Dreaming in Cuban (17 page)

“Mira
, Pilar. I’m asking you as a favor. You could paint something simple, something elegant. Like the Statue of Liberty. Is that too much to ask?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll paint something,” I say deliberately, deciding to play my last card. “But on one condition. You can’t see it before the unveiling.” This will get her, I think. She’ll never agree to this in a million years. She’s too much of a control freak.

“That’s fine.”

“What?”

“I said that’s fine, Pilar.”

I must be standing there with my mouth open because she pops a macaroon into it and shakes her head as if to say, “See, you always underestimate me.” But that’s not true. If anything, I overestimate her. It comes from experience. Mom is arbitrary and inconsistent and always believes she’s right. It’s a pretty irritating combination.

Shit. How did I get into this mess?

Our warehouse is only two blocks from the river, and the Statue of Liberty is visible in the distance. I’d been there once when I was a kid, before we settled in Brooklyn. Mom and Dad took me on a ferry and we climbed up behind Liberty’s eyes and looked out over the river, the city, the beginning of things.

A Circle Line tour boat is rounding the tip of Manhattan, optimistic as a wedding cake. There’s someone on the top deck with a pair of binoculars aimed at Brooklyn. I can imagine what the tour guide is saying: “… and on your left, ladies and gentlemen, is the borough of Brooklyn, former home of the Dodgers and the birthplace of famous ‘It’ girl Clara Bow.…” What they
don’t say is that nobody ever dies in Brooklyn. It’s only the living that die here.

That night, I get to work. But I decide to do a painting instead of a mural. I stretch a twelve-by-eight-foot canvas and wash it with an iridescent blue gouache—like the Virgin Mary’s robes in gaudy church paintings. I want the background to glow, to look irradiated, nuked out. It takes me a while to get the right effect.

When the paint dries, I start on Liberty herself. I do a perfect replication of her a bit left of center canvas, changing only two details: first, I make Liberty’s torch float slightly beyond her grasp, and second, I paint her right hand reaching over to cover her left breast, as if she’s reciting the National Anthem or some other slogan.

The next day, the background still looks off to me, so I take a medium-thick brush and paint black stick figures pulsing in the air around Liberty, thorny scars that look like barbed wire. I want to go all the way with this, to stop mucking around and do what I feel, so at the base of the statue I put my favorite punk rallying cry:
I’M A MESS
. And then carefully, very carefully, I paint a safety pin through Liberty’s nose.

This, I think, sums everything up very nicely.
SL-76
. That’ll be my title.

I fuss with Liberty another couple of days, more out of nervousness than anything. I keep getting the feeling that Mom is going to spy on my work. After all, her record doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. So, before I leave my studio, I set up a booby trap—two tight rows of paint cans on the floor just inside the door. Mom would trip on them if she managed to open the latch and come creeping around late at night. It would serve her right, too, show her that she can’t go breaking her promises and invading my privacy any time she damn well pleases.

I’m usually a heavy sleeper but these last nights every little noise makes me jump out of bed. I’d swear I heard her footsteps, or someone picking the lock on my studio. But when I get up to investigate, I always find my mother sound asleep, looking innocent the way chronically guilty people do sometimes. Then I go to the refrigerator, find something to eat, and stare at the cold stub of her cigar on the kitchen table. In the mornings, my paint cans remain undisturbed and there are no suspicious stains on any of Mom’s clothing in the hamper. Jesus, I must really be getting paranoid.

Max helps me set the painting up in the bakery the night before the grand opening, and we drape it with sewn-together sheets. My mother, surprisingly, still hasn’t even tried to get a glimpse of the work. I can tell she’s proud of the blind faith she’s placed in me. She’s positively aglow in her magnanimity. When I come home that night, Mom shows me the full-page ad she took out in the
Brooklyn Express:

Free food and drinks! This is more serious than I thought. Mom doesn’t give anything away if she can help it.

