Tomorrow They Will Kiss (15 page)

I couldn’t tell her that I hardly recognized the person I was becoming—a woman who constantly complained and nagged, even
at poor little Celeste, who would just look at me with frightened eyes and go seek the comfort of her father’s lap. I couldn’t
tell her that it was impossible for me to find any sort of comfort, not in my husband’s lap or in anybody or anything. I couldn’t
tell her that the world had become as flat for me as in the days before Columbus, and that I felt as if at all times I was
drifting toward the edge and was sure to fall off.

I couldn’t tell her that if she came here she would feel lost without the flowers and the green and the language we took for
granted. That she would go days and days without hearing someone yell out “Buenos días” from across the street or even “Mal
rayo te parta.” That she wouldn’t hear the annoying bicycle bells of the churro vendors or the curses of the garbage man as
his wooden wheels ground into the potholes. Or smell the constant stench of the open sewers and the flies, mosquitoes, and
gnats that swarmed there and often flew into our mouths when we laughed. All I could think of was that back there we laughed.
I would give anything to laugh like that now, even if to do so would mean I had to swallow a million bugs.

I couldn’t tell her that everything we found irritating back in Palmagria we would miss with a terrible desperation. No, I
couldn’t do that. For all I knew, Imperio would have a much better time of it here—she’s much stronger, practical—and selfishly
I wanted her here. I thought that perhaps with Imperio nearby the black dog would go away and I would start to greet each
morning with my usual resolve and courage without even thinking about it, the way it had been back then, back there, when
I knew who I was and where I was going at all times. When I never, for one second, encountered a doubt. Where the horizon
was just a beautiful, distant line where the glorious sun went to sleep each night, the sea was the mattress and the sky was
the blanket and all was cozy and blue and gold.

I couldn’t tell her that even if Palmagria had turned into a hopeless little town filled with strangers, it was home.

“Come,” I said instead. “Mi casa es tu casa.”

*

T
HE GIRLS IN THE VAN,
they had it easy, with their apartments and television sets and the jobs at the toy factory and a van that picked them up
and dropped them off. When Salud and I arrived we had nothing. Just hunger and poverty and heavy hearts and doubts that maybe
we had been too hasty, had left too soon. We were sustained only by the hope that something would happen that would get us
back to Cuba right away. We didn’t want to make ourselves too comfortable here. There had been an invasion, Playa Girón, which
everyone insisted on calling Bay of Pigs, which gives you an idea of what Americans really thought about us. Playa Girón was
a beautiful place, and pigs were not allowed there. Anyway, it had been a disaster. Salud blamed the Americans.

“Their hearts weren’t really in it,” he said. “This has just been a pantomime.”

“They will try again,” I said, “and next time they will succeed.” But I could tell Salud had stopped listening to me.

Poor Salud was lost. In Palmagria he was practically a doctor, and here he was nothing, or less than nothing. Hard as he tried,
Salud couldn’t learn English. It was as if his brain had a block against the language. So going back to being a chiropodist
was out of the question. Imagine how we felt when we walked around Union City and saw the signs. There were chiropodists everywhere
and clearly no need for any more. As dark as it was inside my mind, I never told him, because I suspected it was even darker
inside Salud’s. He’d always been able to provide, and now it was as if his hands were tied. So I did what I had to do.

I put on the best shoes I had and took to the streets to look for a job, leaving Celeste in his care. Every morning I looked
through the newspapers and tried to decipher what the job ads said. And then I’d go to this factory or that. I was like a
mute in those interviews, signaling to the foreman that I was strong and capable and always smiling. I was the sweetest girl
for them. Subservient, even though my heart was breaking.

I should be
your
boss, I’d think as I tried to fill out the application with a small, blunt- tipped pencil.

That was the year that I became Mrs. Rodríguez. I hated the sound of that. I had my own name, my own last name, the name of
my father and mother, but here I was to be known as Caridad Rodríguez. The woman I had been was gone. I would fill out those
applications as carefully as possible, answer all the questions, give them all the information. Imagínate!

