by Carlos Eire
A whole lot.
Abraham, we’re told, was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, simply because God asked him to. And God amply rewarded him by making him the father of the Chosen People, the most persecuted, most widely and continuously dispersed race of exiles in human history.
And then, we’re told, God took his turn by actually sacrificing his own Son, so that the invaluable Chosen status could be extended to the whole human race, adding vast numbers to Abraham’s progeny. And the deal included turning this Son into a refugee for a while, and also a homeless vagrant, and, finally, an enemy of the state. Then, to top it off, those who chose to believe in this Son became enemies of the state too, and sacrificial victims for three long centuries, and on and off after that, down to our own day.
We who’ve been sacrificed have a divine pedigree, you see. None of the particulars have to make much sense, and the sacrificial offering doesn’t even have to undergo death; it’s the offering that counts, the sheer willingness of the parent to give up what is most precious, especially if the circumstances are impossibly painful and illogical.
And the sacrificial victims somehow help to redeem the world. Somehow. Always in a very weird way that seems unacceptable to most people, including the victims themselves.
My ticket out was just about the best I could have hoped for. I was one of the lucky ones. Really lucky. And so was Tony. We won the second prize in the placement lottery: American foster homes. It was all so incredibly simple and improbable at the same time.
A good childhood friend of our mom’s, Marta Monjardín, had married a lawyer named Juan Becquer, back before the world changed. Young attorney Becquer had dealt with the construction of the Havana Hilton Hotel, and in the process had come to know Sidney Rubin, one of the American interior decorators. When the Becquers fled Cuba, the young attorney, like all other Cuban lawyers, found himself unable to practice his profession in the United States. He’d been trained in Napoleonic law, not common law. So, like every other Cuban lawyer in exile, Juan Becquer went searching for any kind of job he could get in Miami, and he contacted every American he had known in Havana, including Sidney Rubin, and Sidney offered him a job as a janitor in his warehouse. It was the only job available, and attorney Becquer took it.
I’d visited their house in Havana many times before they left. It was so beautiful, so heartbreakingly beautiful. And on the eve of their departure, we helped them sort through the stuff they were leaving behind, much as one does when someone dies. What I remember best is a box filled with swizzle sticks from Havana’s nightclubs. I wanted to take it home, but my mom, ever sensible, nixed the idea. “What would you do with those things? Besides, you’ll be leaving soon too.”
Ay.
So, while the Becquers are living in a shotgun shack in some Miami slum, along with their two small children and Marta’s parents, and Juan is stacking boxes and sweeping the floors at Sidney Rubin’s warehouse, my mom stays in touch with them and warns them of the imminent departure of her sons. Fully aware of the cheekiness needed for any such request, Juan Becquer asks his boss Sid whether he knows of anyone who might be willing to take in two Cuban boys for a few months, while they wait for their mother to arrive. Sidney Rubin, a Jew whose family was chased out of Eastern Europe by pogroms, one of the Chosen, one of the perpetual refugees, offers to take in one of us. And he convinces his close friends, Louis and Norma Chait, to take in the other. They too are of the Chosen People, eternal exiles.
I’ve already had my share of adventures at the camp by the time I’m informed of this great deal, so I’m more than ready to move on: In less than two weeks, I’ve found metal fragments in my lunch, gotten a ring-shaped piece of glass stuck on one of my fingers, smeared bubble gum on my hair when a giant bubble popped on me, ripped one of my only two pairs of pants, seen a cloud shaped like the island of Cuba, and learned how to kick soda pop bottles loose from one of the camp’s vending machines. I’ve also learned to bury my feelings much more deeply than I ever had before. And I’ve had a very intense religious experience, thanks to one of the nuns, who—despite the fact that she was not a man—preached the best damned sermon I’d ever heard. Of course, I won’t admit that some of the seeds she has sown have landed on fertile soil. I’m dumb enough to believe they’ve gone straight into the Vault of Oblivion.
