Dreaming in Cuban

by Cristina Garcia

  Celia rests in the interior patio of the plaza, where royal palms dwarf a marble statue of Christopher Columbus. Inside the museum there’s a bronze weathervane of Doña Inés de Bobadilla, Cuba’s first woman governor, holding the Cross of Calatrava. She became governor of the island after her husband, Hernando de Soto, left to conquer Florida. Doña Inés, it is said, was frequently seen staring out to sea, searching the horizon for her husband. But de Soto died on the banks of the Mississippi River without ever seeing his wife again.

  Celia passes by the Hotel Inglaterra, drab and peeling from neglect. Celia imagines her dead husband staring up at the shuttered windows, carrying a late-model electric broom. He studies the ornate balconies like a burglar, gazes through the blue panes of stained glass until he spots her with the Spaniard, naked and sharing a cigarette. She imagines him swinging the broom round and round in a quickening circle, scattering pigeons and beggars, swinging so hard that the air breaks in a low whistle, swinging and swinging, then releasing the broom until it flies high above him, crashing through the window and shattering her past.

  *

  Celia hitchhikes to the Plaza de la Revolución, where El Líder, wearing his customary fatigues, is making a speech. Workers pack the square, cheering his words that echo and collide in midair. Celia makes a decision. Ten years or twenty, whatever she has left, she will devote to El Líder, give herself to his revolution. Now that Jorge is dead, she will volunteer for every project—vaccination campaigns, tutoring, the microbrigades.

  In the back of the plaza, flatbed trucks are accepting volunteers for the fields. “There is no need to worry,” El Líder assures them. “Work for the revolution today and tomorrow will take care of itself.” Celia pulls on a hand stretched before her, its nails blunt and hard as hooves. A bottle of rum passes from mouth to mouth. Celia smooths her housedress then lifts the bottle. The liquor burns in her chest like a hot cloud.

  For the next two weeks, Celia consigns her body to the sugarcane. From the trucks, the acres of cane are green and inviting. But deep in the fields the brownish stalks rise from the earth to more than twice her height, occluding her vision. There are rats everywhere, hollowing the sweetest stalks, and insects too numerous to swat. Celia learns to cut the cane straight across at the base, strip its leaves with her machete, then chop it in even pieces for the gatherers. Despite her age or because of it, Celia advances steadily through the fields, hardening her muscles with every step, every swing. She rips her hands on the tough, woody stalks. The sun browns her skin. Around her, the sugarcane hums.

  One day, a worker slashes a volunteer with a machete. Celia stares as the blood mingles with the sweat of his victim’s chest. “Amateurs!” the machetero shouts so everyone can hear. “Sunday peasants! Go to hell, all of you!” Several men grab the worker from behind and take him from the fields. Oblivious of the tumult, a Creole woman spits out a curse. Celia does not know to whom.

  Celia imagines the cane she cuts being ground in the centrales, and its thick sap collected in vats. The furnaces will transform it to moist, amber crystals. She pictures three-hundred-pound sacks of refined white sugar deep in the hulls of ships. People in Mexico and Russia and Poland will spoon out her sugar for coffee, or to bake in their birthday cakes. And Cuba will grow prosperous. Not the false prosperity of previous years, but a prosperity that those with her on these hot, still mornings can share. Next season the cane will regenerate, a vegetal mystery, and she will return to cut it again. In another seven years, the fields will be burned and replanted.

  In the evenings, the stink of sugarcane coats Celia’s nostrils and throat, sweetening her meat and rice and the cigarettes she smokes. She soaks her feet in balms of herb water, plays cards past midnight, eats oranges under a full moon. She examines her hands daily with pride.

  One dream recurs. A young girl in her Sunday dress and patent shoes selects shells along the shore, filling her limitless pockets. The sea retreats to the horizon, underlining the sky in a dark band of blue. Voices call out to the girl but she does not listen. Then the seas rush over her and she floats underwater with wide-open eyes. The ocean is clear as noon in winter. Bee hummingbirds swim alongside pheasants and cows. A mango sapling grows at her side. The fruits swell and burst crimson and the tree shrivels and dies.

