toys. And they cried out to me:
“We’re yours for the taking. Take us. We know you don’t like us, but please take us home with you. We’ll feel so much better in your sweet-smelling house. Do us a favor, please, take us away from here. Save us. It’s not just the smell, you know, but also the screams of the pigs and chickens that drive us insane within this dusty bin. Look at the dust, too. No one ever brings kids here to buy us. We linger here, unloved, unwanted, surrounded by death, suffocating in the stench of blood and freshly cut flesh. Take us, please. Put us in your pocket.”
Who could resist such a heartrending plea?
I glanced around for watchful eyes, found none, plunged my hand into a bin without looking down, and put some Cossacks in my pocket. Yes, Cossacks. Dad had told me what they were called, but I still had no idea what they were, really.
Anyway, I walked out of there with Cossacks in my pocket. But how many had I freed? I had to know. So the great Cossack liberator made the mistake of attempting a body count in the backseat of the car as we were driving away from the Plaza. I pulled up the booty to the edge of my pocket and peered down. One, two, three. Great! I didn’t even care that these were really ugly toy soldiers. I could always make use of them, maybe by setting them on fire or blowing them up with firecrackers.
“What are you doing?” came the question from the front seat. Marie Antoinette was looking straight at me.
“Uh…nothing…just looking at my pocket, that’s all.” I’ve always been a very unimaginative liar.
“What’s that red thing sticking out of your pocket?”
It was there all right. The tall skinny Cossack was sticking halfway out of my pocket, and his red jacket was hard to miss. I didn’t even try to lie.
“It’s a Cossack…I took it.” I hardly ever said that I “stole” anything. I merely “took” things.
“This is it.” She pointed her index finger straight at me without raising her voice. She never raised her voice.
“Antonio, turn the car around, we’re going back to the Plaza.”
“What for?”
“Carlos stole some toys again, and we’re going to make him give them back to the store from which he took them.”
“Okay, good idea.” The judge agreed, and turned the car around immediately.
“You’re in big trouble now,” observed my brother.
“No, no, please. Don’t make me do this. I promise, I won’t ever do it again. I promise. No, no…Can’t you or Papa take them back for me? I promise, I won’t take toys again.”
“It’s time you learned this lesson,” said Louis XVI.
Once back at the Plaza de Marianao, I was sent back in to return the stolen Cossacks. I had very clear instructions: I was supposed to confess to the woman minding the store and hand the Cossacks back, one by one. But I was sent in all on my own, and entrusted with this painful, impossible task. Neither of my parents went with me to ensure that the penance would be performed. You can guess what I did. As soon as I was back in the toy store, I simply reversed my tactics: I looked around for witnesses, and, finding none, pulled the Cossacks out of my pocket and dumped them back in their dusty bin, all the while breathing through my mouth.
How that place stunk. Good God, how it reeked of death.
And how I ran.
I got back into our brown Chrysler, panting.
“Did you hand back the toys?”
“Did you do as we asked?”
“Sí,” was my simple reply. No elaboration on this falsehood.
“Good. We’re so proud of you,” said Mom.
“I guess you’ll never steal again after this,” added Dad.
Not bad, for a bad liar.
A few months later, perhaps even just a few weeks, I found myself at a very small quincalla, a store that sold odds and ends, and the toy soldiers called out to me again from their dusty bin. It was a store named Saxony. Once again I couldn’t resist the pleas of the poor, neglected toy soldiers. These weren’t Cossacks. They were American army men. Nice and green. I had all of them already: bazooka guy, radio-telephone guy, crawling-with-rifle guy, standing-up-shooting guy, kneeling-shooting guy, grenade guy, bayonet guy, binoculars guy, pistol guy, flamethrower guy, mortar guy, minesweeper guy, pointing guy. But it didn’t matter that I had others like them. They called out to me.
“Take us home. We’re yours. We belong to you. Free us. We will fight for you.”
Using my well-honed skills, I pocketed a few green army men. Freed them from imprisonment in a store named after the land of Martin Luther. Freed them from captivity in the land of arch-heretics, without knowing it.
This time I was much more careful. I knew better than to inspect my pockets in the car. But I got caught at home, damn it, as I was playing war on the marble floor.
“Hey, where did you get those soldiers?” Marie Antoinette, as always.
“What do you mean? I’ve had these for a while.”
“But I thought you only had two grenade guys. I see you have four now.”
“Uh…no. I’ve had four all along.”
“No, I don’t think so. I put them away all the time, and I know you only have two. Where did the other two come from?”
“Uh…oh, now I remember: Jorge lent them to me.”
“Are you sure? I haven’t seen Jorge around for a few days. When did he give them to you?”
“He gave them to me last Saturday.”
“But we spent the day at Grandma and Grandpa’s house last Saturday.”
Then came the stare. That all-knowing gaze. Laser beams aimed straight at the conscience.
“Tell me the truth, come on.”
What could I do but confess?
