Tomorrow They Will Kiss (27 page)

“Deja eso.” Leave that. She said it every time I tried to do the dishes after dinner. “Deja eso,” when I tried to make the
beds or scrub the tub. It was clear that she didn’t want me getting too comfortable in her home, too settled.

When she finally got tired of my protests, she said, “You’re a guest.” She didn’t say this with the slightest hint of sweetness.
She said, “You’re a guest.” And with those words she put me in my place. She moved her wide body so that I had to step out
of her way.

I did nothing for weeks. Only to have Ernesto pester me about it.

“Give her a hand,” he said as Marinela cleared the table by herself.

I took a deep breath and went outside for a while, until it was late and time to go to bed again.

Everyone called Marinela’s father Papo. He lived with them and was only sixty years old, but he looked twice that age.

Four years before, right after they had all arrived in Miami, Papo had been diagnosed with throat cancer. He had a tracheotomy
that had left him unable to speak and very depressed. Or, as Marco said, “a useless burden.”

Papo refused to do anything for himself and was constantly asking for help. He sat on the couch all day long, and if he needed
assistance and no one was around, he would fly into a rage, clapping his hands loudly to get attention. All that handclapping
was thought to be bad for him, since he could only breathe through a little hole in his throat which had to be vacuumed with
an enormous contraption. After one big clapping ordeal, they found him seething with frustration and drowning in his own phlegm.

To ease the problem, Marco gave him a bicycle horn, which Papo kept by his side at all times. Whenever he needed something,
a glass of water, his medicine, or to change the channel on the television, he honked the horn repeatedly. I found it funny,
sad, and horrifying all at the same time. He kept Marinela hopping with that horn.

One day Manolito borrowed the horn while Papo napped, and was playing with it, running around outside honking the horn, the
way any child would.

I was outside chatting with one of the other Cuban neighbors when I heard her. I rushed in to see what was the matter.

I found Marinela screaming at Manolito. You’d think he had committed a horrendous crime. She was about to hit him, but I walked
in just in time. How she felt about me was never more clear than when I grabbed her raised hand and stopped her cold.

“Deja eso,” I said, turning her own words on her. I took my child outside where she couldn’t touch him.

I tried talking to Ernesto about the situation. His face went slack, as if he was being presented with circumstances he simply
couldn’t comprehend.

“How could you be so ungrateful?” he asked slowly and evenly. “I have put up with more from you than anyone could ever imagine,”
he said, beads of perspiration erupting all over his forehead.

The fires of hell came unleashed. Everything he had kept bottled up inside came pouring out.

“You have deceived me, betrayed me, ridiculed me, ruined my life, my career. It’s because of you that I had to leave my country,
it’s because of you that I now have to beg for a dishwashing job in a foreign country. You were never my wife. You put a stink
on that word, on the memory of Josefa, on all that I have tried to do with my life. And now you’re here, complaining, demanding.
Who do you think you are, Graciela? How much lower do you intend to drag me? How much more can a man take?”

Marinela and Marco were standing nearby. I didn’t know where to look, what to do. I had no answers for Ernesto; he was right.
But one thing I knew: we could not stay in that apartment any longer. As long as the truth had stayed unspoken I could pretend
that everything was fine. Now it was out in the open and I could start taking responsibility for my own life and the life
of my children.

Marco and Marinela lived in a busy neighborhood that some were calling Little Havana. A lot of new immigrants were making
their home there. A woman named Esperanza, who lived next door, took it upon herself to enlighten me. I was sitting outside
to get away from the uncomfortable air inside the apartment. Ernestico and Manolito were playing on the sidewalk, and I remember
I was on the stoop just watching, trying not to think about anything in particular, when Esperanza sat next to me. “Marinela
is saying terrible things behind your back,” she told me.

“I don’t want to hear what Marinela is saying,” I said. “I didn’t come all this way to fall into the same sewer of gossip
and betrayal that I just left behind.”

“Listen,” Esperanza said. “Why stay where you’re not wanted? Why put up with the malicious chatter of that woman? It’s not
good for you or for your children.”

