Next Year in Havana Read online

  “Why? Because you love him?”

  There’s no anger in her voice; the words are delivered in a flat, unemotional tone.

  “Yes. I’m sorry,” I add, knowing as soon as the apology leaves my lips that it rings hollow and inadequate, even as it’s all I have.

  Love feels like a luxury here in this world where divorced couples are forced to live together because there is no housing, because the government makes it so. Love feels like a luxury in a world where so many struggle for the basic things I take for granted.

  “Do you?” I ask.

  “What? Love him?”

  I nod.

  “He is a good man. Kind. Hardworking,” she answers.

  “What alternative do I have?” I ask, the doubts creeping in. Am I being selfish? Or is leaving truly the only answer available to him? “They’ll kill him if he stays. I love him, yes. But this isn’t about me. It’s about his future.”

  She scoffs. “It must be so nice for him to have a wealthy American woman who’s willing to make his life easier.” Her gaze pins me. The condemnation in her eyes strips me bare. “Do you think this is the first time I’ve heard this story? Do you know how many of my friends have dreamed of a man who would take them away from this? Have ended up pregnant and abandoned or worse? Perhaps the roles are reversed, but you’re just another rich foreigner making promises. What will he know of your world? What will your rich American friends think of him?”

  “It’s not like that,” I protest.

  Are the differences between us simply insurmountable?

  “Isn’t it, though? Isn’t it exactly like that? You come here, and you spend a few days in Cuba, and tell yourself you’ve fallen in love, that you’re ‘saving’ Luis. And then you return to your nice, safe life in America, far away from all this. You say you want to be Cuban.” Her hands wave in the air, the cigarette dangling between her fingertips, ash falling to the ground. “This is what it means to be Cuban. To be a woman in Cuba is to suffer. What do you know of suffering?”

  I don’t. Not like this.

  “What would you have me do?” I ask.

  “Nothing. I wouldn’t have you do anything. But you’re all complaining about how you lost your country, and the reality is you didn’t lose your country; you left. You left the rest of us in hell. And now he’s leaving right alongside you.”

  “Would you rather him stay here and die?”

  My frustration isn’t with Cristina, it’s with this whole situation, but at the moment she’s voicing the things I fear the most.

  She takes a drag of her cigarette. “No.”

  “Then what would you have me do?” I ask again. “You don’t want him to leave, but he cannot stay. So what solution is there?”

  Her smile mocks me. “Is that what it’s like in your world? Do things get wrapped up in pretty little bows and happy endings? You go back to America with Luis. You get married and have children, and have your perfect little life together. But deep down, you have to know you won’t have all of him. I tried to make him choose between me and Cuba, and he chose Cuba every single time. No matter how much you love him, how much you think he loves you, a part of him will always be here. And a part of him will always resent you for taking him away.”

  Maybe. Maybe the parts of him are enough; maybe things will change and it won’t have to be a choice anymore—

  I stand there, looking down at her sitting on the steps, the straps of her sandals worn, her expression hardened to steel.

  This island will break your heart if you let it.

  “You could leave, too, you know.”

  She laughs, the sound unvarnished and raw.

  “Find some nice man who tells me he wants to take me away from this place and leaves me with a swollen belly and a disease or two? No, thanks.”

  “We could try to get you out. All of you.”

  Scorn fills her gaze. “I tried once. Did Luis ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “I was six. There were twenty of us in a raft. My parents and fifteen others died. We spent a week floating in the water, starving, exhausted before the Coast Guard picked us up and brought us back to Fidel. The adults were thrown in prison. I was sent to live with my grandmother. I’ll take my chances, thank you very much.”

  I’m rooted to this spot, some part of me wanting to stay and convince her, another part of me already gone.

  “I have to go.”

  My grandfather is waiting for me at the Malecón.

  “Then go.”

  When I reach the gate, I turn around, watching as she snuffs out the cigarette on the steps of the house, her gaze trained somewhere out to the sea.

  What does it say about a place that people will risk certain death to leave it?

  * * *

  • • •

  I walk from the Rodriguez house to the Malecón, my conversation with Cristina running through my head on repeat. Luis is with his mother and grandmother, discussing the logistics of him leaving. And I’m here, finally fulfilling my grandmother’s last wishes, the reason I came to Cuba. Waves crash against the rocks at El Morro, the sun setting on another Havana day.

  My grandfather stands next to me, staring out at the sea, and I wonder how many times he did this and whether he searched for her, somewhere beyond the horizon, when he did.

