Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

by Rafael Yglesias

  I don’t remember when my tears started, whether I was already into bed and had been tucked in, or whether it was just before. My mother said, in that flat voice, “You’re crying,” and got into bed with me, gathering me into the warm hollow of her curved body, her head arching over me, her legs covering and entwining with mine. She no longer had the chinos on. Perhaps she had gone out for a while and resumed painting, perhaps this took place in the middle of the night, and I had woken weeping. I don’t remember exactly. The Brooks Brothers shirt I can recall. Its fabric, smelling faintly of my father and faintly of my mother and strongly of paint, was somehow both soft and coarse. My tears wetted a large circle on the upper ridge of her left breast. Her nipple emerged, a truncated pillar, rising in the soaked material.

  After a while I stopped crying. The room was dark. Harsh light from the street’s amber lamps spread through my Venetian blinds. They undulated with the breeze; shadows of their thick latticework moved over the wall, the partly open closet door, and the naked unlit bulbs.

  Lying on the damp of my tears became uncomfortable. I tried to turn away from Ruth and the shirt, but her arms locked and wouldn’t let me.

  “Stay!” she implored in a whisper. She pushed at me with one foot, digging under my legs, and, claw-like, used her other foot to gather me, pressing my legs, pelvis and hips against her. She undulated like the shadows, and her big lips, dry and hot, manufactured soft kisses on my forehead. Moans—I mistook them at first for sobs—escaped between her caresses. I felt the looseness in her sex. At least I remember I did. She rocked and kissed and shuddered until her body went rigid. Her muscles clenched and she jerked a few times. The bedsprings squealed violently; yet her embrace felt gentle, only a breeze that moved the shadows across my unpainted room. After that, she lapsed into sleep. I slid out from her relaxed embrace, found the chinos in a lump by the bathroom, and stole my father’s letter.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Transference

  DURING THE REST OF MY EIGHTH YEAR RUTH’S STATE OF MIND WORSENED. Most of the time she communicated with me by writing messages on a yellow legal pad. I had to answer in kind with the red pencil she offered or simply nod my agreement. (I never disagreed: you don’t talk back to a mute.) When our written conversation was over, she tore off the sheet from the pad and methodically folded the paper into a square. She stared intently, pressed her lips tight, and ripped the square into smaller squares. Her face had a look of fury and concentration. She gathered the litter of yellow pieces into a cup made by her palms, carried them before her as if they were holy into the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet. While the water rushed out, she checked under and around the bowl to make sure none had fluttered onto the black and white web of tiles.

  The messages weren’t worthy of secrecy. They were: “Put your dirty clothes in the hamper in my closet.” Or: “Don’t forget to close the refrigerator door.” Or, every woman’s favorite injunction to men: “Don’t leave the seat up after using the john.” It was absurd, heartbreaking and scary.

  One winter night, at bedtime, she wrote, “Painting your room. Sleep in mine.” While I got into pajamas, she pushed my bed away from the wall and covered it with an old sheet, streaked by colors she had tried out elsewhere. She moved brushes, cans of paint, a ladder, and other paraphernalia into my room. But no painting was ever done there; and she had finished the rest of the apartment.

  My parents had a king-sized bed, so huge that our sharing it for a few nights might not appear odd. Besides, we had no visitors. Ruth deliberately quarreled with her Communist Party friends, presumably as part of the need to separate publicly from my father. She had a non-political friend, the mother of one of my buddies, but she fought with her as well, on some pretext—I never heard that detail. I was allowed to play outside with my friends for an hour after school and some weekend mornings but I was forbidden to visit at their apartments or invite them home, because her paranoia was galloping. She explained on her yellow pad: “Adults are dangerous. Keep everything secret. Go to school and come home. Keep quiet around grown-ups. They could put me in jail.” She didn’t bother me every night; not often, in fact. And was it bothering? How I long to use the jargon that would clothe my nakedness for those of you lucky enough to be shocked by it: I was glad of the security of my mother’s bed and I enjoyed the warmth of her body. And I did my best—believe me, it was my best—to ignore it when that body, swishing the sheets and creaking the springs, became too animated for comfort alone. I nestled deeper into the pillow, reaching for unconsciousness. In fact, sometimes I did nod off while she moved against me with that insistent, furtive rubbing.

