Telex From Cuba

by Rachel Kushner

  Luís Galindez and Pamela vacated the back row, to continue their smooching someplace else. Would the Carringtons send Pamela away for dating a Cuban? Everly didn’t know where there was to send her back to. They were American, but they’d never lived in America. And Mrs. Carrington didn’t seem to care what Pamela did. It was mostly Val who was upset. The romance with Luís was all she talked about now, as if Pamela had betrayed her. Maybe it was like that with twins—they had to share everything, including choice in boyfriends.

  Everyone left the theater but Everly, Stevie, Tico Leál, and the new armed guard at the entrance, who stood stiffly and didn’t watch the film. It boggled her that someone could patiently stand in the rain and let the time pass with nothing to wrap his mind around. But maybe patience, she thought, didn’t mean being unbothered by waiting and boredom, but the opposite: that patient people were exceptionally bothered. Perhaps the guard was able to let his mind bump and drift like a blank white cloud because he’d given up believing that distracting himself was of any use. She suspected that patient people understood the horror of boredom best of all, and thought it was hopeless to pretend there was some way to make it bearable. Which meant patience was actually hopelessness. And impatience, a kind of hope—making the effort to fill time with something, by turning your head to watch the movie, for instance. The guard did not turn to see the film. He confronted his waiting head-on, patient and hopeless, rivulets of water running down the sides of his face.

  “You’re almost fourteen, and it’s time you quit hiding behind this tomboy act and let everyone know you’re a young lady.”

  Stevie was gone, and now it was Everly’s job to be the eldest daughter, the young lady. “I gave her a Seconal and put her on the overnight coach to Havana,” her mother repeated in every phone conversation about Stevie. “It’s for the best.”

  Everly was going to a pool party for K. C. Stites’s fourteenth birthday, and the other kids would be in shorts and pullovers and tennis shoes. Her mother wanted her to wear a dress. Everly didn’t have the heart to explain that it only emphasized their own lower social status to go fancy and formal to a pool party. People with something to prove went fancy, and those with nothing to prove let their kids wear whatever they wanted. Pullovers and shorts. But because it would please her mother, she put on the stiff white kitten-heeled patent leather shoes, which dug into her feet and made them bleed, and carried the matching purse, although she couldn’t think of anything to put in it.

  How can these things let everyone know I’m a young lady, she wondered, if they seem so unlike me? But maybe they were her, she thought, and she just didn’t know it. If she’d never seen a mirror, she wouldn’t recognize herself in one and would have to learn what she looked like. Without a mirror she’d be as blind to herself as the eyes on Mrs. LaDue’s peacocks, which weren’t really eyes, just blue-black blots. Mrs. LaDue treated the peacocks better than she treated Poncho. “Poncho needs discipline,” Mrs. LaDue said. “He’s an unruly child.” Everly doubted that a grown monkey had the character of a child. Poncho had taken to spitting at Mr. LaDue, and now they wanted to get rid of him. No takers yet, despite the four-season wardrobe with accessories—belts, ties, hats, socks, and shoes, even monogrammed handkerchiefs—that Mrs. LaDue was offering complimentary to whomever might be willing to adopt Poncho. Everly put on the dress and kitten heels and hoped they would have the same effect as learning what she looked like in a mirror. Her mother said she looked just darling, that she was starting to fill out and come into her own. Later, after they’d moved back to Tennessee, Everly was elected May Queen and her mother said she wasn’t a bit surprised. But her mother was surprised, which was why she insisted on denying it. She’d always said that redheads were not conventional beauties, but an “acquired taste.” So I’m like aspic, Everly thought.

  She’d had a dream about a woman who walked through a room wearing nothing, just a towel held up to her front. What a lovely way to assert yourself was her dream sentiment, watching the woman stride through the room, her backside bare. When she woke up, it still seemed lovely, even if it was a nonsense dream. Maybe the dreams she had about going to school in her underwear—everyone had them—were not about anxiety, but about wanting to be naked, and in front of everyone.

