Havana Jazz Club (11 page)

CHAPTER 20

“Fucking son of a bitch!” Armando shouted, slamming his fist into the dining room table with so much force it scared Billie, who was sobbing, huddled in a corner of the sofa. “How can such beasts exist? I’m ashamed to be a man! I swear I’ll kill that bastard with my own hands!”

Armando was pacing around the room, red with rage after hearing Billie explain that the creature she carried in her womb was the fruit of a rape. She couldn’t keep the truth from him. Armando was her friend, and she owed him too much to keep deceiving him. But she hadn’t expected him to be so indignant on her behalf. She hadn’t imagined that so much anger lurked within this kindhearted man.

“Calm down. Please,” Billie begged.

Armando stopped in front of her and took a deep breath. Then he knelt before Billie and took her hands.

“You have to report him, Billie,” he said, softening his voice. “That animal has to pay for what he’s done. He deserves to rot in prison.”

“No, no . . . It won’t do any good to report him. It’s his word against mine, don’t you understand? We were alone in the house. I don’t have a witness. Who’s going to believe me? He’s a powerful man. He has money for the best lawyers. It would be a hopeless battle, and I would be the one to be persecuted in the end.”

“But we can’t let him go unpunished,” Armando insisted. “Maybe I don’t have as much money as he does, but I’ll happily use everything I have to put that vermin behind bars. I have powerful friends too. This is very serious, Billie. That son of a bitch has to pay for what he did. He’ll do the same to other girls if nobody stops him.”

“Someone will, Armando. I’m sure of it,” Billie assured him, reaching the limits of her strength. “Someone who’s in a less precarious situation than I am, who has family to support and protect her. Don’t ask me to do it, please. I have enough problems. I just want to put it all behind me. I want to be able to live in peace for once.”

A sob broke through her words, and Armando wrapped his arms around her in an effort to console her.

“It’s okay, little one. It’s okay. We’ll drop it. What we need to do now is find a solution. I assume you don’t want to have it . . .”

“What do you mean?” Billie asked, pulling away from him and looking at him with alarm.

“Well . . . given the circumstances, you’re not obligated to . . . I mean there are ways of resolving it.”

“Are you talking about abortion?”

“Only if you want to,” Armando mumbled, intimidated by Billie’s reproving look.

“I would never do such a thing,” Billie said, looking at her stomach and covering it with her hand. “This creature isn’t guilty of anything. I would never forgive myself if I harmed it in any way.”

“Nobody would blame you, Billie,” Armando said. “It’s the result of a terrible crime. Every time you look at it, you’ll be reminded of what happened.”

Billie shook her head fiercely, and a light smile came to her lips.

“Just the opposite,” she said with resolve. “It will help me to forget.”

Armando smiled, stroked the girl’s hair, and kissed her forehead.

“You’re very brave, Billie, but think about it before you make a decision. You still have some time. And whatever you decide, rest assured that it will be fine with me. You’ll have me by your side for whatever help you need.”

“I know,” Billie said, and kissed him tenderly on the cheek.

From that day on, it was as if the act of sharing her dreadful secret had liberated her from a heavy weight. Unleashing everything that she had held inside since that terrible night redeemed her, and Billie started to feel better, both physically and emotionally. The nausea disappeared, and she felt healthier and looked better. The responsibility of bringing a new life into the world and caring for it gave her a new sense of serenity, and her life entered a period of peace.

Armando, infected by Billie’s state of grace, grew more excited every day about the baby’s imminent arrival and acted as if it were his own child. In fact, everyone who met them assumed that he was the father and that Billie was his wife.

“You rascal! You’ve kept it pretty quiet!” a friend said to him, winking and slapping him on the back. Then he lowered his voice to add in a confidential tone, “And what a babe! If I may say so . . .”

Armando smiled, neither denying nor confirming his friend’s remark, and looked at Billie, who also smiled complicitly. Who cared what the truth was?

Armando had asked Billie to divorce Orlando and marry him. He wanted to be the child’s true father, for it to have his last name, and for the three of them to be a real family. But Billie refused. She said that he deserved better, that one day he would find someone who would truly love him. She loved him, of course, in her way. She felt great affection for him, and she would never be able to thank him enough for everything he had done, but she didn’t love him the way he deserved to be. She would never be able to be a true wife.

“I’m not asking you to be, Billie,” he argued. “There’s no reason for it to be a marriage . . . with all the consequences. I’m twenty years older than you, and I’m a fat, repulsive old man. I know that. All I want is to take care of you, of both of you.”