“I don’t know what else to do, where else to go.” My words came out with a choking spasm of sobs.

I wished with all my heart that I had stayed back in Palmagria. Leaving with Ernesto had been a horrible mistake. One that
I would never recover from.

But I couldn’t go back. How big a fool I would seem if I went back to Palmagria. What sort of reaction would they have to
me, a deserter, a traitor, coming back with my tail tucked between my legs like a frightened dog? I knew I could survive anything,
but I wasn’t going to put the boys through the torture that was sure to follow.

“Here,” Esperanza said, and handed me a small piece of paper. “It’s an organization called Our Lady of Perpetual Help. They’re
Católicos, and I heard that they help out exiles with children and no husbands.”

I took it and put it in my pocket without even looking at it. I just continued watching the boys play. I was in no mood to
talk to Esperanza or to anyone else. She sat there for a while and then stood up to leave.

“Bueno, that’s about all I can do,” she said. “Use it if you want to.”

She started walking back to her apartment and I followed her.

“Esperanza, wait,” I said. “Mil gracias, I really appreciate your efforts to help me.”

“Yo hago lo que puedo,” she said. I do what I can.

After she was gone I looked at the scrap of paper. Our Lady of Perpetual Help sounded like someone I could relate to. She
sounded busy. Hopefully not too busy for me.

The next morning I left the boys with Esperanza. They promised to behave, and I promised not to be gone very long. All three
of us broke our promises. I walked all the way, not trusting buses.

“You get on the wrong bus,” Esperanza warned me, “and you don’t know where you’ll end up. This is a very big country.”

I had expected the building that housed Our Lady of Perpetual Help to be a beautiful cathedral, a place lit by votive candles
and sun streaming through stained- glass windows, where people talked in hushed, reverential voices and a chorus of nuns,
perched in the choir loft, softly sang “Ave Maria.”

Instead I entered a suite of stifling hot offices filled with ringing telephones, crying babies, and sweaty, hostile workers
who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. They asked me my name and entered it at the bottom of a long list.

I waited for hours, my panic rising with each horror story I heard from the other Cubans sitting around me. They told me stories
they had heard about mothers whose children had been taken away because they couldn’t afford to feed them. They said the children
had been put in places called foster homes, which meant they had to live with strange American families chosen by the state.

It started to feel very hot in there. I had not eaten anything all day. I didn’t dare leave the reception area and lose my
place in line. I was feeling as if I was about to faint. Wherever I looked I saw black spots.

I was walking toward a water fountain when I heard my name. I forgot all about my thirst, took a deep breath, and went in.

I was taken into an even smaller office, where two American men, Mr. Ross and Mr. Jacobs (who seemed to share one desk and
spoke Spanish with heavy American accents), listened to my story. The first thing I did was lie to them. Growing up in a country
full of Catholics but ruled by Santería had taught me that honesty afforded you absolutely nothing. With a seriously distraught
look on my face, which I didn’t have to work very hard to achieve, I told them my husband beat me and the children. That ever
since arriving in this country he had turned into an animal. That I was afraid to go home. That the Revolution had turned
him bitter and angry. I touched my shoulders as if feeling painful bruises beneath my blouse.

We were interrupted more than half a dozen times by telephone calls and an irritable and haggard- looking secretary who constantly
opened the door without knocking and asked questions in English, or brought in papers for them to sign.

I had to start my story over and over again after each interruption until I was completely confused, but I held steady, answered
calmly, kept insisting and explaining the unfairness, the urgency, and the absolute tragedy of my situation. I did not want
to present myself as a hopeless victim but rather as a lost pilgrim who only needed a kind soul to guide her back to the road.

I was sure they could see through my complicated web of lies. They asked me questions based on something I had just said,
and I had to stop and rethink my answers while I felt their eyes burrowing into my skull. An annoying little voice in my head
kept reminding me that I had been caught lying before, with disastrous results.

“No es fácil,” I said. It’s not easy.

“No es fácil,” Mr. Ross repeated back to me, but in a different tone. He was nodding his head in sympathy.

