Fifty Grand

It was 1993, right in the heart of the “special economic period.” Communism had collapsed in Russia, and Cuba had no friends. This was before the Venezuelans or the Chinese or the roaring comeback of the sex trade. Blackouts were common in Havana and there was no traffic anywhere.

A nice day.

Some of the older people had brought chairs to catch a few rays of the sun before it vanished behind the stone wall of the graveyard. Mostly women, knitting, repairing clothes, talking. Mrs. Ramírez and her sister in the street in front of us saying things about the decline of morals among kids today. Mrs. Ramírez reckoned that a decent haircut would improve the behavior of most of the unruly boys in Santiago, whereas her sister favored a good kick in the ass.

When they began talking about what was wrong with girls today I stopped listening.

“Come on, little guy, come on.”

I looked up sleepily. Ricky was trying to coax one of the swamp iguanas to come into the garden with a ropey string of sausage. But all the iguana wanted was to be left alone.

“Where did you get those ’izos?” I asked Ricky.

“Kitchen.”

“Aunt Isabella will kill you.”

“She’ll never know,” Ricky said.

“Iguanas only eat insects,” I said.

“Not so, Dad says they eat mice. Meat,” Ricky said.

“Kids, are you outside?” Dad’s voice.

“Get rid of those sausages, Dad will go crazy. You know what he’s like about wasting food,” I hissed.

“They’re not from the ration. Aunt Isabella has half a dozen strings like this in the pantry.”

“Get rid of them.”

“What do you want me to do?” Ricky asked.

“I hear you. Wait there, kids. Don’t go anywhere,” Dad yelled from an upstairs window.

I grabbed the string of sausages and hurled them up into the palm tree branches. They caught first time.

“Dad, we’re over here,” I yelled back.

Dad came out of the house. He was wearing a loosely buttoned white shirt, tan army trousers, and a pair of checked slip-on shoes. He had shaved and combed his unruly hair.

“Hi,” we said.

Dad nodded, walked past us, and looked down the street. He said buenos días to Mrs. Ramírez, even calling her señora instead of comrade. She smiled when he spoke to her. Everyone did. Dad was well liked and he got on with all strata of society. Mrs. Ramírez asked him about his job and he said something about how he loved it, how he always wanted to sail the seven seas. Mrs. Ramírez laughed, because the only stretch of sea Dad’s vessel ever went to was from one side of Havana Bay to the other.

When the pleasantries were over with the neighbors he sat on the white, dusty ground next to Ricky and me.

His eyes were dark like his hair, his nose long and angular. In fact, he was all angles. Skinny even. He was about forty, but he looked younger and was still very handsome. Childbirth, especially Ricky’s breech, had ruined Mom’s looks. She had a worn, worried expression all the time that was no doubt exacerbated by the monthly food crunch and by the throwaway affairs Dad had with women he met on the ferry.

“Why aren’t you playing with your cousins?” Dad asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Did you have a fight?”

Sometimes María and Juanita put on airs because they lived in a big house and we only lived in a scuzzy Havana solar. But that didn’t happen often because we could always call them country bumpkins, or if we were really feeling mean we could point out that they were leche con una gota de café, because their grandmother (like many people in Santiago) was from Haiti.

But today there hadn’t been a fight. We didn’t want to play baseball or hide-and-seek with them because we were just too hot and too tired after the Havana train.

“No, no fight, we’re good,” I said.

He smiled and looked at me for a long time and when I caught him, he turned away. He pretended to be fascinated by a creeper Ricky had twisted into a rope but after a moment he just couldn’t help himself.

“My little girl,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“And my little man,” he said and ruffled Ricky’s hair.

“Hey,” Ricky said, pushing Dad’s hand away.

Dad grinned again and stared at us so hard it hurt.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said and shook his head.

“Stop that,” I muttered.

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like that.”

“Well, kids, how are you liking your vacation so far?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I’m bored, there’s nothing to do here, when can we go back to Havana?” I asked.

“They don’t even have TV here,” Ricky said.

Dad grimaced. For a second, that old Mercado rage took, but he didn’t let it possess him; instead his face filled with and then lost its fiery color. Equanimity returned.

He reached into his pocket. I thought for a moment he was going for a present or money but instead he produced a hip flask. He took a swig and put the flask back in his pocket. Dad seldom drank even beer, and it was disturbing to see him swilling rum like some frito flojo on San Rafael.