  I don’t realize I’ve asked the question aloud until he speaks.

  “I imagined her there. America. As a wife. A mother. With the life we always dreamed about—a house full of kids somewhere with a palm tree in the backyard. I imagined her aging as I have. Each year that passed, I thought of her.” He sighs. “It was enough to hope that she was happy.”

  I hate that their story doesn’t have a happy ending, that ultimately, this is yet another thing Fidel took from them.

  “It feels incomplete,” I murmur.

  “Life so often is. It’s messy, too. This isn’t the ending, Marisol. When you’re young, life’s punctuation so often seems final when it’s nothing more than a pause. When I learned Elisa had married, I thought our story had ended. Accepted it. And now, almost sixty years later, you’re here. I have a granddaughter. A son, a new family. A piece of Elisa.

  “You never know what’s to come. That’s the beauty of life. If everything happened the way we wished, the way we planned, we’d miss out on the best parts, the unexpected pleasures.” He shrugs, gesturing around him. “We all had a vision; we had a plan. Fate, God, Fidel, they all laughed at that plan. I thought I was on one path, and it turned out to be something else entirely. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad, though.”

  He smiles, wrapping his arm around me, bringing me against his side.

  “I’m glad we found each other,” I say.

  He stares up at the sky, a gleam entering his gaze. “I like to think Elisa’s up there smiling down at us, that she brought us together because she wanted us to meet, wanted you to be part of my life.”

  He begins speaking as if his words are the continuation of a conversation he is having with himself, a memory.

  “She was wearing this dress.” He smiles. “White. It had this full skirt, and it swayed when she walked. I couldn’t stop watching her hips,” he confesses with a look in his eyes that makes him appear decades younger.

  I laugh.

  “I brought her a white silk rose. I’ll never forget her smile when I gave it to her. We were both so nervous. I kept shoving my hands in my pockets because I didn’t know what to do with them, because there wasn’t anything I wanted more than to take her hand in mine and never let go. The night kept growing later, and I knew we’d have to part soon, and I didn’t want to leave her. Didn’t want to ever let her go.”

  “Did you fall in love with her here on the Malecón?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps I fell in love with her that first moment I saw her s
tanding on the fringes of Guillermo’s party, her expression so earnest. Once Elisa burst into my life, there wasn’t a moment when I didn’t love her. She was a bright spot in years that were filled with violence and bloodshed. She gave me hope.”

  “What was she like when you knew her?” I ask him.

  “Fierce. Passionate. Loyal. Brave. Smart. She cared about people, and she cared about her country. There was a kindness to her; she always wanted to see the best in everyone around her.”

  So little changed between the girl he knew and the woman who raised me.

  I reach into my bag, removing the container of ashes, my fingers leaving shadowy prints on the cool metal.

  I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this feels a bit unsettling, the act of holding my deceased grandmother in my hands a bit macabre. And at the same time, a weight rolls off my shoulders, as I cast off the mantle of grief that has lain there for so long.

  I will always miss her, but I’ve been given a new chance to know her, and through her, a whole new family. A pause in what felt like an ending.

  And this, too, is right—her reunion with the man she loved and the country that forever held her heart.

  I pass the container to my grandfather.

  A tear slips down his weathered face as he strokes the metal, a tremor in his fingers.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to do this?” he asks.

  I shake my head, understanding what was missing before, why I couldn’t come up with a final resting place that felt right. It wasn’t a place; it was a person. I brought her back to Cuba. The final steps should be his.

  Pablo’s hands shake as he unscrews the lid, as he tips the container out over the sea, into the wind. It’s not as romantic as I imagined it; bits of bone fragments sail through the air. But then again, what is?

  It’s the after, though, that means the most. We stand side by side, staring out at the ocean, at some point we can no longer see.

  Ninety miles. Ninety miles separate Cuba from Key West, the southernmost tip of the United States. Ninety miles that might as well be infinite.

  How many souls have been lost in these waters by people risking everything to find a better life? People like Cristina’s parents—filled with desperation, stretching out for hope? How many people on both sides of the water have stared across the ocean, yearning for something they can’t have—a family member, a lost love, the country where they were born, the soil where they took their first steps, the air they first breathed?

  “Will you come back?” my grandfather asks. “Will you bring them? My son, my granddaughters? Will you meet your cousins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will wait.” He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a packet of letters tied together with a faded string. I recognize the handwriting on them instantly.

  He smiles. “I think she would have wanted you to have these.”

  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.