  The day of K.C.’s party, there was a get-together for the adults as well, at the Pan-American Club. A matinee, the people in Preston called daytime parties. Everly’s father was tired from working all week and didn’t want to go, but her mother said he should do more hobnobbing. And that he should wear a bracer.

  “Dear, I’m not wearing a girdle,” her father said. “It’s ridiculous. Men wearing girdles.”

  “It’s not a girdle,” her mother said. “It’s a bracer.”

  Her mother had ordered it from the Sears in Havana. George Lederer’s reduction diet wasn’t working, so they’d fired Flozilla, whose cooking was too fattening. Before she came to Nicaro, Flozilla had been a cook for Batista’s brother over in Banes. Batista was overweight. You could see his belly when he appeared on television. Marjorie Lederer was convinced that the president’s belly was connected to Flozilla’s cooking and that Flozilla made people fat.

  Everly didn’t miss Flozilla, who had been nice sometimes and mean other times. Like when she told Duffy, who believed her, that the ñáñigos would get them when they were sleeping, and boil them down.

  “Why?” Duffy asked, beginning to panic.

  “To get a powder,” Flozilla said. “Boil you down and extract it. A special powder they need from white children’s bodies.”

  Everly pictured translucent grains, like uncooked rice, in the paper fold of an envelope.

  When Duffy caught a fever, Flozilla said white children got sick because they weren’t hardy. “If you grow up in the bush,” Flozilla said, “eat guava, go barefoot, bathe in the river, you strong. Strong enough to fight off a fever. But you not strong,” she told Duffy, who shivered under a pile of blankets. “You weak. And you sick with a fever.”

  They still hadn’t found the right cook. One of the women who came to interview had good credentials, her mother said, but she was an albino. Everly’s mother said a Negroid albino was the saddest thing in the whole world. Too sad to have in the house, although she’d been pleasant enough. Nothing sadder, her mother said, than a Negroid albino.

  Their laundress had been cooking, filling in until they could hire someone new. But she knew laundry and not cooking and burned everything. Everly had started going to the club after school, filling up on cheese and crackers the bartender gave her. Gouda cheese and saltine crackers, on a plate she’d carry over to the little library in the corner, where she sat in one of the club chairs and looked for the hundredth time at the books on the shelves, all donated by the U.S. government. They were mostly biographies. The Life and Leadership of Rafael Trujillo, President of the Dominican Republic. A painting someone had done of Trujillo decorated the inside cover. Under the image was the mysterious caption “Photograph of His Benefactor by R. R. Martinez.” The Life and Fortune of James D. Dole, Pineapple King. Everly had read it twice. James D. Dole had married Mrs. Belle Dickey of Honolulu and made enormous profits once he figured out how to can pineapple. “After they began canning the fruit,” the author said, “the life of James D. and Mrs. Belle Dole was one long, sweet song.”

  One sweet song. Like canning syrup. How dull, a life that was only one song.

  The servants had built an elaborate sunshade of palm fronds on the patio of the Preston pool. They’d hung Chinese paper lanterns from the sunshade, pink and yellow and baby blue, which bobbed in the wind. One long table was decorated with bunting and streamers, with a place card at each table setting. “You’re right here, dear,” Mrs. Stites said to Everly, patting the seat next to hers, “between me and K.C.” Mrs. Stites leaned close, close enough that Everly could smell her flowery scent. She said she was glad Everly was there to celebrate with them and that it hadn’t been an easy time. With Del gone and ever
ything so—she sighed—unsure. Her eyes welled with tears. “Anyway,” she said, retrieving a handkerchief, smiling weakly and blotting the tears, “I’m so glad you’re here, Everly. And you look lovely. Doesn’t she look lovely, K.C.?”

  K.C. was just sitting down. He looked at Everly, at the white handbag in her lap, and said yes, she sure did look lovely. He said it carefully, like he was speaking to Everly and not to his mother. Everly’s face went hot.

