Love and Ghost Letters, page 14
“Lost something, ma’am?” the bus driver called again.
“Yes. Something very dear,” Mona said, and now her eyes shifted to look upon the sergeant.
“Come,” the sergeant said, and tried pulling her toward the open door. She looked at him and squinted her eyes, poising herself to say something terrible.
“Come,” he said again, and pointed to the family that still waited for Mona to make her decision before they could board.
“They can wait all day, for all I care,” Mona said, and the woman, realizing that, in fact, she might have to wait all day, gathered her children under her dress again and began walking north, toward the next bus stop. Mona walked up to the sergeant, who had one foot up on the bus step. She put her hand into his pocket and found the cuff links. She twisted them in the air above her, as if trying to catch whatever sunlight could be found onto their surface. The cuff links were made of hammered gold, and all the little dents managed to shine there in the stormy air. “You may keep them, Anthony,” she told the sergeant and put them back into his pocket. She pulled a few loose coins from inside her purse and dropped them into the bus driver’s coin box. Then she turned away, walking toward Circle Park and the road to her home.
The sergeant boarded the bus, understanding now that there was no returning to Mona Linde’s house. He patted the little gold lump in his pocket and went up the road.
16
Lorenzo left Gilda on the day of her father’s funeral to avoid the men in her family, who felt he was the cause of Gilda’s disgrace. She isn’t worth the trouble, he thought and readied himself to go home to the one woman he had fought to keep. Once he was out on the road with his things, he found he could not go home to El Cotorro, to Josefina’s constant watching, to the needs of his children. He hadn’t seen them grow up and didn’t feel any remorse concerning his absence. That Lalo was now fourteen, fidgeting all day, his voice deepening, and that Soledad, at nine years, had forsaken the dolls Lorenzo had bought her as a baby did not cause any pangs of guilt in Lorenzo’s heart. He had learned at a young age that life was fleeting, not worth spending on domestic boredom. Lorenzo had lost both parents at a young age to tuberculosis. He barely remembered either one of them. He grew up in the house of an uncle who let him do as he pleased. So Lorenzo played with guns when he was barely out of diapers and decided at age twelve that school was not for him. His uncle thought so, too.
The day he left his uncle’s house for Havana was much like the last day he saw Gilda. The sky was gray, as if it might begin to rain but didn’t. And the stale puddles on the ground from a few days before seemed black and endless in the mistiness, as if he could fall into them and fall forever. A day like this had led him to Havana when he was a boy, and led him there again as a man.
Lorenzo found himself in the capital in the spring of 1952. He had come by foot, by carriage, by train, stopping at the small towns along the way, always finding the warm bed of a young woman who found his dark eyes hard to resist. He was, as some would say, magnetic. It had taken him nearly three years to make the journey, and in the meantime, he felt like a man liberated. He took odd jobs here and there, sent money to Josefina when he could, drank rum well into the evenings.
Havana hadn’t changed since he was last there, hypnotizing Josefina and taunting her father. Lorenzo had avoided the capital since, wanting to stay away from all of the brutal colonels who had been in charge of the island, one after another, as if the city were overtaken by escaped beasts. Lorenzo had lost track of their names. Every year there was a new president, every year new rules to follow. And every year, Lorenzo had less money in his pocket than before.
On the afternoon of his arrival, Lorenzo sensed a buzz in the city. In the distance, a column of smoke rose in the sky. Uncharacteristically curious, he walked toward it, past small painted houses stacked side by side. He secretly hoped that the sergeant’s old house was the one ablaze. Suddenly, Lorenzo heard a shot, felt a sharp pain in his arm. More shots followed, and he ran from doorway to doorway, his upper arm bleeding, soaking his shirt. There were shouts of men, orders barked from a megaphone, quiet, then another round of volleys.
Lorenzo pressed himself flat against a doorway, then felt it give way.
“You’ve walked right into a war,” a voice from inside said, then dragged him inside the house by the shoulders. His arm felt like it was being shed of its skin. He closed his eyes to lessen the pain.
