We spent hours talking about the labor and the horrible conditions of the hospital, among other things. Kassandra was a pretty and naturally red-headed girl of about twenty who was obsessed with anything from the United States. La Yuma, los Yankis or el norte was all she talked about, and how she wanted her daughter to grow up in Miami, not in La Habana.
“In la Yuma, she can study something, she can be somebody, she can have whatever she wants. I want her to have a better life than mine.”
Then she started to cry. I mustered up all the energy I had to drag myself with the IV to her side of the room to sit on the edge of the bed. She hugged me while she cried for a good ten minutes. I just patted her back and assured her things would be fine for her and the baby.
“Things will never be fine here.” She wiped her face with her hospital gown. “If I don’t leave this country, things will never be good for my daughter.”
“My mother used to say that all the time,” I said.
I told her how my mother always said she would do anything for me to grow up in la Yuma. She was one of the best dancers in the world-renowned cabaret Tropicana. She had been to Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, but always with the dance company. She was terrified when two Cuban officials came to her hotel room in Panama City to inform her that she would never see me again if she even thought about defecting. From Miami, it was easier to legally claim me or come back for me; she could hire someone who owned a boat, or a small plane, and once our feet touched ground in the US, there was be nothing the Cuban government could do.
After a long pause, Kassandra said, “I’m a jinetera. That’s why I tell you that if I don’t get her out of here, she’ll turn out just like me.”
“You’re a prostitute for the tourists?”
“Yes,” she said looking into my eyes. Unashamed. “I can’t raise her here.” Again a piercing look from her green eyes. Now ashamed.
“That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case,” I said. “She can grow up to be anything she wants anywhere in the world.”
“Under Castro? How old are you again?”
“Almost seventeen.”
“Most girls I know your age are already doing what I do for a living.”
“How long have you been a jinetera?”
“Since I was twelve, maybe thirteen, can’t remember. My mother was a fletera; her clients weren’t tourists but the sailors on cargo ships from all over the world. Her mother was a fletera as well. I come from a long line of whores, you know,” she said with a smirk. “If I stay here, she’ll be on the streets by eleven.”
We both looked over at the rotting wooden bassinet. Kassandra’s face, although breathtakingly beautiful, was missing the freshness of youth, the irreproachability of twenty. She cried every time she looked at her daughter.
“Why don’t you just stop doing it?”
“I don’t know how to do anything else. And you can’t just stop.”
“Why not?”
“Because…well…I’ve never…” she took a deep breath. “I’ve thought a lot about not doing it anymore, but I can’t just make that decision on my own.”
“What about your family? They can help you.”
“I don’t have a family. I have a chulo and he would never let me quit.”
The word chulo meant something cute, like a little boy with a cute outfit was chulo to me. But on the street, a chulo was a man who ran a group of jineteras, a pimp who provided the girls with protection in exchange for half their wages.
“He takes half your money?”
“Sometimes he takes it all if he needs it for a business deal. When he feels generous he only takes half.”
“That doesn’t seem fair. You’re the one doing all the work.”
“That’s just how it is. His father was my mom’s pimp, and I don’t know any further back, but from what he tells me, his family has been in this business for some time.”
“Sounds like a wonderful guy.” I said.
“He’s not that bad but…”
I waited for her to finish the sentence. She didn’t. The nurse came in to check on us. We hadn’t realized the sun was coming up and Kassandra soon fell into a light sleep. The baby slept without making a sound. I tried to but it wasn’t until hours later that I actually fell asleep.
The baby’s wailing woke me from the deepest sleep I had had in months. For a few seconds I was disoriented and didn’t know where I was. I could recall a faint dream of being on a boat with my mother. But as I looked around the decaying walls, the old hospital equipment, and at Kassandra struggling with the baby in her arms, reality set in. The windows, covered by obsolete curtains from the sixties that were not very good at keeping the sun out, had steel bars running on the outside, like a photo I had seen of a mental institution in an American movie.
“She’s so hungry but she won’t take my breast,” Kassandra said.
“Call the nurse.”
“I did. Five times already!”
I took a deep breath in order to gather strength to pull myself up. I pressed my nurse button continuously for a good minute or so.
“What’s going on here? You two are going nuts with those buttons,” the nurse yelled charging in a few minutes later.
“The baby won’t stop crying,” I told her.
