“Cállate,” Ricardo whispered fiercely.
“If she recovers from her injuries, we shall return the woman to you. But hear me, Ricardo, another disruption to the peace we have here will not be tolerated.” Don Peregrino said all of this without taking his eyes off of Mario, the way a person talks when in the presence of a dangerous creature, like a toxic snake or caimán.
Ricardo waited a full year to see Margarita again. Certain she was dead, though Don Peregrino insisted the woman was still recovering from whatever wounds she’d incurred that day that Oviedo took her away on his horse, Ricardo began to shape a new life for himself, which included meeting secretly with other slaves from plantations all over Matanzas, men who would later stage slave rebellions, and, after that, join the insurrectionists in the war of independence. When at last Ricardo and Mario saw Margarita again, she arrived in the hut carrying a baby girl.
“Our daughter,” she’d said, though the child was fair-skinned and her ears fanned out like a carriage with the doors open.
“Peregrino’s ears,” Ricardo remarked, turning his back on Margarita.
As for Mario, he was smitten by his baby sister, and asked to hold her again and again. When Margarita returned to the cane field it was Mario’s job to care for the baby, whom Margarita had named Regla. At night, Mario slept next to little Regla, his body curved like a sickle around hers. The baby learned to walk holding onto her brother’s fingers. She would eat well for him, opening her mouth to the spoon like a fledgling bird. Her skin was the color of driftwood, and her nose had tiny freckles all over it. Mario would run his fingers on her nose, tapping the dots and counting them. Regla would laugh as if she knew what he was talking about.
By 1886, Ricardo had helped organize two unsuccessful slave rebellions deep in Matanzas, on another plantation. No one connected him to the events, though the rebellions made life on the Peregrino plantation more difficult, as Peregrino gave Oviedo a freer hand in disciplining the slaves. Ricardo and Margarita were spared punishment, for they knew never to look at Oviedo, but to stare only at his feet. But the sound of the whip whizzing through the thick, tropical air could be heard at all hours of the day. Margarita was allowed to abandon her work in the field to care for the hurt slaves. Mario sometimes went with her. He would snap off aloe stems from the small garden his family kept, and rub the plant’s glossy sap onto the slaves’ small cuts. The long, burning lacerations were up to his mother to tend, and these she packed with clean cloths soaked in salted water.
Mario was six years old when he was freed, along with all of Cuba’s slaves. The whole enterprise of carting humans across the Atlantic, breeding them, killing them, and starting over again had become an embarrassment to Spain. Even the Americans had washed their hands of the practice. Besides, the slave rebellions were becoming increasingly intolerable. “Just look at Haiti,” the landowners would say to one another, fear bubbling to the surface of their skin, nearly cracking that stoic, Spanish façade these men seemed to have perfected.
When the news of their freedom reached them at last, Ricardo ran around their hut, shouting for joy. Cuquita got down on her ancient knees and prayed to her gods, and Margarita held up Regla and Mario and twirled them around, both children crying out joyfully.
That very night, three men arrived at the hut looking for Ricardo. They were former slaves of the Requejo sugar plantation nearby. Mario could not remember their names, but swore he would recognize them anywhere, for one of the men had a scar on his scalp that ran from one ear to the other, parting his hair like a line on a map. Another was the tallest man Mario had ever seen. He’d had to duck to get into the hut, and the top of his head scraped the ceiling. The third man’s ears were like two tiny seashells. At the time, Mario had wondered if he could hear at all.
They carried unlit torches in their hands, and machetes were tied to their waists with frayed rope.
“Tonight,” the one with the small ears said, “is for paying them back.”
Ricardo seemed to know at once what they meant. “Where will my family go afterwards? We cannot stay here.”
“East, hombre. To Oriente. There are safe places to stay along the way,” the very tall man said. His voice seemed to shake the very earth under their feet. Mario could not help himself—he crept closer to the giant man.
“Bueno. Pack light,” Ricardo said to the women in the house, and left with the men, arguing over who had the flint and which place might take light the quickest.
