“Look, young man,” she said. “The photo of your so-called leader is in the back room, facedown, with a glass of water over it. And our Jesus will remain on the wall as long as I live.”
Placing a photograph facedown meant “rest in peace,” in this case expressing a wish that Fidel would die. It was about as antirevolutionary a statement as one could make. And the glass of water with no flowers in it meant that no one would miss Fidel if he died. Peruchito turned and walked out of the house, never to return. We wondered if he would report his own grandmother, but nothing ever came of the incident.
Peruchito died in an automobile accident in which all four passengers were burned beyond recognition. This was a common way for Fidel to do in his enemies—kill them, then make it look as if they’d died in a traffic accident. Peruchito must have fallen afoul of El Comandante somehow.
“Funny how cars have suddenly developed a tendency to burst into flame all the time,” Mama said wryly. “I don’t remember that happening before the Revolution.”
“And it just goes to show you,” added Papa, “that you’re no better off supporting Castro. Whether you’re with him or against him, chances are you’re going to end up dead. Better to get as far away from him as possible—as soon as possible!”
Our Last Noche Buena
On December 24, 1961, our entire extended family—nearly two hundred people—and our neighbors gathered on San Carlos Street to celebrate Noche Buena, or Holy Night. This was an annual event, and the highlight of the year. I was happiest when surrounded by my family, and Noche Buena was the one night when we all came together, to celebrate our connection to each other and to rejoice in the birth of Baby Jesus.
The Noche Buena gathering was also a time to tell stories of previous celebrations that had gone hilariously awry. I listened as Papa told the tale of a pig that Tío William had bought, which had escaped before it could be slaughtered. Every fleet-footed man and boy in Glorytown chased that pig for two hours, until it finally died of a heart attack. Tío William later joked that he almost couldn’t bring himself to eat it—almost.
We children were also told the ancient story of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem, where Mary gave birth to Baby Jesus and was visited by the Wise Men. Abuela Ana told us this tale, relating it with such simple faith that I believed she’d probably been there and seen the whole thing.
“Remember, kids,” she said, “it’s all very well to have fun at Christmastime, to eat and drink and play, but let’s never forget the real reason we celebrate at this time of year—to honor the birth of Our Lord and Savior.”
But 1961 would be the last year that we would celebrate Noche Buena publicly, because of what happened that night.
Even if we’d known that this was the last one, there was not a thing we would have done differently. The men put up barricades to block the street to traffic. The women set up tables in front of every house and loaded them with food until the legs threatened to buckle. Papa and Tío Cholu had brought back plenty of fresh food from their Tuesday delivery trips to the countryside, and all the women had been saving things so they could outdo themselves with the cooking. I couldn’t pass a table without someone grabbing my elbow and sticking some delicious morsel in my mouth. There were no complaints from me. I could usually eat enough for two boys, and that night I ate for three.
Traditionally, the main dishes of the Noche Buena feast were pork, plantains, and congris, or black beans and rice. Abuela Ana was a con-gris specialist. She also made a fabulous pumpernickel bread that I can still taste now if I close my eyes. Mama made white rice, seafood empanadas, and croquettes. Tía Carmen, Tío William’s wife, loved to cook yuca, and also to make Cuba libres: Coke with rum and a dash of lime juice. The neighbors brought dessert, such as panetelas, a type of cake; capuchinos, anisette rolls; casquitos de guayaba con queso, or guava shells with cheese; and churros, fried bread dough coated with sugar.
Two people were missing that year: Tío William and Carmensita. We felt their absence keenly. In years past, Tío William had hosted many Noche Buena feasts in his massive yard, which could easily accommodate up to thirty tables and still leave room for dancing in the middle. Tío William’s nickname was Big Daddy. He wore big rings, drove big cars, and smoked big cigars, and he loved to be generous. When he was running the show, Noche Buena started late in the morning, with people stopping by to socialize and have a bite. This casual visiting went on all day, until at last, when night fell, things got serious. Then a band started up, and people ate, drank, and danced until they were on the verge of collapse. Often, they would fall asleep wherever they could find floor space. It was common for total strangers to show up at this party and be given such a warm welcome that they stayed all night. Politicians and policemen were frequent guests, too—all personal friends of Tío William, one of the most successful businessmen in Cienfuegos.
