Oye What I'm Gonna Tell You. Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés
would go to the meat market twice a week. Ay, Orfa and I hated the smell and all the flies but there wasn’t a living soul who Mima trusted with ‘confianza’ to watch us, especially the roomers she had started to take in. Why, they looked as poor as we were! So off we went every few days—with no icebox, what more could you expect? Mima would ask the butcher for the scraps left over from the beef cuts. Only a few people could afford beefsteak then, even worse than now. Do you know what I’m talking about, niña?”
Alma wasn’t sure if she meant the scraps or the people who brought steak. Before she could ask, Lala continued.
“The white strips of tendon and muscle. That’s piltrafa and it was usually for the rich people’s dogs or poor people like us. Mima would get the little piece of pork she could afford and there was one butcher who knew she was a widow alone with two niñitas so he’d save her some scraps that still had a little meat for her. Do you believe it?”
Alma didn’t have to answer because Lala had closed her eyes, signaling the end of the storytelling. Alma could fill in the rest, how the scraps would be put into a big pot of boiling water to get the flavor of meat so that any viands they had would taste more than the tasteless, starchy tubers they were; how that was what sustained them. That and their prayers to Our Lady, of course.
Her little mending jobs gave Alma some extra money to buy discounted material to sew herself a new dress from time to time. No longer flat-chested, her brown nipples were the yokes of what Lala called “two fried eggs.” Eduardo would have liked to have tasted these, Alma thought, remembering the latest letter he’d sent. Alma had started receiving the crumpled letters that his older sister Olga handed to her in grammar class at the Escuela Superior.
That first letter began with “If this letter reaches you, mi querida, know that I love you and only want to be with you day and night, especially in the night.” This line made Alma tremble in a way only Eduardo’s touch had previously accomplished. He told her about the countryside near Camajuaní, how there were royal palms everywhere, how rich the soil and green the plants were. He said that there were so many birds he never knew existed and they sang songs every morning and even in the night that made his head spin but that nothing, darling Alma, was “as beautiful as the look you give just before a kiss.”
His abuelo, he wrote, like most guarijos, left the bohio early each day for the cane fields and returned after dusk. He didn’t want this for his grandson, so he had made a plot of tobacco Eduardo’s responsibility. In large loopy script, Eduardo described how much trouble it took to get the seedlings to grow into long luscious leaves ready for the drying shed. He said the leaves smelled sweet and that they were just as good as those grown in Pinar del Río where everyone said most of the island’s best tabaco was cultivated. His abuelo rolled his own cigars and sold the rest of the crop for cheap to neighbors or friends in the nearby pueblos like Taguayabón and as far as the small city of Remedios where he learned that they had the best Christmas carnavales. With pride, Eduardo told Alma that he got to keep a percentage of the tobacco profits and that he was saving money to come get her.
Alma considered a sacrifice to Yemayá, in order to prove her dedication to Eduardo. A whole watermelon, the goddess’ favorite fruit, to pray over and drop into the high tide at the malecón. She took to carrying seven copper coins in her pocket, using them as a rosary for Our Lady, passing each from pocket to pocket once the Hail Mary was completed.
One day, tía Lala said she needed to speak with her on a serious matter and led her into the sitting room. It felt strange to Alma being there because she couldn’t remember the last time they’d used the room.
Lala arranged her large loose hips in a finely carved armchair she said had been her grandmother’s and asked loudly why Alma’s hand in marriage hadn’t been promised by now.
“Hurry up and find a man, Pelucita. But a good, honorable man. I don’t want any no-count machos around here, especially the kinds that would have you run away from her family. A decent, hardworking man is what I want for you, Pelucita.”
Alma wondered if tía would ever give Eduardo the chance to prove himself. She looked above and beyond Lala’s agitated head to the framed saints in the bedroom.
“First thing I will do is send everyone . . .” this she said more quietly as she pointed upstairs, “packing! Solavaya todo el mundo! You and your husband would have the whole upstairs so you could make lots of children to fill those rooms.” She laughed a little, then looked away. “You know, niña, I’m not getting any younger.”
Alma saw the vision Lala had for her: selfless caretaker cleaning up after her aged great aunt and attending to the anticipated brood for the rest of her life, nothing but the same, cruel routine of old lady sicknesses or baby diarrhea, never seeing anything beyond the outskirts of Havana. (Lala wasn’t expecting Ricardo to take care of her; he’d joined the navy as soon as he could and was now sending home giddy postcards from New Orleans or Alabama and recently Key West where he was stuck for months awaiting his ship’s repair but never once, ever, did he send any money.) Alma’s throat constricted and her chest followed suit. It was as if her blood had slowed to molasses.
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