Imperio had been a classmate from the first grade. Caridad had attended that same school, but back then we never talked. Caridad was like a little pampered Pekingese. Her mother brought her to school every morning in little starched dresses and perfect patent- leather shoes, and dashed her home as soon as the first bell rang. Off she went to ballet or piano lessons.
I met her when I was fourteen or so, through Imperio, and the three of us became friends, sort of. There was always something about Caridad that kept me at arm’s length. She was warm, kind, and well mannered, but it was as if she’d gone to the Catalog of Decency and chosen how she wanted to represent herself. Even as a young girl she was like a crowned nun, very pious and serene, until you noticed how she carried her head. It was somewhat easier to be friends with Imperio, as irritating as she could be, and in spite of that horrible man she married. At least you always knew what you were getting.
After they both left Palmagria for this enormous country, I thought I would never see either one of them again. And that would have been just fine with me. But life had other plans.
chapter five
Caridad
Imagínate!
It all started when poor Berta fell. One moment she’s standing across from me working, and the next she’s sprawled out on the concrete floor of the factory. She fell slowly, as if she was trying to lie down on a bed and someone had pushed the bed away. I was so embarrassed. If poor Berta wasn’t feeling well, why didn’t she just excuse herself? Naturally Graciela, who was working next to Berta, went into hysterics.
“Berta! Berta!” she screamed in that overly dramatic manner that makes me shudder. I could feel the Americans watching us.
Graciela was kneeling over her, and the conveyor belt was still going. Berta’s and Graciela’s pieces were still coming.
“Emergencia!” Leticia shouted. But no one came to slow down the belt, doll parts were piling up. So the rest of us had to move faster to pick up the slack, not just for Berta but for Graciela as well.
A few moments later, Mr. O’Reilly came running out of his office, and between him and Graciela they half carried, half walked Berta to his office. He didn’t slow down the belt.
The doll parts were coming fast. Imperio just started picking them up and setting them aside.
“They can deal with these when they return,” Imperio said. “Maybe Leticia considers this an emergency, but I think of it as an unscheduled coffee break.”
I was working so fast I barely heard what Imperio was saying, but not so fast that I didn’t see what was going on, because from where I stood I could see into Mr. O’Reilly’s office, which was almost all glass. I saw it all as clearly as if I’d been using binoculars.
He pulled out his desk chair and they got Berta into it. Poor Berta’s face was pale and slack, her tongue was practically hanging out. Mr. O’Reilly was kneeling in front of her, fanning her with a paperback book and saying something.
Graciela was standing between the two of them but then leaned forward so that her breasts were practically in his face.
I could see Berta’s mouth moving, so she was saying something, which meant she was all right. I sighed with relief and tried to set my sights back to my work. But then I saw Mr. O’Reilly get up and walk to the water fountain. He returned with not one but two paper cups of water.
Berta sipped at her water and started to sit up. Graciela accepted her cup of water and held it, her eyes locked with Mr. O’Reilly’s like she was at a cocktail party. She took a sip and smiled, and I think they forgot poor Berta was even in the room.
I’m not one to judge, but it seemed to me that after that little incident, Mr. O’Reilly came around much more often. Instead of just walking by and saying, “Buenos días,” he now stopped for a moment and stood right between Berta and Graciela. And she just continued working as if she wasn’t aware that he was standing there. But that’s her strategy. Graciela has always played a good game.
Even during those awful days back in Palmagria when the rumor had almost become a shout, her hand was warm, her grip was firm, and her brushstrokes were as precise as ever. I sat across from her, my hand in hers, and searched her eyes while she lacquered my nails, but her eyes gave away nothing. If she’d heard what people were saying, she never let on. I remember that Ernesto came home while we were all still there and she offered him her cheek to be kissed, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
Imagínate! Ernesto must have been aware of the stories circulating behind his back about Graciela and Pepe Medina Ynclán. It’s not as if Palmagria was a town known for its restraint. Imperio and I decided that because Ernesto was not a man given to hysteria, he thought he could just wait it out. And then, in his own time, he would quietly dissolve his marriage without scandal. Like a teaspoon of sugar in a glass of warm water, it would simply vanish and leave only clarity and sweetness behind.
But Imperio’s husband, Mario, who, sadly, often found courage in alcohol, finally told him what no one dared to say. He did it to his face and in front of everyone.
It happened while Ernesto was playing dominos outside the grocery store. He had been playing the same game with the same five men every Sunday for fifteen years. Mario walked by and saw Ernesto calmly involved in a game while the town talked about Graciela and seethed with shame for him. He stood watching for a moment, swaying from side to side, then stepped up and poked a finger into Ernesto’s chest.
“Ernesto,” he said in that overfamiliar way Mario took on when he’d been drinking. “Do something about the situation, before the rest of the women in this town start to think they can do the same as your wife and get away with it.”
