Fifty Grand

20 MARIA

Denver. The Greyhound Station. The bus to El Paso. His unruly hair brushed, his face shaved. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, cowboy boots. The clear green of his eyes twinkles.

Our lips part.

He looks at me.

Not my best. Pale, bruised, and a beanie hat on to cover the bandage above my right ear.

“Do you really have to go back?” he asks.

“I do,” I tell him. “If I don’t, my boss, my mom, and my brother will all get in big trouble.”

He grins. “So the Cubans think you’ve been in Mexico this whole time?”

I nod.

“Quite the little secret agent,” he says.

The bus driver starts the engine.

“It’s a long drive to El Paso. You got something to read?”

I shake my head. “I’ll think.”

“Four hours from now you’ll be sorry.”

“Maybe.”

He looks at me. I look at the ground.

“Well,” he says. “You better…”

“Yeah.”

I kiss him again. This time chastely on the cheek. I pick up my bag.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Paco?”

“Plenty,” he says and grinds his hips.

“Not that,” I say, laughing. “I’m serious.”

He considers it.

“You saved me,” I explain. “I owe you.”

“My mother has cancer,” he says.

I peer into his face. He has never talked about his family. In fact, I know nothing about him at all. Brothers? Sisters? Orphan? He’s a cipher, a nowhere man.

“Your mother has cancer?”

“Yes. It’s breast cancer. The doctors rate her chances as fifty-fifty. I’d like to increase the odds, if possible.”

“Bring her to Cuba, we have some of the finest doctors in Latin America. They will treat her. I’m sure it’s better than Nicaragua. Bring her. And besides, I, I’d like to see you again.”

He shakes his head. “I’d like that too, but I can’t bring her to Cuba. She’s not well enough to travel and I have to earn money in the U.S.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He clears his throat. “If you have the time I would like you to light a candle for me at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“Our Lady of Guadalupe? I’ve heard of it but I’m not sure what it is exactly,” I reply.

“It’s in the north of Mexico City. I know you’re in a rush to get back, you have a plane to catch, but if you get the time.”

“I never pegged you for the religious type,” I say with a little smile, and as soon as the words are out I remember that time I caught him praying.

Paco grins. “In many ways, María, you’re not very observant at all.”

“What does that mean?”

The smile widens. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

I punch him on his arm. “Ever since you saved my life, there’s a sly confidence that’s come over you that I don’t like at all.”

“Oh, you like it.”

The bus driver revs the engine. All the other passengers are on. I kiss him one more time. Lips. Tongue. Lips.

“The shrine of Our Lady,” I say seriously to let him know that I will do it if it means that much to him.

He clasps his hands together in fake prayer.

“God is generous to virgins,” he says and begins muttering in pretend Latin.

“I’m not a-”

“Sssh, you’re spoiling it.”

“Are you getting on or not?” the driver asks me in Spanish.

“Sí. Momento.”

“Hurry,” the driver says.

“Say goodbye to Esteban for me.”

“I will.”

“And watch out for the INS.”

“I’m one step ahead.”

I get in. Doors close. I find a seat at the back.

Paco waves as the bus pulls out onto Broadway.

The last thing I see him do is hail a cab.

The Denver to El Paso bus is all Mexican, and before we’re even out of the city, I’ve been offered cake, seen baby photographs, watched part of a telenovela, and entertained one semiserious offer of marriage.

Eventually I pretend to fall asleep. South through New Mexico.

Gone are the mountains, the great spine of North America. Gone is the snow. My last look at snow until after the Castro brothers leave us. But it’s ok, I’ll remember it, cold and white on the lakeshore and red from our footprints dipped in the blood of dead men.

The #4 subway train to Martín Carrera. The #6 to Villa Basilica. Thread through the religious souvenir stands. The knockoff merchants. The lame. The halt. Pickpockets.

Traffic, street noise, the kind of density of people and vehicles you never see in Havana. Motorcycles, scooters, ice cream vendors, big cars, small cars, trucks.

The stalls are there to cure you of piety. Jesus pictures with eyes that move. Gaudy life-size statues of María. A photographer who will take a picture of your kid and produce a print of him sitting on Christ’s lap in a shady dell. The tip of the iceberg as you get closer to the Basilica of Our Lady. Crosses of every type, María pics, holy water, holy blood, holy dust. Hundreds of icon merchants and thousands of people buying stuff. Worry beads, rosaries, postcards.

Everywhere the sick, the old, the young, parties of school children, pilgrim tourists from all over Latin America, Europe, the United States.

The hill of Cerro Tepeyac.

Here, five centuries ago, the Aztec nobleman Cuauhtaoctzin saw the Holy Virgin. The bishop demands proof. An image of la virgen morena appears on the nobleman’s coat. A church is built and then a bigger one and finally an entire complex. In 2002 Pope John Paul makes Cuauhtaoctzin a saint. The context for a doubter, for a daughter of the Revolution, for a Cuban: when Cuauhtaoctzin sees the Virgin, Aztec civilization has just been destroyed by Cortés-the Aztecs and their gods are on the run and Cerro Tepeyac is the most important shrine to the brown-skinned female harvest goddess Tonantzin. So you could say worship of the goddess continues in another form.

