Home Front Lines

by Brenda Sparks Prescott

INSIDE, TWO OVERSIZED, ornately carved mahogany chairs finished with plush red cushions crowded the front room. The family shrine rose between them. All the other necessities of the family’s public room—a table, some kitchen chairs, the family radio, and the like—were squeezed into the rest of the small space. A roof leak near the table seeped through the thatch and dripped into a pan crusted with rings from earlier rains.

  The old woman we had seen earlier emerged from a back room, and Paco introduced her as his wife. She wore a simple white apron and carried towels for us. As we dried off, Chucho pushed past her with our luggage, turning sideways. Rosita and I sidled over next to the fancy carved chairs to make room as he disappeared through the doorway toward the back of the house. My sister admired the chairs, and she went on so you would think they were carved from gold. Even so, you could tell from the prim set of the wife’s mouth that it was the right thing to do. Marisol was her name, but Rosita called her Señora Ramírez and Abuela. There was no equality of the Revolution just then. Again, it was the right thing to do, I suppose.

  “They’re from the big house at Doblase,” Abuela Marisol said. “As a little girl, I had to dust them carefully with a polish cloth, but I was never allowed to sit on them. Now, thanks to El Líder, I own them.” She finished with a proud shake of her head. Chucho returned empty-handed. With the five of us together, there was barely enough room to stand without touching. As it was, I was pressed up against my sister.

  “Tell us about Campo Doblase,” Rosita said.

  “Paco, where are your manners?” Abuela said. “Please invite our guests to sit. I must get back to my stew.”

  Would we never find out anything about this place called Doblase? It appeared as if we would have to discover it ourselves without the armor of foreknowledge. Paco swept his arm to indicate the ornate chairs for us, and although we made polite protests, we quickly landed in the seats of honor. As I suspected, they possessed more beauty than comfort, but one could hardly complain under the circumstances.

  As soon as we sat down, Chucho moved back over to the front door.

  “Please excuse us,” Paco said. “We will go tell David that you have arrived.”

  He donned a straw hat and a jacket from a peg by the door and, after a nod to us, followed Chucho out into the rain. What was going on? I looked my complaint at Rosita. She nodded. No words needed to be said, so for once I didn’t conjure them. The one lit kerosene lamp flickered and smoked on the table, throwing the edges of the room into gloom and worsening my sore head. My neck ached and the chair dug into the back of my thighs. I wanted to stretch my legs but couldn’t in the tight quarters.

  After a few moments of silence, a figure entered and stood in the gloom at the door. At first I thought Chucho had returned, but when he didn’t speak, I wasn’t sure. Was this someone sent to guard us while the car was pillaged? Anything was possible in this crazy province. I squirmed to the edge of my seat, preparing for I didn’t know what.

  “I am David Montes,” the figure said.

  I knew that voice.

  “Tomasito!” Rosita and I exclaimed together.

  Only then did he move into the light. We jumped up, but he held up a hand to ward us off. He had always been thin, a high metabolism, Mami always said, but now his cheekbones made sharp planes on his face and emphasized the depth of his large eye sockets. He was dressed, as Chucho had been, in a worn T-shirt and plain work pants. He was wet with rain but not soaked as we had been. This was not the urbane Tomasito that had left Matanzas over two months before. Where did he come from? Then I noticed a heavy bandage on his right arm. It ended in a club where his hand should be. My God! What’s happened to him? Why is he holding us off?

  “Not so easy to get rid of me, is it, dear sisters. Where’s the other one?”

  “Where have you been? What is Doblase? Who are Paco and Chucho?” Rosita said. “What happened to your arm? I’m not going to utter another word until someone tells me what’s going on.” She shook her finger and spoke in her big mama’s voice, the one that Tomasito always obeyed. Suddenly we were teenagers again and he was a little boy standing over a mess to be explained. I prayed, not for the first time, that it wasn’t his fault.

  Tomasito dropped his hand and breathed a sigh. “I never thought the Sisters Montero would give in so easily to the craziness of the Revolution. And turn in your own brother.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “We didn’t even know of the existence of this Doblase place until we got the Calixto García letter.”

