Cuba Diaries (3 page)

I asked Nick several weeks ago if six in help wasn't a little too much. We weren't diplomats, and in the last country, we had only three, including Muna, but Nick said his predecessor had six, it was mean to let anybody go, the house was huge, the kitchen was medieval, and we could afford to live a little because the help cost so little, only $150 per month per person. Of the $150 per month per person, $85 would go directly to the employee, and $65 would go to Cubalse, the state-run conglomerate in charge of almost all construction in the country and almost all services, which provides domestic and other help to foreigners and watches over the help it provides. Eighty-five dollars
a month was a
fortune
, Nick explained to me several weeks ago as we were packing, because in Cuba, the average salary was $10 per month.

“
Watches over them?
”

“Watches over them to make sure they watch over us.”

Muna is paid much more because she travels with us, goes to the States and Europe with us, and her salary is a compromise between what she would make in Europe and what she would make in the States. I have told her that the best thing to do when the other people in the house ask her how much money she is making is to lie and say $300.

We look through the house. The children career, yelling, through the echoing halls, searching for their rooms.

The help come at us, as we are touring, keys in hand. Five years of Spanish in school, but I cannot understand a single word. They open closets, safes, close them, put keys in our hands. They seem to want to get the keys out of their own hands as fast as possible. There is a lot of ceremony around a walkin air-conditioned closet off the kitchen. It is called the
despensa
and it is closed with a key, too.

We walk onto the veranda. Dwarf palms rustle like sheets in the evening breeze. We sit down in metal rocking chairs. The butler, tray in hand, asks us what we would like to drink. We ask for the most Cuban drink. It is a
mojito
, made of dark rum, light rum, lime juice, sugar, and crushed mint.

It was very hot when we arrived, but now it is cooler and a soft breeze hits us, though the words
soft breeze
flop dully as soon as I think them, just as before, on the plane, the word
violet
didn't come anywhere near describing a whole new sensual experience. A pleasant panic as I rummage, jet-lagged, for what it's like: it's like getting hit by a well-powdered marshmallow.

“I think we're going to like it here,” one of us—I don't know which one of us—says.

WE HAVE TWO BATHROOMS
off our bedroom. The bathroom we determine will be Nick's, the His-looking bathroom, is green, purple, and pink. The gardener takes the lid off the toilet and shows us the date, 1928, and the words
SANDUSKY, OHIO
, stamped on the lid's underside. “Sandusky, yeah!” I say in English. The gardener smiles. The bathroom we determine will be my bathroom, the Hers-looking bathroom, is pink and green with a pink sunken tub underneath a frosted arched window, against which you can see the shadows of palm trees waving.

The she of the Hers-looking bathroom, who lived here (we have been told)
until 1958, was short, we realize, and the he of the His-looking bathroom loved her very much and liked to lie in bed and watch her in the tub, her hair pinned up, high-heeled satin slippers ready at the side. He was an adviser to Batista. “Mr. Castro's going to kill me,” he is reported to have said. Which is what happened. She went to Miami and died there in 1981. They live in our house now, as ghosts.

The showerhead in his bathroom is a Speakman, crusted with mineral deposits, so that it can't be adjusted beyond a fat spray. Only boiling-hot water comes out of it—there is no cold—so we shift to her bathroom. A modern European “telephone”-type showerhead has been attached to the pitted art deco faucet, which emits only a very weak spray. Still, it is a bearable temperature, and I hold it for Nick, who then holds it for me, training it on key parts.

The Diplomercado is not far from us, in an area of inexplicably empty volcanic plains on the edge of the sea, with only the occasional tourist hotel. I have to go immediately, for there is nothing to eat in the house, absolutely nothing. Our shipment is still two months away. José, the driver, says that he will go with me. He says it will be a little crowded because it is Saturday morning.

There is a wedge of about three hundred people in front of a single swinging glass door. A guard is letting them in one by one. “Follow me,” says José. I get in immediately behind José, and we move, remarkably quickly, along one side of the wedge. “
Permiso, permiso
,” José says. People move out of our way.

