Tomorrow They Will Kiss (18 page)

“Where is your mind tonight?” Imperio said with a giggle.

I slammed the door and practically ran to see my boys. Until tomorrow I was free. I didn’t care how much they pried, I was
not going to turn my personal life—my past, imperfect as it was—into a telenovela for their enjoyment.

My life was mine to live. The answer to Imperio’s impertinent question had been a simple no. Maybe she believed me, maybe
not. For all I knew, and from the glances they exchanged, she and Caridad would later discuss, reinterpret, even cast doubts
on my answer. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that in my heart I knew I would not be writing any letters to Pepe Medina
Ynclán. Particularly now that I’d caught Mr. O’Reilly’s eye. Maybe I’m too romantic, maybe I watch too many telenovelas. Maybe
my mother was right. I didn’t care. Those looks from Mr. O’Reilly made me feel alive again. Suddenly I felt free to dream
again.

And as Esperanza said in the telenovela
Mil Millas Entre Nosotros
(A Million Miles Between Us), what is a woman if not her dreams?

I
was furious.
Furious! After the so- called Triumph of the Revolution, it was as if a plague had swept through Palmagria, taking with it
all the decent women. Caridad was gone, Cuca Soto was gone, Azucena Martínez was gone, and I had not made any new friends.
Por Dios! There was no one to replace them, no one I could trust. Graciela was definitely out of the question. She could rot
in her father’s house for all I cared. She had done it to herself, and now she had to pay the price. If things had been different,
maybe if she hadn’t been so cheap—quién sabe? But the way things were, with that cloud of shame hanging over her, I knew to
keep my distance. It wasn’t just about me, I never much cared what people thought, but I had Mario to consider.

For a time I thought Caridad would return. How long could this son of a bitch in La Habana last? I asked myself. Everyone
was wondering the same—even said as much, after they made sure all the windows and doors were shut.

“The Revolution was a success,” people started saying, “but everything after that has been a complete disaster.”

My husband, Mario, owned a restaurant at the railway station. It did a good business and afforded us a good life. But not
long after the Revolution, the restaurant was nationalized, along with the trains and anything else in Cuba that smelled of
money. No more private enterprise. We didn’t feel we had much of a choice. How did it happen? How did we become like those
unfortunate people that sad and senseless things happen to?

Mario didn’t take it well, to say the least. He’d always liked to drink, but now he felt he had every reason. I didn’t blame
him; he was heartbroken.

“Let’s just wait it out a little,” I told Mario. “Let’s see what happens with this crazy man in La Habana. Por Dios, somebody’s
got to put a bullet between his eyes sooner or later, and then everything will return to normal.”

But while I was waiting for Castro’s assassination, Mario developed a very strange illness. A red rash about two inches wide
erupted on his back and continued spreading until it circled around his chest. But rather than itch, the way rashes do, Mario
screamed that it was tightening, like a belt or a snake. We took him to the doctor, who prescribed useless ointments while
Mario could hardly get out of bed for lack of breath.

I took him to every doctor, looked for every possible explanation. I even took him to a specialist in Yara, who looked him
over and over and could find no explanation.

“This is Santería,” he said, and I just looked at him, wanting to kill him. We had traveled all the way to Yara just to be
told that nonsense.

Finally Mario’s mother, Liliana, insisted that we take him to see El Haitiano, a man from Jacmel who practiced some superior
sort of Santería that was said to be very effective. I had heard about him. Everybody was always talking about El Haitiano
in those days. I was never the kind of woman who believed in Santería or any of that voodoo nonsense. My family always looked
down on that sort of thing, because, truth is, those are the beliefs of the very poor—you know, the same people who play the
lottery. I’m not saying we were wealthy. The restaurant afforded us a comfortable life. I didn’t have to work, I had help
with the house, a girl who came in to clean and do the wash. I was never the kind of person who needed fancy things, but I
could buy what I wanted. We even took vacations to Playa Girón twice a year. And we did it without offerings to the saints
or buying lottery tickets. It just wasn’t in me to believe those sorts of things. We had what we had because of hard work.
Although my mother- in- law would argue that point.

