We walk. When we get to 8th Street, we turn to the right and head toward the heart of the ghetto. Bodegas, clothing stores, opticians, barber shops, restaurants, coffee shops, pawn shops, furniture stores. All of it small, square, simple, made without any architectural artifice or aesthetic concerns. Created to make a few cents and thus cobble together that petit bourgeois life-style to which the average Cuban aspires.
We walk on. We walk on. When we reach the big, gray arcade of a Baptist church, we sit at the foot of one of the pillars. A protest march of old people passes on the street, toward downtown. I don’t know what they’re marching for. They raise signs that say, “Enough already!” and they’re waving Cuban and American flags. Somebody comes over to us and gives us both typewritten pieces of paper. I read:
It’s time. The “Cuban Avengers” group has been started in Miami. From today on, take heed all the indifferent, the mean-spirited, the closet communists and all those who enjoy life in this hedonistic and bucolic city while an unhappy Cuba moans in chains. “Cuban Avengers” will show all Cubans the path to follow.
I crumple up the piece of paper and throw it out. I start laughing. I lean against the pillar and look at Frances. She gets closer to me and sinks her shoulder into my ribs. She takes one of my arms and places it over her shoulder. I squeeze her a little more and kiss her head.
“My angel,” she says. “Were you ever a communist?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
We’re silent. Then she says,
“At the beginning.”
I lean my head back against the pillar and sing an old anthem from the early years of the Revolution in a low voice:
Somos las brigadas Conrado Benítez
Somos la vanguardia de la revolución
She continues:
Con el libro en alto, cumplimos una meta
Llevar a toda Cuba la alfabetización
We burst out laughing.
“I taught five peasants how to read,” she confesses.
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“In the Sierra Maestra,” she says. “In a place called El Roble.”
“I was around there,” I say. “I was teaching some other peasants in La Plata. Three mountains from there.”
“How long ago was that, my angel?”
I close my eyes.
“Twenty-two … twenty-three years ago,” I say. “Nobody understands that,” she says. “I tell my psychiatrist and he just gives me strong Etrafon pills. Twenty-three years, my angel?”
She looks at me with tired eyes.
“I think I’m dead inside,” she says.
“Me too.”
I take her by the hands and we stand up. A black convertible goes by in front of us. A Miami teenager sticks his head out and yells at us, “Trash!”
I flash him the longest finger on my hand. Then I squeeze Frances’ hand and we start walking back to the halfway house. I’m hungry. I’d like to eat, at the very least, a meat empanada. But I don’t have a single cent.
“I have two dimes,” says Frances, untying a handkerchief.
“They’re no good. Everything in this country costs more than twenty-five cents.”
Nonetheless, we stop in front of a coffee shop called La Libertaria.
“How much is that empanada?” Frances asks an old server who looks bored behind the counter.
“Fifty cents.”
“Oh!”
We turn around. When we’ve gone a few steps, the man calls out to us.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“Are you Cuban?”
“Yes.”
“Man and wife?”
“Yes.”
“Come in, I’ll give you something to eat.”
We go in.
“My name is Montoya,” the man says as he cuts two big slices of bread and starts to put ham and cheese on them. “I’ve also had rough times in this country. Don’t tell anyone I said so, but this country will eat you alive. I’m Montoya!” He says again, adding two large pickle slices between the bread slices. “I’m an old revolutionary. I’ve been imprisoned under every one of the tyrannies Cuba has suffered. In 1933, in 1952 and most recently, under the hammer and sickle.”
“Anarchist?” I ask.
“Anarchist,” he confesses. “My whole life. Fighting the Americans and the Russians. Now I’m very peaceful.”
He puts the open-faced sandwiches, all ready, on the counter and invites us to eat. Then he takes out two Coca-Colas and sets them in front of us.
“In 1961,” he says, leaning forward on his elbows over the counter, “Rafael Porto Penas, lame Estrada, the now-deceased Manolito Ruvalcaba, and I were all together in the same car with Fidel Castro. I was at the wheel. Fidel was without his bodyguards. Lame Estrada looked him right in the eye and asked, ‘Fidel … are you a communist?’ And Fidel replied, ‘Caballeros, I swear to you by my mother that I am not a communist nor will I ever be one!’ See what kind of guy he is!”
We burst out laughing.
“Cuban history isn’t written yet,” Montoya says. “The day I write it, the world will end!”
He goes over to two customers who just walked in and Frances and I take the opportunity to eat our sandwiches. We eat and drink in silence for a few minutes. When we’re done, Montoya is in front of us again.
“Thank you,” I say.
He stretches his hand out to me. Then he extends it to Frances.
“Go to Homestead!” he then says. “They need people there to pick avocadoes and tomatoes.”
“Thank you,” I say again. “Maybe we’ll do that.”
We leave. We walk toward First Street. While we walk, a great idea pops into my head.
“Frances,” I say, stopping at Sixth Avenue. “Tell me, my angel."
"Frances … Frances …,” I say, leaning up against a wall and bringing her gently to me. “I’ve just had a magnificent idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Let’s leave the halfway house!” I say, bringing her to my chest. “With what we both receive from social security, we could live in a small house, and we could even earn a little more if we did some menial work here and there.”
She looks at me, surprised by my idea. Her mouth and chin start trembling slightly.
“My angel!” she says, moved. “And can I bring my little boy from New Jersey?”
“Of course!”
“And you would help me raise him?”
“Yes!”
She squeezes my hands tightly. She looks at me with her trembling smile. She’s so moved that for a few seconds, she doesn’t know what to say. Then all the color drains from her face. Her eyes roll back and she faints in my arms.
“Frances… Frances!” I say, helping her up from the sidewalk. “What’s wrong?”
I pat her face a few times. Slowly, she comes to. “It’s hope, my angel …,” she says. “Hope!” She hugs me tightly. I look at her. Her lips, her cheeks, her face, all of it is trembling intensely. She starts to cry.
“It’s not going to work out,” she says. “It’s not going to work out.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m crazy. I need to take four pills of strong Etrafon daily.”
“I’ll give them to you.”
“I hear voices,” she says. “It seems like everyone is talking about me.”
“Me too,” I say. “But to hell with the voices!”
I grab her by the waist. Slowly, we begin to walk back to the halfway house. A new car passes next to us. A guy with a thin beard and tinted glasses sticks his head out the window and yells at me, “Dump that bitch!”
We walk on. While we walk, I’m planning the steps we’ll take. Tomorrow, the first of the month, our social security checks arrive. I’ll talk to Curbelo and ask him for mine and Frances’. Then we’ll pack our bags, I’ll call a taxi and we’ll go house hunting. For the first time in years, a small ray of hope shines into the deep dark well of my empty chest. Without realizing it, I smile.