To ease the problem, Marco gave him a bicycle horn, which Papo kept by his side at all times. Whenever he needed something, a glass of water, his medicine, or to change the channel on the television, he honked the horn repeatedly. I found it funny, sad, and horrifying all at the same time. He kept Marinela hopping with that horn.
One day Manolito borrowed the horn while Papo napped, and was playing with it, running around outside honking the horn, the way any child would.
I was outside chatting with one of the other Cuban neighbors when I heard her. I rushed in to see what was the matter.
I found Marinela screaming at Manolito. You’d think he had committed a horrendous crime. She was about to hit him, but I walked in just in time. How she felt about me was never more clear than when I grabbed her raised hand and stopped her cold.
“Deja eso,” I said, turning her own words on her. I took my child outside where she couldn’t touch him.
I tried talking to Ernesto about the situation. His face went slack, as if he was being presented with circumstances he simply couldn’t comprehend.
“How could you be so ungrateful?” he asked slowly and evenly. “I have put up with more from you than anyone could ever imagine,” he said, beads of perspiration erupting all over his forehead.
The fires of hell came unleashed. Everything he had kept bottled up inside came pouring out.
“You have deceived me, betrayed me, ridiculed me, ruined my life, my career. It’s because of you that I had to leave my country, it’s because of you that I now have to beg for a dishwashing job in a foreign country. You were never my wife. You put a stink on that word, on the memory of Josefa, on all that I have tried to do with my life. And now you’re here, complaining, demanding. Who do you think you are, Graciela? How much lower do you intend to drag me? How much more can a man take?”
Marinela and Marco were standing nearby. I didn’t know where to look, what to do. I had no answers for Ernesto; he was right. But one thing I knew: we could not stay in that apartment any longer. As long as the truth had stayed unspoken I could pretend that everything was fine. Now it was out in the open and I could start taking responsibility for my own life and the life of my children.
Marco and Marinela lived in a busy neighborhood that some were calling Little Havana. A lot of new immigrants were making their home there. A woman named Esperanza, who lived next door, took it upon herself to enlighten me. I was sitting outside to get away from the uncomfortable air inside the apartment. Ernestico and Manolito were playing on the sidewalk, and I remember I was on the stoop just watching, trying not to think about anything in particular, when Esperanza sat next to me. “Marinela is saying terrible things behind your back,” she told me.
“I don’t want to hear what Marinela is saying,” I said. “I didn’t come all this way to fall into the same sewer of gossip and betrayal that I just left behind.”
“Listen,” Esperanza said. “Why stay where you’re not wanted? Why put up with the malicious chatter of that woman? It’s not good for you or for your children.”
“I don’t know what else to do, where else to go.” My words came out with a choking spasm of sobs.
I wished with all my heart that I had stayed back in Palmagria. Leaving with Ernesto had been a horrible mistake. One that I would never recover from.
But I couldn’t go back. How big a fool I would seem if I went back to Palmagria. What sort of reaction would they have to me, a deserter, a traitor, coming back with my tail tucked between my legs like a frightened dog? I knew I could survive anything, but I wasn’t going to put the boys through the torture that was sure to follow.
“Here,” Esperanza said, and handed me a small piece of paper. “It’s an organization called Our Lady of Perpetual Help. They’re Católicos, and I heard that they help out exiles with children and no husbands.”
I took it and put it in my pocket without even looking at it. I just continued watching the boys play. I was in no mood to talk to Esperanza or to anyone else. She sat there for a while and then stood up to leave.
“Bueno, that’s about all I can do,” she said. “Use it if you want to.”
She started walking back to her apartment and I followed her.
“Esperanza, wait,” I said. “Mil gracias, I really appreciate your efforts to help me.”
“Yo hago lo que puedo,” she said. I do what I can.
After she was gone I looked at the scrap of paper. Our Lady of Perpetual Help sounded like someone I could relate to. She sounded busy. Hopefully not too busy for me.
The next morning I left the boys with Esperanza. They promised to behave, and I promised not to be gone very long. All three of us broke our promises. I walked all the way, not trusting buses.
“You get on the wrong bus,” Esperanza warned me, “and you don’t know where you’ll end up. This is a very big country.”
I had expected the building that housed Our Lady of Perpetual Help to be a beautiful cathedral, a place lit by votive candles and sun streaming through stained- glass windows, where people talked in hushed, reverential voices and a chorus of nuns, perched in the choir loft, softly sang “Ave Maria.”
Instead I entered a suite of stifling hot offices filled with ringing telephones, crying babies, and sweaty, hostile workers who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. They asked me my name and entered it at the bottom of a long list.
I waited for hours, my panic rising with each horror story I heard from the other Cubans sitting around me. They told me stories they had heard about mothers whose children had been taken away because they couldn’t afford to feed them. They said the children had been put in places called foster homes, which meant they had to live with strange American families chosen by the state.
It started to feel very hot in there. I had not eaten anything all day. I didn’t dare leave the reception area and lose my place in line. I was feeling as if I was about to faint. Wherever I looked I saw black spots.
I was walking toward a water fountain when I heard my name. I forgot all about my thirst, took a deep breath, and went in.
