Oye What I'm Gonna Tell You. Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés
since her breasts were even flatter than hers. Alma was fifteen but hadn’t yet started and probably wouldn’t for a long time because she was so skinny. Jorgina, one of her classmates, thought she was being instructive when she showed a clutch of girls in the bathroom what the little towels looked like. Alma had already seen some used ones Rosalinda or Consuelo had discarded on the trash heap in the yard before Lala told them to be more discreet after Riqui brought one to the front porch to inspect.
“Pelucita, hija, el señor blessed me with the burden of raising my sainted niece and then her children,” she said, then gestured for the girl’s hand. “You will have your own children someday but not for a long . . .” She stopped short, biting her lip till teeth marks showed and Alma wondered if a burden could also be a blessing.
In tenth grade, Alma fell in love with Eduardo Domínguez, a poor classmate from around the way who knew how to do many of the acts Alma only knew how to describe, even some requiring the unusual use of one’s hindquarters.
“Pelucita, meet me at the midday break,” Eduardo whispered from behind her as they switched classes one morning. A chill shot down her spine as she nodded. His large-lidded eyes were wider today, she noticed. She bit her lip in anticipation of his fondling and it was difficult to sit still in the last class of the morning.
Alma found him near the walking ficus trees; he liked to pretend he was in jail behind the vines that had fastened to the ground. His crooked smile looked especially handsome to her; Loly didn’t think he was, pointing to the missing canine and bowed legs but these things endeared him all the more to Alma.
“Mi amor,” he reached to pull her behind the widest trunk, his big hands already moving over her.
“We only have a few minutes,” Alma’s smile tilted up just as her shoulder did.
“I know, I know. But we’ll leave the loving for later.” He kissed her forehead. “I have something to propose to you.”
Alma’s thin eyebrows arched.
“Here, let’s sit down. Let me tell you what I have been thinking about.” Eduardo’s face was seized by excitement. “Querida, what would you say if I asked to you go with me to Oriente? Wait!” He held his hand up before Alma could interject. “I want us to be together all the time. It’s impossible for me to concentrate on school when all I think about is being with you, holding you, playing with you until you scream with pleasure.”
Alma had surprised herself with the first yelp that had escaped her lips when his suckled her. It was now his goal to elicit all matter of cries from her during their encounters. She bit her lip and let him continue.
“We could leave this place and become free! New people!”
Was it possible to become a new person in a new place, she wondered?
“No one to tell us what to do. I could work for us, for you! I’ll do anything, cut caña, shine shoes even if I have to but it won’t be like that. I promise, mi vida. It will be wonderful, an adventure. Imagine it, Alma mia!” He explained how they would make their escape, hopping aboard the westbound freight train that left before dawn from the yards nearby, riding in front of the sun and towards their destiny. He told her about the famous days-long carnavales that wound through the streets of Santiago de Cuba. He pointed out that the most important musicians came from that end of the island. She mentioned money; he said he had some, not a lot but enough. She asked when and he said, “Whenever you are ready.”
“My love, with you, always but . . . give me a few days to earn some more pennies to add to yours.” She kissed his hands that firmly grasped hers.
“As you say.”
They parted and didn’t even exchange glances in their only class together. Alma’s blood raced and she felt warmth throughout her limbs while her heart thumped steadily with the promise of a different life.
Alma had every intention of dropping out of school. She could happily see herself running off with Eduardo to Santiago where, he reminded her, the music and dancing was the best on the island. However, a frantic Loly told on her to all the teachers. Señorita Álvarez, one of the more concerned ones, unafraid of their dicey neighborhood, went to talk to Lala, who started cursing as soon as she saw the teacher coming up the street.
She called Alma out to the porch. “What is the meaning of this, niña?” she said through teeth locked on a cigar butt.
“I don’t know, tía Lala,” Alma had already hidden a little piece of cloth in the back of the armoire, wrapping her only blouse and skirt without faded patches or stains, her sandals, some barrettes and Mamá’s comb.
“If you have done anything!” Lala raised her hand high, threatening the violence Alma had personally never experienced but had witnessed, having seen tía thrash half-dressed men who mistreated her roomers going down the stairs out into the street where everyone taunted the fleeing “degenerates.” Shouts of “maricón” or “animal” would follow the singled-out man until he turned the corner and was out of the neighbors’ view.
Lala hiked up her prodigious breasts and slowly made her way down the stairs to the street. She had no intention of letting the teacher in the house without a good reason.
“What is it that you want?”
“Buenas tardes, señora. I come about the girl. Is it possible to speak inside?”
Lala wagged her finger from side to side, then gestured for Alma, already shaking with hot tears slipping down her cheeks, to go inside. Alms considered grabbing her bundle and running out through the rear of the house, though that would require climbing over the fence into the mechanic’s yard where a big German Shepard growled menacingly whenever anyone was near. Instead, she stood behind the door frame to hear what she could as Lala would never kill her but the hulking black and gray demon dog surely would. The teacher told Lala everything.
After she left, Lala came into the hot, narrow kitchen where Alma was pretending to stir the frijoles. She approached without a word and slapped Alma across the face. That afternoon, Eduardo’s family pulled him out of school and sent him to work on his abuelo’s finca in Las Villas. Alma made a deal with the Virgin; if the sainted mother would see to it that she’d be reunited with Eduardo, she promised to say seven extra Hail Marys every night and name her first daughter Reglita, dedicating her to Yemayá.
To bring in some extra money, Alma took to mending things for the roomers. Sometimes, while she was fixing something or sewing on a button, Lala would tell her stories from the past.
“Can you even imagine how poor we were when all the men died?” Tía’s grandfather, father and uncles, including Mamá’s father, had all died in the last revolution, when Cuba was liberated from España. “Your aunt Orfa was a lot older than me . . . She and I were little girls and our mamá was alone so she asked all three sisters-in-law to come stay here. Our house was brand new then, the only one on this hill,” Lala gestured to the left, to the right, then left again. “There was nothing here, can you imagine it? Abuelo had come to live here after Abuelita Victorina died. Papá provided, thanks to God and our virgencita de Regla.” Alma knew that he had worked at the port, though she wasn’t sure exactly what he did but that it was a job with enough income for a house full of females after the war, when there wasn’t anyone else to provide enough of anything.
“Porbrecita Mima, she tried her best to feed us all but after the men were dead and buried, the sisters-in-law returned to their own families. We never heard from them up to this day.” Lala didn’t dwell on the betrayal her mother felt in favor of drawing out the description of their poverty. “Do you know what piltrafa is?” Lala widened her bloodshot eyes as she asked.
“I can’t remember, tía.” Alma said, feigning ignorance, hoping for new details. “Something like a soup?”
“Ha! If only it were even half of a soup like you know today.” Lala scratched her double chin. “As much as Mima insisted it was soup, I never thought it was because I remembered the tremendous soups she used to make before with lots of meat chunks in it