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ROSITA FLOATED THE short distance over to Abuela Marisol and grabbed her hands. “Tomasito tells us a fantastical tale.” She almost hopped with delight. You would’ve thought she was nine years old again and without a care for all our current complications. How does she do that? I still had too many questions. “You’re a miracle worker?”
“It was nothing. He’s too saucy for God to want him yet.” Abuela untangled a hand to pat my sister on the arm.
Meanwhile, something had struck me as odd. “Why haven’t the authorities notified us of your death?”
“What?” Tomasito said, and Rosita echoed a second later.
“If he’s dead, why haven’t they told us?” The lack of logic in those around me kills me sometimes.
Abuela propped herself up with a hand on the door frame. I realized again how many years she had, yet she moved like a much younger woman. “I don’t know, Señora. The doctor no longer questions my judgment, so he just signed the death certificate. We filled out all the proper forms.” She straightened up. “Maybe they have reasons of their own for saying nothing.” She shrugged. “Tomasito, will you move the table so we can eat, please?”
“Of course.” He pulled back a chair from the table with his good hand, and Rosita pulled out the one at the other end, as if all was well. Together they dragged the table over to the colonial seats. Rosita went back for the chairs, while Tomasito ducked through the doorway and returned with a third chair, unlike the other two.
“They didn’t tell us he was here in the first place,” Rosita said. “Maybe they’re content to let us think of him as one of the disappeared ones.”
I conceded that she may well have been right. “Then he has to go the States. He can’t come home with us.”
“Oh dear.” Rosita sank into one of the kitchen chairs.
Abuela brought in a stack of bowls and set them on the table. She considered Rosita and shooed her into one of the ornate chairs. I dropped into the other one without complaint, although I knew it would be a task worthy of Che to reach the table from it in a dainty manner. Abuelo Paco returned, as if on cue, shedding his wet hat and jacket. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a red calico scarf as he sat in the chair nearest the front door.
“That was what I was planning anyway.” Tomasito distributed the bowls on the table. What a change in him. I had never known him to set a table in his life as long as a woman was around. Perhaps he was dead. “Now that I’ve seen you. It’s longer from here, but it’s easier to get a vessel out of one of these provinces.”
“What about the Russians and the Americans?” Rosita asked.
“These are our waters,” Tomasito replied. “We don’t have to worry about them. It’ll be the Cubans that we’ll have to dodge. Besides, I’ve been in a rehab camp. What better credentials for the Americans?” He rested his hands on the back of the chair opposite us. “But where’s Lola?”
I shifted in the stiff chair and looked at Abuela. This was a family matter. She understood and inclined her head to tell her husband to join her in the back room.
After they left, I said, “She’s off feeding the Russians.”
“The Russians are more important than her hermanito?”
I shrugged.
“Sit down. We have our own tale to tell,” Rosita said.
Tomasito pulled out a seat and moved the dinner bowl aside after sitting. He propped his elbows on the table. Rosita turned to me, but I was as tired as I was hungry and had no desire to explain things. She waited, but I can be patient if I have to be.
“Well?” Tomasito switched his eyes between us.
Finally Rosita started. She spoke of the Russians and their secrets and their threats to the family. Our brother’s eyes grew wide when she finally got to the children.
“You didn’t tell your husbands?” he asked, wonder slowing his words.
“Calixto García,” Rosita said.
Tomasito scanned the room as he took in the family code that he himself had used. He brought his attention back to us and nodded. “I will join them. In Miami. I will look after them.” He picked up the bowl and carefully placed it back as part of the dinner setting.
“Of course you will,” Rosita said.
They were both liars. We had no idea where the children were or where they would land, and Tomasito could barely take care of himself, let alone motherless children. I could have pointed that out but decided to let them have their little moment of fantasy. After all, it was my fantasy, also.
“Well, then. Nothing we can do right now. Let’s eat,” Tomasito said. “Abuela!”
She immediately appeared in the doorway. How much she may have heard, I couldn’t say. And at that moment, I no longer cared.