Now I can’t sleep all night thinking maybe this time I’ve gone too far. After all, Mom didn’t seem to have any ulterior motives, at least none that I can figure. For once, I think she genuinely wanted to give me a break. I try to calm down by reminding myself that
she
was the one that cornered me into doing this painting. What did she expect?

At five in the morning, I go to my parents’ room. They’re sleeping back to back, like strange doughy twins. I want to warn her: “Look, I wanted to do it straight but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. Do you understand?”

She shifts in her sleep, her plump body curling forward. I reach out to touch her but quickly pull back my hand.

“What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Mom is suddenly awake, sitting upright. Her nightgown clings to the soft folds of her breasts, her stomach, the creases in her thighs.

“Nothing, Mom. I only wanted … I couldn’t sleep.”

“You’re just nervous, Pilar.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Don’t worry,
mi cielo
.” Mom takes my hand and pats it gently. “Go back to bed.”

The next morning, the bakery is hung with flags and streamers and a Dixieland band is playing “When the Saints Go Marching
In.” Mom is in her new red, white, and blue two-piece suit, a matching handbag stiff on her elbow. She’s giving away apple tartlets and brownies and cup after cup of coffee.

“Yes, my daughter created it,” I hear her boast, trilling her “r” ’s, clipping her vowels even more precisely than usual, as if her accent were partly responsible for the painting. “She is an
artista
. A very brilliant
artista
.” Mom is pointing in my direction and I feel the sweat collecting at the small of my back. Someone from the
Brooklyn Express
snaps my picture.

At noon, Mom gingerly balances atop a stepladder on her tiny, size-four feet. The drum rolls endlessly as she pulls on the sheet. There’s a stark silence as Liberty, in her full punk glory, glares down at the audience. For a brief moment, I imagine the sound of applause, of people calling my name. But my thoughts stop dead when I hear the hateful buzzing. It’s as if the swarm of stick figures have come alive in their background, threatening to fly off the canvas and nest in our hair. The blood has drained from my mother’s face and her lips are moving as if she wants to say something but can’t form the words. She stands there, immobile, clutching the sheet against her silk blouse, when someone yells in raucous Brooklynese, “Gaaahbage! Whadda piece of gaaah-bage!” A lumpish man charges Liberty with a pocketknife, repeating his words like a war cry. Before anyone can react, Mom swings her new handbag and clubs the guy cold inches from the painting. Then, as if in slow motion, she tumbles forward, a thrashing avalanche of patriotism and motherhood, crushing three spectators and a table of apple tartlets.

And I, I love my mother very much at that moment.

Ivanito

I
started learning English from Abuelo Jorge’s old grammar textbooks. I found them in Abuela Celia’s closet. They date back to 1919, the first year he started working for the American Electric Broom Company. At school, only a few students were allowed to learn English, by special permission. The rest of us had to learn Russian. I liked the curves of the Cyrillic letters, their unexpected sounds. I liked the way my name looked: И
BAH
. I took Russian for nearly two years at school. My teacher, Sergey Mikoyan, praised me highly. He said I had an ear for languages, that if I studied hard I could be a translator for world leaders. It was true I could repeat anything he said, even tongue twisters like
kolokololiteyshchiki perekolotili vïkarabkavshihsya vïhuholey
, “the church bell casters slaughtered the desmans that had scrambled out.” He told me I had a gift, like playing the violin or mastering chess.

He used to embarrass me in front of the other boys. He’d call me up to the front of the class and ask me to recite a poem we
had read only once. I’d pretend I couldn’t remember it, but he insisted until I gave in, and I was secretly pleased. The words just came to me, clicked together like so many keys to locks. Afterward my schoolmates would tease me, “Teacher’s pet!” “Show-off!” and shove me between them in the halls.

Mr. Mikoyan was a short man with shiny, ruddy cheeks like a baby’s. He kept ice in a porcelain bowl on his desk. Every once in a while, he’d twist his handkerchief around a cube and press it to his temple. “The most civilized countries are the coldest ones,” he told us many times. “Too much heat addles the brain.”

