Tomorrow They Will Kiss

by Eduardo Santiago

  And now I saw her.

  Oh, she was much too much.

  I tapped Imperio on the shoulder. “There she is.”

  “Qué te parece? What do you think?”

  Imperio smiled, a tight- lipped grimace, no teeth. Together we kept an eye on her.

  Graciela had somehow managed to be right next to Ernesto, where she remained all the way to the cemetery. Imperio and I saw when she pretended to trip on a rock and he took her by the elbow. We were there when they were lowering the coffin and tears brimmed her eyes, tears that flowed as clean and clear as if from a mountain spring (Graciela, out of respect, had not worn a speck of makeup that day).

  I watched as Ernesto reached into his breast pocket and offered her a handkerchief, which she used to daintily dab her cheeks.

  “A handkerchief that Josefa washed, ironed, and perfumed, just before she died,” Imperio said out of the side of her mouth.

  I barely heard what else she said because I had noticed that the stubborn and thoughtless violinist had followed us to the cemetery and had started to play again. Couldn’t he hear the wails and sobs already crowding the graveyard? Did he have to make it worse with his mournful music?

  It was clearly having the same effect on Imperio.

  “I can’t stand it any longer,” she said, and walked right up to him. He saw her coming, and a defiant smile spread across his face.

  “You have to stop,” she said, very respectfully, or so I thought. (Although from the furor that it caused later, one would think she had attacked the man with a hammer.) He refused. He continued to wring those depressing sounds out of his instrument. Personally I was shocked at his insensitivity. But scrawny, old, and hunched over with arthritis, he was no match for Imperio.

  So she grabbed—I mean, took—the violin from him and stuffed it—placed it—very carefully in its case. She held on to it for him until the body was safely in the ground. Then, and only then, did she return it to him. That was all she did. Don’t think for a minute that I didn’t hear about it from everyone I ran into for the next few days. I thought most everyone had been relieved when that dreadful music stopped, and everyone was, except those who always had their tongues wagging, those who were always ready to start problems. In Palmagria, there was never a shortage of those.

  *

  IMAGÍNATE. POOR JOSEFA was barely cold in her grave when Ernesto started to visit Graciela at her parents’ house. The first time we thought nothing of it. But then we saw him go there again and again—sometimes with flowers, sometimes with a greasy bag of churros.

  “That can only mean one thing,” Imperio said.

  I simply nodded. That first time, we just happened to be passing by when we saw him at her door. In short sleeves, like he was visiting relatives. After that we made it a point to walk by after dinner, just to satisfy ourselves that what we thought was happening really was.

  “Por Dios, by the time a man comes to your house with churros,” Imperio said, “he’s already had plenty of time and encouragement to take that step, if you know what I mean.”

  Oh, I knew just what she meant. I did not need to be there to know exactly what was going on in the living room. I knew that Graciela and Ernesto would be on the sofa, holding hands. That Graciela had forced her poor mother into the kitchen to brew café and arrange the deep- fried pastries on a fancy plate, and that her father was sitting on an armchair opposite the couple, talking business and politics—man to man—with Ernesto. Making a connection, under Graciela’s watchful eye, adopting him as his own son against his better judgment. She was controlling everything. Of course she was!

  Ernesto de la Cruz was a catch. Even if he was a widower, which usually put a black mark on a man. In other parts of the country, it may have been different, but in Palmagria and the rest of our province, a widower was expected to remain that way for the rest of his life, because no self- respecting woman, no matter how desperate, was going to get close to a man with the stench of death still clinging to him. Imagínate! Everyone knew that in his house still hung the picture of the dearly departed wife. That white flowers had to be placed under it. And that at Christmas, Easter, on her birthday, on her saint’s day, and on the anniversary of their wedding and of her death, they would have to make the trip back to the cemetery, back to her grave, to offer flowers and beg forgiveness. Everyone knew that if the spirit of the deceased didn’t approve of the new wife, there would be trouble—sometimes manifested by apparitions, warnings, or plain bad luck.