  And what did I feel? Or rather, what was I aware of feeling?

  I was the two-sided boy: the marred downcast face of a geek I saw in the mirror and the outward beam of a happy boy shown to teachers and friends. Sometimes my performance of normality and happiness even fooled me. I would forget for hours at a time, while with the children at school, that I was not a child. I was the revolutionary-traitor, the fatherless-father, the boy-lover, the terrified-strongman.

  My prison was not without parole. I did captain the softball team; I was allowed to play in the schoolyard after class in the various pickup games of stickball, touch football and so on. Contrary to what you might expect I did well at school. My grades were excellent. I was elected to the student council. I was considered to be an exceptionally mature and responsible boy. The explanation is widely understood by child psychologists today, although that does not necessarily make a sufferer easier to spot. Back then only a few specialists (and not all, by any means) would have suspected my imitation of harmony. A truly unhappy child, the child whose parents do not play their roles, knows best how to mimic the behavior of responsible grown-ups and has the greatest motivation to do so. The particular abuse I endured was that my mother cast me as father and lover. She didn’t attack my ego: her abuse wasn’t that active. She ignored me, refused to nurture the real me into manhood, forced me to be an adult-manqué and take care of her, in every sense of that word. For long periods of time children are capable of this fakery. (Usually they become incapable as adolescents or adults, when something more difficult than precocity is asked, when real maturity is demanded by friends and lovers.) Eventually, of course, the facade cannot be supported; cracks and stresses on the flimsy supports multiply, and sooner or later it collapses. But that doesn’t happen right away and, I’m convinced, it is this phase—the cover-up—which does the most harm.

  My mother would pull herself together from time to time. We visited Aunt Sadie and Cousin Daniel occasionally. I was especially enjoined to tell them nothing. I obeyed gladly: the last person I would have admitted my situation to was Daniel.

  And, by the way, when I speak of my situation, I mean the facts as explicated to me by my mother, namely that my father was a revolutionary in exile, a defender of Cuba, preparing for the day when the corrupt government of the United States would be overthrown. I was unaware that my mother’s nighttime embraces were wrong, in the sense that they were the hurtful actions of a traumatized adult for which I bore no responsibility. Nevertheless, I also knew I wasn’t supposed to talk about them; I knew they made me uncomfortable … sometimes. Even if Ruth had released me from my vows of secrecy, I wouldn’t have spoken. In my mind I was a full participant. I didn’t pull away; I made no fuss about sleeping in her bed. I wanted to stay. I kept the secret for my own reasons. The thought of losing her, including what I didn’t like about her, filled my head with panic and resolve.

  We did not attend Seder in 1961 at my uncle’s, although by April Ruth seemed to be improving. She was grooming herself again, circling ads in the newspaper, going on a few job interviews. We were broke. The money my father had left behind in the bank was used up. I believe—I’m uncertain about this detail—that Ruth had been offered part-time administrative work at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and planned to say yes.

  On April 15th, 1961, my ninth birthday, Ruth didn’
t throw a party. She wrote on the legal pad: “We’ll go to the movies and have a cake. But no friends. Children are good but can’t trust parents.”

  It was a Saturday. She took me to the Museum of Modern Art where, in a narrow, stark white screening room they showed Charles Chaplin movies to serious-minded film lovers. My mother enjoyed herself. For the first time since Tampa, I heard her laugh long and loud. And she cried, of course. That was almost as unusual as her laughter. She whispered to me again and again, “He’s a genius. Isn’t this great?”

