The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  Feeling much more sure of himself, Joe wandered into the bathroom to pee, then stepped out onto the porch of his cottage and looked toward the pool. Celia sat in a white plastic chair, wearing a black swimsuit. She had to want something. Didn’t everybody?

  She said she wanted a chaste weekend. So fine, that was what they would have. She’d talk, he’d listen, and by the end of the outing he would have a clearer idea as to what she really wanted. Meanwhile, he would be Mr. Cool. Nothing like indifference to stir up a little insecurity. And that—a woman’s uncertainty about her own attractiveness—was something that always worked in Joe Lago’s favour.

  He meandered across the lawn, dove into the pool, and swam a couple of laps. Then, dripping, he pulled himself out near her feet.

  “Where’s the kid? Soaking?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Sleeping? She slept all the way here.”

  Celia sighed, not the romantic sigh Joe would have liked to hear, but one that bespoke worry. “It has been like this ever since she got back. She sleeps more hours than I would have thought possible. I have no idea what it will take to snap her out of it.”

  Joe saw his opening and moved into it with the alacrity of a soccer player driving a ball toward the net. “There is one thing.” At Celia’s questioning look, he said, “Something you asked about before, but I guess you forgot.”

  He paused, and with sympathy in his voice to give the impression that this was something he hated to remind her, said, “She wants to leave Cuba.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  CELIA knew that. Or had been told that. She chose to think of it as untrue, and since Liliana’s return had given it no thought at all. When José reminded her—and it angered her that he had—she reacted the way she often did when something threatened to send her emotions into turmoil: she slammed shut some inner door on her feelings and called upon the analytical part of her brain.

  “Are you suggesting a connection?” she asked coldly.

  José shrugged. “I suppose Cuban doctors have heard of depression.”

  “Spare me the condescension!”

  “Sorry. But I’ve been there. I know what she’s going through.”

  At Celia’s incredulous look, he said quickly, “Remember in college when I developed claustrophobia? All I could think of was leaving.” He paused and added, “If I had stayed, I might’ve got over it. Or committed suicide.”

  “Suicide is not one of our health problems,” she snapped, not entirely accurately.

  “Unless you count the ones who head out to sea in floating caskets.”

  “Liliana is not a potential balsera! This has nothing to do with a schoolgirl’s fantasy about going on a shopping spree in the States. It has to do with being held prisoner, the rape, and someone trying to murder her—all that barely two weeks ago! She will get over it!”

  José shrugged. “You’re the doctor. But in case she doesn’t, just bear in mind that I can get her, or both of you, out of here.”

  Celia was on the verge of another retort when the penny dropped. She shook her head. “José Lago, you are incorrigible. Is there any situation you wouldn’t take advantage of to get a woman into bed with you?”

  He put on an aggrieved, misunderstood-boy look. “I’m not asking you to jump in bed with me, Celia. Not that I’d object, if that was what you wanted. But I wouldn’t make it a condition. You could have your own apartment in Miami.”

  Celia leaned across the table and looked straight into his confident brown eyes. “Do you have any idea what it would cost me to leave Cuba?” she asked with soft fury.

  “Nothing as far as I can see. Liliana’s your only real family.”

  “And my work, is that not ‘real’?”

  “So you could practise in the States. Or you could switch fields.”

  “Become, say, a pharmaceutical salesperson?” she asked caustically.

  “What’s wrong with that? Fidel’s sister Juanita has certainly done well in Miami; made a damned good living with her pharmacy on Calle Ocho.”

  “Now there’s a parallel,” Celia sniffed. “Juanita chose making money. Fidel chose trying to improve life here in the island for the average Cuban.”

  José grinned. “So who do you figure has been most successful?”

  “History will decide that.” She paused, thoughtful. “Or ‘success’ might be measured by how happy each is with what they chose. Fidel, Juanita, you, me—would any of us have been happy if we had made the opposite decision?”

  José, grin still in place, tilted his chair back on two legs. “Are you saying you’re completely happy with your position at the hospital? That’s all you want out of life?”

  Celia shook her head. “You really do not get it, do you, José? My ‘position’ means nothing to me. What counts is my contribution.”

  He laughed. “To what? La Revolución?”

  “You think that is funny?”

  He sobered. “The funny thing is, I thought we were alike.”

  “Us? Alike? Now that is funny.”

  “How so?”

  “You were always so determined. To get out, make a better life for yourself, all that American dream stuff. Whereas I am—dedicated. Or trying to be.”

  “Maybe you’re trying too hard,” he said quietly.

  Touché. He had aimed the small sharp words at her chest and with the tiniest twist could have made her bleed. What had she been doing if not trying too hard to be a good and dedicated doctor while Liliana slipped away, went astray?

  “You . . . do not understand,” she said, fearing that he did.

  “And you’re not answering my question.”

  “What question?”

  “What’s keeping you here?”

  Celia picked up the bottle of repellent and began applying it to her bare legs, noticing, as she did so, that she had already been bitten a couple of times. José got up and walked to the edge of the pool, then turned around, she supposed, to watch her. He had always admired her legs. His gaze said he still found them attractive. She recapped the bottle and looked up at him. “Sit down, José.”

