The Cat King of Havana

by Tom Crosshill

  “A segment on BBC News?” Ana asked. “Really?”

  “Miranda thinks that’s why they let her go,” Yolanda said. “They got scared of the publicity.”

  “I’m so happy.” Ana hugged Yolanda.

  I hugged her too.

  I knew something, though. The plan had worked but not without a cost.

  Valdes knew about Yolanda now. He’d be watching her, and our entire family. Because of him, I couldn’t come back to Cuba, not anytime soon.

  Today he’d gotten a photo op out of me and Ana. On the other hand, we’d helped Miranda get free. Valdes and I, we were 1–1. But the game was only beginning.

  For the first time in my life, I knew that I could make a difference.

  When Rachel Snow had called me out as a geek, she’d had a point. But there was a power to being a geek.

  I had an idea for my new website. It would be part anonymous blog, part discussion forum. Lots of funny pictures and videos. Some not so funny. The video of Miranda Galvez would go up there, with instructions for anonymously uploading others. The site would be a WikiLeaks for Cuba—except more exciting, with memes and music videos, and tropical-themed cat GIFs to draw eyeballs. I would call it Lolcats for the Revolution.

  It was time I earned my title as Cat King of Havana. Even if I had to go into exile to do it.

  chapter twenty-seven

  NOT DONE

  Our last morning in Havana I took Juanita out for pizza, just the two of us. Cuban pizza was spongy, cottony bread with melted cheese on top, but I’d found one place at the Meliá Cohíba hotel that would have done all right in Manhattan (and charged Manhattan prices). Juanita dressed up finer for pizza than many New Yorkers would have for Per Se—a long pale silk dress and a pearl necklace and red earrings that stood out like small bright berries in her silvery hair.

  After, we strolled along the Malecón back toward Habana Vieja. The sun blazed upon us. A breeze blew in over the water, sent waves crashing against the seawall so that the cool spray of the Caribbean refreshed us. “I read the book you brought me,” Juanita said.

  It took me a moment to remember what she was talking about. “The one about Mariel.”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t going to. But I saw the inscription, For María. . . . Why did you give it to me?”

  “I thought you might want to know what it was like, leaving on the boatlift.”

  Juanita nodded. “It’s strange the way a book gets inside you. Maybe you start out disliking some character but you hear her thoughts inside your head and eventually you begin to understand her.”

  I waited for Juanita to say more, but she never did. So I spoke instead. And asked her the one question I’d been holding inside these past weeks.

  “What really happened in 1980? With my mother?”

  Juanita’s stride wavered. She recovered and kept going, her eyes inscrutable behind sunglasses. “You know, don’t you? María must have told you about it.”

  “She didn’t say much.”

  “It was a painful time,” Juanita said. “Maybe it’s better to leave it in the past.”

  Better for who, I wanted to ask. But I only said, “Please, Aunt Juanita. I don’t want to go home with so many questions.”

  Juanita was silent for a long time.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked finally.

  “So Mom fell in love with Ricardo, the poet. They were going to leave Cuba. Claim asylum at the Peruvian embassy and get out.”

  “That kid was good for nothing. Head in the clouds, full of ideas. He had no idea the risk he put María in. The risk he put our family in.”

  Juanita’s voice came hard yet brittle, with a tremor to it. I kept my eyes carefully forward, afraid that looking at her might startle her into silence.

  “He opposed the Revolution,” I said. “He thought Fidel was hurting the country.”

  “Of course he did. His family was rich before the Revolution, and close to Batista.” Juanita snorted. “If Fidel had failed, he’d never have needed to work a day in his life.”

  I could have told Juanita about Ricardo’s place in Trinidad. The rust streaks on the walls. The rotting roof. The missing bedroom door. I could have asked her if she thought that was what Ricardo deserved.

  I could have asked her if she still believed in the Revolution. I could have pointed out that Juanita’s own daughter had more in common with Ricardo than with her.

  I did none of these things. They would have hurt Juanita to no purpose. It was hard for me to imagine that she’d never thought such things herself.