Margarita waited until Ricardo and the men were out of sight. “Say nothing,” she told Mario, handing the baby over to him. Then, she ran into the night, in the opposite direction from the one Ricardo had taken.
Mario stayed in the hut as he was commanded, feeding his baby sister a bottle of goat’s milk, and listening to his grandmother tell a story in Yoruba, which he did not understand save for a word or two. A large crack, like a massive tree falling, caught his attention at one point, and when he threw open the door of the hut, he saw the plantation house in flames, bright tongues of fire licking at the windows on the eastern side of the home. On the west, the fire did not yet rage, but smoke, black and billowy, poured from the windows there. Whoever was inside, Mario knew, was trapped.
Mario could not have known then that one of those people was his mother.
It was Peregrino’s deaf-mute daughter who told them, after the fire had consumed the entire house. She’d run into the woods, sooty-cheeked, her eyes wild, coughing and gagging when she saw Ricardo, Lidia, Cuquita, and the children hiding. Ricardo had meant for them to go east with the three men, but Margarita was nowhere to be found, so they waited for the conflagration to gut itself out in the hopes that she would appear. Peregrino’s daughter threw her arms around Ricardo’s neck and cried. When he peeled her off of him, she clutched his face and mouthed the word, “Perdón,” a few times before Ricardo understood. “Your wife,” she mouthed, and tears filled her eyes. The girl held her arms out to Regla, who thrust pudgy hands in the girl’s direction. Now, their faces so close together, it was clear that the two were sisters. No one could mistake it.
“Margarita tried to warn you? About the fire?” Ricardo said slowly so that the girl could read his lips. She nodded, and nuzzled Regla’s hair.
“She loved us,” the girl mouthed. Her bottom lip trembled and an odd, grunting sound escaped her, as if she were trying to say more.
Mario remembered the fury in his father’s eyes most clearly, how that fury turned to tears, and how his face reshaped itself into a grimace. “Keep the baby,” he said to Peregrino’s daughter. “She’s none of mine.”
“No, Papá!” Mario cried, tugging on his father’s arms, which had gone limp.
“You must choose, Mario,” Ricardo said, his voice flat, his lip curled as if he’d tasted something that had gone sour. “Stay with the women, or come with me.”
In the end, Mario chose his father, who did not even give him a chance to kiss his grandmothers or his sister goodbye, or to weep for his mother. They wailed in the woods, left behind with Peregrino’s daughter, who joined the chorus of cries after a while, grunting like an animal, which was all she could do. Soon, Mario and Ricardo, heading east as planned, could no longer hear them.
8.
Thoughts on Cosmic Justice
No puedo mas,” Mireya says, standing and marching to the door. She wiggles the handle and finds that we are locked in. She pounds the wood, shouting, “Let me out! I can’t stand another moment!”
Of my stories? I wonder. Or of this confinement?
“Why is the door locked?” Susana asks, and joins Mireya, twisting the crystal knob hard. Then, she too starts knocking on the door.
Soon, a few other women have begun shouting, including Rosalia, who squeaks, “¡Auxilio!” as if she’s being physically hurt.
It looks as if Dulce is struggling to control her breathing, so I sit beside her. Estre
lla runs to the window, throws it open, and starts to shout, “They’ve locked us in!” She does this for a bit, then stops midsentence. “I don’t see anyone outside,” she says in a small voice.
Celia fishes a piece of paper and a pen from her purse, scribbles a note on the paper, and slides it under the door. Then, she sits very quietly on the bed and closes her eyes, her lips moving a little.
“What if they’ve all left? What if they’ve locked up the house and forgotten us?” Dulce is asking me, and I am telling her, no, this is not possible. I tell her to listen carefully. There are the sounds of wood creaking, and pipes knocking.
“Casa Velázquez is full of people,” I say. I imagine this place back when it was new, and the ladies of the house walked about in full skirts that swept the floors. I imagine that the sound of lapping water outside is actually the noise their dresses must have made against the floors and walls.