  He sat.

  “I want to see Cuba become a better place, a happier place, than it is now. I know what I am doing can make a difference.”

  He shrugged. “That’s noble, Celia. But why you?”

  “Because my parents and Camilio and Che and Celia Sánchez—they’re all dead!” she cried. “Don’t you see? It is up to our generation, ours and Liliana’s, to carry on!”

  “Why?” No sarcasm now, just the one uncomprehending word.

  “Because if we don’t, who will ?”

  José cocked his head in mock thoughtfulness, “Duh? Luis?”

  She shook her head. “Luis is a good man. Dedicated and intelligent. But he only cares about keeping things the way they are, not the way they could be.”

  Celia immediately regretted her disloyal words, a betrayal of good boy Abel to his malicious brother Cain. However, José’s next remark told her he had deduced something altogether different from them.

  “You’re not in love with Luis,” he pronounced in a cocksure way.

  “So what?” she shouted. Then, lowering her voice, hissed, “That does not mean I am ready to pick up and go to Miami with you.”

  To Celia’s surprise, José suddenly pulled back, emotionally and physically. Shoving his chair away from the table, he stood up, stretched, and said, “Okay. How about we just pick up and go to dinner?”

  It took Celia a moment to drop the defensive posture he had manoeuvred her into and to gather her wits. “What about a pizza and we eat out here?”

  “So you can keep an eye on the cabin in case Liliana comes out?”

  Celia glanced toward the cabin, which showed no sign of life. “Do you mind?” she asked, her earlier anxiety returning in a rush.

  “No. But you tell her, in the morning she gets her little butt into those thermal baths or I’m going to drag her out and dunk her myself.”

&nbs
p; Celia laughed. “I will tell her that. I will even help you.”

  José walked past her, close enough that the black hairs of his thighs brushed her arm. One hand passed over her hair, casually, oh so casually. He headed for the restaurant to order the pizza. Wearing only swim trunks, his skin copper in the late afternoon sun, he had the confident bearing of a man conscious of the attractiveness of his own body.

  Watching him stride across the lawn in that fluid, muscular way, all predator and prowl even when there was no prey in sight, caused Celia to remember something and smile. It was Franci, who had gone out with José only one time, back in high school, who said, “That José Lago is compliant as a cat. He doesn’t ask a thing of you as long as you let him lie in your lap and knead you with his paws.”

  Celia’s gaze turned inward, trying to see herself in his world. How bad would it be, she wondered, to wake up in a Miami apartment with José Lago rubbing his ever-ready penis against her? And after that? What would fill her days? She could not imagine.

  Then she thought of Liliana. Liliana and José had driven to Pinar and back, had been together the whole of that night and half of the next day. Liliana had told him things she had never told Celia. What if he was right? What if a schoolgirl fantasy of taking a boat ride had been transformed, first by José’s return and then by the psychic wounds she had sustained, into a desire to leave Cuba? What if nothing else would revive her spirits?

  The late afternoon sun was hot but Celia’s arms prickled with chill. It was a price she might be willing to pay. But could she?

  SIXTY-FIVE

  CELIA and José did have to drag Liliana from bed next morning, but in the end she soaked in the thermal baths—all of them did—for as long as the therapist deemed healthful. It might or might not have done Liliana good, but Celia felt better afterwards. She had not slept well; had awakened exhausted from what seemed to have been a night of running from an indefinable terror, or hiding and waiting for it to spring upon her. They had a late breakfast in an open-air restaurant and started back.

  José drove north, through La Palma, rather than the shorter route via Pinar del Río. Celia did not ask why, assuming that he either did not want to be reminded of the night he had taken Liliana there or was in no hurry to get back to Habana.

  They had been driving about an hour when she asked, for reasons of her own, “Would you mind if we stopped at the Cueva de los Portales? Just for a few minutes?”

  She wanted to visit the cave, another of those historic spots where groups of schoolchildren were often taken on field trips, because it had figured in her dream. When she woke she could not remember the details; only that the dream had taken place there.

  “Good idea,” he said with an alacrity that confirmed her suspicion that he was not anxious to return to the city.

  “Did you go home Friday?” she asked. “Do Alma and Luis know you are here?”

  José chuckled. “And leave the very next morning to take Luis’s ex-girlfriend off for what he’d be dead certain was a weekend of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll? Now, what do you think?”

  From the back seat, Liliana snickered. It was the first sign they had had from her since leaving that she was not asleep. Celia turned in her seat and spoke to the girl. “You can be my witness, Liliana, if your sneaky tío gets caught. There was none of that.”

  “I was sleeping,” Liliana murmured, her eyes squinched shut. “How do I know what you two did?”

  “A fine chaperone you are,” Celia teased, her heart soaring at this tiny indication that Liliana’s sauciness was returning. “Sit up and enjoy the scenery, mi corazón. It is very wild.”

  Liliana sat up. “Where are we going?”

  “Cueva de los Portales,” José replied. “Have you been there?”

