chapter twenty-eight
After my grandfather leaves, Luis and I retreat to his bedroom with a makeshift first aid kit in hand. My fingers sweep across his face, careful to keep from hitting the bruises, the cuts near his eye. He unbuttons his shirt, his knuckles scraped and bleeding.
I suck in a deep breath. “What did they do to you?”
His hands tremble over the buttons. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
He shrugs off the shirt, the bloody fabric hitting the floor.
I gasp.
Bruises mar his torso, a particularly nasty one dangerously close to his kidneys.
“You could have been killed.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. They could have killed you, and there’s nothing we could have done about it. Nothing you can do about it. Do you realize how crazy that is?”
“They just wanted to scare me a bit. If they’d wanted to kill me, they would have.”
“And the next time? You heard what my grandfather said. You have to stop. What you’re doing is dangerous. It’s going to get you killed. Is it worth it?”
“Of course it is.” Whatever they hoped to beat out of him, I fear they’ve only made it stronger. “It has to be.”
It’s one of those moments when blinding clarity hits me and two halves cleave together.
Like my grandmother before me, I’ve fallen in love with a revolutionary.
I feel the same helplessness she must have felt, the same sensation that we’re on a train hurtling off the tracks and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I don’t know what to say anymore, how to convince him he has to leave.
I can’t fathom living in a world where you have no rights, where there is no oversight, no accountability. The United States isn’t perfect; there’s injustice everywhere I turn. But there’s also a mechanism that protects its citizens—the right to question when something is wrong, to speak out, to protest, to be heard. It doesn’t always work, sometimes the system fails those it was designed to protect, but at least that opportunity—the hope of it—exists.
The ability to crush a voice is staggering here.
“Do you really think you can change the government? That they’re going to let you?”
I dab at the wounds on his face with the antiseptic.
Luis hisses as I touch the cut near his cheekbone.
“I see the hope for change everywhere I look, the undercurrent of it running through Cubans’ daily lives,” he says. “They know this isn’t enough, that we deserve more. They dream of little changes that would make their lives easier, make their children’s lives easier. Most of us remember when things were really bad, when it was a challenge to get enough to eat, and we remember the desperation we felt, the gnawing hunger in our bellies, the weakness in our muscles, in our bones, and the willingness to break the law because otherwise we would quite simply die. We’re dying a different death now, one that isn’t physical,” he continues. “We need to keep putting pressure on the government, keep pushing for change, demanding they do better. They should fear us. We have a generation now that looks ahead and isn’t pleased with what they see.
“My students—the future of this country—they care about technology, what little they’re able to access through legal means or not; they care about popular culture, which is smuggled to them through flash drives and in foreigners’ suitcases. They’re pragmatic in their desire for change, for more. For now, they’re occupying themselves with the fight—with gathering all they can on the black market, with changing their own realities. But what happens when they’ve exhausted their limited resources? What then?”
Isn’t that what I admire most about him? What attracted me to him in the first place? The passion, the commitment, the absolute dedication and love for his country. The men I know in Miami are obsessed with what kind of car they drive, or the brand of watch they wear, what club they’re going to on Saturday night. Luis lives for Cuba, and I love him for it; but now I fear Cuba will kill him.
I continue patching his wounds, soothing his bruises, struggling to keep the worry from my voice, to stifle the fear. “I understand that you want to make those changes. I admire your passion. But what if the limitations imposed by the government are too stringent for you to accomplish those goals?”
“I don’t know. But what you’re asking me to do—it’s not in my nature to give up. To run. And I don’t want to risk you in order to do it.”
“It’s too late for that. In their eyes, I’m probably already a threat. And don’t consider it giving up or running. Call it a strategic retreat.”
“I’m abandoning my country, my family, my people. My father died fighting for what he believed in. And I’m running away to save myself. How can I live with that?”
My heart breaks for him, because I understand the responsibility he carries with him, the desire to honor his family and to live up to the sacrifices they made. And at the same time, the chasm between us has never felt greater than it does now, the sand stretching on to an infinitesimal length, the sea boundless. Ninety miles feels like an impassable distance.
“If you die, things won’t be better. What will your family do then? At least if you’re alive, you can send them money, more than they would make here; you can make a difference from outside of Cuba. Perhaps more of one than you would make inside the country with all the restraints the government imposes upon you.”
“You want me to go with you.”
“I do.”