“I don’t like it when you talk like that, Armando,” Billie said, growing angry. “You’re not old or repulsive, and I’m sure that when you least expect it, a woman will appear in your life who knows how to appreciate the person you are and will love you the way you are meant to be loved.”

“I very much doubt that will ever happen,” he replied, with a bitter smile. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll reluctantly accept having you and the little one nearby and letting me watch over you. That alone will make me happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life. I feel like I have a family now, someone to take care of who needs me, and that’s enough for me.”

“You’ll always have us at your side, Armando. I promise you.”

Still, Billie wanted to work to raise the child herself and to have her own house, and she communicated this to him. Armando suggested she wait until the baby was born, but she wanted to offer it a home of her own.

“Armando, please don’t think I’m ungrateful. I’ll never forget all that you’ve done for me,” she said firmly. “I love you so much, and you’ll always have an unconditional friend in me, but I need to take charge of my life and my child’s. We can’t always depend on you or live at your expense.”

Armando very reluctantly accepted Billie’s point of view and began looking for a small apartment near his house. He used his contacts to get her the necessary documents, and once that had been sorted out, he offered her the opportunity to sing in the club and act as master of ceremonies, introducing the bands. But Billie wanted to do more than that and made every effort to help him however she could at the club. She took charge of meeting the suppliers in the morning and made sure everything was ready in the afternoon when the first clients started to drift in. She didn’t want Armando to pay her a salary just for singing a few songs—as he tried to do—and then send her home on the pretext that the place was filling up with people and the cigarette smoke could endanger the baby’s health.

“This is no place for a pregnant woman,” Armando would say, not without reason, she knew. To make her feel better, he’d add, “When the child is born, you’ll be the star of the Dixieland, I promise.”

At that point, the idea of becoming a big singer didn’t matter much to Billie. That dream had died along with her innocence. Circumstances had forced her to grow up quickly and take on new responsibilities. But Armando was right: she should do what was best for the child. So she went home, obediently, whenever he suggested it.

Though they didn’t live together, Billie still did the daily shopping and made dinner for both of them at Armando’s apartment. She was convinced that the reason he weighed so much was that he didn’t take good care of himself. She made him go to the doctor to come up with an appropriate diet and took charge of following it scrupulously, despite his weak protests. Though he complained about hunger and the long walks she forced him into, Armando was charmed to have someone worry about him and care for him with the dedication and affection Billie did. It didn’t take long for them to start to notice the effects of the effort and start an inside joke about the physical changes they were both undergoing: as Billie’s body got rounder, Armando’s began to look healthier and younger.

Once Billie had regained her serenity, she decided it was time to write to her parents. She felt terribly guilty about the worry she must have caused them by going so long without news of hers.

Even now, it was difficult to face the blank page and have to keep lying. She hated doing it, but she couldn’t tell them the truth—that she had left her husband and was going to have a baby alone. They would never understand.

Dearest Parents,

I must begin by asking you to forgive me for such a long silence. I know it must have caused you tremendous worry. I hope you will pardon me, and I hope with all my heart that this letter finds you all well, as we are.

There have been a few changes in our life. Don’t worry. Nothing bad has happened. Just the opposite in fact. We’ve moved to Barcelona, a beautiful city in northern Spain that is next to the sea, like Havana. It even seems a tiny bit like Havana—at least I like to think so—and that fills me with happiness and makes me feel a little closer to you all, as if I could stretch my hand out over the waves and touch the tips of your fingers.

I know that Cuba is very far away, on the other side of the world, but the sea is the same everywhere. It is always
Yemayá
, the great universal mother, lady of the sea and the moon. Sometimes I dream that the goddess has her seven blue-and-white skirts and that you’re all on one side and I’m on the other, and we start to walk over them until we meet and hug. That’s my greatest wish.

I promise I won’t take so long to write to you again, and I’ll tell you more about Barcelona and our life here then. But know that we’re both well and we have good jobs. Don’t worry about us. I ask your forgiveness again, and I hope you weren’t too worried.

A big hug and all my love,

Billie

So many lies! It was so painful, faking a happiness that was so different from how she felt. She would have liked to tell them she was expecting a child, that they were going to be grandparents. Her father would surely have burst into tears at the news, and Celia would have wanted to come to take care of her and the baby when it was born. And her brothers would spoil him if they could; they would wind him up and want to instruct him on the facts of life from the crib, and she would have to scold them constantly . . . She hoped she’d be able to. She wanted to be near them to share this moment that would be such a source of joy to all of them. She wanted her child to feel the heat of her family’s love. Instead, he would be born very far away and would only have her.

