Broken Paradise

by Cecilia Samartin

  But the drums grew louder to what I had no doubt was the rhythm of death. They’d captured Alicia and were preparing her for the sacrifice. Tony was smiling and his ghostly green eyes were gleaming at the sight of his perfect prey. How could I just lie there and allow this terrible thing to happen? I had to rescue Alicia. She would do as much for me. I knew she would.

  I pushed back the covers and emerged from the mosquito netting, my knees quivering as I searched for my slippers under the bed. With excruciating caution, I walked to the door and stuck my nose out first. The air was cool and foreboding now that the wind had changed, and the sounds of the drums vibrated through the air, the trees, the ground, and every blade of grass.

  Out onto the porch, I surveyed the shadows of the night. All was dark and misty green. Stars blanketed the tropical sky. I looked back into the room to make sure Marta hadn’t stirred and proceeded to step slowly off the porch. I’d made it to the second step, knowing there were three more to go. And then what? The vast field lay ahead of me, then the grove of trees that were shadowed even in the daylight. Beyond these was San Nicolás, an all black village where Lola and Tony lived, no doubt. Alicia would have taken the dirt path through the woods, and if I wanted to find her I had to allow myself to be swallowed by the void of blackness before me.

  Then I saw movement. Black upon black, moving and shifting. Was Alicia returning? My heart leapt with the possibility, and I almost called out. But what if it wasn’t Alicia? What if it was one of the evil spirits of the night Beba told me about? Chopping onions and green peppers in the bright sunny kitchen I was never afraid, but here in the clutches of the night, while everyone slept, an evil spirit could easily devour me.

  After several minutes of heart wrenching paralysis, I saw the movement in the blackness get closer, bobbing up and down in a familiar way that I would’ve found comforting if I weren’t hysterical with fear. It was Alicia walking absent-mindedly, as if kicking shells on the beach. Her hair floated on the night air, catching the light of the stars. She didn’t see me, and I would’ve yelled at her to hurry if I hadn’t been frightened of waking Marta and Tía Panchita.

  When Alicia finally did look up, she froze and gasped faintly until she realized it was me and then quickened her step. I looked behind her to see if anyone or anything was following her, but she was quite alone.

  “What took you so long?” My fear had turned to anger.

  She half smiled when she spoke. “I was with Tony. He kissed me.”

  Her lips were swollen, as if she’d eaten something that made her allergic.

  “On the lips?” I asked incredulous. Only grown-ups kissed on the lips.

  Alicia nodded and rubbed her eyes.

  She walked past me and opened the door casually, as if she’d just returned from a long and relaxing day at the beach. She kicked off her shoes and pulled her dress up over her head, letting it drop to the floor in a heap. Then she fell into bed and was instantly asleep.

  Taking care to re-bolt the door without making any noise, I hung Alicia’s dress back in the wardrobe and tiptoed about the room arranging everything just as it had been when Tía turned out the lights a lifetime ago. She’d never know anything had happened. Alicia was back and everything would be all right.

  When I awoke, I could tell by the way the sun shone full and bright on the wooden floor that it was almost half way up the sky. Marta and Alicia’s beds were empty, and I heard the sounds of plates and spoons clinking over breakfast in the kitchen.

  I kicked the mosquito netting open and ran out to the kitchen to find Tía and Lola fussing over the coffee and the bread and butter as usual. Marta had her elbows on the table and was munching happily on a steaming slice of bread dripping with butter.

  “Where’s Alicia?” I asked, noticing that a place hadn’t been set for her.

  Tía didn’t look at me when she answered, and Lola simply pulled out my chair and started to butter a piece of bread.

  “Your uncle Carlos came for her early this morning,” Tía finally said.

  I was shocked. “But she was supposed to stay for two more days. Why did she have to go so soon?” The possible answers to this question caused the hair on my neck to bristle, and I eagerly stuffed my mouth with bread and butter.