The other men, who loved Ernesto like a brother, just looked down at their domino tiles. No one jumped up to defend him. No one told Mario to get lost. In fact they seemed grateful that Mario, in his drunken stupor, had done the dirty job that everyone at that table was dreading. They had all wanted to say something to him, but how do you express something like that to the most educated and honored man in town without tearing his heart out? Even Dr. Celedonio, who had been Ernesto’s friend since they were boys and had delivered both his children, did not lift a finger or even raise his voice to defend him.
Mario moved on down the dark and empty sidewalk, weaving and stumbling his way home, and Ernesto was left with the image of his wet lips spitting out words like bullets.
The next morning, as soon as I heard what had happened, I ran to Imperio’s house. Mario hardly remembered the incident at all. But just the same, Imperio had decided to send him away for a while, to a cousin’s in Pilón. She frantically packed a bag for him while he showered.
“Por Dios,” she said. “He felt terrible about the whole thing once I told him what he’d done. He wanted to go and apologize to Ernesto. But I told him he’d already done enough.”
“Ernesto must have felt so alone last night,” I said. My heart ached for him.
The rumor of the encounter between Ernesto and Mario grew louder and went farther, faster and faster, until it was on everybody’s lips. The town was abuzz with gossip. It was all they could talk about. I could hear it as I walked down the street, whether I wanted to or not.
“Pepe neither confirms nor denies it,” someone said.
“Pepe’s become too important to be pushed around,” from another.
“Rumors become fact if no one contradicts them,” it continued.
“If no one steps up and offers a different story it must be true.”
“The whole thing stinks of weakness and no cojones.”
“It sets a bad example.”
“I told my Nena, if I ever catch her, she’s as good as dead. And she’s taking the kids with her.”
“If it were me, I’d cut her chocha.”
Sadly people started to look at Ernesto with anger. For the whole of the next day, Graciela was nowhere to be seen. Her house became like a tourist attraction. People walked past it to gawk, even if it took them blocks out
of their way. But neither she nor her children were seen. The doors and windows remained closed. Imperio and I stood across the street, unsure of what to do.
“What if something terrible has happened in there?” I said.
“Well,” Imperio said, her eyes on the closed windows, “it would not be the first time that an unfaithful wife in Palmagria found herself at the pointy end of a kitchen knife. Por Dios, before the Revolution, any other man in this town would have handled this situation with a swift and simple action. He would have confronted the man who brought shame on the mother of his children and shot him dead.”
“Ruining many lives in the process,” I said. “Most of all his own.”
“El honor es el honor,” Imperio said. “What do we have if we don’t have our honor?”
As we walked away, I thought that any other man would also have hunted Mario down and cut his throat for speaking in front of others what was, in all honesty, none of his business. I was sure Imperio had had the same thought, so there was no need to mention it. I felt just awful for Imperio.
Fortunately Ernesto was not the type to take someone’s life with his own hands. And after the Revolution he had another choice.
The day after his much discussed encounter with Mario, Ernesto went to the courthouse and filled out countless complicated legal forms requesting an exit visa to the United States.
“Only to discover,” Silvia, a clerk at the courthouse told us, “that a married man is under no circumstances allowed to leave the country without his children.”
That was news to me. There was still so much we didn’t know. The constitution was being rewritten daily. Something that was legal one day was illegal the next. And sometimes certain things would become legal again all of a sudden, and so on. But what Silvia said was true and would remain so.
“The Revolution is not about to take on a traitor’s unwanted family,” Silvia explained to me patiently, as if this made perfect sense to her and should to all others.
*
AFTER A TIME ALL FLIGHTS from Cuba to the United States were canceled and people became frantic to reach the United States any way they could, through Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, even Spain. They were like rats jumping off a sinking ship. In Palmagria, for those who dared to fill out an application to emigrate, there were very specific steps to follow, which was good in a country where everything had been turned upside down. It was also very public.
The first thing a family had to do was request an exit visa. That included complicated paperwork that needed to be overseen by a lawyer or at least a notary public. This would be followed by a thorough inventory of all their possessions.
Right after her inventory, my friend Cuca Soto had been so nervous that we took her to Graciela’s to get her nails done, hoping it would calm her down. But her hand was shaking so much that Imperio had to go first. Cuca sat in a chair far from any door or window to the street.
“When I first went in to file, they treated me like I was trash,” she said. “The immigration officials looked at me—and all the others in line—as if we were the worst people in the world. They made it seem like leaving the country was the same as abandoning a baby at the church. They didn’t try to talk me out of it, but I could feel it in my bones that from that moment on, I was despicable in their eyes.”
As soon as the application was filed, three military guards showed up at her doorstep with a pad in carbon triplicate.
“They took the whole day to count and write down every piece of silverware, every ashtray, every cup and saucer, every item of clothing. All of our shoes,” she said.
“Some people smuggle as much as they can out of the house before filing their application,” Imperio said.
“Yes,” Cuca said, “but if they get caught they void everything. I couldn’t risk that.”
Even houses with children, where items are always breaking or disappearing, had to account for everything before they were allowed to leave. The process was not just time- consuming but humiliating too.
