Father Ballesteros then turned around and gave way to Father Moreno to take the pulpit. Moreno had a much thinner face than Ballesteros. His hair was thinning, and so he swept the tufts he had remaining from right to left to give the appearance of a fuller scalp. He had high cheekbones and a wide, disarming smile that created deep angles in his cheeks. He stepped forward and thanked La Iglesia de Jesus de Miramar for having him. He offered blessings to everyone present and discussed how the Catholic Church existed as an extended, worldwide family, and that was why he was present there today. He reminded everybody that they had a home in his church if they ever visited New York City. He spoke softly, but his voice lifted as he started his sermon.
“Who among us would deny being a selfish sinner? I’m not talking about the man or woman who compulsively and knowingly hoards materialistic items every day. If such a wayward soul is present, you must mend your ways immediately or God will not see you . . .
“I’m talking of the small, everyday selfishness that resides in each of us, for many of us are good and abiding models of God’s word. Still, we slip up and have moments each day where we are less than we can be . . .
“We accumulate and take, and when we do, many of us are unaware of our actions. We feel no guilt, we show no shame for our taking. Yet when we are selfish once, we are prone to do so again. So we must guard against such small habits, such unbecoming instincts of thinking only of ourselves and not of others. That is no way to live, and once you have started down a selfish path, it is hard to turn around and head back in the right direction . . .
“It is easy to lose sight of what many of you would regard as a lesser sin, that of selfishness. So, too, it is easier to find yourself in the habit of selfish disregard for others and not recognize it, and worse not being able to reverse your course . . .
“That is why I am asking you to examine your daily habits, especially in regards to your interactions with others. What in your life keeps you from your loved ones? What in life pulls you away from not giving yourself and everything you have to others? If you cannot identify instances in your life that prevent you from giving, you are not looking hard enough. You are not seeing clearly enough. You are not wanting to see . . .
“Just as Christ asked his followers to see the Light through Him, some refused to see. Do not be fooled. It is a difficult task to see. Do not allow your daily routine to blind you from seeing what you may be doing wrong. Focus on the gift of giving. You will see yourself as better than you were yesterday. You cannot live indulgent with selfishness. If you learn to give yourself away, you will live a life of reward better than you ever imagined . . .”
After Father Moreno finished his sermon, the consecration began. The boys followed their mother to the steps at the front of the church. She kneeled before Father Moreno to take the host and then the wine from the chalice. The brothers followed, first Alberto and then Juan. They bent to their knees and opened their mouths, letting their tongues slide out to receive the wafer. Their saliva and the tiny crunch of the cracker pressing against the roofs of their mouths made short-lived the taste of Christ’s flesh. He was half complete within them until they took the red wine. The tiny sip, the blood, the resurrection, the communion was complete. The chalice lip wiped off for the next receiver. Rows of gatherers ahead and behind. Who among them the selfish? Who among them cared? The Ramos brothers tienen hambre, they were hungry for lunch.
Three months later—on the same day in October when Fidel was sentenced to seventeen years in prison for his role in the Moncada attack—Lucretia opened La Hermosa, her beauty salon in Havana Vieja. The salon was not far from El Encanto, one of Havana’s popular upscale department stores, where Lucretia liked to do her happy shopping. But checking up on the daily business at La Hermosa became Lucretia’s favorite thing to do. She made a habit of going into Havana’s commercial district whenever she could. She had a business to run, she had money to make. And money to spend.
