The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy

by Roger Deblanck

  “Why aren’t you laughing?” asked Arturo.

  “Qué? What?” asked Juan, stepping back. He had been trying to shift himself in his pants without notice. He put on a face of annoyance with Arturo’s brusqueness, his in-your-face affront. “Why aren’t you laughing?” Juan countered back at Arturo.

  “I’m right. You’re not laughing,” repeated Arturo. “So what are you looking at?”

  “What’s your problem? Why are you looking at me?”

  “Because I like what I see, but you’re too caught up in yourself to notice. Too scared of who you are. Too busy staring at Colin when you should be noticing me.”

  Juan’s heart quivered, a caged bird in his ribs. Then in the next instant, the bird squirmed through the latticework of his lungs and soared. Juan felt wings carrying him to the sky. He wanted to taste Arturo’s lips right there in front of everyone in class.

  His reverie was broken when Brother Daniel returned and ended the ruckus in the classroom. Juan looked at Arturo and thought, what would my father think of me now?

  * * *

  Chapter 25

  The blow from the commander’s whistle woke Florencio every morning at six. His limbs ached, and his back was stiff. His bones cracked like crusted clay flaking off them, and his eyes stung from the sweat that had run into them from the day before. He was lying on a cot in un bohío in a small town outside the city of Matanzas, about twenty miles east of Havana, and the thatched hut he slept in every night had six other cots, all occupied with men similar to him. They all had applied to leave Cuba, and now before they were granted permission to do so, they had to pay a debt to La Revolución in the form of cutting sugarcane for a sufficient amount of time, which at some point they would then earn a release from the republic, to go as they pleased, all gusanos off the island.

  With the sun slicing through the gaps of the warped planks of the walls of the bohío, Florencio stared into the light and thought about his sons rising early under the same sunshine to go to school only a hundred miles away to the north in Miami, yet that distance represented an infinite amount of time and space between him and them. Then he thought of his own father, Huberto, how forty-five years earlier he had been cutting cane in a field similar to the one he now toiled in daily, and how one day Huberto was asked to calculate some figures for Don Emilio, which had led to him becoming the chief accountant for Andurra Azúcar. Now four and a half decades later, Andurra Azúcar was the property of the people of Cuba, a nationalized company no longer under the proprietorship of Don Emilio, thereby making every employee a laborer of the state, including those, like Florencio, who had sat in offices and kept the profits flowing. But the real reason Florencio was “asked” to cut cane was because he had requested to leave the country. He was a gusano, a worm who wanted out.

  Even with all that had happened in the months since he decided to stay behind in Cuba and take care of financial matters at both home and work before joining his family in Miami, Florencio wasn’t upset with Fidel. To the contrary, he didn’t blame El Comandante en Jefe for consolidating his power after his takeover and steering Cuba toward a new social order where U.S. investors no longer had exclusive opportunity to monopolize and exploit Cubano land, resources, property, and labor. He didn’t blame Fidel for preaching about the New Cuba, where the ideal of matching everyone’s abilities to their passions would someday constitute a utopian reality, where everyone had an opportunity to succeed, where no one would go without health care, where everyone would receive an education, and where everyone would have what they needed. Viva Cuba! Viva Fidel!

  The downtrodden and the poor were finally reveling after nearly two decades of bitter corruption under Batista and his cronies. What was wrong with that, thought Florencio? He stretched out in his cot and blinked away the sweat stinging his eyes. Wasn’t Fidel right about the broken promises of Cubano politics for nearly a hundred years? Hadn’t the lower classes suffered enough? Why did the U.S. insist on using and abusing Cuba’s economy for their own advantages without any responsibility for the damage and corruption they were creating? What was wrong with Fidel wanting Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in every neighborhood to make sure no Cubano was working behind the back of the government? Didn’t the people of Cuba, who had worked the fields all these years, have a right to the Agrarian Reform Law in May of 1959, which finally gave them a chunk of the soil? Every time Fidel made an overture to normalize relations, didn’t the U.S. government refuse to hear any of his ideas? They treated and portrayed him as a lunatic tyrant because they wanted to harness Cuba like it was a wild colt, not a beautiful creature with its own mind. So why was anyone surprised when Fidel decided to nationalize all U.S. owned properties? Why the hell was anyone in shock, Florencio thought? Why was the U.S. acting aggrieved? Hadn’t they been the tyrant over Cuba all these decades, sixty years and more, since Martí fell bloodied to death off his white horse? The U.S. wanted and wanted and wanted, and Fidel was now saying no más, no más, no más! And no different from a bully, the U.S. refused to hear what they didn’t want to hear. Therefore, Eisenhower’s administration stated it would take action to eliminate the tyrant, Fidel.