Mireya is jamming a hairpin into the lock of the door, while Susana, pale all of a sudden, sits down on the floor and clamps a hand over her mouth.
Finally, the doorknob turns, and Ofelia pushes her way inside.
“You’ve locked us in,” Mireya yells at her, jabbing a thick finger into Ofelia’s shoulder. Fear washes over the soldier’s face for a moment, but is then replaced by anger.
“Of course I locked the door,” Ofelia says, her voice booming. The women take a step away from her. “There are looters in Santiago. It was for your safety.”
“The Marco Polo dishes?” Estrella asks.
“Gone,” Ofelia says. “As are the Tiffany lamps that were in the dining room downstairs. Animals, I tell you. The country is overrun with animals.” She runs her hands through her curly hair.
“They didn’t get these!” Estrella says, her laughter a bark as she holds up two of the dishes from the dining room.
Ofelia smiles, her shoulders relaxing a moment when, suddenly, a gun goes off on the floor beneath us. Ofelia spins and leaves, closing the door and locking it behind her. We hear two more shots before there is silence. The fearsome noise has set a few of the women to weeping, and all but Mireya have pulled away from the door and huddled in the corners of the room. But Mireya continues to slam her fist into the wood, shouting for someone to let her out.
“Please, calm down,” Susana is saying.
Mireya begins to kick the door, and when her shoe goes flying off her foot, she pounds the door with a calloused heel.
“Stop it, just stop!” Rosalia says, shuffling towards Mireya. “Get away from the door, you could be shot.” Rosalia tugs at Mireya’s arm.
“Miren,” Estrella says, and opens her purse to reveal a series of small photo albums with pictures of her twin sons in them. “A distraction,” she says, handing the albums out to the women. Her boys are dark-haired and pout-lipped, with curls atop their heads like little rooster combs. “They’re fifty-three years old now, can you imagine? You all must have pictures, yes? Let’s see them. Come, come,” Estrella says, and she points at our purses.
“I have some, too,” Celia says. “Just a few I could grab at the last minute.” She shares photos of her own twin boys. Suddenly, Estrella and Celia are talking animatedly about things the rest of us don’t understand. “The boys grew up together,” Celia explains when we ask. “Four boys, two sets of twins, all living on the same street in Maisí.”
How hadn’t I noticed the two of them, Estrella and Celia, clearly old friends? I look at Mireya and wish I could turn back the clock, reverse the damage done to our friendship. It would be good, I think, to have a dear friend in this place.
Now, more of the women are sharing photographs. The little frame with Mayito’s picture stays in my pocket. I finger it gently and close my eyes, remembering my own little boy, and the way his tiny fingers curled around my thumb.
I overhear Susana describing a picture she is holding. “My great-uncle,” she says. “He died laughing.”
“Lucky man,” Rosalia says, and then giggles herself.
“Mireya, you must have a picture or two in this giant purse of yours,” Dulce says, tugging at the straps of Mireya’s bag.
Mireya leaves the door at last, opens her purse, and pulls out a yellow envelope, fat with photographs.
The pictures are going from hand to hand, and I hold each of them. Here are Celia’s twin boys—one blond, one dark, both with narrow eyes set close together, so that they appear to be conspiring some strange deed. Here are Dulce’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all sitting about the Malecón in Havana, a stiff breeze blowing their curls. I ponder the frozen motion of it, the gravity-defying trickery of a camera lens, before Susana snatches the photograph away and another lands in my hands.
This one is of Alejandro. It is a professional portrait of a young man in a suit, his face made smooth and glowing by the camera’s soft focus. He peers to the left of the lens, his red lips parted just a touch, his long fingers folded together in his lap. This was the boy my Beatríz loved, ten years before he died. I run my thumb over his face.
“Don’t you dare,” Mireya says, startling me. Then she takes the picture from me, shouting, “Your fault! Your fault my Alejandro is gone from this world!” She shoves me hard in the shoulder. I start to take one of my slippers off, thinking to strike her with it, the way mothers spank children when they’ve pushed their limits of patience.