* * *
Chapter 12
The newspapers fed Cubanos a false version of events surrounding Fidel’s imprisonment and trial: that the rebel leader had never been caged up in solitary, that the state had made no attempt to diagnose his mental status as unstable, that his self-defense at trial had not been influential in mitigating his sentence. For Juan and Alberto, gaining the truth came to them by way of Benito, whose father, Max Carbonal, had been one of the revolutionaries who followed Fidel in the storming of Moncada. Now Max had been sentenced to a decade on the remote offshore prison on the Isle de Pines for his participation in the attack. To reveal the truth of his and the other rebels’ time in captivity before and during the trial, Max smuggled out notes to Benito’s mother when she was finally allowed to visit her husband in jail after his verdict. In the days prior to her visit, Max squeezed the juice from the lemons on his meal plate into a paper cup and then daubed his fingernail with the juice and ciphered messages on napkins. When he saw his wife, he snuck the napkins to her, and she hid them in her blouse. Back at Benito’s apartment, his mother scalded the napkins with an iron to reveal Max’s words: that the prisoners had been caged up separately and beaten during interrogation, that the court had tried to falsify Fidel’s condition as unfit for trial, and that Fidel’s sentence was greatly reduced due to his spectacular oration in self-defense of his motives at Moncada.
Benito did not mourn his father’s absence. Rather, he celebrated his courage, and Juan and Alberto found the entire story of the rebels’ endeavors fascinating, especially Fidel’s ability to inspire, his confidence to lead, and his fearlessness to sacrifice, which made him magnetic with intrigue to his followers and supporters, young boys like Juan, Alberto, and Benito. From the messages Max scrawled on the napkins, the boys put their imaginations to work in order to recreate Fidel’s rumored brilliance at his trial. They imagined him rising from behind the defendant’s table and putting both hands to his chest, a signal to ignite the passion burning in his heart, his eyes sparkling with resilience and defiance. “Martí, come to me,” they thought of him summoning to himself. And then, supposedly, for over two hours he had declared his innocence. Swaying forward, his voice rising and falling like the wind, he had unleashed his trademark index finger, slicing it through the air, straight as an arrow, to point out his accusers’ crimes. He was a ring leader, taming those in attendance that day. And as his speech carried on, those present came to admire him—even the judges, though forced to pass sentence on him in the end. Fidel’s final declaration that day left everyone breathless: “Go ahead and condemn me! It does not matter! La historia me absolverá! History will absolve me!”
But this revolutionary fervor that Fidel ignited during the Moncada attack quickly appeared dead when he was sentenced and sent to join his brother Raúl, along with Max and Gonzalo and a handful of other convicted loyalists, in the prison on Isle de Pines. So by the following year, Castro seemed an afterthought for many Cubanos going about their lives, Lucretia among them. She was busier than ever, running both the administrative duties of El Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Fatima and the managerial responsibilities of La Hermosa, which in less than a year’s time had established itself as Havana’s premier beauty salon. At home in La Vibora, the school had been running successfully for a decade, so her adjunct staff—veterans such as Señorita Silvia and Señor Pablo—could now make major decisions. These included the changing of curriculum and the disciplining of insubordinate students. Lucretia remained aware of occurrences at the school, but the bulk of her time she now spent preoccupied with La Hermosa in Havana Vieja. Whereas she employed seven full-time staff at the school, she had two dozen full-time and part-time beauty specialists at her salon: stylists, manicurists, make-up artists, and facial-cleansing experts.
It was clear to the Ramos brothers and their father that Lucretia’s salon constituted her passion, a desire she seemed to cherish more than her family and church because the salon nourished her inner calling of always striving to look her best. She imagined
that other women wanted to model themselves after her. She believed her personal beauty contributed to the overwhelming success of her salon more so than the smart business ventures she had put in place from the start. La Hermosa was a one-stop hair, skin, and nail salon with reasonable prices due to the fact that a client could have all her needs addressed during one appointment, so clients usually went for the package deal and spent more than if they came in for only a haircut and styling. Women who only wanted their hair done also decided upon a facial, followed by a manicure. Instead of dropping ten pesos, they slapped down twenty for the package deal of all three, but most importantly women left feeling empowered and ready to tell their amigas about their experience at La Hermosa. “Don’t you want to look and feel great!” became the salon’s slogan, which caught on quickly throughout la cuidad. New clients kept making appointments: a haircut or trim, followed by coloring, curling, straightening, or how about extensions. Any style for one’s hair could be reproduced at La Hermosa. The facial followed: a deluxe cleansing with all-natural extract scrub, tiny bead particles that exfoliated and rejuvenated the skin, then a massage and the application of a pealing mask to suck out dead cells and nourish and hydrate the pores, clearing and tightening them, the skin left soft, moisturized, toned, and replenished, a new radiance and glow that brought out the youth in the most dried-out and tired-looking faces. Finally, the nails needed pampering: the cuticles pushed back, lotioned, and trimmed before applying new tips, any color or design of choice to bring flourish to a lady’s fingertips. Clients left La Hermosa with a feeling of therapeutic energy coursing through their womanhood, and Lucretia felt satisfied that she was banking off her own experience of what it felt like to be hermosa, beautiful.