  When Celia returns from the fields, she finds her daughter’s condition has declined. Felicia’s skin appears enameled in pinks like the wallpaper of Old Havana inns. The blue roses of her flannel nightgown adhere to her damp filth. Celia washes her daughter’s hair over the kitchen sink then untangles it with a broken comb. She cannot persuade Felicia to take off her nightgown, to allow light in the tenebrous house.

  “They stole my hair and sold it to the gypsies,” Felicia complains. “The sun burns our imperfections.”

  “What are you talking about?” Celia asks impatiently.

  “Light infiltrates. It’s never safe.”

  “Please, hija, give me your gown to wash.”

  Felicia runs upstairs to her bed and lies with her hands tightly clasped under her breasts.

  The twins complain that they’ve had nothing but ice cream to eat for days, that their mother dances with Ivanito and warns them of the dangers of daylight. Luz accuses Ivanito of repeating their mother’s pretentious phrases, of saying things like “The moon glares with a vivid indifference.”

  “Come here, chiquitico,” Celia coaxes, lifting her grandson to her lap. “I’m sorry I left you. I thought your mother would get better in a day or two.”

  Milagro touches a blister on her grandmother’s palm. Celia displays her hands, marred by cuts and callouses. Her granddaughters explore the scarred terrain.

  “Pack your bathing suits; we’re going to Santa Teresa del Mar.”

  “I won’t go!” Ivanito cries, and runs to bury himself in his mother’s bed.

  “Just for a few days. Your mother must rest,” Celia calls after him. Suddenly she remembers her great-aunt’s hands floating on a white surf of keys, overlapping like gulls in the air. Celia used to play duets with her Tía Alicia, side by side on the piano bench. Neighbors would stop and listen to the music, and occasionally invite themselves in for a cup of tea.

  “You can’t steal him,” Felicia warns her mother, rocking Ivanito beneath the sheets.

  Celia leads the twins away from the house on Palmas Street. The girls do not speak but their thoughts tumble together like gems in the polishing, reaching their hard conclusions. Celia fears their recollections—the smashed chairs that left splinters in their feet, the obscenities that hung like electric insects in the air.

  Their father, Hugo Villaverde, had returned on several occasions. Once, to bring silk scarves and apologies from China. Another time, to blind Felicia for a week with a blow to her eyes. Yet another, to sire Ivanito and leave his syphilis behind.

  Despite this, Luz and Milagro insisted on keeping their father’s name. Even after he left for good. Even after Felicia reverted to using her maiden name. The girls, Celia realized, would never be del Pinos.

  Celia sits in the front seat of the bus with her granddaughters. As they leave Havana, a brisk rain falls, rattling the tin bus. Celia cannot mourn for her husband, she doesn’t know why. She loved him, that she learned once, but the grief still won’t come. What separates her from sorrow, she wonders. Felicia’s delusions? The fortnight in the sugarcane fields? The swelter of the afternoon rains? Had she simply grown too accustomed to Jorge’s absence?

  Already it seems a long time since her husband walked on water in his white summer suit and Panama hat. Much longer still since he’d boarded the plane for New York.

  The rain stops as abruptly as it began. By the time Celia and the twins arrive in Santa Teresa del Mar, the sun is as certain as if the day had just begun.

  Celia examines the withered contents of her refrigerator: three carrots, half a green pepper, a handful of spongy potatoes. She sends the twins to the bodega with an empty can and the last of her monthly coupons
. She wants the fattest chicken they can find, a sack of rice, two onions, six brown eggs, and a refill of lard.

  Memory cannot be confined, Celia realizes, looking out the kitchen window to the sea. It’s slate gray, the color of undeveloped film. Capturing images suddenly seems to her an act of cruelty. It was an atrocity to sell cameras at El Encanto department store, to imprison emotions on squares of glossy paper.

  When her granddaughters return, Celia presses her thumb against the rotting onions, indenting them. She picks the pebbles from the rice and rinses it in the sink. Tufts of feathers sprout from the chicken’s skull, and its feet secrete a sticky liquid. Celia sterilizes the bird over a flame and watches the puckered skin blacken and curl. She remembers her husband’s fastidiousness, his war against germs. How he drove her crazy with his complaints!

