Tomorrow They Will Kiss (25 page)

“Raquel told me,” Graciela said as soon as we stepped inside. “I’ve been on the telephone with Berta’s family. You know how
it is, it takes all night to place a call to Cuba.”

“What family?” Caridad and I asked at the same time.

“Her family in Formento,” Graciela said.

Caridad went into the kitchen and got café for both of us. Graciela chattered on about how at the hospital Berta had given
her all sorts of instructions and information.

“She knew she didn’t have much time left,” Graciela said. “She had a vision.”

Dios Santo. A vision. And she tells all this to Graciela but purposely leaves me and Caridad in the dark. It just didn’t seem
possible.

“If Berta knew she was dying,” I asked, “why didn’t she tell us? We were the ones at the hospital every damn day.”

If Berta hadn’t been dead already, I would have strangled her, I was so angry. Now I was furious with Graciela, and with good
reason. I gulped down the tiny cup of café.

“If Berta told you she knew she was dying,” I said, “why the hell did you disappear for the weekend?”

Graciela took the empty coffee cup from my hand and went to the kitchen sink. We followed.

Graciela kept her back to us. She washed that little cup so thoroughly I thought she was going to rub off the paint.

“She told me to go,” Graciela said. “I told her I had planned a camping trip, that I had the feeling Barry was going to propose,
and she said to go, that the visions had told her it wouldn’t be for a few days. I knew she was ill, but I’ve also seen her
be ill before, and I’ve seen her come back from it like nothing happened. So I don’t understand why you’re so upset, Imperio.
It was a simple miscalculation.”

“Did that man propose to you?” Caridad asked. Personally, at that moment, I couldn’t have cared less. I was growing more and
more furious with Berta, dead or not.

“I don’t want to talk about that now,” Graciela said, and walked past us and into the living room. Again we followed.

“So he didn’t,” I said. And from the way she held her jaw and her head bent down just a little, I knew I’d hit my target.
That man, I was convinced, was never going to marry her. Never!

Graciela couldn’t understand why we were so upset. Of course, Graciela can never understand lo que no le conviene, what she
doesn’t want to understand. She was talking about Berta’s visions and marriage proposals just to confuse us. Berta didn’t
have any visions. Of that I was convinced. Graciela went camping because Graciela always does lo que le sale—whatever she
wants.

“We talked to her son, and it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done,” Caridad said. “He’s washing his hands of the whole thing.”

“In Maracaibo,” Graciela said, as if this was a commonly known fact.

“Yes,” I said. “Por Dios, that son of Berta’s is a cold bastard. Cold! Good thing Caridad grabbed the telephone, or he would
have gotten an earful from me.”

“Did he tell you what she wanted?” Graciela asked. “Did Eladio tell you about the arrangement?”

She knew his name! Graciela said “arrangement” slowly, savoring each letter in her mouth. We just looked at her, because from
her tone we knew something was coming. And she took her time, took her long sweet time, and we were not about to beg her for
an answer.

“Eladio did not mention any arrangements,” I said.

“Well, maybe he doesn’t know,” Graciela said. “He’s been feuding with Berta because she refused to go live with him in the
oil fields. I don’t know how often they talked or how often they wrote to each other. Berta wanted him to come here and bring
the grandchildren, but Eladio kept saying he didn’t want to arrive in this country without any money, so he stayed there,
where he could make a comfortable living, and I guess the years passed and he got used to it. You know how it is. But Berta
suffered because of it. She only met one of her seven grandchildren. You know what Raquel always says: ‘In Cuba, families
stay together.’ Well, not anymore, as we all know too well. I mean, look at us.”

And when Graciela said “look at us,” her eyes welled up and we could tell she was on the edge of a big scene. It was suddenly
going to be all about Graciela, her loss, her grief, how hard she was taking this, and how lonely and far from her loved ones
she was. As if we didn’t know she couldn’t wait to get as far away from her family as she could. As if we didn’t know that
she never writes to her family, that they haven’t seen a picture of the boys in a very long time, if ever.

I could almost see the curtain going up on the theatrical stage that has always been Graciela’s life.

Caridad had had enough. I could see all that ladylike patience of hers coming to an end.

