Julio Reyes always left my mother’s room before the streetlamps began to extinguish themselves at dawn, one after another, like a promenade of lights in reverse.
11.
The Many Words for Shame
The women sit in silence when I finish speaking. If not for the persistent whine of the wind outside, it would feel as if we were inside some cave, or a monstrous creature has swallowed us all. Anticipation blooms in my chest. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to tell a story. Hadn’t the men at the cigar factory showered me with affection? Now, I am ready for it—the praise I am accustomed to.
But I’ve forgotten about Mireya, who is the first to make a sound. First, she coughs a little, then, she stands, smoothing her housedress with lean hands that resemble stiff palm fronds. They flutter and she touches her glasses as she struggles to get the words out. “How could you do such a thing to your mother?”
The smile on my face fades. I feel it go, feel my face freeze in a strange grimace. “I’m not sure what you mean,” I say.
“She’s your mother,” Mireya says angrily. “And you air her shameful past as if it were a ten-cent novel.” Mireya trembles all over. She fingers a locket that dangles between her breasts, and I imagine that inside is a Victorian picture of Mireya’s own mother, who, no doubt, was free of all sin.
“Can’t you tell us a beautiful story? One with hope?” Mireya stares hard at me. I’ve trespassed against her, not just because of the history between us, but through the story. Here is a woman incapable of any more sorrow than what life has already doled out. Lulu’s tragic past has pushed her too far.
“We’re on the brink of drowning here, or being blown away, and this is what we have to listen to?” Mireya asks the other women, looking at each of them wildly. The storm has done this, I think to myself. It’s made us all a little crazy. Even now, the sound of the wind pounds in my ears. Drafts snake in and scratch my skin.
“Doesn’t anyone have a less shameful story to tell?” Mireya asks at last, slumping onto the bed. A puff of cat hair and dust rise around her.
For a moment, the women stare at Mireya, then turn to me. But I’m remembering Lulu again, how she told me the story first. She had said there were names for women like her, who had loved as she had loved. She recited them for me—puta, sucia, descarada, sinvergüenza. She’d listed them slowly, watching as I mouthed the words, getting the shape of them right. Then, she’d said, “None of those are my name, María Sirena. I am a decent person. As are you, no matter who you love.” I’d needed that advice at the moment, when the world had turned against me for loving a man I wasn’t supposed to.
I am about to say something along these lines to the women when Estrella and Noraida start to laugh. Noraida has twirled a lock of her dyed-red hair around her finger so tightly that the tip of it is red, too, turning purple by the second.
“Sit down, Mireya, you righteous cow. Don’t you know? These aren’t real stories,” Estrella says.
Noraida releases her finger from her hair and points it, now blue-tipped, at Mireya. “It was her job to tell stories like that. She’s good, isn’t she?”
“I know what she is,” Mireya says. Of course she does. I told her about my work as a lector when we first met. But the stories? Those I kept to myself. Why color our friendship with that sad history? Better that my friends know me as a new creature, without a past. Now, it doesn’t matter. Mireya and I are no longer friends. Let her know the truth. Let her know it all, I think.
A wave of vertigo comes upon me. I am dreaming. I’m certain of it. It’s happening again, getting lost in a dream or a memory, like I did downstairs when I would have sworn I’d been surrounded by the governor’s old slaves. I feel myself listing a little to the right, like I’m on a ship in rough water.
Susana is at my side at once, straightening me. “¿María Sirena, estás bien?” she whispers. I shake my head.
“A ten-cent novel, like Mireya said,” Noraida says brightly, though it feels as if I’m hearing her from a great distance. The room is spinning now, and outside, the lightning slaps the sky.
The stories are as true as this room, as the storm outside, as the sharp edge of Mayito’s framed picture in my pocket. I want to say this, but there are other words shaping themselves on my tongue, other pictures crowding my head—of a charred building and of footprints in blood.
Noraida has settled herself on a shabby divan at the foot of the bed, turning her back on Mireya, who is now chewing the nail of her left thumb, her cheeks red from embarrassment or rage, I cannot tell.