Poor Cuca Soto, a common housewife who’d never had anything to do with the military before and had never expected to, walked around nervously opening and closing drawers for men in big black boots and olive green uniforms, men she had never seen before. She showed them her closets and cupboards, let them look through her most private belongings.
“Halfway through the day,” Cuca said, “they wanted almuerzo, so I had to treat them to food as if they were guests. They sat at my dining room table, eating and chatting like they were friends of mine doing me a favor.”
Once they were gone with their long list, Cuca would spend the next few months—she was lucky, others spent years—worrying and wondering what would happen if something went missing on the day the visa finally arrived. Because everyone knew that everything on the list had to be accounted for before they could leave the country. Once their possessions had been inventoried, they belonged to the state, and heaven help anyone who tried to sell or give anything away.
Even Graciela, whose head was always in the clouds, stopped what she was doing and paid attention. Her little brush stopped in midair and dripped onto the tabletop.
We had already heard horror stories about families whose visa had been denied because the exit inventory did not match the original. I had seen desperate people running around the neighborhood begging and borrowing items from friends to replace lost or broken ones.
“It’s a blatant invasion of our privacy,” Imperio said over and over, while Graciela quietly clipped her cuticles. “Por Dios, why doesn’t someone stand up to them?”
“Some people complained,” Cuca said. “But their paperwork disappeared, and now they’re stuck and outcast, neither here nor there. I’m keeping my mouth shut and my bags packed.”
The people whose paperwork “disappeared” were the first people to take one- way midnight boat rides. Before long, everyone stopped complaining. Just like Cuca said. You filed for your exit visa and kept very, very quiet.
I agreed with Imperio. It was an invasion of privacy. As soon as those military guards showed up at someone’s front door, all their neighbors immediately knew that that family was planning to leave the country, and from then on they became, depending on who you talked to, “one of us” or “one of them.”
The adults in the family lost their jobs, and the vultures starting circling their house. Admitting that you wanted to go into exile was the same as admitting that you were a traitor to the Revolution. You were excommunicated from your country. No longer a Cuban citizen, you were more like a slimy worm inching toward hell. You waited for that visa and tried to survive as best as you could.
Cuca was understandably terrified. It could take years for the visa to arrive. During this time, it was almost guaranteed that her money would run out completely. That she would go into a severe panic every time one of the kids accidentally broke a dish that had been inventoried. That the kids would suffer insults and physical violence at school and everywhere they went.
In Palmagria, when the visa finally came, it was in the form of a telegram. Not brought by the same mailman who always delivered telegrams, letters, and packages, but by a special messenger appointed by the state. In Palmagria, this man was Pepe Medina Ynclán, who had been a nobody but had somehow managed to get promoted after the Revolution.
“I wonder how many ‘comrades’ he stabbed in the back to make that jump,” Imperio said.
I couldn’t begin to imagine.
*
PEPE MEDINA YNCLÁN SAILED AROUND PALMAGRIA on an old black bicycle with a worn leather sack attached to the handlebars. He was the most detested and the most desired man in town. It didn’t hurt that he had beautiful green eyes that ate you up when he looked at you. In a country of brown- eyed men, green eyes—or the even rarer blue—were considered a delicacy. Pepe was handsome, single, and rabidly committed to the Revolution. Like so many of the young men in our town, Pepe had gone up to the mountains to fight. It was completely unexpected, b
ecause when he was younger he never showed any heroic tendencies. If he did, I never saw them. He hadn’t been a particularly brilliant student or athlete, and after we all finished school, he didn’t find a profession that suited him. He was at every dance, or loitering outside of a bar, whistling at girls. Something happened up there in those mountains, because when he returned he was much more of a man. Clearly there had been a transformation, but the real difference between Pepe and those other young men from Palmagria who went up to the mountains is that he managed to come back alive.
Now Pepe, with his bright eyes and powerful job, was fast becoming the most famous man in town. Imagínate! Of all the men in Palmagria, this is the one Graciela decided to have her scandalous affair with.
“How did Graciela manage to have romantic relations with Pepe under our very noses? Our noses!” Imperio asked over and over. It seemed impossible. Insane. But the rumor was too powerful, and there was no use denying it. No one knew who started it, who first saw them together, how it happened, but once people started talking, there was no way to stop them. The rumor grew and grew, passed from lip to ear until it was all anyone could talk about. It was very sad.
“There we sat week after week,” Imperio said, “our hands in hers, our trust in her, our friendship growing, or so we thought. She unforgivably fooled us all.”
Now everyone in Palmagria, and as far away as Palmas Altas, Palma Soriano, Las Palmas, knew about their forbidden romance as sure as if Pepe himself had delivered a telegram to each house in town divulging the information, confirming it in writing. Looking back, no one really remembered ever seeing them together or seeing his bicycle parked outside her house. When was Graciela ever alone? Either she was with her kids or we were there getting our nails done. Or just visiting. It was the perfect place to spend an afternoon. When did it happen? How?
Tomorrow They Will Kiss Page 8