Tomorrow They Will Kiss (7 page)

Palmagria, as insignificant a town as it was, had a very lucky geography. Its southern end ran into a natural bay in the Caribbean,
and its northern end was located at the foot of the Sierra Maestra, the mountains where Fidel Castro trained his hairy men.
Almost everyone in Palmagria was involved with the Revolution in one way or another. Foolishly people smuggled arms, food,
and cash to the bearded rebels in the mountains, risking their lives. Idiotic young men went up there with nothing but a desire
for freedom, counting only on the protection of the saints and the useless prayers of their mothers. Even Mario got swept
up in it and came home one day with his eyes full of fire.

“Mario,” I told him, “you’re no revolutionary. What are you going to do, sleep in a trench?” As soon as he sobered up, he
admitted I was right.

But most women were not as smart as me, and they willingly sent their husbands up to be killed. When Castro finally took power,
they congratulated each other on the streets for a job well done. Never mind that now they were widows with mouths to feed
and no way to do it.

“Ganamos,” they shouted from street corners. We won.

The people of Palmagria knew they were not completely responsible for Castro’s victory, but they were certain that the town
had played an important part. Everyone looked forward to a country free from foreign oppression, the Cuba libre everyone talks
about now.

Everyone but Graciela, I suppose. One breezy July afternoon in Graciela’s dining room, I first noticed that something wasn’t
quite right with her. The radio was transmitting one of Fidel’s interminable speeches direct from La Habana.

Graciela had already finished Caridad’s nails and was now working on mine. Caridad sat on the sofa near the window, her nails
still wet, her fingers stiffly extended, a mentholated cigarette held carefully between an index and middle finger. Her eyes
were fixed on the radio, as if she expected to see the now familiar bearded face, the waving flags, the reaching hands, or
the sea of faces that filled the Plaza de la Revolución.

I sat across from Graciela, my hand in hers, and watched as the little brush made graceful strokes across my nails. Suddenly,
and for no apparent reason, Graciela let go of my hand, walked to the radio, and without so much as an “excuse me,” turned
it off. She responded to our glaring stares with a shrug. With a shrug!

“I can’t stand all that noise,” she said, and went back to my nails.

But it was no use. Fidel’s voice resounded and echoed from all the other houses, so that everything he said seemed to repeat
itself.

“It does great honor to all of us that the Soviet Union,”
Fidel said,
“has sent the man who has just made the first flight in space to be with us this afternoon.”

The astronaut must have stood up, because about ten minutes of shouts and applause followed.

“So it’s true,” I said. “Por Dios, we’re in bed with the Russians.”

“Imagínate,” Caridad said, her eyes big and wide as she considered what this would mean to us.

“I’ve had just about enough of this revolución.” Graciela said. “We’ve had governments change many times before without so
much commotion and backslapping. Who cares?”

She had finished my last nail, and I noticed that they were perfect. She calmly collected her tools: the roll of cotton, the
bottle of acetone, her emery boards. When she was done packing everything into her pink plastic box, she stood and gave us
a look that could only mean good- bye.

All the way home, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Russian astronaut. Lately the word
communist
had been on everyone’s lips. But what did it actually mean?

It was not a new word. Certainly I was aware that communist countries existed. But that was worlds away, in Russia and China.
I could not imagine what it would mean to us. I had seen photographs of uniformed Chinese soldiers standing at attention and
looking more like dolls than men. And of Russian soldiers marching the strangest little ceremonial steps in front of buildings
that looked like they were topped with onions. But that was always in countries so distant that they didn’t even share our
alphabet. To me it always seemed to be taking place in a different time as well, either in the distant past or far into the
future.

There had been mention of communism as far back as I could remember, but not any more than we talked about the Nazis in Germany
or the fascists in Italy. There had long been a Communist Party in Cuba, but it was so small and inconsequential that it could
be easily ignored. They were no more a threat than Jehovah’s Witnesses were to Catholics. Por Dios, there were no real communists
in Palmagria.