This was the first year in some time that Tío William hadn’t hosted Noche Buena, and it was definitely the first time anyone could remember that Tío had stayed away altogether. He lay in bed with the curtains drawn, suffering in silence over the loss of his little girl. I cast a sad glance at his front door every once in a while. It still felt strange to me that Carmensita was gone forever. My child’s mind reeled at the concept of eternity. When you die, you’re dead forever. But what was forever? A very long time, Papa had told me. Longer than I could hold my breath? Far longer than that. Longer than a year? Way longer.
I couldn’t imagine a time longer than a year. In a year, I would be seven, which was very old indeed—too old for me to imagine. Meanwhile, Carmensita, in heaven with the angels, would stay eleven forever. I wondered if she was watching our Noche Buena get-together, wishing she could join us. Was she lonely in heaven, or was she happy because she was with God? God loved children, I knew, but . . . did Carmensita miss me?
Well into the night, the street stayed packed with families, the grownups dancing and drinking and the kids running wild. Rolando, Tito, Luis, and I tore around as if we owned the place—in and out of people’s houses, through their yards, eating a little here and a little there, laughing, screaming, reverting to a state of anarchy. No one cared. The adults let us do whatever we wanted. For once, we were free.
Suddenly everyone got very quiet. That was when I realized we had been invaded.
They’d appeared silently, out of nowhere, maybe a half dozen of them: a gang of rough-looking men, strangers to our neighborhood. We could tell by the expressions on their unshaven faces that they had not come for the food. Everything about them was mean-looking, right down to the pointy-tipped shoes on their feet. One minute everyone was having a good time, and the next you could hear the cry of a distant parakeet.
We kids backed away. The bad men began to walk down the street, eyeing everyone with the same contemptuous glare. Then one of them winked at Mama.
“Hey, baby!” he greeted her.
That was all our menfolk needed. Instantly, the gang was surrounded by a lot of very angry Cuban gentlemen, Papa in the middle of them.
“Who do you think you are?” “What are you doing here?” “How dare you behave like that?” Everyone shouted at once.
“Pigs!” shouted the leader of the gang, a man with bad skin and missing teeth. “Worms! Traitors! Back off, or there will be trouble!”
“Trouble!” said Abuelo Julian. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd until he was nose-to-nose with the ringleader. “You say there will be trouble? You got that right! But we didn’t start it! We’re peaceful people, and we don’t want any problems. But if you don’t turn around right now and get out of here, trouble is exactly what you’ll get!”
No doubt Abuelo believed that no one in his right mind would dare harm an old man. But Abuelo was wrong. The leader planted both his hands on Abuelo’s chest and pushed him. Abuelo flew through the air, landing on the pavement. He winced in pain, then rolled over onto his side.
“Abuelo!” I yelled.
“Ju
lian!” shouted Abuela Ana, watching from the sidelines.
“Let’s get them!” shouted Tío Sergio, the husband of my madrina, or godmother, Magalys. He hauled back and landed a right hook on the man’s mouth.
And that was the beginning of the end of Noche Buena.
We smaller kids were pushed behind a table by the women, who then formed a protective wall in front of us. Meanwhile, the men attacked with howls of rage and fury, using fists, feet, elbows, knees, even foreheads. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Papa himself was right there in the middle of it, fighting like a warrior from ancient times. My heart swelled with pride as I watched him and I wished I were old enough to fight like that.
Then a new sound erupted, one I couldn’t identify. I looked around. It was Tío William, screaming with anger. My godmother had gone to get him. He was in such a hurry to join the fighting men that he was still pulling his pants on over the biggest pair of underwear I’d ever seen. Someone had dared to push his venerable father, and that someone was about to get his due.
