The Death of Small Creatures (14 page)

I am only now learning the truth. I am the music and the water that evades me.

I am on
my knees, ironing my wedding dress the night before my wedding. “Stay up there!” I holler.

Leigh sips wine on the balcony, rehearsing his vows. “Okay,” he replies, followed by a playful, “Are you suuuure?”

It's as if I have engaged him in a game of hide and seek, as if he has only to count to one hundred before coming to find me. This playful exchange—the boyish giddiness in his voice—kills me. I am overcome with guilt and love, imagine the worst-case scenario. What if I don't show up? What if I leave him standing at the altar? What if when the time comes I cannot find those implacable words,
I do
?

I unzip the pink garment bag and remove the gown with tender reserve, knowing that years from now I will regard this act as a moment of sublime acquiescence, that it was I who carried my dress across this Cuban bungalow and hung it on the back of the television cabinet; it was I who opened the window and paused briefly to ascertain the temperature of the wind hoping for good weather on a wedding day I only vaguely understood was my own; and it is I now who kneels on this cool marble floor before this willowy white hem. I will remember this with humility and grace, I hope, knowing in the future as I do right now that I am the harbinger of my fate and no one, not even a man, can save me.

The iron wheezes as I angle its smooth face perpendicular to the fabric. I have it on the lowest setting, use the iron as a makeshift steamer, leaving an inch between the metal and the fabric, hoping the bursts of steam will suffuse the material and work out the wrinkles. But to no avail. The fringes won't give; each tiny crease maintains its delicate line and depth.

I turn up the heat, beginning on the silk setting, climbing to cashmere and ending on polyester. The creases refuse to smooth. I run upstairs and grab the chrome spray bottle Leigh uses to wet his hair, fly back down the stairs again as if my life depends on it, desperate to complete this act of ironing a dress I may never end up wearing, a point which seems irrelevant at this juncture. There are wrinkles in my wedding dress, and I have to get them out. I have to make things right.

I spray the hem, wet it down. The iron coughs hot clouds of steam as the heat and moisture react. I fear that I will melt the chiffon in my urgency, I will fuck this up the way I seem to fuck up everything, that the length of the dress will shrivel up like a plastic bag. So I use my flesh as a buffer, place my hand behind the fabric so I can gauge the temperature as the steam blows through.

I wince with each burst.

My hand turns red.

My dress becomes smooth.

Yurixa arrives one
hour late to give me a manicure, and to do my hair and makeup. She is flushed. Beads of sweat dot her forehead along the hairline where her hair is pulled back tight, parted at the side and tied into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She is dressed in spa attire, a pristine white uniform—stiff cotton pants and blouse—but the white flowers she cradles in her arms (as one would cradle a baby) have rubbed against the blouse leaving streaks on the cotton where the blood of the stems has seeped through.

“
Hola
,” I say. I don't want this poor Cuban girl who does not speak a word of English to sense my displeasure at her late arrival. My capitalistic roots haunt me; to complain given the economic circumstances that divide us feels extraordinarily obtuse. I do not want to be Bitch Bride like the women in the magazines. I want to be laid back Caribbean Cerveza Bride.

So I crack open a Mayabe, still thinking, Mayabe I will go through with this and Mayabe I won't. I try to relax and get a buzz going as Yurixa transcends the language barrier by lifting my hand from the table and tenderly placing my fingertips in solution. “My first manicure,” I say.

“
Si, manicura
,” she says.

Silence hangs in the air, punctuating the breadth and uncertainty of our disparate experiences. Our sex is our only common ground. As she removes my fingertips from the solution and begins that delicate process of cuticle removal, one hand then the other—dredging the blunt edge of the rounded pick from each nail bed to each first half-moon—I think of how seldom I have been touched by a woman, how lovely this experience of being cared for in such an insignificant but exquisite manner. In this moment I understand why men keep women for themselves: this unspoken tenderness between women could at once save and govern the world.

Yurixa lays out her assortment of makeup and application swabs on the coffee table then positions a living room chair so it faces the light of the window. “
Naturel?
” she says, recalling perhaps the glossy picture of Demure Bride in the magazine I showed her at the salon the previous afternoon.

“
Si, gracias
,” I say. “
Naturel
,” and notice that she has not brought with her the picture of Demure Bride as I would have thought.

