Leticia held her hands out for inspection. They were red, chapped, and shaking with rage.
Caridad continued sobbing to the point I thought she was going to choke. Imperio was looking at Leticia like she was going to drag her by the hair. They were like the washerwomen back in Palmagria, fighting in the street. People who walked by slowed down to watch the spectacle of a group of Cuban women screaming at each other in public.
I stayed in the van with Raquel, looking through the windshield, like watching television. Imperio kept swinging at Leticia, trying to get at her. Leticia kept moving away just in time. It was like a cockfight. Just as Imperio was about to make contact, Raquel jumped out of the van and stood between the two of them.
“Chá!” Raquel said, and it was a powerful “chá” that forced everybody to listen. “Let’s try to solve this like friends.”
Leticia got back into the van and sat there, her red hands tight on the steering wheel as if to calm herself down.
“They don’t know,” Leticia said so softly I barely heard her, “what I have to put up with at home when I come up short. They don’t know how Chano gets.”
Caridad and Imperio remained on the sidewalk. Caridad buried her face in Imperio’s shoulder. She couldn’t stop crying. It was like a nervous breakdown. Imperio sort of put her hand on Caridad’s head, but you could tell it wasn’t easy for her. She knew Leticia was right. She knew that if she’d been in her situation she’d have done the same, and sooner.
Finally Leticia waved at Imperio and Caridad through the windshield without looking at them and said, “Get in.”
Neither one of them made a move. Then Raquel gently pushed them toward the door.
“Get in,” Raquel said. “We’re going to be late.”
And they got in, quietly. Caridad stopped as if deciding where to sit, and of course she sat in the front seat. We rode in silence toward the factory. Until Raquel spoke because she just couldn’t help herself.
“In Cuba nobody fights over money anymore,” she said. “In Cuba nobody has any.” And Caridad took in a deep sob.
The very next day Caridad paid up in dollar bills so wrinkled that they looked like she’d slept with them tight in her fist the whole night. And then it was all forgotten, for the moment.
You would think that women with those enormous problems wouldn’t be so concerned with me. But they watch me like a telenovela.
There is one thing I have in common with all those long- suffering telenovela women that continue to capture my imagination: I never give up hope, and I am always willing to take a chance. For a while I felt as blind as Rosalinda or as crippled as Inés in Let No Man Put Asunder. But I never gave up. Maybe I’ll get somewhere as a fashion designer someday, and maybe I won’t. I know I’m going to continue taking classes. I’m getting better. I got countless compliments on my wedding dress, which I designed all by myself. And who knows what’s in my future? Maybe great success, maybe more mistakes. As the priest said in A Long Walk to Love, “The book of life is already written, all we do is turn the pages.” I have to agree with him.
And my English is getting better all the time. I still can’t read Barry’s books, but sometimes I’ll sit down and skip from page to page and I can understand the sentences, if not the story. Those stories are complicated! But I know someday I will. For now I’m happy that I can speak to people and understand what they say to me. My accent is very thick, so I have to concentrate hard to make myself understood. But it’s an effort I’m only too happy to make. No one else in the van can say more than “thank you” and “bye- bye.” It’s their loss. English is such a beautiful language. They refuse to learn. It’s almost as if learning English means that they are never going back home. As if they’ve given up. I don’t know if I want to go back. Maybe for a visit, but I like it here.
I no longer feel as alone as I did back in Palmagria. All those poetry recitals, just me, alone, on a bare stage. The long, lonely walk to my wedding to Ernesto, the afternoons doing nails for the girls, feeling like an outsider in my own living room, the solitary years I spent locked up in my parents’ house. I am no longer alone.
Barry was with me every step of the way as I prepared for our wedding. He took me to the beauty salon and read a newspaper while I had my hair and my nails done. What a luxury! I gave my hand to the girl and let her take care of me the way I used to take care of others. I told her I wanted perfect half- moons, but she said no one wears them like that anymore. Times have changed. She painted my nails an almost translucent pink. I have hands like a nun’s.
