The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  Celia listened with a smile and never asked for details. Thus there was a several-month delay in hearing a tidbit of gossip that did interest her. One day at the hospital Esther Cohen popped in, and in her abrupt way asked, “Which of those Lago brothers are you seeing, Celia?”

  Celia looked up from her desk, surprised by the question. “Neither one. Why?”

  “Oh yes, you know—the one who calls here all the time. Or used to.”

  “Oh. Used to.” Celia wondered what had prompted the question, as it had been months since Luis had telephoned her at the hospital. “That was Luis, the older one.”

  “The one who recently got married?”

  “Yes. I grew up down the street from the Lagos. I didn’t know you knew them.”

  “Slightly,” Esther said airily. “I met the younger one at services.”

  “Services? You mean church?” Celia must have looked dumbstruck.

  “Synagogue.” Esther gave Celia her competitive, one-up smile and was gone.

  The exchange so intrigued Celia that she could not resist asking Liliana, “Do you know if José is seeing a doctor from my hospital?”

  “Oh yeah!” Liliana brightened at the opportunity to demonstrate more in-the-knowness about her playboy tío. “Doctora Cohen. Emily told me. One day Tío Luis couldn’t pick her up after church so he asked Tío Joe to do it. Emily said she was crossing the street to where he was parked when Doctora Cohen came out of her synagogue and Tío Joe whistled at her. Emily said Doctora Cohen stopped and looked him and the máquina over in this really bold way. He called out did she want to go to lunch with him, and what do you suppose she said?”

  “I cannot imagine,” Celia admitted because she really could not.

  “Doctora Cohen said, ‘That depends on how good a conversationalist you are, and whether you have anything interesting in mind for later.’”

  Celia chuckled at the very thought of comedy/dramas likely to be played out between those two as they clicked and clashed. “Is he still seeing her?”

  “Her and about twenty other women. I guess he’s pretty good to all of them, though, because he does get a lot of repeats.”

  “I am sure he is,” Celia said and kept to herself the rest of that thought, which was: As long as he gets a lot of high-energy, low-hassle sex geared to his bio-rhythms rather than those of his partner and no questions as to whom he bedded the night before.

  According to Liliana, much of José’s time in Miami was spent fighting with his ex-wife, trying to get permission from the court to take his daughters on vacation out of the country. Knowing how Alma ached to know her grandchildren, Celia hoped he would find a way to bring them to Cuba—preferably not one of the illegal ways that Liliana said he often threatened when he returned from Miami in a really foul mood.

  “Sad,” Celia mused. “Given half a chance I think José would be a good father.”

  Liliana, who was sprawled on the sofa with a textbook propped on her chest, said casually, “He told me that if you moved to Miami and married him, he might be able to get custody of his kids. At least part of the time.”

  “Oh really?” Celia sat down in the rocker and looked at her niece speculatively. “And you would have two little sisters. Was that what you wanted?”

  “I wouldn’t mind. But it doesn’t matter so much now.”

  “It mattered before?”

  “Well, yeah. Before he started letting me drive the convertible.”

  In a voice that carried a hint of disgust, Celia asked, “Is that what he promised you if we moved to Miami? A car?”

  Liliana reddened and did not answer. All Celia could think was, A car! She was willing to abandon Cuba and me for a car!

  After a moment Liliana sat up and, textbook clutched to her chest, said with a mixture of apology and defiance, “The car wasn’t the main thing. I just wanted to see what it was like over there. You know, like people used to.”

  For a second Celia failed to comprehend “like people used to” since not in her lifetime had it been possible to hop over to Florida for a mere look around. Then she grasped that Liliana didn’t mean the recent past but the whole of Cuban history—or almost all of it. Five hundred years during which residents on both sides of the Strait travelled both ways for business, vacations, family visits, or just to get a sense of what it was like “over there.”

  “You never wanted to travel so you don’t understand how I feel,” Liliana stated with the assurance of an adolescent that no adult can possibly comprehend their passion.

  Celia almost smiled. If only you knew, she thought. I travel to places so far in the past that the only way to get there is in my head. And similarly transported, there’s hardly a night in the last year that I haven’t travelled into the mountains to be with a man who finds all his meaning there . . . and only come back because what I have to do is here.

  “There is Operacíon Milagro,” Celia ventured.

  “Do you think it’ll still be going on when I get out of medical school?”

  “Almost certainly. Maybe even expanding by then.”

  “I saw a list of the countries where doctors are being sent,” Liliana said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t care which one as long as it was, well, some where.”

  Celia had a sudden image of Dr. Leyva’s daughter, whose desire to go “somewhere” had led to her death and a lifetime of sadness for her family. It was followed by an enormous sense of relief that a travel option had opened up for Liliana—or would be open if she pursued her education.

  Celia crossed a leg over her knee to expose the sole of her foot. “So, Doctora Liliana. What do you think? Are my feet healed enough to go to the beach?”