  From Florencio’s point of view, he didn’t really care what Fidel did or what the U.S. decided to do with El Comandante. All Florencio wanted was to see his sons again, to be a better father. He hoped that the years ahead would be better for everyone, for Cuba, for America, because for him the entire dispute between the countries was ridiculous, a fucking joke, built on greed, status, and power, and not on love of what was right. That is why he didn’t mind having to wake up early and work until his body burned with pain cutting sugarcane. He even thought he deserved such a fate, having always put work before familia. Time in the field was finally a way for him to contemplate what was most special to him in life. Now that all the material stuff was taken away, the only things important to him were his sons, Juan and Alberto. Te amo, I love you, he whispered to them every night before his eyes went out. And every morning as the sun rose, it reminded him that he was one day closer to completing his servicio before Fidel would let him join sus hijos, his dear sons.

  He stumbled out of bed and walked out of the hut and headed for the watering hole, where a pump shot out streams of warm water into a tin bucket. He splashed the water on his face and ran his wet fingers through his graying hair, his whitening goatee. He then got in line to receive his breakfast, a plate of scrambled eggs and a piece of bread. As he ate, he talked with his bunkmate about the days ahead, how many more hours before their names would be called and they would leave the fields and be granted their request to leave.

  “I’m thinking, I’ve put in six months already, I can’t have more than six left,” said Florencio.

  “They say a year may not be enough now,” said his cutting partner.

  “Well, whatever it takes, it will someday be enough, and then I can rejoin mis hijos.”

  “Perhaps because you want to go to America, they’ll make you work even longer to pay your debt?”

  “To me it makes no difference where my boys are, I will go to them.”

  “Entonces, you should lie and say you wish to go to España. The Spanish are not Cuba’s enemy anymore like the U.S. is. Castro doesn’t care if you want to go to Spain.”

  “I don’t want to go to the U.S. because I hate Fidel. I understand what he’s doing. If the U.S. wouldn’t force him into a corner, he wouldn’t fight like a beaten dog.”

  “You sound like the type of man Fidel needs to continue La Revolución. Maybe you should reconsider leaving?”

  “If my boys were here, maybe I would?”

  “Sí, but they are afortunado. In America, opportunity is endless.”

  “But oportunidad would be better here, if the U.S. would sit down with Fidel and work out an agreement.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yes, I believe Fidel wants peace,” said Florencio. “With the right U.S. president, there will be peace
. Then all of us Cubanos can live with nuestras familias here or in the U.S., wherever we want. We can share the benefits of peace without fear of one country wanting to control the other.”

  “You now sound like a politician?”

  “No, I’m just tired of the mistakes I’ve made. I just want to live in peace. Anywhere. I just need my boys by my side.”

  “Well, yo creo, I believe you will have your chance. I’ve seen many men called out and leaving the next day on a wagon back to Havana with their papers signed to leave. They’ve all said a year has been what it takes.”

  “Then I’m more than halfway there,” said Florencio, cramming his last bite of bread into his mouth.

