Ruins Read online

  When it was his turn, Diosdado dropped his piece without even looking up.

  “But that aside, yes, you’re lucky—you have a wife who loves you and would never cheat,” Frank continued with a fake felicity, “a daughter you can count on to be your daughter forever. Because Nenita is a real girl, after all, a real girl—”

  “What do you mean?” Usnavy sat up straight. “Of course she’s a real girl …”

  Frank played without hesitation, smacking each piece down with a broad, dramatic arching of his arms. “That’s what I’m saying—you can go to sleep knowing Nena’s a real girl and get up the next day knowing Nena’s a real girl—that’s a kind of security in this crazy world, no?” Mayito, disgusted, clicked his tongue as he pushed in his piece. “Frank …” he said softly.

  The sapos started making faces at each other, not sure where Frank was going. (Frank produced enough good stories; he was worth the wait.)

  “My god, yes, she’s a real girl! What are you saying, that she’s not Pinocchio?” Usnavy exclaimed. It seemed like a ridiculously obvious thing. “But that’s not luck—that’s natural!” The sapos giggled at Usnavy’s assertion.

  “That’s what I’m saying! That’s it exactly! But in this world you can’t take that for granted, can you? What do you think, Diosdado?” Frank said, widening his eyes in mock innocence.

  The sapos were startled: What was Frank getting at? They stared while Diosdado inspected his pieces as if in deep concentration, but Usnavy noticed a slight tremor in his hand. “Are you going to play, Usnavy, or are you going to continue with this ludicrous discussion?” Diosdado asked icily.

  Was it his turn already? “Yes, yes, of course I’m playing,” Usnavy said, giving his pieces a quick glance. His stomach took a little bounce too.

  “You didn’t say what you think, muchachón,” Frank dared Diosdado.

  The sapos leaned closer. Usnavy could feel the heat of their bodies and smell the ever-present rum, like gasoline spilled around kindling. He slid his blistered foot back in his shoe, just in case.

  Diosdado refused to lift his eyes from the slats in his hands. “What I think about what?” he asked.

  “You know …”

  The smile, Frank’s smile; it was a trap, Usnavy could see it coming down on his poor pal Diosdado and there was nothing anyone could do, not even Mayito, who was now staring at his dominos in utter revulsion. The murmurs from the sapos were creating a curtain of noise, like radio static, behind them.

  “No, I don’t know,” Diosdado finally said, folding over his pieces with a hard slap that made both Usnavy and Mayito jump. Their own dominos wobbled then fell over haphazardly, exposing about half of them. The crowd hushed. Miraculously, Frank’s pieces stayed up.

  “Yes, you do; you know exactly what I’m talking about,” Frank said, chewing his cigar ever more furiously, making it go up and down like a piston. He leaned up on the table and covered his pieces with his hands, laying them down without making a sound. “About Reynaldo … or should I say Reina …?”

  A red-faced Diosdado shot out of his seat, taking the table with him and hurling the black and yellow dominos all over the street. Mayito lost his balance and almost fell backward while the sapos erupted in protests at Frank for goading Diosdado and at Diosdado for not being able to take it. Rum spilled, some even splashing onto Usnavy, who quickly tried to wipe it off, not wanting to show up at home later and have Lidia worry more than she already did.

  Frank cackled wickedly. The autistic boy, expressionless and unmoved by the commotion, got up from his chair and stood expressionless, then began to pick up the dominos.

  “Fuck, man, whatever it is, it’s not that big a deal,” said Jacinto, the neighbor from Tejadillo who’d sewn Usnavy’s shoe together. He called after Diosdado, but he was already a block away, his stubby legs hurrying from the scene.

  “I hate this,” muttered Mayito as he scrambled to his feet.

  “Be cool, man,” Chachi said to everyone and no one in particular. He was married to Yamilet, Usnavy’s neighbor.

  “That was unnecessary,” Mayito said directly to Frank as he bent over to help pick up the scattered dominos.

  Frank straightened his shirt, tucked it into his pants, and pumped his chest out like a shield. “That’s what he gets for raising a faggot,” he said in his own defense.

