The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  Miguel began spooning a dark thick liquid into his coffee. “I haven’t got any sugar. This is honey. From wild bees. Want some?”

  “Por favor,” Celia said in a voice that sounded prim even to her.

  He passed the spoon to her. While she transferred honey from the jar into her coffee, he cut the pancake thing he had been cooking in half and offered part of it to her.

  “The honey’s good on skillet bread too. It’s got royal jelly in it and probably bee larvae. I don’t bother to strain it.”

  “I don’t mind a few baby bees. They are protein, right?” Celia was determined not to sound prissy again. All the same, she was glad there were no larvae to be seen in what she spooned into her coffee.

  “Looks like you could use some,” he said, without looking at her.

  “Some what?”

  “Protein. You must’ve lost two kilos in the past ten days.”

  Celia stared at him. Not only had he kept track of how many days it had been since he saw her, but with barely a glance he had been able to guess almost exactly how much weight she had lost since Liliana’s disappearance.

  “So you gave up eating for Lent, or what?”

  “For your information,” Celia informed him crisply, “I had perfectly nutritious rice and beans all last week.” She held up a hand in his face, fingers spread, and began ticking off what she could remember of recent meals, not bothering to note how little of each she had actually eaten. “Saturday, I visited a friend in Trinidad who fed me picadillo and sautéed yucca, and on Sunday I dined with a Spanish lady in Bayamo who served pallea with green salad and white wine. Yesterday in Santiago—” Celia paused, trying to remember whether she had eaten either before or after getting together with Franci.

  Miguel caught her hand and held it, frowning. “What happened to your palm?”

  Embarrassed, she pulled her hand back. “It’s from digging. A grave.”

  “Is that what brought you back to this end of the island? A funeral?”

  “Not a funeral. A burial.”

  He rose, and from a shelf took a brown bottle and a square green can. “Hydrogen peroxide,” he said, unscrewing the cap on the bottle. He held out his hand for hers.

  Meekly, she gave it to him. Miguel poured the hydrogen peroxide onto the blisters of each hand. Together they watched the fizz. Then he opened the green can and smeared a Vaseline-like substance into the damaged flesh.

  “What is that?” Celia asked.

  “Bag Balm. A Canadian colleague sent it to me. It’s used for cuts and scratches on the udders of milk cows.”

  “Cow udders? ” Celia sputtered. “You’re putting cow medicine on my hands?”

  “That’s right, Doctor. Apparently when dairymen rubbed Bag Balm on the cows’ teats to heal minor cuts, they discovered that it helped heal their hands too. According to my friend, it’s now used by all sorts of people who have never been near a cow. I use it myself when I get scratched in the bush.”

  As he spoke, Miguel rubbed the salve into her palms and fingers, then slowly up her sunburned forearms. As if sensing her readiness to pull away, he stopped at the elbow and put the lid back on the green can. “This person you buried—was it a close friend?”

  “No.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes before Celia conceded that since she was the one who had arrived unexpectedly, she would have to do the explaining. As the dead man was the most recent thing that had happened, that seemed the place to start. So she told him who Franci and Philip were, how Philip had let the Haitian stowaway slip into the country because he had a little girl, and how that girl was now in Philip and Franci’s care—the black, part-French child they had not been able to have.

  As Celia talked, Miguel stared out the cabin door, watching the morning light come up. When she finished he said, softly, “Que milagro! Little orphan girl stories don’t often have such happy endings in real life.”

  Celia blinked fast to keep her eyes from overflowing. “Are there happy endings?” she asked in a strangled voice. “In real life?”

  He got up and walked out onto the porch. A large juita came from the forest and stood at the bottom of the porch steps looking up at him. He came back inside and picked up the piece of skillet bread, which she had only nibbled. “Are you going to eat this?”

  Celia shook her head.

  He tossed it to the tree rat and said, “Come. Let’s sit on the porch.”