I’d heard stories of Tío William’s wrath before, mostly from Papa, who had occasionally witnessed it in the workplace—though always in response to a broken tool or carelessly misplaced invoice, never to anything serious. Mama’s stories were more dramatic. Tío was the eldest of all her siblings, and once or twice, when he was a young man and she still a little girl, she’d seen him explode in fury. She explained that Tío was slow to anger, but once the feeling peaked, he was like thunder in a summer storm.
Now, hurt to the core by Carmensita’s death—for which he blamed the Communists—and filled with a murderous rage at these hoodlums—who were obviously on the Communist payroll, hired to cause trouble—he was living up to all the stories I’d ever heard. Despite my panic and fear, I remember feeling pleased that I was finally getting to see Tío William in action.
Tío dived into the melee and unleashed a barrage of punches. Men fell to the ground, bottles flew through the air and shattered, women screamed. Among them was my dear Abuela Ana, who yelled at her husband of fifty years: “Julian, Julian, don’t you see that you are just too old for this?”
“Not too old yet!” I heard Abuelo cry.
Emilio Pérez, my father’s best friend, who in my eyes was invincible, stood by, just waiting for an opportunity to get into the fight. Then he saw an opening, and he jumped in. But a lucky punch landed flush on his forehead, and Emilio went down like a sack of wet noodles.
“Emilio, get up, please!” I yelled.
Emilio tried to stand, but his knees had turned to water, and he went back down.
“Emilio is hurt!” I yelled to my cousins, who were watching in horror. “They’ll kill him, Papa, help him, please!” I shouted.
Seeing the situation, Papa came to Emilio’s rescue and pulled him out of the way. I’d always thought Emilio was the strongest man on our block—even stronger than Tío William—and it depressed me to see him like this.
And then it was over. I couldn’t see through the screen of women to find out what happened after that, but the next thing I knew, everyone was shaking hands and apologizing. I even saw Tío William hug one of the thugs. There was nervous laughter, and the bad guys retreated down the block—no doubt because they’d lost the fight. Everyone helped right the tables. Brooms were fetched to sweep up the broken dishes and bottles. Dogs appeared to lap up the ruined meals. My friends and I chattered about the mysterious men. Who were they? Why had they done this? What did they want?
Later, Papa explained to me: “Those thugs were sent by the government to scare us.”
“But why?” I asked. “What did we do to them?”
“Nothing. That’s not the point. They want us to be scared. They’ve disrupted our most important feast of the year. They want us to know that they control everything.” His face was white, and his voice was shaking.
Papa’s rage, so rarely glimpsed, was infectious. “I hate them!” I screamed. “I’ll kill them all! I’ll wring their necks and cut their heads off like a bunch of chickens!”
“Hush! You’ll do no such thing,” Papa said. “You’re still just a boy. You have to learn to think, not just to act. They want us to fight back. That way they can arrest us.”
“Arrest us for what? They started it!”
“There is no right and wrong here, niño,” said Papa. “You have to understand that they don’t care about that. All they care about is control. Our beautiful island of Cuba is being run by people who are too stupid to understand anything except brute force. That’s what they use to make their point, and then people like us end up getting hurt.”
“It’s not fair,” I said.
“No, it’s not. But don’t worry, Eduar. Someday these people will get what’s coming to them. In the meantime, we have to be smarter than they are, and stay out of trouble.”
Papa looked at me for a long and serious moment. It seemed as if he wanted to say something else, but I didn’t know what. Later I guessed that he wanted to acknowledge the craziness of the times—to apologize, perhaps, for having brought me into this kind of world, but also to assure me that if I stuck it out long enough, I would see better days. Instead, he just gave me a hug and a slap on the back, and sent me on my way.
More Changes
As the days turned into years, our day-to-day lives became more and more oppressive and difficult. Abuela Ana was spending a lot of time waiting in lines for food, and in March 1962, we were given a libreta, a ration book, to use to buy food. The first time I went with Abuela and noticed her holding her libreta, I asked her to read me what was in the book to help pass the time. But she replied that it wasn’t a story; the libreta merely told her how much food she was allowed to buy.