Surprisingly, not only had they heard, but they had understood every word I’d said. Ross and Jacobs sat talking to each other
in English while I said prayers to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The next time they talked in their funny, slurry Spanish, they
asked just one simple question—which in turn changed my life forever.

“Are you willing to live in New Jersey?” Mr. Ross asked soberly.

“In New Jersey,” Mr. Jacobs added with a strange smile, “there are better- paying jobs than in all of Florida.”

They waited, looking at me as if they expected me to take my time, to think it over.

I didn’t have to think twice. It was probably a little inappropriate the way I jumped up and kissed them both on their cheeks,
but I was so excited and relieved. After disentangling themselves from me, they called in their haggard assistant, who introduced
herself as Sue and stunned me by speaking fluent Spanish.

From that moment on, I was in Sue’s hands, and she took care of me in a way I will never forget. (Sue, wherever you are, I
thank you with all my heart.)

Ernesto didn’t try to stop me or talk me out of it. He said a tearful (and, it seemed to me, slightly insincere) farewell
to the boys. Ernesto never had much of an interest in children. He didn’t deny them to me, but he’d always been a solitary
man. If Josefa hadn’t died, he would have gone on with his life as it was. He was somewhat relieved to see us go. We were
messy in his eyes, children who fight, a woman who cheats. If it hadn’t been for the government restrictions, he would have
left Cuba without us. He had no use for us, and we had no further words. Whatever had to be said had been said.

As we walked out the door, Papo sounded his little horn, a sentimental little send- off. I did not turn back. I left that
apartment with my head held high. We were on our way to a new life in a place called Union City.

As the bus made its way north, the weather grew colder. It was February, warm and humid in Miami but still winter everywhere
else. There was so much about this country I had to learn.

I had never seen so many trees with no leaves before. They looked like the long, skinny arms of the dead sticking out of the
cold ground, their spindly fingers reaching in desperation toward the gray, dull sky.

A black wave of fear gripped at my heart. I was terrified of the trees. I remember thinking, Trees never lose their leaves
in Cuba. This is an evil place. My mother was right, God has sent me here as punishment. I had not fooled those people back
at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. They had given me exactly what I deserved. I would have burst into tears if the children had
not been seated next to me, their big eyes getting used to the new surroundings. I had to be strong for them.

People could say what they wanted. I couldn’t afford the luxury of listening, of caring. I set my course, and stuck to it.
I worked hard to become a stronger person, a better mother.

*

D
AY AFTER DAY
I did what Barry suggested. I pushed all my negative thoughts down the river until the bad dreams had vanished. One day I
woke up and realized I hadn’t had one in weeks. Eventually I began to feel a sense of well- being that I had not felt in a
very long time. I felt as if I was growing, tall and proud like the palm trees of Palmagria. I let my heart fill up with the
sweet memories of the people I had loved—Arroz Blanco, Chanclas, El Gago, and poor Alvita with her beautiful face stained
by the moon. All the outcasts of the cruel little town I thought I’d left so far behind.

All the while, Barry had an arm around me and I could feel his heart beating against me, his easy breath coming and going.
Funny that the person who would finally understand me would be a man so different from anyone I had ever known before. A man
who’d grown up speaking a different language, whose childhood had taken place so far away, in a land of snowstorms, fireplaces,
and camping trips. Barry didn’t have a tropical bone in his body, and yet he was the warmest person I had ever met. He adored
everything about me—my dark skin, my funny accent, my spicy cooking, my music. He even liked the way I dressed, and my love
of the telenovelas.

After we first made love, he said, “Wow, baby.” Those were the two sweetest words I’d ever heard. And while we made love his
eyes remained open, fixed on mine, and I could see all that love inside. He snuggled up closer and held me, and we whispered
to each other until it started to get light outside. He didn’t slap my ass and jump out of bed like it was on fire, like Pepe
used to. Or turn away and start snoring, leaving me feeling more alone than I had ever felt before, like Ernesto used to on
those very rare occasions when he acted like a husband.