She scrapes a comb across my scalp and twists my hair into a tight ponytail like hers. This is nothing at all like the picture of Forest Nymph Bride from the magazine, whose bangs hung in loose tendrils around her face, laying softly upon her shoulders, cascading in a way that suggests beauty without trying. As she twirls the ponytail around into a bun and pins it tighter to the back of my head, the skin at my temples tightens and I feel like a kind of Sumo Bride. She holds my sumo bun in place and sprays my head for fifteen seconds. Lastly, she pinches the white buds from the stems and pokes them through my crispy hair helmet, positioning them in what I hope is a sensible configuration at the back of my head, and at intervals between each flower-bud placement, she further cements the petals in place.

She applies gobs of naturel foundation all over my face, uses her fingers to blend. The powder follows. She powders my face, even my tanned shoulders and neck, and it occurs to me that Yurixa is blotting out my sun-kissed tan, perhaps in conjunction with local opinion that the pinkish hue so many white people adorn after a few short days at the resort has surely happened upon them by accident.

Then comes the pink blush, glittery gold eye shadow, pink lipstick, liquid eyeliner and mascara. The pointy tip of the applicator sweeps up and away from the outer corners of my lids, each one a final artistic flourish. And lastly, she feathers in my otherwise non-existent eyebrows with a questionable reddish brown.

In ten minutes a golf cart will arrive to transport Leigh to the gazebo and shortly thereafter I will be expected to follow looking fresh and vivacious—and I have found myself in Cuban drag.

My scalp is screaming. I feel plastered in goo.

I am most struck by the harshness of my eyebrows which have been painted orange and over-arched, giving me the appearance of a surprised clown.

“Okay?” Yurixa says.

“
Gracias… si
, but maybe less here,” I say, tracing the arches. “Not so much here.”

Yurixa nods, glides an applicator in a more naturel pigment and applies another layer of light brown powder to my brows. I fall back in the chair, gaze down upon my hands and admire the smooth white fingertips, the glossy sheen of each nail.
There's no point in putting up a fight
, I think.
The damage is done
.

A grave unimpressed
fellow named Jorge, who will also be one of our witnesses, waits for me in a golf cart that Sussett has decorated with white tulle and colourful balloons. Several of the housekeeping ladies huddle together in the shade across the courtyard, wait for me to appear in my dress. They smile and nod as I step out of my air-conditioned bungalow into the blazing midday heat. Sussett is dressed in her royal blue Occidental Hotel uniform (a knee-length skirt, matching blazer and white blouse), but she has placed a flower behind her ear for the occasion.

“You like the balloons?” she says, as I suck in my gut and slide into the cart.

“
Si…gracias
,” I say.

Jorge nods hello but appears hot and strained in his suit and tie.

Sussett slides in the cart too, and the driver lurches us forward. The maids smile and wave goodbye.

Ciao
, I think.
Adios. Goodbye. Goodbye.

It's only a three-minute drive to the gazebo, but it's so hot out that one by one the balloons pop.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
It's like the shootout at the OK Corral, or gunfire from Guantanamo, a kind of ambush on my wedding day, or bullets zipping across the coral reef all the way from Florida.

Pop! Pop! Yehawwww!

Only one balloon survives.

Rose petals flutter
on the dirt path to the gazebo.

Jorge offers his arm, and I latch onto it, hook myself into it. I find this such a comfort, this strange man's arm, that there is someone here to hang onto on these last steps to matrimony.

A catamaran with orange and pink sails drifts past in the distance.

“You look beautiful,” Leigh says.

“You too,” I say.

He smiles, seems composed, his arms relaxed, hands clasped together in front, but I know he's nervous. The lawyer lady is here too; she has come in from Havana to orchestrate the vows, to declare in Spanish all the legal obligations of Cuban marriages. And Sussett is here, smiling with that flower in her hair.

The lawyer lady proceeds and Sussett translates, struggles with the legal terminology and convoluted sentence clauses, stumbles once, refers to Leigh as someone named Tom, we're not sure why. Everyone laughs, and I say, “I'd like to know who this Tom fellow is.”

The vows come and go without meaning.

I don't care about any of this—these vows, these legalities, this lawyer lady from Havana. I don't believe in marriage anyway. It's the ceremony that has drawn me in, the public declaration of love.

I could not resist the silver sandals with jewelled overlay.

I hear ice cubes clinking in margarita glasses from the beach far away, a blender mixing ice and lime into mojitos, the buzz of electric golf carts cruising up the path, the French Canadian girls in high heels and sparkly bikinis grooving to salsa on the pool deck.