Luz: book i: comings and goings (Troubled Times 1) (2 page)

Like many rumors, there were always some parts that
were
true and some parts that
weren’t
. A story had circulated that America, or the mighty Eagle to the North as some regarded it, had dispatched a giant ferry to pick up as many Cubans as could fit. We all believed this fairy tale, fantastic as the claim sounded; although to many it didn’t seem that outlandish. Not with the exodus of Mariel still alive in our memory.

Before long, a giant crowd coalesced along the Malecón waiting and praying for the ferry to come. By some accounts
as many as five thousand of my brothers and sisters had converged along the seawall waiting for its arrival. It never showed up. It was a tale born of heightened hope and desperation,
a ferry tale
. But days after that crushing disappointment, the multitudes along the Malecón had not fully dispersed. Remnants of the faithful kept lingering and loitering and lowly simmering until, finally, on August 5, all hell broke loose:
El Maleconazo
, as it would come to be known.

I heard it from my house, only blocks from the flashpoint. I wanted to run toward the ruckus and join in, but Rigo forbade it. He wouldn’t let me leave the house. But according to those fortunate enough to witness the incident, privileged enough to take part in history, a boy of no more than sixteen had deliberately tried entering the Hotel Deauville—a grave transgression for any Cuban: any ordinary, everyday Cuban.

From birth on we learned the cardinal rule around here: the only ones blessed enough to enter the gates of any hotel were tourists and foreigners, or members of the elite. We understood it was meant for our own good, meant to shield our eyes from the riches contained within: shoes meant
not
for our feet, food intended for bellies
other
than ours. Apparently this boy of sixteen had never learned this cardinal rule or didn’t care for its adherence. No one knew exactly
what
ran through his mind, but one thing was known. As he argued with the mongrel who blocked his path, those standing nearby joined in the boy’s defense and argued right alongside him.

“Why can't he go in?" they demanded to know. "Why can't he?"

What happened next unraveled in a blur. A sharp scuffle. A spontaneous spark. Someone pushed someone else and instantaneously a fight erupted, a violent one. Those standing nearby intervened and attempted to keep the policeman from arresting the boy. But it all swelled too swiftly, this fast-moving tide. It all surged too fast, this rapidly moving wave, bringing with it a surge of sights and sounds unfamiliar in our city. The most glorious sound of all came in the form of shattering glass. Who-knows-what or who-knows-who had
smashed the large front windows of the Deauville and the most splendid sight to behold came in a shower of splintering glass. Not anyone or anything could stop the hail of crystal that came crashing to the ground.

El Maleconazo. They called it an act of terror, those who called the shots around here. But it was no act of terror. That was just political prattle, petty propaganda. El Maleconazo was an act of valor, an act of courage. It was a hotel defaced—that most hated symbol of class distinction here—especially a landmark hotel along the Malecón. But out of defacement came determination and an uprising had sprung to life. All of these hijackings and escapes and acts of defiance had ignited a resistance and, for the first time in thirty-five years, rioting and protests surged through our streets. For the first time in their sedentary lives my brothers and sisters felt restive and ablaze, and I, as a young insurrectionist working to subvert this regime, could not have been more thrilled.

That was how I saw myself: not as a dissident, not as a pacifist, but an insurrectionist. Dissident was too nice a word. Pacifist, pathetic. The word insurrectionist cut to the heart of our plight with a raw and ruthless ring. As rocks and bottles were flung at the Deauville, an insurrection it was. As chants of freedom were hurled in the air, a real revolution this time, an actual revolt. No more apathy. None of the staleness or stagnation that threatened to smother us all. The myth of that giant ferry quickly faded, but a resolve to flee and live again had newly spawned.

But not everyone viewed the events of August 5 as a miracle. Some, like my husband Rigo, regarded it as lunacy. Others, like Mamá and my sisters, viewed it as sheer stupidity. I was one of three daughters in my family: the middle sister, the one right in the thick of things or always getting lost in the shuffle. I had an older sister, Pilar, and a younger sister, Angélica. My mother, Inez, was still very much around, but as for my father, Alejo, well, it was usually too painful for me to think about him.

