The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  Tourism, Celia thought bitterly. Was there any aspect of it that wasn’t corrupting? But she said nothing, as Angelica had switched to talk of her children and grandchildren. Celia did not mention Liliana and Angelica did not ask. Perhaps she did not remember, from that single visit so long ago, that Carolina had a little girl.

  Around nine o’clock, Angelica said, “You should bring the car inside. There is a lot of theft these days.”

  Celia didn’t grasp what she meant until Angelica began to bustle about the courtyard, moving potted plants and rocking chairs to the side. Then Celia realized that just as horses and buggies were driven into the paved courtyard in the olden days, she was to drive the car inside, securing it for the night behind hacienda walls.

  While bringing the car in, Celia heard loud music. “Is there a fiesta going on?”

  Angelica cocked her head and listened to raucous sounds that seemed to be coming from everywhere and not in harmony. “Funny. I have become so used to it I hardly notice it anymore. There is a nightclub around the corner, and now a larger one has opened down the block. Both are built amidst the ruins of old colonial buildings. Oh, what a shame that Nanita is not here to show you around!”

  “I would like to walk a bit, to see if Trinidad has as much charm as they claim,” Celia said, hoping Angelica would not offer to come with her, as she was not, as yet, ready to reveal the reason for her visit.

  “It is pleasant this time of the evening. Ever so much nicer than during the day, when you can’t see the town for the tourists. When I was a girl we always went out walking after dinner. Not alone, of course. That would never have been permitted.” She patted Celia on the arm. “But you’ll be fine. Thank goodness we don’t have much of that kind of crime in Cuba.”

  Once the car was parked in the courtyard and Celia was shown her bedroom, actually Nanita’s bedroom, Angelica walked her out to the street and gave her a key to let herself back in. “They play salsa at La Casa de la Música. The clubs feature a folkloric group around eleven, and there is acoustic music at the Casa de la Trova there on the corner.”

  Celia would have loved nothing better than to sit in the Casa de la Trova and listen to an old maestro make love to his guitar. But there was no point in looking for Liliana there. She walked to the disco nearest Angelica’s house.

  Inside the club, despite the fact that the place had no roof, the air was thick with tobacco smoke. Squinting into the gloom, she moved around until she had seen everyone in the room, then went down the street to a second, smaller club. The crowd was not as young as she had expected. Rather than young travellers of the sort that Magdalena might have called “backpackers,” most of the foreigners appeared middle-aged or even seniors. Youth was represented mainly by Cuban girls, and some young men, who were with, or trying to pick up, foreigners. Celia wondered how many of them came from the housing estate in nearby Casilda where, as in her own apartment complex, there would be schools, clinics, places to hold dances, sports facilities, and easy access to the beach; in short, everything needed for a wholesome life—but where few families would have a dollar income with which to buy consumer goods.

  Yet Angelica had said that hundreds of families in Trinidad rented rooms to tourists. Those homes probably contained personal entertainment equipment such as she had seen at Magdalena’s and perhaps the kind of cosmetics and clothing that Luis had unearthed in Liliana’s room. Was that what drew so many young Cubans to places like the discos where, if they took the fancy of a foreigner, they too might earn dollars? Was it just that—a desire to have new clothes and other consumer items such as friends from dollar-earning families had? Was that what had drawn Liliana?

  In the dim, smoky atmosphere of each club, Celia saw more than one girl with a head of dark curls enough like Liliana’s to stop her heart. After watching couples gyrate on the dance floor to music at a volume she was sure must be doing permanent damage to everyone’s eardrums, Celia left profoundly disturbed. As she trudged back to Angelica’s, she no longer found it difficult to imagine Liliana as one of those pretty Cuban girls hanging out at discos for reasons that by no stretch of the imagination could be called wholesome.

