The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  She was already at the door when he cleared his throat, indicating that he had something else to say. She turned and saw that whatever it was, it was not easy for him.

  “Do you know . . . that is, did she ever speak of leaving Cuba?”

  The question stunned Celia, but her answer came swift and sure. “No. Never.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  JOE walked into the apartment to find Alma kneeling in front of the statue of the Virgin. She crossed herself, rose, and said brusquely, “Dinner’s ready. Luis is working late. He said we should go ahead and eat without him.”

  “Good. I’m hungry. Smells delicious.” Actually Joe was more tired than hungry. Had he been alone he would have skipped dinner. But it was a small deception that cheered his mother and cost him nothing. “I don’t suppose Celia called?”

  “She did, to thank us for the food. She still hasn’t heard from Liliana.”

  Joe might have made nothing-to-worry-about noises, but given what he knew about the kid, he wasn’t going to put on that much of an act. The meal passed in silence.

  After dinner Joe said he was going for a walk. He never walked in Miami, not during the day because it was so bloody hot, and not at night because it was so bloody dangerous. But it seemed natural here, especially in this neighbourhood, with its old trees and half-uprooted sidewalks. He walked beyond the neighbourhood and a few blocks farther, to the Habana Libre Hotel. He checked the venue but nothing appealed to him. Then on to Hotel Nacional, but there was nothing of interest there either. He had an overpriced beer and left.

  The problem wasn’t the entertainment. He just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Not until he got back to his own street and had circled the block twice to avoid going into the house did he realize why he was so bothered by the sombre atmosphere. It used to be like that when his father was alive.

  Alma, prior to retirement, had been an ambulance driver. One of her first emergency calls, when she was barely nineteen years old, was to El Encanto, a Habana department store blown up by terrorists. One of the wounded Alma scraped off the sidewalk that day was Lázaro Lago. Five days after hauling young Lázaro and other injured shoppers to the hospital, Alma was providing the same service to Bay of Pigs casualties. Months later, when Lázaro was released from hospital, he came to thank her. Although he had not recovered from his injuries and never would, he began courting her. Within the year they were married. They rarely talked about the occasion of their meeting, and when they did, the focus was on the romantic aspect, not the gory details. Lázaro Lago lived a dozen years longer. By then most had forgotten, if they ever knew, how his body got broken in the first place.

  By contrast, everyone knew how the Cantú girls’ father died. The entire nation was reminded, every October 6, how on that day in 1976 its national fencing team, plus coaches and other passengers, had been blown out of the sky by a terrorist’s bomb, the tragic voice of the co-pilot as preserved on the flight recorder while the plane was plummeting toward the sea being replayed again and again. The story was particularly relevant to this neighbourhood because two of those passengers—Celia’s father and their friend Joaquín’s father—lived on the street.

  Joe stared at the house that had triggered the memory, where Joaquín’s family had once lived. Like the house in which he and Luis had grown up, it was an old mansion that had long since been divided into apartments. A bluish light in the living room window indicated that the family inside was watching television. It was the blue light that brought back the memory.

  Joe had been about seventeen at the time. After hanging around with the Cantú girls all his life, mostly lusting after Carolina, who was two years older and only made jokes when he hit on her, he had just begun to notice her younger, shyer sister. That night he followed Celia over to Joaquín’s house to watch a rerun of televised testimony by an ex-CIA operative, Philip Agee. Joe wasn’t much interested, but it seemed a small price to pay for a little touchy-feely in the dark on the way home.

  Joe assumed there would be something in the program about the bomb planted on the plane that killed the Cantú girls’ father, and so there was. However, Agee’s testimony also covered the department store explosion that had broken his own father. Agee claimed that what blew El Encanto to smithereens was dynamite that CIA operatives had stuffed into dolls in the store’s stockroom. A few days later, when Joe had time to assimilate it, he realized that this was what made his mother and Kristina Cantú so tight. It wasn’t just that they were widows, but that they had been widowed by similarly irrational (or purely evil) acts.

