Broken Paradise

by Cecilia Samartin

  “What did you wear, Mami?” we’d ask.

  “I decided that whatever I wore, it had to be white. I wanted this young man to notice right away what a good color it was for me.” It took us a few years to get this joke, but we’d laugh along anyway.

  “When I first saw your father he was wearing a linen suit and a Panama hat as he looked out at the ocean. He didn’t have to turn around for me to know he was handsome. I could already tell by his posture and the breadth of his shoulders. But when he did turn around….”

  Marta and I would sit up in our beds and poke our heads through the mosquito netting so we could clearly see Mami’s eyes light up brighter than the moon floating outside the window.

  “…I almost fainted.”

  “Why did you almost faint, Mami?” we’d ask, already having memorized the answer.

  “Now, I don’t just say this because he’s your father, but he was the most handsome man I ever saw in my life! All my cousins fell in love with him instantly, but…”

  “We know, we know. He only had eyes for you.”

  “That’s right. And he didn’t leave my side the entire afternoon. Every weekend after that, he invited me to go somewhere, the movies or to see a beautiful show at the Copacabana or to a magnificent dinner. Six months later, he asked your grandfather for my hand, and we were married at the Church of the Sacred Heart, the same church where both of you were baptized. I was the happiest woman on earth and I have been ever since.”

  Mami would close the blinds so the moonlight entered in luminous bars across the floor and wall around us. “Now I don’t want to hear any talking, just sleeping,” she’d say before kissing each of us good night.

  Now Mami twisted her napkin so that it fell to pieces on the kitchen table. “What am I going to tell your father?”

  I stilled her unsteady hands. “Weren’t you just a little over nineteen years old yourself when you got married?”

  “Yes, but a girl didn’t need an education like she does now. A pretty face could get you a lot in those days, but it’s a different world here.”

  “That’s exactly right,” I told her. “It’s a different world.”

  Heated arguments followed, some lasting well into the night and concluding with the slamming of doors and a few threats thrown in for good measure. “If you think we’re going to spend a fortune on your wedding when we should be paying for your college education, you’re crazy,” Mami would yell.

  “Then I’ll elope,” Marta countered. “And we’ll move away and have many children—your grandchildren, whom you’ll never know.”

  This was usually followed by Papi’s more reasonable plea. “Now let’s not talk this craziness, both of you. Let’s calm down….”

  I was impressed with Marta’s fortitude. She had to endure both Papi and Mami’s onslaught for days. They made a formidable team: Mami, a volcano of emotions erupting and spewing with an irregular, but agonizing rhythm; Papi, like the constant drip of a faucet drip-dripping its pristine arguments that were collecting with the force of millions of gallons behind the Hoover Dam. I tried to intervene once or twice, but was quickly put in my place.

  “Nora,” Papi said, his anger controlled. “You may be in college and getting good marks, but you don’t know everything yet.”

  I was ready to turn out the light after a particularly tense day when Marta came in and sat down next to my bed. She looked like a wounded puppy as she scrambled up next to me. We could’ve been in Cuba watching the stars through our bedroom window, feeling the warm breeze wrap itself around us one last time before we retreated to our tented beds.

  “Thanks for trying to help with Mami and Papi.”

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t much use.”

  Marta punched the bed with both fists at once. “They think we’re supposed to do things their way until we die. It’s my choice who I marry and when I marry him, not theirs.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “But it’s so hard because as much as I want to say, ‘the hell with you, we’re not in Cuba anymore’, I can’t. It feels like I’d be cutting out my own heart.” Marta buried her face in her hands and began to sob for the seventh or eighth time that day. She reminded me so much of Mami.

  “Have you talked to Eddie?” I asked gently.

  “I don’t want to hurt him. He thinks Papi and Mami like him so much and everything…” Marta looked at me with her saucer brown eyes swimming in tears. “What should I do?”

  Two days later, Eddie showed up at the front door wearing a suit and tie. His freckled face was flush and his hair slicked back with the broad stroke of a very wet comb. I hardly recognized him. No one had ever seen Eddie in anything but a pair of faded jeans and a football jersey. With barely a hello to anyone, he asked to speak with Papi.

  Mami threw a glare at Marta who was curled up on the couch leafing through one of the many bridal magazines she enjoyed flaunting. We followed Eddie into the kitchen where Papi sat reading the evening paper.

  “Excuse me, Mr. García….” Eddie shoved his hands in his pockets and then pulled them out as if he touched something hot.

  Papi lowered his paper. A slight redness began to glow about his ears as he surveyed the scene before him. I was afraid he might throw Eddie out of the house or explode in his face. He said nothing.

  Eddie cleared his throat. His voice wavered, stringy and high. “I owe you an apology sir, and I hope that you’ll accept it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I love your daughter, Mr. García…Marta.” He coughed. “I asked her to marry me because I want to spend the rest of my life with her, but I didn’t ask you first. I didn’t realize….”

  I glanced at Mami who was smiling with tears streaming down her face. Papi stood up from his chair, his eyes also brimming.

  “Mr. García…I’m asking you for permission to marry your daughter.”