Imagine how absurd, to go through all that. It was like a slave showing up at a plantation and begging to be taken in, like
offering your wrists to be shackled, only to be turned away, for no reason that I could understand. Of course they didn’t
want someone who didn’t speak English—why should they? I tried place after place until finally we saw an ad that had the RCA
Victor logo printed on it, the little dog listening to the Victrola. It was as if a light had gone on in my head. I recognized
that little dog; he was on all our records at home. And as if that little dog had willed it, that was the first place where
I was treated like a human being.

The factory was big and white. So spotless it even smelled clean. It was hard to imagine that people worked there. I was taken
into an office and left there, alone. The professional American woman who I assumed was going to conduct the interview rattled
something in English, then rushed out. At first I thought she had gone to get a policeman. In those days I only expected the
worst to happen, and I sincerely thought they were going to arrest me and send me back to Cuba and I would never see my husband
and daughter again. I sat in the office and tried to calm my nerves by concentrating on the clean and organized desk with
its neat towers of papers and folders. There was a telephone with many buttons on it. The telephone rang several times. I
watched as the buttons lit playfully like a musical toy while the telephone rang and went off when the ringing stopped. The
office smelled strongly of her perfume. I looked for photographs of her family but found none. On the wall hung a calendar
with a picture of a long, wide, empty beach.

She returned with an interpreter—a Spanish- speaking man who talked a mile a minute in English and then very slowly to me
in Spanish. While the man talked to me in Spanish, the American woman nodded and smiled at me, which was funny, because I
knew she didn’t know what he was saying but was trusting that her words were being passed on correctly. What could I do? I
kept my eyes on her and nodded and smiled.

When it was all over, she extended her hand to me. “Hasta mañana, Señora Rodríguez,” she said with an accent, and I was happy
to hear those words no matter how strange they sounded.

“Hasta mañana,” I said while my stomach tightened, because I dreaded mañana more than she could ever imagine. I had never
worked a day in my life. Now I was to be a factory worker in a strange country and in a foreign language.

As I walked into our apartment that day I felt surprisingly victorious and triumphant. I was Mrs. Rodríguez, a woman with
a job. It was a feeling that would not last for long. Everyone who worked at that factory was one hundred percent black. All
black ladies. Not that I have anything against los negros, but I knew enough to know that in America this placed me at the
bottom of the heap. Not one of them welcomed me in any way, no one said a word to me. They just looked at me like I was bicho
raro. The foreman was the same man who had been at the interview, and that was lucky for me, because I had a lot to learn.
I was given a light blue smock to put over my dress and a shower cap for my hair. Then they seated me on a stool at a big
white table where many other ladies were seated and each one of us had a huge magnifying glass in front of us. On the table
were tiny little parts and tiny little screws and tiny little screwdrivers, and the idea was to look through that magnifying
glass and screw everything together.

Olvídate de eso. My hands were shaking and sweating and the screws kept falling to the floor and the black ladies kept looking
at me and then looking at each other and the more that happened the worse it got but this was going to put food on the table
and pay our rent so I kept trying and trying and finally one of the black ladies left her post and stood next to me and placed
her black hands on mine and steadied me and helped me do the first one while the rest of them watched but then my eyes started
to fill with tears and I couldn’t see anything and I just dropped my chin on my chest and cried and cried I couldn’t stop
I was so embarrassed I just wanted to die the more I cried the more my hands shook and then the Spanish-speaking man came
and said something to the black lady and she went back to her stool but no one was working everyone was watching the spectacle.
Me.

“Vamos, señora,” the man said kindly, and he led me to the women’s washroom, where I threw up. Then I returned and I sat on
my stool and looked through the magnifying glass and grabbed the screwdriver and the little screws and I got to work. I don’t
know where it came from, but I did it. When I looked up, the black ladies were looking at me again, and I found the eyes of
the one who’d tried to help me and I smiled, and she nodded like she knew.