I am embarrassed. I have heard that foreigners are served first, allowed to go places Cubans cannot go. I am wondering if I look so different: I am wearing a T-shirt with sweat patches under the arms and a pair of shorts. I have dark hair. It is José, I guess, who is making me seem foreign, but on the faces I see, there is no annoyance, though I think I hear a sigh or two. José nods to the guard, and in we go.

Once inside, people start running. José makes three quick leaps to the shopping carts, pulls one, and we make for the meats. People are standing four thick at the meat bins, scooping plastic-wrapped packages of frozen and semifrozen chicken and meat out of them—thin blood dripping from the packages—almost as fast as the clerks are throwing the packages in, then inching their way out of line, middle-aged white and brown women, mostly,
their faces flushed. There is a little jostling, but there is no pushing or shouting. “Excuse me,” I hear, “please.” It is polite semipanic.

“What do you want?” José asks.

“Ground beef,” I say, “chicken . . .”

José feints, ducks, dodges, passing frozen chickens and packs of ground beef back to me in the one space I have found for the cart as I try not to think of freezer burn.

It is the only place to buy beef in a city of two million people.

The cook has made a list: flour, milk, cream, baking powder, salt, sugar, onions, carrots, potatoes, pasta, rice, beans, vegetable oil, and canned tomatoes, in addition to the meat. It's a two-person operation, I realize. I stay with the cart while José moves around, gathering the items and returning to the cart.

Squid in ink, I see. Octopus, too. And a twenty-foot section of white asparagus in cans. Rows upon rows of cardoons in glass jars from Italy. Pigs' feet floating in brine in glass jars with Russian writing on them. Something labeled “Luncheon Meat.” Purple hot dogs from Romania, standing on end in a kind of cookie tin, and layers of pale yellow peas and greenish carrots in gallon jars with no labels whatsoever. There's a smell of sweat and mold and pickle juice, and the terrazzo floor looks like it hasn't been mopped in thirty-five years.

There are American products, too, and some of them look the worse for wear—cans of Planters corn chips with the paper coming off the canisters and brown around the edges—but some of them look brand-new. Pepsi. Heinz ketchup. Del Monte canned fruit.

When it comes to what you really need, there's vegetable oil, I see, but only a single row of bottles on the edge of the shelf, with no other bottles behind them. From a distance and if you squint, it looks like profusion.

José returns. He speaks slowly so that I can understand. There is no flour, he says, no sugar, and no salt. He tells me to leave the cart and follow him. José leads me to a swinging door at the back of the Diplo. He knocks, and a man in a green smock looks out cautiously. José mumbles something to him. The man shakes my hand. Just then, a cart loaded with packs of sugar is being wheeled out. José takes two off the top. The man in the smock disappears into the back of the shop and emerges with five packs of flour. José says maybe he can buy some salt from a friend. There's no baking powder at all.

A shopping list in Cuba, I realize, is just a wish list. It has little to do with
what might actually be there. There is toilet paper, though, lots of it, and I start to feel as if I have gone a little overboard with what I put in the container.

We pass the produce section on the way out. Four tomatoes wrapped in plastic on a Styrofoam tray for $5.00, three apples for $4.50. I tell José I can understand it, about the apples, but $5.00 for four tomatoes, which surely must grow here? José tells me to buy just enough fruits and vegetables to last for the next day or two, until I can get to the
agro
.

CREEMOS EN FIDEL Y EN LA REVOLUCIÓN
(We believe in Fidel and in the revolution) reads a slogan Nick and I see during a walk we take in the evening.

I am beginning to get the names straight after three days. José, about thirty-eight, is medium height, wears too-tight
guayaberas
(traditional Cuban shirts buttoned down the front, with pockets), and has some hairs growing out of the top of his nose, which he tries to keep after. Manuel is the butler, and though he shares the title of
custodio
with the gardener, Miguel, Manuel is, by way of age (he's fifty-five) and experience, the head guy and is perfect for the role. He looks like an Asian version of Robert Mitchum and Cubans call him Chino (Chinese), but he tells me that he has no Chinese blood and his ancestors were all from the Canary Islands. He is quiet, dignified, knows when to advise on the way things are usually done and when not to. He comes every day at four o'clock, as the others are leaving, serves dinner, and sleeps in one of the three maids' rooms (the other two are used now for storage).

