The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  Refreshed by the shower, Celia went into the bedroom, slipped on shorts and a top, and brushed damp hair. “Did Alma come by today?” she called through the open door.

  “No, but she phoned. So did Magdalena. She might come over later.”

  “What do you want for dinner?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Celia grimaced at the response, which was identical to what it had been all week.

  There was a single knock, the sound of the living room door opening, and José’s voice: “Not even if we go out to dinner and you can order anything you like?”

  “Not even,” Liliana responded as Celia came from the bedroom.

  José walked to the sofa and looked down at the girl. “So. She found you.”

  “I wasn’t lost,” Liliana muttered.

  “Hello, José,” Celia greeted him. “I didn’t know you were back.”

  “Just got here. The taxi’s waiting downstairs.”

  “Oh. You can let him go.” Celia reached into her purse. “Here are your car keys. And what’s left of your money.”

  “What money?” Liliana asked, but Celia ignored her.

  “Maybe you should keep the car a while longer,” José said, trying to push the envelope with the remainder of the cash back at her.

  “Thank you, but we have no need of it now,” Celia said firmly, stuffing both the keys and the money into his jacket pocket.

  “We do!” Liliana objected, although not once since her return had she shown the slightest interest in leaving the apartment.

  José stood there for a moment, looking from Celia to Liliana and back, assessing the situation. Then he said, “I don’t have anything on till Monday morning. How about we take this beat-up chica to the baños in Viñales tomorrow?”

  Celia hesitated, but when she saw what she thought was a flicker of interest in Liliana’s eyes, she replied, “All right. If we leave early. I’d like to get back before dark.”

  “Easier on everybody if we stay the night,” José said casually.

  Too casually, Celia thought, narrowing her eyes at him. “You should not keep the taxi waiting. Come. I will walk down with you.”

  José followed her out and down the stairs. After he had paid the taxi driver and shifted his bags to the convertible, he turned to Celia and asked, “Well, what’s the story? Was she—”

  “Yes,” Celia said shortly. “But she is not pregnant and there is no sign of a sexually transmitted disease.”

  He rested his backside against the fender of the convertible. “So what’s wrong with her? Other than she got the shit beat out of her.”

  “Thrown out of a car. Luis can give you the details. But there is more to it.”

  “Like what?”

  Celia rubbed fingertips across her forehead, smoothing out wrinkles that seemed always there. “Something isn’t right. I obviously was not aware of what was going on with her before she ran away but at least she seemed happy. Now there is this sense of hopelessness or something.” Celia closed her eyes, feeling the shame that engulfed her when she thought about how much she had not seen coming and how little she understood of what it would take to make Liliana “right” again.

  Her eyes opened with a start as a warm hand pressed the small of her back and a familiar voice said, “Hi, Dr. C.”

  She turned and saw Magdalena. She was wearing black lycra shorts and a black halter top. Her spiked hair had changed from metallic orange to jet black.

  “Hello, Magdalena,” Celia greeted her, but Magdalena’s eyes were on José.

  “You wouldn’t be Fiancé Number One, would you?”

  “I’m not used to being called that,” José replied with a wary grin.

  “How about Dumpee Number One?” Magdalena smirked. “Although I don’t know why—not if this is your máquina.” She pushed a black fingernail with a gold lightning bolt design along the fender of the car, stopping just short of where José’s backside rested. “Or Uncle Joe? Can I call you tío too?”

  “His name is José,” Celia cut in on Magdalena’s attempted cuteness. “José, this is Liliana’s friend Magdalena.” Putting an arm across Magdalena’s shoulders, she said, “I am glad you came. Liliana has been waiting for you.”

  To her surprise, Magdalena shot her a grateful smile. It occurred to Celia that given the way the girl dressed, she was probably unwelcome in many homes. Celia smiled reassuringly. “I would like to visit with you too. You can tell me how you managed that.” She pointed to the designs on her black nails. “Liliana will be dazzled.”

  “You think so?” Magdalena beamed, then frowned. “Is she okay?”

  “Well . . .” Celia hesitated. “Not really. I think she is depressed. Go on up. Maybe you can make her feel better.”

