Tomorrow They Will Kiss (19 page)

Mario was wobbling, hardly able to place one foot in front of the other. His body was weighing down toward the ground, as
if he just wanted to fall, as if he didn’t have the strength to remain upright for one more second.

To my relief El Haitiano directed us away from his shack, toward the river. We half pushed, half carried Mario. And there,
on the peaceful and sunny bank of the Aguadulce, with the soft rumbling of the waters behind us, El Haitiano cured my husband.
To this day I don’t know how he did it, and I don’t care. As they say, if you knew what the river carries, you would never
drink the water.

I watched as he took a large, smooth- edged knife and dipped it in the river. Then slowly, without actually cutting the flesh,
he pressed the blade against Mario’s rash, creating a cross while at the same time dividing the rash in two. He dipped his
finger into a small vial of blood and dabbed at the rash exactly where the knife met the skin.

Mario let out a deep howl, and tears poured out of him. But he hadn’t been cut or harmed in any way, it was just the simple
contact of the blood upon his skin. Still, I was alarmed. I had never seen him cry. I had heard him say horrible words and
seen him throw things across a room. Of course—he was a man after all. But cry? Never.

“What are you doing?” I asked El Haitiano.

“Shhh . . . crocodile blood. Very powerful,” El Haitiano whispered to me. “It’s helping to drain the poison out of his soul.”

What poison, you fraud? I wanted to say. Instead I nodded, pretending to understand, to believe that something as common as
crocodile blood had any sort of power over a man’s soul. He must have read my mind, because he looked at me and said, “Crocodiles
attack each other all the time. Like the humans, they are territorial. They tear each other apart, gaping wounds, missing
limbs, just for a piece of land. They live in mud and filth, but they never get infections, they heal very fast. Something
in their blood protects them.”

“Por Dios,” I said.

“But crocodile blood alone cannot heal your husband,” he added.

El Haitiano took my hand and asked me to pray with him. I could feel one of my eyebrows involuntarily arch with skepticism,
but I prayed. I prayed like I never had before, intoning novenas and supplications I hadn’t uttered in years. And then the
snake began to disappear, to fade from my husband’s flesh, and a few moments later, it had vanished completely. Mario opened
his eyes, still weak from everything that had gone on before, and looked around. When he looked at me, he smiled. He was breathing
without effort. I could tell from his face that the pain was completely gone.

“I felt it happen,” Liliana said when we got home. “I was getting too nervous here in the house, so I went to church. It was
empty, just me and my rosary beads, and I tell you, I felt it. I felt the release, and I knew my son would survive. Look,
I’m getting chicken skin just telling you!”

Mario’s affliction, I learned, was called La Culebra. It was a common curse that can actually strangle a person to death.
I had never before believed in the curses of the Santeros. I chose instead to believe that it was just another of the countless
superstitions that abounded in Palmagria, supported by tales made up to frighten ignorant people and to keep their lives in
the hands of others.

But that morning by the Aguadulce River opened my eyes.

I was more than impressed by El Haitiano’s miraculous abilities. If anyone could bring people back to life, I said to myself,
this was the man.

As we were leaving, he took me aside and told me to pay very close attention.

“While I was working on Mario I had a very disturbing vision,” he said. “La Culebra is the work of bad magic. Someone is trying
to harm you.”

“I don’t have any enemies,” I said. “Who would do something like that?”

He looked away. “There is a way out, but you’re resisting. Mario could get very sick again, and maybe the next time he won’t
be so lucky. Sometimes even the crocodiles can’t help.”

I searched my mind but could think of no one. Truth is, there were people who didn’t care for us, but not to such extremes.
Just recently we’d had a bit of a struggle with our next-door neighbor over the building of a fence between our properties,
but that had been settled somewhat amicably. And Mario did have the tendency to tell people the truth when he’d had a few
drinks. But that sort of thing went on all the time with lots of folks. People loved Mario. They loved him! When word had
gotten around about his illness, many stopped by the house with gifts of eggs and cheese, and to offer their help.

