The Lazarus Rumba (11 page)

“¿Pero estás loca? Say hello at least. Do you think I have forgotten how to care for children?” doña Adela shut the door and smoothed her hair back with both hands, a gesture she often used to express disbelief.

“I just want to see her. Did she miss me? A whole week.”

“She's sleeping in my bed.”

Alicia smiled and headed for her mother's room.

“Don't wake her,” doña Adela called. “She got burned a bit at the beach today. She just fell asleep.”

The child slept on her back, the sheet tossed aside, her pajama top pulled off and held in one hand. The slow rise and fall of her belly measured her quiet sleep. Alicia lay beside her, her head resting close to her daughter's belly. She did not want to wake her but she was not able to resist touching her after so long, gingerly placing her hand on her belly, feeling the heat of her sunburn rising from her like a light fever.

“Did you miss me?” Alicia whispered. “Ven, besa a tu mamá.”

The girl opened her eyes and nudged her mother's face away with the hand that held the pajama top and whimpered that she was burning and just as quickly fell back into her quiet sleep, her belly rising and falling.

Monday Cola

She looked in both refrigerators and there was no milk. She stepped out on the patio and called for her mother, but doña Adela had not yet returned from la bodega.

“Sorry,” she said to her guest. “You'll have to take your coffee black.”

“That's fine, perfectly fine, dear,” Father Gonzalo said. “So tell me, tell me of your trip.”

Alicia scooped two careful teaspoons full of raw sugar into the cafetera and sighed.

“Sabes, their coffee tasted like ink water,” she said. “These miserable folk live right by the largest sugar-producing fields in the world and their coffee goes unsweetened, as if they were saving every little scoopful to be weighed in at the record harvest. ¡Viva Fidel! they seem to be screaming, as they pucker their faces and sip the bitter stuff.” She poured Father Gonzalo a bountiful cup and then herself the little that was left in the cafetera.

“¿Y Adela?” Father Gonzalo asked.

“She'll drink from mine … if she ever shows up.”

Father Gonzalo swirled the coffee and took a long whiff from his cup as if he were taking in sea air. He took two small sips. They were seated at one end of the long kitchen table where Alicia remembered Father Gonzalo spending many a long afternoon with her mother as doña Adela rolled out cookie dough or prepared dinner the nights Julio, the indian cook, was off. Even then, as a little girl, Alicia had made coffee for him. First poured the blond sugar into a measuring cup, then waited till the first thick spurts of coffee dribbled out into the cafetera, and poured out just enough to wet the sugar, barely staining it, and then beat and beat the sugar with a tablespoon till it was a thick caramely foam and the muscle between her thumb and index finger hurt. Only then did she pour the rest of the coffee into the measuring cup (and a touch of boiling milk, which her mother had ready for her), so that the sugary foam was doubly thick on top. “Perfecto, delicioso,” Father Gonzalo always said, taking the first sip so that the foam would stick to his upper lip and he licked it off with his tongue before he smiled. Alicia would then be allowed to have some of the coffee herself and sit for a while with Father Gonzalo and her mother. She tried to remember what Father Gonzalo looked like back then, but she could only see him as she saw him now. Had he not aged, or were her memories of that time simply vanishing, the grievous present like a pool of black oil over the waters of her past? Still the same slicked-back thin black hair, still only slightly balding, still the smooth orange-brown skin that would never wrinkle (when Alicia had asked her mother if Father Gonzalo was an indio, doña Adela had crossed herself and hushed Alicia as if she had just spoken a sin), still the eyes the same color of the sugary foam, the whites mapped with stringy vessels, because as doña Adela told her daughter all of the sins of his congregation were on Father Gonzalo's head and he could not sleep (Alicia forced herself to stay up for two nights in penance for having asked if Father Gonzalo was an indio, pinching herself in the palms of her hands when she got sleepy), and still the stooped shoulders, because—Alicia supposed—the sins of so many weighed heavy on him as well. Maybe Father Gonzalo had not aged because he had looked old ever since Alicia knew him.

“So, tell me,” he said.

“There isn't much to tell,” Alicia said, sipping only a bit of her coffee and putting the rest aside for her mother when she returned. She grimaced. “I don't make it like I used to, eh?”

“It's fine, perfecto, delicioso. At the rectory, Anita makes it so watery that when you add milk it turns the color of old newspapers. I've since stopped adding milk. Who would have guessed it? La Revolución has forced us to drink coffee thinner than the yanquis'!”