  She followed him outside and sat down in a rocker. The fact that in this remote place, at a cabin where a man lived alone, there was an extra chair on the porch as if inviting a visitor to sit and chat, was so Cuban and friendly that it made her feel better.

  “It must have been a chore to carry these rockers up the mountain,” she said.

  “They weren’t carried up. I made them here.”

  Celia took a second look at the chairs and saw that they were well built, with intricate designs carved into the back and arms. “Is that your hobby, woodworking?”

  “One of them. What are yours?”

  “I don’t think I have any. Just my work.”

  “But after work,” he persisted. “What do you do with yourself?”

  In an almost inaudible voice, she said, “There was my child.”

  He laid a hand on her cheek and turned her face toward him. “Was?”

  In a clipped, reporterly way she told him why instead of being at work she was roaming Cuba from one end to the other. When she finished she got up and walked to the end of the porch. The sun, higher now, was hot. The forest had grown quiet.

  “You blame yourself,” he said.

  “Of course! Myself and—everybody! All the lies, the deception! They say our children are contented! And when they aren’t, some claim it’s because we’re too permissive. Others say it is because there is not enough freedom! That more choices or,” she spoke bitterly, “at least more dollars will solve everything.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing solves everything. Simple answers provide comfort, not solutions.”

  The rising temperature of the air seemed to ignite her own anger—anger toward Luis for his interference, anger toward José, who might have put ideas into Liliana’s head, anger toward Liliana that until this instant she had not allowed herself to feel. “They are no comfort to me!” Throwing up her hands, she whirled to face him.

  “I ask you, Miguel, is this what our parents fought for? So their children could become bureaucrats and their grandchildren could trade it all for consumer trash?”

  “Do you think that’s what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know what is happening! I just want to know what happened to the Cuba they promised us! Where is the Cuba we thought we were building? Where is my child? ”

  Of course he could not answer those questions, nor did he try. He became very still, the way she would learn that he always did when tension thickened the air. The jutia crept onto the porch and squatted near his foot.

  As quick as her anger had flared, it turned to ash. In a more controlled voice she explained to him, and to herself, why she had come. “I was trying to find her, but I kept losing my bearings. I needed to be with someone who knows who I am. Someone I have not kept secrets from.”

  “You mean the Celia Sánchez thing?”

  She shrugged and did not answer.

  “That’s still an issue for you?”

  “It is not an ‘issue,’” Celia snapped. “It is me.”

  He looked beyond her, into the trees. She also stared into the trees, and at last began to take some solace from their quiet way of being alive. She said, “Celia Sánchez didn’t want to leave here, you know.”

  “Then why did she?”

  “She had . . . responsibilities. Things no one else could do.”

  He did not respond. After a few minutes, she asked, “What are you thinking?”

  He reached down and absently scratched the juita’s back. “With most animal behaviour there are patterns. I was wondering if th
ere are any patterns to these Sánchez ‘visitations’ or whatever you call them?”

  Celia had asked herself the same question, and knew the answer, more or less. “They seem to happen when I come to a place I don’t know but feel I do, sort of a deja vu thing. It is often a place where Sánchez spent time. Sometimes I knew that, like when I came to the Comandancia. But there are times when I did not know. It might be only my imagination that she spent time there.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “After all, where on this island didn’t she go?”

  “Anything else?”

  Celia wiped sweat from her neck. “I seem most likely to feel that I have become her—or vice versa—when I’m weak, drained. Or totally exhausted.” She gave him a wry smile. “Like now. Only right now I am not in her space, or her in mine. I am just here and tired as sin.”

  “Aye!” He jumped up from the rocker so suddenly that he startled the tree rat, which skittered off the porch. “I didn’t think! You must have driven all night!” He went down on his knees and began tugging at the laces of her running shoes.

  “Miguel! What are you doing?”

  “Putting you to bed. There.” He pointed to the cot in the cabin. “It’s all yours.”

