Tomorrow They Will Kiss (2 page)

“They don’t even have toilet paper in that country,” Raquel said as soon as she took her seat. “They have to use newspapers
to wipe.”

“Por Dios,” Imperio said. “Those newspapers are just filled with pictures of Fidel and his useless promises. Even if there
was plenty of toilet paper, I’d still wipe my ass with it.”

“Chá,” Raquel said.

I could almost feel Raquel’s relief when the van pulled into the factory’s parking lot. As soon as it had stopped, she jumped
out and rushed in ahead of the others, steam trailing from her nostrils.

“She’s wasting her time waiting for that man,” Imperio said as we hurried across the freezing stretch of concrete. “He’s not
coming back. I’ll bet you any amount of money that he’s been executed. Por Dios, who knows what he did to those men in the
beards.”

“You know how it is back there,” Leticia said. “All you have to do is look at them wrong and they shoot you.”

“Is that true?” Berta asked. “Has it gotten to that point?”

“And worse,” Caridad said.

“What could be worse?” Berta asked.

Imperio and Caridad exchanged looks and moved on ahead with Leticia. I fell behind with Berta. It was much too cold for simple
answers.

*

R
AQUEL COULD GO
day after day in silence, but then, when least expected, a lament inevitably popped out of her orange mouth. It was almost
like a nervous tic. As unpredictable, uncontrollable, and annoying as that.

“They have apagones every night,” she said as we drove home one night. Blackouts. “They live in darkness.”

It was a dark blue night in Union City too; the streetlights hadn’t gone on yet.

“Raquel,” Imperio said, “why don’t you get a really long extension cord and run it from your house to Cuba? Por Dios, mujer,
you could bite it between your teeth and dog- paddle back. It’s only ninety miles from Key West.”

“Imagínate!” Caridad said, moving a hand delicately to her neck.

Raquel smiled too. But embarrassment turned the orange smile crooked. I only half listened. I kept my eyes on the dark road,
waiting for the magic moment when the streetlights would go on.

“Niiiiñas, let’s talk about something else,” Leticia sang out. She always used the word
niñas
to get our attention, extending the first syllable like a telephone ringing. She called us niñas, the girls, as if she were
the benevolent headmistress of a private school.

“Niñas,” she said, “did you watch
Cadenas de Amargura
last night? It’s getting good! La solterona, the spinster, is not as innocent as you think. I suspect she’s been secretly
married before and that Jorge Alberto is really her son, and that he’s the one who paid for her operation.”

Leticia wasn’t just fanatical about the telenovelas. She was obsessed. She talked as if she was a part of them and delighted
in figuring out what was going to happen next, what dramatic new turn or twist the plot would take. She was the first to start
watching them. Now we were all addicted. All except Raquel, who daily endured our frivolous chatter.

“How can I enjoy a telenovela when the people back in Cuba are living in despair?”

I felt terrible for poor Raquel. I knew that her husband never wrote to her. I knew that all the information she got was through
his family, that their letters painted as bleak a picture of life in Cuba as possible. I knew those letters always included
requests for money—but never a word or mention about her husband’s situation. Was he dead? Ill? Had he been transferred to
another prison? Why didn’t he write? Raquel knew nothing. But she held on to the memory of her husband with both hands. She
told me that she was sure that one day they would be reunited, and that she didn’t care how long she waited or what sacrifices
she had to make.

“But why doesn’t he write to you?” Imperio asked one day.

“Chá,” said Raquel. “Do you think they let prisoners anywhere near a pencil? Or a stamp? He’s a prisoner, and back there that
means you don’t exist.”

Imperio and Caridad liked to pretend that they were concerned for Raquel. I knew they just enjoyed taunting her, getting the
kind of pleasure children get out of picking at a scabby knee. But with those two it was better to just ignore them, as I
had been trying to do for most of my life. Unlike the other three who rode in the van, Imperio, Caridad, and I came from the
same small town in Cuba: Palmagria. And if you want to know the truth, it was a stinky little town just like Union City, except
the weather in New Jersey was worse. It was a place I thought I would never get away from. Then everything changed. Caridad
and Imperio left, and then three years later I did. I truly believed I would never see them again. Which would have been just
fine. After the way Caridad and Imperio had treated me. After the things they said behind my back. After what Imperio’s husband,
Mario, had done to me. But in those days, if you were Cuban, you went to Miami or Union City. There were times when I wished
I’d stayed in Miami, but I’ve come to understand why I had to leave.

