Tomorrow They Will Kiss (11 page)

Right after her inventory, my friend Cuca Soto had been so nervous that we took her to Graciela’s to get her nails done, hoping
it would calm her down. But her hand was shaking so much that Imperio had to go first. Cuca sat in a chair far from any door
or window to the street.

“When I first went in to file, they treated me like I was trash,” she said. “The immigration officials looked at me—and all
the others in line—as if we were the worst people in the world. They made it seem like leaving the country was the same as
abandoning a baby at the church. They didn’t try to talk me out of it, but I could feel it in my bones that from that moment
on, I was despicable in their eyes.”

As soon as the application was filed, three military guards showed up at her doorstep with a pad in carbon triplicate.

“They took the whole day to count and write down every piece of silverware, every ashtray, every cup and saucer, every item
of clothing. All of our shoes,” she said.

“Some people smuggle as much as they can out of the house before filing their application,” Imperio said.

“Yes,” Cuca said, “but if they get caught they void everything. I couldn’t risk that.”

Even houses with children, where items are always breaking or disappearing, had to account for everything before they were
allowed to leave. The process was not just time- consuming but humiliating too.

Poor Cuca Soto, a common housewife who’d never had anything to do with the military before and had never expected to, walked
around nervously opening and closing drawers for men in big black boots and olive green uniforms, men she had never seen before.
She showed them her closets and cupboards, let them look through her most private belongings.

“Halfway through the day,” Cuca said, “they wanted almuerzo, so I had to treat them to food as if they were guests. They sat
at my dining room table, eating and chatting like they were friends of mine doing me a favor.”

Once they were gone with their long list, Cuca would spend the next few months—she was lucky, others spent years—worrying
and wondering what would happen if something went missing on the day the visa finally arrived. Because everyone knew that
everything on the list had to be accounted for before they could leave the country. Once their possessions had been inventoried,
they belonged to the state, and heaven help anyone who tried to sell or give anything away.

Even Graciela, whose head was always in the clouds, stopped what she was doing and paid attention. Her little brush stopped
in midair and dripped onto the tabletop.

We had already heard horror stories about families whose visa had been denied because the exit inventory did not match the
original. I had seen desperate people running around the neighborhood begging and borrowing items from friends to replace
lost or broken ones.

“It’s a blatant invasion of our privacy,” Imperio said over and over, while Graciela quietly clipped her cuticles. “Por Dios,
why doesn’t someone stand up to them?”

“Some people complained,” Cuca said. “But their paperwork disappeared, and now they’re stuck and outcast, neither here nor
there. I’m keeping my mouth shut and my bags packed.”

The people whose paperwork “disappeared” were the first people to take one- way midnight boat rides. Before long, everyone
stopped complaining. Just like Cuca said. You filed for your exit visa and kept very, very quiet.

I agreed with Imperio. It was an invasion of privacy. As soon as those military guards showed up at someone’s front door,
all their neighbors immediately knew that that family was planning to leave the country, and from then on they became, depending
on who you talked to, “one of us” or “one of them.”

The adults in the family lost their jobs, and the vultures starting circling their house. Admitting that you wanted to go
into exile was the same as admitting that you were a traitor to the Revolution. You were excommunicated from your country.
No longer a Cuban citizen, you were more like a slimy worm inching toward hell. You waited for that visa and tried to survive
as best as you could.

Cuca was understandably terrified. It could take years for the visa to arrive. During this time, it was almost guaranteed
that her money would run out completely. That she would go into a severe panic every time one of the kids accidentally broke
a dish that had been inventoried. That the kids would suffer insults and physical violence at school and everywhere they went.

In Palmagria, when the visa finally came, it was in the form of a telegram. Not brought by the same mailman who always delivered
telegrams, letters, and packages, but by a special messenger appointed by the state. In Palmagria, this man was Pepe Medina
Ynclán, who had been a nobody but had somehow managed to get promoted after the Revolution.

“I wonder how many ‘comrades’ he stabbed in the back to make that jump,” Imperio said.

I couldn’t begin to imagine.

