The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  “José! ” His mother screamed in a voice that might have been proclaiming the Second Coming of Christ. “Mi hijo!”

  Luis dropped the receiver back into the cradle and turned in time to see José lift their tiny mother off her feet in an all-encompassing hug.

  “I knew you’d come back! I told Luis—didn’t I tell you, Luis? He will come back!” Without turning to Luis for confirmation, Alma shouted to neighbours, “My son José! At last! He is here!”

  The scene, which Luis had seen played out in other families countless times, sickened him. Why did Cubans always treat visiting gusano relatives like returning heroes? What was so heroic about abandoning your country? Once, after observing a neighbour behaving exactly as Alma was now, he had asked his mother those questions. With patient superiority Alma had replied, “You have no children, Luis. You cannot understand what it is like to lose one.”

  That was one of the times, one of many times, when she had said, with tears glinting in dark eyes that seemed too large for her tiny face, “My José will come back. I know he will.”

  Luis could not fathom his mother’s unconditional love any more than he could challenge her tears, but neither had he changed his opinion of those who welcomed rogue relatives with open arms. He believed that most families were more excited by the expectation of lavish gifts than by the visit itself. That would not apply to Alma, of course. She was like himself in that respect: largely indifferent to material things.

  Luis stood unobtrusively in the background as José, still locked in Alma’s embrace, grinned self-consciously and waved to neighbours who peered from windows, doorways, and balconies up and down the street. Although the old mansions had been constructed with an eye to privacy, subsequent transformation into apartments ensured that their wide marble steps and decorative balconies provided everyone in the neighbourhood with ringside seats, so to speak, to everyone else’s life.

  When Alma finally dragged José inside, she left the door wide open. Luis knew that this evening and for as long as his brother remained, curious neighbours would be dropping by to say hello to get a look at the local boy turned Yanqui. He turned to get a better look himself.

  José stood blinking at what had once been the main salon of a lavish colonial home. Prior to their family’s tenancy, the spacious room had been converted into an apartment; the main part a living-dining area, with a narrow strip at the back walled off to form a minuscule kitchen. Down one side a somewhat wider strip had been partitioned into two bedrooms and a bathroom. Only the fourteen-foot-high frescoed ceilings, with fleshy cherubs entwined in faded banners, remained as an incongruous reminder of former grandeur.

  “I can’t believe it!” José exclaimed. “This place looks exactly the same! I swear, even the plastic flowers!”

  Luis had forced his face into a welcoming grin, but that remark set his teeth so on edge that the smile more closely resembled a sneer. Before he could compose a rejoinder, a neighbour’s child skipped in carrying a chipped enamel cup.

  “Tía Alma, Mamí wants to borrow some cooking oil.”

  “By the stove, María. I’ll pour it.” From the kitchen Alma called, “Put your bags there in your old room, José. Luis, did you make space for his things in the wardrobe?”

  José raised his eyebrows at Luis. “You still live here? With Mamá?”

  “Why not?” Luis snapped. “You know what a housing shortage we have in Habana.”

  “Well, yeah. But you being in government, I would’ve thought—”

  “That I would use my position to get put ahead on the housing list? Thereby depriving someone else of a place to live? No, José. I would not do that. Nor would my compañeros.” Pursing his lips, Luis waved his hand toward the bedroom they had shared for the first twenty-odd years of their lives. “Help yourself.”

  The little girl headed for the door, her face puckered with the effort of not spilling the oil. Alma called after her, “Ask your mamí if she found any tomatoes at the agromercado.”

  José continued to stand in the middle of the room, eyes moving from one well-worn object to the other. He motioned to a small statuette of the Virgin. “That’s new, though. Since the Pope’s visit?”

  “No, no! I have had it for years. You don’t remember? It used to be in my bedroom.” Alma placed serving dishes filled with steaming food on the already-set table and cast an accusatory glance at Luis. “Always I have been a good Catholic.”