  When she opened her mouth to object, he held up her runners, laces dangling, and grinned. “Strings attached, but only to your shoes. See?”

  As Celia drifted to sleep it occurred to her that long ago she had become the one who dealt with others’ aches and pains, removed shoes, and insisted on naps. She could not recall the last time somebody had done those things for her. How strange that the one who would was a near-stranger whose closest companion might well be a big tree rat.

  FIFTY-ONE

  THE guerrillas wound their way down the mountain; Fidel leading one column, Che another, Cienfuegos another, Tete another. Tanks rumbled along the highway. Fighter planes roared into the air. “Fidel! From the south!” Celia shouted into the microphone. “They’re coming!” She pressed the headset tight against her ears but could not hear his voice. What she heard was gunfire, shrieking metal, and a shout, “Take cover!” She saw the battle as if she was there although she was not. A girl from Tete Puebla’s female brigade leapt onto a tank. A soldier emerged from inside the tank. They struggled, hand to hand. He flung her over the side. As she fell her body twisted and Celia saw the face: Liliana.

  Celia’s feet hit the floor before she was fully awake, the image from the dream searing her mind. “Miguel!” she shouted.

  Her T-shirt was glued to her body with sweat. She wanted water. She wanted her shoes. She saw them on a chair. There was a note stuffed into one. She spread the note on the table and read it as she pulled on the shoes.

  Had to check some track traps and wildlife cameras. Back before dark. Make yourself at home. Don’t mind the juita. He’s used to having the run of the place. —Miguel

  She picked up a stubby pencil and on the bottom of his note scribbled, So sorry, I must go. She wanted to explain but it would take too much time. She did not have time.

  She ran back along the path to the main trail and started swiftly down. The way she had found easy in the dark seemed treacherous in broad daylight. She stumbled repeatedly and fell twice. Only after the second fall, when she banged her knee on a rock, did she force herself to slow down and exercise caution appropriate to the rough terrain.

  The late afternoon sun was blazing. She was drenched in sweat and recognized her lightheadedness as dehydration. How foolish not to have drunk water before she left the cabin! Just as she felt she would faint from thirst, she came around a bend and saw a small stream. It tumbled down a rocky incline and crossed the trail in a wash so narrow that it could be crossed in a single step. She had scarcely noticed it before.

  Beyond the stream a mule stood tied to a tree by a short rope. The animal’s foam-covered lips fluttered helplessly toward the water he could not quite reach. Sharp as her own thirst was, it struck Celia as outrageously cruel to have tied the animal in such way, in sight of water but unable to get to it. She stepped across the stream and untied the mule. He promptly plunged his muzzle into the water. Celia moved upstream a metre to where it cascaded down the rocks into a basin-sized pool and drank. She ducked her head into the cool water and, eyes shut in ecstasy, poured handfuls over her shoulders, soaking herself front and back.

  She opened her eyes to see a stocky man emerge from the trees. Without a word he grabbed the mule’s lead rope and jerked its head up.

  “He was thirsty,” Celia said, her voice reflecting the indignation she felt that the man had not allowed the animal to finish drinking. “He wants water.”

  “Dumb beast doesn’t know what it wants.” The man’s eyes, flat and stupid, fastened on the front of Celia’s wet T-shirt.

  As Celia scrambled to her feet a second man emerged from the forest. When he saw her he stopped short and grinned. Celia felt goosebumps rise on her wet skin, not from the coolness of the water that still dripped from her hair down her back and between her breasts but from what she felt as clear and present danger.

  Traitors! You would sell your neighbours to Batista for a sack of rice, or for a bottle of rum, your own son. But not me. I go where I please in these mountains and you will not be the ones to stop me.

  Instinct told her it was useless to turn and run back up the steep trail. They would be on her like dogs. She could dash into the forest but they must know the terrain better than she. Forward, down the trail, would be fastest. But how to get past them?