“That’s silly!” I said. “Why carry around a book if it’s no fun to read?”
Abuela gave me a wry glance. “Silly is right,” she whispered, but that was all she would say.
We waited in line for hours. I thought that whatever was at the end of it must be something really great. When we finally got to the head of the line, we were handed a chunk of hard bread, some sugar, and a bunch of cans with funny writing on them.
“All this time we wait, and this is what they give us?” I said.
“Ha ha! He’s only joking,” Abuela said quickly to the person behind the counter. Then she rushed me out of there.
When we were on the sidewalk, she grabbed me by the shoulders and brought her eyes to my level—which for her, since she was so short, merely meant bending over. “Niño,” she said, “never, ever, ever let them hear you complain.”
“Who? Never let who hear me complain?”
She looked over her shoulder. There was an armed soldier on the corner, and nearby, on a wall, was a poster of Castro with his big, fluffy beard, a smile plastered across his face. By now I knew the man with the beard was the Voice we heard constantly on the radio and loudspeakers. He was the one in charge now, even of those who had once seemed like gods to me—my parents and grandparents.
“Them,” she whispered. “The Communists.”
“Why not?”
“Because they could take you away—or, more likely, they would take me away. You have to stay quiet, Eduar. Never let them know what you are thinking. M’entiendes? Do you understand me?”
I nodded, though I didn’t understand at all. But I knew Abuela Ana wasn’t playing a game. She seemed scared of something. That frightened me. I’d never seen Abuela afraid. She could wring the neck of a chicken without even flinching, and then cut its head off—smack!
“Now let’s go home,” she said. She grabbed my hand and pulled me along after her, double-time. We didn’t stop until we were safely home again.
I once asked Papa what the funny writing on the cans was, and he explained that the cans came from Russia.
“Where is Russia?” I asked.
“Russia is very, very far away,” said Papa, “though not quite far enough to suit me.”
“Why do they send us this s
tuff?”
“Because,” Papa said wearily, “the Russians are best friends with Fidel.”
“If they were really friends with Fidel,” I said, “they would give him good food to share with us, wouldn’t they?”
Papa stared morosely at the can. “Maybe Fidel does like it,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“You think Fidel is eating this garbage?” Mama said bitterly. “He’s eating like a king, while the rest of us starve. He and all his friends.”
“Hush,” said Papa. “Someone on the street could hear you.”
“I don’t care!” said Mama.
Then in 1963, just before I turned eight, one of the most civilized customs of Cuban life came to an abrupt end on San Carlos Street.
I lay in bed, in the living room where I slept, listening to the gentle clicking of dominoes from Tía Silvia’s front porch next door. This sound was the signal for all within earshot to make their way over to watch the action, or just to chat. I could hear the voices of the adults having a good time. I was supposed to be asleep, but I crept from bed and crouched, unseen, behind a post on our porch. Four men, including Papa, straddled wooden chairs around a table, while more stood, watching and talking. Cigar smoke shrouded their heads like clouds over mountaintops. The women, including Mama, talked all at once, using their hands as well as their mouths, their voices rising whenever they got to a punch line or an important point. Every few minutes, one of them would get up and brew another pot of sweet, potent Cuban coffee and serve it to their husbands in espresso cups. The men would down these in one or two swallows. Fueled by the sugar and caffeine, they could play the game until one or two in the morning.
Mama loved these evenings. Even though she was only going next door, she was dressed as if she were headed for a tony night club, as were the other ladies. That night she wore a brightly colored dress and spritzed herself with heavenly perfume. I could still smell the trail she had left from our porch to Tía Silvia’s. Papa eyed her appreciatively, joking about the effect her beauty was having on him. Mama rolled her eyes in mockery. This exchange was always subtle and respectful. Papa, like all the men in my family, was a true Cuban gentleman.
Leaving Glorytown Page 3