She would have liked to confess to her parents that she had separated from Orlando, to tell her mother that her intuition had been spot on, as usual. Celia had always been a bit of a witch, Billie said to herself, smiling tenderly. She should apologize to her mother for having closed her eyes and ears to her mute warnings and getting irritated with her for the slightest insinuation. But, what smitten young girl listens to any voice but her heart? She knew her mother would understand.

She would have liked to tell them that her greatest desire was to be near them, for them to be able to hug their grandchild and have him grow up near them, that she would do everything in her power to make that happen. But she was no longer sure that dream could become reality as soon as she had hoped. She wasn’t alone anymore. She had to think about her little one, and she knew that life in Cuba was difficult. She would have to do what was best for her child.

The thought made her sad. Until that moment, it hadn’t even crossed her mind that she might never return to her beloved island, that she might never see her family again.

CHAPTER 21

Billie named her son Nicolás, after her father. She had somehow always known it would be a boy, had never given any thought to what she would name a girl.

Nicolás was born strong and healthy, with skin the color of toasted cinnamon, like Billie’s, and his mother’s enormous black eyes. The fine black fuzz on his head made it clear that in time he would have thick, curly, raven-colored hair. He was a beautiful boy bursting with grace and kindness, and he rewarded everyone who looked at him with a radiant smile. Whenever Billie went out to stroll with her baby, passersby stopped to admire him. Billie brimmed with pride.

As soon as she held her son in her arms for the first time, Billie understood that she had no right to hide his existence from her family. She wanted to share her happiness with them. She had decided to bury the terrible memory of his conception in the darkest, most remote corner of her brain. Some mysterious trapdoor in her brain enabled her to convince herself—and her family—that Orlando was Nicolás’s father. For the time being, it didn’t seem necessary to tell her parents that they weren’t together anymore. In time, she would tell them their lives had taken different paths.

She knew that their joy at learning of the arrival of the newest member of the family would be somewhat dimmed by the sadness of their being so far away. She knew they would want him to grow up around them. They would want to watch him run around, hear his infant laugh, and follow his progress day by day. But Billie would promise her parents that she would write to them all the time and tell them about every detail in Nicolás’s life. She would take lots of photographs of the little one and send them in her letters so they could see him grow up just as if he were sharing his life with them.

She would also speak to Nicolás all the time about his family in Cuba so that he would feel closer to them, know that he was part of a large family, and grow up feeling their presence even from afar. She put photos of all of them next to his crib, and every morning, first thing, they both said good morning to Grandfather Nicolás, who was a bit of a grouch but the best man in the world; to Grandmother Celia, so sweet and a little bossy, but clearly also the pillar that held the whole family up; to Uncle Eduardo, so serious and responsible, and to Uncle Rubén, who was the opposite of his older brother and the kindest and silliest in the family.

Billie felt much better after writing to her parents about Nicolás’s birth. She felt liberated from the weight of the secret and the sense of guilt and betrayal she had felt toward those beings she loved so much and who trusted in her blindly. She felt less alone too. It was as if she had built a bridge between her son and her far-off family, and it was giving her the strength she would need to raise her boy. She knew that her mother would overwhelm her with advice and that she could turn to her when she needed help.

Her mother did not waste any time writing back. In her letter, Celia relayed the delight of the whole family and sent congratulations from friends and neighbors. She wrote that she always had pictures of Nicolás with her and that she showed them proudly to everyone who crossed her path. Her father had become very emotional upon learning that he was a grandfather and that his grandson bore his name. His health had been delicate for some time, Billie already knew, but the news seemed to have lifted his spirits and he was looking much better. When he had recovered, he wanted the whole family to travel to Spain to meet the newest member of the clan. Or maybe Billie and her son could come to Cuba to visit them. Celia lamented that he didn’t realize how difficult it was to get on or off the island in those days.

Billie burst into tears when she read those words. Her father clearly still believed in the paradise that had been promised so many years before and didn’t seem to grasp the truth about life in Cuba. Rubén, however, had gotten it into his head that he wanted to immigrate to the United States, no matter the risk. He wanted to settle in Miami where many of his friends lived. Billie already knew what her brother was like, Celia wrote. He had always been stubborn and nothing would stop him from getting what he wanted. Though she tried to dissuade him—it was still dangerous to try to leave the island via any of the precarious methods available, and even worse, he could be arrested if he were discovered—she knew that sooner or later her son would leave, and she wasn’t going to be able to stop him. Rubén was a good boy, she continued, but he had always been a constant source of worry for her. In any case, the family was disintegrating, Celia lamented. She and Billie’s father were going to be very lonely after having brought three children into the world and dreaming of a sweet old age surrounded by their grandchildren. But that was life, and she had to accept it as it was. The circumstances were what they were, and her children had the right to lead their own lives as they saw fit. At least Eduardo was staying. He had a very pretty new girlfriend, and they were thinking about getting married soon. Her eldest son seemed satisfied with the life he had been given and had no intention of going elsewhere.

