Tomorrow They Will Kiss (3 page)

Raquel and Berta innocently believed that by harmlessly stealing a leg here, an arm there, they would have a few complete
dolls by Christmas.

*

“S
TEALING ISN’T THE PROBLEM,”
Berta said as the van pulled out of the parking lot that night. She dug into her brassiere, pulled out a little rubber leg,
and handed it to Raquel.

“You’re right,” Raquel said as she casually took the little flesh- colored limb and dropped it into her clear plastic bag,
where another little arm or a torso she had stolen that day was waiting.

“The real problem is that we work on so many different dolls that the arms and legs never match.”

We worked on all types of dolls. Dolls that cried, dolls that peed, dolls that pretended to drink from a bottle, cute little
baby dolls and frightening baby dolls as big as an actual baby. Dolls that walked, dolls that crawled. Dolls like little fashion
models with perfect figures, exotic ball gowns, and accessories: necklaces, bracelets, combs, hand mirrors, little purses,
even a complete set of matching luggage.

“Por Dios, Raquel, it’s going to take you forever. And even if you get all the parts, what will you do about its head?” Imperio
asked.

“They’re never going to let a Cuban work with heads,” Caridad said. “Not after the problem with Calixto.”

Caridad nodded in agreement.

“Calixto was an idiot,” Leticia said. “Se pasó de mano.” He went too far.

A few days ago we had watched as Mr. O’Reilly escorted Calixto Guiñón, who worked in shipping, out of the factory.

“What did I do?” Calixto had shouted. “You got no proof. No proof.”

Jacinto walked just a few steps behind, acting as if he had nothing to do with the firing of a fellow Cuban. That day Jacinto
became a traitor and Mr. O’Reilly, the enemy. From that moment on, Jacinto was pointedly ignored. “He’s dead to me,” Imperio
said. To the foreman, the Cuban women only offered insincere, lipstick- smudged smiles.

Mr. O’Reilly, whose first name was Barry, didn’t seem so awful to me. He did what he had to do. But even before the incident
with Calixto, the others in the van had been suspicious of him. Mostly because he wore his hair in a long, blond ponytail
and had a pierced ear with a small, silver crucifix hanging from it.

“There’s something wrong with that one,” Imperio whispered to Caridad, making circles around her ear with her index finger.

Barry O’Reilly never sat with the other employees in the lunchroom. Instead he read paperback books by himself. During the
little free time I had at lunch, I spied on him.

I was intrigued by the covers of those books of his. I loved the exotic illustrations of dragons, spaceships, and fiery planets,
sometimes even alien creatures and robots. I looked forward to new ones he would start.

I was even a little envious that Mr. O’Reilly, for a half hour each day, could escape to such exotic destinations. My escape,
the telenovelas, just took me to the same place every night, a mansion or country estate filled with conventional, earthbound
romance. Sometimes I wondered if the day would come when I would know English well enough to read the kinds of books Mr. O’Reilly
read. I wondered how that would change the way I looked at the world. But to the others at the assembly line, Mr. O’Reilly
remained a danger, as if getting too close to him would expose us to a grave and contagious disease.

“Only a drug addict would read those kinds of books,” Leticia said as she plugged a little flesh- colored leg into its little
flesh- colored socket. She said something similar every time Mr. O’Reilly walked by.

“Por Dios,” Imperio said. “I’m shocked at the number of people who use drugs in this country. I see it on the news. They’re
everywhere.”

“Imagínate,” Caridad said, waving a little leg in the air. “We saw them at the park, in groups, young people with long hair,
bare feet, and crazy eyes. It gives me escalofríos.” Shivers.

“And it’s not just los negros, like in Cuba,” Leticia said, tapping the skin of her arm with two fingers.

Mr. O’Reilly displayed every symptom described in the news: the long hair, the weird books, faded denims, his slow and drowsy
way of speaking, and his habit of going into the wilderness for entire weekends. Having lost our country to a man who came
down from the mountains, Cubans didn’t trust anyone who would actually choose to go camping. But Mr. O’Reilly treated us with
respect and seemed to enjoy working with Cubans. Oblivious to the contempt around him, he often dropped a word or two of high
school Spanish into his greetings.