But then, unexpectedly, sympathizers started to emerge. People we had known all of our lives turned suspect. A book by Karl
Marx was discovered in the public library, and it had been read so often and so feverishly that its spine was broken. I looked
into the eyes of my neighbors and began to wonder if they might be the ones. What if they were the communists?

There was a Chinese family that had always lived in the center of town. No one but their next- door neighbors really talked
to them, and that was at arm’s length. The Chinese family did what Chinese families always do in small Cuban towns. They raised
vegetables for market and took in laundry.

But now everyone wondered, were they the communists in Palmagria who were pushing this new movement on us? Or worse, communist
spies?

“I don’t trust los chinos,” Caridad said, and stopped taking her sheets to them.

I continued to take my laundry to the Chinese, but kept my visits short. I dropped off and picked up, and made sure no one
saw me going in or out. While I was there I took a quick peek behind the counter to see if there was anything subversive lying
around: a pamphlet, a leaflet, a flag. It seemed as if, from one day to the next, the people of our town were divided. Suspicions
were aroused.

There were those who were desperate to leave the country, those who hated the people who were leaving the country, and the
rest of us, who were caught in the middle.

People like me were frozen with fear and indecision. We were not the sort of people who dreamed of a life in other parts of
the country, let alone the world. We were born in Palmagria and, in spite of its problems and defects, we expected to die
there, be buried there, and spend the rest of eternity there. That’s the way it had always been. Occasionally someone ventured
out, driven by some strange desire that no one could understand. But for the most part, we stayed.

It was easier for the wealthy to get out, they had always kept one foot in Cuba and another abroad. It was not unusual for
them to have a big house in Cuba and another in Miami Beach. They sent their children to universities in Spain or the United
States. They were used to entertaining foreigners who came to visit in yachts and private airplanes.

For the very poor, there was no decision to be made at all. Very few had the education or even the mentality to consider going
to another country and learning another language. They could barely get along where they were born. Besides, the new administration
was all about them. There were slogans on walls now offering them a brighter future. There were organizations dedicated to
their care. Politicos of humble backgrounds, who had risen to prominence only after the Revolution, made fervent speeches,
telling the poor that it was time to rise up out of their pitiful lives and take their rightful place in society. Every day
these new saints of the people served themselves up as examples of the new success.

You couldn’t leave the house without running into some sort of demonstration. Banners and flags appeared everywhere. Uniformed
men and women became so common that after a while we hardly took notice of them. They walked around rigidly, their faces set
hard with responsibility. They always saluted us as we walked by. They demanded respect. They were not friendly people, these
rebel soldiers. They didn’t smile, they didn’t dance; it was as if, suddenly, they had stopped being Cubans. As if something
hard and harsh had invaded their souls.

“Imagínate,” Caridad said as we crossed the street. “Even a couple of ladies like us simply walking to the store get the military
treatment.”

We didn’t know what to do.

“Do we salute back?” she asked me.

“Just wave,” I said. “See what the hell they do.”

So she just waved. “Qué tal?” And smiled the way she always did. In Palmagria, you greeted your neighbors no matter how you
felt about them. It was considered good manners. I didn’t. If I didn’t like you, you knew it. But with these new people, I
was always a little concerned that waving or not waving, smiling or not smiling, was somehow wrong or disrespectful. That
they might take offense. If forced to, I waved, but I never smiled. Never! And I certainly was not about to salute them.

That summer everything took on a military tone, as if the entire town had been enlisted. As if the Revolution wasn’t really
over, as if we were now in a new and confusing war and the enemy could be just anyone.

“Take back your country!” people shouted on the radio and from street corners.

There were marches and speeches almost every day.

Too many took the slogans too seriously, and a rash of crime erupted almost overnight in a town where, before the Revolution,
people had rarely locked their doors. Por Dios, our windows were always wide open, and everyone knew everyone else.