  “Oh come off it, hermana. Ramón described the family meeting.”

  Rosita stiffened at the mention of her husband. “When did you speak to Ramón?”

  “I didn’t. But Chucho’s wife, she lived for a while in Sancti Spíritus. She learned to read there, so she works in the office sometimes. She logs in the guest workers. People like me.”

  As I thought, the polite term for prisoner.

  “She saw the letter from Ramón—she was too scared to take it—but she copied it word for word for me.”

  “What letter?” I asked.

  “The one that listed all of my offenses and said how my behavior alarmed the entire family.” With each of those two shouts, he thumped his thigh with his good hand. I wondered if Marisol would come in to see what all the shouting was about.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Rosita asked.

  “You know you all signed it. Even Mami and Papi.”

  “We signed no such letter. I swear to you.” Rosita crept closer to our brother, but he retreated until he bumped up against the table.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Remember those petitions Ramón asks us to sign? They’re always two pages, one for the petition and one for the signatures. Maybe he switched out the second page of a petition we freely signed and married it to this despicable lie. But why?”

  “Ramón?” Tomasito rubbed his thumb back and forth across his fingers. “Money.”

  Rosita covered her mouth with both hands. Her eyes shone in the dull light from the lantern. “He couldn’t have. He doesn’t need money.”

  “He doesn’t need blow jobs from poor women who want to feed their kids, but believe me, he takes advantage of them.” Tomasito hunkered into his shoulders. His jaw muscles bulged as he clinched his teeth, and his left leg quivered. He seemed ready to explode with anger, but I knew that leg tremor also helped him hold back tears. Poor little one. Left all alone in the world because of that bastard Ramón. Rosita should’ve never brought him into our lives.

  “But we tell each other everything,” Rosita said.

  “Did you tell him about the children?” I asked.

  “What about the children? Where’s Lola?”

  So many questions. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You thought all the Monteros had turned against you.” Tomasito nodded. “Then why did you send the Calixto García letter?”

  Tomasito held up his bandaged arm. “This was an accident. At least I think it was. You all wouldn’t want anything like this to happen to me, right? Then I died, so I thought I would go to the States. But I wanted to let you all know that I wasn’t really dead, just headed to the States, but no way was I going to let Ramón know that he hadn’t really gotten rid of me, because then no telling what he would do. As long as I was letting you know I wasn’t really dead, I thought maybe I could see you one more time before leaving. Even if you had signed that stupid letter.” His voice trailed off, and he cradled his bandaged arm in front of his chest.

  Rosita went to stand directly in front of him. She touched his good arm but looked at the other. “Hermanito, your arm.” Her voice was as soft as her touch. He drew her in and let her hug him. Her husband sent him away to a hellhole, but still he sheltered her. Meanwhile, I remained with empty arms at the other end of the tiny room. The injustice of it.

  “It’s nothing. Good thing I’m left-handed, eh?” He waggled the fingers of his left hand as he had so many times before as he
took off on boyish adventures. The smell of frying food filled my nose, and my empty stomach responded with a rumble. Usually a headache takes my appetite, but I was famished. There was still so much to hear from Tomasito, yet here I was thinking of food. I felt like a wicked stepsister. Yes, clearly I didn’t deserve to be embraced by my baby brother. Rosita’s tears flowed.

  “Don’t cry now.” Tomasito pulled her closer with his good arm. “I told you, it’s nothing.”

  I always must be the practical one, and much more needed to be said before I too succumbed. I was glad I had kept my distance while soft Rosita let her emotions overcome her. My stomach gurgled.

  “Wait, go back,” I said. “You died, but you didn’t die? What does that mean?”

  “It started with the accident on the machine that crushes cane. It’s old. The guard gave way. The teeth grabbed me.”

  “Mary, Mother of God! Our Tomasito could’ve been killed!” Rosita’s sobs escalated.

  Tomasito stroked her hair and rocked her back and forth. I, too, wanted to release the tensions of those uncertain months, but I didn’t. I couldn’t afford to yet.