Dad never believed in any of that stuff, nor Ricky, and Mom believes too much. Her ghosts and goblins are another inoculation against a moment of revelation.

The plaza of the basilica.

An old church, earthquake-damaged, being held up by scaffolding. Side churches and temples. The new church, which looks for all the world like an unfinished terminal at José Martí Airport. But this is where the pilgrims are going-this is where María haunts the building. I’m now wearing a black beret to cover the bandage above my ear. I take it off when I go inside.

Midnight mass, but only a few empty seats in the swooping basilica.

I am unaccustomed to religious services and the thing is still in Latin despite Vatican II. Men and women beside me, kneeling, standing up, reciting the rosary. I copy them. Stand when they stand. Kneel when they kneel.

Where is the María?

What is it that they have come to see?

A girl comes by with a collection plate. I throw in a few pesos and am given a picture of the dark-skinned Virgin. I realize that it is the double of a big picture behind the altar. The focus of the church. The mother of Jesus, the goddess protector of all Mexicans, of all women.

For many Cubans, of course, the dark Virgin is Ochún, the sensuous Santería goddess of love and protection.

When the ceremony is over, I light a candle and place it as close to the image as I am permitted.

I bow my face.

“Accept this candle on behalf of another,” I whisper.

The Virgin sees. Understands.

A moving walkway means that no one is allowed to remain directly under the image. It seems like a joke, but it isn’t. The devout are in tears. Mothers are showing the Virgin barren wombs, deformed babies, terminal cancers.

Crying, candle smoke, prayers.

Too much.

I back away and run outside.

Take a breath.

My head hurts. It’s a reminder. A centimeter to the left and that.270 round would have smashed my skull. A centimeter to the right and it would have been a clean miss and Briggs would have gone for a chest shot before I’d even heard the crack of the first.

A policeman asks me if I am ok.

“Fine. Too many people,” I tell him.

“You should have seen it last week, the holy day of Guadalupe is December twelfth.” He waves at the plaza. “There were two million out here.”

The subway.

Basilica to Martín Carrera to Consulado to the airport.

My plane is at four.

The airport. The special Cuban line. The ticket.

A delay. Newsstand. A headline in the December 18 Miami Herald: “Wire Service Report: Fidel Hints at Retirement.”

The plane. Cubana flight 131. Take off over the glittering city. Circle to gain altitude, and already the lights are lost beneath the nighttime haze; only the beacons on Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl peeking through the dark.

East across the forests of Yucatán.

I take out the image of the Virgin María. For a while we shared a name, you and I.

I rest my eyes, even sleep a little.

I feel the plane descend and a stewardess asks me to return my seat to the upright position.

I open the window shade.

When Columbus saw Cuba for the first time the landmass was so large that he knew he had made it to one of the islands of Japan. He landed near Gibara and brought the astonished Taino Indians gifts and respectful greetings for the Japanese emperor. When the shogun refused to show up, Columbus gave the Indians instead the cross and slavery and smallpox and death. Cortés took the cross from Cuba to Mexico. The old gods fell and the father god took their place. Wise Cuba threw off the shackles of all the religions, found truth in Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Fidel Castro. The very first thing we learned in school was that religion was the opium of the masses.

And yet.

I am copied in your eye, lady of Guadalupe, lady of the moon.

Accept this candle for another, blessed mother, generous to virgins…

Havana.

The bay surrounded by mist.

A pink sea.

The plane descends.

I put María in my pocket.

Dark when we took off and not quite morning when we land at José Martí.

Yawns, a smattering of applause.

The Jetway is broken and takes a long time to dock to the plane. I thank the pilot and the stewardess and walk down the ramp back into la patría.

As soon as I enter the terminal building and before I even make it to the metal detectors I spot Sergeant Menendez, the DGI spy in Hector’s office.

He nods to two men in blue suits.

“Chivato cabrón,” I say under my breath.

They arrest me.

“What’s the charge?” I ask them as they lead me outside into the dark, warm, drizzly Havana rain.

“Treason.”

Treason. Yes. The great catchall. And one of the many, many offenses in Cuba that carries the death penalty.

“Come on. Get in.”

I get in the car, a Russian police Lada.

The engine turns over.

The lights come on.

The engine dies.

“Everyone out,” the driver says.

The rain again.

A gun in my face.

“Help us push.”

“No.”

“Do it or I’ll shoot you.”

“You won’t shoot.”

The smell of earth. Fruit rotting in the fields. The sea.

“Forget it then.”

The men push, the car moves, the clutch slips, the engine catches, the men jump in, and, having no alternative, forward into the day we ride together.