The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  “A lot of them do come home,” Luis corrected.

  “So what’s the problem with letting them go?”

  It took longer than Luis thought it should have taken for his antennas to pick up the message José was sending. When he did get it, he felt more tired than angry.

  “So you want to take her to Miami with you, is that it? You think Celia will follow. Then you will convince her that Liliana ought to go to school in some other city. Leaving just the two of you in a love nest that you’ll have ready and waiting.”

  José gave a harsh laugh. “That’s the fantasy, all right. But it’s pretty hard to romance a woman who turns a verbal blowtorch on you every time you get within shouting distance. Celia would burn in hell before she’d move to the States.”

  Luis was glad his brother was still staring out to sea and did not notice how astonished he was by the admission. He asked, “So why the pitch for Liliana to travel?”

  José turned back to him, frowning. “Because we have no idea whether the kid is jerking our chain or actually contemplating suicide. You can’t rule that out—not when some do. And others risk their life in anything that floats for the sole purpose of leaving.”

  Luis stonewalled. “Maybe you have a solution but I don’t. Not when Celia has made up her mind to handle the situation without any input from us. From me anyway.”

  José laid a hand on his shoulder. When he spoke his voice again had an intimate quality, as if the two of them were alone on the boat, not with half a dozen other guys loudly mouthing off about inconsequential things a few metres away. “What we do know is this, Luis. If Liliana suicides, we’ll feel guilty forever. Mamá would cry every day for the rest of her life. And it would flat-out kill Celia.”

  A swell tilted the boat sharply. José grabbed the rail. Luis took advantage of it to move beyond his brother’s reach. “I do not work in Immigration,” he said, knowing even as he spoke that the distance he had placed between them was not great enough.

  José looked at him in a way Luis remembered from childhood, when he was asking something that Luis considered absolutely impossible. It was a look that said the thing being asked was possible, and all statements to the contrary were irrelevant.

  “But you could get her a passport, couldn’t you?”

  In fact, Luis could not get her a passport. He probably could get a visa for a one-time trip, but did he want to?

  When José had gone back to schmoozing with his prospective socios, Luis considered the pros and cons. To let Liliana go would be an admission, of sorts, that Cuba could not meet the needs of its own young people and they must go abroad to find a decent life. However, Luis had always believed that Cuba was better off without gusanos and for that reason alone, those who wanted to leave should be allowed to go—and not allowed to return. As he saw it, Cuba had little to lose by letting a materialistic little mutt like Liliana leave. And in his view, better before the government invested a small fortune in providing her with a university education. Then there were the reasons José had given, which, Luis had to admit, were not frivolous. The thought of Celia defecting with Liliana was terrible—but the suicide scenario was infinitely worse.

  Luis thought he was beginning to get queasy as a result of the swells that kept the deck rolling under his feet. He hadn’t zeroed in on the fact that what was actually churning his gut was the knowledge that if Liliana left and Celia did not follow her, that could generate a whole other agony. Up to now he had been able to explain away Celia’s failure to respond to him with any degree of passion, then her refusal to set a wedding date, and now her apparent determination to cut him completely out of her life, as having to do with Liliana. What if Liliana was not around to explain Celia’s holding back?

  Although Luis had worked none of this out in his head, he felt it. It was not dissimilar to the despair he felt the day Celia broke off their engagement. Then he had held out hope that it would all blow over and things would go back to being as they were. This time it was worse. Whatever his head told him about the possibility of a future relationship with Celia Cantú, his sloshing gut told him that she had made up her mind that he was not the man with whom she intended to spend her life.

  Maybe that man would be his brother. Or her boss at the hospital, a widower who apparently gave her permission to do whatever she wanted, even if it meant bending the rules. Or maybe she would end up like her mother, welcoming compañeros to drop in for food, music, conversation, and when she felt a sexual urge, that too.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  CELIA stood at the bottom of Calle de Caridad, looking up. The steep street, lined with small stuck-together stucco houses, wasn’t exactly a street anymore. It was now two blocks of broad steps paved with terra cotta tiles to create a memorial to Celia Sánchez. Ascending the steps, Celia paused to admire beautiful ceramic tile murals that the artist Lecur had placed on walls, displayed above windows, and tucked beneath stairs: here a sunflower, there a stylized tree, farther up, a heron in flight over the moon.

  Celia loved the art but for her the genius of the memorial was that it incorporated the homes on either side. Most were accessed by half a dozen steps built close to the side of the house and railed in wrought iron. Children dashed up and down those steps and played tag on the larger terracotta steps of the memorial as if it were their playground. Elders placed their chairs in the shade of buildings on whichever side of the street was providing shade. Women washed their own stoops and came down onto the steps of the memorial and cleaned those too. They were pleased that the street where Sánchez and her doctor-father once lived had been made into a memorial. But as an old man had told Celia on a previous visit, they did not need the memorial to remember Celia Sánchez.