  Liliana studied the scared sole. “Not barefoot,” she pronounced. “And not alone. I have to go with you.” She pushed the book aside. “I’m burnt out on studying anyway.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “La Historia de la Revolución. It is so boring.” As she headed into her room to change, she added, “Except for the part when they were in the sierra.”

  Celia dressed for the beach and waited for Liliana. She came out pulling up her swimsuit. “When I’m living in Santiago, could we visit the Comandancia de La Plata sometime?”

  “Funny. I was just wondering if that was something you might like to do.” Actually, Celia had thought of it more than once when they were doing their “every weekend a different place.” She had never suggested it, though, being not quite ready to share it—or Miguel—with anyone.

  “I wish the book had more about Celia Sánchez.”

  “She was a very private person. Only Fidel really knew her.”

  “Magdalena says even though he has Dalia now and all those sons, he still goes to Celia’s place late at night and sits there for hours because he misses her so much.” Liliana turned her back so Celia could tie the strap at the neck. “You think it’s true?”

  “Possibly. Lift your hair out of the way.”

  “I wonder if I’ll ever meet a guy who loves me that much,” Liliana mused, her bright dark eyes going dreamy. “Lots of women risked their lives for him. And that was when he was still a grungy revolutionary. But Celia was his true love, wasn’t she?”

  “So they say,” Celia murmured.

  “Imagine living with one man—how long?”

  “Well, it was in 1957 that she went to stay with him in the mountains, and January 1980 when she died. Twenty-two years, I guess.”

  “Awesome! There must be a million women in the world who would like to sleep with him. Even now, when he’s a dottery old man.”

  “Not so dottery,” Celia protested.

  “Would you?” Liliana challenged, smirking over her shoulder.

  Celia laughed and headed for the door. “Maybe—in another life.”

  EPILOGUE

  CELIA could feel that the cabin was empty. She knocked on the door, which was slightly ajar. There was no answer so she pushed it open and stepped inside. Although she had only been h
ere once and that was almost two years ago, she did not feel like an intruder. However, the juita sitting under the table may have felt otherwise. Fat as an overfed cat, he watched Celia watching him until she backed out, having ascertained that but for the big tree rat, the cabin was empty.

  The hour-long climb up the trail from the parking lot had left her hot and thirsty. She drained the last of the water from a bottle she had brought with her and took in her surroundings. She had not paid much attention to them on her previous visit, yet the place seemed familiar. This, she knew, was because of details included in the more than one hundred letters she had received from Miguel in the past fifteen months.

  Besides answering her questions and remarking on things she had written him, each of his letters contained detailed descriptions of aspects of his environment that he found intriguing. Thus when she walked to the end of the porch she knew that if she looked hard in a certain place she would not immediately be able to pick out what would seem to be a brown leaf dangling near the end of a thin branch. Yet if she waited she would see the movement of a bee hummingbird sitting on her nest.

  Actually that was not what she saw because that description had been in a letter from Miguel the previous week. What Celia saw was the iridescent colobri zip up to the brown thing that was not a leaf but a nest the size of a bottle cork, and perch on its rim to feed her newly hatched hummingbird babies.

  Celia stepped off the porch and circled the cabin. Trees grew close on all sides, as if the builder had not cut any but found a spot between them to squeeze the cabin in. The structures at the Comandancia had been built like that too: trees left standing to prevent buildings from being seen from the air and to provide protection from the blazing sun.

  Behind the cabin she saw a rain barrel on stilts. That, Miguel had explained in one of his letters, was how he managed to have running water in the sink. She found the outhouse where she expected it to be and knew to duck as she entered to avoid disturbing an elaborate spiderweb that Miguel liked to observe when he was using the facilities.

  Completing her inspection of the immediate vicinity, Celia went back to the porch and collapsed into one of the rockers. She knew that Miguel went out at first light but did not know when he came back. That might be one of the few things about him she did not know. He knew as much or more about her. After all, why bother to keep secrets from someone to whom you had revealed your darkest secret before even learning his name?

  She knew he called himself apolitical, although he had also told her that nature was both his politics and his religion; that he would lay down his life, take up arms, or even pray if he thought it would protect the natural environment for all time. He felt that the state capitalism of Cuba had been as destructive to the environment as corporate capitalism, and despised them equally for it. The one difference, he said, was that the former was younger and as such, perhaps more amenable to learning, self-awareness, and change. At least he hoped so and did the research he did and wrote the books he wrote in an effort to facilitate that process.

  She had learned that Miguel rarely ate meat, read all sorts of books, played just a bit of guitar, and, like the poet José Martí, “el arroyo de la sierra me complace más que’l mar”—“the mountain stream pleases me more than the sea.”

  He had made it clear that he would never live in a city or even a town; that when his research in the Sierra Maestra was completed he would move on to another wild mountainous place where, as he had so pointedly reminded her, there were no hospitals. She knew that in about three months’ time he would be leaving here to begin a project in Parque Humboldt on Cuba’s northeast coast. Did she know more than that about him? Did she need to know more than that, plus what her own senses had confirmed? Had he told her less about himself than she had told him about herself?