  María skipped in with a tomato for Alma and slipped out again, this time daring a shy smile at José, who absently ran a hand across her dark hair.

  “And what’s your reward, Mamá?” José winked at Luis. “Two sons—one a godless communist the other a godless capitalist.”

  Luis snickered. One quality he had always appreciated in his brother was José’s use of humour to shield both of them from Alma’s scoldings. They had never been allies—José was too self-centred for that—but he had a way of linking them in remarks like the one he had just made that allowed Luis to feel, at times, that they were on the same side. No sooner had the warm memory surfaced than the corners of Luis’s mouth turned down. Alliances of convenience, he thought contemptuously. The only kind José understood.

  “I pray for you both.” Alma placed the plate with sliced tomato on the table with a sharp thwack that said she wasn’t amused. “Come. Dinner is ready.”

  José walked to the door of the bedroom. Without asking which bed might be Luis’s, he heaved his bags onto the one he had occupied before leaving home. Through the open door, Luis saw him glance around and imagined a sneer at the room’s smallness.

  It didn’t seem that small after you left, he thought grimly. But if you stay long, it is going to get very small indeed.

  José moved from bedroom to bathroom—the only bathroom—squeezed narrowly between his room and his mother’s.

  Luis tried to stop himself from seeing the apartment—the only home he had ever known—the way he imagined his brother now saw it. But it was no use. How many bathrooms, he wondered, did “Miami Joe” have in his house?

  As José slid into what had always been his place at the table, Luis mumbled, “Guess the place seems kind of small to you now.”

  “It’s bigger than my apartment,” José said. “The one I moved into after the divorce.”

  “Divorce?” Alma looked stricken.

  “Sorry, Mamá, but that’s the way it is. In America, anyway.”

  Luis watched his mother trying to cover her disappointment by plying first José’s plate, then his, then her own with food. The news jolted him too but with mixed emotions: sorry for his mother’s sake, yet pleased that José had not returned with a triumphant entourage of wife and children. Somewhere beneath those feelings was yet another one that left Luis shaken: fear of the unknown. Not yet identified for what it was, he did his best to suppress it. Yet it rose up in his gut and spread out like the hood of a cobra: the knowledge that just as his brother’s leaving had changed everything, so would his return.

  Luis put down his fork and reached for the only defence he could think of: a better understanding of what he was up against. “So, José. What brings you back?”

  “Business.” José wiggled his eyebrows comically and lowered his voice to suggest shady dealings. “Pharmaceuticals.” Then added seriously, “Basic medical supplies.”

  José reached across the table and caught Alma’s hand that had lain limp on the table since mention of the divorce. “Plus I wanted to see my mamá, to ask her pardon for being such a neglectful son.”

  Alma slapped his hand away. “Perdón, no! A good paddling is what you deserve.” But she smiled and began eating.

  Luis felt a simmering resentment at the ease with which José charmed their mother, and fished for a question that would show him in a less favourable light. “Did you finish medical school?”

  José dug into his food and, mouth full, shook his head. When he was able to speak again, he said, “Couldn’t afford it.”

 
“Naturally. Not in the States,” Luis observed smugly.

  If José noticed the smugness he didn’t show it. He replied cheerfully, “But you know how it is: one door closes, another opens. I’ve done well; my company’s still growing.”

  “And you have some notion of expanding into Cuba.”

  “That’s the plan,” José mumbled from behind another mouthful of rice and beans.

  “No chance. We are not ready to travel that road.”

  “We?” The expressive eyebrows shot up. “You may not be a capitalist, Luis, but the Cuban government is cutting business deals right, left, and centre.”

  “With Europeans and the Chinese, sure. With Yanquis, never,” Luis informed him coldly. Then added, as honesty compelled him to do, “Except for essential foodstuffs.”

  José waved his fork dismissively. “Food now, medical supplies tomorrow. Eventually all Cuba’s essentials will come from the United States. It’s only natural—”

  José broke off up when a hip-swinging woman in her early twenties walked in without knocking. She flashed a neighbourly smile at Luis and one of bold curiosity at José. Motioning to the cooking pot she carried, she spoke to Alma. “I ran out of kerosene. My rice needs another ten minutes.”

