Food rationing came early in 1962, and the great cages in our living room which had always been filled with chickens, emptied overnight. Live chickens were delivered, if luck would have it, once a week, along with the allotted number of eggs that the store was granted to sell, but these things didn’t always arrive as planned.
In the uncertainty of the months and years to come, people took to forming a neighborhood watch in front of every store, staying there from morning until it was clear that no new deliveries would arrive that day. When one did, the neighborhood watchers would fan out in all directions, spreading the extraordinary news. Shortly to follow was a hectic whirlwind of customers in front of the one lucky store.
In front of our house, they pushed and shoved, each person maneuvering to get in front of the line—al frente de la cola. This was important since no one ever knew how many chickens had been delivered on that fortunate day. It never mattered in the end since there were never enough chickens for everyone, and as soon as the last of the chickens was sold, Mother rushed to send the disappointed customers away while nervously closing the door to our house.
Outside, the hungry, angry people, gesturing wildly with their hands and arms, argued and shouted at each other without stop.
Just as fast, the blocks’ revolutionary committee would show up to remind the crowd that Cuba had no food shortages, and then the fighting mob was replaced by a procession of sad people walking back to their house.
The ones that dared to linger behind scared me the most because I feared that they might turn violent and push their way into the house. So I took to running out to the backyard and hiding from them.
In their hunger, I could hear them accuse Mother of having lied and of hiding some of the chickens from them. And of course, I knew she had, because Mother always managed to save a few chickens for us and the staff.
The staff ran the risk of being caught while taking their illegal portions with them. So they waited until the committee members were out of sight before leaving the house. To be safe, Mother outfoxed then by cutting the chickens into small pieces that could easily be concealed in a folded newspaper that the workers could casually tuck under their arm.
In this regulated world, families were forced to use a small, complicated ration book when buying any goods. These books were filled with pages and pages listing every item that each woman, man, and child was allowed to have. People could buy milk, but only if their qualifications matched. Parents could buy toys for their children, but only until their fourteenth birthday arrived.
This new world created a fertile ground for the ingenious and crooked Cuban merchants to thrive. Cleverly, they recorded the allowed amount in the people’s ration books, but with the swiftest of hands, they held back a little from the people they disliked and gave it to those that they liked.
Mother embraced this game with open arms, determined to be the most powerful merchant on the block. Unaware that everyone was onto her game, she took others to be fools. She mistook their flattery as a sign of victory, thinking that she once again had pulled the wool over their eyes. “Ay Margarita, que linda tu estás hoy,” they’d say to her, appealing to her vanity by complimenting the beauty of her face.
All this chaos came with an unexpected change when the government closed Father’s small neighborhood stand and forced his customers to shop at stores blocks away from their homes.
Set adrift, he was left with little do. To make matters worse, Mother stubbornly refused to turn the running of her store over to him, thus relegating him to the lowly position of a hired hand.
Tía Cecilia tried to intercede, reminding Mother that a man needed to feel that he had a purpose within his own house. But she would have none of it, for the house was in her name, and she had single-handedly built the business from scratch.
Embarrassed by a wife he could not keep in line, and angry that she had dethroned him as head of the family, it didn’t take long before Father began to disappear for days at a time.
Gone forever were the days of pleasant mothers, maids, and grandmothers casually shopping at his produce stand. And gone were the spirited conversations between Father and the men who stopped by to chat. Gone as well were all my hopes for returning to the old neighborhood to visit Sandra, Benita, or Celestino. Why return when it only reminded Father of all that he had lost?
Those times had vanished into some dreamlike past that would never return, because the revolution had turned our lives into something that was dirty and dark, leaving us angry and sad.