When I was ready, we practically ran back to the apartment like a couple of kids. My heart was pounding with joy. While I slipped into my wedding dress, Ernestico, Manolito, and Barry sang “Las Mañanitas” to me. I was a little nervous, but the more they sang, the happier I got, until I thought I would explode. It was so different from that other wedding day. Here in Union City I have a family that supports me. I have a good feeling about this marriage, I really do.
Barry drove very slowly. I sat in the passenger seat, the boys rode in back. When the first police car passed us, sirens blaring, I jumped. Barry kept one hand on the wheel and with the other he took mine. We stayed like that as more police cars and ambulances passed us.
Above us the sky was full of smoke, but I kept my sights on a little piece of blue sky in the distance. New Jersey could burn to the ground. I didn’t care. Palmagria could wash into the sea. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to the park. This was my wedding day; no amount of racial tension was going to ruin it.
As we drove, I counted my blessings. Who could have predicted that next week I would start my new job as supervisor? That I would, in fact, be in charge of the assembly line that attaches little heads to little plastic torsos. That I would be on the other side of the plastic curtain. And of course, I’ll be making much more money. Yes, at last, I’ll be able to afford that color television set the boys have always wanted! No more blurry, interrupted programs, no more pleading on my knees for the picture to stop rolling, or climbing to the roof in all sorts of weather to fix the antenna. And now that I’ve learned to drive, maybe I’ll even buy my own car. Why not? Anything’s possible.
The park was green, wide, and filled with friends. But Imperio and Caridad seemed so little and lost in all that green. Caridad, all alone without Salud, looked like she was about to fall over. And Imperio seemed tense, like she’d rather be anywhere else. So I asked them to stand next to me. They seemed a little stunned, which I enjoyed.
But none of that mattered anymore. At the party, Barry looked at me with so much love that his eyes were like fountains. I was in his arms and he twirled me around and around. Everywhere I looked I saw smiles and laughter. The hall was full of people wishing me a happy future. There was music and beyond the music there were sirens and helicopters, fire and smoke. But none of that mattered either. Rosalinda may as well have been there too. Her bandages gone, her eyes clear and bright with love for her Armando, and burning with the expectation of tomorrow, and that kiss.
Acknowledgments
I believe that angels step into my life to help me get to the next level, and here they are, (roughly) in order of appearance:
Roger Jones.
Donald Rawley.
Susan Harris, Alan Carter, Howard Baker.
Cathy Wagner and Roger Gould, Katerina Monemvasitis and Chloe Wyma.
Shannon O’Connor.
Carrie Owens, Paul Langlotz, Jef Cameron, Noel Alumit, Howard Junker, Leslie Schwartz, and Tod Goldberg.
Mr. Mark Davis.
Mathy Wasserman Simon and Owen Simon (thanks for all the lunches).
This novel would not have come into existence without the generous support and validation of my recklessly optimistic agent, B. J. Robbins.
I am also deeply grateful to the good people at PEN USA for their enthusiasm and support, and to the “Pennies” they brought into my life: Natali Petricic Escobedo, Mae Respicio, Taylur Nguyen, Mel
issa Roxas, and Candace Harper, whose encouragement and/ or critical response helped shape the book.
I am gladly indebted to my amazing mentor, Anne Louise Bardach, and her sweet husband, Robert Lesser, who provided me with home and heart when I desperately needed both.
Very special thanks to Nancy Hardin for her sharp eyes and passionate response to my work.
Grateful acknowledgment is extended to the smart and supportive folks at Skylight Books in Los Feliz.
My everlasting gratitude to Little, Brown and Company, and particular thanks to Michael Mezzo, who found the needle in the haystack.
And to Barbara Farmer, enthusiastically yours!