Guajiros were being told that everything belonged to everyone, and that it was theirs for the taking. Those with nothing,
who just needed an excuse, started to help themselves.

Those of us who had even the tiniest bit more than others became their targets. Poor families trained their children to sneak
into our homes during the day and hide. Then at night they quietly unlocked the front door while we slept and the adults then
tiptoed in and cleaned us out. Many families woke up to empty houses; everything that could be taken had been. Fear took hold.
I’d see people sitting on the front steps of their house waiting for the authorities, their heads in their hands, and I knew
without asking that they’d been hit. There were serious reports and investigations, but olvídate, forget it, once you were
ransacked, you stayed that way. And it wasn’t as if you could just go to the store and replace what had been stolen.

Caridad, who had the courage of a goldfish, stopped sleeping.

“Imagínate,” she said. “People are afraid to go outside. They’re getting guard dogs, the most vicious ones they can find.”

She was right. Our town was now overrun with guajiros, who came down from the mountains like a swarm of locusts to seek their
fortune. You could see the hunger in their eyes, their desire for more. This was their moment after a lifetime of poverty,
and they were going to take full advantage of it. They were dark and weathered and ill- mannered, these people. Their children,
used to life in the fields, would shit on our sidewalks. Not that Palmagria was the most elegant place on earth. But there
were certain things we did not do. Dios mío! Shitting on the sidewalk was definitely one of those things. Definitely!

“Isn’t it enough,” Mario said, “that the Land Reform Act has given them all the land the Americans left behind? Free land
just for the taking. Isn’t it enough that schools are being set up for them, that they’re being taught to read and write?
Isn’t it enough that they’re all being vaccinated? Why do they have to come here? What’s here for them?”

I told Mario again and again to keep his opinions to himself. But after a few drinks, he always forgot. Always.

*

T
HE ONLY OTHER TIME
that Palmagria had been invaded by these primitives was during hurricanes, when the rivers overflowed and flooded their houses.
Guajiro families came into town cold, wet, frightened, and useless, not with that air of entitlement they had now. We gladly
took care of them, gave them shelter, food, dry clothing, and blankets, because we knew it would all be temporary. Once the
water drained out of their fields, they always returned, in slow- moving caravans: wooden carretas filled with donated supplies,
pulled by oxen and mules. Back they always went, if reluctantly, to rebuild their lives as best they could. Sometimes one
or two families remained in town. Even if they weren’t immediately welcome, with time they were absorbed and eventually forgotten.

Por Dios, now they were everywhere, and they were not going back. Now they had it better than at any other time of their lives.
The homes of the wealthy, houses that had been in the same family for centuries, were being vacated and handed over to these
so- called Heroes of the Revolution. Families that had been living in shacks with dirt floors found themselves in ornate mansions
with swimming pools and servants’ quarters. Venerated buildings now housed reinvented organizations. Instead of Boy Scouts
we now had the Young Pioneers, which everyone said was dedicated to brainwashing the young into the communist way of life.
All children were forced to join, regardless of what their parents felt. The new government was focusing as much on the young
as on the poor. It was, they trumpeted, their “investment in the future.”

I had never cared too much about politics. I always figured things would take care of themselves. That day when Graciela turned
off the radio, I knew that what she’d said was true. There had been revolutions before, assassinations, and crazy elections
when even the dead could cast a vote. But I could tell that this was different, this time there was a solid plan. Por Dios,
they were going after the most ignorant and impressionable segment of the population. There was a plan, a design, and it seemed
to me that the aim was to destroy what we had managed to create for ourselves through hard work and determination. To take
away what little we had.

People like me were putting up a fight. Not a loud one, because we knew that would immediately land us in prison. But small
things. We started withdrawing into our own little ways. Many parents kept their children from attending the mandatory Young
Pioneer meetings. It was the revolt of the middle class, which was curious, because up to that point the world didn’t think
Cuba had a middle class. Por Dios, according to the Revolution, the country consisted of those who lacked nothing and those
who had nothing, but that was not entirely true.