I was taken into an even smaller office, where two American men, Mr. Ross and Mr. Jacobs (who seemed to share one desk and spoke Spanish with heavy American accents), listened to my story. The first thing I did was lie to them. Growing up in a country full of Catholics but ruled by Santería had taught me that honesty afforded you absolutely nothing. With a seriously distraught look on my face, which I didn’t have to work very hard to achieve, I told them my husband beat me and the children. That ever since arriving in this country he had turned into an animal. That I was afraid to go home. That the Revolution had turned him bitter and angry. I touched my shoulders as if feeling painful bruises beneath my blouse.
We were interrupted more than half a dozen times by telephone calls and an irritable and haggard- looking secretary who constantly opened the door without knocking and asked questions in English, or brought in papers for them to sign.
I had to start my story over and over again after each interruption until I was completely confused, but I held steady, answered calmly, kept insisting and explaining the unfairness, the urgency, and the absolute tragedy of my situation. I did not want to present myself as a hopeless victim but rather as a lost pilgrim who only needed a kind soul to guide her back to the road.
I was sure they could see through my complicated web of lies. They asked me questions based on something I had just said, and I had to stop and rethink my answers while I felt their eyes burrowing into my skull. An annoying little voice in my head kept reminding me that I had been caught lying before, with disastrous results.
“No es fácil,” I said. It’s not easy.
“No es fácil,” Mr. Ross repeated back to me, but in a different tone. He was nodding his head in sympathy.
Surprisingly, not only had they heard, but they had understood every word I’d said. Ross and Jacobs sat talking to each other in English while I said prayers to Our Lady of Perpetual He
lp. The next time they talked in their funny, slurry Spanish, they asked just one simple question—which in turn changed my life forever.
“Are you willing to live in New Jersey?” Mr. Ross asked soberly.
“In New Jersey,” Mr. Jacobs added with a strange smile, “there are better- paying jobs than in all of Florida.”
They waited, looking at me as if they expected me to take my time, to think it over.
I didn’t have to think twice. It was probably a little inappropriate the way I jumped up and kissed them both on their cheeks, but I was so excited and relieved. After disentangling themselves from me, they called in their haggard assistant, who introduced herself as Sue and stunned me by speaking fluent Spanish.
From that moment on, I was in Sue’s hands, and she took care of me in a way I will never forget. (Sue, wherever you are, I thank you with all my heart.)
Ernesto didn’t try to stop me or talk me out of it. He said a tearful (and, it seemed to me, slightly insincere) farewell to the boys. Ernesto never had much of an interest in children. He didn’t deny them to me, but he’d always been a solitary man. If Josefa hadn’t died, he would have gone on with his life as it was. He was somewhat relieved to see us go. We were messy in his eyes, children who fight, a woman who cheats. If it hadn’t been for the government restrictions, he would have left Cuba without us. He had no use for us, and we had no further words. Whatever had to be said had been said.
As we walked out the door, Papo sounded his little horn, a sentimental little send- off. I did not turn back. I left that apartment with my head held high. We were on our way to a new life in a place called Union City.
As the bus made its way north, the weather grew colder. It was February, warm and humid in Miami but still winter everywhere else. There was so much about this country I had to learn.
I had never seen so many trees with no leaves before. They looked like the long, skinny arms of the dead sticking out of the cold ground, their spindly fingers reaching in desperation toward the gray, dull sky.
A black wave of fear gripped at my heart. I was terrified of the trees. I remember thinking, Trees never lose their leaves in Cuba. This is an evil place. My mother was right, God has sent me here as punishment. I had not fooled those people back at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. They had given me exactly what I deserved. I would have burst into tears if the children had not been seated next to me, their big eyes getting used to the new surroundings. I had to be strong for them.
People could say what they wanted. I couldn’t afford the luxury of listening, of caring. I set my course, and stuck to it. I worked hard to become a stronger person, a better mother.
*
DAY AFTER DAY I did what Barry suggested. I pushed all my negative thoughts down the river until the bad dreams had vanished. One day I woke up and realized I hadn’t had one in weeks. Eventually I began to feel a sense of well- being that I had not felt in a very long time. I felt as if I was growing, tall and proud like the palm trees of Palmagria. I let my heart fill up with the sweet memories of the people I had loved—Arroz Blanco, Chanclas, El Gago, and poor Alvita with her beautiful face stained by the moon. All the outcasts of the cruel little town I thought I’d left so far behind.
All the while, Barry had an arm around me and I could feel his heart beating against me, his easy breath coming and going. Funny that the person who would finally understand me would be a man so different from anyone I had ever known before. A man who’d grown up speaking a different language, whose childhood had taken place so far away, in a land of snowstorms, fireplaces, and camping trips. Barry didn’t have a tropical bone in his body, and yet he was the warmest person I had ever met. He adored everything about me—my dark skin, my funny accent, my spicy cooking, my music. He even liked the way I dressed, and my love of the telenovelas.