  What was it he read to her once? About how, long ago, the New World was attached to Europe and Africa? Yes, and the continents pulled away slowly, painfully after millions of years. The Americas are still inching westward and will eventually collide with Japan. Celia wonders whether Cuba will be left behind, alone in the Caribbean sea with its faulted and folded mountains, its conquests, its memories.

  She finishes chopping the onions and stirs them in a frying pan with a teaspoon of lard. They turn a golden yellow, translucent and sweet.

  Celia’s Letters: 1935–1940

  March 11, 1935

  Mi querido Gustavo,

  In two weeks I will marry Jorge del Pino. He’s a good man and says he loves me. We walk along the beach and he shields me with a parasol. I’ve told him about you, about our meetings in the Hotel Inglaterra. He tells me to forget you.

  I think of our afternoons in those measured shafts of light, that spent light, and I wish I could live underwater. Maybe then my skin would absorb the sea’s consoling silence. I’m a prisoner on this island, Gustavo, and I cannot sleep.

  Yours forever,

  Celia

  April 11, 1935

  Querido Gustavo,

  I’m writing to you from my honeymoon. We’re in Soroa. It hasn’t rained a single day since we’ve been here. Jorge makes loves to me as if he were afraid I might shatter. He kisses my eyes and ears, sealing them from you. He brushes my forehead with moist petals to wipe away memory. His kindnesses make me cry.

  I am still yours,

  Celia

  January n, 1936

  Gustavo,

  I am pregnant.

  Celia

  August 11, 1936

  Querido Gustavo,

  A fat wax grows inside me. It’s looting my veins. I rock like a buoy in the harbor. There’s no relief from the heat. I rinse my dresses and put them on wet to cool off. I hope to die of pneumonia.

  They poison my food and milk but still I swell. The baby lives on venom. Jorge has been away in Oriente for two months. He’s afraid to come home.

  If it’s a boy, I’ll leave him. I’ll sail to Spain, to Granada, to your kiss, Gustavo.

  I love you,

  Celia

  September 11, 1936

  Gustavo,

  The baby is porous. She has no shadow. The earth in its hunger has consumed it. She reads my thoughts, Gustavo. They are transparent.

  December 11, 1936

  G.,

  J. has betrayed me. They’ve hung gold stars in the hallways. There’s a northern tree with metallic leaves that spin in the sun. Malaria feeds the hungry clocks, the feverish hands spin and stop. They flay my skin and hang it to dry. I see it whipping on the line. The food is inedible. They digest their own faces here. How’s the weather there? Send me olives stuffed with anchovies. Thank you.

  C.

  January 11, 1937

  Mi amor,

  The pills they watch me swallow make my thoughts stick like cotton. I lie to the doctors. I tell them my father raped me, that I eat rusted sunsets, scald children in my womb. They burn my skull with procedures. They tell me I’m improving.

  Jorge visits me on Sundays. I tell him to line up the electric brooms and turn them all on at once. He doesn’t laugh. He sits with me on a wrought-iron bench. Nature is at right angles here. No bougainvillea. No heliconia. No flowering cactus burning myths in the desert. He holds my hands and speaks of Lourdes. Others surround us in the sun. Their words are muted as the winds they allow through the netting. It’s a sweet-scented rot.

  I’ve made a friend here, Felicia Gutiérrez. She killed her husband. Doused him with gasoline. Lit a match. She is unrepentant. We’re planning to escape.

  Tu Celia

  February 11, 1937

  Querido Gustavo,

  They killed Felicia. She burned in her bed. They say it was a cigarette but none of the guards will admit to giving her one. Four men carried her ashes and bones. She trailed a white liquid that I could not read. The director wiped it up himself. No one else would.

  I leave tomorrow. Jorge tells me we’ll live by the sea. I must pack. My clothes smell of mud.