Fool yourself long enough and you’ll be proven a fool for sure. Just when I thought I had all my problems licked, I got sideswiped by all of my buried emotions. Walloped. Sucker punched. Flattened. I’m taken to meet my prospective foster parents and I melt down as I’ve never, ever done before. Suddenly, I’m wailing like a banshee and feeling as if all the cells in my body are dissolving their bonds with one another. There, in their living room, right under a framed reproduction of Picasso’s Three Musicians, a piece of art that my father would not only have ridiculed, but thrown into the flames, something goes haywire inside my mind and I start sobbing uncontrollably, saying again and again—in Spanish—“No, no, I’m not worthy of living here, this is far too good for me.”
Chew on that one, doctors Freud and Jung, and please have an argument over it. I’d love to hear your opinions. Is it a piece of cake, or a jawbreaker, this eruption of mine? I’ll help you out by adding this:
What I felt most intensely was absence. Faced with the undeniable fact that I was about to get new parents, suddenly, as if from nowhere, this gaping void, this vortex of nothingness—of pure Absence—filled the room and tore me apart. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, my very flawed and very dear parents, were not there at all, and I longed for their presence, their bodies. I ached for them, physically, and for their flaws as someone might ache for all four limbs if they were suddenly to be severed, or for a soul mate who can never, ever be embraced again. To stay in that house, to get new parents, was to admit that my real parents were really, really gone. Out of the picture. It was also to admit that perhaps I might be better off without them, that I’d happily betray them forever.
Son of a bitch, that Void. Sónomambíche, in Caribbean Spanglish.
Fortunately, Juan Becquer saved the day. He took me out to the backyard and gave me a sound verbal thrashing that straightened me out and helped that gaping Void to vanish as quickly as it had appeared. “You can’t throw this away,” he said. “Don’t be such an idiot.” No sé tan comemierda. So I went back in, all calm, and everyone acted as if nothing had happened, and the pleasantries flowed once again, and the next thing I knew I was leaving the camp and moving in with Louis and Norma Chait, their two recently adopted children, Philip and Eric, both younger than two years, and their German shepherd, Victor. And Tony was moving in with Sid and Carol Rubin and their two teenage children, Alan and Sherry. Tony and I wouldn’t be reunited under one roof, as we’d hoped, but at least we’d be only about three miles apart, living with folks who were good friends and got together regularly.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again and again, until the day I die: such good people, such brave people, such transparent proofs for the existence of God. Little did they know what was in store for them, entangling their lives with ours. And little did Tony and I know what lay in store for us during the next few months, day in, day out. It was a giant leap of faith for everyone involved, even Victor the dog, a leap from great heights without parachutes or bungee cords or hang gliders or anything else that could break your fall or turn it into a joy ride. Not exactly a leap into the Void, but a fearsome leap all the same.
But that Void I felt there, in the Chaits’ very small living room, in that tiny house in the Westchester area of Miami, which was then at the outermost edge of the city, that Absence, that Void, which deserves its capital V, would keep resurfacing again and again, walloping me every time, flattening me again and again. Age hasn’t made it any easier to take. I recognize it now for what it is, but knowing what it is makes it no easier to stand up against its knockout punch, which seems to be getting stronger and stronger. I put up a fight every time, even though I k
now I can’t win; I dodge and bob and weave and throw punches that always miss, but I swing away all the same. And the Void always cheats, pounding me with a lightning-fast punch when I least expect it.
“You, again. Okay, here we go. Dukes up.” Pow. Lights out. Coño, que mierda.
But every now and then I land a winning punch.
Flash forward, forty-three years.
I’m holding my mother’s hand in a Chicago hospital, waiting for her to die. It’s a stormy Midwestern spring night, lightning bolts forking everywhere between the tall buildings and above them, there, near the edge of Lake Michigan, a fickle body of water that sometimes looks awkwardly turquoise, almost like the sea that caresses Havana, but also has a habit of turning steel gray and freezing over. The sparks given off by the elevated trains, less than half a block away, respond in some kind of code to the lightning bolts, as if joining in a subtle, sublime harmony that only God and the angels can hear.