  Tía Panchita stirred her coffee vigorously, then shoveled in three teaspoons of sugar when I knew she only took one. The clinking spoon silent, she studied me behind thick glasses, her huge eyes unblinking and calm. I knew there was no need to repeat my question, and I squirmed under her hot gaze.

  She took a sip of coffee, then placed her cup down on the saucer with an audible clang. “It was time for Alicia to go home.”

  5

  WEEKS WENT BY WITHOUT A WORD FROM ALICIA. EVERY TIME I asked Mami if I could call or go for a visit she turned away and mumbled something about Alicia being sick or the family being out of town, but nobody went out of town during the school year. I reminded her of this, and she looked at me like Tía Panchita did the morning Alicia left, as if she was able to determine my innocence or guilt by the way I held up to her stare. I passed these tests, but it was difficult, and I dared not attempt it often, so I silently worried about Alicia, and wondered when I’d see her again.

  I felt more hopeful about our reunion when Christmas Eve arrived. On this day the entire family got together for a pig roast at Tía María’s house in Havana. We roasted it in a big pit filled with hot coals and rocks. It was a full day of cooking that started first thing in the morning. The men stood around the pig in a circle out back, smoking cigars, laughing and talking about things not meant for women’s ears. I wasn’t a woman yet, but when I walked up to see how the pig looked all splayed out like a thick rug and to inhale the enticing aroma of pork fat sizzling on hot coals, they poked each other with their elbows and pretended they were coughing in the middle of their words. This served as some kind of code and prompted them to make polite comments about how tall I was getting and to tell Papi that he’d have trouble on his hands when I was older because I was so pretty that all the boys would come calling. I didn’t listen much to them, I just inhaled deeply and asked if I could poke the pig with a stick like they did.

  Alicia and her parents finally showed up well past noon, when the pork was already half cooked. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw her because she looked as though she’d faded into an old black and white photograph, where the people just stare into the camera like they’re already dead.

  She wore a brown dress almost down to her ankles and her hair was drawn back in a stiff looking braid. Alicia hated brown. She liked pink and light blue and yellow. Perhaps Mami was right and Alicia had been sick. In fact, she still looked a little bit sick. We waved excitedly to her, and she barely lifted her hand in return.

  When she approached the gathering on the porch, everyone crowded around her. I wasn’t the only one who’d longed for her, and for a few minutes her old smile returned, and her eyes shone brilliantly, sometimes golden, sometimes green. She was just as beautiful as ever.

  Once again I noticed her figure was more like a grown-up woman’s with breasts that stretched the stiff fabric of her dress. And her fingers were long and graceful as she patted the heads of our younger cousins and accepted chicken croquettes from my mother, who planted a firm kiss on her pale cheek.

  “We missed you,” I heard my mother whisper.

  After the meal Alicia and I found a moment to speak alone. We sat behind the rose bush, and reaching down into her sock, she produced a small white envelope. She was solemn as she held it out to me like a communion wafer. “If anyone sees what’s inside this envelope…I’ll be sent away forever. You have to promise complete secrecy.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you swear not to tell anyone?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  Alicia took hold of my hand and put the envelope in it. “This is for Tony,” she said. “You have to give it to him next time you see him; next time you go to Tía Panchita’s hou
se.”

  “Why don’t you give it to him yourself?”

  “Because I can never go there again, or talk about what happened. That’s part of my agreement.”

  “What agreement?”

  “My agreement with God.” Alicia’s brows knitted together with such force that they produced a deep wrinkle in her forehead. I’d never seen a girl with lines like that on her face.

  I folded the envelope twice and stuffed it in the pocket of my blouse, pressing it down hard on my chest so that it would show as little as possible. “Isn’t giving this envelope to Tony against your agreement with God?”

  Alicia wrung her hands and glanced nervously over the rose bush toward the house. “Yes,” she whispered. “It is.”

  “Then tell me what happened.”