  Standing there in the dark, looking up at a window that glowed with pale blue light, it occurred to Joe that Agee’s testimony on television that night, which confirmed what Cuban security forces and some international tribunals had been saying all along, had been a defining moment for all of them. Naturally it hadn’t seemed that at the time. After all, they were just a bunch of horny teenagers sprawled on a hardwood floor in front of the TV, munching plantain chips that Joaquín’s mother had fried for them.

  Joaquín had picked up a rapier and leapt about the room making lightning thrusts at empty air, punctuating each jab with “Pendejo! ” and “Take that, caca !” He had inherited his father’s quick reflexes and was already competing at a high level, but it was when he started using fencing to vent his anger at the subhumans who had killed his father that he vaulted onto the Cuban Olympic team. For a while he and Celia were obsessed with all that crap, using every scrap of news they could get their hands on to feed their anger. Lucky for Celia that she and Franci were so tight. Franci was always telling Celia to let it go and more than once got into it with Joaquín for bringing it up in every conversation.

  Thinking of Franci, Joe smiled and absently scratched his crotch. He had had his eye on her too, but whenever he tried to put a move on her she brushed him off as if he was a gnat. That night he had been sitting on the floor next to Celia, with Franci sprawled on the other side of him. The program over, Franci leaned on her elbow and mused on the psychology of the criminals, wondering if there was any way to prevent people from developing into the type of perverts who had done the things Agee described in his testimony. Her Afro brushed Joe’s arm, causing parts of his anatomy to tingle. Joe, wondering if he might make out better if he ditched Celia and walked Franci home, had surreptitiously slipped a hand up the back of her sweater.

  Franci sat up, looked deep into his eyes, and said, “Please, José, try not to be a prick at a time like this.”

  Luis, the oldest in the group, had adopted a certain grim seriousness, causing him to look like a hardline Cuban patriot of the bureaucratic stripe, as their father had been and Luis would later become. He had just begun attending Communist Party meetings and might have mouthed some Marxist cliché about the inherent corruptness of capitalism. Or maybe he hadn’t said anything. Luis often didn’t. In that respect he was like a religious person who doesn’t go in for proselytizing. He believed deeply and practised his beliefs but rarely talked about them.

  As Luis brooded, Franci mused aloud, and Joaquín leapt about the room imaginarily skewering the men who had murdered his father, Celia and Carolina had sat holding hands, speaking in low voices. Then Carolina had said, to the room at large, “I shall join the army.” And Celia said, “I would rather be a doctor.”

  As for himself, that very evening Joe made up his mind to get the hell out of Cuba by any means possible. Whatever his life turned out to be, he sure as hell didn’t want it to be a permanent target for the guys with the biggest bombs.

  THIRTY

  CELIA reached Liliana’s school just before noon. She stepped off the bus into sweltering heat and walked across a grassy expanse toward the administration building. A once-gracious country house, it had, like many others, been confiscated when its owner left Cuba. Two-storey additions, constructed later, winged out on either side. The wings compromised the architectural integrity of the original Spanish-style hacienda but made it more functional as
a school. Verandas ran the length of each wing. Classrooms were on the ground level. Dorm rooms were on the second floor, boys in one wing, girls in the other.

  A pretty chestnut filly with a white blaze down her face grazed on the lawn, reminding Celia of the horses that had kept the grass down at the cancer hospice where her mother spent the last months of her life. As Celia approached the horse, it threw up its head and eyed her with an ears-forward alertness that suggested it might welcome a startling move as an excuse to go galloping across the grass. Celia reached out to touch the velvet muzzle. The filly quivered its upper lip against her palm and, finding it empty, went back to grazing.

  Celia entered the director’s office just as Compañera Campos was preparing to go out. A grimace of displeasure at having her departure delayed was quickly replaced by an insincere, “How nice to see you, Dr. Cantú. How can we help you?”