  The sapos jerked to attention; Jacinto winced.

  Usnavy shook his head. That was news? “C’mon, Frank, we’ve all known about Reynaldo since he was—what?—twelve? Why harass Diosdado now, for god’s sake?”

  “Because,” said Frank with an unusually serious timbre, “Reynaldo is not Reynaldo anymore: He’s really Reina.”

  “Cómo?” asked a skeptical Oscar Luis from the crowd.

  “So?” asked Usnavy with a shrug. He was, admittedly, confused, but he didn’t really care what Reynaldo was doing with his life. It had nothing to do with him, or them, and he was so far away now.

  “So, you dimwit—that little faggot had his wee-wee cut off. He had that operation. He’s Reina now. Legally. The motherfucker is a woman now!” Frank explained; he seemed to be marching in place as he talked, so proud was he of being able to deliver this information.

  “Coño!” Jacinto exclaimed.

  The sapos oooh-ed and aaah-ed, everybody suddenly covering, touching, or grabbing their own parts, imagining the agony of having them sliced away, their laughter a transparent defense.

  Mayito nodded, not approvingly, but to affirm the facts of the story. “None of our business, though, none of our business,” he continued under his breath, his Buddha face sagging.

  Almost immediately, Chachi started joking. “So did he get big ones, huh?” he asked, using his hands to shape two global spheres on his chest. The sapos yelped with glee.

  “And what about back here?” Oscar Luis giggled, grabbing his own ass.

  But Usnavy couldn’t fathom any of it. “How do you know about any of this, huh?” he asked Frank.

  “How do I know? Because Obdulio arrives in Miami delighted to call Reynaldo, and who shows up but Reina!”

  “Maybe it was a joke,” Usnavy suggested. “Maybe Obdulio got confused, huh, did you think about that? He just got there; he might not know how things are yet.”

  Around him, the guys chuckled, shaking their heads. Was it at Reynaldo (or Reina), or at Obdulio, or at him? Usnavy pulled at his T-shirt, soaked from careless rum, and held it away from his skin.

  Frank continued: “No, man, it’s true: Reynaldo’s a woman now. But you know what bothers me? You know what it is?” He poked Usnavy in the chest with his finger, right on the wet spot. “Diosdado knew—he’s known for years. And that jerk never told us. Never.”

  Around them people nodded and shuffled. Mayito stepped away from the circle, shaking his head. “Why would he?” he grumbled, but he wasn’t talking to anybody in particular anymore.

  “Imagine that!” Jacinto exclaimed.

  The sapos, laughing and joking among themselves, were dispersing now. Whether they understood Frank’s gripe enough to process it didn’t matter. Each would take the story, chew it up good, then practice how they would tell it later, adding little bits and pieces to their individual versions, each according to his need.

  That night when he got home, Usnavy found his worried wife out in the courtyard on Tejadillo, pacing among the tenement’s gossips and hustlers. It had taken him awhile longer than usual to arrive, not because he was walking instead of riding now, but because, first, he’d strolled over to the Malecón to replay the clapping that had scared off the tourists, to think through what he’d found out about Diosdado and Reynaldo, and then what Frank had done.

  At the Malecón, he’d seen young girls Nena’s age strut as if on a runway for the benefit of the foreign men who drove by in rented cars. The girls were brazen: As if dipped in Lycra, their clothes accented every crevice of their young bodies, every slope and incline of their new breasts. They yelled out “Spain!” or “Ital
y!” to the cars, all loaded with men Usnavy’s age who looked as if they couldn’t believe they’d stumbled onto this paradise, their expressions of joy so exaggerated that even the most benign grandfather among them seemed maniacal.

  As he neared the water, Usnavy had found himself particularly struck by the full figure strolling in front of him, flabby hips swinging wildly, almost like a bell. He thought he could hear it striking, a loud and forceful tone that paralyzed him. But when the womanly shape turned, she startled Usnavy—wasn’t there something a bit off in her face? Wasn’t her nose too bulbous, her mouth too cavernous and labrose, her laugh too robust?