“Because you love me or because you think it’s the right decision?” Luis asks.
How has he known this when I only just worked it out myself?
“Because I love you and I think it’s the only decision.”
His eyes close for a moment when the word “love” leaves my lips as though he’s absorbing the force of that word, as if I’ve hit him with a physical blow.
His eyes open. “I’m not afraid to die for what I believe in.”
“Maybe not, but what does your death accomplish? You wouldn’t be the first one, and you won’t be the last, and what changes? Nothing. I would rather you be alive in the United States than dead in Cuba.”
He makes an impatient noise. “You don’t understand. You speak as though Cuba is just a place to live, as though it’s nothing more than taking a few boxes and moving them from one house to the next. It’s not. This is my home. My country.”
“How can you love a country that does this to its citizens? A government willing to throw you in prison for speaking out against their abuses. I came here wanting to love Cuba; I told myself I would look at it through clear eyes, that I wouldn’t be swayed by Miami’s view, that I would judge it on its merits and not through the lens of the exile. But I can’t. I’m Cuban, too. Perhaps I wasn’t born here, but my blood is Cuban. How can you fight to stay somewhere where you are not wanted, in a place that will get you killed? You’re a smart man; it makes no sense. Where is the logic?”
“Ahh, but love is not logical. It is my weakness, perhaps, but it is my country. How do I not love it?”
“But at what cost?”
“When you love something you don’t count the cost.”
“And me?”
Luis smiles sadly. “You know I love you, Marisol. Do not ask me to choose between who I love and who I am. I fear it would not reflect well on either one of us.”
“I’m not asking you to choose. There is no choice. They’ve made the choice for you. You cannot stay here and live; and death is not a continuation, it is not a way of fighting them; your death will mean nothing. You can do more good alive in Miami than dead in Havana.”
“The exile’s refrain.”
“So what if it is? At least we’ve preserved a version of Cuba that does not exist in this place. We’re the only ones who’ve preserved it.”
“You cannot live in a museum, Marisol. The problem with your ‘preservation’ is that it fails to account for the fact that there is a real Cuba. A living, breathing Cuba. You’re all so busy fighting imaginary ghosts in Miami while we’re here, bleeding on the ground, dealing with real problems. Your exile community isn’t concerned with the black market, or the housing shortage, or the very real flaws in the much-touted education system, or the fact that racial discrimination occurs on a daily basis. You’re still pissed because your grand mansions were taken away and are now occupied by the very men you hate the most. The rest of us are caught in the middle, worrying about how to survive.”
“So teach us. Come to Miami. Get involved with the movement there. Change the narrative. The discourse is changing. Fidel is dead. The enmity toward the regime is turning to a very practical approach on Cuba. We’re on the cusp of a new era in Cuban-American relations; perhaps there is an opportunity for something better. That article I’m writing? What if it wasn’t about travel? What if it was about contemporary Cuba? What if you told your story? Help us. Teach us about the problems facing Cuba now.”
“It still feels like I’m abandoning my country.”
“It’s already abandoned you. This isn’t your country. Or your grandmother’s. It’s Castro’s. And now, his ghost’s. It was supposed to be yours. That was the promise of ’59. But they broke that promise almost from the beginning. This version of Cuba belongs to the regime, but that doesn’t mean the future has to.
“Retreat is a victory of sorts. You can’t win this battle, not like this. You’re not giving up, just giving yourself a better chance to change the system in a world where you don’t have to play by their rules.”
He shakes his head. “Marisol.” His tone is resigned, but there’s a gleam in his eyes that wasn’t there a few minutes ago.
“You know I’m right.”
“Perhaps,” he acknowledges.
“We have to make do with the opportunities that present themselves. We have a chance to get you out. We need to take it.”
He’s quiet for a long beat, the only noise in the room the sound of our breathing, the whirl of the ceiling fan overhead. And then—
“I know.”
I run into Cristina on my way out. She’s sitting on the steps, smoking a cigarette, staring out at the rusted metal gate at the entryway.
“You want him to leave with you,” she says, her tone flat, not bothering to glance at me.
I guess Ana filled Cristina and Caridad in on the conversation with my grandfather. I’m exhausted from my talk with Luis, with the events of the last few days, my grandmother’s ashes a weight in my bag, and more than anything, I don’t have much fight left in me.
“Yes.”
She takes another drag of her cigarette, the smoke billowing in the air.