Every morning he walked past us on his way to his office and said, “Buenos días,” and we chorused the same back without looking
up, sounding as if someone had let the air out of our tires. We didn’t take our eyes off the black conveyor belt and the hundreds
of little limbs and torsos it constantly delivered to us.

Personally I thought it was very sweet of Mr. O’Reilly to try to talk to us in our native language. One day I looked up as
he approached. I tried to meet his eyes and give him a bit of a smile, just to let him know that even if the others didn’t,
I appreciated his effort to communicate with us in Spanish. He sort of smiled back, his face reddened, his feet stumbled a
little, and the rubber sole of his shoe made a squeaking sound on the polished cement floor.

After he moved on, I found that I liked thinking about him. He had a nice face, once I got past the long hair and the earring.
But the hair could be cut, the earring removed. His eyes were blue and calm, his nose small and straight and sprinkled with
just enough light brown freckles that I could almost see the child he’d once been. Yes, a very nice face.

To the others he looked like any other Americano, like the countless others that populated our new town. They were everywhere:
walking down the street, driving past in cars, staring blue- eyed from billboards, holding a glass of Johnnie Walker Red or
inviting you to walk a mile for a Camel. They were the enemy and Mr. O’Reilly was too, even though he could have had Calixto
arrested but didn’t. Never mind that Calixto had been caught smuggling boxes of toy trucks that he planned to sell for profit.
Even after witnessing Calixto’s downfall, Berta and Raquel continued to steal.

*

A
LL THE DOLLS
we worked on were female, and they all had yellow hair and round, blue eyes. But none of us would ever be allowed to touch
one of their heads. The head was the last thing that got attached before the doll was dressed and packaged. The Cubans, they
said, were too new to work with heads. Only the older and more trusted employees, usually American women, pale, trembling,
and docile, were allowed to handle complete toys because of all the theft.

“I think it’s bad enough that we have to carry our belongings in plastic bags,” Caridad said.

“Even if there is good reason,” Imperio said with a shaded look to Berta and Raquel, “I think keeping us away from heads is
an unforgivable insult. Por Dios, we’re not all thieves.”

“In Cuba, everyone gets to work on everything without discrimination,” Raquel said with the voice of a petulant child, her
orange lips puckering into a pout.

“Raquel, in Cuba kids use empty rum bottles for dolls,” Leticia said.

“Not in my house they didn’t,” Caridad said, almost in a whisper.

“If you think it’s better in Cuba,” Imperio said to Raquel, glaring now, “I’m sure Fidel will welcome you back with open arms
and a bag full of toys.”

Caridad didn’t say anything, but she nodded her head in solemn accord.

“Chá,” Raquel said. “I’m not talking about Cuba as it is, I’m talking about Cuba as it was.”

Imperio and Caridad didn’t seem satisfied with her answer; they couldn’t stay out of other people’s business.

“What good’s a rumor if you can’t spread it?” Imperio often said.

“Every rumor has a little truth in it,” Caridad always added.

That day I took one look at Raquel’s face, pinched to the edge of tears, and couldn’t stop myself.

“Raquel,” I said carefully, “I don’t know why you even bother to open your mouth around these two.”

Caridad turned until her round eyes met mine with a look of disbelief. Then her eyebrows lifted almost imperceptibly and her
lids opened slightly so that I felt like I was falling into the dark pits of her pupils. Then, just as quickly, Caridad’s
eyes returned to normal size and she turned back to face the road.

I knew what that look was about.

That look was a warning.

I had secrets.

M
y name is Caridad Rodríguez,
and no matter what you’ve heard, I detest gossip. Sometimes I may share a thought or opinion with my best friend, Imperio.
But other than that, I keep my thoughts to myself.

Take Graciela, for example. She is an unfortunate creature living a reckless life, yes. But I wouldn’t dream of telling her
how to live her life. One would think that after all she went through back in Palmagria, she would have learned her lesson.

But she clearly hasn’t, and who am I to say? Imagínate!

Looking at her today, sitting quietly in the van, one might think that she is just another decent, hardworking Cuban in exile.
But I know better. I know all about Graciela Altamira de la Cruz. I know more than I care to know.