  At the water’s edge, Usnavy had leaned forward and inhaled the sea, letting the spray cover him. The waves climbed and curled, then crashed among themselves. Maybe the salt would crystallize and he’d be like the sparkly man, giving off light wherever he went. It had been such a long day.

  “Lidia, are you all right?” Usnavy asked when he saw his wife in the courtyard at Tejadillo, her house dress wrapped tightly around her timid body, her feet tucked sloppily into plastic sandals. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to worry you. I went for a walk after the game. You won’t believe what happened.”

  Lidia grabbed at his sleeve, not to reproach him but for refuge. “Usnavy …”

  “What? What’s going on?” he asked, taking her softly by the shoulders.

  “It’s Nena …”

  “Nena!” He’d forgotten to go to the hospital to get her papers for the new ID! Nena was wandering Havana like an undocumented alien, like those desperate Haitians who tried to pass as Orientales but whose French and Creole accents always gave them away.

  “Yes, the police …”

  Usnavy thought his heart stopped for an instant. Whatever trouble she’d gotten into was no doubt his fault for being so irresponsible, so focused on other things beside his daughter. He shook his head in dismay.

  “They brought her home,” Lidia sputtered.

  “What …?” Usnavy asked, jerking back, suddenly out of breath.

  “She’s okay, she’s fine,” Lidia said, patting him on the chest. “But—”

  “What happened?” he asked, pulling Lidia into the shadows between their water barrel and the door, away from the prying eyes of the neighbors that, Usnavy thought, all suddenly seemed as large and portentous as the feline pupils floating in their room. Rosita, the woman who made sandwiches from blankets, ambled by and winked at him knowingly. She was brazenly carrying a couple of pieces of cloth across her arm.

  “Nena went to see the Campos family,” Lidia explained while pushing back a lock of hair.

  Usnavy had to think: The Campos…

  “For god’s sake, Usnavy—the Campos—the people who used to live down the street, who gave her that poster of the American singer when they moved to Miami!” a frustrated Lidia said, her eyes moist and red.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so upset. “Did they do something to her?”

  “No, Usnavy, no—they didn’t do anything. What happened was … when she went to see the Campos, she didn’t have an ID to show—”

  Usnavy flinched.

  “Not that it would have mattered, since the police wouldn’t have let her go up to their room at the Habana Libre anyway.”

  Usnavy slumped against the wall. There was no way around that. Even with an ID, Cubans needed to be on official business to enter hotels, everybody knew that. And there was never any business beyond the lobby considered official, if that.

  “And … and Nena resisted,” said Lidia, looking at the floor. “I don’t know all the details, she hasn’t told me and I don’t even know where to begin. But she got in an argument with the police. They had to drag her out of there. When they brought her to our door, she wasn’t any calmer.”

  Usnavy ran his hand over his face. Nena was an exemplary student who’d breezed through her initiation into the Union of Communist Youth. She did volunteer work with a Jamaican benevolent society that had a small chapter in Havana (this, though it was much harder to get people to admit to a Jamaican past in Havana than in Oriente). She had been elected to leadership posts at her school’s camp in the countryside. How could this happen?

  “We’re failing her. We need to pay more attention to her, buy her things—I don’t know!” exclaimed an exasperated Lidia.

  “Buy her things? She has all she needs!” Usnavy protested.

  “All she needs? Oh, Usnavy, don’t you get it? She’s a girl, a girl turning into a young woman. She needs things you can’t even imagine.”

  “Well, if I can’t even imagine then—”

  “You know what I mean!”

  “What do you want me to do, Lidia? Break the law? Steal? Would that make you and her both happy?” Obdulio’s fading figure crossed his mind, his raft held together with the illicit rope. Usnavy felt his throat grow dry and tried to move his tongue around, to scare up some spit.

  “What would make me happy is if you weren’t so naïve … If we have all we need, why can’t we try and get her something extra now and again? I don’t know, a decent pair of shoes …I don’t know! This is going to kill you?”

  “Everything requires dollars! Where am I going to get dollars?” Of course, he’d been thinking about this already—about the injured lamp, about getting Nena her own bike, but he couldn’t say anything yet. After all, he still hadn’t figured out any kind of plan. He still didn’t have a clue what to do. He still didn’t have a single dollar to his name.