“Why? Because you love him?”
There’s no anger in her voice; the words are delivered in a flat, unemotional tone.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” I add, knowing as soon as the apology leaves my lips that it rings hollow and inadequate, even as it’s all I have.
Love feels like a luxury here in this world where divorced couples are forced to live together because there is no housing, because the government makes it so. Love feels like a luxury in a world where so many struggle for the basic things I take for granted.
“Do you?” I ask.
“What? Love him?”
I nod.
“He is a good man. Kind. Hardworking,” she answers.
“What alternative do I have?” I ask, the doubts creeping in. Am I being selfish? Or is leaving truly the only answer available to him? “They’ll kill him if he stays. I love him, yes. But this isn’t about me. It’s about his future.”
She scoffs. “It must be so nice for him to have a wealthy American woman who’s willing to make his life easier.” Her gaze pins me. The condemnation in her eyes strips me bare. “Do you think this is the first time I’ve heard this story? Do you know how many of my friends have dreamed of a man who would take them away from this? Have ended up pregnant and abandoned or worse? Perhaps the roles are reversed, but you’re just another rich foreigner making promises. What will he know of your world? What will your rich American friends think of him?”
“It’s not like that,” I protest.
Are the differences between us simply insurmountable?
“Isn’t it, though? Isn’t it exactly like that? You come here, and you spend a few days in Cuba, and tell yourself you’ve fallen in love, that you’re ‘saving’ Luis. And then you return to your nice, safe life in America, far away from all this. You say you want to be Cuban.” Her hands wave in the air, the cigarette dangling between her fingertips, ash falling to the ground. “This is what it means to be Cuban. To be a woman in Cuba is to suffer. What do you know of suffering?”
I don’t. Not like this.
“What would you have me do?” I ask.
“Nothing. I wouldn’t have you do anything. But you’re all complaining about how you lost your country, and the reality is you didn’t lose your country; you left. You left the rest of us in hell. And now he’s leaving right alongside you.”
“Would you rather him stay here and die?”
My frustration isn’t with Cristina, it’s with this whole situation, but at the moment she’s voicing the things I fear the most.
She takes a drag of her cigarette. “No.”
“Then what would you have me do?” I ask again. “You don’t want him to leave, but he cannot stay. So what solution is there?”
Her smile mocks me. “Is that what it’s like in your world? Do things get wrapped up in pretty little bows and happy endings? You go back to America with Luis. You get married and have children, and have your perfect little life together. But deep down, you have to know you won’t have all of him. I tried to make him choose between me and Cuba, and he chose Cuba every single time. No matter how much you love him, how much you think he loves you, a part of him will always be here. And a part of him will always resent you for taking him away.”
Maybe. Maybe the parts of him are enough; maybe things will change and it won’t have to be a choice anymore—
I stand there, looking down at her sitting on the steps, the straps of her sandals worn, her expression hardened to steel.
This island will break your heart if you let it.
“You could leave, too, you know.”
She laughs, the sound unvarnished and raw.
“Find some nice man who tells me he wants to take me away from this place and leaves me with a swollen belly and a disease or two? No, thanks.”
“We could try to get you out. All of you.”
Scorn fills her gaze. “I tried once. Did Luis ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“I was six. There were twenty of us in a raft. My parents and fifteen others died. We spent a week floating in the water, starving, exhausted before the Coast Guard picked us up and brought us back to Fidel. The adults were thrown in prison. I was sent to live with my grandmother. I’ll take my chances, thank you very much.”
I’m rooted to this spot, some part of me wanting to stay and convince her, another part of me already gone.
“I have to go.”
My grandfather is waiting for me at the Malecón.
“Then go.”
When I reach the gate, I turn around, watching as she snuffs out the cigarette on the steps of the house, her gaze trained somewhere out to the sea.
What does it say about a place that people will risk certain death to leave it?
I walk from the Rodriguez house to the Malecón, my conversation with Cristina running through my head on repeat. Luis is with his mother and grandmother, discussing the logistics of him leaving. And I’m here, finally fulfilling my grandmother’s last wishes, the reason I came to Cuba. Waves crash against the rocks at El Morro, the sun setting on another Havana day.
My grandfather stands next to me, staring out at the sea, and I wonder how many times he did this and whether he searched for her, somewhere beyond the horizon, when he did.
I don’t realize I’ve asked the question aloud until he speaks.