  I hated Chaplin. I thought the pathetic tramp grotesque, the absence of dialogue a dreary reminder of my home’s inarticulate misery. I wanted to see a James Bond movie—I think Dr. No was playing then. Friends of mine had been given the 007 attaché kit for their birthdays. It included a plastic copy of Bond’s Walther PPK that fired red bullets. My friends let me play in their hide-and-seek spy games, but I had to hide all the time, since I had nothing with which to defend myself. Worse, I had nothing to shoot at them.

  I told Ruth I thought Chaplin was great. I watched her out of the corner of my eye and echoed her laughs, smiling when she turned her head to confirm that I was enjoying it.

  “You have such good taste,” she told me over my birthday dessert at Rumpelmayer’s. “Is it good?” she asked about the piece of dark chocolate cake she had ordered for me. She had vetoed my request for Black Forest saying it was vulgar. (I liked cherries—still do.)

  “Yes,” I lied. The dark chocolate was too rich and too bitter for my unsophisticated child’s palate. (Still is.)

  We crossed the street to Central Park. Ruth found an empty bench, in an odd spot, near a stone bridge. (I can’t find it today.) Occasionally a bicyclist went by; once, a couple walked past. She fell silent each time until they were gone. She took my hand, looked toward the trees, not at me, and made a speech.

  “You’re nine years old today. It’s amazing to me. It’s absolutely amazing. I can remember how you looked the day you were born. You had a full head of black hair. You weren’t one of those wrinkled old men. Your eyes were the shape of almonds. And they were so bright. The nurse said you couldn’t really see yet, but you seemed to look right into my heart and I swear you knew who I was. The nurse showed me your full head of hair and then she straightened your fingers to show me how long they were.” Ruth gently lifted the tips of my fingers away from their curvature toward my palm. “‘He’s going to be tall,’” she said. She was right,” Ruth commented with a note of surprise. “I don’t think her method was scientific. Well, she had seen Francisco. So it wasn’t that brilliant of her, was it?” she chuckled. She must love Chaplin, I remember thinking. Her mood hadn’t been this gentle and easy since the attack.

  “That was the happiest day of my life. Not the day you were born. I was too scared and too foggy from the anesthesia to enjoy it. The next day, when I got to hold you and feed you and everyone came—” she narrowed her eyes, “even people I hated were nice and so impressed by you.” She stopped here, I think because of a passerby. When she resumed, tension had returned to her voice. “I had lots of days when I was happy. I don’t want you to think I was always like this. I wasn’t. I wasn’t always angry and scared.” She glanced at me. Her eyes were wet. I hoped she wouldn’t cry. “I was happy when I used to dance. Before Bernie put a stop to it. Put a stop to it quickly. Put a stop to that. And to a lot of other things.”

  She rapidly turned her head as if she were going to catch someone hidden behind us, eavesdropping. When she saw no one she turned back and resumed. “But there was always something that turned things sour. Not the day after you were born. Everything was gorgeous. I didn’t feel sore or any pain. I did the next day. But not your first full day on earth. I remember everyone saying how well I looked. I looked well because I was happy.” She didn’t glance at me. She squeezed my hand for emphasis, but her green eyes nervously scanned the trees and nude lawns. She raised her voice, abandoned the hunted whisper of her paranoia, and spoke clearly above the distant surf of traffic on Fifth Avenue. “I want you to know that. No matter what happens to me, remember the day I got to see you, really see you for the first time, was the happiest day of my life.”

  We returned to our apartment building around five o’clock. As we were about to go into the lobby, a voice called from a window. It was Joseph. Outside of contact in school I hadn’t played with him since the day I was branded a liar to his parents. (I was wrong about the label becoming general throughout the neighborhood. Either the Steins had no credibility or they didn’t talk to anyone.) He called down, “Rafe!” and then glanced back furtively into his apartment. Something appeared in his hands. “Happy birthday!” It was a package. He indicated he was going to drop it. “Catch!”