  • • •

  It was dark in the windowless, high-ceilinged room when Celia woke, but a thin line of light under the door told her that it was morning. She heard soft sounds from the courtyard, indicating that Angelica was already up. Celia dressed and went out, carrying her shoes in her hand. Angelica, despite her sixty-some years, was wearing jeans and running shoes. She held a large bouquet of flowers and was pushing a bike toward the door. “What beautiful flowers!” Celia exclaimed. “Where are you taking them?”

  “Oh, Celia, good morning. I didn’t expect you to be up so early. They are for my sister. That is, for her grave. I thought I’d be back before you woke.”

  Celia stared. For her the death of a sister had always been a deeply personal, unshared thing. It never occurred to her that this woman might be living with a similar loss. “I’ll drive you to the cemetery,” she said quickly. “It will be easier on the flowers.”

  “She isn’t at the cemetery,” Angelica said, but showed acceptance of the offer by leaning her bike against the wall. “She is buried at the old place, where we grew up.”

  Celia recalled Nanita telling her that her grandfather, one of Trinidad’s sugar barons, had owned a plantation that was confiscated by the revolutionary government.

  “All the more reason for me to drive you,” Celia said, sitting down on a rocking chair to put on her runners.

  “Would you like coffee first?”

  “No, let’s go now, while it’s cool and the flowers are fresh.”

  Bouncing slowly over ancient cobblestones, Celia saw that Trinidad was an exceptionally pretty town, more so than she had realized the night before. Streets and parks were empty at this early hour. The elegant old buildings were still in shadow, but here and there church spires captured and held golden sunshine against a pure blue sky.

  “How lucky you are to live in such a lovely town!” Celia exclaimed.

  “I like it. My mother also preferred living in town. But my father hated it, and that poisoned it for her. It poisoned him too, in the end, all that hatred.”

  “You mean after he lost the finca?”

  “Sí. Confiscado.” Angelica pointed. “Take that road, the one to La Boca.”

  In another few blocks they were in rolling hill country, the mountains mere purple silhouettes in the distance. Perhaps five kilometres from Trinidad, Angelica spoke again. “That turnoff just ahead. Don’t go down the road, though. It’s too rough. Park on the highway. We can walk from here.”

  Celia saw no buildings and wondered how long a walk she was in for. Angelica answered the question she had not ask. “It’s not far. You can’t see it because it’s down in a hollow.” She gazed across the gently rolling landscape, thickly covered with bright green thorn bushes that gave the illusion of lushness. “A shame, isn’t it?” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “To have such rich land lying fallow. In my father’s day it was sugarcane as far as the eye could see. I don’t fault the government for making a mistake. But that it took twenty-five years to realize it!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The notion that big farms had to stay big and were better in the hands of the state than individual families. Certainly big farms made some families rich, while those who worked the land were exploited, but under state management they didn’t make anybody rich. They still had to have cheap labour, didn’t they?”

  “Do you think the government realizes now that was a mistake?” Celia asked.

  “Obviously. That is why they have started breaking up big farms and giving small parcels to families and co-ops. But first they let this happen.” Angelica waved her hand at the rolling land around them, which was lush only with thorn bushes.

  “When the Soviets stopped providing farm machinery and fuel, I think Cuban officials sulked, ju
st like my father, hoping somehow they would get back what had been taken away.” She gave Celia an ironic smile. “That’s men for you. It has taken them all this time to face the fact that they needed to try something new.” As Angelica spoke, they were walking along a rutted road. She stopped and pointed. “There is the house.”

  Nestled in a wooded glen was a long low ranch house with the traditional veranda running along one side. It was smaller than Celia expected, given how wealthy the family was said to have been. “How big was your family?” she asked.

  “Twelve children,” Angelica replied. “But we never lived here at the same time because we were spread out in age. And there were the townhouses. That was how my father kept a lot of property when the farm was confiscated. The government said from the start that private homes wouldn’t be confiscated so Papá gave each of the children a townhouse, either in Trinidad or Cienfuegos. I didn’t get one because I remained with my parents. Their house—the one where I am now—became mine after they died.”