This time around the penance imposed on me was the same as at the Plaza de Marianao, but with a wicked twist. This time, when I went back to the store, both of my parents followed me into the store.
“My son has something he wants to tell you,” King Louis informed the clerk behind the sales counter at Saxony. Louis XVI put his hand on my shoulder. I remember the way his hand seemed to have no weight at all and an awful lot of weight at the same time. Light as a feather. And as heavy as my conscience, which finally, at that very instant, seemed to have sprung to life.
Everything that happened in the store after my dad put his hand on my shoulder is now in my vault of oblivion. No details left. This means, of course, it was a reverse peak experience, a Mariana Trench of the soul. I only know that I did what I was supposed to do because my parents praised me for it and wagged their fingers at me some more.
“I bet this cures him,” Marie Antoinette said to King Louis as he started the car.
“How bad was it?” asked my brother, who had wisely refused to go into the store.
Silence from me. I couldn’t talk for a long time. Maybe even the rest of the day.
I felt genuine remorse for the first time in my life. Or at least I
felt embarrassed. Ashamed. Humiliated. Exposed as a thief. Is that the same as remorse? I still don’t know.
But I do know that from that day forward I never stole anything. Not even when I was slowly starving in Miami, at that foster home for juvenile delinquents where Tony and I were fed only once a day, at five in the afternoon.
How wonderful those Twinkies and Moon Pies looked on the store shelves. How they sang out to me.
“Take us! Unwrap us! Touch us! Squeeze us! Taste us! Eat us! We belong inside of you. Hear that rumbling in your gut? Listen to that. That’s no rumbling, it’s a roar. Listen more closely. Hear that nearly imperceptible sound? Those are your bones. They’re gasping, bending, growing crooked. And, by the way, when is the last time you went to a doctor, or had a dessert?”
Tempted as I was by the song of the Twinkies, I resisted their siren call. Stealing was wrong, but not just because it was a sin. Stealing was an affront to the mother and father who had driven me back to Saxony and stood with me as I confessed my sin. Stealing was a betrayal of those memories that mattered most to me.
Stealing seemed so wrong that I couldn’t bring myself to go along with some of the thugs who lived with me and wanted me to help them steal stuff. Couldn’t do it, even when they threatened me with harm. One of them, Miguel, got it into his head to steal an outboard motor from a boat moored at the Miami River, not far from our foster home. We used to go there often to watch fishermen catch nothing or, every now and then, fight off water moccasins with their rods. The place was crawling with all sorts of snakes.
Miguel wanted me and Tony to help him steal this outboard motor and carry it all seven blocks to our foster home, and he threatened to hurt us if we refused. What he wanted to do with that motor, I’ll never know. We had as much chance of gaining access to a boat as we did of having an air conditioner installed in our room, or of winning the Spanish lottery. Tony and I refused to join Miguel, but he ended up finding someone to help him and somehow managed to lift it up onto the flat roof of our orphanage.
Social workers called it a “foster home,” but it was really an orphanage. Twelve children living in a rundown, three-bedroom house infested with roaches, mice, and scorpions, under the care of two adults who didn’t really care for us. Four or five kids to a room. Two in the glassed-in porch. One in the living room. No air-conditioning, no fans. In Miami, mind you. One tiny bathroom for all of us. One meal a day, and plenty of menial labor. Physical and mental abuse from adults and housemates alike.
Anyway, Miguel got his outboard motor. And one evening, as I was in the backyard throwing out the trash, Miguel snuck up behind me and hit me as hard as he could above the knees with a huge, crudely made club, larger than a baseball bat. I think he was aiming for the knees.
“I broke your legs! I broke your legs! Ha, that’ll teach you!”
I thought he had broken my legs for real, it hurt so much. He laughed loudly and swung the club over his head as he did some kind of dance all around me, chanting.
Well, he didn’t really break my legs. I managed to get up off the ground about ten minutes later. But I did get the largest bruises I’d ever seen, and I had trouble sitting down for a while.
Miguel ended up getting caught by the police a few days after he whacked me. They came to our house, found the outboard motor on the roof, and took him off to jail. His partner had ratted on him.
Very odd, how my conscience gained the upper hand and prevailed. I still resent that victory, deep down. And that, my friend, is a very big problem. After all, a huge chunk of the message delivered unto Moses by God Himself had to do with keeping your stinkin’ mitts off things that belonged to others. Check out Exodus 20:15–17: “Do not steal.”
“Do not desire another man’s house; do not desire his wife, his slaves, his cattle, his donkeys, or anything else that he owns.”
Good God in heaven. Even desire is forbidden. Is this harsh or what? Especially the part about donkeys? You can’t crave what belongs to others, ever. If you do, your soul is stained. And if it’s stained, you’re in big trouble.
That’s how the Christian Brothers explained it to us. In order to get to heaven, your soul needs to be pure. Think of it as pure whiteness, that’s what they told us. Blazing, blinding white, that’s how God wants your soul to be. Just one large stain is enough to land you in hell for eternity. One stolen toy, that’s all it takes. One covetous glance at a pair of nice new shoes, or the person wearing them, or whatever belongs to someone else. That’s all it takes to be plunged into a sulfurous burning pit, where you will be horribly tortured by hideous demons for eternity.