“What did she want, Graciela?” she said firmly.

“She wanted her body shipped back to Cuba,” Graciela said. “She doesn’t want to be in New Jersey for all eternity.”

I didn’t have to think about it twice.

“Por Dios, it must have been the fever,” I said. “She’s lived here most of her life.”

“Imagínate,” Caridad said, a hand over her mouth.

“Was she out of her mind?” I asked. “Por Dios, Graciela, was she delirious? What exactly did she say?”

“Just what I told you, that she didn’t want to spend eternity here. That she had already been here too long. Those were her
exact words, may she rest in peace. I guess she never mentioned it to you. I guess you didn’t know.”

Apparently there was a lot we didn’t know. For one thing, we didn’t know that Berta and Graciela were so incredibly chummy,
that they were practically comadres.

“But not so chummy,” Caridad later said, in her slow, measured tone, “that Graciela didn’t strap on a backpack and leave her
friend’s deathbed to go frolic in the woods with that man.”

The clear and senseless selfishness of it all came to light when Graciela reached into a drawer and took out the letter. We
had no idea that Berta had given Graciela written instructions, which she was only too happy to wave in our faces. The letter
was addressed to Graciela, handwritten and signed by la difunta herself.

“
Mi Queridísima Amiga Graciela
. . .” it started. My dearest friend. Singular. So there was no mistaking that this letter was intended for Graciela and
no one else. What about us? We were the ones at her side almost to the moment when she took her last breath. And then it went
on about the evenings they had spent together and what an alivio those times had been for her. A comfort!

“What is this, about the evenings she spent with you?”

Graciela took the letter from me and looked at it as if seeing it for the first time, as if she’d missed that part.

“She came here to watch the telenovelas sometimes,” she said, her eyes welling up again.

“What’s sometimes, Graciela?” I asked.

“I don’t know, two, three times a week.”

“Imagínate,” Caridad said. “I had no idea.”

Suddenly it was clear to me.

“Did Berta cook for you?” I asked.

“Sometimes, whenever she felt like it. She said that she hated cooking just for herself. It was mostly on nights when I had
school.”

So that’s where all those leftovers came from that Graciela was so generously offering to Raquel. What a little conspiracy
the two had going. With Berta cooking for Graciela, and Graciela giving the front seat in the van to Berta, and both of them
quiet like little mice about the whole thing.

“You let that old lady come here after dark?” Caridad said.

“Whenever she could get a ride. Or Ernestico would help her—it’s only two blocks,” Graciela said without a note of apology.
As if it was the most normal thing in the world to send your son out at night in Union City with an old woman and let him
walk the streets alone.

The rest of the letter was about Berta’s money, which apparently she had plenty of, in a savings account.

“She saved whatever Eladio sent her from Maracaibo because she didn’t want to be a burden to him when this happened,” Graciela
said.

“He sent her money?” I said. “No wonder he sounded so upset this morning.”

The letter went on, very specifically, about how the money was to be used to buy a coffin and to send her body back to Cuba
in the event of her death. She even had the name of a mortuary in Miami that specialized in that morbid business of transporting
bodies from one country to another.

I stood up and looked Graciela in the eye, practically backing her into a wall. I saw Caridad’s eyes grow wide, as if expecting
me to grab Graciela by the hair and pull her to the ground. Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind.

“You realize this is crazy,” I said, almost spitting in her face. “Don’t you? You know what they do, don’t you? The government
steals the coffins and throws the bodies into wooden crates so they can use the fancy American coffins when one of Castro’s
cronies dies. You know that, don’t you? She can rest right here in Union City. What difference does it make now? Just because
Berta went a little crazy from her illness doesn’t mean we have to carry out this crazy wish of hers.”

“Not us, me,” Graciela said. She slapped her chest with her hand, but it felt like a slap in my face. She was trying to squeeze
us out, take it all for herself. Graciela the hero, Graciela the saint.

“Look,” she said, a little softer. “I know you loved Berta, we all did. I need your help and your support, but what Berta
wanted is what she’s going to get. I don’t care what I have to do to get her back there. I’ve already talked to her family
in Formento, and we’re all in agreement. They have a family plot there, and that’s where she should go. Not here all by herself
in this cold, foreign ground. She’ll be miserable here. Her spirit won’t get any rest.”