As the van traveled through the New Jersey gloom, I looked out the window and watched the streetlights turn on, as if a joyful
fairy was rushing ahead of me, unfolding the longest diamond necklace in the world. I tried to think of my life that way,
as if something beautiful was flying ahead of me, lighting the way, illuminating the darkness. My future was bright. I just
had to figure out a way to get there.

*

W
E ALL LIVED
in the same neighborhood in Union City, just blocks from one another, except Raquel, who lived out toward Newark, where apartments
were even cheaper. Imperio and Caridad lived in the same building but on different floors, so they were always together, just
like in Cuba. None of us had learned to drive except for Leticia, who charged us each seven dollars a week, which was how
she made the monthly payments on her van.

Riding with Leticia was more expensive than the bus, but to me it was worth every cent. She picked us up at our front doors
every morning and brought us back every night. Although Leticia was a recent exile just like rest of us, she had managed to
get some money out of Cuba, and with that money she bought a used, bright yellow Ford Econoline, tropical yellow, the color
of the noontime sun. Imperio and Caridad said Leticia had dollar signs in her eyes, like a cartoon character.

The van had two purposes. Leticia’s husband, Chano, used it early in the mornings to deliver pork to butcher shops. He started
his rounds at three a.m. and was done by seven. Then he went home and slept all day. Leticia insisted that he clean it up
before he handed it over to her. We could always tell when he was running late, because the van smelled like a raw pig. Sometimes
the floor was still sticky with bloody water from the packing ice. It could be disgusting. But after a while I didn’t even
smell it anymore. It’s amazing what people can get used to.

“It wasn’t money she smuggled out,” Imperio often said, “it was jewelry, and who knows where she had it hidden.” Caridad always
laughed at this, one of her little embarrassed laughs, like a geisha’s.

Imperio swallowed her curiosity for as long as she could, and one day she just couldn’t hold it any longer. We were all in
the van when she finally dared to ask what she had long wanted to know. First she looked at Caridad with an evil grin. She
knew very well that what she was about to ask could put both of them on a bus.

“Oye, Leti,” Imperio said in her chummiest voice. “Is it true that you took jewelry out of Cuba in your chocha?”

Leticia didn’t bother to answer. She ignored the question the way she ignored the honking drivers who regularly lined up behind
her. Leticia’s hands, big as a man’s, held the steering wheel so tight I feared she would snap it in two. From where I sat
I could only see the right side of her face, her thick, square jaw set firm. Leticia had an impressively strong face. Caridad
once said it was mannish. Imperio, behind her back, called her cara macha, man face, and once even suggested that Leticia
had hair on her chest.

“Comemierda!” Leticia shouted at the traffic. “These Americans drive like they own the road.”

She hit the brakes hard to keep from slamming into a passing truck. There was a collective outcry from the backseat as we
toppled forward. Even Caridad, who from the front seat saw it coming, had to place both hands on the dashboard to keep her
head from crashing into the windshield.

The van continued on, and everyone, a bit shaken but unharmed, settled quietly back into their seats. Dresses were smoothed
over knees, hair patted back into place. For the moment, the subject of Leticia’s smuggled jewels was dropped. Caridad turned
her head back slightly, just enough to exchange a knowing smile with Imperio that said, “It’s true, the lack of denial makes
it so.”

To them it was a big joke, but I wondered what that day had been like for Leticia, squatting in a dirty airport bathroom stall
and shoving a handful of rings and necklaces into the most private and sensitive part of her body.

I felt safe with Leticia, even though she sailed through red lights as if they were only decorations and was frequently trailed
by a chorus of angry, honking drivers. But her driving record was good, just two minor incidents in the time I had been riding
with her. Imperio said that Leticia drove like a crazy woman on purpose.

