Tomorrow They Will Kiss (28 page)

A few nights after Berta died, I told Barry I wanted to recite a poem from my country for him. We were in bed together, and
it was warm and safe there.

“Yes, baby,” he said. “I want to hear it.”

“It’s about a rich girl named Pilar who gives away her new shoes to a poor dying girl.”

“Heavy,” he said, and sat up on the bed.

“It’s in Spanish,” I cautioned.

“That’s all right. I wanna hear it.”

“Hay sol bueno y mar de espuma,”
I began, as I had done countless times since I was very little, since I was Pilar’s age.
“Y arena fina, y Pilar quiere salir a estrenar su sombrerito de pluma.”

I recited the long poem, verse after verse, and his eyes stayed on me, on my lips, reading them the way a deaf person would.
I knew that in his own way, he was understanding every word and, most importantly, that he understood what this moment meant
to me.

The first time he talked to me, other than to give me work- related orders, was when he saw me studying my English as a second
language book. He didn’t make fun of me; instead, he encouraged me. After that, every time he saw me he would ask me how my
classes were coming along. Little by little he won my heart. And one day I realized that no one had ever won my heart before;
that my love for him was pure in a very special way.

The boys liked Barry. From the kitchen I would hear them over the gunplay on television. They liked to watch the FBI programs,
and I liked the sound of the boys talking to Barry in perfect, rapid- fire English.

“Barry,” I would shout over the noise, “you don’t have to entertain them.”

Sometimes they teased me about my pronunciation. “Beree,” they’d say, “ju don haf tu ennertain dem.” And I just laughed, because
I could never tease my mother. She considered it disrespectful, but I didn’t.

Now I had to decide if I wanted to start over again. Barry had asked me to marry him. In New York City!

*

N
EW YORK HAD ALWAYS BEEN
the big city across the river. Almost every day I caught a glimpse of it, glittering in the distance. To me it was a frightening
place. It was the city where Agustín García- Mesa had lost his fingertips. New York was the place where his life had been
ruined, where his promising career had ended underneath a Steinway piano, where his friends had turned their backs on him.

I was a little nervous as we boarded the train. Barry held my hand gently as we sped over tracks, through tunnels. I was surprised
at how quickly we got to our destination. I followed him up the stairs and into the warm night. I wanted to be taken by the
thickness of it, the people, the traffic, and the height of the buildings. I wanted to become a part of what had for years
been only a postcard.

But I looked around and it was dark and dingy. Instead of glistening glass towers there were old buildings, mostly two and
three stories tall, with rickety fire escape ladders crisscrossing their worn façades.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Baby, we’re in Little Italy, the most romantic corner of Manhattan,” he said, and placed his arm around my shoulders, holding
me close as we walked. As I looked around, I saw other couples walking, hand in hand, and I noticed all the Italian signs
on the shops:
trattoria, zeppole, Chianti.
The narrow cobblestone streets took on a charming glow, the sweet smells of garlic and basil intoxicated me.

As I walked, my heart kept beating the same refrain:
you found him, you found him, you found him.

There was something beautifully different about Barry that night. He was like a child, his step was light, his eyes shone.
He led me into a restaurant called Il Palazzo. And there, in this dim, musty palace, in a red leather booth, Barry took my
hand and said, “Graciela, cásate conmigo.”

He spoke the proposal in Spanish, so I knew he meant it. He had taken the trouble to look it up in a dictionary. His eyes
were misty, and on his face was a funny look, as if he was afraid I would say no.

As Caridad would say: Imagínate!

Of course I said yes! I said it in English and I said it in Spanish. My heart did all the talking for me that night in that
Italian restaurant, in New York.

The confusion came later—when I was alone.

I didn’t know what to do, it was almost too soon. But I did know. I wanted to be with him—and someday I wanted to take him
back to Palmagria and show him the horrible little town I came from. I wanted to return with my new husband and my children,
and with my head held so high they’d have to jump up to see my eyes. But I couldn’t help worrying. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t
made mistakes before. Big ones. Barry wanted to get married right away. I told him I had to think about it. That I needed
a little time to get used to the idea. Most of all, that I had to discuss it with my boys.