The job didn’t get any easier. Looking through that magnifying glass gave me headaches and my vision was getting worse. Sometimes
I would look at my fingers through the magnifying glass and see the ravaged cuticles and the bare nails where once a glorious
half- moon had existed, and it just made my heart sink. I was bringing home a paycheck every week, and that was the only thing
that kept me coming back. Same as everybody else. It was then that I started taking a few dollars out of every paycheck to
buy hand cream and lotions. I may have been reduced to working in a factory, but some dignity had to be maintained.

Yes, Imperio had it easy compared to me. By the time she arrived I had already met Leticia and switched to the toy factory,
where the job was much easier, even fun, and it paid better. Mr. O’Reilly had shorter hair then, and even wore a tie—one of
those you clip on.

Best of all, I didn’t have to take the bus anymore. Leticia bought a van and she asked if I wanted a ride. I accepted immediately.
Only later did she tell me there would be a fee. Every day I just climbed into Leticia’s van with Raquel and Berta and pretended
I didn’t mind paying, but I felt like she had tricked me.

*

Y
OU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE LOOK
on Imperio’s face when she first arrived in Union City. I don’t know what she was expecting, but it certainly didn’t please
her.

“This is where you live?” she said, sniffing around my little apartment with a look on her face like the beans were burning
in the kitchen.

Imagínate! I sat her down and explained things to her. And I was very clear about everything. Of course she denied having
grand expectations, but inside her words was an apology and I let her get away with it. Her reaction wasn’t all that different
from mine. The first night we stayed up all night talking.

She and Mario lived with us for a few weeks until they could get an apartment of their own. Fortunately it was in our building.

And they got that apartment just in time, because Salud and Mario were not getting along.

Mario complained to Imperio that Salud acted like he was still a doctor, when he wasn’t anything like that. Imperio told me
about it because she tells me everything, and I had to mediate between the two men. I’ll admit, Salud tends to be a little
arrogant. But that arrogance is all the poor man has now.

Mario called him El Médico, just like everyone used to back in Palmagria, but he said it with an ugly sneer, like a burla.
My poor husband hadn’t been able to get a job, and he was so successful once. He was not used to watching his wife go off
to work every day and control all the money. But he was good with Celeste, and I knew that sooner or later he would find his
way.

“Salud, por favor, just ignore him,” I said. “You know how Mario is. He’s still recovering from that Santero’s curse.”

“Curse,” Salud said. “What do I care about a curse? Why should I listen to garbage from a man who lost everything to a Santero?
Carajo! I could be bitter too, but why should I have to pay for his superstition and bad judgment? While he’s in my house,
eating my food, he should at least show some gratitude. And he drinks too much.”

“All the gratitude we need I get from Imperio,” I said, and I meant it.

Shortly after they moved out, and much to Mario’s frustration, Salud got a job at a hospital. He worked nights cleaning up
blood, vomit, and quién sabe qué, and we hardly saw each other, but we had a little more money coming in and he was still
able to watch Celeste during the day while I was at work. I was suddenly filled with optimism. I started to feel a little
happier with Imperio at my side. I no longer woke up with that horrible desire to weep. I had my friend back. Together we
would make it through this difficult time, until things in Cuba went back to normal, until we could return and claim what
was ours. For now, it would be like old times again, if in a different language, with a different last name, and in different
surroundings. I got her a job at the toy factory, and of course she rode to work in Leticia’s van. Leticia was only too glad
to have the extra money. Yes, the situation was getting better. That was back when it was just us. Graciela arrived three
years later, and everything started to change.

I
never believed we were going back.
I was not like those other Cubans who looked at the horizon every day with tearful eyes, who carried poison in their souls,
who refused to learn English or move forward. There was nothing for me back there. But because my heart is treacherous, sometimes
my thoughts drifted to a distant future and I saw myself back in Palmagria, with a soft breeze blowing through the narrow
streets. And the streets full of strangers. My boys didn’t figure in my daydream; they were grown and gone, most likely married,
and hopefully happy.