  In the weeks after his sons, Lucretia, and Cuca had left for America, Florencio spent those days trying to secure as much of his savings as he could. He had been able to withdraw eight and a half grand from the national bank and safely mail it to his parents in Miami. He spoke almost daily with them and with Juan and Alberto for many weeks in a row until the government took over the electrical and telephone companies, in particular those owned by the U.S. Then Fidel announced the Agrarian Land Reform Act, which limited private ownership, one of which was Don Emilio’s rights to Andurra Azúcar. Overnight the company became appropriated, and at that point Florencio didn’t see any reason to remain in Cuba. Don Emilio, who had been a great friend to Florencio, told him, “Vaya a la America, go to America with your family. I want you to feel no obligation towards me. That’s an order!” But when Florencio arrived at Customs, he was informed that no one was being granted passage to the United States unless he or she was already an American citizen. He sought out Cuca’s brother, Admiral Joaquin Rivera, but he told him, “I’m dearly sorry Señor Ramos. I cannot pull any strings for you now. There is no more palanca. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand, dear amigo,” he said. “You have done so much for mi familia already. We are forever indebted to you.”

  When he went back to the Customs office to inquire about what he needed to do because his family was already in Florida, he was directed to the Social Affairs office in Havana Vieja. There he was issued an application to fill out. Afterwards, when he handed the packet back with all the information completed, he was told to return to his home in La Vibora and wait for the milicianos to come by and take inventory of his property. Then, if he was still decisive about leaving, the Affairs office would set him up with a labor debt to be paid out at the nearest location to Havana. So that’s how he ended up in Matanzas on a sugarcane plantation.

  And so as he headed to the fields carrying his machete that morning, he recalled the day in May when two milicianos arrived at the Ramos house—once their home, once the distinguished school of Nuestra Señora de Fatima. Now it felt like an empty warehouse. Florencio had hired a crew to help him clean up the wreckage from the New Year’s ransacking, and then he began mailing off important keepsakes to Miami—photo albums, a favorite mug, some of Lucretia’s shoes and dresses, some of the boys’ favorite books. As he roamed the halls, he realized that everything they owned was just stuff, nothing of which really mattered to him. Yet he had made a decision to stay behind and secure that stuff, and now all he wanted was to be with his sons again. He was not the type of man to curse himself for what he should have done. He was not like his wife who chose to lose her mind when things didn’t go right. Instead, he chose to solve problems, to look at what needed to be done, and to go about doing what was necessary to reach a solution. He would need permission to leave the island, and the only way to attain that status was to turn over everything he owned to the state and offer servicio in exchange for an opportunity to leave. Ultimately, he didn’t see his debt as such an imposing bargain.

  Even as he trudged to the field that day and prepared for another eight hours of labor, he felt liberated, a form of recompense through work. If this was the cost to see his sons again, he was ready to bear the burden. So as he chopped the cane, he thought about the milicianos when they entered his house in La Vibora with their clipboards and pencils and went from room to room and made marks on their clipboards, tallying everything and taking notes. How many chairs, how many tables, what length and height. They counted the spoons and forks in the kitchen. They added up the number of towels in the pantry. They measured the rooms and walked around the perimeter of the property and took down the dimensions. All the while, Florencio didn’t care. He just wanted the process sped up. He wanted to begin his servicio and begin tallying his own days of labor until he boarded a boat headed a hundred miles north to Miami.

  Estoy veniendo, I’m on my way, he repeated to himself as he swung his machete and thought about the future, a resilient smile on his face.

  It was hard work, very hard at first. Even with the gloves he wore, blisters spread out over the palms of his hands, puss-filled and red, like burn marks. Razor cuts from the sharp edges of the cane leaves paralleled along his arms and legs, but still he reared back and sliced away. He developed his skill, refining the precise angle at which to hack at the bottom of the stalk, severing it from the root in the ground. His speed increased as his body adapted to the heat and length of the day. With his straw sombrero shielding his eyes and his long sleeve cotton shirt and trousers protecting his limbs, he cut and hacked. Then after a large accumulation of stalks began to mount, he gathered as much as he could cradle in his arms and carried it to the back of a wagon. He sometimes had to tear off leaves or chop up the stalks further to get them into transportable lengths. When the wagons and carts were full, the horses hauled the loads off to the centrales azúcareras, the mills and refineries, the scent of sugar a permanent reminder of how sweet their work was.