“I can eat a goat,” he said.
“Oh, you,” she said with a swoosh of her hand.
You could tell she held much affection for our hermanito. She disappeared and returned with a big pot of stew. Paco followed on her heels. Something about this moment made me suspect I might never see this charming brother of mine again. My heart thumped but strangely was calmed by the smell of Abuela’s stew. She heaped a spoonful of yucca and goat-tail bones in his bowl and moved on to Rosita. After serving all of us, she went out back again and returned to set a cup of steaming brown liquid beside my bowl. No one else received one.
“Pardon me, Abuela, but what’s this?” I asked.
“For your headache.” How did she know?
She frowned at me and pointed to the ridges between her eyes.
Tomasito laughed. “Careful. I told you what happened to me when I drank one of her concoctions.”
“You turned into a goat?” I asked, and everyone laughed. I sipped the sweet tisane. We were in expert hands.
After dinner, Chucho brought in his wife to meet us. Her yellow shift was faded but clean. Spots of rain darkened the hem where it had hung below her jacket. She had a habit of bunching the dress at the waist and smoothing it out again. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and had the brassy look of a bad henna job. What I could’ve done for her if I had the time. Our brother rose to offer his seat to her, but Abuela insisted that he sit and rest his injured arm. Chucho’s wife, Berta was her name, stood by the door, as it was the only place for her in the crowded room. She hardly spoke until I thought to ask her whether a notice had been sent out immediately when Tomasito was declared dead.
Berta glanced at her husband as if asking for permission to speak. He nodded once. “Oh yes, Señora. All our guests are accounted for at all times.” Her hands were pressed flat at her sides, as if she were reciting her catechism.
“We received no notice,” Rosita said. “Did it go to our parents?”
“No, Señora. They told me to send it to the gentleman who signed the original papers.”
A fire burned near my heart, but I had to be sure of my suspicions. “Do you remember the name?”
Berta’s eyes searched the thatch roof above for her answer.
“Was it Ramón Fernandez?” I asked.
“Señora, that’s it. I remember now because our youngest is also named Ramón and he makes his R big like a balloon like this gentleman did. Of course, our Ramón had only seven years, but already . . .” Her voice trailed off as she stared at Rosita.
My sister had blanched whiter than a christening dress. I thought she was going to faint. I reached out to her, prepared to catch her if she flopped out of her chair. This was certainly the limit: not only had Ramón sent our hermanito away, he then kept silent about his supposed death, even when he knew we were frantic for information.
“I’ll kill him,” I said.
My words seemed to revive Rosita. She put a hand to her throat, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the sky beyond the low thatched roof. We call this her martyr pose.
“I’ll handle him,” she said.
Please. As if she would do anything to him that really mattered.
“You know this Señor Fernandez?” Chucho asked.
I glanced at Tomasito, who was watching Rosita closely without expression. How mature he looked. He had become his own man in those two short months. He must’ve also learned some lessons about trust, because Chucho’s question made clear that he had never revealed Ramón’s connection to him and our family.
“Intimately,” Rosita said.
She lowered her chin and opened her eyes but didn’t say anything more. That was all right. We had a long ride back over the mountains to address the subject of her traitorous husband.
Chucho soon escorted his wife home, leaving behind a promise to return to help with whatever needed to be done. In a household that probably retired soon after dusk, we kept the front room alive with family chatter late into the night. We quickly decided that we would leave all our provisions with the Ramírez family, either for their own use or to help speed Tomasito on his way. As much as we wanted to linger with our precious brother, those other absences and uncertainties tugged at us. We would leave for home in the morning.
My DeSoto had drawn notice when we arrived, which added to my concern for our brother’s safety. He assured us that everyone in the batey knew about him and his hiding place. It was only a passing official or a nosy campesino from another settlement that might cause upset. In any case, late at night, after the storm had passed and the singing night insects were joined by the steady drip of back country vegetation shedding its shower, Chucho returned to unload our car. A few provisions, such as the American dollars, were stashed in compartments hidden in the DeSoto’s body. I retrieved those goods myself. Our hosts admired the ingenuity and extent of our resources.