Lucretia’s ambition for what she wanted left her drifting farther away from her sons and husband during this time. The boys were old enough now that they didn’t care. They had their friends and their own interests to keep them busy. Although Juan stayed close with Benito and Miguel, he preferred to study books about law. Alberto, for his part, hung out with Benito and Miguel, but the lure of mischief waned once Alberto got a guitar at a garage sale to replace the banjo his father had bought him when he was five. Then Benito picked up a set of drums. They started jamming together after school, and Miguel soon joined with a base guitar. Sitting out on the big backyard porch of the Ramos home, supported by wooden columns on each corner, the three started putting together some songs. Once they developed a harmony with one another, they decided they needed a name. Because they lived on a beautiful island, almost divine, they called themselves Los Divinos. The cadence of the name sounded good, and so on many evenings they made music until the setting sun had sizzled out its last bit of light and extinguished itself in the sea. Instead of looking for ways to cause trouble, music became a constructive outlet for the boys.
Their only fan was Juan, who gave a good critique of their songs. He told them if the beat was too slow or fast or whether the base needed to stay more in rhythm with Alberto’s lead guitar. Juan even suggested that his brother tap his feet and sashay his body from side to side. “It will give intrigue to your voice and delivery,” he told his little brother.
They had great fun until Lucretia came home and said the noise needed to stop.
“It’s not noise, mamá,” said Juan, standing up for his brother and his friends. “Están tocando la música. They’re playing music.”
“Well, I’ve been working all day. I need some peace and quiet. If you want to move the band out into the yard or to someone else’s house, that’s fine. I just don’t have the patience for hearing any loud noise.”
“Mamá, Alberto is very talented. You should pay him more attention,” Juan tried to engage her.
“I’m sure he is,” she said. “And I’m happy you’re enjoying the music. Now let me concentrate.”
And then she disappeared into her office.
Around this time, their father began spending longer and longer nights away from the house. He showed up for dinner only once or twice a week in those years. He always showed interest in whatever his sons were doing, and he always encouraged and supported whatever they wanted to do, yet that did not curb his frequent absences.
“What do you think papá’s up to at night?” Juan asked Alberto one evening. “I mean, he and mamá don’t share the same room anymore, so what do you think he does before coming home late.”
“He’s at the office, I suppose . . .” replied Alberto.
“I don’t want to believe he’s spending time at the men’s club.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Don’t you want to know?”
So the next evening after Cuca fixed the boys their dinner and they finished eating and helping wash the dishes, they told her they were heading to the field for a pick-up baseball game under the lights. They took along their mitts as a guise. But instead of heading south to the field, they headed towards the downtown district and waited outside the Royal Bank building. From the empty street, they detected a light on in their father’s office on the fourth floor. They waited behind a blossoming flamboyán tree, its flowers flaming red, and by half past eight the light went out. The brothers moved closer to the front of the building and watched for their father to exit. When he did, they followed him. He didn’t look in a hurry. He didn’t look upset, aggravated, or overworked. He swung his alligator-skin briefcase with nonchalance, and he whistled un bolero as he strolled down side streets and cut across the downtown sector headed towards Vieja.
