Luis washes the dishes, his back to me, and I walk over to the sink, picking up one of the rags and drying the ones he’s already cleaned. He shoots me a curious look but doesn’t say anything. My hands tremble as I wipe the cloth over a plate.
The dishes are a hodgepodge. Some are clearly the remnants of expensive sets with elegant stamps on the back. Others are plain and cheap. Luis treats them all the same, his soapy fingers methodically scrubbing them with a worn cloth. His nails are neatly trimmed, his fingers lean, devoid of a ring.
How long have they been married?
The need to fill the silence tugs at me.
“You play beautifully.”
He doesn’t respond.
“I heard you earlier on the saxophone,” I add.
Nothing.
“Have you been playing long?”
The side of his mouth quirks up. While the women in the house—Ana excluded, of course—appear to view me through a filter of mistrust and disdain, he seems indulgently amused, as though I am some bizarre creature taken out of her habitat and dropped in the middle of an environment where I clearly don’t belong.
“Since I was a child. My father taught me.”
The father who died in Angola. I feel a pang of sadness for his mother who was left to raise a child in Cuba as a widow—surely no easy feat.
“How old were you?”
“When he died?”
“Yes.”
“Seven.”
I swallow. “I’m sorry.”
Luis rinses one of the plates, handing it to me, his fingers ghosting over mine for a moment before he turns to the next one, repeating the motions as though he’s producing parts on an assembly line.
I search for something else to contribute to the conversation only to come up short, silence filling the kitchen save for the rush of water and the clunk of plates being set on the tiny countertop.
Ana returns a moment later, a box in her hands.
I finish drying the last dish and join her at the table while Luis excuses himself.
The box is a dark wood with a small gold clasp, a little bigger than a shoe box. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to reside in a gentleman’s study holding cigars or cash or jewels with mysterious provenances.
“It was your great-grandfather’s.” She smiles, handing it to me. “Elisa borrowed it.”
My great-grandfather Emilio Perez. Sugar baron. Batista supporter.
He died before I was born, but I’ve seen old family photos of him. He was handsome, tall, and distinguished. The stories I’ve heard from my grandmother and great-aunts give the impression of a man more concerned with business than family, but a man they loved just the same.
“When families left Cuba, they didn’t know how long they would be gone,” Ana explains. “Most thought Fidel’s regime would be temporary. They weren’t able to take items out of the country, but they also weren’t comfortable leaving them in their homes for fear the government would seize them or others would steal them. So they buried them in their backyards and hid them in the walls of their homes for when they returned.”
My heart pounds.
“Your great-grandfather buried a large box of items in the backyard.” She hesitates. “Beatriz has it now.”
This is the first I’ve heard of Beatriz having some secret box of family possessions.
“How did Beatriz end up with it?”
“That’s Beatriz’s story to tell. Let’s just say your great-aunt has led an interesting life. More so than you probably realized.”
Considering the myth-like quality surrounding Beatriz, I’m not entirely shocked.
“The contents of this box, though, were your grandmother’s. We buried the box together under a banana tree the night before she left Cuba. When the Russians moved into your family’s home, I snuck back over there and dug it up before they could find it.”
I gape at her.
She chuckles. “Beatriz isn’t the only one willing to take risks.” Her hands stroke the wood. “It was the right thing to do. Elisa wouldn’t have wanted it to fall into someone else’s hands. Especially the people who took her home. I told her years later that I had the box, and she asked me to keep it for her. To keep it for you.”
She slides the box toward me.
“I don’t know what’s in it. She never told me and I never looked. Go through it. If you have questions, find me.”
Ana reaches out, her hand covering mine.
“She loved you very much. Adored your father. Your family was her entire world. Her letters were filled with stories of all of you, so much so that I feel as though you’re a part of my family, too.
“She was trying to make the best of a difficult situation. You can’t understand what those times were like, how our world was shattered in the span of a few months. Whatever you find, don’t judge her too harshly.”
* * *
? ? ?
Later, I sit on the edge of the bed in the guest room, staring at the wooden box, running my fingers over the edges. My grandmother was nineteen when she left Cuba, and I try to imagine her as a young girl, caught in the midst of such political turmoil. If I had a box—not much larger than a shoe box—in which to place my most important possessions for safekeeping, what would I choose to guard? What did she save?
The hinges creak as I open the box.
Yellowed pages stare back at me, covered in ink, tied together with a red silk ribbon. Letters by the look of them. I set them aside. Next is a ring.
My heart pounds.
The center stone is a diamond, set in an art deco style, smaller diamonds cut in emerald and round shapes surrounding it. The ring itself isn’t large, but it’s elegant and clearly antique, the craftsmanship superb.
We never grew up with family jewelry whose origins extended past my grandmother’s time. Everything remained in Cuba after they left and eventually our valuables disappeared. In some ways, it’s as though the Perez family was invented in 1959. So this piece of family history is everything.
I slide the ring over my finger, delighted it fits.
There are other items in the box—concert programs, a white silk rose, the petals still soft, a faded map, a matchbook from a Chinese restaurant in Havana—treasures that clearly possess more sentimental value than monetary.
I go for the letters first, starting with the top one, expecting to be greeted by my grandmother’s familiar, loopy handwriting. Instead it’s slanted, all hard lines and black ink. Masculine.
I begin to read.
chapter six
Elisa
I barely recognize myself anymore—last night I snuck out to a party with my sisters, today I am walking along the Malecón, on my way to meet a man whose last name I do not know, whose family I do not know, who my family would likely never accept.
We are the source of my mother’s greatest pride and also the instrument of all her ambitions. That Isabel at twenty-three is not yet married is a travesty my mother is unable to reconcile, compounded by the sheer volume of marriage proposals received and summarily rejected by Beatriz—who at twenty-one should already be presiding over a home of her own, a child tucked away in a nanny’s safekeeping. My unmarried state is hardly a priority with two older sisters, but it is no small thing, either. Love is for the poor. In our world, you marry for status, for wealth, for family.
And yet here I am.
The Malecón is one of my favorite parts of the city—five miles of seawall that showcase Havana at her most beautiful, especially during the moments when the sun sets, the sky exploding into a series of golds, pinks, and blues like the colors that adorn the heavy paintings that hang on our walls.
I pass a fruit vendor selling pineapples, mangos, and bananas. He offers me a toothy grin before returning to his customers.
I’ve chosen another white dress to wear to see Pablo—one of my favorites, another purchase from El Encanto. It was harder than I anticipated to sneak out of the house today. Maria wanted to come with me, and Magda kept glancing at me suspiciously as though she could tell something had changed.