  Celia

  November 11, 1938

  Mi Gustavo,

  I’ve named my new baby Felicia. Jorge says I’m dooming her. She’s beautiful and fat with green eyes that fix on me disarmingly. I’ll be a good mother this time. Felicia loves the sea. Her skin is translucent, much like the fish that feed along the reefs. I read her poetry on the porch swing.

  Lourdes is two and a half years old. She walks to the beach on her skinny brown legs. Strangers buy her ice cream and she tells them that I’m dead. Jorge calls her every night when he travels. “When are you coming home, Papi? When are you coming home?” she asks him. On the day he returns, even if he’s not expected until midnight, she wears her frilly party dress and waits for him by the front door.

  Love,

  Celia

  February 11, 1939

  Mi querido Gustavo,

  I get up while it’s still dark to see the fishermen push their boats into the sea. I think of everyone who might be awake with me—insomniacs, thieves, anarchists, women with children who drowned in their baths. They’re my companions. I watch the sun rise, burning its collection of memories, and I draw strength for another day. At dusk I grieve, thinking the earth is dying. I sleep a little.

  Yours always,

  Celia

  July 11, 1940

  Querido Gustavo,

  Last week, Jorge took us on a Sunday drive through Pinar del Rio province. The sight of mountains left me breathless. My vision is so accustomed to a shifting horizon, to the metamorphoses of ocean and clouds, that to see such a mass of rock, immovable against the sky, was astonishing. Nature had seemed more flexible. We drove past fields of sugarcane, rice, pineapples, and tobacco. Acres of coffee trees stretched in all directions.

  We stopped in the capital for lunch. It reminds me of Havana when I was a girl. Hibiscus grew everywhere, as if painted by legions of artists. The pace was slow and there were rambling houses with columned verandas. I thought of Tía Alicia, her hair braided like mine with a blue ribbon, sitting at the piano playing Schumann’s Kinderszenen, her peacock brooch at her throat.

  There were always children in the house who took lessons for a few months or a year or two, and shifted uneasily on the piano bench. They relaxed in her presence, brought her crayon drawings or flowers they had picked from their mothers’ gardens. Tía Alicia would take the canaries from their cage and let the children feed them seeds or grains of rice they’d saved from their lunch.

  I remember Tía Alicia’s coconut cakes, the layers inflated with air. Her hands were always scented with the violet water she combed into my hair. She took me for long walks through the city’s parks and along its boulevards, revealing intriguing histories. She’s the most romantic person I’ve ever known.

  Lourdes and Felicia were quiet most of the day, staring out the window. Felicia usually follows Lourdes around, imitating her sister until Lourdes gets exasperated. But today the two of them hardly said a word, I don’t know why. Jorge coaxed me to try a guayabita del pinar, a
local drink, and I surprised myself by finishing four. The girls shared a plate of pork chops.

  Much love,

  Celia

  September 11, 1940

  Querido Gustavo,

  I’m sorry I didn’t write to you last month but Jorge was in a terrible accident and I had to rush to Holguín with the girls. He crashed his car into a milk truck and broke both arms, his right leg, and four ribs. He was in the hospital for over a month and has splinters of glass in his spine that the doctors can’t remove. Jorge is home now and moves around on crutches but he won’t be able to go back to work for a while. Lourdes refuses to leave his side. I’ve set up a child’s cot for her next to his bed. Felicia cries and wants to play with them but they ignore her.

  Jorge is a good man, Gustavo. It surprised me how my heart jumped when I heard he’d been hurt. I cried when I saw him bandaged in white, his arms taut in midair like a sea gull. His eyes apologized for having disturbed me. Can you imagine? I discovered I loved him at that moment. Not a passion like ours, Gustavo, but love just the same. I think he understands this and is at peace.

  I’d forgotten the poverty of the countryside. From the trains, everything is visible: the bare feet, the crooked backs, the bad teeth. At one station there was a little girl, about six, who wore only a dirty rag that didn’t cover her private parts. She stretched out her hands as the passengers left the train, and in the bustle I saw a man stick his finger in her. I cried out and he hurried away. I called to the girl and lowered our basket of food through the window. She ran off like a limping mongrel, dragging it beside her.