  “But I wasn’t. Not really,” he said. “Only two fingers lost.”

  Rosita gasped and went silent. I covered my mouth to keep in any sound. My eyes remained dry.

  “Chucho says I was lucky that a campesino was there to stop the machine and pull me out. It’s eaten up more than one man, he says.”

  Tomasito appealed to me with his large, dark eyes. Despite my resolve, my tears brimmed but didn’t fall. He shook his head and rolled his eyes at them. His muscles had softened and the leg tremor was gone. He was enjoying the attention.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Look at it this way,” he said. “It got me out of Doblase.”

  “How?” I asked. Thunder rumbled and rain dripping from the roof pinged faster in the pan.

  “An infection set in . . .”

  “Oh no,” Rosita said. She mumbled into his chest. Although I couldn’t hear clearly, I assumed she was saying some Hail Marys.

  “Stop that.” Tomasito held her away from him with his strong left arm. She assented with rapid shakes of her head, then turned to grope for the purse that she’d left on the colonial chair. She took out a handkerchief and carefully dabbed at her eyes. I thought again that no woman looked prettier when crying than Rosita. Maybe that’s why she did it so much.

  “You finished?” Tomasito asked.

  Rosita sniffed and nodded. She tucked the hankie into her pocket and grabbed my hand. Her palm was damp, but her grip was strong.

  “As I was saying, I was in the infirmary when an infection set in. The doctor was away in a remote part of the plantation and couldn’t get back right away because the roads were rivers. Abuela Marisol was in charge of the infirmary while he was away.”

  “Her?” I pointed toward the other room.

  “Um hm. She never went to school, but she was the main doctor around here for years. Many still prefer her to the new man with the fancy degree. You should see her medicine chest.”

  “Go on,” Rosita urged in a calm voice.

  “Two red tracks ran up my arm. Abuela piled all the blankets in the infirmary on me and still I froze. She showed the tracks to the assistant director and told him, right in front of me, that I may not make it through the night.” Rosita squeezed my hand harder, if that was possible, but said nothing.

  “She put a poultice on my hand and gave me some pills, and then left me completely alone some time during the night. You three, you used to read to me and do skits to make me laugh when I was sick. Remember? Just thinking of your elaborate plots helped me through that night. My sisters were all with me, so I wasn’t afraid.”

  I squeezed Rosita’s hand harder. He thought we had betrayed him, yet he turned to us in his hour of need. I saw him, a man prepared to die alone. How hard-hearted this Marisol must be, to leave our Tomás like that. Why were we accepting her hospitality?

  “When she returned, Chucho and his father were with her. She gave me a horrid brew, which I immediately puked up. Chucho laughed. ‘You’re going to live, my friend,’ he said, ‘but we’ve got to get you out of here.’ Abuela wrapped a blanket tight around me, and Chucho and his father carried me out into the night. I’ve been in his father’s hut ever since, only going out after dark.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What did the officials do when you disappeared?”

  “Ah, Now you will see Abuela Marisol’s true genius.” Tomasito cradled his bound arm with his good one. “They had an old goat that had stopped giving milk. Time for the pot, so they killed her, took the tail and some steaks, and wrapped her in sheets. I died that night. Of course, without preservatives, a body has to be buried right away out here. The next morning, Chucho and his father volunteered to bury me, and the goat went into the ground.”

  The kerosene lamp threw Tomasito’s looming shadow onto the wall. It bobbed with the flame’s flicker.

  Abuela Marisol stopped in the doorway. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

  Reprise

  The Man with the Spanish Shoes

  “DID YOU KNOW about it? What they did with my boys?” Diego’s voice purrs and his open gaze invites confidences. He, Ramón, and José sit in the kitchen of Ramón’s house with a bottle of rum on the table. They each have already emptied several glasses before addressing this subject.

  Ramón wants to avoid talking about it. The others have always seen him as weak. He knows this. But what if they knew that he had killed to save their children? They would think him a man then.

  “Look at the position they’ve put me in. I could kill Lola.” José squeezes his hand shut and open several times before taking another gulp of his drink. “The Russians. When they find out, they won’t trust me. Then what?”