He went down a slender alleyway that looked up to apartamentos with wrought-iron balconies that had flowerpots spilling over with the fragrance of hibiscus and bougainvillea. A dance club down the block poured the pulsing rhythm of music into the alley and caused the iron balconies to vibrate and the apartment windows to shake. He passed by shops, storefronts, and salons with habaneros hanging out, smoking cigarros, and drinking beers. Then he traversed through a marketplace with vendors hawking their fruits and poultry from stalls. The smell of coconuts and papaya clashed with the raw odor of blood from hunks of pig carcasses. Other stalls sold watches, wallets, tools, toys, and crosses and crucifixes. Juan thought of Cuca when they passed a woman claiming to be a curandera. She tried to push on him and his brother an assortment of talisman, potions, and magic candles. They turned her down and kept up their sleuth after their father. When he finally reached a walkway alongside a shoulder-high limestone wall, he proceeded until he reached the corner and then turned towards a nondescript door in a dimly lit plaza, only a few blocks from the Malecón. He rapped three times on the door. The brothers waited in the shadows around the corner from the door and could hear soft music playing from inside when an enormous man in a linen suit and tie answered.
“Bienvenidos, Señor Ramos. We haven’t seen you for several nights.”
“I’ve been busy with work. Tonight I’m glad to be finished temprano.”
“It’s never too early or too late at Mujeres Siempre for an appointment. La fiesta is always going on here. You know that. Will Señorita Graciela be seeing you again tonight?”
“I sure hope so.”
The brothers overheard the conversation as their father spoke in the most pleasurable voice imaginable to the gigantic doorman.
The brothers looked at each other, but neither was surprised, nor did they feel angry or confused. They were wise enough to know their parents were not a couple in bliss anymore. Still, they waited to see how long their father stayed. He must have had a nine o’clock “appointment”—as the doorman had mentioned—that lasted an hour because by ten several men began to arrive as several others made their way out, including their father. As he bounded up the steps from the brothel and began whistling as he adjusted the knot at his tie, Juan jumped out in front of him on the sidewalk.
Their father threw up his hands in fright, his legs buckled. He nearly lost his balance in the asphalt street before realizing his sons had leaped out in front of him.
/> “Qué hacen aquí? What are you two doing here?” their father shrieked.
“We wanted to see where you were,” said Alberto.
“I’m on my way home. What does it look like?”
“Not straight from the office,” said Juan.
“I had some business in Vieja. My job takes me all over la cuidad.”
“To the ladies’ house?” asked Juan.
“What are you talking about?” claimed their father.
“Don’t play stupido,” said Juan.
“It was Juan’s idea to follow you, papá. I told him we shouldn’t,” said Alberto.
“You two shouldn’t be spying on your father. How do you think this makes me feel?”
“We understand why you’re not happy with mamá,” said Juan.
“Walk with me,” said their father with a sigh. His sons each took a side next to him, and the three of them headed home as the hour neared eleven.
In the thirty minutes from downtown to the portal of their home in La Vibora, Florencio put everything into perspective for his sons, a man-to-man revealing of how he felt and why he was living the way he did.
“You see, hijos, I loved your mother once. I still do in a way. She is driven. She is successful. What she is not . . . well, you already know. She does not know how to love. For me, the circumstances are very easy to assess. She works a lot. I work a lot. She does not care about anyone but herself. I care very much about you two, although I realize I have not always been the greatest padre. But when it comes to myself, I have my own urges I need fulfilled. You two will know soon enough. So, as I am a man who devotes a great many hours to my career for Don Emilio, it does not leave me time to find another woman. Nor do I particularly want to go through the rigor of separation with your mother. She is content to look the other way on certain things. Plus, she would never agree to a divorce. She is too strict a Catholic to stray from the pact of marriage. Therefore, I have found what I need to keep myself satisfied with no attachments or complications. It is not easy for me to talk to both of you of these matters. I hope you may forgive me, or at the very least try to understand a little. I love you both dearly, and I would never do anything to harm you. Your mother just wants to have control. That is why she ignores what I do, just as long as we honor the original covenant of our marriage. In other words, as long as we stay married, she does not care what I do. So I must do what I have to do. That is the best I can explain the situation to both of you.”
The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy Page 9