  Alma waved her to the kitchen. “Leave it, Yvonne. I’ll bring it over when it’s done.”

  Luis poked irritably at his food. “Cuba does not need US pharmaceuticals! Ours are vastly superior. But for the damned blockade, we would be producing plenty!”

  “Hey, I don’t support the embargo. Most Americans don’t. As soon as Fidel kicks off—”

  “Damn you Miami gusanos!” Luis shouted. “Like maggots, just waiting—”

  Yvonne came out of the kitchen and headed for the door. “Gracias, Alma.” She cast a mischievous glance at them as she passed. “I see your sons get along well.”

  “Just like old times,” Alma called after her in a cheery voice. But when Alma looked at her quarrelling boys, now men, her eyes were sad. “Never a meal in peace,” she said quietly so that only they heard.

  Luis was immediately ashamed for having let his temper get the best of him so quickly over—nothing, really. “Perdón, Mamá.”

  He thought José ought to have apologised to her too, but José was looking at him. “I didn’t mean to set you off, Luis. So what’re you up to these days?”

  Luis was considering how he wanted to answer that question when Alma spoke. “Luis is the fourth-highest-ranking official in the energy department. A very important post. He has been a member of the National Assembly for five years.”

  “Holy shit!” José exclaimed, giving Luis the satisfaction of seeing his younger brother look genuinely impressed. “What is Cuba’s energy outlook? I hear it’s pretty bleak.”

  “Only because of the blockade. Once our oil reserves are developed—”

  “Cuba has oil reserves?”

  “We do. And unlimited solar potential. Of course, being cut off from US technology has delayed our solar development.” He gave José an accusing look. “I guess you heard that US State Department refused to grant its own scientists visas to attend the most recent international conference held in Habana on solar energy.”

  “Yeah, but that’s going to change.” José glanced around the shabbily furnished apartment and back at his mother. “It’s bound to be for the better.”

  Alma tilted her head, thinking this over. Luis had a general sense of his mother’s politics but could not guess how she might feel about what her younger son had just said.

  After a moment of silence, Alma spoke heavily, with the certainty of a person who has lived through political upheaval. “The only good change is slow change.”

  Two children, one black, one brown, bounded in. The younger boy was holding his arm, crying. The older one, a self-assured ten-year-old, took charge. “Where is Doctora Celia?” he demanded. “David hurt his arm.”

  “She is not here at the moment,” Luis told him. “Let me see.”

  David held up a chocolate-coloured arm for Luis’s inspection.

  “Can you wiggle your fingers?” Luis asked.

  The boy wiggled his fingers, flapped his hand, then waved his whole arm up and down. “Maybe it’s okay now,” the child conceded.

  Luis suppressed a smile. “Seems to be. But if it keeps hurting, perhaps you should walk over to the clinic and have the nurse look at.”

  “Sí, sí, gracias! ” they shouted in unison and bounded out.

  “Celia still visits?” José addressed the question to Alma.

  “Claro. That girl is like a daughter to me.”

  “Did she ever marry?” The question appeared casual, but Luis wasn’t fooled for a second. Por Dios, how he wished he could answer that in the affirmative!

  Alma sighed. “Not yet.”

  “Maybe she’s still pining for me.” José grinned.

  Luis guffawed. “What an egotist you are, José!”

  Then Alma delivered what Luis appreciated as the coup de grâce. “Celia’s engaged. Didn’t she tell you?”

  José looked abashed. “No, she didn’t.”

  “To Luis. Since two years ago.”

  José’s open-mouthed astonishment gave Luis enormous satisfaction. He had been momentarily put out to find that Celia had not told José herself, but now he was glad she hadn’t. It was worth anything to have this moment of triumph.

  Suddenly José burst out laughing.

  “What is so funny?” Luis demanded.

