Tomorrow They Will Kiss (8 page)

Yes, there were very rich people who owned just about everything, and they were foreigners, mostly Americans. Yes, there were
a tremendous number of peasants who owned nothing, not even the tiny square of land they slept on. But there have always been
people like that in every country in the world. Who ever said life was fair? In Cuba there were also plenty of families who
owned their own homes and their own businesses, even if it was just a greasy mechanic’s shop or a seamstress’s workshop. People
had a very definite way that they wanted to raise and educate their own children.

When the private and religious schools started to close down because they refused to change to Marxist textbooks, many decided
to keep their children home instead of sending them to public schools, where communist indoctrination had already begun. When
the officials started to notice that there were many children who were not completely taken in by their propaganda, that parents
were keeping their children out of school, a terrifying rumor began to circulate, throwing everyone into a frenzy. A frenzy!

It all started when someone said that Fidel was going to send his twelve- year- old son, Fidelito, to the Soviet Union to
be educated by Russians. On the day we were all whispering this rumor, my younger sister, Clarita, ran into my house in tears.

“They say they’re going to send all children from twelve to fifteen years old to the Soviet Union,” she said through a runny
nose and slurpy sobs.

“It makes perfect sense to me,” I told her. “From twelve to fifteen, they go to the Soviet Union to become perfect little
communists. Then they return, and from ages fifteen to eighteen, they are thrown into the military. After that, they’ll be
pissing Red.”

Maybe I am too practical, too sensible, and too realistic. Maybe what they say about ice water in my veins is true. Por Dios,
I see things for what they are. Of course, this wasn’t what Clarita wanted to hear, but I can only tell the truth. I felt
that if she was going to make the right decision, she needed to have all the information. To just console her with lies would
have been criminal.

In a panic, parents started to send their children to the United States to stay with relatives or with church groups, just
temporarily, to keep them safe. We could not imagine what would happen to a child in the hands of the Russians or how they
would endure those harsh winters without the comfort of their family. Twelve- year- olds are still very young. My friends
tended to pity me because I never had any children. Never to my face, of course, but I could see it in their eyes. Well, I
pitied them! And now I felt, not quite superior, but certainly blessed.

When it came to children, my sister Clarita won the lotería, vulgarly delivering five kids in about as many years, each more
annoying than the next. Unlike me, Clarita was voluptuously endowed with wide hips and large, soft breasts. And our natures
were at opposites too. Clarita did not possess one ounce of suspicion and could never hold a grudge. Whenever there was something
about a neighbor or a friend that I wanted to discuss, she always pushed me away and told me that she was too busy taking
care of her family to think about such things. She’s too kind, too softhearted, my sister. Her kids ran circles around her,
and her house always looked like a tornado had hit it. Sometimes I thought it would serve her right if they took away some
of her damn kids and sent them to Siberia. Maybe an experience like that would pull her head out of the sand. She was trapped.
She couldn’t suddenly pick up everything and move with five kids to the United States.

At the time, though, most of us were sure Castro couldn’t last, and we were determined to continue our lives just as we always
had. A lot of people had already left everything behind, thinking that when they returned a few months later, it would be
there waiting for them. But I knew that was not true.

I knew that once one of those guajiros got into your house, you’d have to set fire to it to get them out.

It was in this time of rancor, suspicion, and regret that Graciela made her biggest mistake. Por Dios, whatever she got, she
had coming. If you tied a rope around your neck, there were plenty of people in Palmagria who were more than happy to lead
you toward the gallows.

M
ost days I didn’t miss Palmagria
at all. Palmagria was in the past. It had been raining cold and hard in Union City, and I was almost glad to be inside the
factory. Grateful for the dolls that came to me naked, cold, and incomplete. The dolls had perfectly round holes where their
legs, arms, and heads should be. They glided by endlessly, reflecting the fluorescent lights that hung above. We assembled
them limb by limb until they started to take human form. They came fast and were handled roughly, quickly, by our frantic
minimum-wage hands.