  I moved under his window. He let go. He had wrapped the present in brown paper and written “Happy Birthday” in Magic Marker on both sides. His handwriting was as neat as a girl’s. Inside the wrapping was a paperback book. Not new; very well used, in fact. And on the inside cover there was a sticker with Joseph’s name. The title suggested the book would solve a mystery: How to Play the Opening in Chess. Upstairs, I got out my plastic pieces and tested my assumption. Sure enough, the dramatic advantages Joseph used to gain at the start of our games came from that book. My opponent for the openings had been the advice of generations of chess geniuses who had explored the first twenty moves or so and recorded the best options. Joseph had never let on. The rest of Joseph’s books were on the shelves for all to see, but this one hadn’t been on display. Indeed, I suspected (I was correct) that he must own more than one chess book. I noticed an advertisement on the back jacket that said there was a companion volume, How to Play the Endgame. I wanted to thank him. And I wanted to play chess again. I tried to think of how I could convince first my mother and then his mother that neither the CIA nor the Nazis would gain anything by Joseph and me playing together. I guess it’s a sad indication about my life that I didn’t laugh at this summation of my obstacle but seriously began to compose speeches to surmount it.

  My attempt to puzzle out a convincing brief for parole was interrupted by Mother breaking the radio silence of our apartment. She shouted my name, “Rafe!” with urgency and horror.

  I ran to her. She was in the hall off the kitchen. In happier days my parents used to serve meals at the long pine table in this room to argumentative Communist and ex-Communist Party members. For large groups they cooked Cuban peasant food: Francisco prepared great pots of black beans and rice; Ruth had learned from my grandmother how to make ropa vieja. Truly huge crowds were sometimes invited for dessert. Ruth baked delicious blueberry and apple tarts. She explained how she kept their crusts flaky during the brief lulls of political debate. And in the corner, sometimes to illustrate the subject of their discussions, was a small black and white television. Not the huge consoles of my friends and certainly not a hypermodern color set. It was the kind of portable television that soap-opera addicted women kept in the kitchen or indulgent parents bought for teenage children to watch in their bedroom.

  I found Ruth kneeling in front of it. The news was on. Probably Walter Cronkite, but I don’t remember.

  She said, “They’ve bombed Havana.” Havana was where I understood my father to be living. At my local public school there had been atomic bomb drills, later satirized or solemnly re-created by many works of the anti-war culture of the late sixties. We practiced getting under our desks. I saw my father under a desk. I saw him under my grandmother’s kitchen table winking at me.

  They were showing file footage (I guess) of Fidel’s troops taking Havana. The report (which turned out to be false) was that the Cuban air force had revolted against Fidel and bombed the capital. In fact, U.S. planes had dropped some bombs and a lot of leaflets to weaken morale in preparation for the invasion of CIA-trained Cubans at the Bay of Pigs. That was not what my mother knew, however. She heard that Havana was under attack from a Cuban counterrevolution. She knelt before the news bulletin, but her hands we
ren’t in a prayerful pose; they were clenched fists poised to strike at the image.

  The phone rang.

  “Oh, my God,” Ruth said. She stood up. She was still in the clothes she had put on to take me out for my birthday, a cheerful yellow and white dress that billowed prettily when she walked. She was forty-five years old but looked younger. Her eyes were bright, a pale green at that moment, although they could look darker, almost brown. Her brows were black, hardly plucked, expressive arches that emphasized her alert eyes. “You answer. Say I’m not here.” She covered her mouth and stared at the ceiling as if someone were hanging from it. “Shit. Of course they know.”

  The phone continued to ring, insisting on our attention. “I’ll get it,” I said. Ruth called out for me not to, but I was in the kitchen and had lifted the phone from its cradle before she could countermand me.

  Grandma Jacinta was on, talking in rapid Spanish, almost hysterical. We had spoken earlier, when she called to wish me a happy birthday. This time I couldn’t understand her. In the background I heard a relative of mine shout: “They say it’s an invasion!” Jacinta calmed herself enough to say, “Listen, honey, don’t worry about a thing. Put your Mama on, okay?”