EDUARDO SANTIAGO was born in Manzanillo, Cuba, and grew up in Los Angeles and Miami. He holds a BFA in Film and Television from California Institute of the Arts and was a 2004 PEN Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellow. His work has appeared in Zyzzyva, The Caribbean Writer, and Slow Trains. He has also written for the Los Angeles Times, Square Peg magazine, and IFP magazine. He’s worked on several television programs for CBS, Warner Brothers, and Telemundo networks. He has taught creative writing at various Los Angeles high schools and works part- time at Skylight Books in Los Feliz. He currently lives with his dog, Lyon, in Angelino Heights, a Los Angeles neighborhood known for its stunning Victorian and Craftsman homes. Mr. Santiago is currently at work on his next novel. He can be reached at [email protected].
Reading Group Guide
Tomorrow They Will Kiss
a novel
Eduardo Santiago
A conversation with Eduardo Santiago
When did you leave Cuba and what images of your childhood influenced your description of Palmagria?
I spent the first ten years of my life in Manzanillo, a town where everybody talked with the dead. And I mean with! They had ongoing conversations. Their lives were guided by the dead. Eighty percent of the population was clairvoyant. Manzanillo is described in a tourist guide as “a sleepy fishing port about 65km west of Bayamo that feels a long way from anywhere, but worth a visit.”
I based Palmagria on Manzanillo. I changed the name because I didn’t want the fifty thousand Manzanilleros living in the U.S. to come after me, insisting that I got it all wrong. I know my people well enough to know that they would. Also, since the Revolution, Manzanillo has taken on a greater significance because Fidel Castro’s so-called lover, the revolutionary heroine Celia Sánchez, was born there, and I didn’t want Graciela to have to carry that burden. Besides, at the time that the novel takes place, Manzanillo hadn’t become a historical landmark. Celia’s statue hadn’t been erected yet.
The relationship between Cuban exiles and those they left behind is complicated by politics and trade policy, as the United States holds firm on the embargo of goods from the U.S. and its trading partners. Do you still have family in Cuba and, if so, on what basis can you relate to them?
I was born too late to see Cuba in its heyday, when the stores were stocked. All my memories are of deprivation, depleted shelves and counters, long lines of people with empty bags that they’re hoping to fill with anything, whatever’s there. Shortly after the Revolution, even if you had tons of cash, you couldn’t walk into a store and say, “Today I want chicken,” or, “The kids need new socks, I think I’ll pick up some socks.” No, you took what was available if you were one of the first in line. Many went home with nothing.
This image is so seared into my consciousness that to this day, even though I’ve been to Cuba and seen the abundant dollar stores, I can’t walk into a supermarket without that image being superimposed. I’ve had many arguments in places like Ralph’s, or Vons, or Safeway, because my partners tend to be Americans who sail through stores piling on as many items as a shopping cart will hold. “No,” I say, “that’s too much. There’s a limit, and if there isn’t, there should be.” I look at the pyramids of apples and oranges, the endless rows of canned goods, and there is another picture overlaid, of cobwebs and dust—and of the storekeeper, sitting there in the store, under flickering fluorescent light tubes, waiting for something to arrive.
Who’s to blame, the communists or the embargo? If the point of the embargo was to starve the Cubans into an uprising, why do Cuban exiles send them millions of dollars a year in personal remittances? “Where is the humanity in that statement?” my mother, a frantic remittance-sender, asks me. It’s a haunting dilemma, the idea of starving a country into surrender, but such is war. What are the options? Invasion? Devastation? Bloodshed? Of course, not all Cubans who live and work in the U.S. are like me. Most of them want, get, and enjoy everything America has to offer. They live well, eat well, wear thick gold chains around their necks and wrists, and soothe their conscience with monthly remittances. I envy them. They seem so free.
What made you choose Graciela, Imperio, and Caridad as the novel’s narrators? By giving them alternating chapters were you bestowing validity or deconstructing their points of view?