The divorce from Ernesto wouldn’t be a problem. He’d had very little communication with us. He’d written to tell me that he
was working in a library, in a place called Coconut Grove. Along with the letter he sent divorce papers for me to sign and
a twenty- dollar bill for the boys. Hardly enough, but I didn’t care. I set the divorce papers aside—there was no hurry at
the time, and, frankly, it was not something I was eager to think about. I was glad that Ernesto was in a place where he could
be at peace. He always felt safest among books and silence.

At the moment the only problem, if I could call it that, was buried within my own soul. This love, this happiness, was overwhelming
me to the point of insanity. Just the thought of it made me want to take all my clothes off and run naked, screaming, down
the streets of Union City. Yet it seemed so right, like it was the work of all the saints and virgins I prayed to. Even the
ones I never believed in.

“Send me the right man or take away my desire to find true love,”
I had prayed again and again. And they sent me Barry O’Reilly.

Who was I to say no?

I signed the divorce papers without conditions or requests and sent them back to Miami.

I was free to love again.

D
ios mío,
Rosalinda was the
only
topic of conversation for weeks. Las niñas, as Leticia still insisted on calling us (even though there wasn’t one woman in
that van who wasn’t on the slippery side of thirty), chattered faster, louder, and longer than ever. To keep from thinking
about Berta, if you ask me.

I must admit, the telenovela was definitely heating up. It was the best one yet, and I’m not easy to impress. Rosalinda’s
boss, Armando, had left his wife and confessed his love to her, but she refused to let him near her until after the operation.
If she regained her sight, she would be his. If not, she made him promise to go away forever. Only a complete moron would
believe that Rosalinda would not see again. The question that had everyone worked up was: When will Rosalinda and Armando
kiss?

Caridad, who now sat in the front seat once again and for all times (Graciela knew better than to even mention changing the
system), insisted there would be a surprise ending.

“Imagínate,” she said. “Rosalinda isn’t just going to regain her sight, but she’s also going to come to her senses. Don’t
expect a wedding.”

“Caridad, what makes you think Rosalinda’s not going to marry him?” Leticia asked.

“What would that girl want with such a rich man?” Caridad said. “If Rosalinda marries Armando she will be miserable. People
should marry people like themselves. If all your life you’ve been someone’s maid, even if in fact you are the true heiress
of the plantation, the man you marry will always look at you as if you were the maid. When the honeymoon is over, and we all
know that honeymoons don’t last forever, he’s going to see her for what she really is. The maid.”

Everyone disagreed with her. Even I disagreed with her—which is something I never do, not in front of the others. If I have
a problem with Cari, I always discuss it with her in private. But we all wanted the happy ending. Why not? Even Berta, in
a strange way, got hers. One of the little boxes made it to Cuba—and even if the authorities there opened it up and flushed
her remains down the toilet, at least it was a Cuban toilet.

But Caridad wouldn’t leave it alone. Ever since Berta’s death she’d been nervous and grumpy. Even I saw a big change in her.
She was always so kind and gentle. Too kind and too gentle if you asked me.

The other day she said, “Women should not marry men who are unlike them financially, and most importantly, they absolutely
should not marry a foreigner.”

We all held our breath, because it was a loud and clear attack on Graciela. But Caridad was not done.

“Because you never know how often they bathe,” she added.

It was a really cruel thing to say, all things considered, coming from Caridad, who always smells like she slept on a bed
of roses. I thought it was damn funny, but no one dared to laugh. The words hung in the stuffy air of Leticia’s van.

“Chá,” said Raquel with a sympathetic look to Graciela.

Graciela didn’t say anything at all. The discussion ended right then and there. As the van continued moving toward the factory,
a very deep silence descended. Thoughts of Berta were inevitable, no matter how loud we talked, no matter how hard we laughed
or quarreled.

Graciela kept her distance from us that week. But Caridad was obsessed.