  Instead I said, “There’s one thing I don’t understand. Grandfather had Ricardo locked up before he could meet Mom at the embassy. But how did Grandfather find out? Who told him?”

  It took me a few steps before I realized Juanita had stopped. I turned.

  She walked to the seawall and leaned on it, gazed out at the sea. When she spoke, it was so quiet I had to come close to hear her.

  “For thirty years I hoped María would come home. Thirty years waiting for a visit, to see her face, to hug her and hold her close. Las hermanas Gutiérrez together again.” Juanita’s fingers clutched at the concrete seawall, so hard I was sure it hurt. “Six letters she wrote me. Three phone calls—one when Yolanda was born, another for Yosvany, and another for you. Three phone calls over thirty years. Sometimes I thought to get pregnant again, just so I’d hear her voice. Your mother was a hard woman, Rick.”

  I thought of Mom sitting beside me at my writing desk, her shoulder warm against mine. Her head bent over a math problem that she couldn’t make head or tails of—but tried to anyway.

  On the road behind us, a large wedding caravan drove past. Horns honked. A lively Strauss waltz blasted from someone’s speakers. The bride stood upright in a red convertible almendrón, a plump figure in a cloud of white lace, waving to everyone on the Malecón.

  “María told me her plan the night before,” Juanita said. “We were close, as close as two sisters can be. She knew I wouldn’t go with her, knew I was a revolutionary at heart, and besides, I had a boyfriend here—but she wanted to say good-bye. That was María’s mistake. She wanted to say good-bye.”

  I meant to keep my mouth shut. I really did. But the words escaped me, quiet and flat. “What was your mistake?”

  “My mistake was thinking I could hold on to her.”

  Juanita fell silent then. I sensed she would say no more even if I pushed.

  I didn’t push. I’d heard all I needed to. I went to stand beside her instead and put my arm around her. Together we looked across the water toward Miami.

  In theory, packing for home should have meant three minutes of tossing all my stuff in the suitcase and locking it up. In practice it became a tropical treasure hunt. That pile of Yosvany’s T-shirts, did it hide my electric razor somewhere? That fine selection of papers, CDs, shorts, and books on the table, did it include my flashlight? And Yosvany’s room demonstrated effectively that the best camouflage for socks was more socks.

  By the time I finished, it was almost time to leave. I was struggling to zip up my overflowing backpack when Yosvany came in. I hadn’t seen him since the incident with Ana and Celia—he’d been staying at his uncle’s, by Juanita’s edict. Now he didn’t knock, didn’t say hi. He swept in, ripped off his shirt, and plopped on his bed, arms outstretched. “This place smells like ass.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll get used to it again.”

  We looked at each other for a while. Me on the sofa holding my backpack. Him stretched out on his bed like he didn’t have a care in the world—but his eyes on me, focused, bright.

  That would have been the moment to tell him everything I thought of him. What a dick he was for hurting Ana. But it would have accomplished nothing. Yosvany was not the kind who’d listen to advice from his nerdy yuma cousin. It would only have pushed us apart.

  And he was my family. After my conversation with Juanita, I wasn’t about to forget that.


  So I opened my mouth to say I’d had fun this summer—when Yosvany spoke up. “Bad luck with Ana, huh.”

  “Bad luck?” Family’s family, but there’s only so much you can take. “You really are a comemierda, Yosvany. You were with the most amazing girl I’ve met, and you know what, she liked you, she really did. And you spat on that.”

  “You’ve got to be bad with girls,” Yosvany said. “If you’re good, they get bad with you. O jodes o te joden. I know, cousin—I’ve tried it both ways.”

  “So you’re gonna be a dick all your life,” I said. “Never trust anyone, and never have anyone trust you.”

  “You can’t trust a woman.” Yosvany shook his head sadly. “Everyone knows that. This famous writer, he once said to his mom—I trust you as a mother, but not as a woman.”

  Yosvany quoting a writer, now that was something new.

  “It sounds like you’re going to have a lonely life,” I said.

  “It sounds like you’re going to have a painful one,” Yosvany said.