At some point in my teens I became aware of the backstabbing relationships among the Cuban women in my mother’s life. They kept shifting allegiances. Later I realized that had they remained in Cuba, a lot of those friendships would not have lasted; they would have moved on to other Cuban women with whom they had more in common. But here they were trapped. The circle was small, the pickings slim, and they had only each other in spite of their differences. This dilemma, which I found both comic and dramatic, was the very first grain of inspiration.
How to tell the story was a bit more challenging. Initially I wanted to write something based exclusively on gossip, hearsay, and slander. So I wrote a short story about Graciela from Imperio and Caridad’s point of view. I wanted it to read like a conversation over a clothesline, brief and biting. When I decided to go to novel length, I gave Graciela a voice, but with the condition that she had to tell the truth. I was fascinated by the idea of—what if the gossip is true? And if it is, if Graciela is all the things people say, what were her circumstances at the time? How did she come to make those mistakes and how did those mistakes affect the others? It got more and more complicated from then on.
Are Graciela, Imperio, and Caridad based on women from your childhood?
Initially, yes. My mother had two types of friends: the ones my father approved of and the “secret” friends. The ones my father approved of, the close friends, we were related to in some way—sisters-in-law, aunts, cousins distant and not. They were all married, none of them was divorced or ever would be divorced. These women chose a man, stuck by him no matter what. Then there were the others, the not-so-close friends, who visited when my father was at work. They were divorced, independent, outspoken, and smart. They filled the room when they walked into it; they had ideas and plans. They dressed in the latest fashions and kept themselves thinner than my mother’s other friends, who seemed to gain fifteen pounds with each child. They exchanged their vanity for motherhood.
It seemed to me that my mother and her close friends spent their entire lives finding fault with the not-so-close friends. Now what’s really peculiar is that the secret friends didn’t band together. They were strong, independent, and adrift. I loved those women. When they came to visit they seemed like movie stars or royalty. Their lives were frightening, melodramatic, intoxicating. And they were always very nice to me, as if they recognized a kindred spirit. So, initially, I based Graciela on some of those women, but eventually the real women receded and a new one emerged.
Graciela, Caridad, and Imperio aren’t political people. What was your aim in writing from an apolitical perspective?
I knew from the start that I didn’t want to write a book that took place in Havana, and I didn’t want to write a book that either glorified or vilified the heroes of the Revolution or the heroes of the counterrevolution.
There is only one Havana and everyone knows it well. But there are a thousand small towns, small as you can imagine, and I wanted to take readers there for a change. I also didn’t want to write about a place known
for its scenic beauty—I didn’t want to write a travelogue.
So the book was more about what I didn’t want to write than what I did. Politically, it was drummed into my head by my parents that we were accidental exiles, victims of circumstance. I have come to understand that our flight was more economic than political. It’s no secret that the middle class likes things, they like stuff. So we came here to where things and stuff are plentiful. Of course, once we were here, none of the stuff was good enough—shoes were better in Cuba, clothes fit better in Cuba, food tasted better in Cuba. It is my opinion that if it hadn’t been for the embargo on this end, and the nationalization of property on that end, my family would have stayed and grumbled about the system the way Republicans in this country grumble about a Democrat in the White House and vice versa. They’re unhappy until the next election, but they go about their business. A major difference is that in this country elections come every four years. In Cuba they seem to come every fifty to sixty years! That’s a long time to grumble.
The men in Tomorrow They Will Kiss are portrayed as strong and powerful when they are in Cuba, but when they reach the shores of America they become remarkably absent, participants in events rather than instigators. Why this role reversal after exile?
Shortly after our family arrived in the United States, my grandfather was diagnosed with throat cancer. He had a tracheotomy that removed much of his throat, most significantly his vocal cords. So here was a man who had lost his country, his money, his ability to work, and his voice. He was a once-powerful patriarch rendered powerless. The men in my family lived lives of shame; most of them had helped bring Fidel Castro to power only to be betrayed and humiliated by him. You may disagree, but that’s the way they saw it, and it caused them to be distant, or depressed, or drunk. The men also found it more difficult to form an intimate group. When I listened to them, I heard nothing.
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