But there’s a remedy, we were told. Your soul can be made pristine, scrubbed white, as pure white as a consecrated host. You can make that happen by receiving the sacrament of Penance, by going to confession, and exposing each of your stains to a priest.
And confess I did, after rehearsing in front of my family. Since I was a male I had to face the priest directly in the confessional box. Only girls and women got to hide behind a wicker screen. At the time I didn’t know that the screen was there to protect the priest from temptation. I thought women were getting another unfair break.
I read my list of sins to the priest, at San Antonio de Miramar, that cool, air-conditioned Art Deco church surrounded by beautiful homes, bathed in light straight from the highest heaven.
Theft was high on my list. Bad words were nowhere on the list, of course. They frightened me so much, they were never a temptation back then. Bad thoughts? You bet. Nearly everything was a bad thought if you dwelt on it long enough. Lots of malice towards others, especially. Wishing lizards harm, and making your wishes come true. No naked women, though, no dirty magazines. Nothing to do with that troublesome ecce unde down yonder, not yet, not really. But I confessed that sin anyway, just in case I hadn’t understood Brother Alejandro correctly. Maybe I had. After all, you had to touch it every time you peed. Disobedience? Of course. All the time. Lying? Every single day. My whole life was one big, stupid lie. A transparent lie, too, especially to my mother.
“For all of these sins and any others I have overlooked I am heartily sorry.”
“Una confesión muy buena, hijo.” That was a very good confession, my boy. Go in peace, your sins are forgiven.
Much to my surprise, I did feel relieved as I stepped away from that confessional. I felt as if some weight had been lifted off my shoulders, maybe the weight of a father’s hand.
I also felt proud. So proud of myself for making such a good confession and being spotless inside. If they’d been able to assign grades for this exercise, I was sure the Christian Brothers would have given me the highest possible mark, Sobresaliente, Outstanding.
I didn’t tell any lies that day or the next, and I didn’t kill any lizards either. I managed to resist temptation at many turns, and to make it to my First Communion two days later with a fairly white soul and a perfectly tailored, perfectly bleached white suit, white gloves, and white shoes. The white suit looked oddly out of place at the beach later, at the reception that was held at the Havana Yacht Club. Odd, but as white as my soul.
Or so I thought, standing on the pier of the Yacht Club, sweating profusely in the blazing sunshine, feeling the sharp edge of the starched collar against my neck, looking down at my white shoes rather than at the sea, eating a ham salad sandwich, a perfect triangle of white bread, all white on the outside and pink inside, every trace of the brown crust carefully excised.
One stain had been missed, though. Forgiven, of course, under the rubric of “any other sins I have overlooked.” It was the stain of pride.
I remember thinking how nice it was to be at the Havana Yacht Club, how well it suited me, my classmates, and our families. I knew at that age that I was lucky and thought God owed me that luck simply because I richly deserved it. Deserved it more than others.
I would have Fidel to thank for pointing out this pride to me, and “stinkin’ mitts” Curtis too, who made me realize for the first time
in my life that I was a Cuban.
Thanks, guys. Muchas gracias. You gave me what I truly deserved.
And thanks also to the heresiarch who came up with the idea of having everyone in church hold hands during the Our Father. You have no idea how you wound my pride and remind me that I am Cuban. Every Sunday you put me in touch with the abysmal root of all my problems.
I can see that monstrous root now in a way I never could at the age of seven. My first stab at confession was like a leap off a cliff, blindfolded. I rehearsed with my family in the same way Evel Knievel did before any of his motorcycle stunts, with the likelihood of a crash landing in mind, but no real acceptance of the chasm about to be spanned, or the pull of gravity.
“That was an excellent confession,” said Marie Antoinette as I finished my rehearsal at the dinner table. Everyone else remained silent.
“Did I leave anything out?”
“No, you didn’t. If you confess like that later this week, you’ll have covered everything. And you don’t have to say you’re a thief. You’re not anymore.”
“Are you sure?” I looked at Marie Antoinette, and then at the others. Everyone but my mother looked away or pretended not to be at the table. Tony hid his face in his armpit.
My mother looked me straight in the eye and said, “Yes, I’m sure.”
Total silence. Everyone got up and left the dining room. Tony zipped out of his chair at the speed of light. I remained glued to my seat for a while.
Fast-forward forty-three years. I am confessing to a priest, face to face, cataloguing my soul’s dark stains in a sunlit room. The worst ones get the most attention, and this time around they happen to be as dark as they come. Jesus H. Crucified Christ, the gloom inside me is formidable. I recognize these blots for what they are: states of mind and deeds that I am attached to, or even love, but which cause pain to others and diminish me in the process. I am brought face to face with my desire for what’s wrong and my dogged avoidance of what’s right. Can I really repent for things I don’t feel totally sorry about?