  “Claro!” Magdalena turned and almost ran up the walk to the apartment building. Just as she reached the door she remembered her manners, manners that, Celia noted, she did have after all, although not regularly on display. She turned and waved. “Chau, José. Nice to meet you.”

  “You too, Magdalena,” José called back.

  As soon as the door closed behind the girl, he cocked a questioning eyebrow in Celia’s direction. “That’s one of Liliana’s friends?”

  “One of her roommates from school.”

  “That might explain a few things.”

  Celia frowned. “Not really. Maybe they fed each other’s fantasies, but I am almost certain that it was not a case of Magdalena talking Liliana into something.”

  “How about Viñales then? The thermal baths might be just the ticket. She could have a soak when we get there and again Sunday morning before we drive back.”

  “It couldn’t hurt,” Celia conceded.

  José grinned. “You look like you could use a little relaxation therapy yourself, Doctora. Of the hydrotherapy variety,” he added quickly.

  Too quickly, Celia thought, reading a sexual suggestion into what she was sure was exactly that. “I would appreciate it,” she said tightly, “if you would accept the fact that I’m not going to sleep with you, and I did not have to fend you off the whole time.”

  He lifted his hands into the air. “Word of honour.”

  They settled on ten the following morning. José left and Celia went upstairs. She paused outside the apartment door, hoping to hear the murmur of girlish chatter mingled with giggles. What she heard was a low humming sound. Entering the apartment, she saw Liliana lying with eyes closed, her head in Magdalena’s lap. Magdalena was crooning a lullaby. The absurd Goth makeup was streaked, and one wet tear clung to the underside of her chin.

  When Magdalena finished the song, Celia sat down in a rocking chair across from the girls and said, “I thought you would be talking.”

  Magdalena shook her head. “She can’t. It hurts too much. The sex thing, I think.” She cut her eyes at Celia to see how she would take a reference to “the sex thing.”

  “Liliana did not have sex,” Celia said, watching not for Magdalena’s reaction but for Liliana’s. It was instantaneous. Liliana’s eyes flew open. Celia looked directly into them. “What happened to you was not sex,” she stated. “It was violence.”

  “I don’t get it,” Magdalena said. Liliana’s eyes conveyed the same confusion.

  Celia took a breath and did her doctorly best to see that both girls “got it.”

  “Sex is something you do with somebody else. Sometimes it is great and sometimes it’s not. But it is always both people’s choice. Violence is one person’s decision, meant to hurt somebody else. They might use a sexual part of the body, but that does not make it sex.”

  She then risked an awful example, but one she knew they would get. “Remember those stories in the news about torture victims in that prison in Iraq, men being forced to masturbate and do things with other men?”

  Magdalena nodded. Liliana turned so pale that Celia almost lost the nerve to make her point. But she was too far in to back out. “Torturers used sexual parts of the body but it was not sex.
It was violence. So is rape. The only one at fault is the one who inflicts it.”

  There, done. She had said what she knew to be the truth, but whether it was the right thing at the right time, or if it would make any difference, how could she tell? Celia felt the panic of a professional who has strayed beyond her area of expertise and may have done more harm than good. She wanted to scream, We are not prepared for this kind of danger! Not doctors, not parents, not children! How can we know the right thing to do?

  Magdalena began to hum the lullaby again. Liliana closed her eyes. When the song ended, Liliana sat up. “I think I’ll to go to bed now, if that’s okay.” She glanced apologetically at Magdalena. “Thanks for coming by.”

  “Wait,” Celia said quickly. “We are going to Viñales with José tomorrow. Would you like to come with us, Magdalena?”

  “Fabuloso!” The skinny girl popped up from the couch like a puppet jerked on a string and clapped her hands. Then, as if strings had been dropped all over, her arms flopped to her side and the corners of her mouth turned down. “Ay, no! It’s my grandfather’s seventy-fifth birthday. I’m in charge of just about everything for the party. Family’s coming from all over the island.” She smiled hopefully. “But next time? I would love to ride in that máquina.” Hugging Liliana, she said, “Do get better soon, Lili. School’s awful without you.”