After we first made love, he said, “Wow, baby.” Those were the two sweetest words I’d ever heard. And while we made love his eyes remained open, fixed on mine, and I could see all that love inside. He snuggled up closer and held me, and we whispered to each other until it started to get light outside. He didn’t slap my ass and jump out of bed like it was on fire, like Pepe used to. Or turn away and start snoring, leaving me feeling more alone than I had ever felt before, like Ernesto used to on those very rare occasions when he acted like a husband.
A few nights after Berta died, I told Barry I wanted to recite a poem from my country for him. We were in bed together, and it was warm and safe there.
“Yes, baby,” he said. “I want to hear it.”
“It’s about a rich girl named Pilar who gives away her new shoes to a poor dying girl.”
“Heavy,” he said, and sat up on the bed.
“It’s in Spanish,” I cautioned.
“That’s all right. I wanna hear it.”
“Hay sol bueno y mar de espuma,” I began, as I had done countless times since I was very little, since I was Pilar’s age. “Y arena fina, y Pilar quiere salir a estrenar su sombrerito de pluma.”
I recited the long poem, verse after verse, and his eyes stayed on me, on my lips, reading them the way a deaf person would. I knew that in his own way, he was understanding every word and, most importantly, that he understood what this moment meant to me.
The first time he talked to me, other than to give me work- related orders, was when he saw me studying my English as a second language book. He didn’t make fun of me; instead, he encouraged me. After that, every time he saw me he would ask me how my classes were coming along. Little by little he won my heart. And one day I realized that no one had ever won my heart before; that my love for him was pure in a very special way.
The boys liked Barry. From the kitchen I would hear them over the gunplay on television. They liked to watch the FBI programs, and I liked the sound of the boys talking to Barry in perfect, rapid- fire English.
“Barry,” I would shout over the noise, “you don’t have to entertain them.”
Sometimes they teased me about my pronunciation. “Beree,” they’d say, “ju don haf tu ennertain dem.” And I just laughed, because I could never tease my mother. She considered it disrespectful, but I didn’t.
Now I had to decide if I wanted to start over again. Barry had asked me to marry him. In New York City!
*
NEW YORK HAD ALWAYS BEEN the big city across the river. Almost every day I caught a glimpse of it, glittering in the distance. To me it was a frightening place. It was the city where Agustín García- Mesa had lost his fingertips. New York was the place where his life had been ruined, where his promising career had ended underneath a Steinway piano, where his friends had turned their backs on him.
I was a little nervous as we boarded the train. Barry held my hand gently as we sped over tracks, through tunnels. I was surprised at how quickly we got to our destination. I followed him up the stairs and into the warm night. I wanted to be taken by the thickness of it, the people, the traffic, and the height of the buildings. I wanted to become a part of what had for years been only a postcard.
But I looked around and it was dark and dingy. Instead of glistening glass towers there were old buildings, mostly two and three stories tall, with rickety fire escape ladders crisscrossing their worn façades.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Baby, we’re in Little Italy, the most romantic corner of Manhattan,” he said, and placed his arm around my shoulders, holding me close as we walked. As I looked around, I saw other couples walking, hand in hand, and I noticed all the Italian signs on the shops: trattoria, zeppole, Chianti. The narrow cobblestone streets took on a charming glow, the sweet smells of garlic and basil intoxicated me.
As I walked, my heart kept beating the same refrain: you found him, you found him, you found him.
There was something beautifully different about Barry that night. He was like a child, his step was light, his eyes shone. He led me into a restaurant called Il Palazzo. And there, in this dim, musty palace, in a red leather booth, Barr
y took my hand and said, “Graciela, cásate conmigo.”
He spoke the proposal in Spanish, so I knew he meant it. He had taken the trouble to look it up in a dictionary. His eyes were misty, and on his face was a funny look, as if he was afraid I would say no.
As Caridad would say: Imagínate!
Of course I said yes! I said it in English and I said it in Spanish. My heart did all the talking for me that night in that Italian restaurant, in New York.
The confusion came later—when I was alone.
I didn’t know what to do, it was almost too soon. But I did know. I wanted to be with him—and someday I wanted to take him back to Palmagria and show him the horrible little town I came from. I wanted to return with my new husband and my children, and with my head held so high they’d have to jump up to see my eyes. But I couldn’t help worrying. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t made mistakes before. Big ones. Barry wanted to get married right away. I told him I had to think about it. That I needed a little time to get used to the idea. Most of all, that I had to discuss it with my boys.
The divorce from Ernesto wouldn’t be a problem. He’d had very little communication with us. He’d written to tell me that he was working in a library, in a place called Coconut Grove. Along with the letter he sent divorce papers for me to sign and a twenty- dollar bill for the boys. Hardly enough, but I didn’t care. I set the divorce papers aside—there was no hurry at the time, and, frankly, it was not something I was eager to think about. I was glad that Ernesto was in a place where he could be at peace. He always felt safest among books and silence.
At the moment the only problem, if I could call it that, was buried within my own soul. This love, this happiness, was overwhelming me to the point of insanity. Just the thought of it made me want to take all my clothes off and run naked, screaming, down the streets of Union City. Yet it seemed so right, like it was the work of all the saints and virgins I prayed to. Even the ones I never believed in.
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