  Graciela’s parents were superstitious and terrified. But Graciela ruled over them. It was obvious to me that they had received a good talking to. Clearly Graciela convinced them that Ernesto was an exception, that he might very well be her last chance at a good marriage. So her poor parents had to go through the motions and reluctantly followed the rules of courtship.

  “It’s sort of like a shotgun wedding,” Imperio said, “except in this case it’s the bride who is holding the shotgun.”

  “It is much too much,” I said. “The situation verges on blasphemy.”

  “Por Dios,” Imperio said. “Josefa’s mother is still in full mourning. Graciela’s parents can’t look their neighbors in the eye.”

  But we knew there was nothing anyone could do. Graciela had always intimidated her parents. Unheard of in Palmagria, where parents held the right to govern their grown children, and their children’s children, until death and often beyond.

  How Ernesto went from quiet, sedate Josefa to crazy Graciela is one of the great mysteries of Palmagria. There are many stories about how Graciela managed to snag Ernesto. Some said she sat in his class day after day without bloomers. Imagínate! Some people will say anything. Once I got over the shock, it was not hard for me to figure it out. Graciela was no mystery to me. She was so transparent it was almost indecent. The answer was simple. She wasn’t getting any younger. Most of the men in our age group were spoken for, and Graciela’s desperation was starting to show. It got so we were uncomfortable when our husbands were around her. So even though the union of Ernesto and Graciela was not one we approved of, not even a little, we were almost relieved.

  From the start, there was trouble.

  I remember that wedding very well. Not because of the wedding itself, but because of the horrible event that took place on the very same day.

  *

  IMAGÍNATE! THE WEDDING WAS HELD at the exact same church where Josefa’s funeral had taken place just a few short months before. There was a smaller, less ornamental chapel in Palmagria, and certainly the wedding of a widower did not call for such a big to- do, but Graciela insisted on the big church and Graciela got it. Fortunately she had the good sense to settle for just the wedding ceremony and not the endless Latin mass, so the whole ordeal was relatively brief.

  Immediately after the chaste kiss that I truly hoped would unite them for life, with a sigh of resignation, we stood up to leave.

  “Gracias a Dios,” Imperio said with a roll of her eyes as we filed out of the church. “It’s finally over.”

  Arroz Blanco, a local lunatic believed to bring good luck to brides, was standing just outside the church, and Graciela, in one of her typically false and exaggerated gestures, walked out of the church (to a halfhearted showering of good wishes) and handed her wedding bouquet to Arroz Blanco.

  Arroz Blanco took the flowers greedily, her demented eyes like two spinning marbles. Graciela continued on, walking proudly, smiling and waving as if she had just set a great example for us all. As if to say, “Look at me! Look at how lovely and generous I am to the less fortunate. Why, I’ve grown up to be just like Pilar in the poem. I would give her my pink shoes too, if I had any.”

  Graciela did not see what Imperio and I saw. As soon as Graciela had moved on, Arroz Blanco promptly started to eat the bouquet, as if she were a goat.

  We looked at each other with tears in our eyes. Imperio was the first to go, and I’m afraid I didn’t hold back much longer. I felt terrible, but how could we n
ot laugh? The sight of that poor, demented creature eating Graciela’s wedding bouquet like it was a salad was much too much. That was bad enough, but the last thing Graciela needed was the sad spectacle that was taking place in the tenement next to her house.

  “It’s a bad omen when your own parents won’t attend your wedding,” Imperio was saying as we walked from the church to Graciela’s house after the wedding. We were strolling leisurely, taking our time. The afternoon sun was mild, the sky was a beautiful, brilliant blue. The only thing that would have made it a more perfect day for a wedding would have been a quick, thick rain shower. It means good luck. But the only black cloud that day was Graciela’s parents’ refusal to attend the wedding.

  “Graciela said they were not feeling well.”

  “Both of them?” Imperio asked. “I don’t believe it. Do you? Cuca Soto told me that this morning she heard shouts coming from their house.”

