chapter twenty-nine
Elisa
The days, weeks, after Alejandro—I cannot finish the thought—run together as February passes on until it is nearly March. The wave of grief hits all of us, even our parents—our father who once declared him “no son of mine” for attempting to assassinate Batista so long ago. Alejandro’s funeral is a somber affair—only family. I cannot bear to think of his mangled body lying in that casket.
Did God heap all of our losses together in one fell swoop so we could bear them more easily, drifting from one death to another, vacillating between heartbreak and despair? Would it be crueler if they were stretched out over years, or is the sheer avalanche of loss our punishment for our sins?
I no longer know.
I am sick, mostly in the mornings, but every once in a while my body likes to surprise me with an afternoon malaise. I possess a newfound respect for my mother; she did this five times—four healthy pregnancies and a baby who went to live with the angels.
Magda clucks over me, my sisters sneak suspicious glances my way, and my belly swells with each day, but the dawn of new life is shrouded in the death that shakes us all. Still—how long before I can no longer hide the changes beneath my gowns? I hold my breath, waiting for my parents to say something, for my mother to notice the differences in my appetite, but she does not, her grief consuming her, her whispered conversations with our father becoming more frantic. And then our parents usher us into our father’s study and the reason for their distraction becomes clear.
I sit next to Beatriz and Isabel on the couch in the corner of my father’s study, praying my stomach can make it through this family meeting without giving away my condition. Maria and my mother sit in the chairs opposite his desk, my mother in the very chair where I once sat and begged for my father to intervene and save Pablo’s life.
I thought I was saving him by sending him to the mountains, but it was all for naught.
And Alejandro—
A lump forms in my throat. Beatriz tenses beside me when our father begins speaking.
“The situation in Cuba is changing. There are rumors that they’re going to pass an act to reform the amount of land an individual or company can own. Small farmers will be fine, but for those with more than a thousand acres, the plantations . . .” My father swallows. “They say Fidel wishes to take those away.”
Fidel’s initial desire to abstain from government has been obliterated. José Miró Cardona is out, and Fidel is prime minister now. Manuel Urrutia Lleó is Fidel’s creature. We are all Fidel’s creatures.
Fidel killed my brother—or gave the order, at least. I am certain of it.
“It’s hard enough with the labor problems,” our father continues. “But if Fidel gets everything he wants? They treat him as though he is a god; there is no stopping a god, no reasoning or negotiating with one. He will destroy everything in his path.” His voice breaks over the words. We do not speak of it, but we all know. “The people will let him, they will cheer him on, fueled by their anger and their thirst for blood, and they will tear those of us who prospered all this time from limb to limb.”
My mother pales—
The French Revolution has come to Cuba.
His voice lowers; in Havana now, the walls have ears.
“We will go.”
“Emilio—”
“Quiet.”
My mother falls silent.
“We will go,” he continues, “because it is no longer safe for us to stay. We will go until it is safe for us to return.”
We will go because they are killing Perezes in Havana.
“Where will we go?” Beatriz asks, a defiant gleam in her eyes.
I close mine, offering a prayer that she will accept this, that we can get through this with minimal discord. I have nothing else left inside me. Whereas Alejandro’s death has drained me, it has filled her with a righteous fury the likes of which I have never before seen.
“To the United States,” he answers. “I have some friends in Florida who will help us. There’s sugar in South Florida. I have some land there.”
I’m not entirely surprised. My father is the sort of man who always has a card up his sleeve, who has a contingency plan in place.
In contrast, my mother looks like she might faint.
“Who will watch the house while we are gone? Our things?” she asks.
I feel a pang of sympathy for my mother; my father isn’t interested in her opinion, her concerns, her fears. He has decided we will go to America, and he will brook no argument over the matter.
“The servants will,” he answers. “Your aunt can come stay for a bit. It will be no different than when we’ve left the country for a trip. This one will simply be longer, give some time for the country to sort itself out. This insanity cannot continue forever; at some point, the people will come to their senses.
“Fidel does not offer any real solutions for Cuba. He has no experience governing, doesn’t have what it takes to lead this country. They flock to him now because he removed Batista, but mark my words, there will be another leader whose name they’re chanting sooner rather than later. Perezes have shaped Cuba’s future for centuries. Sugar is this country’s foundation. We will always have a home in Cuba.”