  Marta slipped up next to me and squeezed my hand. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  17

  Dear Nora,

  So much has changed since my last letter to you. Some of the changes I saw coming, but other’s fell on me like a wall of bricks, and each brick has inflicted its own particular pain.

  Lola died last month, and Tía didn’t speak for days. She just sat in her rocking chair with Lola’s empty chair beside her. For a long time she wouldn’t let anyone sit in it except for me when I needed to feed Lucinda. She hardly ate and never cried in front of me, but at night I heard her. She sounded like a little girl sobbing and suffering from a kind of pain she’s too young to understand.

  The government’s plowing over many of the older sugar cane fields and planting a new kind of crop for cows. What that means is that we had to move out of our houses in the field and are now living in a little apartment in Havana, near the malecón. The rains have come, and they haven’t stopped for days. Tony’s not back yet, and the aching in my heart has spread out over my entire body so that I’m just one giant ugly sore of a person. Some days, I don’t think I smile even once. Tía says my sadness is affecting my little Lucinda because she hardly smiles like other babies do. She doesn’t play with little toys we make her or the brightly colored flowers I show her. All she likes to do is sit and stare at the sun.

  But I wish you could’ve seen her the first day I took her to the sea. It was one of those days when the sun explodes in the sky and lights everything up to ten times its usual brilliance. The greens were greener, the blues were beyond heavenly, and the sand whiter than I imagine snow to be. Tía sat on the sand as I took Lucinda down to the water. As always she raised her head to the sun and would’ve been happy to do just that, but when we entered the water she splashed and jumped up and down with such happiness, that I cried and cried as she laughed and laughed.

  I’ve had this secret fear, Nora, and you’re the first to know. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with my little Lucinda because she’s not like other children. She’s so serious all the time, like she’s
thinking these important thoughts instead of exploring with her little hands and her feet the way I see other babies do. But when I took her to the village doctor in Güines, he told me she was fine and very healthy and that I shouldn’t worry, but I still do. When I saw her frolicking in the ocean, all the fears I had lifted from my heart, and I felt light enough to fly to the top of the palm trees.

  I received a box of letters from Tony last week. He’s been writing to me regularly but with mail backed up the way it is, they all came at once. It was like a feast for my heart, and I was most overjoyed to read that he’ll be coming home soon.

  You may have heard that Abuelo and Abuela’s visas finally arrived. What you don’t know is that tomorrow, Lucinda and I will take the train to Varadero where Abuelo will secretly meet us at the beach where we used to go swimming. I haven’t been there for years. Do you think it’s changed?

  I must bring this letter to a close. Tía’s waiting for me. She’s better now, even stronger than she was before. It’s as if she swallowed up all of Lola’s strength so that now she’s as strong as the two of them put together. We go out every afternoon before the markets close to see if we can find a few bananas or maybe a bag of rice at a lower price. I’ve managed to get a few things free. Tía says it’s because of my looks, which still aren’t too bad even though I don’t have a proper dress to wear. It’s almost an adventure. We take our ration books and even if it’s not our day we show up and stand at the end of whatever line we find that sometimes wraps around the block. When we get to the front, (this only works with men) I ask in my sweetest voice if there’s anything left. Everyone knows that even when the shelves are empty there’s always something left. So, I bat my eyelashes, I toss my hair this way and that and even smile seductively. In this way I’ve been able to get three cans of milk, a loaf of bread, half a bag of rice and once, when this man told me that I looked like Botticelli’s Venus, a whole chicken. Most days though, I don’t get anything at all, and I’m afraid that soon I’ll have to jump on the counter and dance like a show girl. I’m a little ashamed to admit this even to you, but hunger can lead a person to do things they would’ve once considered impossible.

  I’m afraid that I’m not much of a revolutionary. I think too much about myself and my needs and not enough about what’s good for the country. Perhaps it would’ve been better had you stayed and I left. But you are still here, Nora, I can feel it in your letters. You never left.

  Alicia

  When Abuelo and Abuela descended the steps of the plane I hardly recognized them. They looked as though they’d lost 100 pounds between them. Abuelo wore a faded suit somewhere between green and gray that was obviously made for a man twice his size and Abuela’s normally plump cheeks were sunken, giving the impression that she’d lost most of her teeth. We managed not to gasp at the sight of them, but inside we were flooded with tears. For years we’d comforted ourselves with the thought that perhaps things weren’t as bad in Cuba as we heard. After all, when people are missing their loved ones and adjusting to great social changes they can be prone to exaggeration, and Cubans love to tell their stories with a flare for the dramatic. We only had to take one look at the hollow sadness lurking in both Abuelo’s and Abuela’s eyes to know that even our worst fears couldn’t compare to the reality of their suffering.

  We hugged them cautiously, as if they might disintegrate in our arms if we weren’t careful, and they looked upon us as if we were strangers. Was it the shock of it all? Was it like opening your eyes and realizing that the dream and the nightmare have suddenly reversed?

  When we got home, Abuelo sat on the white couch and moved his rickety hands up and over the soft cushions. He gazed about at the art on the walls and stared at Marta and me with the same vacant appreciation.