  • • •

  Celia started climbing the steps a little nervously, concerned that with all this Sánchez history surrounding her she might be swept into a hallucination. That was the last thing she wanted right now! She scanned the memorial street, thinking that if Miguel was coming he would be here already, but his not being here told her nothing. Maybe he had not received her message. Or had received it and had chosen to ignore it.

  She decided she would spend an hour at the memorial, and if he was not here by that time she would walk on to the train station. She could not get back to Santiago tonight, but she could travel as far as Bayamo and stay at Joaquín’s place. That would be easier than remaining here in Manzanillo, feeling rejected.

  She climbed the steps slowly, taking her time at the small pieces of art along the way, each of which she found simple, imaginative, and exquisitely rendered. At last she reached the memorial’s focal point. A large ceramic tile mural about four metres square, it stood alone at the top, backed by blue sky. The panel was covered in a wild array of green leaves, yellow sunflowers, and white doves. Topping it was the face of Celia Sánchez in profile, her neck extending into the mural’s profusion of flowers, leaves, and vines as if those were an integral part of herself, her body.

  Having studied many photographs of Sánchez taken at all ages, Celia could see that the artist had given the profile sharper features than Sánchez actually had. The way the sharp-featured face was thrust forward captured the strength of Sánchez that a softer, more feminine likeness would not have. Lecur had rendered the head of a woman who might have graced the prow of a ship, as she had graced the prow of the Revolution throughout the war and for twenty years to follow. Sánchez’s softer side was reflected by a single small flower woven into her hair. It was not the most compelling feature. That detail belonged to eyes that gazed fearlessly into the future. At the bottom of the mural was a quote from Amando Hart, calling her la flor más autóctona de la Revolución. For the hundreds of poems written to Sánchez and about her, during her life and afterwards, those few words were enough. She was not a woman who would have wanted more.

  The name Celia Sánchez rarely appeared in public unless it was the official name of something like the children’s hospital where the conference had been
held. In any part of Cuba, but particularly on this end of the island where Sánchez had spent the first thirty-nine years of her life, one often saw roadside paintings of flowers or birds, unsigned and unexplained. If there were any words, it would be a phrase like, “We have not forgotten you.” But never her name. She had shunned publicity in life and that preference had been generally respected after her death. Thus it was not surprising that in this two-block-long memorial, there was only one place her name appeared. It was on a small mural on the side of a building, a blue field with a single white bird, and one word, Celia.

  She would look at the mural with the name, then one more, a large one tucked into an alcove. Then she would leave. She turned right to walk around the large mural and saw him standing in the alcove. He wore khaki pants and a sleeveless, multi-pocketed vest of the same tan fabric. His dark hair, longer than she remembered it, lay in untidy curls along the neck of a white T-shirt. She had almost reached the entrance of the alcove before he turned and saw her.

  “Hello, Miguel. Have you been waiting long?”

  “No, not long.”

  For a moment they stood in awkward silence like the bare acquaintances they were, studying the mural’s flowing design and soft yet sensuous colours. Then Celia noticed that he had no bag. “Where are you staying?” she asked.

  “Nowhere yet. What about you?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “That’s all you have?” He indicated the worn leather bag slung over her shoulder.

  She smiled. “You don’t seem to have this much.”

  “Ah, but I have pockets.” Grinning, he reached into one and held up a toothbrush.

  So he had come planning to stay the night, she thought, feeling less uncertain. “I was hoping you could suggest a place.”

  “They did put you up at the hospital, for the conference?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You could have stayed there.”

  “Not with you.”

  It was then that he kissed her. It was not their first kiss—or was it? She could not remember. She only knew one thing: it would always be like this. He would wait for her, not move until she moved, for fear she might fly away. She would always be the one to choose. It was a reversal of roles, although not entirely. He had come to where he thought she would be. He had been there as if to wait for, but not pursue, some wild thing.

  • • •

  Celia took his hand as they walked along the sidewalk, moving slowly in the heat of the afternoon and dissuaded from conversation by noisy traffic. Not until they reached the relative quiet of Manzanillo’s shady central square did Miguel say, “I know a casa particular, if that would be okay with you?”

  She said it would and let him lead her to a doorway with a red triangle sticker to show that it was licensed to rent rooms. It was a narrow townhouse of colonial vintage, three storeys squished between equally shabby houses on either side. The owner, a pear-shaped woman with a light quick step, answered Miguel’s knock. She took them in at a glance, and before he had the question fully out of his mouth, opened the door widely and motioned them inside. “Claro, we have a room.” As she led them into the parlour, she bellowed, “Don Renán! Bring the guest book!”

  A man of perhaps seventy, with the look of a decrepit Spanish grandee, entered the room carrying a registration book in one hand and a beautiful old guitar in the other. He inclined his wispy white beard in their direction, handed his wife the guest book, and retreated from whence he had come.

  The woman watched as Miguel and then Celia wrote their names and ID card numbers in the guest book. “Biologio. Doctora,” she murmured with approval, reading their professions upside down. “Bueno.”