  However, to make it clear that she was leaving, the director strode from her office into the reception room clutching a large plastic handbag. Celia knew that it was lunchtime, and got right to the point.

  “As you know, Compañera Campos, my niece, Liliana, has been absent this week. I understand that she has missed other days as well.”

  “Well, yes. Her asthma . . . ?” Campos left Celia to finish the statement.

  Celia hoped that the shock she felt was not reflected on her face. Liliana did not have asthma. She had suffered from it as a small child, when she was living in a household where mother, father, grandmother, and most of their friends smoked more or less continuously. The asthma was one reason why, after Liliana’s parents and her own mother died, Celia decided to move to the beach. She thought living in a smoke-free apartment cooled by a fresh offshore breeze might help. And it did. Liliana had not shown symptoms of asthma in at least six years.

  It took Celia only a second to realize that Liliana knew how to fake an asthma attack and must occasionally have used it as an excuse to explain short absences.

  “I want to go over her attendance record,” Celia said. “I would like a copy of every month back to September.”

  The director’s face took on an offended look, as if Celia had asked her to give up her lunch hour to run the copy machine herself. Celia ignored it and launched into the little speech she had prepared on the bus ride out. “Liliana has been missing from home for three days. I need to talk to her friends. Of course I know the ones in our neighbourhood but there are others I have not met. So I would like a list of students in her class, as well as the addresses of any older and younger friends.”

  This second request seemed to cheer the school director enormously. Celia guessed that it pleased Campos because it was one she could legitimately refuse.

  “I’m so sorry, Dr. Cantú. Sorry to hear about Liliana and sorry we can’t provide you with the names and addresses of other students. Such information can be released only to family members. And to the authorities, of course. I’m sure, as a doctor, you understand that.”

  Campos held the hard plastic pocketbook against her ample belly like a shield, giving Celia the impression that in any moment she would withdraw a dagger from behind it and thrust. Which, in a manner of speaking, she did.

  “Now, if you were to send out a social worker, Dr. Cantú, or Liliana’s doctor—”

  “I am her doctor,” Celia snapped. “And social workers are aware of the situation. I prefer to deal with it myself.”

  Even as she said it, she saw it was no use. Campos leaned toward her, attempting to intimidate Celia with her bulk as Celia had often seen her intimidate the secretary. “I assure you, we are ready do everything possible to assist you. But without a formal request from the proper authorities, our hands are tied. Completely tied.” She beamed at Celia. “I’m sorry to run off, but unfortunately,” she glanced at her watch, which showed five minutes past twelve, “I have another appointment. If you had called first, perhaps—”

  “Then I will just take copies of Liliana’s attendance records.” Celia folded her arms and fixed the larger woman with a gaze that she had perfected specifically to gain the compliance of recalcitrant patients. “But I would not want to keep you, Compañera Campos. Surely your secretary will not mind staying five minutes to run them off.”

  The director’s bosom heaved with the burden of having to settle for half a victory. After a moment of obstinate silence, she turned on Emily.

  “Emily!” she snapped in a voice that stabbed the secretary with her own name. “Copy the attendance records of Dr. Cantú’s niece.”

  Emily bounded to the filing cabinet. By the time the director’s heavy footsteps had faded down the hall, she had the copy machine humming.

  While Emily made copies, Celia stood at the window. Children were flowing out of classrooms and clattering along the verandas. Most headed for the dining hall but a few spilled into the yard. Celia could not have described the pain caused by their joyous kinetic energy. Like the little filly, they seemed to be looking for an excuse to go bucking across the lawn, manes flying. Why was her Liliana not among them?

  Emily left the copy machine to refile the originals, fumbling them nervously. “Liliana is not like most girls her age,” she confided.

  “In what way?” Celia felt her throat constrict with panic at what she might hear.

  “She isn’t cliquish. She treats everyone the same. That’s why she’s so popular.”

