“What would you have me do?” I ask.
“Nothing. I wouldn’t have you do anything. But you’re all complaining about how you lost your country, and the reality is you didn’t lose your country; you left. You left the rest of us in hell. And now he’s leaving right alongside you.”
“Would you rather him stay here and die?”
My frustration isn’t with Cristina, it’s with this whole situation, but at the moment she’s voicing the things I fear the most.
She takes a drag of her cigarette. “No.”
“Then what would you have me do?” I ask again. “You don’t want him to leave, but he cannot stay. So what solution is there?”
Her smile mocks me. “Is that what it’s like in your world? Do things get wrapped up in pretty little bows and happy endings? You go back to America with Luis. You get married and have children, and have your perfect little life together. But deep down, you have to know you won’t have all of him. I tried to make him choose between me and Cuba, and he chose Cuba every single time. No matter how much you love him, how much you think he loves you, a part of him will always be here. And a part of him will always resent you for taking him away.”
Maybe. Maybe the parts of him are enough; maybe things will change and it won’t have to be a choice anymore—
I stand there, looking down at her sitting on the steps, the straps of her sandals worn, her expression hardened to steel.
This island will break your heart if you let it.
“You could leave, too, you know.”
She laughs, the sound unvarnished and raw.
“Find some nice man who tells me he wants to take me away from this place and leaves me with a swollen belly and a disease or two? No, thanks.”
“We could try to get you out. All of you.”
Scorn fills her gaze. “I tried once. Did Luis ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“I was six. There were twenty of us in a raft. My parents and fifteen others died. We spent a week floating in the water, starving, exhausted before the Coast Guard picked us up and brought us back to Fidel. The adults were thrown in prison. I was sent to live with my grandmother. I’ll take my chances, thank you very much.”
I’m rooted to this spot, some part of me wanting to stay and convince her, another part of me already gone.
“I have to go.”
My grandfather is waiting for me at the Malecón.
“Then go.”
When I reach the gate, I turn around, watching as she snuffs out the cigarette on the steps of the house, her gaze trained somewhere out to the sea.
What does it say about a place that people will risk certain death to leave it?
* * *
? ? ?
I walk from the Rodriguez house to the Malecón, my conversation with Cristina running through my head on repeat. Luis is with his mother and grandmother, discussing the logistics of him leaving. And I’m here, finally fulfilling my grandmother’s last wishes, the reason I came to Cuba. Waves crash against the rocks at El Morro, the sun setting on another Havana day.
My grandfather stands next to me, staring out at the sea, and I wonder how many times he did this and whether he searched for her, somewhere beyond the horizon, when he did.
I don’t realize I’ve asked the question aloud until he speaks.
“I imagined her there. America. As a wife. A mother. With the life we always dreamed about—a house full of kids somewhere with a palm tree in the backyard. I imagined her aging as I have. Each year that passed, I thought of her.” He sighs. “It was enough to hope that she was happy.”
I hate that their story doesn’t have a happy ending, that ultimately, this is yet another thing Fidel took from them.
“It feels incomplete,” I murmur.
“Life so often is. It’s messy, too. This isn’t the ending, Marisol. When you’re young, life’s punctuation so often seems final when it’s nothing more than a pause. When I learned Elisa had married, I thought our story had ended. Accepted it. And now, almost sixty years later, you’re here. I have a granddaughter. A son, a new family. A piece of Elisa.
“You never know what’s to come. That’s the beauty of life. If everything happened the way we wished, the way we planned, we’d miss out on the best parts, the unexpected pleasures.” He shrugs, gesturing around him. “We all had a vision; we had a plan. Fate, God, Fidel, they all laughed at that plan. I thought I was on one path, and it turned out to be something else entirely. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad, though.”
He smiles, wrapping his arm around me, bringing me against his side.
“I’m glad we found each other,” I say.
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.