I have known her since we were children, but I always kept my distance. Even as a little girl, she behaved provocatively.
There was something off- putting about her. I always got the feeling that she would become annoying if she got too close or
stayed too long. She was much too much. For one thing, she insisted on performing in every school assembly, reciting the verses
of José Martí at every opportunity. Showing herself off. All through school, we were in the same classroom, but we almost
never talked to each other. I always sat in the front row; Graciela sat in the back, with the boys.

“Los Zapaticos de Rosa,” the most famous poem by José Martí, became her specialty. It told the story of a rich girl who owned
brand- new rose- colored shoes. One day her mother took her for a walk on the shore and they encountered a woman who had a
little girl the same age. The little girl was deathly ill, and they were so poor there was no hope for her. No hope at all.
Overtaken by compassion, the rich girl gave her new shoes to the poor girl. But it was too late. The poor girl had died.

In the beginning, Graciela would just stand on the small stage and recite that long poem from memory. As she got older, she
started to embellish her recitations. In the third grade, she entered the stage carrying a tin pail filled with sand. She
spread the sand on the floor so that it looked like she was at a beach, and while she recited, she scooped up handfuls of
sand and let it all run through her fingers and back into the pail. She did this as if in a dream, perfectly timed so that
when the poem ended all the sand was back in the yellow bucket.

In the fifth grade, she wore pink slippers just like the ones in the poem. Imagínate! By the time we were in the tenth grade,
much too old for that sort of thing, she was wearing her hair in a big satin bow, the way girls wore them back in the days
of Martí. It was annoyingly creative, but even I will admit that no one performed “Los Zapaticos de Rosa” like Graciela did;
she put her heart and soul into it. Year after year she brought the whole school to tears and then cheers. She was featured
in all the assemblies from the first grade on, getting better and more dramatic as we grew older. Others tried, but without
anything like the same success. In the Palmagria of my childhood, “Los Zapaticos de Rosa” was everyone’s favorite poem. I
like to believe it still is.

Of course, at the time we had no notion what this poem was really about. We innocently believed it was about two little girls,
one rich, one poor. We thought it was about how gracious and generous the rich could be to the poor. We were all dying for
the chance to give away our new shoes to the less fortunate. Later, when the less fortunate were practically tearing the shoes
off my feet as I ran to jump a boat out of the country, it became a different story altogether.

Imagínate! Through that poem, Graciela became something of a local celebrity, but also something of a curiosity, an eccentric
you didn’t want to get too close to. I really got to know her at Imperio’s house. We must have been about thirteen, fourteen
years old at the time, just becoming young women. I stopped by Imperio’s house one afternoon shortly before summer vacation
and found Graciela teaching her how to cinch her waist with an old nylon stocking. Imperio, in a youthful fit of frustration
and despair, had made the silly mistake of turning to Graciela for advice. Poor Imperio was sort of shapeless. She was not
developing the wide hips and narrow waist every Cubanita desired. She was skinny, flat- chested, and lacked a single womanly
curve. Her stomach bloated out forward and sideways. She had a pretty face and interesting, curly hair, but from the neck
down she was a bit of a disaster.

In those days the style was bright- colored blouses, starched and off the shoulder, narrow skirts with ruffles at the knee,
and wide belts with matching purse and shoes. The belt was worn as tight as we could stand it to give us a desirable silhouette,
because a girdle could only do so much. The hips were just as important as the breasts. Graciela could cock a hip like opening
a drawer, and just by walking down the street she could make men spin like tops.

I sat on Imperio’s bed and watched as Graciela studied her carefully. Graciela was undoubtedly flattered, and yes, honored,
to be invited into our world. Imagínate! We played records and Imperio’s mother brought in pastries and lemonade, which Imperio
and I consumed with glee. Graciela hardly ate, which I found rather insulting. That afternoon, in front of my very own eyes,
Graciela convinced Imperio to wear the nylon stocking twenty- four hours a day for as long as it took to train her waist.

The first time Imperio fainted was in the middle of English class. It was a particularly hot afternoon, the kind of afternoon
that makes you feel like a lizard, drowsy and changing colors. Well, one moment Imperio’s sitting in front of me, the next
she has melted to the floor.