  The panic melted into relief, not because Emily’s observation was complimentary but because it validated Celia’s own judgment. She took the copies Emily thrust at her and automatically flipped through them to be sure they were all there: September, October, November, December, January. She stopped. The next page was not February; it was a list of student names and addresses. She thumbed through several others and saw that this was what she had requested. Quickly she stuffed the papers into her handbag. “Muchas gracias, compañera!”

  “I marked a couple of them,” Emily whispered.

  “Special friends?” Celia asked.

  “Mm, I’m not sure. Like I said, Liliana doesn’t play favourites. But there is this one boy . . . and Magdalena.”

  Liliana had mentioned Magdalena but Celia had never met her; as far as she knew, she was just one of the girls in their twenty-bed dorm. “Why Magdalena?”

  “Well, you know what she is like.”

  “Actually, no. Liliana’s friends often drop by but I’m usually at work. I don’t recall having met this Magdalena. What is she like?”

  Emily pursed her lips. Celia sensed that she was looking for a way to describe the girl that would not seem unsympathetic. “She is one of those who deliberately excludes herself. Then gets lonely and looks around for someone who won’t tease her for being different.”

  “Is she?” Celia asked. “Different, I mean?”

  Emily gave a small laugh. “She tries to be. Mostly she’s just difficult.”

  “You seem to know the students well.”

  Emily took it for the compliment it was meant to be. “Well, I do live here on the grounds. And I enjoy them. We are not exactly friends—I’m sure none of them think of me that way.” She gave a self-depreciating laugh. “Or think of me at all, for that matter. But I love watching them. They are so lively and full of self-assurance.”

  “That’s what I like about working with children too,” Celia smiled. “And if I say so myself, Cuba does have good children. Not perfect or perfectly healthy, but I cannot imagine children have it much better anywhere. They are truly treasured, and they know it.”

  “I agree.” Emily nodded. “But different children do different things with their energies. Magdalena, for example. She will go to any lengths to be seen as a rebel.”

  “Is she from a broken home?” Celia asked, unconsciously falling prey to the stereotypical notion that difficult children are more often from one-parent families.

  “Heavens no!” Emily exclaimed. “She has two parents, two sets of grandparents, and two older siblings. All in the tourist industry.”r />
  “All?” Celia repeated in surprise.

  “The brother and sister are still in training, but that’s where they’re headed. Her father is a rental car agent and her mother works in a boutique. I don’t recall what the grandmothers do, food preparation, I think. One grandfather is a musician. The other one sells cigars. Magdalena goes on and on about the money they make and can’t wait to finish school and get her share.” Emily shook her head dubiously. “But she is not the kind of girl they hire for those jobs.”

  “What do you mean?” Celia asked.

  “She is not the helpful type. More the look-at-me type.”

  Celia guessed she knew what Emily meant, but could not imagine such a person as one of Liliana’s friends. “Why do you feel that I particularly should talk to her?”

  The secretary lowered her voice, “They have been absent on some of the same days. Including last Friday. Magdalena returned on Monday, but when Liliana didn’t come to school this week, she presented a note from her mother saying she would need to miss school the rest of the week due to a family emergency.” Emily dropped her voice still lower. “Of course it’s a forgery, but frankly, she is so disruptive that the director prefers it when she’s not here. Then her behaviour is not our problem.”

  As she spoke, Emily glanced down at Celia’s watch.

  “Forgive me!” Celia exclaimed. “I am taking up your lunch hour.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Emily assured her quickly. “But I expect you’ll want to catch the one o’clock bus. There isn’t another till five.”

  “I would like to get back,” Celia acknowledged. “But I was hoping to talk to the nurse, to ask her about this asthma business. I don’t recall receiving any reports.”

  Emily shook her head. “One of her own children is sick, so she didn’t come to work today. I can give you the details.” She hesitated and backtracked. “But that wouldn’t be very professional, would it?”