  Oh, what a service they provided: sugar, molasses, and sweet rum. What would Cuba do without la zafra, the cane harvest? What would the island do without colonos, laborers like himself, Florencio thought? Oh, how he loved Cuba! His homeland, his country of birth. He didn’t want to see her fail. He didn’t want to see her become something she was not. He just wanted to see his sons. Oh, Cuba, I love you. I will work for you. But, please, por favor, please, let me leave to be with mis hijos, Juan and Alberto.

  * * *

  Chapter 26

  The summer after Juan’s graduation—while his brother experimented with Guadalupe and while Sharkey did whatever he wanted with Josephine—Juan took baby steps with Arturo. They went to movies and dinners together, went on long walks together, talked about their families, and started off slowly with putting their hands on each other.

  Arturo had never known his father; he referred to him as “some lowlife.” His mother was lucky to have one day off a month from working two jobs, one as a maid and the other as a weekend nanny for a wealthy couple, both business executives. Arturo had two siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, and a step dad whose eyesight was going out. Deemed legally blind, he couldn’t work anymore so that left Arturo’s mother as the main bread earner. Throughout his high school days, Arturo had to pick up weeknight jobs to help make ends meet. Consequently, he fell behind his first two years of high school at La Salle, failing a course during each of his freshman and sophomore years. By the start of his junior year, his younger brother was able to find a job so Arturo didn’t have to work as much during the week, and his grades picked up enough to pass. His senior year he squeaked by, but still he did not graduate with his class due to missing credits from his first two years.

  Arturo’s hardships at home had no bearing on him coming out. He knew early on who he was and didn’t hold back. He’d had flings with guys older than him, and he was much more relaxed and confident with opening up. Arturo’s charm made Juan think he had fallen in love.

  For one thing, Juan’s inevitable step towards coming out became something he was more interested in figuring out than with whom he figured it out with. It took Juan a while to realize that because Arturo had noticed in him what he hadn’t fully acknowledged outright in himself, it was easy for Juan to look at Arturo as his one-and-only,
the one and only person who he would ever need to make him happy, to bring out the happiness in him. For sure, Juan was aware of his attraction for Arturo’s thick, wavy hair and the sporty sex appeal of his goatee, which Arturo kept neatly trimmed in the same fashion of both Juan’s grandfather and father. He also found himself falling into the pools of cerulean blue in Arturo’s eyes, which were perfectly spaced in a slightly pudgy face resembling his own. Juan liked to rub his open palm over the soft hairs surrounding Arturo’s mouth and stare into the clearness of his transparent blue eyes, and in return he adored the way Arturo rubbed his shoulders and legs.

  But by the summer, their flush of passion had cooled off like steam rising from a frying pan tossed in the sink. Or more accurately, Juan’s oven didn’t fire up as easily, as warmly. At first Arturo took Juan’s reluctance as a slight, but Juan thought less about intimacy with his first love and more about Arturo holding true to his promise to attend night school and finish his last credits for graduation. During his senior year, Arturo tried taking his academics seriously, but those classes he failed his first two years pestered Juan more than Arturo. And Arturo’s procrastination with completing his credits to graduate soon began to bother Juan more and more every day. Juan couldn’t understand why Arturo refused to take advantage of the easy five-week “make-up” sessions offered all summer long, day and night, in order to complete his diploma. From Arturo’s perspective, he saw his classmates graduate in June—Juan, his love, among them—and he couldn’t bring himself to admit he hadn’t finished on time with his class and now needed to extend his senior year to earn his diploma. He wanted to move on, but because he didn’t know what he wanted to do, his next step after going through four years of high school, whether graduated or not, was to look for a job to make money, not to think beyond the given moment, not to think about his futuro. When Arturo secured a job as a waiter at a small cafe along Miami Beach, he lost sight of earning his high school degree. His family had always been short of money, and now that he was old enough to be done with school, he wanted to work and make más dinero. Juan refused to overlook Arturo’s glaring irrationality of not prioritizing a goal to graduate, and his frustration with Arturo hit the fan in the weeks before Juan started his first semester at the University of Miami.