Later they passed through a clear plastic curtain and into a dustless room, where their heads would be added. They moved on
down the conveyor belt, to the place where the journey became slower, where gloved hands handled them more delicately. They
would be as lovingly dressed and combed as an infant’s corpse. Tiny bunches of plastic flowers were added to their curled
and lustrous hair, and then they were carefully placed in boxes without a ruffle out of place. Eventually they would find
their way to little girls all over the world. They were given special names and treasured. They listened to sweet confessions
and plans for the future, they heard of boys and dates, graduations and wedding plans. They were wept on and held tenderly
during dark and frightening nights. They sat on canopied beds fragrant with the carefree smell of little girls. Their unblinking
eyes observed the delicate passage from girl to woman. And they lived on, long after they had been discarded, with the complete
certainty that they would never be forgotten.

On the assembly line, day after day, I stood across from Caridad, the ever- moving conveyor belt between us. Imperio stood
to her left, Leticia to the left of her. Raquel was on my right, and Berta always stood next to me on my left.

Beyond was the department that attached the heads. We could see them in there moving slowly, luxuriously. It was like an exclusive
neighborhood that we could walk through but couldn’t afford to live in.

The women in “heads” made more money and dressed better than us, and every Friday they all went to the automat down the block
for lunch. They always returned chatting and happy, as if they’d just been on a Caribbean cruise.

Berta and Raquel eyed the women from heads with scorn while they waited for the day when they could work in that department.
Waited for the day when they could start to steal the precious plastic heads that would complete their stolen dolls. Berta
and Raquel lived in envy and fear. They were jealous of the white women who not only got to work with heads, but could most
likely afford to buy a doll.

They also lived in fear of Mr. O’Reilly. What if he exposed Berta one day, like he did Calixto? What if a little leg or arm
accidentally fell out of Raquel’s skirt as she walked past Jacinto? Berta always stopped and crossed herself as she walked
past the warning sign.

But in spite of the sign, the plastic bags, the overall feeling of mistrust, and the growing disapproval of the others in
the van, Raquel and Berta continued to steal doll parts. Fridays were their big days. Sometimes they were so excited that
they traded doll parts while the van was still in the factory’s parking lot.

“You can at least wait until we’re on the road,” Leticia said. “I don’t want to be caught with contraband.”

As the van made its awkward way down the boulevard, Caridad pointed at Raquel and Berta with her lips. It was a quick, almost
imperceptible puckering and unpuckering.

“Por Dios,” Imperio said. “Look how jumpy you two are. You live as if you were still back in Cuba under the eyes of the Committee
for the Defense of the Revolution.”

“I don’t dare steal a thing,” Caridad said, “not an arm or a leg,” and turned up her nose as if the thought was too unpleasant
to consider.

“Even if I did have a child,” Imperio said, “I’m not stupid enough to risk my job for a plastic doll.”

“You don’t know what it’s like, Imperio,” Raquel said. “The girls want things that I can’t buy for them.”

“Personally, I don’t see the harm in it,” Berta said between her “ay- ay- ay” and the rubbing of her legs. “The factory owners
will never miss it. They’re richer than God.”

“The poorhouses and the jails are full of honest people,” Raquel added.

“I don’t know why you put up with it, Leticia,” Imperio said. “These two could get all of us fired. Fired!”

“Or imprisoned,” Caridad added with a tremor. “Imagínate! Then where do we go? Our reputations will be ruined. No one will
hire us ever again.”

“Niiiiñas, calm down,” Leticia said as she took a turn so close to the curb that two wheels of the van bumped over its edge
and onto the sidewalk. “No one’s getting fired; no one’s going to prison.” She maneuvered the van back into traffic.

Raquel wanted dolls for her daughters. And Berta had seven grandchildren from her grown son, who lived in Venezuela and barely
kept in contact with her.

“In Cuba, it would be different,” Raquel said. “In Cuba, families stay together.”

Sometimes we drove past the department stores where our dolls were sold, and there they were, blond and shiny, smiling through
the clear cellophane windows of their pink- and- yellow boxes. We knew how much they cost. We knew we couldn’t afford them.