  The man holding the mule continued to stare at what the wet T-shirt revealed of her breasts. The second man stood just beyond the mule, on the lower side of the trail. He held a burlap bag from which protruded orchids. Celia registered the orchids and guessed that since this was a national park, they were probably poaching them for sale in town. The man dropped the bag on the ground and started toward her.

  The mule, still prevented from drinking by the man who held its lead rope, had swung its rump around so that it blocked the trail. It stood with one hind leg slightly forward, cocked. Its ears lay flat against his head. Celia had never had any dealings with mules, but she understood that body language. The mule rolled its eyes to watch the man approaching behind him.

  Another step put him within range of the mule’s kick. Its leg shot out, caught the man square on the thigh, and sent him flying sideways off the trail. Simultaneously the animal jerked free and plunged up the mountainside.

  “Corre!” Celia shouted, and she ran.

  Adrenalin flooded her veins and sent her racing down a last steep incline. Then she was on the broad flat part of the trail that led to the parking lot, running as she had not run since some long-forgotten track meet back in secondary school.

  • • •

  It was dark by the time Celia reached Bayamo. She did not stop there or anywhere else until she needed gas. She made a final gas stop just before getting on the autopista. By then it was into the wee hours of the morning and she was feeling drowsy. She put down the convertible top and drove the rest of the way with the wind whipping her hair and smoke from burning sugarcane fields on either side of the highway stinging her nostrils. In her mind images from the dream, of Liliana being thrown from the turret of a tank, replayed again and again. The red flames and smell of burning cane fields were real. The wind in her hair was real. The ones who died in battle were real. What she did not know was whether the night wind and cane field fires and loved ones who had died were real then or now—or both.

  In the grey dawn, the Pan-American stadium loomed off to her right. The next exit was for Habana del Este and home.

  Celia parked at the curb in front of the apartment building and glanced at her watch. It was five-thirty in the morning—exactly twelve hours since she had left the parking lot at the Comandancia trail head.

  FIFTY-TWO

  CELIA woke to the shuffle of feet outside her door, soft voices, hesitant knocks. At first she did not know where she was. In her apartment, yes, but why o
n the sofa and not in her own bed? Then she remembered. She had only meant to catnap until eight, then call around to find out whether anyone had heard anything. Late morning sun blazing through the apartment’s east windows told her that she had slept much longer.

  A man’s urgent voice was shouting, “Dr. Cantú? Dr. Cantú!”

  “Who is it?”

  “The Gómez family. We have your child.”

  Celia sprinted to the door.

  At first she did not see the faces of the man and woman, nor did she notice the three children behind them. All she saw, hanging between them like a limp doll, was Liliana. She was wearing the same white shorts and red-and-white-striped top she had had on when Celia last saw her. Exposed skin was scratched and scraped, with blood still oozing from some of the wounds. Liliana let go of the couple supporting her, stepped forward into Celia’s arms, and fainted.

  Together they lifted her to the sofa. Celia knelt beside her, taking vital signs, running hands over her scalp, feeling for broken bones. The visible damage told her something of the nature of the accident, although not its severity. She had treated children with similar injuries who had been tossed off fast-moving bicycles, and once a boy who had been thrown by a horse over the edge of a steep bank. A thorn-covered bank, she corrected herself, noting the thorns imbedded in Liliana’s flesh. Again her hands went to Liliana’s head, feeling for bumps that might signal a concussion.

  The Gómez family hovered behind her. “We probably should have taken her to the hospital,” Mr. Gómez began in a tentative voice.

  “But she said you were a doctor?” his wife said in a dubious voice.

  Only much later would Celia understand why they sounded so doubtful; what they had seen when she opened the door: a bleary-eyed woman wearing a filthy T-shirt and even filthier jeans, knees darkly stained with dirt from the grave site. But she was unaware of the impression she made on them. In fact, she was scarcely aware of them at all until the children began to chatter and the adults chimed in with information she needed.