  She led them up two flights of stairs, each steeper and narrower than the one before. Celia was beginning to wonder if the next one would be a ladder when they emerged onto a sunlit rooftop surrounded by a metre-high wall. Along one side ran a line of flapping laundry, beyond which was a stunning view of the sea. On the other side was a boxlike room that Celia supposed must once have housed a servant. Oven-hot it would be, as it received no shade from any direction. But the late afternoon sun would soon be below the wall and in an hour or two would drop below the horizon. Even now there was a stiff sea breeze that caught the thin white curtains of the room’s large window, causing them to billow inward. Maybe it would not be as hot as she imagined.

  The landlady handed Miguel a key that she explained was to the front door, in case they decided to go out later. They did not need a room key, she said, since no one would come up to the roof to disturb them. Would they want dinner later?

  Celia and Miguel exchanged a glance, each waiting for the other to reply. Celia realized that neither had the faintest idea of what would please the other.

  “No,” said Celia, when it was clear that Miguel was not going to answer for them. “Thank you, but we will be going out for dinner.” She knew that food prepared by the housewife would be superior to anything they could buy in town, but how did she know what would transpire in the next few hours, and when or whether they would want to eat?

  The woman gave Celia a knowing smile, snatched an armload of breeze-whipped clothes from the line, and disappeared back down the stairs.

  Then they were alone, this time two real people in real time.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  IN the whole of her life, Celia had taken the lead only at work, and even there she did so in subtle rather than overt ways. The habit dated back to childhood when as the younger sister she had been expected to follow and felt comfortable doing so. However, as she stood in the doorway of a room that was about to become a love nest, with a man she barely knew, she understood as she had at the memorial that she must take the lead. It was that, more than the impending intimacy, that almost caused her to lose her nerve. Then she looked into Miguel’s eyes, saw the stillness, his waiting for her to move either toward him or away, and let the voice of her self tell her what she wanted to do.

  The white-walled room, so unlike the rain-darkened cottage at the Comandancia where they had made love before, was ablaze with light from the slanting afternoon sun. It was empty save for a double bed and a straight-backed chair—just that and breeze-filled white curtains.

  Beyond the bed was a doorway into a tiny bathroom.

  Celia was wondering what the protocol for such a situation might be when Miguel said, “I’m so hot and sweaty . . . I didn’t take time to . . . I’d like to take a quick shower.”

  “Claro!” Celia said, relieved that at least one of them had a notion of what to do next. “What time did you leave this morning?”

  “At ten. As soon as I got your note.”

  “You only got it this morning?” she exclaimed.

  “That’s right. I went out as usual before sun-up. It was there when I got back.”

  She looked at him wonderingly. “And you came? Just like that?”

  “Well, sure. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  She did not answer. Had she thought he wouldn’t? Or that he would? She did not know what she had expected, only what she had hoped.

  “I usually go for a swim after work,” he explained. “But if I had taken time to do that I couldn’t have made it to Manzanillo by three. So”—he was edging toward the bathroom as he spoke—“if there’s running water in here . . .”

  She kicked off her sandals and fell face down on the bed. Soon there was the sound of running water. When it stopped, she rolled over and saw him step out of the shower. She had seen him nude before, of course, but only in near-darkness. Now he stood dripping wet in bright light, unselfconsciously giving his hair and beard a cursory wipe with the towel, then his almost-hairless chest and furry pubic area.

  His visible readiness ignited her own. She felt her breasts harden and a hot hollowness between her legs that wanted filling. Her mind seemed to shut down altogether as emotion overwhelmed her and fastened on the man who, without yet touching her, had roused a level of sensuality that caused her bre
ath to go ragged and her eyelids to flutter shut.

  When she opened her eyes he stood over her, nude and ready. She was just as ready, but most awkwardly, fully clothed. She wished she had undressed while he was in the shower. She unzipped her jeans, wondering how they had come off so easily before, so easily that she could not, in fact, even remember taking them off that other time. He knelt at the side of the bed and pulled them over her feet; then she remembered.

  She caught the tail of her T-shirt and lifted it over her head. When it was half-way up, she felt his mouth on her breasts and gasped. She pulled the shirt off and saw him reach into the pocket of his vest, which he had hung on the back of the chair next to the bed. From it he took a condom, opened the packet, and began rolling it on.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he moved over her, “for putting you at risk before.”

  “We put each other at risk,” she corrected him, remembering all too well who had initiated their previous intimacy.

  “Not much,” he grinned. “Weren’t we Celia and Fidel? Their lovemaking was all pre-AIDS.”

  “But not pre-pregnancy,” Celia quipped.

  His eyes widened in alarm and she saw that he had misunderstood. “Oh no! Not to worry! Last time was safe.” She touched his sheathed penis. “But we do need this now.”

  She put her arms around him, feeling the wetness of his back that he had not dried. A pulsing motion that felt as powerful as an ocean wave bore down on her and lifted her past the pain of the first thrust. Again her mind went blank. There was neither fear nor fantasy, only a physical need that sucked everything else into its vortex. As before, he climaxed before her but kept the rhythm until she came. Then she rolled on top of him and as before, they slept. The difference was that this time she woke unafraid, knowing who he was, who she was, and exactly where they were.