When they began talking about what was wrong with girls today I stopped listening.
“Come on, little guy, come on.”
I looked up sleepily. Ricky was trying to coax one of the swamp iguanas to come into the garden with a ropey string of sausage. But all the iguana wanted was to be left alone.
“Where did you get those ’izos?” I asked Ricky.
“Kitchen.”
“Aunt Isabella will kill you.”
“She’ll never know,” Ricky said.
“Iguanas only eat insects,” I said.
“Not so, Dad says they eat mice. Meat,” Ricky said.
“Kids, are you outside?” Dad’s voice.
“Get rid of those sausages, Dad will go crazy. You know what he’s like about wasting food,” I hissed.
“They’re not from the ration. Aunt Isabella has half a dozen strings like this in the pantry.”
“Get rid of them.”
“What do you want me to do?” Ricky asked.
“I hear you. Wait there, kids. Don’t go anywhere,” Dad yelled from an upstairs window.
I grabbed the string of sausages and hurled them up into the palm tree branches. They caught first time.
“Dad, we’re over here,” I yelled back.
Dad came out of the house. He was wearing a loosely buttoned white shirt, tan army trousers, and a pair of checked slip-on shoes. He had shaved and combed his unruly hair.
“Hi,” we said.
Dad nodded, walked past us, and looked down the street. He said buenos días to Mrs. Ramírez, even calling her señora instead of comrade. She smiled when he spoke to her. Everyone did. Dad was well liked and he got on with all strata of society. Mrs. Ramírez asked him about his job and he said something about how he loved it, how he always wanted to sail the seven seas. Mrs. Ramírez laughed, because the only stretch of sea Dad’s vessel ever went to was from one side of Havana Bay to the other.
When the pleasantries were over with the neighbors he sat on the white, dusty ground next to Ricky and me.
His eyes were dark like his hair, his nose long and angular. In fact, he was all angles. Skinny even. He was about forty, but he looked younger and was still very handsome. Childbirth, especially Ricky’s breech, had ruined Mom’s looks. She had a worn, worried expression all the time that was no doubt exacerbated by the monthly food crunch and by the throwaway affairs Dad had with women he met on the ferry.
“Why aren’t you playing with your cousins?” Dad asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Did you have a fight?”
Sometimes María and Juanita put on airs because they lived in a big house and we only lived in a scuzzy Havana solar. But that didn’t happen often because we could always call them country bumpkins, or if we were really feeling mean we could point out that they were leche con una gota de café, because their grandmother (like many people in Santiago) was from Haiti.
But today there hadn’t been a fight. We didn’t want to play baseball or hide-and-seek with them because we were just too hot and too tired after the Havana train.
“No, no fight, we’re good,” I said.
He smiled and looked at me for a long time and when I caught him, he turned away. He pretended to be fascinated by a creeper Ricky had twisted into a rope but after a moment he just couldn’t help himself.
“My little girl,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
“And my little man,” he said and ruffled Ricky’s hair.
“Hey,” Ricky said, pushing Dad’s hand away.
Dad grinned again and stared at us so hard it hurt.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said and shook his head.
“Stop that,” I muttered.
“Stop what?”
“Looking at me like that.”
“Well, kids, how are you liking your vacation so far?” he asked, changing the subject.
“I’m bored, there’s nothing to do here, when can we go back to Havana?” I asked.
“They don’t even have TV here,” Ricky said.
Dad grimaced. For a second, that old Mercado rage took, but he didn’t let it possess him; instead his face filled with and then lost its fiery color. Equanimity returned.
He reached into his pocket. I thought for a moment he was going for a present or money but instead he produced a hip flask. He took a swig and put the flask back in his pocket. Dad seldom drank even beer, and it was disturbing to see him swilling rum like some frito flojo on San Rafael.
“Yes,” he said apropos of nothing and then he lay on his back, put his hands behind his head, and gazed up into the palm tree. How he missed the sausages I have no idea. He muttered something to himself-the words of a song, I think-and then after a minute he turned to me.
“We better go inside. Isabella’s getting your cousins, we’re having an early dinner,” he said.
“I’m not even hungry yet,” Ricky said.
Dad ignored Ricky and lifted him onto his shoulders, something he hadn’t done since Ricky was about five. I took his hand.
We walked into the house.
Dinner. The UFC man’s dining room. A hardwood floor elevated so that you could see through the Spanish windows to the old coffee fields beyond. China plates, silver serving spoons, and even a chandelier that had been in the house since the twenties.
We had changed into our best clothes, Ricky in a stiff shirt and me in a black Sunday dress.
It was still hot. The house had an electric fan but it wasn’t working.
Around the table: Aunt Isabella, Mom, Dad, Ricky, me, Uncle Arturo, María, Juanita, Danny, Julio, and the new arrival, little Bella. I was jealous of María and Juanita that they had a baby in the house and I wondered when Dad and Mom were going to make a sister for me.
Servants were forbidden in Cuba, but Uncle Arturo had two: a black woman from the village called Luisa Pedrona who made the food and a girl from Las Tunas who brought it to the table. Aunt Isabella was famous for her inability to cook, but the fiction around the table was that she had made everything.
“These plantains are amazing,” Mother said.
“Did you try the ajiaco?” Aunt Isabella asked.
Mom said that she had and that it was delicious too. She turned to Dad but he merely grunted and I could see that he’d hardly touched anything.
I wolfed it all. Luisa was good at Cuban specialties and this was a Cuban meal that included such exotic things as fish, beef, and fresh fruit.
The men talked baseball and the woman talked children and the children said nothing at all.
We were onto the coco quemado when the phone rang. Juanita got it and announced that it was for Dad.
The phone was in Uncle Arturo’s “study,” a small adjoining room that had a patio and leather chairs. It was where Uncle Arturo kept several hundred of the UFC man’s English books locked in a glass case, and it was where he had his own stash of Marlboro cigarettes and pornographic magazines in a rolltop American desk.
Dad bowed to Aunt Isabella, excused himself, and went into the study. The adults resumed their talk, which was something about President Clinton and the Miamistas. I was nearest the study door and couldn’t help but listen in on Dad’s end of the conversation.
“Yes? Yes? What is it?… Impossible. I’m in Santiago. You know what that train is like. How can I… No, no, no, of course not… They can go to hell… Yes. I’ll get the overnight. I hope this is not indicative of the state of the rest of the… Ok… Goodbye. Wait, wait, please tell José to remember the diesel.”
The conversation stopped.
Uncle Arturo was fortune-telling: “I predict that President Clinton and the pope will come together to Cuba for a visit. Mark my words. Remember this date.”
I remember. October 1, 1993.
The phone. The cradle. Father running his hand through his hair. He came back to the dinner table. His coconut pie was cold. He looked at Mom. He grinned at me and, reassured, I went back to my dessert.