“She had those accidents to make driving look difficult, to scare us out of getting our own licenses and our own cars,” Imperio
said when Leticia was out of earshot.

“Imagínate!” Caridad said. “She put our lives in danger just to keep collecting our money.”

Not that any one of us could have dreamed of buying a car. Our little salaries barely covered rent, food, and the monthly
payments to Crazy Manny’s for our television sets. We left everything behind in Cuba, arrived with absolutely nothing. No
china, no family silver or photos, and definitely no toys for our children. Only Leticia had had the good sense and the courage
to shove a handful of valuables into an unmentionable place, and now she alone reaped the rewards. Leticia and Chano, with
their three incomes, were the rich ones.

The rest of us were poor, and painfully aware of it. So the fact that for the past three months Raquel and Berta had been
stealing from the factory hardly bothered us at all, until Mr. O’Reilly posted a warning sign near the entrance. It was white
with big black letters. The word
crime
was in red! A Spanish translation, roughly scribbled on a piece of cardboard, was tacked just below it.

THEFT IS A SERIOUS CRIME.

THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED

TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW.

THE MANAGEMENT

*

T
HE DAY THE SIGN FIRST APPEARED,
I walked through the narrow door of the factory ahead of the others, found my time card, and clocked in. I walked right past
it. I didn’t stop to read it, didn’t comment on it.

Jacinto Ramírez, the security guard, stood in front of the door that led into the work area. He was long- necked and long-
nosed; every inch of his skin wrinkled and sagged. Jacinto was from Havana and, just because he came from the capital and
now wore a uniform, thought himself superior to us.

“Buenos días, Jacinto,” I said and tried to get past him.

“Buenos días, Graciela,” Jacinto said. I stopped four feet before him, and even from that distance I could smell his dentures.
I tried to continue, but he blocked my way, peering into my plastic bag.

Factory policy demanded that all female employees carry their belongings in a clear plastic drawstring bag that dangled from
their elbow like a purse. No actual purses were allowed in the factory. My plastic bag contained a wallet, the key to my apartment,
a compact, a hairbrush, and a sanitary napkin (for emergencies).

I hated those bags. But they didn’t seem to bother the English- speaking employees—las gringas, las negras, las boricuas.
None of them seemed to give the bags a second thought.

Us Cubans, we worked alongside black ladies who kept to themselves, Puerto Ricans who refused to speak in Spanish to us, and
some white, stringy- haired girls so skinny they looked like they’d blow over if you whistled at them. They knew the rules
and accepted them. We didn’t.

“The situation is getting serious,” Jacinto said, pointing at the sign and stepping in front of me as if in a mambo. “Too
many people with sticky fingers.”

The others had stopped behind me, their arms folded protectively across their chests. I could hear them murmuring. Imperio,
not known for her patience, walked right up to him.

“Look, Jacinto,” she said, waving her bag in his face, her little body erect and sharp as a switchblade. “If you’re insinuating
something, just come out and say it.”

Caridad took a deep, loud breath, so loud I could hear it. Her hand sprang to her throat. Leticia, Berta, and Raquel stood
beside her. Their eyes tracked from Jacinto to Imperio and back again.

“No señora,” Jacinto said, flashing his false teeth. “Adelante. Come in, come in.”

Imperio didn’t return the smile.

“If they dock us for being late,” she said, “you’re going to hear from me.”

“Imagínate,” Caridad said as we entered the main floor. “I can understand inspections on the way out, but does that crazy
man think we’re smuggling toys
into
the factory?”

“This is getting worse than Cuba,” Imperio said.

“Niiiiñas, I think he just wanted an excuse to frisk us,” Leticia said. We all laughed louder than the comment deserved and
continued walking with our plastic bags banging against our hips.

In spite of the laughter, the sign made us nervous. Not that anyone in the van ever thought of Raquel and Berta as thieves
or criminals.

For what?

For stealing little plastic doll parts?

No.

Not after all we’d been through. We’d lost our country, had been forced into exile, while the Americanos had stood by and
done precious nothing. They owed us, and some free dolls were a small price to pay.