A slamming door ripped Lucy out of her dream. In it, she was back on the farm, sitting beneath the old sugar maple at the top of the hill. Below her, the fields sprawled out like a patchwork quilt, every tile a different shade of green: olive, jade, seafoam.
Somewhere, water ran from a faucet. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to leave the cool shade of the tree, sun-dappled light tickling her skin.
The door slammed again and Lucy’s mom appeared in the living room, her hair wrapped in a toweled turban.
“You slept on the couch.” Lucy watched as her mother bent down to fix the hem of her tailored pants. Standing up again, she straightened her floral print blouse. “You could have slept with me, you know?”
Lucy nodded, but her mother had already disappeared back into the dark hallway towards her bedroom. Without lifting her head from the pillow, Lucy’s gaze swept the living room.
The room looked like an altar in her honor. Dusty framed photographs decorated every surface. Lucy posing in ballet slippers in this same living room, a mouth full of baby teeth. Standing awkwardly beside the elementary school principal, clutching an award on the cafeteria stage. Dressed as a pilgrim for the middle school play, white paper bonnet askew. A forced smile and a fancy up-do for prom. Holding her rolled up college diploma in front of the austere façade of Sylvian College.
She turned over on the couch, her sweaty skin squeaking on the plastic cover meant to preserve the fabric beneath it. Once again, Lucy squeezed her eyes and tried to imagine the smell of chamomile flowers crushed underfoot as she walked between rows of brassicas and nightshades, and the sudden burst of sweet acidity when she bit into a tomato the color of sunrise, its juices warm with summer sun.
There was a slapping of flip flops on tile. “Fifi!” a voice crooned. “Ven pa ‘ka!”
Lucy’s eyes flew open.
The voice continued. “¿Quién es la perra más linda?” It was coming from the kitchen.
Trying her best to be quiet, Lucy slid off the couch and crept towards the kitchen. Peering around the doorframe, she watched as a tiny woman with bleached blond hair wearing a skin-tight blue top and equally tight black pants crouched down with a cookie in hand and waved it in front of a dog the size of a large rat. The dog leapt into the air, snatching the cookie from her hand.
“¡Que perra más intelligente!” the woman said, standing up and turning on her heel.
“Arghhh!” she screamed, dropping the box of cookies and bringing her hands to her face.
“I’m sorry.” Lucy searched for her Spanish. “Soy Lucila. Jacqueline’s daughter.”
“Ah síiii,” the woman said, clapping her hands and breaking into a lipsticked smile. “¡Lucila! Mucho gusto. Me llamo Arminda.” The tiny woman threw her arms around Lucy’s neck, kissing her cheek as if they had known each other for years. “¿Quieres un cafecito?” she asked, pointing towards the cafetera sitting on the bright red coils of the stovetop, the smell of tin earth seeping from beneath its lid.
“Uh,” Lucy said, stalling. She hadn’t drank coffee in years. Her past life had been fueled by teas made with medicinal flowers dried from the garden and wild herbs harvested from the forest. “¿Por qué no?” she said, lifting a shoulder.
“Muy bien,” Arminda said, clapping her hands. “¿Quieres una galleta?” she said, picking up the box of cookies she had dropped on the floor.
“No gracias,” Lucy said. Her stomach was hollow, but the thought of swallowing anything solid made her cringe.
Lucy’s mom appeared in the kitchen.
“I see you met Arminda,” she said, loosening her hair from the towel. “She’s renting out your old bedroom.”
“Right,” Lucy murmured, picking at a nail. It shouldn’t irk her that her mother hadn’t asked before renting out her room.
“What are you going to do today?” her mom asked, shaking her damp curls. Lucy shrugged, wrapping both arms around her torso. Her mother continued. “I’ll be home late tonight. I’ve got a church meeting. There’s a pot of lentils in the fridge from a few days ago.” Lucy nodded again, tightening her grip on her body. Her mother stepped back to look at her daughter, dirty clothes rumpled on her athletic frame. “And Lucila, please don’t forget to shower, okay?” And with that, she was out the door, tacones tapping.
Alone with Arminda, Lucy’s hands clutched the counter as the tiny woman whirled around her, scooping food into plastic containers and speaking rapid-fire Spanish at Lucy. As she spoke, Arminda’s hands fluttered like hummingbirds, punctuating her sentences. Lucy picked up something about a beauty salon, but she couldn’t be certain. Arminda poured out black coffee and added about a pound of sugar before stirring vigorously, metal spoon clacking against a ceramic mug.
“Tenga,” she said triumphantly, pushing a tiny cup into Lucy’s hand and pouring one for herself.
As if by instinct, Lucy stuck her nose into the cup and inhaled. Like an electric shock, her body tingled. The coffee’s tannic darkness reverberated through her bones. She felt as though just the smell of it was waking something deep inside her, something she had forgotten was asleep. But did she want this long-lost part of herself to be awakened?
She walked out of the kitchen and pushed open the back door. The dog scrambled past her legs and disappeared into the tangled yard.