Determined as I was to launch my dreams then, I expected a few hurdles along the way, namely from the women in my
life. But I could handle them. Rigo was a different matter. If I had always thought I possessed an unfailing partner in my spouse, never did I expect the only man I had ever loved to prove my biggest obstacle. But that’s exactly what he’d become these last three days: an obstacle, a stumbling block I could not overstep.

They were leaving tomorrow from Cojimar, the nearby fishing village made famous by Hemingway. It was from Cojimar that nearly all my brothers and sisters were catapulting to sea. And it was also from there that my best friend, Amalia, and her boyfriend, Henry, were likewise taking off. Not the day after tomorrow or the day after that, but tomorrow: on August 15.

A talented painter and sculptor, Henry had built the raft all by himself. He could do anything with his hands and had constructed our sturdy vessel in one short day, fashioning it solely from sugarcane stalks and
maloja
. While the vast majority of rafts were strung together from inner tubes and other floatable plastics, Henry refused to utilize such distasteful material. He despised plastic so much that he even hated admitting his degree was in
Artes Plásticas
. Henry assured us that the raft did not need anything so unnatural as plastic. According to him, maloja, literally,
the bad leaf
—and which happened to be the green outer sheath of the sugarcane stalk—possessed a natural buoyancy far superior and more durable than that of plastic.

“There’s much the world has yet to learn about maloja,” he noted rather abstractedly. “And one day it will.”

I should have known. For some reason, maloja always seemed to pop up in my life—always. Personally, I loved its delicately exquisite flower that resembled a whitish wispy flame. And it may have been the nurturing and protective leaf of sugarcane, but most considered it a useless weed, which is why maloja was burned so savagely in the fields during harvest time, this “bad leaf” as it was known. But Henry christened our vessel
“La Maloja”
anyway. Not the most auspicious of names, but fitting under the circumstances. I hadn’t seen the raft yet and didn’t want to. Not beforehand.
I’ll admit that I was scared. But I also trusted in his abilities. If La Maloja was good enough for Amalia, it was good enough for me. Henry wanted out of Cuba for two reasons: his art and his ideas, which he considered one and the same. Art and Communism were two natural enemies, two siblings who not merely rivaled each other, but reviled each other. As for Amalia, she didn’t care about anything
but
Henry. If her boyfriend was leaving, so was she.

It was dusk on this August 14. Some viewed dusk as that magical time of day when afternoon and night blended into each other with the softness of a lover's embrace. But dusk was my least favorite part of day. I had never liked it, that period of partial darkness when neither daylight nor nighttime could compromise on which should prevail. Dusk was not to be trusted. I found it dissolute, indecisive. Was it light getting lost in the shuffle, or light secretly scheming and right in the thick of things? Was it a thief on the run or a thief waiting to strike? There was only one thing I liked about dusk. Not the softness of its colors, but the swiftness of its descent: those fatal moments when afternoon fused into darkness with the quickness of a receding tide, when it drained all the errors out of day and devoured its disasters. Still, dusk was no delight, just simply the deterioration and death of everything.

Night was a salvation from dusk and how I wanted night to arrive. How I wanted morning here already. By morning I’d be gone. But Rigo and I continued fighting, and there was no dissolving Dusk’s dogged determination. This dusk of August 14 clutched and clung onto daylight for dear life. If darkness usually flushed it out with the ease of a passing rainstorm, this dusk would not be doused or dampened any. It kept floating atop the vestiges of daylight, refusing to blend in with the night.

In much the same way, Rigo and I had wrangled for hours. For once we had the house to ourselves and could fight like a normal couple. But surely not for long. Mamá and my sisters were
I-don’t-know-where
, and might return any minute, and I
was truly at the end of my rope. No more reasoning. No more imploring. No more screaming, and no more time to waste. I just wanted to know one thing from my husband and would ask him one final time.

“I’m leaving tomorrow, Rigo. Are you with me or not?”