  Liliana accepted the hug with a wan smile. “Sure, ’Lena.”

  They listened to Magdalena clatter down the hallway. “Too bad she couldn’t come,” Celia offered. “Viñales will be a nice change, don’t you think?”

  “If you want to be with Joe, that’s fine with me.”

  “I want to be with you,” Celia corrected, touching the girl’s pale cheek.

  Liliana turned away and headed for her bedroom. “Nobody’s with me,” she said in a low voice. “And I don’t want to be with anybody.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  JOE sighed, happier than he had been in days. It didn’t occur to him that he was making this trip as a compensation for a previous trip to Pinar with Liliana that had foreshadowed a lot of bad things to befall her afterwards. Or that Celia’s readiness to let him do a fatherly thing for Liliana was something of an antidote to the poison Vera darted him with every time he tried to play dad to his own girls. Joe’s motive for the trip, as far as he knew, was much simpler. But at the moment he was not thinking of it either.

  As he cruised along the Habana-Mariel autopista, a big navy base on his right, with a duty-to-serve-the-people quote from Fidel painted on the side of a cement block building like “Jesus Saves” on the side of a barn in the southern United States, reminded him of his military service. In retrospect it didn’t seem so bad. Two years, required of all Cuban males, hadn’t been a great loss at that point in his life, since he did not yet have a sense of direction. He did know, within weeks of induction, that he did not want to be a military professional in Cuba’s armed forces or any other.

  One thing he had got from his stint in the navy was confidence on the water. As the various small craft to which he was assigned piddled around offshore, a recurring thought was that, weather permitting and the right compass setting, one could make landfall in Florida in a matter of hours. That awareness metamorphosed into a determination to make the journey.

  The day he mustered out of the military he applied for permission to emigrate. A year later he had it. Not that permission from the Cuban government meant much without a corresponding entry visa from the country one wished to emigrate to—in José’s case, the United States. The United States issued few visas. The Cuban government distributed those few by lottery. With little hope of being one of the lucky ones, Joe enrolled in medical school. It was a casual choice, made because several women he was hot for at the time were there. But he was only killing time.

  It was 1994, and Joe was halfway through med school and nowhere near the top of his class when the rules suddenly changed. Castro, fed up with the way the United States was encouraging dangerous illegal sea passages by granting undocumented Cubans instant status as “political refugees” while accepting only a few of those who had exit visas in hand, suddenly announced that anyone wishing to leave was free to do so. A wave of Cubans, fleeing the hard economic times brought on by the recent loss of Soviet support, headed for Florida. A panicked Clinton administration promptly started negotiations, demanding that Cuba go back to restricting the number allowed to leave.

  Joe had not waited for the outcome of negotiations. Three days after hearing that those who wished to leave were free to do so, he was on a boat bound for Florida. His leave-taking was from the port of Mariel. A grey dawn it had been, and no one to hug him goodbye. Or as he saw it then, no one to hold him back. Prior to his departure, nothing had sparked his interest except sex. But that day his whole body was stoked. His heart felt like it was pumping more adrenalin than blood. Flying as he now did would never match the thrill of that first crossing, he thought, as he left the Habana–Mariel autopista, cut across to the Habana–Pinar del Río autopista, and continued west.

  • • •

  Celia’s silence lasted for the better part of the three-hour drive. Only when they crested the last mountain and the Valle de Viñales spread out below them did she gasp, “Oh, lovely!” She turned and said, “Liliana, wake up, mi corazón. Look at the mogotes.”

  “Are we there yet?” Liliana asked in a small-child voice.

  Joe glanced in the rear-view mirror. Liliana sat up, swaying slightly. She was as pale as any Cuban he had ever seen. “I’m carsick,” she moaned.

  Joe immediately pulled to the side of the highway. “Get out and walk around,” he advised and got out himself to admire the strangely shaped limestone formations that rose like gigantic camel humps out of green tobacco fields in the valley far below. Celia got out with him, but paid less attention to the spectacular view than to Liliana, who shook her head at the suggestion that she walk around.