  “We missed you, Abuelo,” we said. But this old man sitting in front of us wasn’t my Abuelo who taught me how to swim. Those weren’t the tranquil eyes that surveyed the ocean, the solid arms that cut easily and steadily through the crystal blue waters. Abuelo had sloughed off his skin like a snake and sent the body on the plane without him.

  Abuela picked at the cheese plate on the coffee table and chattered nonstop like an angry bird, her boney ankles crossed and her panty hose rolled down below her knees because of her bad circulation. The red crease across her forehead created by her hair net turned redder as she talked about the plane trip, how it pitched and how she feared Fidel himself would shoot the plane out of the sky just because he could.

  For days they wandered about our house as though searching for something they weren’t sure they wanted to find. It wasn’t unusual for Abuelo to walk into a room and just stand there watching us, as if he couldn’t be sure whether we were real people or ghosts playing with his imagination. They didn’t like to go out much, and Abuela contented herself with making Cuban dishes she hadn’t been able to cook for years due to the lack of ingredients.

  One evening she presented us with a giant roasted leg of pork on a silver platter. She placed it in the center of the dinning room table, sat in her chair, and began to weep.

  “What is it, Mama?” Papi asked.

  “For years I prayed that one day I could cook a leg of pork like this for my children again. Now I’m crying with gratitude. Forgive me.”

  The pork was unusually delicious that night, the way we remembered it in Cuba. Abuelo said it was so good because it was seasoned with our tears.

  Summer turned into autumn, and Abuelo began raking the leaves on our front lawn in the afternoons. He marveled, as I had once, at the falling leaves, the russet and yellow carpet crunching beneath our feet. Abuelo told me that raking the leaves and smelling the earth on his hands reminded him that he still belonged to the land even though he was so far from his home.

  “Are you sorry you left, Abuelo?”

  He laughed a little at this question. He was looking much more how I remembered him, robust and confident, and he didn’t slow his brisk pace with the rake. “I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t go to sleep every night with the sounds and smells of my country pulling at me like a stubborn dream. But I’ll tell you this, it’s much easier to sleep with the pain of nostalgia in your heart than the pain of hunger in your belly.”

  We played dominoes after dinner almost every night. I looked forward to this ritual and imagined we were sitting in the porch at Varadero gazing out at the Caribbean rather than on the redwood deck overlooking the valley filled with a sea of smog. It was at these moments, when we were alone, that I dared ask him about Alicia and Lucinda.

  “Oh yes, we met at the beach,” Abuelo whispered, casting a wary eye over his shoulder in case Abuela should hear him. “Alicia is as lovely as ever, but thin like everybody else. She’s doing better than most,” he added, when he saw my concern. “And Lucinda is a beautiful child. Her eyes are more captivating than the ocean and sky put together, but so sad. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. When I held her and tried to make her smile, she looked through me straight to my heart.” He shook his head sadly and turned his attention back to the dominoes.

  “Do you think Alicia will ever leave Cuba?”

  He clucked his tongue with certainty. “She still believes in the revolution, that child. And Tony’s a good man. He saved her after Carlitos died, but he brainwashed her in the process. She’s forgotten all about her father and her mother who’s still locked up in the hospital. She doesn’t seem to see the country falling to pieces around her. I don’t know if it’s the revolution or the obsession she has for her husband, but there’s no talking to her about emigrating. She looks at you in much the same way Lucinda does, and says she’ll never leave her home.”

  The North Campus Café was a crowded blur of commotion, but I managed to feel peaceful in the midst of such frantic activity. As always, I sat in the far corner table and sipped my coffee until almost nine o’clock, depending on the time of my first class. It was a strange place for an education major to spend time because all my classes were at t
he extreme opposite end of the campus, but that’s precisely why I preferred this spot. It was a small reminder that I had choices and space and freedom.

  I’d been on a couple of dates since starting at the university but managed to end the exchanges efficiently enough. Perhaps Sister Margarita knew what she was talking about all those years ago. It seemed that the religious life was a pleasant one with few worries. Mami and Papi might be proud to have a daughter committed to the church, Mami could write to the family and brag as if now her place in heaven was secured.

  “Nora, is it you?”

  Startled, I spilled coffee over the table, creating a hot waterfall onto my jeans in the process.

  “Oh no, I’m sorry…I…” Jeremy rushed to grab a handful of napkins from the dispenser, and I stared after him with hot coffee dripping off my thighs. Time suddenly spun around and did a flip. Jeremy was no longer real to me, but a legend from some distant time and place. Now here he was blotting the table with a wad of napkins, laughing, and shaking his head just like I remembered.

  I placed my hand on his shoulder “Jeremy…you’re here. I mean, what are you doing here?” A flutter in my throat made it difficult to swallow, let alone speak.

  He laughed again and gave me a warm and friendly hug. “Nora, my God it’s good to see you.” He held me out at arm’s length. “You look different than I remember you…but the eyes are yours.” He gave my shoulders a squeeze. “May I sit with you awhile?”

  “Of course.”

  I moved my books off of the table and blushed when our knees touched by accident like in high school. He explained that he was considering an assistant professorship in the anthropology department. He’d been traveling for the last couple of years, mostly in South and Central America.