  “And you?” Diego again levels his gaze at Ramón.

  Ramón had started drinking long before the other two arrived. Since Guillermo’s death at the tannery, he seemed to have taken over his brother’s fondness for the rum. His plaid shirt is damp with sweat. He knows he stinks.

  “How did they get the money they needed?” Diego asks. Ramón sees in his eyes an avenging angel who has come to punish him for murdering his own brother. He wants to confess, but all he does is shake his head. Helping the women with the money was nothing.

  “Women,” José says. “I slapped that bitch around when she told me.”

  “Me too,” Ramón says. “Rosita, I mean.”

  The other two look at each other, bemusement on their faces. “Sure you did, hombre,” Diego says.

  They don’t believe him. They don’t believe him! He is a man. Strong. His wife does what he tells her to. “I killed him,” Ramón blurts.

  “Who?” José asks, his voice dull. He doesn’t look up from the table.

  “Guillermo.”

  “Ah, hermano.” Diego sits back and passes his hand over his eyes. “The Monteros killed him. The way they’re trying to kill us by stealing our boys.”

  I have girls, Ramón thinks.

  Diego rises and pulls Ramón from his chair. Here he comes, the avenging angel.

  “You must be tired after such a long day at the tannery,” Diego says. His hand slips on the slickness of Ramón’s arm until it finds purchase at his elbow.

  “I did. Rolled him over,” Ramón says.

  “Sure, hombre.” Diego tugs at him to get him moving. “Come, go to bed. We’ll close up here.” He leads Ramón to the hall and gently pushes him toward the bedroom.

  Do they not hear him? He sways in the dark hallway, confused. Maybe he hasn’t spoken aloud. That happens sometimes to him. Or maybe . . . He stumbles to the closet in the bedroom. Guillermo’s Spanish shoes are gone. Perhaps they had never been. That’s it.

  All is normal. Thank God.

  Ramón returns to the hall and stops outside the bedrooms of his daughters. “Virginia,” he calls softly. “Alma, Margo, Papi’s here.” There is no answer.

&n
bsp; Chita

  A Message from García 8

  ROSITA FLOATED THE short distance over to Abuela Marisol and grabbed her hands. “Tomasito tells us a fantastical tale.” She almost hopped with delight. You would’ve thought she was nine years old again and without a care for all our current complications. How does she do that? I still had too many questions. “You’re a miracle worker?”

  “It was nothing. He’s too saucy for God to want him yet.” Abuela untangled a hand to pat my sister on the arm.

  Meanwhile, something had struck me as odd. “Why haven’t the authorities notified us of your death?”

  “What?” Tomasito said, and Rosita echoed a second later.

  “If he’s dead, why haven’t they told us?” The lack of logic in those around me kills me sometimes.

  Abuela propped herself up with a hand on the door frame. I realized again how many years she had, yet she moved like a much younger woman. “I don’t know, Señora. The doctor no longer questions my judgment, so he just signed the death certificate. We filled out all the proper forms.” She straightened up. “Maybe they have reasons of their own for saying nothing.” She shrugged. “Tomasito, will you move the table so we can eat, please?”

  “Of course.” He pulled back a chair from the table with his good hand, and Rosita pulled out the one at the other end, as if all was well. Together they dragged the table over to the colonial seats. Rosita went back for the chairs, while Tomasito ducked through the doorway and returned with a third chair, unlike the other two.

  “They didn’t tell us he was here in the first place,” Rosita said. “Maybe they’re content to let us think of him as one of the disappeared ones.”

  I conceded that she may well have been right. “Then he has to go the States. He can’t come home with us.”

  “Oh dear.” Rosita sank into one of the kitchen chairs.

  Abuela brought in a stack of bowls and set them on the table. She considered Rosita and shooed her into one of the ornate chairs. I dropped into the other one without complaint, although I knew it would be a task worthy of Che to reach the table from it in a dainty manner. Abuelo Paco returned, as if on cue, shedding his wet hat and jacket. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a red calico scarf as he sat in the chair nearest the front door.