  When it became apparent that Liliana was going to remain in the car, Joe motioned Celia back into the convertible. “We’ll be there in five minutes,” he promised. To Liliana he added, “And five minutes after that, you can be cooling your nalgas in the pool or warming them in a thermal bath.”

  Joe had booked two cottages on the forested grounds of the villa, but the fantasy of shoving Liliana into one and sharing the other with Celia was dashed within minutes of check-in. Liliana brought it out in the open as she took one of the keys from him and said to Celia, sullenly, “You might as well sleep with him and get it over with.”

  “We didn’t come here for a romantic holiday,” Celia snapped, snatching the key from Liliana’s hand and marching off in the direction of the cottage. Liliana shrugged and followed. Joe watched them go, feeling a little discouraged.

  In his own cottage, changing into his swim trunks, it dawned on him that he had been thinking about Celia in the wrong way. All this time he had been treating her like a woman he had already courted and slept with. But hadn’t she put him on notice that she wasn’t the woman she was back then? If she was a different woman (not that he saw it that way, but if she did), then he was in effect starting from scratch. For Celia, this outing might have the emotional content of a first date—or given Liliana’s presence, maybe not even that. Maybe it was merely a pre-date, the sort where you made the lady receptive by being kind to her parents/children/ younger siblings—whoever she brought along to keep you at arm’s length, and whom you treated with special kindness in order to put her in a receptive frame of mind.

  Joe tried to see himself as Celia might, but only succeeded in seeing himself the way he always did—as a man on the move, determined to lay hands on what he wanted. Surely Celia was not unattainable. Standing on the outer edge of youth, she was bound to be ripe for something more than his stick-in-the-mud brother. While pumping himself with possibilities, Joe was realistic enough to admit that this wouldn’t be an easy conquest. It had to do with what he had inadvertently confided to Liliana that night in
Pinar del Río: the fact that he did not seem to have anything Celia Cantú wanted.

  “Bullshit,” he said aloud, annoyed by the notion that he had nothing to offer. Yet something was bothering him. He sat down on the bed and stared at the wall, trying to figure out what it was. Then he got it. He was changing. Fucking—changing.

  From the minute he laid eyes on Celia on the day of his return he’d wanted to bed her, to relive the wild abandon of those heady days when he had been her first and only lover. He had not thought beyond that or wanted more than that. Seriously, he had not.

  Yet when he returned to Miami, hadn’t he fantasized Celia there? Wondered where he could buy a house she’d find acceptable? And the day with Amy and Keri, hadn’t he imagined Celia standing between them at the railing of that slimy alligator-wrestling pond, the breeze tossing her brown hair as it was tossing their blond curls, all of them “his girls”?

  Somehow it had snuck up on him, the desire to have Celia as his—what was the term they used nowadays?—“significant other.” He had not recognized it sooner because he had never wanted a woman like that, not even Vera, whom he had married only because he was out-of-control hot for her and that was the price she charged to quench the fire. He had been drawn into that relationship by lust, and lust was still the driving force in his life. But there was definitely more going on where Celia Cantú was concerned. It made him profoundly uneasy.

  Joe lay back on the bed and examined the possibilities as he might a business deal—a Cuban business deal, which, as he had already learned, was complicated by the fact that few Cubans in positions of power admitted to being interested in business. Yet didn’t they give foreign businessmen the red carpet treatment? Each upscale hotel with a “business centre” geared to corporate tastes—what was that if not an enticement to the business class? Even as Granma damned capitalism, every issue seemed to announce a new joint venture.

  It was probably the same with Celia. She wanted what a capitalist lifestyle could offer as much as Cuba did, but it wasn’t politically correct to admit it. So—okay. Just as he’d come back to Cuba to get something he wanted by showing its heavies that he had something they wanted, he’d do the same with her. Not by grabbing—that would only get his hands slapped. He would take the cerebral approach. Lots of women liked to think of themselves as intellectuals, brains over hormones and all that. He doubted such women existed, but didn’t mind pretending he viewed them that way if that was what it took.