Now, she takes aim at me. “I bet I know how this one ends. The gentle innkeeper, Julio Reyes, kills the bastard Aldo Alarcón, doesn’t he? Then he sweeps Lulu off her feet and they run away together,” she says. “That’s the way of romances. They’re all like that,” she says.
“Finish the story,” Noraida demands. Outside, the faint sound of a siren disturbs our room. Noraida turns towards the sound, biting her bottom lip and squinting. The siren stops mid-blare, and Noraida leans back in her chair. “Go on then,” she says to me, and the rest of the women lean forward, like palms in a strong wind. But only Susana speaks. With a hint of sadness in her voice she asks, “So, what’s your real name?”
When I begin again, it is as if I am no longer doing the speaking. It’s like I’m there again, sitting in the tall chair in the cigar factory, holding a book in my hand from which I do not read. But this time, I tell a part of the story I’d never meant to tell.
12.
A Story Unspoken Before Now
Someone threw open the door to Lulu’s room. Both Lulu and Julio Reyes sat up in bed at once, terror in their eyes. But it was only Fernanda, and her forehead was shiny with sweat, her chest heaving.
“They’ve done it. There’s been a revolt in Baire!” Fernanda cried, not caring a bit about her uncle’s bare chest under those thin blankets.
“Baire?” Lulu whispered. My mother had grown up there, a village just fifty miles from Santiago de Cuba.
“Casualties?” she asked, thinking of old friends perhaps, but Julio Reyes had spoken, too, asking, “What else has been reported?” so that Fernanda did not hear Lulu’s question.
“They say Macéo and Martí are back!” Fernanda said, clapping her hands. Just as quickly, her face darkened. “But you must turn her out at once, Tío Julio. There’s been a prison break. Her husband is surely on his way here,” she said.
“Thank you, Fernanda. Give us a moment, please. Take María Sirena with you.” Fernanda pulled me up by my arms and dragged me away from the room. Though I was fourteen years old, I still shared a room with Lulu. A small trundle bed had been put in by the window for me. Fernanda had pulled me out of bed, and I was still drowsy.
“Ay,” I cried out, swatting at Fernanda.
“Be quiet!” Fernanda had urged me. “You’re so much trouble sometimes.” Fernanda was a hard girl, toughened by work in the inn, life without a mother, and having no siblings at all. No young man had ever looked at her twice. She was twenty-six and practically ran the inn. What would she do were it to fall to ruin? Enter the convent? Fernanda was a young woman without choices, and it had made her rigid, her face frozen in a bitter expression nearly all of the time.
But she was also a gossip, and when I pressed my ear against the door to my mother’s room, Fernanda had followed suit, and so we heard what we should not have.
“Mi vida,” Julio Reyes was saying to Lulu, and Lulu had murmured something, then began sobbing.
“Agustín is not the man for me. He is my husband, but he was a brute. I married too young, too young,” she was saying between gulps of air.
“Then we run away t-together. Tonight, we leave Havana, leave this w-war. I will bar the front door in case Agustín tries to f-find you.”
“And María Sirena?” Lulu asked. My heart soared at hearing my name in my mother’s
mouth. She had not forgotten me.
“Of course. She is like my daughter, too.”
Then, there was silence. There had been no mention of Fernanda’s name, no one to form the syllables of it in her mouth. She’d been hoping to hear it, of course. A simple “F-fernanda” from her uncle’s twisted tongue would have been enough to keep her from doing what she did.
But he had said nothing, and the sounds that followed were wet and revolting. Fernanda slipped away without a word. I watched her go for a moment, then decided to follow her from a distance.
“I will not go to a convent!” Fernanda said to herself out loud, and I heard her. The two of us stumbled as we made our way down the busy streets—Fernanda, because she was distraught, and I, because Havana was unfamiliar to me. I was not allowed out alone without Lulu or Alarcón. We were prisoners as much as my father was. Alarcón made sure of it. Once, when Lulu and I had left in the middle of a cool night, Alarcón had met us at the train station, a cigar in his hand. He pointed the glowing red tip at us and it was as if the devil himself had spied on us, binding us to him.