  They descended into the glen and were soon standing at the edge of a small family cemetery with markers dating back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Angelica moved among them, pointing out various relatives, more than half of whom were children. “So many babies died in those days,” she said, kneeling by a gravestone with a 1953 date, the last one buried in the family plot. “Not that my sister was a baby. She was sixteen.”

  “Younger or older than you?” Celia asked.

  “My twin. She died of cholera. A terrible death. It was so contagious no one wanted to nurse her. I alone did that. And promised to bring flowers on her birthday. That was all she asked for at the end.”

  Celia stood quietly, sharing yet not sharing the loss of a beloved sister. She had thought that nothing could be worse than the pain of being told that the person closest to you in the world had been killed in a purely random way. Now she saw that it might have been worse; that like Angelica, she might have spent days or weeks watching her sister suffer as she slipped away. Yet grief was not an emotion to be compared. Each person, she knew, lived with their own, unmeasurable against any other.

  At last Angelica rose to go. Celia looked at the house and back at Angelica.

  “Did you want to visit the house?”

  Angelica shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. It was my father’s home. The place in town, it was more my mother’s. And mine.”

  “So it wasn’t so bad for you, the changes that came with the Revolution?” Celia asked as they headed back toward the car.

  Angelica walked without answering for a minute or more. Finally she said, “My family was one of the wealthiest in this area. But of twelve children, my father could only afford to send two to university, his two eldest sons. Both live in Miami now and are even richer than our father was. We never hear from them. They hold it against us that we stayed. They think we chose to support the Revolution.”

  “Did you?” Celia asked.

  Angelica looked at her in surprise. “Me? I chose nothing. I was the youngest girl. It fell to me to look after my parents in their old age.”

  Celia felt foolish for having forgotten that a woman of Angelica’s generation would not have had the options she had had. True, there were those like her mother and Alma who had used the chaos of a revolution to break free. But they were ordinary city girls, not shackled by tradition as a girl raised in a wealthy conservative family in the provinces would have been.

  Angelica looked out across the wasteland that had once been a great plantation. “I have six children,” she said softly. “Boys and girls alike, they all went to university.”

  As they reached the car it occurred to Celia that if this was the dead sister’s birthday and she and Angelica were twins, then it was Angelica’s birthday as well. Also, they were only a few kilometres from the coast. The resorts on Playa Ancón, where she intended to drop off notices about Liliana, were close by.

  “I would like to see the beach resorts,” she told Angelica. “Are there many?”

  “Two, I think, with another one under construction,” Angelica replied. “I haven’t been out there in years. I would enjoy the drive.”

  “How about a birthday breakfast at one of the hotels?”

  Angelica looked askance. “I have never even been inside one of them. I’m sure they are frightfully expensive.”

  “Not for us.” Celia gave her a smug smile. “Remember that José Lago I had just broken up with when you visited us?”

  “Your mother mentioned him,” Angelica recalled. “But I never met the boy.”

  “He emigrated to the United States. But he came back recently. He lent me this car and some money. I am going to use both to take us to breakfast at the beach.”

  The four-dollar price of the breakfast buffet at Hotel Ancón made it unaffordable for the average Cuban, but Celia supposed it was nothing to José. Recalling how he had flaunted his affluence by taking Liliana and Luis to La Casa de Al for lunch, she determined not to feel guilty for this extravagance. They joined the line of guests and heaped their plates, the morning walk having given them a good appetite. They spoke little until they had eaten their fill and a waiter had come by to refill the coffee cups.

  Suddenly Angelica looked up and asked, “Your sister’s little girl, she must be in her teens by now. Where is she?”

  For a moment Celia sat perfectly still because she had been thinking exactly that: where is she?

  Celia spent the next half-hour telling Angelica about Liliana, admitting her fear that the girl had either become a jinetera or had hooked up with young foreigners who would only use her while they were vacationing in Cuba. When she finished, Celia sat there feeling as desolate as she had felt at the cemetery thinking about her dead sister.