*

P
EPE MEDINA YNCLÁN SAILED AROUND PALMAGRIA
on an old black bicycle with a worn leather sack attached to the handlebars. He was the most detested and the most desired
man in town. It didn’t hurt that he had beautiful green eyes that ate you up when he looked at you. In a country of brown-
eyed men, green eyes—or the even rarer blue—were considered a delicacy. Pepe was handsome, single, and rabidly committed to
the Revolution. Like so many of the young men in our town, Pepe had gone up to the mountains to fight. It was completely unexpected,
because when he was younger he never showed any heroic tendencies. If he did, I never saw them. He hadn’t been a particularly
brilliant student or athlete, and after we all finished school, he didn’t find a profession that suited him. He was at every
dance, or loitering outside of a bar, whistling at girls. Something happened up there in those mountains, because when he
returned he was much more of a man. Clearly there had been a transformation, but the real difference between Pepe and those
other young men from Palmagria who went up to the mountains is that he managed to come back alive.

Now Pepe, with his bright eyes and powerful job, was fast becoming the most famous man in town. Imagínate! Of all the men
in Palmagria, this is the one Graciela decided to have her scandalous affair with.

“How did Graciela manage to have romantic relations with Pepe under our very noses? Our noses!” Imperio asked over and over.
It seemed impossible. Insane. But the rumor was too powerful, and there was no use denying it. No one knew who started it,
who first saw them together, how it happened, but once people started talking, there was no way to stop them. The rumor grew
and grew, passed from lip to ear until it was all anyone could talk about. It was very sad.

“There we sat week after week,” Imperio said, “our hands in hers, our trust in her, our friendship growing, or so we thought.
She unforgivably fooled us all.”

Now everyone in Palmagria, and as far away as Palmas Altas, Palma Soriano, Las Palmas, knew about their forbidden romance
as sure as if Pepe himself had delivered a telegram to each house in town divulging the information, confirming it in writing.
Looking back, no one really remembered ever seeing them together or seeing his bicycle parked outside her house. When was
Graciela ever alone? Either she was with her kids or we were there getting our nails done. Or just visiting. It was the perfect
place to spend an afternoon. When did it happen? How?

While Mario was away at his cousin’s, I visited Imperio every day.

“The idea must have hit Ernesto like lightning, no?” I said as Imperio made café the way she liked it, using one of Mario’s
old socks for a filter. “Because right after he signed his name at the bottom of each form, one for his Graciela and one for
each of his sons, he went home, packed her up, and the kids too, and walked them, in daylight, back to her father’s house.”

“Dios Santo, in daylight,” Imperio said. I couldn’t help noticing the little smile that curved her lips.

Imperio had not been at her window that day; it would have been unseemly considering that none of this would have happened
if it wasn’t for Mario. But I saw it all and, sad as she was, Imperio insisted on details.

“Tell me, Caridad, what was she wearing? What does a woman wear for such an occasion?”

*

I
T HAD BEEN QUITE A SPECTACLE.
The sidewalk was lined with people as if a parade was going by. Graciela walked in front, dressed in black and white, the
colors of a nun. But on Graciela it looked obscene, a black skirt and a white blouse that showed every curve. And with a child
holding each hand. They walked slowly, Manolito smiling at the neighbors and waving hello. He was just a little boy then,
maybe two or three years old. Ernestico, a year older and more aware of the situation, kept his eyes downcast. Graciela continued
to look forward, like a magnificent lioness carved into the bow of a sinking ship. Ernesto walked behind with the suitcases;
the shadow from his hat covered his eyes. People shook their heads sadly as they watched their beloved professor walk by in
disgrace.

Ernesto had always been a proud and proper man who kept his dignity in spite of doing a woman’s job. Year after year he worked
hard to earn the respect of his cynical and disrespectful students, only to end up like this. What was Graciela thinking?
All her life people had been mistrustful of her, and now she had handed them her head on a silver platter. Only out of respect
for Ernesto did they refrain from hurling insults and covering her with spit. But talk they did, as soon as the family was
out of earshot. They even suggested that Graciela might be pregnant with Pepe’s baby.

