I hear shouting through the open window.
“Come on.” Danita grabs my hand, and we hurry down to the kitchen where normally glasses of guanabana juice and great slices of warm cassava bread are waiting for us. This morning there is nothing. The air has a burned smell, but there is no fire in the stove. Not even the coffee is brewing. Mamá stands with her back against the counter as Mercedes clings to her full, bright skirt.
When she sees us Mamá gives a nervous laugh and says, “I don’t know how to cook,” looking at the stove as if it is a great, black beast ready to attack.
“Where’s Aayla?” Danita asks. Aayla is our cook.
Mamá shakes her head. “She’s gone. They are all gone.” Mercedes starts to cry. Mamá does not shush her or lift her onto her hip. She stands perfectly still, moving her eyes around the room as if everything familiar has suddenly become foreign.
Secretly, I am glad Aayla is gone. I hate her. Mamá says hate is too strong a word, but that’s exactly how I feel. Aayla is tall and bony, with arms wound tight as cording, her hand springing out and slapping me whenever she feels like it, especially if I try to take a slice of cake before my brother Bebo, who is her favorite.
“Farah’s not gone,” I say, matter-of-fact. Farah is our Haitian nanny who loves me. She is the exact opposite of Aayla, and she’d never leave. She is plump and warm with the darkest skin I’ve ever seen. When she hugs me, her flesh is so consuming I am sure she has no bones at all. Every night she and I sing Haitian lullabies together after everyone is asleep. She is the one who taught me the mambo and the rhumba.
“Farah is gone, too.” Mamá makes no attempt to soften the blow, and tears spring to my eyes. What will I do without Farah? I fly to the open window, wondering if she is out there whooping and shouting with the others, but the mist is so thick all I can see is a gray-green soup of clouds.
“Get away from there.” Mamá yanks me back, pulls in the shutters and latches them with big, angry movements. Just then the outer kitchen door swings open, and Papa stomps in, his face grim. My two brothers are right behind him, shoving each other to see who will get through the door first. Bebo wins. He is smaller and quicker and beats Manuel at most things.
“Where is my father?” Mamá asks, her voice high.
Papa tosses his straw hat on the counter. Papa is thin and muscular with a wiry energy that makes me nervous even when things aren’t out of control. “He left for Havana early this morning.”
“Is Mamá okay?”
“She’s fine. She said she’ll stay put until your father comes back.”
Despite the pandemonium, Papa doesn’t look at all out of sorts. His black hair is slicked back, his mustache neatly brushed. Standing at the counter, he taps the jar of coffee beans grimacing as if the absence of coffee is the most disturbing prospect ahead of us. Resigned to this difficulty, he sits mugless at the head of the long wooden table fisting his hands in front of him. “Sit, all of you,” he orders.
My brothers sit on either side of him, my father’s parallel shadows. I realize Oneila has been sitting silently at the table all along. Her white blouse is pressed, her black hair parted and pulled away from her face so tightly I can see the white line of her scalp. How did everyone else have time to put themselves together? Danita and I are still in our cotton nightgowns.
Despite this indiscretion, we scurry to our seats. If not for the loss of Farah, I would find this all very exciting. It’s the same feeling I get before a storm, when the warm wind picks up as the sky turns wild and tints everything a shocking orange.
Mamá sits at the opposite end of the table from Papa, and Mercedes climbs into the chair next to her, sucking on her fist. All we need now is something to eat, I think, pressing my hand into my stomach to quiet the grumbling, wishing tragedy had struck after breakfast.
Glancing around the table Papa meets our eyes with deliberate soberness, speaking as if he is broadcasting the news over the wireless. “There has been an uprising. The student-run Directorio has taken over.”
I give Danita a what does that mean? look. She shrugs. Outside there are pops like fireworks and a clanging as if spoons are being banged against pots. I feel like I am missing a party.
Oneila, generally timid, startles us all by saying, “We’re entitled to know what our family has done to deserve this,” as if three-year-old Mercedes, Danita, my brothers Bebo and twelve-year-old Manuel and I are entitled to anything.
I stare at Oneila leaning forward in her chair trying on a new expectant expression. She said we but means I. If her questioning is a test of maturity, she passes it in a single leap. Instead of scolding her for being insolent, Mamá looks her directly in the eye and says, “Nothing, Oneila. Our family has done absolutely nothing to deserve this.”
Papa, ignorant of the momentous exchange taking place between mother and daughter, says, “That is not true, Maria.”
Mamá starts. “What does that mean?”
“That we’re not innocent.”
“What have we done?”
“Exactly what they accuse us of.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind yet. These are our people. They have a right to fair wages, fair labor, education, a modern university.”
“They are Negroes. Haitian. Jamaican. They are not Spanish.”
“We are all Cuban!” Papa bangs the table, charged with an energy that springs off of him in quick bursts. “This—” he waves his hand in huge circles over his head, conjuring a storm “—is your world. Your father’s land. Your father’s money. Did you know—” Papa’s eyes flash around the table, the you now directed at all of us “—that your mother’s people and mine all come from Asturias, from the exact same region in Spain? Our backgrounds are identical, our people no different. But here, here in Cuba we are different, and do you know why?”
We quickly shake our heads, no.
“No, of course you don’t. My father gave his life so that you would not know. Before the Cuban War of Independence, the only difference between your mother’s people and mine is that her father was born in Spain and mine was born in Cuba. This made my father a creole. It made me a creole.” His voice dips down right before he spits out, “We were nothing. Dirt!” He then falls silent, letting the unjustness of it sink in as he eyes each of us in turn.
Before this, we’d heard very little of Papa’s people or the war. His parents died before any of us were born. His two brothers and one sister seem no different than Mamá’s brothers and sisters. It doesn’t appear that anyone thinks Papa is dirt. Grandpa lets him run the plantation, and Grandma kisses his cheek when she greets him.