  When the party was over, K.C. insisted on escorting her to the dock. The other Nicaro kids were walking in front of them. They were near the seawall when he stopped her. He said he had something to give her, that it was private and he didn’t want to give it to her in front of the others. They could hear people drifting out of the Pan-American Club, which was right next to where the Nicaro yacht was anchored. Mrs. Billings’s high-pitched voice. “No, really, I mean it. That’s what he said! I swear to you—you can’t make these things up.” K.C. reached into his pocket, retrieved something, and placed it in Everly’s hand. It was smooth and metal, a mechanical part to something. It took her a minute to figure out what it was: a gold faucet handle.

  “From the water closet,” he said, “in Daddy’s Pullman car. I stole it when I was little, on one of our trips to Havana. It might seem like a crazy gift, but I’ve hung on to it all these years. Now they’ve destroyed Daddy’s Pullman car, and it’s all that’s left.”

  He was looking at her, and she wished he wouldn’t. That he would just give her a minute to absorb what was happening.

  “You know that Mother has always liked you, Everly. She thinks you’re something special. Anyway, this little object means a lot to me, and I wanted you to have it.”

  Everly thanked him and put the handle in the purse her mother had wanted her to carry, which now held one thing. K.C. was a golden boy, had all the confidence in the world. Girls were always declaring crushes on him. He was good at sports. Did well in school. His father ran the entire town and yet he wasn’t spoiled, always good-natured and loved to show people around and tell them about the sugar operation and how it was run. “We” and “ours” and “the company,” he’d say, proud of everything. He should have wanted to date a blond tennis star from Ruston Academy in Havana, one of those girls with tan arms and charm bracelets, a jaunty ponytail with a scarf looped around it. The kind of ladylike girl Everly’s mother nagged her to be, and that she wasn’t.

  Something about that day, giving in to the kitten heels, the dress, and the attention from K.C., changed her. She didn’t mind the attention. It didn’t embarrass her the way it would have even the year before, when she’d squealed with horror at Stevie’s suggestion that she go to the movies with Tico Leál’s younger brother. In fact, attention from boys was okay. Nice, even. A redhead was an acquired taste. Not conventionally attractive. She’d been told this her whole life. Maybe it was to her advantage, because it meant she wouldn’t attract boys who wanted conventional.

  If K.C. liked her, there must have been something to like. What about Willy? she wondered. If K.C. saw something, what about Willy? “Thank you K.C,” she imagined herself saying, “but I can’t accept this. Because I’m spoken for.”

  The Americans said the guards in Nicaro, the new guard at the movie theater, the guard patrolling the managers’ row, made them nervous.

  “Thugs,” Mrs. Billings said.

  “You know Batista let some of them out of prison. Murderers and rapists keeping the peace.”

  “Charming. Just charming.”

  “I mean, is this really necessary?”

  Because they’d all complained, there’d been no guard on the boat to Preston that day, and no guard on the boat home.

  As they approached Nicaro, Everly could see people standing along the dock, as if waiting for them.

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Mackey asked.

  Behind the people were cars and jeeps parked at angles. Vehicles were not normally allowed on the dock, unless they were authorized to unload supplies.

  “That looks like our Studebaker!” Everly’s mother said. Dusk was descending and it was difficult to see the color, but it did look like their car, dark green, with the bullet nose, parked next to some sort of tractor with a curious metal structure built onto it, and guns pointing out.

  As the boat got closer, they saw that the people were Cuban rebels. They wore army fatigues and berets, and M-26 armbands. They smiled broadly and waved at the Americans like a curious greeting committee. They did not look scary or menacing, although some of them had guns. They looked like people who were just back from a very long camping trip, dirty and tired but happy. Everly scanned them as the boat pulled up to the dock, hoping to identify some of them from the pictures at the nickel company offices. She looked for D. L. Mazierre. He didn’t seem to be among them, though one did resemble a photo from the offices. He had a soft smile and dark, pretty eyes, his beret cocked sideways. It was Raúl Castro. He smiled and helped Everly out of the boat. He called her “linda,” and retrieved two M-26 armbands from a jeep and gave one to her and one to Duffy.

  A rebel who spoke English explained that the American men would go with them into the mountains but that no one would be harmed. It was simply “procedural,” and there was no reason for alarm. They thanked the Americans for being so cooperative and apologized for having to take the men, promising again, as they directed them at gunpoint into the vehicles, that no harm would come to them. Everly’s father was led into the backseat of his own car, which a rebel started by opening the hood and touching two wires together. Her mother watched, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I really think they mean it,” Everly said, trying to console her. “Mean what?” “That they won’t hurt them.”