I used to stay after class and wipe the blackboard for him with a wet rag. He’d talk of winter sleigh rides in the countryside, of lakes frozen solid enough to jump on and snow that fell like crystal from the sky. He’d tell me stories of the Tsarevitch in St. Petersburg, weak with hemophilia, his fate controlled by wicked forces. All the while, the ice would crackle in his bowl, as if to confirm his words.

I felt that I was meant to live in this colder world, a world that preserved history. In Cuba, everything seemed temporal, distorted by the sun.

Then Mr. Mikoyan would read me quotes from Tolstoy, whom he considered the greatest of all Russian authors, to copy onto the blackboard. My favorite was the first line in
Anna Karenina
: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Perfect, it is perfect!” Mr. Mikoyan would say. He’d clap his hands, happy with Tolstoy and my perfect spelling. I liked to please him, to see his small, milky-marble teeth. He told me his wife was a chemist who worked with Cuban scientists on top-secret projects developing products from sugarcane. They had no children.

One afternoon, as I was wiping the blackboard, Mr. Mikoyan stood close behind me and told me that he was returning to Russia. He said that I would hear vile things about him.

I turned to look at him. His lips were dry and clung to each other as he spoke. I felt his sour little bursts of breath on my face. He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but then he clasped me to him suddenly and smoothed my hair, repeating my name. I pulled away from him, accidentally knocking the porcelain bowl from his desk. It shattered into a thousand pieces, and crunched beneath my feet as I ran.

For a long time, I thought about Mr. Mikoyan, about his ruddy baby cheeks and the things he warned me I’d hear. A boy from an upper grade accused him of indiscretions. Everyone spoke of it like murder or treason, with fascination and revulsion. Then the jokes started, more and more cruel. They said I was his favorite, that I’d stayed with him after school. “Go join him in Siberia!” they taunted. “You’ll keep each other warm!” I didn’t want to understand.

(1978)

The
oddu
, the official
santería
prediction for this year, is mixed. Yes, believers can accomplish many things because the dead are benevolently inclined toward the living. On the other hand, nothing can be taken for granted because what the living desire will require great effort. Felicia del Pino is fortunate in that she knows unequivocally what she wants: another husband. In this respect, at least, she will be twice more blessed.

In the second week of January, Felicia visits a
santero
known for his grace and power in reading the divining shells. Through the mouths of the cowries the gods speak to him in clear, unambiguous voices. The
santero
dips his middle finger in holy water and sprinkles it on the floor to refresh the shells. He begins to pray in Yoruba, asking for the blessings of the
orishas
, whom
he honors one by one. Then, with the sixteen cowries, he touches Felicia’s forehead, her hands, and her knees so that the gods may learn of the aching between her legs, of the hunger on her lips and the tips of each finger, of her breasts, taut with desire. The gods will tell her what to do.

The
santero
tosses and retosses the shells, but they foretell only misfortune. He enlists the aid of the sacred
ota
stone, as well as the shrunken head of a doll, a ball of powdered eggshell, and the
eggun
, a vertebra from the spine of a goat. But the reading does not change.

“Water cannot be carried in a basket,” the
santero
says, shaking his head. “What you wish for, daughter, you cannot keep. It is the will of the gods.”

He instructs Felicia to perform a rubbing ritual to cleanse herself of negative influences. This is easily done, he says, by smearing a piece of meat or a soup bone with palm oil, aspersing it with rum, curing it with cigar smoke, then placing it in a paper bag and rubbing herself from head to toe.

“The bag will absorb the evil that clings to you,” the
santero
says. “Take it to the gates of the cemetery and leave it there. When you have done this, return to me for a final cleansing.”

Felicia has every intention of following the
santero’
s advice. But on her way home she falls in love.

Not everyone would be attracted to Ernesto Brito. His most remarkable feature besides his paleness, a paleness that obliterates any possible expression, is his hair. He combs his flaxen strands meticulously from the lower left side of his head to his right temple, then swirls them round and round on his bald crown, securing them with a greasy pomade. When a stiff wind disarranges his lacquered locks, he looks panic-stricken, like a man who’s just seen his own ghost.