Earlier that day, the room had been full of Cubans, my mother’s friends. Tony was there too, briefly. He couldn’t get away from his nursing home for very long, and couldn’t take the stress either. We weren’t all supposed to be there, but we had snuck in one by one, fooling the security guard downstairs, with the help of a very kindly nun. The room was jam-packed, and the walls reverberated with our voices as we prayed the rosary, loudly, in Spanish, at breakneck speed, stringing together all the words as if there were no spaces between them, going from Ave Maria to Amen in a split second. It wasn’t how I like to pray, rat-tat-tat, but this is what they’d all done together for years with my mom, once a week, and it was beautiful, the best possible “bon voyage” gift at that moment.
At one point, a nurse had opened the door and jumped back, as if she’d stumbled upon a kennel full of barking, spike-collared Doberman pinschers. She didn’t dare return after that. And I laughed at that, out loud, as everyone kept the Ave Marias going at full speed, rat-tat-tat.
But as I hold my mom’s hand, I’m the only one in the room. It’s nearly midnight, and everyone else has gone home. I’ve been told she has only about six hours left to live, maybe ten at most, so I’m ready for a long vigil. She’s unconscious, and her breathing doesn’t sound anything like breathing. It’s a loud gurgling of the sort one expects to hear from sewer pipes, or from one of the machines at her factory, where she worked for many years. The Void hovers close by, circling ever tighter. It’s tensing up, getting ready to pounce, but it hesitates. I’m praying wordlessly, asking for nothing. Nothing at all, save for God to do the praying for me.
I’ve never been more awake, more ready to take on the Void.
Dukes up.
Zap! Whoosh! Snap!
Sweet Jesus, my God. Hail Mary, full of grace. A powerful electric current surges from my mother’s hand into mine—zap, whoosh, snap—and it courses through my whole body in a flash, and lingers, and fills me with a sense of wholeness and well-being the likes of which I have never, ever felt. I’m there and not there all at once. I’m home. Home. I’ve always been here and always will be, and there is no Void. None at all. The Void is exposed for what it is: Nothing. And against this Fullness and Light there can be no Void of any kind, no Absence, no Darkness, no Unrequited Love. And time is stripped of its hypnotic power, and in this eternal Now there is no longing, no pain, no guilt of any kind, only pure Love that seems like annihilation, but is just its opposite. And all my little loves and infatuations are exposed for what they’ve always been: tiny shards of the real thing, grossly misshapen by my own selfishness.
Then the current that has been flowing through me forever suddenly stops, and I know my mother has just given me the best embrace ever.
Of course.
I look over and she’s no longer breathing. The gurgling has ceased. Her body looks a lot like mine did when I hovered above it during surgery, at another Chicago hospital, thirty-four years earlier.
I go out to the nurse’s station and ask them to confirm the obvious. I make all the necessary arrangements, all of which are exceedingly mundane and not as painful as I’d feared, and I walk out of the hospital. It’s about a quarter past two in the morning, Central Time. I’ve already spoken on the phone with Jane, back east in Connecticut. I can’t call Tony at the nursing home until sunup. So, it’s just me and Chicago. There are very few people on the wet streets, and few cars too. The el train rumbles past, its sparks flashing wildly on nearby buildings and on the trees, which are swaying as wildly as the sparks, and casting fleeting inkblot shadows here and there, above and below, left and right. The sky is pink, the way it always is when it’s cloudy in Chicago at night, thanks to its legions of street lamps. The thunderstorms have quit, but the wind is trying to keep the party going. The air is moist, thick, and sweet-smelling. The trees are all doing their early spring thing, spewing all kinds of scents as they unfurl their new leaves. I pause to fill my lungs with the sweet night air and look at the skyline, once so familiar, now so surprisingly alien.
This became home, long ago, and is home forever and nevermore.
Sweet, sweet exile. Blessed exile. Sacred entryway to Now, my Ishtar Gate. Eternal blues bar. Sweet home, Chicago, my promised land, my Babylon, gained and lost, by the rivers of which I laughed and wept, and sang no songs of Zion. Sweet and holy privilege, exile. Blessed are the Chosen, for they shall always yearn for home, everywhere and nowhere in particular, and always find it in the most unlikely places. And blessed are the sacrificial victims, for they shall have no choice but to accept their role, and smile, knowingly.
