Next Year in Havana(80)

The nausea makes another untimely appearance.

I pray, words from childhood, words I’ve used more in the past several months than in the totality of my life combined. I pray for Beatriz, for my father, for my brother, for my unborn child, for all of us now.

Minutes pass, an hour. The stark reality that I may have lost Beatriz, too, that our father might never be returned to us, hits me with an intensity that grows with each ticking moment. How are we to provide for our family without him? Will my great-uncle take us in? Another distant family member? How will we survive this?

And just when my panic reaches an unbearable level Beatriz walks out. It’s impossible to tell if she was successful or not; Beatriz walks the same in victory and defeat.

She stops a foot away from me, her expression grim.

“I wasn’t able to get him out. I was able to see him, though. He’s injured but fine. Furious with me for coming.” She swallows. “They shoved him in a cell with ten other men. Like animals.”

“What are they going to do with him?”

“I don’t know.” Her silence tells a different tale.

“Beatriz.”

“They’re shooting people. Three times a day. Like clockwork.” Her expression turns murderous. “Che likes his schedules.”

This time I do throw up, the contents of my breakfast landing on the ground beneath me.

Beatriz is there in an instant, silent, stroking my back, pulling my hair away from my face.

“What’s going on with you?” she asks, her gaze sharp once I’ve righted myself.

I shake my head, wiping at my lips with the handkerchief I pull out of my bag, an acrid taste in my mouth. “It isn’t the time.”

Soon it will be, though. How much longer can I hide this secret? How much weight can we bear on our shoulders before we collapse?

Beatriz seems to accept my answer for the moment, but her gaze is searching.

The corner of her mouth is smudged, bright red lipstick marring her face.

I shudder. “What happened in there?”

She shakes her head, her gaze shuttered. “I’m fine. It isn’t the time,” she says.

I wrap my arms around her, needing this moment of comfort. “What do we do now?” I ask her.

“We go home. And we wait.”

We lock arms, turning away from the fortress. My legs shake.

Behind us, the sound of gunshots fills the air—

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

I count them as tears rain down my cheeks.

For the first time in my life, I know what it is to truly hate, the emotion filling me entirely, annihilating everything else in its path. And then the hate is gone, as swiftly as it came, leaving me with new emotions I’m not equipped to deal with.

There are dozens of ways you can betray your country—broken promises, failed policies, the sound of a firing squad pumping bullets into flesh. And then there’s the silent betrayal—the most insidious one of all. We thought we were being smart by merely enduring Batista. We thought we were playing the long game, cozying up to power so we could keep our grand homes, and our yacht club memberships, and our champagne-filled parties. We thought the indignities of his regime wouldn’t touch us.

I told myself being a Perez meant more than being Cuban, that my responsibility to my family, to do what was expected, to be the woman my parents wanted me to be meant more than fighting for what I believed in, for speaking out against Batista’s tyranny.

And the whole time we were pretending our way of life was fine, the “paradise” we’d created was really a fragile deal with a mercurial devil, and the ground beneath us shifted and cracked, destroying the world as we knew it.

Fidel has shown us the cost of our silence. The danger of waiting too long to speak, of another’s voice being louder than ours because we were too busy living in the bubbles we’d created to realize the rest of Cuba had changed and left us behind.

I feel guilt and shame.





chapter twenty-four


Marisol


That night I dress for dinner with Luis, counting down the few days—three—we have left together in my mind, wanting this evening to be special, to make the most of our time together. Luis knocks on my door just as I’m finished changing into my red dress, the scent of the perfume I’ve spritzed lingering in the air.

I open the door and am greeted by the sight of Luis standing outside my room, smiling at me, his gaze running over my appearance, a bouquet of sunflowers in his hand.

We walk from the Rodriguez house to the Malecón, our hands joined, fingers linked. When we reach the water’s edge, he buys two bottles of Presidente from a cart vendor. We take a seat on the stone ledge, our feet dangling over the water as it crashes against the rock, the sea spray hitting my bare calves.

The sunset rolls in, transforming the landscape as the locals come out of the crumbling buildings lining the promenade, carrying music and laughter with them. Luis hooks an arm around my shoulders, bringing me closer to his body, my head burrowed in the crook of his neck. My lips slide over the skin there, tasting the salt from the water. My hair whips around me in the wind.

“I’m going to miss this,” I say, turning away from him and staring out at the sea. It feels like I just got here, and now there’s not much time left. I’ve been thrust into this unexpected world, its impression lingering. I no longer wish to write about Cuban restaurants and foods; I long to write about revolutions, exile, loss. I ache to write about Cuba’s future. I yearn to return.