Next Year in Havana(96)
He stares up at the sky, a gleam entering his gaze. “I like to think Elisa’s up there smiling down at us, that she brought us together because she wanted us to meet, wanted you to be part of my life.”
He begins speaking as if his words are the continuation of a conversation he is having with himself, a memory.
“She was wearing this dress.” He smiles. “White. It had this full skirt, and it swayed when she walked. I couldn’t stop watching her hips,” he confesses with a look in his eyes that makes him appear decades younger.
I laugh.
“I brought her a white silk rose. I’ll never forget her smile when I gave it to her. We were both so nervous. I kept shoving my hands in my pockets because I didn’t know what to do with them, because there wasn’t anything I wanted more than to take her hand in mine and never let go. The night kept growing later, and I knew we’d have to part soon, and I didn’t want to leave her. Didn’t want to ever let her go.”
“Did you fall in love with her here on the Malecón?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps I fell in love with her that first moment I saw her standing on the fringes of Guillermo’s party, her expression so earnest. Once Elisa burst into my life, there wasn’t a moment when I didn’t love her. She was a bright spot in years that were filled with violence and bloodshed. She gave me hope.”
“What was she like when you knew her?” I ask him.
“Fierce. Passionate. Loyal. Brave. Smart. She cared about people, and she cared about her country. There was a kindness to her; she always wanted to see the best in everyone around her.”
So little changed between the girl he knew and the woman who raised me.
I reach into my bag, removing the container of ashes, my fingers leaving shadowy prints on the cool metal.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this feels a bit unsettling, the act of holding my deceased grandmother in my hands a bit macabre. And at the same time, a weight rolls off my shoulders, as I cast off the mantle of grief that has lain there for so long.
I will always miss her, but I’ve been given a new chance to know her, and through her, a whole new family. A pause in what felt like an ending.
And this, too, is right—her reunion with the man she loved and the country that forever held her heart.
I pass the container to my grandfather.
A tear slips down his weathered face as he strokes the metal, a tremor in his fingers.
“Are you sure you don’t want to do this?” he asks.
I shake my head, understanding what was missing before, why I couldn’t come up with a final resting place that felt right. It wasn’t a place; it was a person. I brought her back to Cuba. The final steps should be his.
Pablo’s hands shake as he unscrews the lid, as he tips the container out over the sea, into the wind. It’s not as romantic as I imagined it; bits of bone fragments sail through the air. But then again, what is?
It’s the after, though, that means the most. We stand side by side, staring out at the ocean, at some point we can no longer see.
Ninety miles. Ninety miles separate Cuba from Key West, the southernmost tip of the United States. Ninety miles that might as well be infinite.
How many souls have been lost in these waters by people risking everything to find a better life? People like Cristina’s parents—filled with desperation, stretching out for hope? How many people on both sides of the water have stared across the ocean, yearning for something they can’t have—a family member, a lost love, the country where they were born, the soil where they took their first steps, the air they first breathed?
“Will you come back?” my grandfather asks. “Will you bring them? My son, my granddaughters? Will you meet your cousins?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will wait.” He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a packet of letters tied together with a faded string. I recognize the handwriting on them instantly.
He smiles. “I think she would have wanted you to have these.”
chapter twenty-nine
Elisa
The days, weeks, after Alejandro—I cannot finish the thought—run together as February passes on until it is nearly March. The wave of grief hits all of us, even our parents—our father who once declared him “no son of mine” for attempting to assassinate Batista so long ago. Alejandro’s funeral is a somber affair—only family. I cannot bear to think of his mangled body lying in that casket.
Did God heap all of our losses together in one fell swoop so we could bear them more easily, drifting from one death to another, vacillating between heartbreak and despair? Would it be crueler if they were stretched out over years, or is the sheer avalanche of loss our punishment for our sins?
I no longer know.
I am sick, mostly in the mornings, but every once in a while my body likes to surprise me with an afternoon malaise. I possess a newfound respect for my mother; she did this five times—four healthy pregnancies and a baby who went to live with the angels.
Magda clucks over me, my sisters sneak suspicious glances my way, and my belly swells with each day, but the dawn of new life is shrouded in the death that shakes us all. Still—how long before I can no longer hide the changes beneath my gowns? I hold my breath, waiting for my parents to say something, for my mother to notice the differences in my appetite, but she does not, her grief consuming her, her whispered conversations with our father becoming more frantic. And then our parents usher us into our father’s study and the reason for their distraction becomes clear.