“I guess we’ll know the truth when we see the baby’s green eyes,” someone whispered.

Once again her parents’ house was surrounded by a curious mob; not as many as on her wedding day, but once again she was the
center of attention, the cause for concern. And once again she walked through them without saying a word and on to the front
door, which opened just wide enough for her and the children to walk in and then closed behind her.

This time Ernesto did not follow her in but turned to face the gossiping crowd. They grew suddenly quiet, as they used to
whenever he had turned away from the chalkboard to stare down a disruptive student. They shrank back under his unwavering
gaze. Slowly at first, then more uniformly, they all began to disperse, allowing Ernesto to walk uninterrupted to the school,
where he sat at his desk one last time and wrote his letter of resignation. This letter he read aloud at a rally commemorating
José Martí the following Friday.

All the students were lined up in their uniforms. They sang the national hymn. Then a little girl recited “Los Zapaticos de
Rosa,” but she was no Graciela Altamira (everyone said so). And it wasn’t so much that the little girl, whose name was Haydee
Moreno, was untalented. It was just that even the youngest students knew all about Graciela. They knew what was happening
between Profesor de la Cruz and his wife. They were so curious to find how he was going to handle this enormous scandal that
they hardly paid attention to Haydee’s poetic efforts.

What the students and the rest of the faculty were not expecting was Ernesto’s brief and painless resignation. There was no
emotion in his voice, not a crack or a quiver. It took only seconds for him to read it all. After that he went home and began
the long wait for the visa, which would eventually be delivered, no doubt, by the very same man who had ruined his life.

*

G
RACIELA ALTAMIRA VANISHED FROM SIGHT
after the door to her parents’ house closed that day. When that door closed, so did the door to our hearts.

One afternoon Ernestico showed up at my house with a message from his mother. Imagínate! Graciela wanted me to convince the
girls to come to her mother’s house to get our nails done.

“Tell your mother I will see her soon” was all I had the heart to say. But I knew I wouldn’t. I couldn’t! No one was going
to go. Not me, Imperio, Cuca, Azucena, or anyone else. Not anymore. What had once just been a shabby and run- down part of
town was now actually considered very dangerous. Things were going on there that no one could understand. That was the official
reason. Truth is, not one of us could afford to be seen in the company of the woman who had betrayed our beloved Profesor
Ernesto de la Cruz.

Palmagria set a very high price on a woman’s fidelity. Infidelity for women was not tolerated. Mujeriegos—skirtchasers—were
another story. Men could do whatever they wanted. It was what it was. For women it was the most shameful of acts. Even more
than murder, I think. When there’s a crime of passion, one person is dead, remembered only by their loved ones, and the other
one vanishes to a faraway prison, never to be heard of again. But people who got caught cheating stayed around, and every
time they were seen, their disgrace was remembered, discussed, used as an example.

“I don’t want people saying that we knew, that we covered for her. Por Dios, she could bring us down to her level.”

What Imperio was saying took my breath away. It hadn’t even occurred to me. I had always been above reproach, and intended
to stay that way.

“Distance,” I said. “Time and distance. Discreetly.”

In order not to arouse suspicion, we let a few days go by before we found someone else to do our nails. But it was never the
same again, never those same precise half- moons. Eventually, little by little, we stopped having our nails done at all. What
for? There were no restaurants to go to. Parties were few and weddings less fancy. Even nail polish had become scarce and
hard to come by. At first we hoarded the little bottles as if they were filled with liquid gold, but eventually they dried
up. All the color started to drain out of Palmagria as well, to be replaced with a dull, military gray that made even the
copious palm trees our town was known for look dull.

Imagínate! The next time I saw Graciela Altamira de la Cruz, we were across from each other, separated by a fast- moving conveyor
belt at a toy factory in Union City, New Jersey. I was not happy to see her. Not happy at all. But I couldn’t turn my back
on her, a woman alone in New Jersey with two mouths to feed and not a penny to her name. How would that look?