  She attempted to sit Indian-style but the narrowness of her long skirt prevented her, and she had to sit like a lady with her legs to the side. She folded her hands, looking more like a nun than ever. “Lola was there that night; the night I left to see Tony. She saw me, but I didn’t see her.”

  “Lola…saw you with Tony?”

  Alicia nodded. “The next day, very early, she called Tía Panchita and told her everything. It was probably still night because Tía called my parents, and they came right away to take me home, before anyone was awake. They had me checked by the doctor, this old man with bad breath and a red spotted nose. He made me lie on a table and open my legs wide so he could look inside me. After that, they sent me away to stay with a priest and some nuns. We prayed all the time and ate beans and rice with a little meat. We went to Church twice a day and they made me talk to the priest over and over again about what happened with Tony, but they didn’t believe me when I told them he didn’t do what everyone thought he did. He only kissed me on the mouth and told me that he loved me. He didn’t violate me like they said.”

  “Violate you?”

  “You know, like when a man and a woman make a baby. When they have sex.”

  I was stunned. How could Alicia be denying anything about sex, when I still wasn’t exactly sure how the act was performed? Seeing my hesitation, Alicia sighed. “When they’re alone in bed at night, and married, because they’re supposed to be married, the man puts his pito inside the woman’s hole down there. There’s a hole down there where the blood comes out.”

  I knew about the blood from Mami. She’d blushed when I presented her with my blood spotted underwear one morning, convinced I was dying. But I was already well past thirteen, and there hadn’t been any blood since that day even though I checked my underwear rigorously since she told me about it. I was glad it hadn’t come again even though Mami told me it would, and that it meant I was officially a young lady.

  “Did you get the period blood yet?” I asked, interrupting Alicia.

  “Yes. How about you?”

  I nodded, ashamed, but not sure why.

  “They made me promise before God that I’d never talk to Tony again or be with any man, especially a black man.” Alicia looked up, her eyes clouded with shame. “I can’t really explain what I feel. It’s a strange pain in my heart whenever I think of him or say his name. It makes me feel like I’m the luckiest person on earth just to have known him, and other times I feel like I want to die. I’ve prayed so hard for this feeling to go away so I can feel how I did before I knew him, but I can’t stop thinking about him. That’s why you have to give him the letter. Will you give it to him, Nora?”

  “If they catch you again, then what?”

  “I don’t care.” Alicia drew several quick circles in the dirt near her feet and smoothed her skirt leaving a light trail of dirt with her fingers. “If you don’t give it to him, I’ll have to run away and give it to him myself.”

  “No…I’ll do it,” I said quickly, helping Alicia to stand up in her narrow skirt.

  As we walked back to the house, I asked, “Do you always have to wear those clothes?”

  “I have to wear them for a year to make sure that God forgives me for my sins. I made a promise.”

  I shook my head in disbelief at the number of promises flittering about like fireflies glowing in the night and, like Alicia’s vows, vanishing in the light of day.

  It was several weeks before I managed to fulfill my promise to Alicia. I sat on Tía Panchita’s porch like an anxious sentry waiting for Tony with the envelope, already crumpled and sweaty from weeks of continuous handling. This day alone, I’d moved it from my drawer to my pocket, from my pocket to my bag, and then back to the drawer again. I couldn’t wait to get rid of it, and although I’d seen him ride by on his horse twice during our stay, Tía Panchita or Lola were always on the porch and would’ve seen me pass him the note. It was during his third pass that I had my chance. Both had gone inside to fix the afternoon meal, and I ran down the porch steps and down the path to the main road, pulled the letter from my shirt as I did so, waving it like a white flag.

  Tony looked suspicious as he saw me running toward him. For a moment I thought he was going to urge his horse into a gallop, but he waited and looked down on me and my letter as if it were a gun instead of a simple white envelope.

  “This is for you from Alicia,” I said, panting and nervous.

  Tony made no move to take it from me. A fine vein running down the smooth brown skin of his neck throbbed steadily, and his hands fumbled with the reins that rested on his thighs. He was without a doubt the most amazing boy I’d ever seen, and at that moment, I could easily imagine Alicia risking all to be with him.