But Mario’s condition got so bad that there were times when I thought he wouldn’t make it through the night. He’d wake up
gasping for breath and would actually roll off the bed. He would lie on the floor, his face turning colors I had never seen
before on a human being, pounding his fists hard on his chest while I desperately tried to help him.

“Mario, por Dios,” I shouted, shaking him. It looked like he was dying. I was not about to let him die and have his mother
giving me the evil eye for the rest of my life.

“An ounce of faith is worth a pound of priests,” Liliana said. To tell you the truth, at that point I was willing to try anything.
Anything!

*

E
L HAITIANO LIVED OUT IN THE COUNTRY,
off the main highway, in an area that couldn’t be reached by car. In fact, there were no roads at all where he lived. We
were told to follow the Aguadulce River to his house. Liliana arranged for a friend, Genarísimo, to drive us to the designated
spot on the highway. But he just left us there, frying in the sun.

“Imperio,” Genarísimo said, “I can’t leave my car here in the middle of nowhere.” I understood. There was a very good chance
that the car could get stolen or gutted for parts. But what was I going to do? Mario could hardly walk. We’d had to carry
him to the car, and even though he had lost a lot of weight, he was still a heavy man.

To my relief a boy of about twelve, pushing a wooden gurney, met us there.

“Are you here to see El Haitiano?” he asked.

We laid Mario down on the gurney and started our bumpy walk though the sweltering foliage. I felt as if we were traveling
deep into the primeval jungle. Even though it was early in the day, the heat was already unbearable. Insects of every shape
and size attacked us. At times the vegetation was so thick that the boy, whose name was Chevy, had to stop and cut through
with a machete.

It was slow going, with Chevy pulling and me pushing over thick roots that grew in the footpath, and then stopping to cut
branches and weeds. There were parts where the soil was wet and soft and the wheels sank in and we had to lift and pull at
the same time. After what seemed like an eternity but if you think about it was probably less than an hour from the highway,
I started to hear the strangest sounds. I immediately wanted to turn around. I stopped.

“Espera,” I said to Chevy. Wait.

I think he could see the fear in my eyes.

“No falta mucho,” he said. We’re almost there.

I looked at Mario, who hadn’t said a word. His chest was heaving as if it wanted to break open. I had come this far, but what
had I been thinking? What had I gotten us into? If Chevy was right, there was no point in turning back. What would I say to
Liliana? I would never hear the end of it. I nodded, and Chevy started pulling again and I, pushing.

Not much later we came to a clearing. All the thickness of the jungle opened up on a small, brown shack surrounded by a wire
fence. The front yard of the shack was a combination of flat dirt and trenches. The trenches were full of brown water. Scattered
around the holes at least a dozen crocodiles seemed to be sleeping.

I remembered Liliana mentioning that El Haitiano worked with their blood. The thought of it disgusted me.

The place had the creepy feeling of an abandoned gypsy camp, a place where anything could happen. Anything! Again, I wanted
to turn right around and take Mario home, but when I looked at him, thin and pale, I knew I had to keep moving forward. I
also remembered I didn’t want to face his mother, who had wanted to come along. She had ranted and raved when we left her
behind. But it had been a good decision not to bring her, or we would have needed two gurneys, one for Mario and one for her.

Liliana had always been a strong, practical woman. She was as firm in her Catholic faith as in her faith in the Santeros.
But she held the love of her country above all else. She believed that Cuba, even with all its problems, was the best possible
place in the world.

“This is the Pearl of the Caribbean,” she liked to say.

I had never heard her say a word against Batista or any of the previous dictators. Of course she had always been well cared
for.

She got to stay home and give money to the Catholic charities and to the Santeros, and left the rest up to God and the saints.

“I have no use for politics,” she’d say. “Machado, Batista, Grau, Prio, Batista again—as long as they leave me alone, it’s
all the same to me.”

Then when Fidel Castro took to the mountains and his face started appearing almost daily in the newspapers, she took a sudden
turn. One afternoon while sitting on the front porch, she pointed at his picture.

“Look at him, Imperio. Doesn’t he remind you of Jesus Christ?”