I ask Muna to find out if Manuel has a wife. Muna seems to be getting along with everyone and brings me back small bits of information.

Miguel, the gardener, about thirty-five, is small and slim with a razor-thin face and looks just like his mother, Estrella, the laundress, who has a razor-thin face as well, and bright blue eyes. A telephone and computer technician from Nick's firm comes to do some work at the house and has a razor-thin face as well.
This must be some kind of Cuban face
, I think,
some Galician or Canary Islands or Asturian face
, until they tell me the electrician, Ysidro, is Miguel's brother, Estrella's other son. “I like their faces,” Nick says. “So extreme.”

Concha, the downstairs maid, in her mid-fifties, is tense, with eyebrows
that have been plucked, then painted back on. She has one son in Tampa and a daughter in Venezuela. She has some pretensions to propriety (an urban background, some education, unlike Estrella and Danila, the upstairs maid, who are both country girls), which can be an asset when you're having to deal with downstairs (taking phone messages, serving meals) but can lead to lording it over the others.

Danila, the upstairs maid, in her mid-thirties, is the simplest of the lot. She seems scared and doesn't speak much above a mumble—scared, maybe, that she will lose her job to Muna, but we would never do that. Danila doesn't have much to do, though, and she knows it. Muna won't have much to do, either, during the day, when the children are in school. We have told Muna that her job in Cuba will be more mental than physical. It is her judgment we will be paying for, her consistency with the children. Danila is
leche con un poquito de café
(milk with a little bit of coffee)—a little bit black, with green eyes and a shapely figure.

Lorena, the cook, is jet-black, with a lively personality.

I don't know much yet about the black/white thing in this country. So far it doesn't seem to
be
a thing: you see black people and white people and brown people hanging out together in much more fluid ways than in the States—playing dominoes at card tables on the sidewalk, waiting at bus stops, holding hands, riding four on a motorcycle, each one of the four a different shade. There is no black neighborhood, no white neighborhood, and I find myself with a new feeling: it is the feeling of being relaxed.

TE SERÉ SIEMPRE FIDEL
(I will always be faithful to you).
Fiel
means faithful, but they have inserted a
d
.

“We don't have to wear uniforms?” Thea asks as I lay a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals out for her on the first day at the International School of Havana. Thea and Jimmie wore gray uniforms at the British-run school that they were in last.

“No.” I have somehow forgotten to tell her and Jimmie this.

“
Wow!
” Thea runs into Jimmie's room. “
No uniforms! No uniforms! No uniforms!
”

“IT WAS LIKE BEING
at a party, but with new kids!” Thea says, jumping into the car after her first day at the International School of Havana.

“Yeah!” Jimmie says.

Thea's second-grade teacher and Jimmie's kindergarten teacher wave at me from behind the chain-link gate. “It went very well!” they call to me in English.

“Did you put something in their juice?” I ask the teachers.

They laugh. “They are happy children!”

I drive home with Thea and Jimmie, bouncing on the backseat.

“So how did it go?”

“We sang, Mommy! We danced! I am going to be in a play!” Thea says.

“I made puzzles with my teacher!” Jimmie says. “And there was a
big pig
in one puzzle! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Nick and I have heard about how hard it is on the children, changing schools and friends.

We are home. Thea and Jimmie leap from the car. They dump their lunch boxes on the hall bench, take off their shirts, and run upstairs with their shirts streaming behind them like flags. “We're in
Kew-baaaaaaaa
, we're in
Kew-baaaaaaaaaa
and we don't have to wear any
uni-for-or-or-orms!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
”

Miguel takes me to an
agropecuario
, or fruit, vegetable, lamb, and pork market. The pesos-only
agropecuario
is a middle way between the entirely state-run dollars-only Diplomercado, with its five-dollar-a-pound tomatoes, and the state-run pesos-only bodegas, where only Cubans can go, with ration books, to buy staples (when available) at subsidized prices. Less and less, though, is available in the bodegas, so Cubans are obliged to shop at
agros
and at the Diplo (if they have dollars) more and more.