Her greatest desire, Celia continued, was for Billie, her husband, and her son to return to Cuba, but she understood that it was very difficult for them to do so just then. If things were going well in Spain, she and Orlando wouldn’t even be considering coming home, she imagined, especially now that they had a son to think about. “Don’t rush, sweetheart. I know that one day we’ll all be together again. I ask Our Lady of Charity every day.”

As promised, Billie got in the habit of writing to her parents regularly. She sent them photos all the time and told them stories about her son’s progress. As he grew, Nicolás was becoming more and more restless and cheeky—he was like Rubén that way, Billie joked. She was exhausted from having to stay vigilant, fetching her son down from the canopy of a tree or the part of the swing he wasn’t supposed to climb on. But he was also sweet and funny, had a good appetite, and slept through the night like an angel.

In school, the boy soon revealed a certain tendency to bend the rules or just outright break them, but his kindness and natural humor charmed his teachers, who usually let his mischief go unpunished. They nonetheless had had to call Billie more than once because one of the boy’s shenanigans had crossed the fine line that separated a simple prank from a thoughtless act that could put his own physical safety, or that of his classmates, in danger.

As the years passed, he grew increasingly bold. He exceled at inventing exciting games that always pushed the boundaries of the forbidden and gathered a cohort of followers who admired his courage. The boy never wanted to disappoint them even if it meant getting in a fight. But he never had to look too far for those, as his anger spiked whenever some classmate he didn’t get along with objected to the smallest provocation.

Billie was worried about her son’s aggressive tendencies, which could eventually have very serious consequences if they weren’t addressed. They had said as much at school. Billie knew that Nicolás had a good heart and was a sensitive and affectionate boy, so she tried to make him understand that this violent behavior was inappropriate and repugnant to her. He needed to try to control his impulses for his own good.

“Nicolás, why did you get into a fight at school today?” she asked him.

“Because Andres called me black.”

“Well, that’s not an insult. There’s nothing wrong with being black,” Billie said, albeit without much conviction. She was well aware of how cruel children could be to those who were different.

“But I’m not black! And I don’t want anyone to call me that!” Nicolás protested.

“Of course you’re not, sweetie,” Billie tried to explain. “You have darker skin than your classmates because your mama is from Cuba. Lots of people there have the same color skin as you. Your grandmother Celia, for example, and your uncles.”

“I know, Mama, but I’m the only one here, and that’s why the boys pick on me.”

“Well, just don’t pay attention to them. If they see that you don’t care, they’ll leave you alone. You have to be proud of who you are and where you came from.”

Billie realized that such arguments weren’t any great consolation to an eight-year-old boy being confronted by his classmates in the schoolyard, but what else could she say? She felt helpless in the face of people’s cruelty—that of both children and adults.

“Listen, Mama,” Nicolás said, after a few thoughtful, silent seconds. “If I scrub really hard with the sponge in the bath, will I turn white like the other kids?”

“No, my love. This is the color of your skin, and it can’t change.”

“Well, I don’t want to be different from the rest of the kids,” he insisted. “Why don’t we move to Cuba then?”

“One day, sweet pea, one day.”

She hugged her son, suddenly propelled by a desire to abandon everything and return to her country. She had no doubt that Armando would help her if she decided to leave. But her own mother dispelled the idea whenever she mentioned it. They wanted nothing more than to have them near, she said, but things were very complicated on the island. It was better to wait a little longer.

Billie regretted being
unable to liberate her son from bitter and undeserved rejection. She would have liked to be able to do more than console him when he felt wounded and show him how to be strong and composed. As she reflected on her life in Spain, she realized that she had never felt looked down on for the color of her skin. She had gotten an occasional impertinent look, but those didn’t bother her much. Adults, she thought, knew how to hide their prejudices—if they had them—even if they were just being polite. But children hadn’t acquired that habit yet and weren’t conscious of the pain they could cause. She trusted that her son would eventually learn to accept his skin color and wouldn’t be offended by allusions to it. In time, he would be treated with the consideration and respect he deserved.