  I sighed. “Tell you what, Yosvany. Let’s leave this for the next time we meet. Maybe then we can figure out who was right.”

  “Maybe next time will be in New York.” Yosvany pushed up from the bed with newfound energy. “We’ll go clubbing in Manhattan.”

  We clasped hands.

  “Sure,” I said. “Take care of Yolanda and Juanita.”

  “Of course. And you . . .” Yosvany glanced away. “Well, look after Ana, will you?”

  The sudden awkwardness in Yosvany’s manner surprised me. “I don’t think she needs looking after. But I’ll do my best.”

  “I’ll send you a copy of my new CD when it comes out,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Yosvany grinned. “One day you’ll realize how much I taught you this summer, primo.”

  “Oh, you taught me things, all right,” I said.

  We stood there looking at each other. This cool, ripped Cuban kid and his skinny nerd of a cousin.

  I hadn’t magically morphed into Mr. Ripped this summer. If I was cooler than when I’d arrived in Cuba, I still wasn’t about to make the cover of any teen magazine. And yet our last handshake seemed more equal than our first.

  Yolanda had airport duty. Juanita said she had a neighborhood meeting to attend, but really I think she didn’t want to cry in public. She fed us a late lunch and packed us ham sandwiches—still hot from the toaster oven—and never stopped talking for a moment, as if words could hold off the need to think and feel.

  “Make sure to exercise on the plane to avoid an embolism,” she said, though she’d never flown, and “Speak well of us in New York,” and “Tell your father to come with you next time.”

  She hugged Ana and me for thirty seconds each at the door. I wondered how long she might have hugged me if she’d known there might be no next time.

  The truth was, I didn’t want to let go either.

  Yosvany came into the hallway, but didn’t approach us. Ana ignored him. I waved him good-bye.

  Yolanda had gone down already to get the car. Ana and I dragged our suitcases out of the apartment and into the elevator. For one last time I cranked its manual lever. The metal cage shook and creaked and descended. Juanita watched us from the door until the very last moment—immobile, a statue, her hand locked on the doorjamb.

  In the darkness of the shaft, I found myself wishing the elevator would break down for once. But it never did.

  We rode through Centro Habana in the family Lada, windows down, breathing in that Havana special—fresh Caribbean air mixed with diesel fumes. Up front Yolanda drove one-handed, her elbow jutting out the window. She peppered us with questions about the TV show, about our flight, about our plans for the last week of summer break. Ever since the news about Miranda, she seemed changed: taller, relaxed, comfortable with herself.

  Me and Ana, we were different. We kept looking back, scanning the road for cars with government plates. At any moment I thought we might hit a roadblock and Valdes would pop out like Freddy at the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street, yank us off to that gray building with barred windows near Plaza de la Revolución.

  But Valdes didn’t come. We got to the airport and stood in the check-in line for an hour, and no one seemed the least bit interested in stopping us or asking us questions.

  Yolanda left us before passport control. She hugged us both and made us promise to write, and said not a thing about what we’d gone through this summer. Instead she smiled at us when it was time to leave and said, “Thank you for everything.”

  “I’m happy we could help,” I told her. It wasn’t exactly true, not knowing the cost of that help. But it wasn’t exactly a lie either.

  “Don’t give up,” Ana said. “Things will get better.”

  Yolanda nodded. I could tell she wasn’t so sure. She turned and walked away.

  I looked after her. I must have looked after her for a very long time, because eventually Ana touched my shoulder—carefully, as if afraid she might startle me. “Shall we?”

  In the line to passport control my stomach did its usual imitation of a blender on pulse. The official in the booth barely looked at us, though. He checked our passports, mumbled something under his breath, and buzzed us through.

  Later, as we sat on the tarmac waiting to take off, I realized—they were done. Valdes, the rest of them, they didn’t need to shoot us or torture us or lock us up. Fear was all they needed, fear for ourselves and our families.

  All they thought they needed.

  As acceleration pressed me into my seat, as the gray buildings of the airport blurred past outside, I closed my eyes. I wanted to feel every bump and rattle along the runway. These might be my last seconds on Cuban soil for many years.