  “I don’t know, Usnavy, where does everybody else get dollars?”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. He had to figure something out.

  “No, Usnavy, it’s not okay,” Lidia insisted. “Everybody saw what happened, how she …” Lidia’s voice drifted off and she stamped her foot, crossing her arms across her waist as if she had a stomachache.

  “How she what? How she what?” Usnavy demanded, desperate.

  “My god, she was reciting Guillén at the top of her voice: I have—”

  “Lidia, Lidia—I know how it goes!” Usnavy exclaimed in a fierce whisper.

  Ever since he could remember, Nicolás Guillén’s “Tengo,” an early celebration of the Revolution, was required reading for every Cuban school child:

  When I, just yesterday, look

  and recognize myself, me, Juan Nobody,

  and today Juan Somebody,

  I have everything today,

  I open my eyes, I see,

  I touch myself and see

  and ask myself how things have come to be this way.

  I have, let’s see,

  the pleasure of strolling through my country,

  master of everything within it,

  with things at hand that

  I didn’t or couldn’t have before.

  I can say harvest,

  I can say mountains,

  I can say city,

  I can say army,

  forever mine and yours, ours,

  a vast array

  of light, star, flower.

  I have, let’s see,

  the pleasure of going—

  me, a peasant, a worker, an ordinary person—

  I have the pleasure of going

  (it’s just an example)

  to a bank to speak with the manager,

  not in English,

  not as sir or madam,

  but as compañero, the way we talk in Spanish.

  I have, let’s see,

  being a black man,

  the right not to be stopped

  at the door of a dancehall or bar,

  or at the desk at some hotel,

  and be screamed at because there aren’t any rooms,

  not even a small room, not a huge one,

  a tiny room in which I can rest.

  I have, let’s see,

  freedom from any rural guard

  who might grab me and lock me in a cell,

  who might seize me and toss me from my land

 
into the middle of the road.

  I have, like the earth, the sea as well,

  no country club,

  no highlife,

  no tennis and no yacht,

  but shore upon shore and wave upon wave,

  immense, blue, open, democratic:

  indeed, the sea.

  I have, let’s see,

  the fact that I have learned to read,

  to count,

  I have learned to write,

  and reason

  and laugh.

  I have—I now have

  where to work

  and earn

  what I need to eat.

  I have, let’s see,

  I have what I should have had.

  Usnavy thought: And now what? Now what was he going to do?

  In their room, a tired Nena was already bundled under the bed sheet, the magnificent lamp lightless above her, leaving her parents to gaze at her blurry black figure on the mattress. A schoolbook lay open, facedown, next to her.

  But on stepping into the room, Usnavy’s sewed-up right shoe slid on a puddle of oily water, causing him to do an awkward dance right at the door, barking like a frightened pup, his arms flailing. Nena jerked on the bed. As Lidia steadied him, Usnavy got embarrassed at the spectacle he’d just made, and suddenly felt too ridiculous for the serious talk he was planning to have with his daughter.

  “It’s because of Chachi and Yamilet,” Lidia whispered to him about the puddle, her pupils pointing up, past the lamp. “The ceiling’s leaking.”

  Usnavy shook her off, annoyed. He turned on the light and picked up a paperback of Jesús Díaz’s Los Años Duros from the wet floor, its cover buckling and bubbling, ruined. “I wish we’d had a son,” he said, meaning to spite her and regretting it instantly. Because she’d grabbed him again, Usnavy felt the impact of his words immediately: Lidia’s muscles turned taut, like blankets being wrung by powerful hands.

  The comment had been exceptionally mean: Lidia had wanted a boy more than anything, more than he certainly, and had almost died in the long torturous process of bringing Nena into the world. She had confessed to Usnavy a strange mix of pride in her own twenty-two-hour endurance, but she’d also been transparently disappointed in the baby. While Usnavy had beamed at the two of them, all Lidia could say as Nena took to her breast, bewildered, was, “A girl …” Lidia had insisted that growing up female brought problems that were only magnified in hard times yet Usnavy didn’t care: His baby girl was a gift, light in its purest form.