I want to believe his words. I want to believe in something when I fear I no longer believe in anything at all.
Tears spill over Isabel’s cheeks. Beatriz looks like she wants to slap someone. My mother and father appear slightly shell-shocked as they run through his plans, their voices hushed to prevent any of the staff from overhearing.
The staff—
What will happen to Magda in our absence?
What will I tell Ana? The rest of my friends?
“Nothing,” my father says when I ask the question aloud. “You are to say nothing to draw attention to us.” His words are directed toward all of us, but his gaze rests on Beatriz.
Maria appears caught between excitement and fear—to be thirteen again.
My hand drifts to my stomach, to the life beneath my palm, that tiny life fluttering inside me. I can’t hide the secret much longer. Once we’re settled in the United States, I’ll have to tell my family about the baby, need to face this additional change in my life. But not yet—
Not until we make it through this next challenge, this next shift in fortunes.
So now we will go and inhabit the country that has shaped our destinies whether we wanted it to or not. There’s an irony in the fact that our casinos and hotels are filled to the brim with Americans, and now we will flood their country in a similar fashion, looking for some sanctuary from this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.
“We leave tomorrow,” my father decrees.
My sisters are crying now, attempting to muffle their tears, to keep the rest of the house from knowing our plans.
“We will go as tourists. It is the only way. You will treat this as a trip abroad; you can each take one suitcase with you. Anything valuable will have to remain behind.”
“What will we do when we get to America? Where will we stay? How will we live?” Isabel asks.
Is she thinking of her fiancé? Would I leave if Pablo were alive? I don’t know. I share my father’s fears, the sense that we are no longer safe or welcome in our own country—my brother’s dead body lying on our doorstep is a testament to that. I am afraid to bring my child into this world—our child—afraid of what the future holds.
America is an unknown looming before us, but it can’t be worse than this.
The house is silent for the rest of the evening. My parents have retreated to their bedroom, Maria has gone to bed, and I’m fairly certain both Beatriz and Isabel have snuck out of the house, perhaps to say good-byes in their own fashion.
I pack a suitcase, surprised at how easy it is to condense one’s life into a small container. Of course, it’s much easier when one’s valuables must be left behind. Once I’ve finished, I change into my nightgown and robe. My jewelry box full of every single piece of jewelry I own save for one rests on top of my dresser.
A few minutes later, Magda enters my room.
“I see Beatriz and Isabel are out and up to no good,” she complains.
I can’t help but grin at her indignant tone. The city is falling down around our heads, but she’s concerned about my sisters’ reputations.
I don’t think I’ve ever loved her more.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, sitting next to me on the bed and rubbing my back like she used to when I was younger.
I rest my head on her shoulder, my hand settling over my stomach. I’ve noticed myself doing it more and more, catching myself mid-motion when I’m out in public or around others. I tire of all the secrets I keep locked up inside me.
“Better. Thank you.”
I can’t cry.
I take a deep breath, steadying myself. “I would like to give you something.” I walk over to the dresser. My fingers shake as I hand her the jewelry box. This will be one of our secrets, like so many before it.
“We’re going on a trip tomorrow. To America.” My father will likely tell the staff tomorrow morning, but I’ve never thought of Magda as anything other than family.
She takes my hand, her fingers trembling. The timing of our trip is clearly not lost on her.
“We might be gone for a while.” I cannot cry. “And I’m not sure when we will return. I would like you to have this.”
Magda shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes. “I couldn’t.”
I attempt to paste a smile on my face, try to hold back the emotions threatening to spill over the floodgates.
“I want you to.” I take a deep breath. “I want you to take it and go to your family. They’re in Santa Clara, aren’t they? I want you to use it to get out if you need to. To take care of yourself and your family. One day Fidel and his men might come for this house, for everything in it, and if they do, I want to know you are safe. That you have the freedom to do as you please.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Please. Please take it. I will worry about you the entire time I am in America if you don’t. These are troubled times, and I want to know you have security in them. Please.”
Tears spill down her cheeks. “This is everything. This is far too much.”
“It’s not nearly enough.”