“What’s wrong with you?” Susana says, holding Mireya back. Mireya falls to the floor, sobbing.
I join her on the floor and wrap my arms around my old friend. “I don’t know what you mean,” I whisper to her. “I don’t know what I’ve done to hurt you.”
Mireya looks up at me with distant eyes, so red and swollen that I think that she has not felt any joy in a very long time, and I am awash with sympathy. We are alike, so very alike, I think for the first time, and feel my eyes filling with tears too.
Mireya is about to say something when Ofelia returns to us. Her hands are trembling, and her hair is wild, as if she has been running her fingers through it again and again. Her eyeliner is smeared and her pale lipstick is long gone. She no longer looks like a woman of the times, but like the pictures of ancient Egyptians in books and museums—dark-eyed and haunted.
“What happened?” Rosalia asks.
“We caught someone shooting at an ibis that had perched on a windowsill. He could have killed someone,” she says.
“Ay,” Dulce says, crossing herself.
“He’s just a boy,” she says, still trembling and damp. “He’s been arrested.” She pauses again, looking off into the distance. When she speaks again, it is as if she is talking to herself. “Skinny, shirtless boy. Using a military issue gun, too. God knows where he—” Ofelia says, but her gaze falls upon Mireya and me on the floor. In an instant she composes herself and is all action again.
“Ven conmigo,” she says to Mireya.
Mireya shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. I just wanted the door unlocked. I’m better now.”
Ofelia rubs her eyes, kneeling beside Mireya. “I need to make sure we don’t have any leaks. I could use the help,” Ofelia says.
“Bueno,” Mireya says, and allows herself to be helped to her feet. Ofelia struggles a bit until Estrella offers a hand. Then, Ofelia ushers Mireya out the door. Mireya has left Alejandro’s portrait behind, and I tuck it into my pocket to sit with Mayito’s frame. Our two lost boys, I think, will keep each other company.
Susana helps me to a seat next to Dulce again, who is toying with her painted fan again. Even though she keeps her watery eyes trained on her fan, she speaks to me softly, and I can feel my nerves calming as she talks. “I am sorry that bad things have happened and are happening to you.”
“I’m fine—”
“There is no cosmic justice. This is just life, me entiendes?” I take Dulce’s papery hand in mine and squeeze a little. Perhaps she is right, that there is
no reason to suffering, no fair dealing when it comes to meting out bliss and pain. There are just choices, and the echoes of those choices.
The photos go around until they have returned to their owners. They are put away carefully, tenderly.
“We never saw any of your photos,” Celia says to me.
“I didn’t bring them,” I tell her, adjusting my dress.
Celia’s brow furrows, and she opens her mouth to say something when Dulce interrupts her. “Tell your story, María Sirena. Go on.”
When I resume the story, the women fall quiet, and I think that my voice has come to resemble the sound the rain makes—a feature of the current landscape, broken up by passing flashes of light by which we see more clearly.
9.
Gestures of Inheritance
My mother’s recovery from the fever went quickly, and the months since Agustín left us at the tallér came tumbling by like river water. Not all of those days were unhappy. Every woman and child there had a role to play. Lulu took charge of the children’s schooling, and she taught the little ones to read and write and to manipulate numbers, the older ones to recite poetry and compose clear letters. We also learned how to polish and sharpen machetes, and how to clean rifles and pistols. We kept a small garden and raised chickens and goats. In the shadows of that rich valley, the tallér was a secret place, the kind of green and lush corner of the world one read about in books, where duendes and adas flitted inside flower blossoms, granting wishes.
As for Mario, his fingers were meant for weapons. Dulled machetes became deadly again in his hands. His father, Captain Ricardo Betancourt, helped Mario set up a smithy during one of his return trips and taught the boy simple blacksmithing. The tools the captain brought with him all bore Spanish insignias, and he’d laughed, saying that at least one Spanish cavalry unit would have to go without equipment.
The Distant Marvels Page 13