“You should wait here,” the young woman said. “Wait with me until my papi comes back, please?”
When Lorenzo opened his eyes, he saw a girl, about sixteen, like Lalo. She was plump and dark. Her eyes were thin slits, and Lorenzo thought she might be part Chinese. She sat before him on the ground, her legs bent at the knee and to the side, the crease at the back of her knee dark and deep. Her nails were polished a golden orange and her wrists were creased, too, like a baby’s. The girl wore her long dark hair loose and it made her look wild, like a lost cat.
“Where is your father?” Lorenzo asked.
“Fighting. He’s a policeman. It’s that horrible Batista who is trying to take over again.” She cried without sound and held Lorenzo’s hand. Outside, Lorenzo could hear them, the clumsy police shouting orders at the wind and the shots that silenced the voices.
Later, the girl would dress Lorenzo’s wound—a surface scratch that hurt like fire—and would cook him a small meal of corn meal and rice. Her name was Dulce, sweet, and Lorenzo thought it appropriate.
He stayed with Dulce for a week, all through the bloody coup, and waited for her father, the policeman, to arrive. With every passing minute, Lorenzo fought the urge to embrace Dulce, to take the soft, firm body and press it to his. But she was much too young, too close to Soledad in age, to Lalo, and Lorenzo restrained himself.
Even when it was clear that Dulce’s father was dead, even when Batista came on the radio and said he had abolished the constitution, even when there had been more fighting in the streets, many, many men lined up against walls and shot without the consolation of a final prayer, even then, with Dulce reduced to sighs and trembling, Lorenzo could not offer her even a gentle pat of reassurance, because he feared himself.
He left in the middle of the night, when the streets of the capital were finally safe, and made sure to lock the door behind him.
Mi Hija,
Do not cry when you receive Lorenzo’s letters. Do not think of the women he wastes his time with. Instead, look to your mailbox and wait for me. Sometimes I dream that I can fold myself up into squares, flat as a sheet of paper, and stay there, in the envelope, for you.
I have sent an angel to watch over you, hijita mia. He will make sure that the children eat, that you don’t have to worry about Lorenzo in Santa Clara. But if he wrongs you, dear, I will clip his wings.
Tu Papá
17
That summer, Josefina began to look everywhere for her angel, the one her father wrote her about. When she learned about the coup in the capital, she imagined the angel there by her side, protecting her children with giant feathery wings and a voice like a bell. When the coup was over and Batista was firmly entrenched in the palace, Josefina rejoiced in the wholeness of her family, their safety, and thanked the angel in her prayers. She dreamed that he was tall and golden, casting shadows behind him everywhere he went. Sometimes she imagined that the hazy, wavy mirages that appeared on the concrete in the heat of summer were her angel. Or dust clouds that formed in the church foyer. Or the match that Abel used to light his cigarettes. The sergeant had said the angel was coming, so she looked for him.
Josefina began making crosses from palm fronds, twisting the sturdy, long leaves into shape. She tied them to Soledad’s and Lalo’s bedposts, and from her own, too. She hung them in the kitchen over the stove, over doorways, the drawers of dressers, buried in the lawn at the base of the avocado trees. She gave them away to strangers in the street, who frowned, then tucked them away into a shirt or a purse, so fearful were they of throwing out a cross of any sort. Neighbors thought she was protesting the new regime, or that she was defending it, mindful of the goings-on in the capital. But all the while Josefina thought that these palm crosses would call down the angel like a lighthouse beacon, and so she didn’t concern herself with the trials of politicians and soldiers.
Josefina’s constant search made Abel nervous. He’d snap his fingers in front of her nose when she was lost in thought. He’d suddenly say that he wanted to take a walk or mow the lawn or read Soledad a story if the very word “angel” escaped her lips. So it was that Abel took his mission to save Josefina to heart. He realized that he was the angel of the sergeant’s letter, and he began to mold himself in that image.