“That’s what babies do, my dear. And premature babies cry even more.”
“Premature?” I looked at Kassandra. “I didn’t know she was premature.”
“Only a few weeks,” she said, looking down at her baby.
“A few weeks too many. She should’ve stayed in her mom’s belly for at least another six weeks,” the nurse continued as she took the baby from Kassandra’s arms. “So expect her to be a troublesome baby.”
“If she’s premature, shouldn’t she be in an incubator?” I asked. I had read this information in one of the magazines my mother had brought me from Mexico.
“We only have four of them in the hospital, and there were three other premature births with a lot more risk.”
“What about the fourth? Can’t she be put in there?” I said.
“It was occupied until this morning. But now I’m going to feed her, and put her in until the doctor comes later on.”
Kassandra kissed her baby’s forehead before the nurse took her. “My baby has been alive for over twelve hours, and is only now they are going to give her some medical attention. And you think she’ll get a fair shot at life here? She’s already starting on the wrong foot.”
“She looks very strong. There’s nothing you can do about her wanting to come earlier than planned.” I said, trying to sound reassuring while knowing nothing about babies.
“My boyfriend slapped me and I fell, and when I hit my stomach on the floor, I went into labor.”
“The baby’s father slapped you?”
Kassandra looked away. “I’m not sure he’s the father. I told him I had been with a Yuma without using a condom and that I wasn’t sure this was his baby.”
“He knows what you do?”
“He’s my chulo.”
“Why would you have this baby if you didn’t know whose it was?”
“I used to think he loved me and that this would change him.”
“If he really loved you, he wouldn’t have slapped you,” I said.
“You ever been in love?”
“No,” I said, hearing my mother’s voice saying that if a man really loves you, he would never use his hands to hurt you. I told Kassandra the story my mom had told me of how my own father had doubted I was his, and offered to pay for the abortion when she told him she was pregnant. My mother said no and threatened to go to the authorities if he didn’t accept responsibility for his actions. He was a high ranking general of the Revolution, married with two older kids. If word got out that he had been with one of the young mulata dancers from Tropicana, Castro would’ve had him in his private office asking questions.
General Martinez arranged for my mother to be taken care of until she gave birth. She was picked up in the middle of the night from her tiny apartment in Regla where she lived with her mother, and was taken to a farm on the outskirts of the city.
When I was born, he came by to see me. Told my mother I looked just like his mother, and that she should name me Eugenia. My mother told him she had no intentions of naming me after a woman she didn’t even know.
“Her name is Milena. Milena Martinez or Milena Campos?” she asked.
He told her he could never legally recognize me as his daughter because it would ruin his military career. She yelled and reminded him of the fact that he had been the one to pursue her for weeks at the cabaret, and that later on, when she finally gave in to him, he had not wanted to use any protection. Enraged, she jumped on top of my father. He pushed her off, grabbed her by the neck and punched her face so hard she lost a tooth.
While she was on the floor, he kneeled down next to her and told her that if she ever did go to the authorities, he would have us both killed. He was a powerful man who could make us disappear, and no one would even bother to look. That was the last time she ever saw my father. Two years later he defected in Costa Rica, then we found out he had gone to Miami.
“We would have had the same last name,” Kassandra said when I was done with the story. “We could even be sisters, who knows?” On the foot of her bed it said Martinez.
Just then, the doctor came in to check on her. She was released, but the baby had some complications, bacteria in her lungs. She would have to stay another week or so. I was also released with no one picking me up. We were both getting ready to leave the room when one of the nurses walked in with someone following her.
“Surprise,” she said, pointing behind her to a black man who was dressed completely in white and held a bunch of pink jasmines in his hands.
Kassandra’s face turned pale, a mixture of surprise and terror. The man had to go around my bed to get to hers. He smiled politely at me.
“Hija mia,” he said stretching out his hands to her.
Daughter? Kassandra had pretty green eyes and brown reddish hair. Her complexion was fair and gaunt. She had no trace of black in her. People always told me they could tell I had black in me because of my big lips, my flat nose, my not so straight dark hair and my huge butt, which was deemed a sure sign of an African bloodline. But not Kassandra. There was nothing on her face that told of a black father.
“Padrino,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I come to see my daughter and granddaughter!”
As he hugged her, she looked my way in a panic. She didn’t give back the hug, simply stood there licking her lips.