Except Graciela. Could Graciela be the one behind this curse? Or her crazy mother?

I asked El Haitiano before we started back for the road.

“It could be a woman,” he said, “or a man.”

It was one of those infuriating answers that most irritated me about Santeros.

“What do you suggest I do?” I asked, but never imagined I would get such an answer.

“You must get out of Cuba.”

“Leave Cuba? Nunca!” I said. Never. “I will not be run out of my own country. And do what, go clean toilets for American tourists
in Miami Beach?”

Grateful as I was to El Haitiano, I was shaking with anger. How dare he put those thoughts in my head!

I admit I had voiced my opinions here and there, but never in my wildest dreams did I suspect that one of those people, those
idiots, would try to do us harm. I have learned over the years that desperate people are capable of anything.

I didn’t know what to believe. I felt my world turning upside down. And I no longer had Caridad to talk to. She was gone for
good. Vanished in the middle of the night without a word. All she left was a jar of mentholated cigarettes, and they were
gone too. What was left of our friendship had gone up in smoke. In smoke!

I couldn’t blame her for being secretive. No one knew who to trust anymore. And it was clear that we had to protect ourselves
too. There no longer was a place for us in Cuba.

Mario would never be the same again. It took some time for him to get back on his feet. Something had been taken from him.
But as soon as he started feeling stronger, we began to plan our escape.

Truth is, we didn’t plan to be gone very long, convinced that Castro’s hold on the island, gained through lies, couldn’t last.
He had captured the imagination of the people, not just the very poor—for those people anything would be an improvement—but
also the working class and the middle class. People like us had the most to lose, because our money had not been handed to
us. We had worked for it day after day. So we decided to leave until someone knocked him out of power. It wouldn’t be long
before the American government or the American mafia stepped in. I knew it was just a matter of time.

I asked for a sign and I got it. And I’m not a big believer in signs, but how else do you explain the letter from Caridad?
She had been gone for months with no word. And then the letter arrived. It had been opened and read and then sealed back again
with Scotch tape. Whoever opened it at the post office had not been very careful. The envelope had not been steamed but torn
open, and then the letter had been read and carelessly stuffed back in, as if someone wanted me to know, without a doubt,
that I was being watched. I’m not much for miracles, but it was a miracle that it had reached me at all. The message inside
was very simple.

“
Aquí tienes tu casa,
” it said. You have a home here. And then an address and phone number. I was impressed.

“She already has a telephone,” I said to Mario.

I called her immediately, but it took two days for us to be connected. And it was sweet as sugar to hear that voice again.
She sounded like she was right around the corner.

But she was in a faraway place called Union City.

Liliana wouldn’t hear of it. We sat her down and tried to explain the situation to her. She sat on her rocking chair, but
she didn’t rock. She kept the chair steady, both feet planted firmly on the floor.

“But we want you to come too,” Mario said.

Liliana stood up, her face turning red with anger.

“I’m not leaving my house or my country,” she said, and started for her bedroom.

“Liliana, are you crazy? What are you going to do here all alone?” I said. I was ready to wring her stubborn, wrinkled neck.

Mario started to follow her, but I held him back. Mario didn’t know what to do. Does he follow his wife or stay and protect
his mother?

“Mira,” I said to him. “We go first, and then we send for her. A few more months here and she’ll beg us to get her out.”

Liliana stopped, turned, and looked at me with hatred.

“Union City,” she said, and spat on the floor. “That’s what I think of your Union City.”

A few months after we had left Cuba, Liliana wrote to us that El Haitiano himself was the one who moved into our house. But
by then it was far too late. He had kicked her out of her own house, those were Fidel Castro’s rules. “A little old lady doesn’t
need such a big empty house,” they said. “Give it to someone who needs it, someone with children and in- laws.”