“Do you think I’m stupid? That you aren’t watched like a prize, mi amor?” he asked my mother, and pinched her hard on the arm, just above the elbow. “I love you so very much, Illuminada,” he kept saying as he walked us back to the inn, pinching her harder and harder every so often, so that her arm would be black and blue by the morning. That was the last time we tried to leave. I spent most days in the inn with Lulu, who taught me to read and write and recite poetry. My childhood slipped by quietly, muffled by the warm wood walls of the inn’s lobby, and made interesting by the many guests that streamed in and out on a daily basis. I learned a bit of German from a beautiful pianist who’d come to tour Havana. Many Americans came and went, and the little English I spoke was accented like theirs. It was as good an education as a girl could wish for when imprisoned.
Now, the city was a maelstrom of bodies, and I was a shy thing, still wearing little girl clothes, though the bodices of my dresses felt tighter by the day. I had not yet had a monthly bleeding, and Lulu treated me like a child. So, I acted the part. Naïve and vulnerable, I followed Fernanda through that hot maze of a city because I suspected she was up to no good.
There were people everywhere. Spanish police barked orders at everyone, warning that the prisoners were among them. But the people knew better than to pay it any mind. Most of the jailed, they knew, were Cuban rebels. This was cause for celebration. And so, music poured out of the inns and homes, despite the occasional gunshot or shout from a Spanish officer.
Fernanda led me up a sharp hill. The harbor came into view. There, docked and surrounded by dazed-looking sailors, was the Thalia, Aldo Alarcón’s ship.
Fernanda ran down the hill towards the ship and onto the dock. Aldo Alarcón was standing on the bow, his eyes squinting against the brightness of the horizon. His back was to the city as he faced the open sea. It was as if he did not hear the gunshots at all. I hid behind a wooden container that smelled of fish. From there, I could hear and see everything.
“¡Capitán!” Fernanda called out to Aldo Alarcón. The captain turned at once, and when he saw Fernanda, he blanched.
He leaned heavily over the railing of the ship. I bit my tongue hard. I’d hoped for a second that the man would tumble and break his neck, but I chastised myself for the thought. Once, I had told my mother that Aldo Alarcón deserved to die, and Lulu had warned me never to wish ill on any person, no matter how awful he was. “That is what the Spanish do, and they will lose this island as a consequence. You will see.”
“Is my Illuminada safe?” he shouted down.
“No,” Fernanda lied. “Her husband is coming for her and she’s afraid.”
“I’ll kill him!” the captain said, his hand going to the gun at his side.
“She asked me to come for you. So that you might rescue her,” Fernanda said.
Aldo Alarcón’s eyes widened. He pushed himself off the railing and nearly tumbled down the plank in excitement.
“Did she? Did she? She asked for me?” he demanded once on the dock, and Fernanda nodded gravely.
“Here, take this,” she said, putting a heavy iron key in the palm of the captain’s hand. “There is a back door to the inn, one we never use but is always locked. Let yourself in, rescue Illuminada, and take her away from my uncle and me. We want nothing to do with her.”
Aldo Alarcón raised an eyebrow. “The daughter you can keep,” he said, took the key, and turned towards his ship.
“Don’t forget!” Fernanda called to him. “Come as soon as you can. And bring your gun!”
Aldo Alarcón waved the iron key in the air, dismissing Fernanda.
I crouched behind the box and took several deep breaths. It was no use. I burst into sobs. I cried for as long as it took Fernanda to disappear down the cobblestone road and get lost among the people on the street. My sobs made my whole body shake, and were the kind of cries only children can manage without hurting themselves. Even so, it felt as if my chest were being torn in two.
I could picture the inn and the street it was on, but I had no idea how to get there. The Havana streets were complex, and unnumbered, and an address was of no use to me. What I did know was that if Aldo Alarcón was going to the inn today of all days, someone was going to get hurt.