There is no price you can put on all the nights she rocked me to sleep, the times she held me when I was sick, wiped my tears, held my hand. There is no price I can put on the nineteen years she has loved me, stood beside me, been like a mother to me.
I wrap my arms around her, holding her close, as she has done so many times to me, while her shoulders shake, while my heart aches.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you, too,” she says. “And one day I will hold your baby in my arms, just as I held you when you were a young girl.”
It’s hard to let go.
“I need help,” I say over the line.
“What do you need?”
I think if I told Ana I had to bury a body in the backyard, she’d bring a shovel.
“Can you come over?” I ask.
“Of course.”
Thirty minutes later I meet her in my backyard, beneath the enormous banana tree we’ve played under since we were little girls. We’re both dressed in our nightgowns and robes. It isn’t the first time we’ve had a late-night adventure such as this one, although in our younger years our exploits were limited to sharing secrets about boys we liked. Now I’m asking her to be the guardian of the box holding my greatest secret.
“Is something wrong?”
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” I whisper. “Going to the United States.”
I don’t say the rest, some words simply too painful to utter—I don’t know when we’ll return.
Tears well in her eyes. “Elisa.”
I swallow. “We can’t stay.”
She nods, her knuckles white as she clutches the lapel of her robe. Everyone knows what happened to our brother now.
“I’m not entirely surprised. You certainly aren’t the only ones.”
“Your parents?” I ask.
Ana shakes her head. “They want to wait, see what happens in the next few months.”
I can’t blame them for that. It’s hard to leave everything behind you, not knowing what will greet you when you return.
“I will miss you,” she says.
My throat is hoarse. “I will miss you, too.”
She hugs me, and the familiarity of it is both a balm and salt in an open wound. This is home. How can I leave?
Ana releases me, and I wipe away the tears that have fallen on my cheeks. Her gaze sweeps over the box behind me, the makeshift shovel I stole from my mother’s flatware collection. This isn’t a wholly original idea—two hours ago I watched from my bedroom window as my father crept out in the night and buried items a hundred or so yards away from the palm tree—but it’s the best one I could come up with on such short notice.
“So what are we doing?” Ana asks, a sad smile on her face. “Digging for buried treasure?”
It’s exactly the sort of trouble we would have gotten into when we were younger, digging up my mother’s prized flowers and pretending we were pirates—I blame the French corsair for the inspiration.
“No, burying it.”
I pull out the box I pilfered from my father’s study—inside I have placed my most treasured possessions, my memories, the only pieces of Pablo that remain.
“If something happens, will you dig this up for me? I don’t know what else to do with it, and I don’t want anyone to find it. Can you keep an eye on it for me?”
I could give it to Ana to hold on to, but who knows where her family will end up, how the winds of change will eventually affect them, too. If the madness of this revolution has taught me anything it is that the affairs of men are impossible to predict; I prefer to rely on the constancy of the earth beneath our feet. It doesn’t care whose blood spills onto its soil or whose boots march upon its grass—it is Cuba, impervious to those who profess to control it. The earth cares nothing about revolutions.
“Of course,” she replies.
Ana grabs one of the instruments, a laugh escaping from her lips. “This is one of your mother’s serving spoons, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
I almost laugh at the absurdity of it. Two Havana debutantes in our robes, using my mother’s finest silverware to dig in the dirt in our backyard. And at the moment, I can’t think of a better use for it. This seems to be a year for the tragic and the absurd.
We speak in quiet voices as we dig, the roar of the ocean drowning out our words. We speak as only lifelong friends can, carving out a moment of peace in these fragile times—
I am forever fortunate for the corsair’s decision to build his home on this street, on this block where one day a rum scion would do the same, providing me with another sister.
When we’ve dug a nice-sized hole, I set the wooden box inside. My hand drifts to my stomach. Will I bring my child back here to dig it up with me? Perhaps I’ll make a game of it—buried treasure indeed.
I cover the box with the cold earth, clutching the dirt in my hands until my fingers are caked with it, until it sneaks into the crevices under my fingernails. One day I’ll bring our child here. I’ll show our baby the letters we wrote, the ring its father slid on my finger, give it this part of our history, our love. The earth will guard my secrets, preserve this piece of Havana for me, my memories—
For when we return.