  Angelica reached across the table and took her hand. “Listen, Celia. Children don’t get lost in Cuba and they don’t disappear, not for more than a short while. Whatever foolish thing Liliana might be doing now, she will come back to the person she loves and trusts. You wait. You’ll see. I know I am right about this.”

  After breakfast, Celia made phone calls to Liliana’s school, the hospital, and to Alma, but there was still no news. She left flyers at each of the hotels on Playa Ancón, drove back into Trinidad, and left others at hotels there that Angelica directed her to. She also left copies of the flyer with Angelica, who said she would circulate them among casa owners who rented rooms to foreigners and show them to the boys on bicycles.

  “Those boys are as good as palace guards,” Angelica assured Celia. “They stop every car that comes to town and meet every passenger who comes by bus. If Liliana sets foot in Trinidad, they’ll see her. Once they know we’re looking for her, I’m positive they will let me know.” Angelica promised that she, too, would watch for Liliana on the streets of Trinidad. Nanita often went dancing so she could keep an eye out for her in the clubs, and Angelica’s grandson Pepe, in university in Santa Clara, could watch for her there.

  On her way out of town, Celia stopped for gas. Not until the tank had been filled did she know where she was going. Not home, not back to work, and certainly not back to lean on the Lagos. But neither did she want to be alone. Franci she could count on, no matter what. Why return to Habana when she was already halfway to Santiago?

  FORTY-FOUR

  JOE checked his seat assignment and stopped in the aisle next to a young woman with eye-catching breasts. He preferred an empty seat between himself and the next passenger, but if it must be occupied, better an attractive female than a sweaty male. As he fastened his seat belt, the woman murmured, “Oh no!” in a stricken voice. He saw that she was reading a People magazine article about the break-up of a movie-star couple.

  The man in the window seat glanced over her head at Joe, their eyes meeting with a sardonic twinkle. The woman shut the magazine and gazed pensively at the barf bag in the seat pocket for a moment before sizing up her seat mates. Joe, being the younger, got her attention. “Hi,” she said
brightly. “Did you enjoy México? Or are you from there?”

  “I’m from Cuba,” Joe told her. “And I enjoyed my visit there, yes.”

  “Cuba?” Her expression hovered between horror and fascination. “Isn’t it, like, awfully dangerous? Or illegal, or something?”

  Joe grinned. “As far as I know, it’s not against the law for Cubans to have their own country. And a woman friend, a doctor in Habana, bikes back and forth to work in the middle of the night, so I guess it’s not all that dangerous to live there. Compared to Miami anyway.”

  While the woman struggled to integrate his reply into her preconceived notions about Cuba, the man in the window seat remarked with interest, “I have heard tourism is booming there. Travel and Leisure readers just voted it the best vacation destination in the Caribbean.”

  “Not surprising,” Joe responded. “Cuba always had great beaches, and now it’s got a whack of new resorts. I guess some people prefer a place that isn’t a Cancun clone.”

  “I liked Cancun,” the woman said defensively. “Besides, it’s against the law to go to Cuba, isn’t it? I mean, they don’t really want us there, do they?”

  “It’s the United States that forbids travel to Cuba,” Joe informed her. “Or, more accurately, limits it. A person has to get State Department permission, which is not given for tourism. Only for political junkets or family visits, things like that.”

  “And you have family there?” the window-seat passenger surmised.

  “A non-issue for me,” Joe nodded, not bothering to explain that like most Cuban Americans, he had opted to ignore the embargo. No need to mention any of that to complete strangers who for all he knew might be CIA plants.

  The woman sighed. “Did you see Robert Redford in Havana? I’d love to visit Havana. Especially if he was there making a movie.”

  The other man took out his laptop, and Joe, having lost interest in the exposed tops of the woman’s breasts, did likewise, callously leaving her to fulfill any emotional needs she might have through empathy with the celebrities featured in People magazine.