  Cuba might be done with me. But I wasn’t done with Cuba.

  epilogue

  RETURN OF THAT CAT GUY

  Back when Rachel and I were dating, we made a music video set to her rendition of “The Cat Came Back.” The clip featured a Creative Commons–licensed feline escaping disasters ranging from neighborhood dogs to a computer-generated apocalypse. It was loud, it was hectic, it was colorful—and it got like seven hundred views.

  Pearls before swine.

  Right after Rachel dumped me, I’d watched that clip over and over again. Partly to hear Rachel’s voice—and partly because I’d admired the scrappy hero of the song. I’d wondered if I would ever escape the nuclear winter of Rachel’s dumpage as the cat escaped all his troubles.

  Now, though? I’d have liked to see that cat deal with Maykel Valdes—or Ana Cabrera for that matter.

  “It’s hard to believe we’re going back to our old lives tomorrow,” Ana said to me halfway to Cancún.

  “Are we?” I asked her.

  She stared at the dense white clouds outside the porthole. “My dad hasn’t moved out,” she said at last. “Mom didn’t say much on the phone, but I bet he’s still drinking.”

  I searched for something reassuring to say, but Ana gathered herself and spoke again. “I can’t fix their lives, can I?” She paused. “You can love someone but . . . what they do with your love isn’t up to you.”

  And it occurred to me that Ana too wasn’t leaving Cuba entirely unchanged.

  That old cat? He had nothing on the two of us.

  Ana and I talked for hours, that long trip home. On the plane, at the airport in Cancún, on the evening flight to New York that night. At first in Spanish, then—somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico—switching to English. We answered some questions over salted peanuts, settled a few things while rattling in turbulence, came to understand each other a little better waiting in the bathroom line. Ana and Rick, two friends, nothing more, nothing less.

  This isn’t a soap opera so I’ll skip over those conversations. Here’s the last question Ana asked me, though.

  We were getting ready to land at JFK late that night. The lights of the New York skyline tilted this way and that out the window. The captain came on the
intercom, told the crew to take their seats. Ana adjusted her neck pillow, gave me a quick glance, then turned to look at me straight on.

  “Tell me one thing,” she said. “Are you sorry you ever met me?”

  I studied this girl before me. Deep-set eyes that had never looked at me with desire. Lips which had never said the words I’d hoped to hear. I thought of the nights I’d spent tossing in bed, thinking of her. The days I’d gone without wanting to eat . . . the moment when I’d first seen Yosvany kiss her . . .

  “This year might have been a lot easier if I hadn’t,” I said.

  Ana winced.

  “Easy isn’t always good,” I said.

  Ana looked at me as if she expected more.

  I smiled. “You want me to thank you for breaking my heart? Well, thanks, Ana. It was a blast.”

  She laughed. We both laughed.

  But I meant the thanks.

  Without Ana I would never have danced casino while Mandy Cantero and Los Van Van rocked the night so close I could touch them. I might never have met Ricardo Eugenio and learned the true story of Mom’s last days in Cuba. Years might have passed before I walked down Obispo with music playing on every corner or strolled along the Malecón on a breezy morning, or met Juanita, Yolanda, and Yosvany, my family.

  As we glided down toward the runway, the lights of Long Island streaming past, I said to Ana, “I was messed up when we met. Confused. I was in for rough times whatever happened.”

  “Then I’m glad I’m what happened,” Ana said.

  “Me too,” I said, with no reservations.

  Yet half an hour later, as I stood in the passport line watching Ana talk to the immigration lady ahead of me, a weight sank down on me. It felt familiar and strange, like a childhood toy that you find in the closet years after you last played with it. It was the weight of solitude.

  I’d spent two months in that small Centro Habana apartment with Ana and Yosvany, Juanita and Yolanda. Aside from three days in Trinidad, I’d hardly ever been alone, not even when I wanted to. Now I’d left my family behind. Ana and I would go our separate ways at Penn Station. We’d still go dancing, maybe even perform together eventually, but it wouldn’t be the same.