I offered Diego’s pistol to my brother. My husband liked him and wouldn’t begrudge him the gun. He, though, was concerned with our safety, especially after he heard the tale of the bandit brothers. Rosita showed off her Derringer, which evoked snickers from the men. Tomasito decided that we would need the protection of the pistol more than he would. Besides, two of the authentic ration books for the Havana province would pay for adequate, and more modern, firepower for his needs.
Every time I thought of leaving Tomasito behind I could scarcely breathe, but Rosita seemed to be her old animated self. Tomasito spoke so cheerfully of joining our kids in Miami that we were happy to let the uncertainty of their exact whereabouts slide. He waved his injured hand around as if it were whole, and his face glowed when he spoke of living out in the light again. We continued to drink our fill of our brother. Our hearts tugged toward home and the fate of our children, but that night we had eyes only for Tomasito.
After a miniscule amount of sleep on pallets in Abuelo’s front room, we clumped together out in the last night shadows in the valley and hugged and cried and hugged again. The light of dawn struck the mountains with its golden rays. Clouds gathered on their crowns and wisps of mist danced among their lower heights. At last the sun peeped into our bowl of shadows and we knew we must go. We would return home with one question answered but many more to ask. Tomasito agreed to wait for word from us before taking off for his new land, but I could see in his eyes that he would jump into the first seaworthy vessel he found with the first set of men he hoped he could trust. That Tomasito was always reckless as a boy, but he had made it that far. He worked his angels overtime, I thought as we finally got in the car.
He closed my door, and I took his hand before starting the DeSoto and turning it around in the small clearing. I stopped in front of him so Rosita could also clasp our little brother one last time. She took his good hand in both of hers and pulled him quickly toward the car.
“What are you doing?” My voice was harsh with surprise.
“Come with us.” Her fingers clutched Tomasito, and her voice came out equally harsh, but with something else. “We can hide you. I will take care of Ramón, and then you can be free again. Come. Now.” She tried to hang onto him with one hand while reaching for the door handle with the other. Tomasito snapped his hand out of her grasp and jumped back.
“Drive,” he commanded.
Rosita reached out to him as I floored it. The wheels spun in the mud and the rear fishtailed twice, but both Tomasito and I knew that Rosita was capable of all kinds of romantic foolishness at a time like this. A quick getaway was our only hope of leaving without more antics. She hung out the window, her arm stretched back toward the batey long after it disappeared from view.
After that, our journey home was uneventful except for a punctured tire in the mountains, which I fixed. Please. That was child’s play, even with little room between the road and the rocks that rose high above our heads. We found our bandit friends’ platform empty, the feed bag gone, when we passed it in the late morning. Given my sister’s last minute histrionics, I thought it best to leave any discussion about Ramón to after our return. Look what had happened to our family. I had every right to run down that worthless slug and her, too, for bringing him into our lives. Despite my resolve, I would have pounced if she had brought him up, but she didn’t mention her husband. Not once. When she broke her quiet, it was usually with a memory of Tomasito, the wave in his hair, his impish smile, his infectious laugh.
Back on the highway, just as we were again feeling comfortable with our surroundings, I had to crawl for a while behind a truck laden with tobacco leaves, a harvest that smelled like the cigars the leaves would be rolled into. Suddenly a rock shot into the windshield. Rosita jumped and yelped, and her breath immediately turned into sobs. Virgin of Charity, you would’ve thought it was a real gunshot straight into her heart, the way she carried on. It was only a stone. It left a small nick that didn’t even craze, although we would have to watch it.
As we returned deeper into familiar territory on the northern coast, we again passed the man dressed in a straw hat and red pants on the tractor. He now had a passenger on the fender and was heading toward Havana. I honked. We waved as we sped past. A few more kilometers, and I turned off the highway and headed across town to my home.