It never crossed my mind that the whole thing had to do with our house. The idea that someone would put a curse on a family
just to get their house was crazy! Por Dios, it was just a simple old house. Sure, it was in one of the nicest parts of Palmagria,
but it was still in Palmagria, which was like being the prettiest girl in an ugly contest.

Liliana had to pack up her radio and go live with relatives in Palma Soriano. If you ask me, she got what she deserved.

I
wouldn’t dream of telling
others how they should raise their children. No one knows better than me how difficult it is. It was just that I worried.
Graciela left the boys alone at night to fend for themselves and went who knows where. Imagínate! What sort of mother is that?

She said she was going to school; she said she was studying English and fashion design.

“Por Dios!” Imperio said. “She’ll design the ‘easy to undress’ dress. For ladies who need to take it off and put it back on
quick before the husband comes home.”

Those kids of hers were growing up wild! Ernestico looked like a little thug. There was something angry about him, something
hidden, as if he was waiting for just the right moment to do something crazy. And in this country children his age did crazy
things all the time. How could any right- thinking person trust him? There was something about him—he wouldn’t look you in
the eye, and he answered all questions with a shrug, like he cared not one bit about anything in the world. I kept my Celeste
away from him.

Imperio predicted a problem.

“That boy’s going to end up in juvenile detention,” she said.

But Graciela didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong. And if she did, she never mentioned it. Nothing. It was like the
three of them had a secret pact. Some sort of family agreement that no one could figure out.

I was not prying, I was worried.

Manolito was still too young to be left alone, even if it was with his older brother. Who knew what two boys could get up
to, alone in an apartment?

Don’t think we didn’t mention it to her.

“Piénsalo bien, Graciela,” Imperio said. Think about it.

“I will,” Graciela said, but there was an airiness to her words, as if they came just from her mouth, not her mind. We knew
she just wanted to shut us up.

It was a closed subject with her. The curtain came down as it always did when she did not want to listen to reason.

She refused any bit of sensible advice, after all we had done for her. We were the ones who gave her a hand up, as we had
with all the other exiles that came after us. With Graciela we made an extra effort; after all, we’d known her forever—and
we knew what she was capable of. Graciela could dig herself into a hole faster than anyone I had ever met. So we tried to
guide her, to protect her from herself.

But no, Graciela will be Graciela until the day she dies.

“A palm tree that grows crooked stays crooked forever,” Imperio said. And I had to agree.

Still, we did all we could, foolishly thinking that in this country she could make a fresh start. First we got her out of
that horrible hotel room, found her an apartment, and helped her out with furniture. We introduced her to Leticia so that
she could get a ride to work, and we got her boys enrolled in school. And how did she pay us back? As Imperio said, “You can
paint the stripes off a zebra, but she will never be a white horse.”

Imagínate! After months of giving me the cold shoulder, she showed up at my apartment as if we were still the best of friends.

“I like your new furniture,” she said.

Little by little I’d been buying furniture, on credit, which made everything so much more expensive. But what else could I
do? My apartment was Mediterranean. The new living room set was dark blue with scalloped cushions, and I painted the walls
light pink to remind me of my house in Palmagria. Of course it will never be as beautiful as that house. There were no portraits
of my family to hang on the walls; we had to leave all that behind. The new lamps were much nicer than what I had in Palmagria,
but still I missed the old ones. I missed them every single day.

“Mil gracias,” I said, and sat down on my new couch. Graciela remained standing. I could tell she was charged up about something.
She had on a full face of makeup and was wearing a knitted black dress that showed her nipples as if she was standing naked
in my living room. Well, what could I do?

“Come in, sit down,” I said. Why is she here? I wondered. After all, I have to see her at work every day. But I acted as nicely
as I could. I even offered to make her some coffee, which she refused. She said she didn’t want any, and I could understand
why. She didn’t need it. She was already overstimulated enough. You could see it in her eyes—an excitement, or was it desperation?
I never can tell with Graciela. I went ahead and made coffee anyway, just to keep moving.