  José shook his head. “Just—life, I guess. Always ready with the curve balls.”

  Alma replenished their plates with more black beans and rice. “I’m sorry there’s no meat. Do you still like moros y cristianos?”

  “Love ’em,” José assured her. “I’ve cut way back on meat anyway.”

  He gave Luis a long, speculative gaze across the table. “Tell you what,” José said finally. “I’m going to Varadero Friday next. Come along, you and Celia. I’ll treat you to lunch.”

  “Celia will be in Santiago that weekend for a medical conference.”

  “Okay, then. Just you and me.” José reached across the table and smacked Luis on the biceps. “We’ll celebrate you winning the hand of my fair maiden.”

  Alma beamed, and Luis felt a surge of anticipation. It was an emotion he recognized from his youth when José—for it had always been José—came up with a plan of adventure and included him. But Luis had other reasons to look forward to this particular outing. Varadero more than anyplace reflected the economic miracle the Cuban government had wrought, while displaying the natural beauty of the island. The resort fairly flaunted what José had lost when he chose to abandon them. As for the timing, that too was perfect. Given that Celia had to be away, it would be only the two of them, not the triangle it had been all through their childhood, with him in one invisible corner.

  EIGHT

  CELIA pedalled toward her apartment, bone tired. She had caught herself treating an asthmatic child brought into emergency with an emotion that was dangerously close to apathy. She fully intended to complain to Luis again about the scheduling. Not that he had anything to do with it, but he was in a position to let other officials know how doctors felt. She smiled grimly. On the other hand, his being aware of how cranky she got when working long hours might be why he had not called all week; he did not want to listen to her whine. At least she had tomorrow off, and if he did call—

  Just as she turned up the walk to her building the electricity went off, plunging the whole area into darkness. Partly due to an embargo that prevented Cuba from getting the petroleum needed to generate electricity, partly because so much of what was generated was utilized by resorts, and partly because old power plants were being shut down with increasing frequency for repairs, rolling blackouts had become a regular nuisance.

  As Celia reached for the doorknob, a hand touched her back. She jumped, not frightened but startled. A bouquet of three large sunflowers was thrust in front of her.

/>   “Aye, Luis! You surprised me!”

  “Perdón, mi amor. I thought you saw me. Before the lights went out.”

  “I didn’t, no. I think I was half asleep already.”

  Two boys came crashing out the door of the apartment building. “Doctora Celia!” the older boy exclaimed. “We’re going for candles. Can we borrow your bicycle?”

  Celia handed the bike over to the boy. “Put it away when you get back, please.”

  “Claro, Doctora.” He pedalled off with the smaller child behind him, standing on the spikes that protrude from the back axle of the Chinese-made bike.

  Celia looked down at the flowers. They glowed pale yellow in the moonlight. “Gracias, Luis. Es una occasión especial?”

  “The anniversary of our engagement. Celia, you must set a date!”

  Celia sagged against the door frame. “Ay, Luis! How can you ask at a time like this? I am exhausted! These twelve-hour shifts—”

  “It’s not my fault longer shifts are more efficient!”

  Celia could count on one hand the number of times in her life she had lost her temper. And this was about to be one of them.

  “Efficient for who?” she exploded. “The bureaucrat who draws up our schedule? How would you like to be the patient operated on by a doctor who has been on her feet for ten hours? It is not as if Cuba has a shortage of doctors! Or nurses or restroom attendants. Yet we’re all on these damned double shifts just to save on transportation costs. Surely you and your National Assembly comrades see how stupid that is!”

  “I will not argue politics. Just set a date, any date! I can’t go on like this!”

  Celia heard the desperation in his voice. Had she not been so tired she probably would have responded. As it was, it took all the willpower she could muster to bring her temper under control. “I told you before, Luis. I do not know. Not then and not now. Especially not now!”

  He slumped forward as if hit from behind. “Because José is back, right?”

  Suddenly the lights came on. Disco music spilled down on them from the balcony of Celia’s apartment four floors above.