  Finally, he reached down and took the letter up to his lips and inhaled deeply. Then it slipped out of his fingers and fluttered down to the ground, settling on the dirt near his horse’s hooves. “Tell your cousin not to write me any more letters, unless she’d like to see me hanged from the nearest tree,” he said with sad resignation. He prodded his horse with his heels and started to ride off. “Anyway, I can’t read,” he added, turning back one last time.

  I returned the dusty envelope to Alicia behind the rose bush at Tía María’s the following Sunday. She implored me to recount every detail of my encounter, the exact words Tony spoke, the expression on his face, the clothes he wore, and then I had to repeat it all over again at least three or four times.

  “Do you really think they’d hang him?” I asked.

  The deep line in her forehead returned as she gazed at the rejected envelope. “Do you really think he can’t read?”

  6

  I HEARD THE DRUMS IN MY SLEEP AGAIN. THE DREAD I’D FELT AT Tía Panchita’s house settled on my heart with a heavy and startling thud. I was still waiting for Alicia to return from her encounter in the forest with Tony. Time froze and I began to shiver as I struggled to breathe in the thin air around me. I’d lose her forever and have to explain through lying, rattling teeth what had happened. Worse than that, I’d have to live with the knowledge that I could’ve saved her.

  But there was something different this time. The sound of the drums was deeper, and the enticing rhythm that made my toes twitch when I was afraid was replaced by a haphazard pounding that woke me with a start.

  I was not at Tía Panchita’s, but in my own room seven stories up in Havana. The drums were never heard in the city, only in the deep forests at the edge of small towns where the sugar cane grew thick. And the sound that made the windows tremble in their panes, they weren’t like any drums I’d ever heard. Instead, a low blasting sound spread out across the silence of the city like electric rain. I bristled with fear and dared not get out of bed and peek through the window into the night.

  The hall switch clicked on, and my room glowed by the faint light fanning under my door. Mami’s slippers padded toward me. She opened the door to Marta’s room first and then closed it promptly. Marta could sleep through anything. We always joked that a hurricane could blow her windows open and swoop her out into the storm and she’d still sleep through it all, wondering what happened when she found herself lying amongst the trees in the street.

&nb
sp; My door opened slowly. “Nora, are you awake?”

  “What’s that sound, Mami?”

  “It’s OK. It’s far away.”

  “But what is it?”

  Mami entered and sat on my bed. In the half-light the delicate crease between her eyebrows that appeared when she contemplated simple worries, like who to invite to her next dinner party or whether or not Marta and I should wear the same color dress for Easter, had grown into a cavern. She spoke with careful and measured words. “Somewhere in the city, angry people are setting off bombs.”

  “Why?”

  “They want a different government.”

  I sat up in bed, feeling safer now that she was in my room. “Does it have to do with what Papi said yesterday about the people who were killed?”

  “It might.” The crease shifted and smoothed out slightly. “They were also against the government. You see, there are many who want Batista out. They want free elections.”

  I’d heard about this from fragments of conversation I’d collected throughout the years as adults argued on the porch, debated over coffee at the dinning room table, or when Mami and Papi were talking in the car. Everyone we knew was opposed to Batista and wanted a new and better government. There’d been talk about revolution and free elections as far back as I could remember, but nothing ever really happened. Now it seemed things were happening all at once, frightening things.

  “Do you and Papi want Batista out too?”

  “Not like this. Free elections like they have in the United States, that’s what we want. Now go to sleep.”

  I could tell by the way she bit the inside of her cheek that she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “You have school tomorrow. You’re safe here, and you’ll be safe there too.”

  She kissed my forehead and closed the door behind her. I heard another distant boom, but it was no longer the sounds outside that kept me awake. It was the image of my mother’s face, shifting and vague, a smile flickering on her lips as she tried to comfort me. She was pretending to be strong instead of just being strong like I knew she was, and this made me worry in a new way.