  “No,” Liliana replied shortly. “I don’t like caves.”

  When did this come about? Celia wondered uneasily, recalling José’s remark about wanting to leave Cuba so badly that he had developed claustrophobia—and not recalling that Liliana had ever expressed a dislike of caves or other closed-in spaces.

  “It is not much of a cave,” she assured the girl. “Small, with a river flowing through. Che made it the headquarters of the Western Army during the October Crisis.”

  Liliana frowned. “Did we really think the United States was going to nuke us?”

  “Well, I think so,” Celia began tentatively. “All of Habana was evacuated.”

  “Damned right,” José cast a glance over his shoulder. “We weren’t born yet but our parents evacuated Habana along with everyone else in the city; it was that close.”

  “José! Watch out!” Celia cried as they hit a pothole. The fifteen-kilometre road through Parque La Güira was paved, but there were small washouts at the bottom of some of the gullies that caused them to bounce in their seats. As they soared up short steep hills and plunged down the other side, the ride took on the quality of a roller coaster—or so Celia imagined, although she had never ridden one, only seen them on television. Liliana shrieked, showing enjoyment for the first time on the trip.

  They parked in front of a campismo consisting of unimaginative cement block huts. José paid the attendant a small fee and told him, “We don’t need a guide; we’ve been here before. We know the way and all the stories.”

  Liliana hung back, whining excuses for why she should be allowed to remain in the car. But José cajoled her and then walked with her along the path leading to the cave, telling her stories he had heard as a boy of what it was like when Cuba was on alert, everyone in Habana believing that it might be America’s next Hiroshima.

  He led Liliana up a ladder toward one entrance of the cave. Celia took another route, following the river that flowed into the cave and through the cavern’s largest room. The room, which had been used for planning, was empty except for a long rough table.

  Opening off that room was a tiny stonewalled cell where Che had slept. She entered and stood next to the narrow cot, listening . . .

  Out in the main room, Che was insisting, Take my room. Just for tonight. Go on, you haven’t seen her for weeks. Fidel arguing that he is the commander-in-chief and does not take orders from Che. At last—would it be the last?—laughter.

  Then Fidel was there, holding a blanket, holding her, through the longest night of their lives, the longest night ever in the history of the world. He spoke of strategy, how they would organize themselves after the attack, how they would survive. She thought, during all his can-do, must-do, will-do talk, that he had somehow overlooked the fact that if Cuba were hit with nuclear bombs it would be a thousand times worse than Hiroshima because the bombs were no longer atomic but hydrogen; that there would be no survivors. But of course he knew and later they spoke of that too. If I don’t die, she whispered, don’t let me live. Promise you will not let me live sickened by radiation, dying day by day in that awful way. I do not want to be weak. He shook his head. What you are asking would take more courage than I have. Only you can promise yourself that. Then I will, she said, and held him closer than breath. The night went on and on and on, and they make love worthy of the night that might have been the last night of their world. Then dawn came and no bombs fell. We are alive, she breathed. Our children are alive. Cuba lives.

  Celia touched the metal frame of the cot lightly and walked to the door. For an instant she wondered why the war room was not swarming with soldiers. Then she saw Liliana’s pretty sandalled feet on the ladder leading down into the cave and remembered.

  “It’s not too scary,” Liliana said. At Celia’s bewildered look, she added, “This cave, I mean. Like you said, there’s not much to it. And the river running through, that’s nice. I wonder if bats live in here.”

  “Yes,” Celia said. “There are bats.”

  She did not add, And ghosts.

  SIXTY-SIX

  CELIA had hoped the weekend excursion would be a turning point, but when she begged Liliana to go to school the following week, she flatly refused.
/>   “At least have breakfast and go sit on the balcony,” Celia urged. But Liliana remained in bed, staring moodily at the ceiling of her room.

  Celia worked at the computer until noon, distractedly, then dressed for work and tried again to engage Liliana. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked into the girl’s expressionless face. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Prison.”

  “What prison?”

  “Any prison. What’re they like?”

  “You must have read in school some of the things Fidel wrote about when he and his compañeros were locked up at the Presidio for their attack on the Moncada Barracks. Most of the time he was in solitary—”

  “That was fifty years ago. I mean now.”

  “I have no idea. Look, mi corazón, you really should get up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the longer you stay in here the worse you are going to feel.”

  “How do you know how I feel?”

  “All right,” Celia sighed. “The longer you stay in here the worse I feel.”

  “I feel like I’m in prison,” Liliana muttered.

  “Why? Who or what do you feel is keeping you there?”

  Liliana got up and shuffled into the bathroom. As she closed the door, Celia heard her say, “Everybody. Everything.”

  • • •

  Celia was blessedly busy at the hospital, although less with patients than with paperwork. Besides normal managerial responsibilities, it seemed that all of her doctors required consultation on something. There was a note on her desk that Dr. Leyva wanted to see her. Celia had not seen Dr. Leyva since he assigned the task of writing protocols and her team had voted on the ones it would pursue. He probably wanted a status report.