“If that were all,” Alicia said and reached for the cup again and sipped some more coffee and dropped her eyes. She had not slept much, worried over her daughter's sunburn, rubbing different lotions from her mother's bath closet on the child every hour or so during the night. By daylight, the girl's skin felt fresh and she awoke without complaining. Alicia ran a cool bath and they bathed together, playing the splashing game for so long that when doña Adela walked into the bathroom and saw the puddles of water on the floor outside of the tub, she rebuked both of them. Alicia complained that her mother's tub wasn't big enough and doña Adela said then go to her own house to make such a mess, as she brought out the mop and started soaking up the water and Alicia said, fine we will and winked at her daughter and wrapped her in a fresh towel, though she was shaking from a fit of giggles and not from the chills.

“Mama's bath is so big, Aunt Marta even jumps in with us sometimes,” the girl said.

Doña Adela ceased her busy mopping when she heard the name of Alicia's half sister, as if she were allowing a phantom to pass through her before she resumed her task.

“Teresita, cállate,” her mother said, and led her away from the bathroom as doña Adela was beginning to go over their bare feet with the mop.

“You're going to ruin that girl by bringing her up so loosely,” doña Adela called to Alicia. “Dress her nice; I'm taking her to morning Mass and then to the market.”

They had only been at the poorly attended Monday morning Mass for the opening minutes, Father Gonzalo said, had left after the Prayer of Contrition, much earlier than other Mondays (they usually left after Communion); Teresita had waved at him on the way out and he waved back from behind the serpentine, marble altar, his dissimulating finger wiggling on the hand he still held to his chest from the last
mea culpa.
Doña Adela took Teresita to the market because she knew what power the girl had over Alfonso, the bodega's manager, how he would call them up from the back of the Monday cola (others lined up from before sunrise) just so he could play with Teresita for a while, how he would stuff one or two more liters of milk in doña Adela's bag than the rations mandated, and a few extra scoops of coffee beans, and three chunks of fresh guava paste, how he would give her the freshest bread and the choicest portions of paticas de puerco, even calling Teresita back behind the butcher counter because he knew how fascinated the girl was with the blood juice and with the cleavers, though they stood far enough from the butchers, Alfonso putting her down and keeping her back so that the blood wouldn't splatter on her white dress. Once he even showed her a freshly gutted pig that was to be prepared for the wedding of a certain elite comandante. “If I'm still around,” Alfonso said to the girl, “you will have a much bigger
machón
than that for your wedding.”

Doña Adela never objected to the old man's increasing infatuation with her granddaughter because she knew it meant her granddaughter would eat better during the week. So every Monday she made sure she took Teresita to morning Mass and then to see Alfonso. She watched them closely but she never interfered with his affections. Though not without reservations, Alicia accepted all this.

“Just keep a good eye on them and make sure the old bastard doesn't get any ideas.”

“Ay Alicia, no seas dramática; he's a good honest man.”

“Keep an eye out anyway. Que al fin y al cabo, he's not one of us.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he's on the inside. It means he fills with pride when you call him compañero. It means you cross him and he'll make sure our ration cards are all used up by the second week of the month.”

“Mija, sometimes I think you should have left this country long ago.”

“We're not talking about this country, we're talking about your granddaughter!”

At this doña Adela said nothing more. And Alicia said nothing when they left for Mass and then the market on Monday mornings, Teresita looking overly angelic in one of her white linen dresses that her grandmother had sewn for her. This Monday they had taken much too long. They had been gone for three hours. Alicia sipped the last of the coffee she had been saving for her mother.

“She'll bring more,” she said.

“Are you going to tell me of your trip or not?”

Alicia was silent. She went for the coffee cup again, knowing there was no coffee in it, and pretended to drink from it, tilting it all the way back so that the grainy sugar syrup touched her lips.

“She'll bring more,” Father Gonzalo said. “Tell me.”

“He's in a camp, like a prisoner of war camp almost, or a labor camp.
They
call it a military camp, but all the conscripts do is work in the fields. I saw him for less than five minutes.”

“Concentration camps, Fidel's enemies call them. Certain pamphlets have passed through the rectory detailing this or that atrocity, especially with cases like Héctor, attempts to cure their sexual deviance. I would be more vocal about it, but it's a difficult subject to approach from the pulpit.”

“He didn't
seem
tortured … seemed almost healthy. That in itself is more frightening than anything, that they make believers out of them, so much so that he is happy there!”

“You should speak at the church about your trip, speak about Héctor.”

“What would that do?”

“I can't do it, but you can.”

“What would it do?”

“It might bring people in, for one! Put some life back into the services.”

“It might also get you arrested,” Alicia said and reached for the empty coffee cup again. “El Rubio has his hackles up.”

