The Aguero Sisters by Cristina Garcia

Right now, I’m out here earning pocket money until my visa comes through for Spain.
    Like I said, it takes an occasional
novio
to get by. Mamá doesn’t understand this. She’s immune from the day-to-day hassles because she’s had that bureaucrat lackey lover of hers since the dawning of
la revolutión
. Every night, Pepín brings her a feast from God knows where. Fresh steamed lobsters. Steaks thick as my thumb. Mangoes so perfectly ripe and sweet—not the stringy stuff you get with coupons—they’re a kind of ecstasy. He also brings her shampoo that doesn’t glue your hair together like the local brand, when you can find it. Let’s just say the woman hasn’t had to wait in a line since the Year of Ten Million, when the whole country went crazy cutting sugarcane.
    Mamá isn’t the most fervent revolutionary on the island, but she’s basically tolerant of the system. She and Pepín say that young people today are spoiled and don’t appreciate all we have, that we should’ve seen how things were before the revolution to understand deprivation. Everybody I know is sick of these arguments, sick of picking potatoes and building dormitories, only to find no meaningful work in the careers we trained for. Sick of not washing our hands after we shit because there isn’t any soap. Sick of the blackouts and dry faucets. Sick of having nothing to do, period. At minimum, it can make a person permanently irritable.
    You can never work hard enough here, either. Cuba is like an evil stepmother, abusive and unrewarding of effort.More, more, and more for more nothing. Until last month, when they fired me for fraternizing with a foreigner, I was the volleyball coach at José Martí High School (we came in sixth last year at the national championships), and I earned one hundred eighteen pesos a month.
Créeme
, it’s not easy staying in shape on sugar-and-lard sandwiches. At least this way, I make a few dollars. That’s how it breaks down here—those with dollars and those without. Dollars mean privileges. A roll of toilet paper. A bottle of rum. Pesos mean
te jodes
. You’re fucked. It’s that simple.
    Come here. Look at this view, this harbor, this gorgeous curve of coast. Men from all over the world tell me that Havana is the most beautiful city they’ve ever seen. So when will we get it back? When will it be truly ours again?
Coño
, El Caballo has four broken legs, and no one has the courage to put him out of his misery.
    My father, José Luís Fuerte, was one of the original revolutionaries. He was at Moncada and in the Sierra Maestra side by side with you-know-who. Part of a museum display in Santiago de Cuba is devoted to his exploits. Mamá took me there when I was a kid. There was a blown-up photograph of him with a rifle across his back. He’s smoking a too-big cigar and has a beaded bracelet on his wrist. The odd thing was that he seemed very familiar to me, even though I’d never seen him before. Then I realized it was because I’d inherited his face.
    All the while I was growing up and misbehaving, Mamá used to say: What would your father think if he were still alive? It used to shame me for the moment. I have a tattoo on my shoulder, three twisting vines intertwined with the name of my first boyfriend, coincidentally also named José Luís. When I was fourteen and got pregnant by him, my father was the first person I thought of. Mamá never found out, or she would’ve insisted I have the kid. She was sixteen when Iwas born and says she couldn’t have imagined her life otherwise. Mamá’s been after me to have a child. And for what? So she can coo over the kid before shipping him off to some boarding school in
el campo
like she did with me? Forget about it.
    These days, I find myself wondering not what my father would think of me but what he would think of his revolution and his former