  After they’d left, Mrs. Billings screamed that it was an outrage. Ambassador Smith would be equally outraged, and she was going to telephone him immediately. Two days later, someone from the ambassador’s office finally contacted her and said the ambassador didn’t see what the wives in Nicaro wanted him to do. What could he do? Mrs. Carrington called the consul general in Santiago, whom she’d known from the U.S. embassy in La Paz, Bolivia. He arranged a mission up to the camp, to negotiate with the rebels. Eventually Fidel Castro called for the Americans’ release.

  Her father said he’d enjoyed himself immensely during his three weeks in the mountains. They were good people, fighting for a reasonable cause, and had treated him well. Too well, he said, patting his belly. He and the other Americans had eaten delicious food that the local guajiros brought into the camp every day. Three meals a day, without fail. Roast pig. Fried plantains. Arroz con pollo. Picadillo. Coconut cakes. All washed down with prú, a homemade herb drink, her father explained. Or sometimes beer, which the rebels went to great lengths to acquire for them, and then cleverly kept cold in a stream.

  The guajiros up there were clearly rooting for the Castro boys, her father said, and you couldn’t help but sympathize. He’d slept on a mattress and eaten like a king and dipped his feet in the cool stream where they kept the beer supply. It was excessive and terrible, he said, what Batista’s people had gone and done in Levisa. The Rural Guard burned it to a smoldering, flattened wasteland as retribution. Thousands of people were homeless. Others, who hadn’t been able to escape, were killed in the fire. Retribution for what? her father asked, pointing out that even Mr. Mackey had a ball, though Mackey would never admit it. Too busy insisting that Raúl was practicing Marxism out of books. Mr. Mackey drafted letters to the State Department, warning them that the rebels in the hills were Communists. No one, Mr. Mackey complained, seemed interested. The other Americans, including Everly’s father, mooned around talking about Raúl’s future wedding to his aide-de-camp, Vilma Espín, which they’d all been invited to attend, to be held in Santiago sometime after the triumph. “You’re hoping for a revolution, so you can go to a wedding?” Marjorie Lederer asked him. The question seemed to stump George Lederer, who shrugged and said nothing.

  Willy was living in a navy barr
acks now, on a special ship sent to house the servants and mine employees after Levisa burned. He told Everly that no one got on the ship without proper ID. Guards roamed the bunks all night long with flashlights, waking people up and shining lights in their faces, demanding to see their papers. He said the guards barely let you close your eyes in there, and when he finally did manage to drift off, rats nibbled on his toes.

  George Lederer had gotten Willy a job in the nickel plant. He said Willy was a quick study and that he could learn metallurgy. Willy had pointed out that the locks on the company boats got ruined because they were brass on the outside and iron on the inside. Her father told the story over and over, marveling that Willy knew something about metal. Her father wanted to train Willy as a technician, said he was trustworthy and no troublemaker. But he got resistance, as he put it, “from on high.” Willy was given a job, but Mr. Mackey arranged for him to work in the furnace room, where he’d get zero technical training, her father said sadly. “They’ll promote you eventually,” he told Willy, “I promise.” On the weekends, Willy still came to work for the Lederers. “Why are you up so early? It’s Saturday,” Willy asked Everly. She wanted to be near him every hour he was there.

  Willy said the furnace room was hot, very hot. But he was thankful to go to the plant. It was safer to be near the Americans. “Safer than what?” she asked. “Than being out and about,” he said, “where you might find trouble.” “You mean like with rebels?” “I don’t know anything about that,” he said, not looking at her. She suspected he was lying. Why would he lie? Because she was an American, and worse, the daughter of a nickel plant manager who didn’t protest his assignment to the furnace room. She wished Willy hadn’t lied. She wanted him to confide in her. It was selfish but she couldn’t help it, just as she couldn’t help disliking the idea of him dancing at the Club Maceo, Willy off, and working for no one but Willy.