The following Sunday Abel appeared at the house, dressed in white linen, ready for Mass again. To him, Josefina looked like a familiar portrait at the moment, one that is seen in countless brochures, in textbooks, in dreams. She sat in the yellow infant light of the morning. Her white skirt lay in soft folds around her, like a silken cushion. In her hands was a crinkled sheet of paper, striped with disciplined penmanship.
The image was soon interrupted when Josefina saw Abel in the doorway. She quickly hid the letter in her hand, palming it like a magician who is used to hiding cards in his grip. Again, Soledad was pushed into the old “church” dress, and again Josefina wore her veil of black lace, the Spanish fan hanging from her wrist. But the procession to the church of San Matéo was different. As before, Soledad walked with her mother, who whispered rules into her ear to calm her nerves, Abel walked behind, and farther behind still, was Lalo, kicking pebbles off the road and sending them like missiles at Abel’s ankles. Once inside the church, the scene repeated itself as before with the exception of the comportment of Camila Flores, who spent a good portion of the Mass waving a gloved hand at Soledad, a misdeed which led to a harsh slap on the thigh from the old woman who sat beside her.
After the Mass, Soledad and Camila met underneath a large tree in the garden, so covered with vines that the trunk was no longer visible. Soledad was in awe of this girl, whose plump arms were so different from her thin ones, whose skin was so light that the bluish veins around her eyes could be seen. Camila poured her rosary from one hand to the other, the crystal beads clicking prettily.
“What do you think of the new president?” she asked. “I heard he is very ugly.”
“I don’t know,” Soledad said, and waved the topic away. She hadn’t yet discovered the intricacies of dirty politics, the chatter that was the national pastime.
“Where do you live? Is it far from here?” Camila asked, changing the subject and leaning her elbows on her knees, her chin caught on the tip of one finger.
“Not far,” was her answer. Soledad didn’t want Camila to come to El Cotorro just yet. She was old enough to understand shame and the lines that were drawn between the likes of Camila and herself.
“Then I’ll visit.” By now Camila had Soledad’s grasped hands, the rosary beads pressing into her palm and marking them.
“I’m not sure you can, I mean, I don’t know how you…”
“Por favor, Soledad. If you let me visit and promise to be my friend, I’ll show you my secret.” This last was whispered, and Soledad could not stop her eyes from widening and her mouth from watering. She nodded her head and Camila released her hands. Slowly, Camila began to unbutton the back of her dress, first the collar, then the back. She pulled the dress down over her shoulders and pointed at a broad scar high on her chest. The skin folded over itself, like the pleats in a skirt, and in places it formed tiny ruts, like a dry stream, running over her left shoulder.
“When I was a baby I crawled onto a puddle of hot tar while a hole in our roof was being patched. My father waited too long to take me to the doctor, and so now I have this to show for it,” she said, and then: “Oh, Soledad, don’t cry. I don’t remember it at all. Can we be friends now? Now that you know my secret?”
But Soledad could not stop crying or pulling her own skirt up to wipe at her nose. The mournful romance of such a story did not escape Soledad, and she was enamored with the idea that the secret was now hers, too. Her loud sniffling caught the attention of Lalo, who jumped out from behind the tree and stood transfixed, looking at the girl with her dress half off. He thought how different she was from the girls at the theater, and did not see the scar at all but a swatch of ivory skin instead. Camila tried putting her arms into the dress, but could not.
“Lalo, don’t look!” Soledad screamed at her brother, but he could not help himself. And he stood there and watched as Camila dressed, kissed Soledad on the cheek, their tears mingling, and ran through the church garden.