I must have wept for an hour. No one stopped to help me. Perhaps I looked like one of those raggedy orphan children of which there were so many in Havana in those days. But I was wearing shoes. Nice, polished shoes of black charról that Julio Reyes had bought me for Christmas. Someone should have noticed those, I remember thinking to myself at the time. I was not a girl set adrift. I was loved! And my mamá needed me. Who would sleep near her on cold nights? Who would twirl the ends of her long hair so that the tips fell into small ringlets? To whom would she whisper stories of the sea, of a mermaid that rose from the depths to name me? We weren’t complete without one another, Lulu and I.
With these thoughts in mind, I stood and turned and surveyed the place where I was. To the left was the Cathedral of San Francisco de Asis.
Before me, the tall, gray convent rose in gothic spires to the sky. The apse hung long and low over the bay, and the bells started to chime loudly, making my ears hurt. I scanned the street before me. Fernanda had gone left at the intersection, I was sure of it. But we’d taken so many turns getting to the ship that I had no idea where the inn could be.
I asked three people walking past if they knew of the Reyes Inn, but they had a wild look in their eyes, and when I approached them, they’d flinched.
“Get somewhere safe, girl,” one of the women had said, fanning herself with a rickety fan and hurrying off.
“I’m trying to,” I called after her, but she did not turn around. No one I asked seemed to know in which direction to point me. One had said, “Go north.” Another had suggested I go south.
I scuttled along the street, sticking close to buildings and keeping my nose in the air. Every so often I’d stop a stranger and ask, “The Reyes Inn?” but it was no use. Either I was ignored, or the person did not know of the place. I began to wonder if my life had been a dream, that there was no inn, that I was only a shadow of a girl, without substance. My nostrils flickered as I ran past a taxidermy shop. Shiny marlins hung in the windows, their blue scales picking up the afternoon light. Beneath them sat what I thought was a jaguar, or panther, one paw in the air as if waiting for a handshake. The whole place smelled of iron and, strangely, treacle. A few blocks further, I pinched my nose against the stench of horse manure, piled halfway up the wall of a building. Two brown horses clopped their hooves in place, the black carriages shiny behind them. Two more blocks and the light began to fade. Havana seemed a grayer place at once. Five policemen pounded past me. I shouted to them, “I’m lost! Help me find the inn!” but they did not seem to hear me.
So, I follo
wed them.
Three more blocks and the policemen slowed. They’d reached the prison, and halted, their mouths open. I opened my mouth, too. A part of the prison’s façade had been blown off, and I could see the cells where men once slept. It was as if someone had taken a giant butter knife and sliced the walls away.
“Papá,” I whispered, for I knew my father was being kept in that prison. I had stood in that very spot with Lulu, where she commanded me to wave at the windows, not knowing which one held my father. “What if a murderer is watching me?” I had asked, and she’d pulled my hair and told me not to be ridiculous. Now I saw how one of the cells had watercolor paintings of yellow daisies on the walls. I had drawn them, each one, on paper I’d borrowed from the front desk of the inn. Lulu had mailed them to my father at the prison. Scores of my drawings flapped lazily in the breeze now coming through that comfortless room.
I cast down my eyes. There, on the pavement, were a dozen dead men in prison uniforms. Some had died in the blast. Their arms and legs stuck out like spider limbs. Others bore dark, wet holes in their foreheads, chests, and necks. Gunshots, I knew somehow, though I’d never seen such wounds before. I thought, surely one of these men is my father. I’d seen only one tintype of him, but it was a blurry, ruined picture. My eyes settled on a slender man who died with his eyes open, terrified and beseeching. His hands lay palm up. His graceful fingers were curled into a claw. I seemed to recognize his nose—jutting out beyond a weak jaw—and there was something about the hazel color of his eyes, with specks of yellow on green, that resembled mine. I had drifted that close to the bodies.
I was yanked away from the scene by the collar. It was one of those policemen whom I had followed to the scene. “¡A tú casa!” he yelled at me ferociously, a bit of spit leaving his mouth, making him look more like a wild dog than a man.
“The Reyes Inn?” I asked him, surprised to find my voice worked. “Where is the inn by the bakery? The one that makes the cinnamon cakes, señor. Julio Reyes’s inn?” I rattled off what I knew quickly, afraid that the policemen would turn away from me.
The Distant Marvels Page 6