  She had told him what it was like growing up in a Habana suburb, and of course, about Carolina and Liliana. She also told him about the Lago brothers whom, oddly or predictably, she rarely saw anymore. He knew that Liliana was now in Santiago, living in the Morceau household and attending medical school.

  According to Franci, Liliana’s biggest adjustment had been the return to foot power. However, being her usual resourceful self, Liliana wrote to her ever-indulgent Tío José. Soon thereafter Philip was called down to the train station to pick up what turned out to be a bicycle for each of the girls. That silenced Liliana’s complaints while ensuring that she got regular exercise. Her grades, of some concern during the first two months, were now being maintained at an acceptable level.

  Naturally Celia had written Miguel a good deal about her work, how each of the clinical trials had taken on a life of its own and every page of paperwork seemed to generate more. And how, when she asked to be relieved of administrative duties so she could resume working with patients, Dr. Leyva had refused. He explained that while there were innumerable younger pediatricians well trained in patient care, the “internal brain drain” caused by doctors leaving medicine to take up careers in tourism had left him with no senior doctors to replace her in administration. He reminded Celia, in words reminiscent of what she had told José about why she didn’t want to leave Cuba, that, “Our mission is to serve the Revolution’s goal of making Cuba a better nation. We do that by contributing our services where they are most needed.”

  Celia had very nearly asked the question José had tossed out in that same conversation by the pool there in Viñales, as to why, exactly, it had to be her. But the more she thought about it the more the question evolved in her mind until it became, Why is it somebody else, and not me, who decides what my contribution should be?

  • • •

  All this and much more Celia shared with Miguel in the letters they exchanged once a week for a time, and more often now that Celia lived alone. She had felt very close to him writing those letters, knowing that he was alone too. Only now, sitting on the porch of his cabin, did she realize how different living alone was for each of them. She lived in a cement block tower many metres above the ground, with a vista of rocky coastline and vast light-reflecting ocean. He lived in a thatched-roof hut barely one step above the ground, so close that she could smell the earth. It was surrounded by tall trees that blocked the view and filtered the sunlight.

  Directly in front of her, the largest tree of all was not one tree but two; a marañon wrapped tight by a strangler fig. It was one of the things Miguel had described in a letter, explaining how the fig grew up as a light vine, twining itself around the larger tree, then, upon reaching its full height, began to thicken and squeeze. Eventually the tree that had supported the fig when it had no sturdy trunk of its own would cease to be, having given up its life to sustain the seemingly weak but actually stronger fig.

  Was this a metaphor for relationships? she wondered. Did one always hold the other in such an inescapable embrace that the weaker one ceased to be its own life form? Looking up at the strong but dying marañon, she understood that this was what she had feared all along, first from José and then from Luis. She had no such fear of Miguel, but was that sensible? It was true that he had never held her too tight, but Luis had seemed gentle too, had he not? And yet she had had a harder time extracting herself from Luis than from José. Perhaps she should be afraid of Miguel, but she was not. There were two sides to that coin, she reasoned, or rather, two people in any embrace. Both had a choice.

  As she stared up into the intermingled leaves of the marañon and its strangler mate, she knew there was something else that made a man and a woman’s relationship different from this great tree and the smaller one that was swallowing it. The marañon had no defences, no thorns or toxic bark to fend off its subtle attacker. But she, Celia, was not so helpless. A warrior mother she’d had, a warrior sister, and yes, a warrior soul—the soul of her namesake who became a commander not to command men but so none could command her. No one would ever again take from her what she did not want to give.

  She caught a movement from the corner of her eye, turned her
head, but saw nothing. She ceased rocking and as she had learned to do from Miguel’s letters, sat very still, watching until she saw the movement again. It was Miguel, who had stopped when he saw her sitting there, now striding forward. She went to the edge of the porch and he, standing on the ground below so that they were the same height, greeted her in a full-body hug.

  “Have you been waiting long?”

  “About an hour.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  “It was kind of last minute. I have been working weekends, hoping to get a few days off in a row. As soon as I had permission, I caught the next train to Santiago to see Liliana. Then came here because—well, this will be my last chance before you leave.”

  “Yes.” The single word told her he was in waiting mode, waiting to find out whether she had come to say goodbye, or if not, why exactly she had come.

  “I want to visit the Comandancia again,” she said in a low voice.

  He looked at her for a long moment, looked into her, she felt, and understood exactly what she was asking.

  “I know now,” she said hesitantly, “that I went there to find myself, not . . . the other Celia. I couldn’t accept the choices I was being offered and, well, I guess I hoped the past was something I could . . . disappear into.”

  He listened to her self-analyze, neither nodding nor contradicting. He was silent a moment, then looked up the mountain toward the Comandancia, and said, “If we wait until sunset when the guides have gone down we could stay the night up there.”

  “Even if I do not know . . . ?”

  She did not finish the sentence, did not know how to finish it. She still had occasional feelings of deja vu but had not had a full-blown hallucination in more than a year. That did not mean that there was no Sánchez left in her psyche. It might reappear at any time and if it was going to, where more likely than at the Comandancia?