In the dark of night, silhouetted against the pink sky, all I see are straight lines and right angles. No curves to speak of, no outrageous colors. Nothing superfluous. No curlicues, no filigree, no gilding, even though I well know that the city is full of such things. Sheffield Avenue, the street I’m on, seems to stretch to infinity. That’s how most of the streets look in Chicago, which is as flat as South Florida. It’s designed as a perfect grid, with lines so straight and true that you can use them to guide your stargazing on clear nights. But it’s all an illusion. Forget infinity down here. A few blocks to the north, between the point at which I’m standing and infinity, Sheffield runs past Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs, the ultimate losers, the baseball team that turned me into a sports atheist. Nothing is more finite than Wrigley Field, or more charmingly heartbreaking.
The city feels eternal, not old, and as free of its stifling past as it is of ghosts, including those of Abe Lincoln, Al Capone, and my mother. I’m so, so happy, and so, so grief stricken all at once. So much at home, so displaced, so eager, and so unwilling to go where my mother has gone.
The Void will knock me out again, for sure. I know it. It’ll roar back when I least expect it, and its inevitable sucker punch will land true and hurt like hell, as always. But the next time—maybe tomorrow, or an hour from now, or next Christmas—I might be able to last a round or two against my familiar adversary, and taunt it a little.
Sónomambíche. Cabrón. Dukes up. Ay.
Lights out.
Four
I’d never seen a garbage disposal before. It was one of those contraptions that never made it to Havana, thanks to the Revolution. One of many technological advances that had been deflected by Castrolandia’s new communist force field, which was directed from Moscow. The free world moved ahead at breakneck speed, inventing and selling all sorts of neat stuff, while Castrolandia headed backward toward a Neolithic standard of living.
The garbage disposal inside the kitchen sink drain was one of many, many wonders in the humble Chait household, my new home. It made a lovely sound I won’t try to imitate, for chances are that you’ve probably heard it, a harmonious blend of whirring and grinding and chopping, which spoke of sheer annihilation. How I wanted to toss stuff down that drain and flip the switch. Hoooo Weeee! Any item would have done. But I knew myself well enough by then: If I were to throw in just one item, I’d have to follow it up with another and another. And soon enough the kitchen wou
ld be emptied of contents or the grinding machine would be smoking and crying for help, or both.
And then I’d be in the doghouse.
One of the first things my new mom Norma showed me was the doghouse plaque in the kitchen. It had six little wooden dogs hanging on hooks to the right of a doghouse with a hook in it. The six dogs had our names on them. Everyone in the house had a dog avatar, even Victor the German shepherd. If anyone misbehaved in any way or caused trouble, their dog figure would be moved into the doghouse and hung on its hook.
I didn’t know what shamed me the most: my dog hanging in the doghouse, or the empty hook left behind among the other dog figures. It was a painful thing to look at, any way you sliced it. I’d have that debate with myself until the day I left that wonderful house, and my dog was retired, all scuffed and worn-out at the edges.
The Puritans who once ran the New England town in which I live would humiliate all reprobates by shackling them to pillories on the village green, where everyone could scold them and pelt them with rotten food and other unpleasant stuff. The Chaits had no pillory, but they did have the doghouse plaque in the kitchen. Over the next few months, my dog would be in there way too frequently. The only other member of the household who came close to rivaling my record was Victor. He was a good dog, but a lot like me. Too curious, too clueless, and too bent on following his instincts.
The sliding glass doors that led to the screen-enclosed patio in the back had paper appliqués on them: human handprints and figures of birds, all in tropical colors. Victor liked to chase whatever moved in the yard, even beyond the screened-in patio, and he’d crashed into the glass doors too often. The silhouettes pasted on the glass were there to remind Victor that there was a wall of glass between him and the great outdoors. I think he’d crashed through one of them and injured himself, but I’m not sure about that because when Norma and Lou told me that story, I still didn’t understand everything they said.