And then she stopped, bit her lips as if to keep them from trembling, and said, “Por favor, don’t fight me on this.”

I looked at Caridad, who only shrugged helplessly. We had no way of knowing if Graciela was telling the truth about a family
plot in Formento. And we couldn’t prove that she was lying either. She had to have been, of that we were convinced. But no
one could stop Graciela once she set her mind on something. Por Dios, shipping a body back to Cuba! We had seen bodies in
the news being shipped back to America from Vietnam. Coffins covered with the American flag and filled with men hardly old
enough to shave. Is that where Berta got her crazy idea? Should we cover Berta’s coffin with the Cuban flag? Or would that
be just a little too much? One thing was certain, Graciela was determined to send Berta back and there appeared to be nothing
we could say or do to stop her.

*

F
ORTUNATELY, GRACIELA WAS ABLE TO TALK
to Mr. O’Reilly and get us excused from work. Dios mío, what Berta put us through that week. She had been very little trouble
in life, but in death, she was nothing but. I don’t know where Berta got her information, but there was no such thing as sending
bodies to Cuba. The place in Miami did not exist. A child answered the phone and told Graciela that his parents were not home.

“What kind of a funeral home is that,” I asked, “that has children answering the telephone?”

“Are you sure you dialed right?” Caridad asked.

Graciela tried calling again later while we stood around her like idiots, a coffee cup in one hand and a mentholated cigarette
in the other, our hearts pounding with anticipation. We wanted Graciela to fail. We wanted her to give up, and put Berta in
the ground, in New Jersey, where she belonged. At first there was no answer, the telephone just rang and rang. Graciela avoided
our eyes, the receiver to her ear for an eternity. An eternity!

And then finally someone answered. Graciela spoke in English, holding the telephone firmly, using a professional tone of voice
I had never heard before.

“Good evening,” she said. “We are calling to arrange the shipment of a body to Havana.”

From the frown on her face we could tell what she was getting from the other end of the line was not good.

“I knew it,” Caridad said as soon as Graciela hung up.

“Didn’t I tell you this was crazy?” I said, and meant it. “Piénsalo bien, Graciela. Berta was not in her right mind when she
wrote that letter.”

But Graciela would not listen to me.

“I don’t know why you keep saying that,” Graciela said, with no small amount of irritation in her voice. “Berta never seemed
crazy to me. Certainly not any crazier than anyone else I know.”

In the silence that followed, she looked at me, and then at Caridad, and I can’t speak for Caridad, but I felt insulted.

“Bueno, that’s that, there’s nothing else we can —” I said, but didn’t get to finish.

“We’ll have her cremated and send the ashes by mail!” Graciela said as if it was the most brilliant idea anyone had ever had.

As much as we tried to talk her out of that absolutely insane plan, Graciela forged ahead. It was as if Berta’s body now belonged
exclusively to her and she could do whatever she wanted.

Exactly two days later, Berta was delivered to us in a waxy box. That was it. All that life, all that pain, all those men,
all that dancing, was burned down to a box of ashes. I didn’t want to touch it, not that Graciela would have let me. She took
possession of that box and carried it around ceremoniously, like it had the crown jewels in it, her face flushed with a look
of accomplishment, even excitement. Gone was the sad, worried look of the past two days. Graciela had set her grief aside
so that she could properly carry out Berta’s wishes and claim victory over common sense. Por Dios, it was almost as if she
was happy to do it. Happy.

Graciela had a crazy plan. She had scissors, string, boxes, tape, and plastic bags all set out on her kitchen counter. We
reluctantly sat at her kitchen table and helped her distribute the ashes into four clear plastic bags. Graciela used a soupspoon
while we took turns holding the bags. It was like dismembering a person. For all I knew, her face was with her feet—the thought
of it made me queasy. The air in the room filled up with Berta’s dust. We were breathing her in, and Caridad sneezed so many
times she had to go sit in the living room. I stayed and helped Graciela place the plastic bags in small boxes. We taped them
shut, wrapped them with string, and addressed them all to Berta’s aunt, a certain Niurca Gómez Castillo, in Formento.