When We Left Cuba(29)
“I’ll be fine.”
He pulls over about a block away from the Theresa, and I pay him for the trip and step out of the car, wrapping my coat more tightly around my body, in part to ward off the late-September chill that the rest of the city appears immune to, and in part to cover my dress.
For the longest time, I’ve felt as though I hovered in the precipice between girl and woman. My mother has expected marriage from me—my little sister is a wife and mother—and society has pushed me into a grown-up state I am largely unprepared for, as though once I turned eighteen, I miraculously crossed some imaginary threshold that made me ready to go from my parents’ house to my husband’s house.
I’ve hovered in this in-between, staring at my reflection in the mirror and feeling slightly betrayed by the body that decided to grow curves and breasts somewhere along the way, that propelled me into this stage of life whether I was prepared for it or not.
Oh, I flaunted my newfound womanhood as soon as it came, because there was power in it. But still, I was always uneasy, as though my body belonged to someone else, never to me, as though it was a commodity to be bought and sold on my behalf.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I looked at myself in the mirror, and it occurred to me that perhaps adulthood had come not with a white gown and veil thrust upon me against my wishes, but rather in this moment, with this decision to claim my womanhood, to use it to get what I want rather than what everyone else wants for me.
Tonight, I feel powerful.
My heels click against the pavement, heads turning my way with each step. The crowd looks larger up close; a group of protestors shout at a pair of camera-wielding tourists. In my younger years, I would have stood beside them, holding a sign proclaiming Fidel a villain, shining a light on his human rights abuses for the world to see. I flash the protestors a quick, private smile, wishing I could commend them for the sense they have injected into this farce, the courage they’re expressing standing up for their convictions.
A policeman wades over to the protestors and yells at them. I duck my head to the side as a reporter raises his camera and snaps a picture of the interaction. In Havana, my sisters and I were forever captured in the society pages, our faces well-known enough that circumspection became a necessity.
Security personnel stand outside the Theresa, men in serviceable black suits that practically scream “U.S. Government.” A few more disreputable sorts are mixed in with the fray, bearded men in fatigues who must be part of Fidel’s personal security detail. I scan their faces quickly, but no one is familiar to me.
I remove my coat once I’m inside, and one of the security men guides me through the hotel. With each step, people stare, whispers in English and Spanish reaching my ears. A man laughs somewhere in the background, a comment about my figure causing my cheeks to heat.
We follow the growing crowd, over the threshold to another room, my heartbeat kicking up with each passing moment, a tingle running down my spine.
There are more men dressed in fatigues here, another horrible reminder of what the streets of Havana looked like in the aftermath of Fidel’s coup. The atmosphere is jovial, smoke in the air, fat Cuban cigars in hand. It’s the scent of my childhood, my father smoking on the veranda of our home in Miramar, Maria playing in the backyard, the chef making paella in the kitchen while Isabel hit discordant notes on the piano. Tears well, and not just from the smoke.
And then the crowd shifts, and my eyes adjust to the dim light, the haze, and I step forward.
I’ve imagined this meeting for so long, steeled myself for the moment when I would face my brother’s killer, Cuba’s scourge, and now he’s here, the villain of my days and nights slouched in a chair, his omnipresent green fatigues wrinkled and grimy, his beard scraggly, a cloud of cigar smoke surrounding him, and the shocking thing isn’t the flash of hate I expected to feel or the wave of grief I imagined would carry me away, but rather the sheer banality of it all.
I don’t feel anything. He could be a stranger on the street. And the truth of it hits me, the realization that somewhere along the way I have built him up in my mind until he has become a caricature of himself, likely more cunning, more intelligent, more formidable than he is in real life. He was the villain lurking under my bed, the ghoul in the closet, the proverbial monster used to scare children into good behavior, and the reality doesn’t live up to the machinations of my imagination.
He is, after all, just a man. A flawed one, a dangerous one at that, but a man all the same. Confident, arrogant, easily led astray by a pair of fine eyes and a set of curves.
Fidel holds court seated at a long table against the wall, flanked by two of his cronies, plates of food in front of them. The audience is overwhelmingly male save for a few women wearing similar dresses to mine. The one closest to Fidel—a pretty brunette with chin-length brown hair—sizes me up as thoroughly as any debutante.
Fidel is in the middle of telling a story—his exodus from the Shelburne, I presume, based on the words drifting my way. He gestures excitedly, a cocky smile on his face, a cigar dangling from his fingers before he stubs it out on a cheap ceramic ashtray.
I square my shoulders, my body relaxing, my hips going languid, my eyes sharp.
Tonight, I am confident.
Tonight, he is mine.
chapter ten
Fidel’s gaze flicks to me as I approach the table.
He pauses mid-sentence.