“Can you imagine his ya tu sabes?” Caridad said to me one day, after we dropped Graciela off. Her hand went to her chest,
as if to feel her own heartbeat, but her eyes remained fixed on mine.

I knew exactly what she meant. Santo Dios, it’s no secret to us that American men have their foreskin trimmed off when they
are babies, like the Jews. And I couldn’t imagine. None of us could imagine having that big pink head looking at us all the
time. At least our men have the decency to cover it up between rounds, like God intended.

Another night, on our way home, we were talking about the balseros, the countless Cubans arriving in Miami on rafts, and how
short the distance between Florida and Cuba really was.

And then Graciela crossed a line. And I know these were not her words; it was the Americano talking. I would bet my life on
it. It was raining that night, hard, gray, rain that made it so loud inside the van that we almost had to shout to hear each
other. And we are not women with soft voices. But on that night we had to make an effort to be heard.

“Have you noticed,” Graciela said, “when you look at a map, that Cuba looks like a vagina, a horizontal slit quivering in
the warm blue sea, and that the Florida peninsula looks like a big, hard, throbbing penis just waiting to . . .”

Graciela stopped and looked at Caridad.

“Waiting to ya tu sabes,” she finished, but her voice was mocking Caridad, who’s always had trouble voicing intimate body
parts and functions.

Leticia almost drove the van off the road. The rest of us were mortified. We would never be able to look at our little country
the same again.

“Graciela, how do you come up with such things?” Raquel said. Raquel was now always dressed in blue. In her desperation she
had apparently turned away from Alpha 66 and now was asking La Virgen for help in getting her husband out of prison. But Caridad
said it was just a smokescreen to cover up her affiliation with Alpha 66. And it made sense to me, because not once before,
in all the time we’d known her, had Raquel even hinted at a spiritual life. But for weeks she’d been wearing that horrible
blue dress she made herself, and a medallion. During the coffee breaks she disappeared somewhere, “to pray,” she claimed.
But I suspected other motives.

“You can’t see it? A penis and a vagina?” Graciela asked, looking at each one of us. “Who knows, maybe it’s destiny, maybe
it’s just a temporary squabble, a lovers’ quarrel. Maybe someday they will kiss and even make love.”

“Well,” Raquel said, “if you want to look at it like that, I will admit that Cuba is no virgin. She’s been penetrated by Americans
before.”

“Exactly,” said Graciela, as if she was suddenly a professor of world history and geography. Two subjects I remembered very
well that she didn’t quite get in school.

“And by the Spanish,” Raquel added, as if a brilliant thought had just occurred to her. “And the Russians.”

Caridad looked at me and I knew what she meant. Raquel’s blue promise was just a farce. No true disciple of La Virgen would
ever entertain such a thought.

“Niiiiñas, can you talk about something else, please? Graciela, you too,” Leticia shouted over the pounding rain. “I won’t
have my country insulted in my van. I won’t have her talked about as if she was a bitch in heat. I may be far away, but she’s
still my country.”

Silence followed. We drove along with just the rain, and a strange sadness. I knew these were the filthy thoughts that Mr.
O’Reilly was putting in Graciela’s head. Perverted pillow talk. For me it just brought a picture of their sex life that, frankly,
I would rather not have to think about. It just made us even more uncomfortable with that relationship. I couldn’t stand it
much longer.

“Tomorrow they will kiss,” I said.

“Too soon,” Leticia said. “Rosalinda’s still bandaged. It will happen after the bandages are removed, and you know it’s going
to be blurry at first, it will take some time for her to see clearly.”

We had all watched enough telenovelas to know that she was right. The next few weeks would be blurry, because we would be
looking at the world through the watery eyes of a formerly blind girl. And then the image would get clearer and clearer until
the end. Until that kiss.

*

N
O MATTER HOW WE FELT
about Barry O’Reilly or how big our hints to Graciela, she was determined to go ahead with her plan—her crazy, crazy plan.
She was like a little bird chirping. Her happiness was so annoying it was giving me headaches.

But just the same, that Saturday morning we all had to put away our differences and put on our best outfits. We tried to make
the best of a very uncomfortable situation.