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I HAD SPENT the afternoon scurrying about, bagging and boxing black market chocolate and smoked meat, mamey sapote jelly from the fruit of our tree, American spark plugs, and other items that either we could use on a trek over the mountains or would be as good as currency for our brother if we could leave them with him. After our conversation at the shop, Diego hadn’t spoken at all during dinner. When I wondered aloud about the state of the roads, he just kept his eyes on his plate and tore the crusty bread into crumbs that he didn’t eat. After our silent dinner, he ran a caged construction light out from a plug in the kitchen and hung it on the trellis on the side of the house. He had brought tools home from his shop to tune the car for my journey with Rosita. I watched through the window as he raised the trunk lid and hood.
My beautiful ’56 DeSoto would carry us over the mountains. It was light yellow and white, the colors of lemon sherbet and sweet cream. The government imposed heavy restrictions on gasoline, but what was it if not a government of the people? And those people—individuals—enforced the regulations as they saw fit. Our gas supply flowed more generously than most, shall we say. Don’t ask questions. Earlier, before meeting Diego at the salon, I went out to the rear wall of the side yard to uncover the jugs of extra gas we would carry in the trunk. Travel was difficult, but we had Cuban inventiveness and my Diego kept my machine in perfect running condition. Surely, though, he could use some help under the hood. I went outside. Clouds were low overhead. We would have rain before morning. Would we see Tomasito before nightfall tomorrow?
Diego’s head was deep in the engine compartment. I spoke to the bow of his back. “How are the belts?”
The wing nut of the fan cover and several screws nestled in his old straw hat on the fender. I peered under the hood. Diego torqued a tool deep in the compartment.
“Goddamned whore of an engine,” he said.
“What’s the matter?” I stooped beside him.
He threw an elbow in my direction without looking up. “Get out of my light.” His voice rumbled and seemed to be magnified by the engine compartment.
Sure, I let him feel as if he was in charge, but I, too, am a mechanic, but not by profession. “I’ll check the oil.” I reached under the hood, but he caught my wrist and flung my arm away. My hand smacked the fender. I shook the sting in my hand.
“Leave it.” Diego bent back to his work.
This car had been bought with Montero money, and I took care of it as much as he did. I hooked a finger in the dipstick’s ring and pulled.
Suddenly I slammed against the trellis and felt the oily tip of Diego’s screwdriver at my throat. “I said, leave it.”
“This is my car.” Twigs and leaves pricked my back and arms. My hands went slack and the dipstick dropped to the ground.
“If I pop a hole in your throat.” Diego pushed harder, which forced my chin up. “And I go before a judge—a man—and tell him what you did. He will clap me on the shoulder and set me free to find another wife.”
“Good,” I said with a clenched jaw as some instinct feared impalement through my own movements. But that end to not knowing about the children was better than others. “Then do it.”
A car rolled past outside the gate, the radio voice of El Líder clear in the night. Diego dropped his hands and stepped back. “But you wouldn’t suffer enough for what you and your sisters did.” He shook his head. I stayed pressed against the vines. “Go on.” He waved the screwdriver at the door. “Go to your Monteros.” He spat on my shoe.
My head floated and saliva flooded my mouth. Then I was falling, falling, falling toward the gravel and dead leaves. I saw the dipstick in the dirt. One more thing to clean. I reached for Diego to tell him, but he stepped back. At last my hands crunched on the ground.
The next second I was cradled in Diego’s arms as he knelt between the car and the wall. I struggled to right myself. Fainting on cue was for manipulators, not for me.
“Rosita is supposed to be the one who faints,” I said.
Surely I had only been out for a second, but in the time I was away, Diego had pulled the pins out of my bun and had unbuttoned the top of my blouse. He grabbed my hair and pulled my head back to examine my face. He’d held onto me like that during tender moments, after the boys were asleep. I had an idea.
“Take me to bed,” I said.
He scooped me up and took me inside and into our room, where he laid me on the bed. He closed my suitcase with the brass buckles and moved it to the floor by the big dresser. He turned off the lamps and kept his face averted while he crossed the room to the door. I fanned my hair out on the pillow the way Rosita had taught me as a teenager.
“Diego.”
He stopped with his back to me. I called his name again and waited until he turned. His face looked crumpled and old. I rolled over and allowed my skirt to hitch up to my hip.
“Wash up and come to bed.” I turned my head and waited for the creak of his footsteps to either move up the hall to the bathroom or stamp away from me and back to the car. Neither happened as a muffled swish on the bedroom rug approached me.
Diego speared his fingers in my hair and bunched them into a fist. His other hand alighted on my bare hip and ran down my thigh, pressing hard and skidding on the oil and grit layered on his skin. Never before had Diego come to bed with dirty hands. His hand landed on my mother’s sheet when he knelt on the bed beside me. Even in the dim light I could see the oily gray imprint it left. I would have to scrub hard to get rid of it. Diego had brought other filth into our marriage. The girls in Camagüey Province, the money he lost to those thugs in that import/export scheme.
I looked at the mirror on my dressing table. Reflected there was the yellow glow that spilled in from the hall. We were alone in the house; the door could remain open. I had brought that unspeakable emptiness into our marriage. Diego slipped his hand under my skirt and pressed a grimy finger into me. What were my grievances next to his? I folded my lip between my teeth and opened my legs.
Neither of us slept in the bed that night. Diego returned to the car while I scrubbed all but my most delicate parts with his rough soap. I took it and a brush to the grease smeared on the sheets. I didn’t care if I rubbed a hole in them. I would leave them snow-white for my husband to sleep on while I was away. Then I rechecked my traveling supplies. Late into the night, when all boxes were stacked by the door and rain dripped from the eaves, I curled up on the settee in the living room. I planned an elaborate first meal in America for my boys. Eventually I fell into a light sleep.
I awoke before dawn. I had no idea where Diego had slept, if at all. As far as I knew, he hadn’t reentered the house until I had gotten dressed and made coffee. He leaned against the counter.
“Sit down,” I said.
Diego crossed his ankles and relaxed his arms at his waist, coffee cup cradled against his belly. His hands were clean, his cuticles scrubbed. The birds called to one another in the trees outside. “Wake up, wake up. Time to wake up!”
“Maybe you should take the truck,” Diego said, his head bowed.
The truck was simpler and more reliable, but if I took it, he would be tempted to use the DeSoto in his work. To please the men from Havana, he wouldn’t hesitate to load the back seat with carburetors and mufflers and such. I would never be able to get the filth out of the cream seats. He had sullied enough already.
“We’ll be fine with the car.” I reached out to pat his bare arm, but he slipped out of range.
If Rosita stood in my shoes, she would have had some sweet, supple words to keep her man beside her. I didn’t know what they might be. “Diego. You’ll stay near the phone. Or find someone to listen for it.”
He swung away and stomped to the door. He stopped there and flung his cup back onto the counter. It skidded and tipped. I feared it would tumble into the sink and break, but after a precarious moment, it didn’t.
Nor did I. Not that time. “And check the mail. Every day,” I said to his back.
Then he was gone again. Rosita would’ve handled her husband better than I did mine, but she trusted neither herself nor her husband to receive the all-important message. Lola had her duties with the Russians. She always told people that she was the one to do this, she was the one to do that. But only I had the strength to be the first to know. And I was the only one with the strength to get us to Tomasito. Rosita would know what to do when we got there, but I was the one that would get us there. I resisted Diego’s sly spirit that cajoled me to smash the cups in the sink. Instead, I washed and dried them and placed them carefully in the cupboard. Then it was time to go prod Rosita onto the road. With the grace of Jesus and his Mother, I would see my baby brother before that day was over.