I will admit that in those days Castro’s face, desiccated by months of starving and marching in the mountains, had the clear-
eyed look of a hermit monk’s. As far as I was concerned, that’s where the similarity ended. But Liliana, driven by a revolutionary
zeal that bordered on lunacy, sold bonds to raise money for the Revolution, an activity that was punishable by firing squad
without trial. Mario had been worried to death, because she kept the illegal bonds in her underwear drawer.

“You’re insane,” Mario told her over and over again. “If they find out, we’re all as good as dead.”

Even I tried to reason with her.

“Por el amor de Dios, Liliana, we could lose everything,” I said. “Everything!”

Liliana would just click her tongue at us and continue out the door to see how many of her friends she could embroil in her
clandestine activities. Even with her legs stiff from arthritis, she’d hobble from door to door and try to get her cronies
involved.

When that son of a bitch in La Habana came down from the mountains in victory, no one was more excited than Liliana. It was
her own personal victory, and she savored it like a juicy mango.

“Didn’t I tell you?” she chirped happily from the wooden rocking chair she kept right next to our radio. She spent all of
her free time sitting on that chair, her back bolstered by a pillow, listening to the speeches of the rebels, as well as to
the trials that were now being broadcast daily.

“He’s a messenger from God, come to save the poor,” she insisted, her eyes glowing with fanaticism. Even when things started
to change for the worse, even after Mario lost the restaurant, she remained strong in her support of the Revolution.

It ate away at me like you wouldn’t believe that she could be so stubborn. She could see as well as any of us that the increasingly
oppressive regime was killing her only son. But she refused to see the connection between Castro’s triumph and Mario’s condition.

“Go to El Haitiano and see what happens” was all she said. She had heard about El Haitiano from one of her church friends
and that was all the proof she needed that the man could work miracles.

*

S
O I FOUND MYSELF
in that bizarre place full of crocodiles in the middle of a swamp with a half- dead man while she sat by the radio, happily
listening to Castro’s latest delusion and congratulating herself on the triumph of the Revolution and worrying her rosary
beads to dust.

I ignored my fears and inched closer to the shack. Suddenly the crocodiles began to crawl toward the shack as if to protect
it. I could hear the chirping sounds of the jungle, the roaring of a river, the wind through the branches of the trees that
surrounded us. In spite of the heat, I felt cold; the sweat that was pouring out of me felt like freezing rain.

“Imperio, take me home,” Mario said. They were the first words he had said since we left. Most of the time he was coming in
and out of consciousness. I could only imagine what he must have felt, lying on that wooden gurney, completely helpless. And
with just me to protect him.

“Tranquilo” was all I could think to say, for my mind was shutting down, my thoughts were coming to me thick and lazy from
exhaustion and fear. I missed Caridad so much. She would have come with me. My mind was so weak that I even wished Graciela
had come with me. That’s how desperate I felt.

After dropping us off and collecting a tip, Chevy had left. I was suddenly aware that I was alone with Mario, who by now was
really of no use at all. The sun began to feel even hotter on my uncovered head, and I felt a strong wave of nausea cloud
my eyes.

Just then the door to the shack opened and a small, brown man with shoulder- length hair, neatly dressed in white, was fearlessly
walking past the crocodiles the way you would walk through a flowering garden.

“Bienvenidos,” he said, with a strange French accent. It was as if he’d been expecting us. The man opened a small gate, walked
up closer, and glanced down at Mario, whose pale face had become flushed and alarmingly red from the heat.

“Don’t worry, brother,” El Haitiano said to Mario in a kind of singsongy voice, patting Mario’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about
anything.”

With that he looked up at me and smiled.

El Haitiano had a kind smile; it made his brown, leathery face crinkle around his eyes, but I had my eyes on the big, ugly
lizards.

“You don’t expect us to go in there,” I said, my voice loud and strong.

“Come with me,” he said. Mario struggled to get up, and El Haitiano helped me get him to his feet. He took hold of Mario from
one side and I from the other. Mario’s back felt unfamiliar. I could feel his bones where there had always been muscles. What
will I do without you? I wondered. I’ll be stuck with that crazy old woman and that voice on the radio.