* * *
Camila Flores lived alone with a woman named Doña Amparo. The affair of the tar was not quite the way that Camila knew it. In fact, it was well known among the adults of El Cotorro and Mar Lindo, because it was a thing they could not forget, that Camila’s father had poured the tar over his daughter purposely. Even Josefina had heard the story one day at the doctor’s office and now remembered the report and gruesome pictures of the bandaged child in the newspaper so many years ago. There was nowhere Camila could go without whispers in her wake—first of the “accident” and then of her beauty. Soon thereafter, Doña Amparo, who had no relatives to speak of and lived alone in a large home in Mar Lindo, took the scarred infant in. Camila grew up believing that her parents had perished in a fire when she was an infant, and Doña Amparo, who loved the girl as her own, even paid the cemetery to place a pair of false gravestones on a hilly patch of grass with the names of the parents, so that Camila would have a place to bring them flowers and kneel and speak to them. What really happened to Camila’s mother was not known, but her father was sent east to Oriente province by a judge in Mar Lindo to live out his life in a sanatorium.
The following weekend, Doña Amparo and her charge appeared at the house in El Cotorro. Camila and Soledad clasped hands and ran to the little bedroom that Soledad shared with her brother. In the parlor, Josefina asked Doña Amparo to sit down while she made coffee. The old woman sat on the worn sofa uncomfortably, shifting her weight back and forth, keeping her tense arms on her lap for fear of having any further contact with the dingy couch. Josefina returned with the coffee in the porcelain cups she had saved from Vedado after the sergeant’s death. Though several of the handles had broken off in the rush, three were spared any injury, and, luckily for Josefina, there was only one Doña Amparo.
Neither of the women spoke until Doña Amparo fixed her eyes on a photograph of Soledad and Lalo, the frame’s glass cracked down the center in a thin line that was visible in only certain kinds of light.
“Where is your husband?” the Doña asked.
It was an unfair question, Josefina thought. She had not asked, after all, about Camila’s own misfortune. Josefina cleared her throat and pulled a thread from her skirt. “He is away. Working, you understand.”
“But I saw him at church with you. The man with the red hair.”
Josefina felt herself grow very cold, and then, with a smile, said, “He is my brother. The children’s uncle.”
Amparo seemed satisfied. She pushed herself deeper into the seat. “And how many children do you have, señora?” Doña Amparo asked, refusing to address Josefina with her name. Josefina found that she could not look into the old woman’s eyes, so hard was the stare.
“Only the two you see there. Lalo is sixteen now.”
“Where is he?”
“In the bedroom with the girls, I suppose.” At this, the old woman stood with a speed and agility that did not seem to belong to her. “Señora, what is your son’s full name please?”
Josefina was startled and rose also, “Eulalio Miguel Concepción … but why are you so angry? What has he done?”
Doña Amparo left the parlor and stood in the entryway of the hall, peering down the darkness and listening for the laughter of the girls. She straightened, formed her hands into a funnel, and placing them around her mouth yelled, “Eulalio Miguel, come immediately.”
From his corner in the bedroom, where he had been busy pretending to do his arithmetic while studying Camila’s legs, shot out in a V before her, and her shapely white arms as she played jacks, Lalo looked up. He had thought, for days now, of what he had seen of her in the churchyard. The scar, though ugly, did not mar her loveliness for him, and he often found himself wondering if she would lift her dress again, but only for him someday.
Doña Amparo called again. Camila, who not only was unaware of her origin, but furthermore believed that Doña Amparo was her great-aunt on her father’s side, said, “That is my tía calling. You had better go.” Lalo ran down the hall, stopping right before the old woman, one of his feet planted directly onto her right toe. She stepped back, stretching her arm out toward him, as if inviting him into her own parlor, in her own house. Lalo did not have a chance to sit down before Doña Amparo began.
“When my niece”—she, too, had come to believe the lie she had formed—“is in your house, you will be so kind as to not be alone with her.”
Josefina, reddening with every syllable the woman uttered, as if the words themselves pricked her, interjected, “But Doña, they are only small girls, children.”
Turning on her heel, Doña suddenly faced Josefina. “How old is your daughter?”
“Soledad is only eleven.”
“And Camila is thirteen. She is no longer a child, and he knows it.” Amparo’s starched shirt tightened around her breasts with each heavy intake of breath. Lalo, who had been near the front door, turned the knob and walked out, without saying another word. He decided then that he did not want to see the little house in El Cotorro again.