“That’s money we can send back to Cuba,” Raquel said.

“You’re sending money again?” Caridad asked. “Then what’s the point of the embargo?”

“Raquel,” Imperio said, “how are we going to get Fidel out if you continue to send him money?”

“It’s just twenty dollars a month,” Raquel said. “They can do a lot with twenty dollars back there. They send me letters.
Those letters will break your heart.”

“Don’t read them,” Imperio told her.

“Don’t you understand, Raquel?” Caridad asked gently, as if talking to a child. “It defeats the purpose.”

“Por Dios, Raquel, do you want to stay in this country forever?” Imperio almost shouted, her face starting to flush with frustration.
“Do you want to work in a factory all your life and freeze every winter? Do you want to end up old and crazy and eating cat
food in a shelter? Think about your girls. Your husband did whatever it was he did without thinking of the consequences.”

“He did what he did,” Caridad echoed. The words just hung there. Raquel said nothing.

“Whatever it was,” Imperio added.

Then everyone fell silent for the rest of the way home.

Raquel didn’t care. She continued sending money home, and she and Berta continued stealing doll parts.

It was just a little leg here, a little arm there. Mostly on Fridays, sometimes on Wednesdays. Or Mondays, depending on how
things went that day. Sometimes they felt particularly lucky, or safe. They played a careful game. But not everyone was as
careful. Some people always went too far. Calixto Guiñón’s sad example haunted us.

*

O
N CHRISTMAS EVE,
what we call Noche Buena, the good night, we gathered in Leticia’s apartment because it was the biggest. She had two bedrooms.
Chano got pork at a discount, so that’s what was in the oven, a big, fat hunk of pork. I sat in the kitchen with Imperio and
Caridad, sipping from a glass of red wine while Leticia cooked. She was making congri and yucca, and the whole apartment smelled
of olive oil, garlic, and laurel leaves.

The men stayed in the living room. From the kitchen I could hear Mario going on and on, but not a word from Caridad’s husband,
Salud, or from Leticia’s husband, Chano.

“Where are the Americans?” Mario said, his voice getting louder. Salud didn’t answer. His best defense against Mario’s rants
was to let him go on and on until he ran out of steam.

“All I see are judíos, negros, and italianos, viejos.” Mario said. “Fíjate, the Jews own all the businesses, the blacks are
enslaved in factories or getting drunk at the corner, and the Italians won’t have anything to do with us. Their skin is the
same color as ours but they treat us like negros.”

From where I sat, I could see him. At first glance you’d think Mario was as white as the Americans he railed against. His
hair was the color of copper wire, his eyes a very light brown. But if you looked carefully, you could see his mulatto features,
the sinewy body of an African, and the taut, yellow skin of a Chinaman.

The room was too small for him, most rooms in Union City were, so he just took one step forward and another back, one hand
in the loose pocket of his pants jiggling the coins and keys he kept in there. In the other hand he held a beer. Not his first
or his second. Salud and Chano had sunk down on the couch; their stomachs looked like someone had stuck beach balls under
their plaid shirts.

“And forget about Miami,” Mario went on, his annoying voice getting louder and blurrier. “All the gangsters from Havana control
Miami. You can’t open even a tiny business there without greasing somebody’s hand. The only way to make any money is with
la bolita.”

My boys were out in the hallway playing with Celeste, Caridad’s daughter. I could hear them running the length of the narrow
corridor and up and down the stairs, laughing and shouting at each other. Twice, Leticia’s neighbors, Americans in red- and-
green sweaters who were still getting used to having Cubans in their midst, had come to complain about the noise.

“Graciela,” Mario shouted from the living room. “Do something about your monsters.”

“What am I supposed to do? Tie them to the couch?” I shouted back.

I wasn’t going to let Mario ruin Christmas for me. Even with a gut full of beer, he knew better than to push me too far. He
was lucky I didn’t march into the living room and slap his drunken face—after what he put me through.