  “They have to know what a slap in the face this is,” I said. “Their only daughter.”

  “Por Dios, she’s their only anything,” Imperio said, picking up the pace. “The father of Azucena Martínez got out of his deathbed just so he could walk her down the aisle, then he went home and died. Remember?”

  Imperio was getting so worked up that I could hardly keep up with her. The shoes I had bought just for the wedding were killing me. I knew Salud would not approve, so I didn’t complain. How would that look? After all, I am the chiropodist’s wife.

  As we turned the corner, I was shocked by the staggering number of people standing outside Graciela’s house. For a split second I felt the stirrings of jealousy, like a subtle altering of my pulse, that so many people had come to wish her well on her wedding day. Surprising, because when a girl marries late in life—Graciela was already twenty-two—or marries a widower, the celebration is played down. Rather than a big party, there is more of a wake, a polite little brindis, a toast, just the immediate members of the family and one or two of the bride’s and the groom’s closer friends. Cake is served, champagne is poured, someone says a few words, and everyone goes home. No music, no dancing.

  So the excitement was completely unexpected.

  “It’s that type of neighborhood,” Imperio said, and stopped to survey the pushing, sweating crowd. “Poor people are all very close and in each other’s business all the time.”

  But we soon discovered the cause of the commotion was not Graciela’s wedding. It was something even more horrendous.

  First I noticed the ambulance, and I said, “Oh, something horrible has happened to Graciela’s father.”

  “Maybe he really was too sick to attend,” Imperio said as she slowed down to a stop.

  Then we saw both her parents looking through the window, their faces so pale they looked like two wax figures, but both very much alive.

  And then the ugly story emerged from the depth of the solar.

  “Drowned . . .” was all I heard at first; like a whisper out of a nightmare.

  “. . . kill their own children . . .” someone else was saying as I passed by. I wanted to get closer to where Graciela was.

  “. . . the mother, I’ll stake my money on it . . .” another finished, callously. How could he know? I wondered. Why is it always the mother?

  Buzz, buzz, buzz. Everyone whispered at once. It was like walking through a beehive. Imperio, who’s smaller and faster, disappeared from my side and returned a moment later with the news.

  “Dios mío,” she said, both hands on her cheeks. “Someone in the solar drowned a newborn baby in one of the outhouse latrines. And the military police are going from hut to hut, inspecting all the women to see who looks like she might have just delivered.”

  I shuddered to think of the humiliation those women must be suffering, to have to get so intimate with a sweaty, insensitive policeman. It was much too much.

  The crowd was getting thicker, louder, and smellier by the minute as word spread through to other neighborhoods. People rushed in as if someone was handing out free money. I had to dig the heels of my new shoes into the ground to keep from being swept into the alley by the gawking, curious mob.

  I managed my way closer, to get a sidelong glance. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of Graciela, in her white dress and veil. She zigzagged through the crowd, pushing people aside, trying to make it to her front door. It was at that moment that I heard a collective groan, as if the crowd had gotten a whiff of something vile. It erupted like a wave, starting at the front and working its way to the rear (by now there were people all the way round the block). At that moment, Graciela stopped and turned quickly, looking like a trapped, frightened animal as she came face- to- face with Pepe Medina Ynclán, a young man we had known all our lives. He’d been in our class at school. One of the best- looking men in Palmagria. But we didn’t have much to do with him since he’d joined Batista’s secret police, which was no secret at all. People like that, no matter how attractive, it was better to keep at a distance.

  Now Pepe’s handsome face was pale, his eyes red with tears, his nose running. The fluids met at his chin and dripped onto a small bundle wrapped in the dirty pink blanket he was holding close to his chest. The people around me could not stop commenting and speculating.

  “He rescued the baby,” someone said.

  “He didn’t rescue it, he pulled it out of the latrine,” someone else countered.

  “What a nasty job.”

  “That baby is dead.”

  “What sort of mother . . . ?”