“I imagined her there. America. As a wife. A mother. With the life we always dreamed about—a house full of kids somewhere with a palm tree in the backyard. I imagined her aging as I have. Each year that passed, I thought of her.” He sighs. “It was enough to hope that she was happy.”
I hate that their story doesn’t have a happy ending, that ultimately, this is yet another thing Fidel took from them.
“It feels incomplete,” I murmur.
“Life so often is. It’s messy, too. This isn’t the ending, Marisol. When you’re young, life’s punctuation so often seems final when it’s nothing more than a pause. When I learned Elisa had married, I thought our story had ended. Accepted it. And now, almost sixty years later, you’re here. I have a granddaughter. A son, a new family. A piece of Elisa.
“You never know what’s to come. That’s the beauty of life. If everything happened the way we wished, the way we planned, we’d miss out on the best parts, the unexpected pleasures.” He shrugs, gesturing around him. “We all had a vision; we had a plan. Fate, God, Fidel, they all laughed at that plan. I thought I was on one path, and it turned out to be something else entirely. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad, though.”
He smiles, wrapping his arm around me, bringing me against his side.
“I’m glad we found each other,” I say.
He stares up at the sky, a gleam entering his gaze. “I like to think Elisa’s up there smiling down at us, that she brought us together because she wanted us to meet, wanted you to be part of my life.”
He begins speaking as if his words are the continuation of a conversation he is having with himself, a memory.
“She was wearing this dress.” He smiles. “White. It had this full skirt, and it swayed when she walked. I couldn’t stop watching her hips,” he confesses with a look in his eyes that makes him appear decades younger.
I laugh.
“I brought her a white silk rose. I’ll never forget her smile when I gave it to her. We were both so nervous. I kept shoving my hands in my pockets because I didn’t know what to do with them, because there wasn’t anything I wanted more than to take her hand in mine and never let go. The night kept growing later, and I knew we’d have to part soon, and I didn’t want to leave her. Didn’t want to ever let her go.”
“Did you fall in love with her here on the Malecón?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps I fell in love with her that first moment I saw her standing on the fringes of Guillermo’s party, her expression so earnest. Once Elisa burst into my life, there wasn’t a moment when I didn’t love her. She was a bright spot in years that were filled with violence and bloodshed. She gave me hope.”
“What was she like when you knew her?” I ask him.
“Fierce. Passionate. Loyal. Brave. Smart. She cared about people, and she cared about her country. There was a kindness to her; she always wanted to see the best in everyone around her.”
So little changed between the girl he knew and the woman who raised me.
I reach into my bag, removing the container of ashes, my fingers leaving shadowy prints on the cool metal.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this feels a bit unsettling, the act of holding my deceased grandmother in my hands a bit macabre. And at the same time, a weight rolls off my shoulders, as I cast off the mantle of grief that has lain there for so long.
I will always miss her, but I’ve been given a new chance to know her, and through her, a whole new family. A pause in what felt like an ending.
And this, too, is right—her reunion with the man she loved and the country that forever held her heart.
I pass the container to my grandfather.
A tear slips down his weathered face as he strokes the metal, a tremor in his fingers.
“Are you sure you don’t want to do this?” he asks.
I shake my head, understanding what was missing before, why I couldn’t come up with a final resting place that felt right. It wasn’t a place; it was a person. I brought her back to Cuba. The final steps should be his.
Pablo’s hands shake as he unscrews the lid, as he tips the container out over the sea, into the wind. It’s not as romantic as I imagined it; bits of bone fragments sail through the air. But then again, what is?
It’s the after, though, that means the most. We stand side by side, staring out at the ocean, at some point we can no longer see.
Ninety miles. Ninety miles separate Cuba from Key West, the southernmost tip of the United States. Ninety miles that might as well be infinite.
How many souls have been lost in these waters by people risking everything to find a better life? People like Cristina’s parents—filled with desperation, stretching out for hope? How many people on both sides of the water have stared across the ocean, yearning for something they can’t have—a family member, a lost love, the country where they were born, the soil where they took their first steps, the air they first breathed?
“Will you come back?” my grandfather asks. “Will you bring them? My son, my granddaughters? Will you meet your cousins?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will wait.” He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a packet of letters tied together with a faded string. I recognize the handwriting on them instantly.
He smiles. “I think she would have wanted you to have these.”