How I waited and waited for an answer. Dusk sat thickly in its particles of indecision, but so did my husband’s thoughts. Then, suddenly, as Rigo put his books down and turned to face me, I gazed at him and braced myself. Here it came, the all-too-expected answer, the same response of the last three days. Slowly he walked over to me, and still I can picture exactly what he looked like that dusk of August 14. I can tell you what he was wearing, exactly what I was wearing. But the only thing worth mentioning about our attire back then was its drabness.

All clothes in Cuba were either drab or dreary or just plain dingy. Whether the pairs of pants were blue or brown or khaki, they exuded a drabness. Whether the shirts were olive or beige or tan, they lamented their own dinginess. And whether the skirts or blouses were the color of honey or lavender or the green of the sea, they languished in a dreary despair. Everything hung on our weary bodies flatly and lifelessly, while only our eyes contained the slightest hint of life. Rigo peered into mine deeply now before giving his response: those restless brown eyes of mine searching for a clue; my thin but forceful face squaring off with his resolve. He took his sweet time as he raised his hands to my face, smiling at me strangely as he slid his fingers down the sides of my hair, so long and silky brown then and hanging just below my shoulders.

“Yes,” he uttered softly, barely audible in the din of this stubborn dusk. “Yes,
amor de mi vida
, I’m going with you.”

I didn’t hear him. I could hear only the voice in my head wanting to drown him out. I pushed him away from me and stepped back toward the dresser in our room.

“But chico!” I reacted excitedly. “I’ve told you a million times the way it works. Don’t you get it? We don't have to
make the full journey across the straits. We just have to reach international waters twelve miles out. That’s where the rescue boats will be, where the Americans will be waiting for us. Don’t you realize what this means? In just one short day or two, we can be in the United States—
the United States, Rigo!
”

“Amor,” he tried to interject. “Listen to me—”

But, alas, I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t hear. As of late I had fallen prey to several bad habits that I attributed to growing up in a Communist State: always disregarding my opposition and, even worse, always repeating myself needlessly. I had not always been this way, quite the opposite. But I noticed the vice had come fully into bloom with the advent of our Special Period, during which I found myself constantly repeating my thoughts and ideas. I hated it too, this indelible stamp of Communist rule, where repetition was the basis of all communication and indoctrination. And I seemed to have developed a bad case of it. I asked myself repeatedly if there was some way I could have avoided this disease. If it was anything I might have done or failed to do. But, no—that was not it. How could any of us have shielded ourselves from this curse? How could any of us eschew the tendency to repeat or restate familiar refrains when it was all our leaders ever did? When, quite simply, it was all that we knew.

“No, Rigo! Don’t interrupt!” I shot back. “I already know what you’re going to say. You listen to me. You just want to blame Amalia. You think this is her fault, but don’t blame her. This was not her doing. She hasn’t brainwashed me. She hasn’t filled my head with any grandiose schemes. I’ve made up my own mind, Rigo. Amalia is leaving because Henry is leaving, and she wants to be with the love of her life. If you loved me as much as she loves Henry, you’d go too—so don’t blame her!”

“I do love you amor, just listen to me.”

But I only shook my head furiously and gestured at him. “No, Rigo.
You
listen to me! I’ve heard all your reasons. I know you don’t want to leave your family. I know you think you’re abandoning them. But we’re doing this because of
family. The day will come when they want out of Cuba, and we’ll be the ones to pull them out, the ones to save them. Sure, we won’t know anybody, but we’ll have each other. We’ll make new friends and form a new family. That’s what friends do, Rigo. Friends become family when they have nobody else.”

“I agree, amor. Didn’t you hear me? I said I was going.”

I still didn’t hear him, not fully anyway. Not with the restlessness that held me in its grip. Not with the ferocity of my thoughts all riled up and revved up and ready for a showdown. I waited for him to fight back, to refute my reasons point by point. My husband was a great debater, great at reasoning and skilled at arguing, and I loved to wage mental battle with him. It was one of our favorite pastimes as a married couple: debating to the death. But something was not clicking. Something was clearly the matter. He just stood there insensate and inert, sullen and almost sinking right in my presence. His eyes were those of a wounded little boy, and the hurt in their expression was now a spear that sank into me, much as the echo of his words finally began to do—seeping and sinking deep into my skull.