  I kept my eye on Graciela. Her white dress, in the midst of the dirty crowd, seemed to capture all the sunlight and reflect it back. Those closer to her moved back, as if scorched by its glow. Her first reaction was to send a hand to her mouth, as if to cover a gasp. Instead she made the sign of the cross slowly, her eyes locked with Pepe’s. Then she stepped aside, allowing him to continue on to the waiting ambulance. Graciela gathered her white skirt and ran up the three steps to her house. Before she entered she took a final look back, as if searching down from a great height for someone in the crowd. Ernesto? Then her white veil swung back around and slowly, without a sound, the door closed behind her.

  Seconds later Ernesto, in his shiny brown suit, knocked lightly at her door. It opened just wide enough to let him in. It was like a moment slowed down in time as the crack of darkness inside the house opened wider, just wide enough to swallow him. Then, quickly, it closed again. Can you imagine a more horrendous wedding reception? It was talked about for weeks.

  Imagínate. But that was not to be the most dramatic episode in Graciela’s life. Oh no. The woman we see every day in Leticia’s yellow van, the one who rides with the rest of us decent ladies, her knees demurely pressed together, the one who consoles Berta when she is in too much pain to walk, the one who immediately forgives Raquel whenever she babbles on about her husband and, with little regard for our feelings, insists on reminding us of how horrible everything is back in Cuba—she may seem like one of the girls now, but it wasn’t always like that.

  chapter three

  Imperio

  Some of the girls in the factory say that I have ice water in my veins. That I don’t have feelings. That there’s a calculator where my heart ought to be. A calculator! I shit on them. Por Dios! I consider myself practical, sensible, and realistic. That’s the way I am, and if you don’t like it, don’t come around. Don’t come crying to me.

  “Stop rubbing your damn legs and whimpering,” I said to Berta one morning after she kept us waiting fifteen minutes. “If you’re as sick as you say you are, go see a doctor.” Graciela looked at me like I had just slapped the old woman across the face. But how much is a person expected to take? How much? Maybe I see things much more clearly than others. If you ask me a question, if you say to me, “Imperio, what do you think of such and such?” I’ll tell you the truth. My truth. If Berta’s looking for someone to put an umbrella into the bitter cocktail that is her life, she can go to someone else. I don’t make ugly things pretty. I don
’t put sugar in my coffee, I don’t beat around the bush, but I do expect her to be ready when the van arrives and to not take forever getting in and out. For me a situation is either black or white. And that’s the way I like it. But Graciela defends her. Defends her! Por Dios! Graciela has never been reasonable. Not now in Union City, and not back in Palmagria. She has always let her heart, and not her brain, make all the decisions. She sees herself as romantic, soft, and caring. An innocent. Innocent my ass. I think she’s an idiot. Listen, if you’re stupid enough to let your heart rule your life, then heartache is sure to follow. Graciela should have known better, particularly in Palmagria.

  There’s no point describing the beaches and the palm trees and the sunsets. You go to any tropical island and you’re going to find just that. So what?

  Palmagria was a very small town that followed very specific rules. If you grew up there, as Graciela did, you knew that from the cradle. If you came to visit, you learned soon enough. Usually the hard way. There was no gray in Palmagria, and the rules were tougher on women. I’m not saying that was good or bad; it was the way it was. Girls who couldn’t live by those rules moved to La Habana. It was only a few hours away by bus, but as far as the people of Palmagria were concerned, it was on another continent.

  In La Habana there were no rules. People did what they wished without worrying about what others thought. In La Habana women could wear two- piece bathing suits at the beach, live in their own apartments, dye their hair different colors, have love affairs with married men, or black men, even other women if they wished. But they couldn’t do such things in Palmagria.

  Por Dios! If a woman moved to La Habana for some other reasons, to further her education or just to enjoy a different way of life, people back in Palmagria still whispered that she went away to be a lesbiana or a prostituta. That’s why the very few who left, and I can count them on one hand, never returned, not even for visits.

  Graciela should have left as soon as she could and never come back. She never fit in. She had different ideas, and the more she tried to live like the rest of us, the crazier she got.