Father Gonzalo put both his hands over hers. “You can be the guest homilist. Two Sundays from yesterday,” he said. “It'll give you time to prepare a sermon and me time to get the word out, make sure there are people there to hear it.”

“¿Qué sé yo de sermones?”

She tried to lift the cup to her lips but Father Gonzalo held tight to her hand.

“There is nothing to know. Just say what you saw. Say what you suspect. Say what we all know but are too afraid to tell each other. Do you want to get Héctor out of that camp?”

Alicia thought of Héctor's kisses through the cold fence and tried to convince herself that el Rubio would not dare harm Father Gonzalo. “Yes,” she answered quietly but assuredly, “I want to keep Héctor alive. I want to get him out of there.”

“Then it's set.” Father Gonzalo seemed very pleased. “Two weeks from yesterday. The early afternoon Mass, the one your mother goes to.”

There was a sound towards the front of the house and Alicia went to the kitchen doorway and looked out and turned back into the kitchen and put her index finger to her lips. Father Gonzalo nodded. “I'll talk to her about it later,” Alicia said. Father Gonzalo nodded again.

The girl ran into the kitchen first, ahead of her grandmother. She went to Father Gonzalo's side. The priest lowered his head to her and the girl kissed him on the cheeks.

“We left early,” she said.

“I know,” Father Gonzalo said. “I saw you.”

The girl put out both her arms in front of her and then she pulled down on the collar of her dress. “I'm not burned anymore.”

Father Gonzalo kissed her hands. “Good,” he said.

Doña Adela walked into the kitchen carrying a small bag. She put it down on the table. Beadlets of sweat gathered on her forehead. She took out of the bag one liter of milk, a small bag of coffee beans, a bag of bread rolls, and half a stick of butter.

“You'll talk to me about
what
later?” doña Adela said.

Alicia was silent. She stared at the meager groceries.

“They're out of meat for the month,” doña Adela said. “Alfonso has taken ill. Some woman is in charge of the store for now. ¡Sinvergüenza!”

“Shall I make you some coffee, mamá?”

“No. I'll wait till tonight.”

The girl took one of the bread rolls out of its plastic bag and bit into it. It was crunchy. Doña Adela promised to steam them and rebake them. They all agreed it was the best thing to do. Father Gonzalo soon excused himself. While he was hugging doña Adela he made the victory sign to Alicia with his hand around the old lady's back. The girl, by her mother, mocked him, waving the victory sign back and chanting,
dos dos dos.
Two weeks, Alicia knew. She would start to work on her sermon that night and perhaps pick an appropriate verse from the Gospel for Father Gonzalo to read beforehand.

The Sermon of the Seven Kisses

It was Christmas Eve. It had been over two weeks, in fact well over two months, since Alicia had promised Father Gonzalo to deliver her sermon at his late afternoon Sunday Mass. Now, at Midnight Mass, almost ten weeks late, Alicia was ready, her sermon handwritten on five sheets from her daughter's drawing pad, folded twice and held in her lap as the congregation waited for Father Gonzalo and the celebrants to enter the church. She was seated on the fourth pew from the altar, her mother and daughter beside her, the young girl asleep with her head resting on her grandmother's lap. The church was teeming with people, many faces Alicia did not recognize, out-of-towners certainly. How had they heard? There were even five uniformed soldiers, barbudos, lined up along the back wall beside the life-size porcelain statue of St. Lazarus of the Wounds, their weapons pressed respectfully to their side, their berets tucked neatly in their back pockets. Next to them, his hand wrapped around one of St. Lazarus's lesioned ankles, his black beret disrespectfully covering his blond crown, was Camilo Suarez, the captain of the revolutionary police force, el Rubio. Alicia had seen him conferring with Father Gonzalo out in the courtyard when she arrived, had watched him tie his gray bullmastiff, heretically named Tomás de Aquino, to the left railing of the church steps. She was going to talk to Father Gonzalo before the service, but instead she hurried past them and Father Gonzalo did not try to stop her. Now everyone else tried to ignore the soldiers and the pale police captain. Though the windows were cracked and the ceiling fans were whirring, a dead air inhabited the church and the many people were busy fanning their faces with the available missals or with their fanciest, hand-woven abanicos brought out for this one evening of the year. It was almost midnight. The congregation waited for Father Gonzalo. Alicia passed her hands through her daughter's hair. It was moist with sweat. She opened up the folded sheets of the sermon once and began to fan her. Doña Adela did the same with her missal. The girl turned her head over, wiping her face on her grandmother's lap.