The yard was an explosion of greens, from forest black to fluorescent avocado. This is definitely not Massachusetts, Lucy thought, hot cement scorching her bare feet. Gone were the sturdy limbs of the hemlocks and oaks that had decorated the landscape of her life for the past ten years, ever since she’d left Miami at eighteen to attend college in a quaint New England town. In their place were tropical plants painted lime green, fuchsia, stoplight red. What their structures lacked in hardiness, they made up in moisture.
The spindly arms of the bougainvillea stretched in her direction, scraggly and beautiful at the same time. Some plants splayed out of the ground like bouquets of needles. Others boasted leaves the size of elephant ears. Invasive runaway vines—air potato, rosary pea, morning glory—climbed towards the sun, suffocating anything in its path. A collection of bird feeders swung from the lowest branches of the framboyán tree, their chambers empty of seed.
Lucy lifted a palm to shield her eyes from the unforgiving glare of the morning sun. She thought about the ice she had scraped from her windshield the morning she left the farm—yesterday? The day before? She couldn’t remember.
Back inside, the house was dim and mercifully quiet. Arminda had left for work, and Lucy sidled between rooms, aimless in her wandering. Being alone had taken on a new quality in the last few days, ever since she’d found out about her, the flower farmer from a few towns over. She’d been Jacob’s ex before Lucy entered the picture. Before Lucy and Jacob had woven their lives together in so many ways, real and imaginary. But he’d returned to her, this grower of flowers, this midwife of plants that were objects of beauty, not nourishment for bellies and bones.
The door to her old bedroom was ajar, so Lucy pushed it open. She couldn’t help but gasp when she flicked on the light. Of course she knew it was going to look different than the way she’d left it a decade before, but she wasn’t prepared for the harshness of bare white walls. What had become of the Nirvana and Green Day posters that had been her constant companions as an angsty teenager?
The room looked smaller than she remembered it. The twin bed that had once been hers was dressed in navy sheets—hers had always been yellow, or cornflower blue. The lamp was the same one she’d used to read before bed, but there were no books on the shelves. In their place, a stack of CDs and a stereo playing bachata on low. The rickety desk where she’d labored over chemistry lab reports and comparative literature analyses was in its same spot by the window, but instead of a computer, there was a sewing machine with a pair of pants lodged in its teeth.
Lucy swallowed hard and tried not to think about the room that she and Jacob had shared for five seasons, a little efficiency built into the barn that was big enough for a bed and a space heater in the winter. She batted away the static photo engrained in her mind: their bedsheets tangled in a knot before closing the hollow door and getting into her station wagon, packed to the gills with the remains of five years of hard labor and heart work.
Where was Jacob now? Probably with her.
Lucy turned off the light and squeezed her eyes shut to erase the image of him with another woman, to drown out the promises she and Jacob had made to one another, to forget the dreams they had drawn on each other’s bodies late at night, mice dancing in the barn walls. She tripped her way across the room and sank onto the bed.
Next thing she knew, she was being shaken by a shadow.
“Lulu,” the shadow whispered in the darkness. “You awake?”
She wasn’t sure where she was or how long she’d been asleep, but she knew that voice. She’d been speaking to it all of her life, across beds during sleepovers, and on the other side of bathroom stalls at school. She’d heard that voice through phone lines when phones were still attached to the wall.
“Desi? What are you doing here?”
“Your mother sent me,” Desiree said, groping in the dark for the light switch. She flipped it and the room was illuminated, the fluorescent light landing harshly on piles of high heeled shoes and her dark chocolate curls. “Why didn’t you tell me you were home?”
Home. A place where empty birdfeeders hung in the backyard.
“Sorry, I’ve just been…”
“A mess. A hot mess.”
Lucy pursed her lips. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
“Listen chonga, what the hell happened? I was so worried after you left me that strange voicemail. And then your phone kept going to voicemail. ¿Qué pasó?”
“My phone died. We lost power on the farm.”
“Yeah?”
“Freak snow storm.”
“Shit. That doesn’t sound fun.” Desiree peered inside a plastic jewelry box on the dresser.
“You’re telling me. No heat, no nothing.”
“Coñóoo,” Desiree said, rummaging through Arminda’s drawers.
Lucy watched her friend, trying her best to gauge how much she knew. Had she heard about Jacob and the flower girl? Knowing the way news traveled in her family, Lucy wouldn’t be surprised. But if she did know, Desiree wasn’t giving anything away. Still, Lucy could clearly remember Desi’s advice after meeting Jacob a few Thanksgivings ago. “Never trust a white guy with dreads,” she’d said. Lucy had taken it as a joke, of course.
Lucy turned over in the twin bed and stared at the wall, focusing on a spot of peeling paint. How many hours had she stared at this same wall when she was a girl, wondering when her prince charming would arrive?
“Look,” Desiree said, sitting down beside her friend. “I know your heart is broken, pero qué te puedo decir? There are other dicks in the sea, my friend.” She gave her friend’s limp body a shake and Lucy began to sob, as if the sudden movement released a closed valve.
“Shit!” Desiree said, horrified by the outburst she had caused. “I’m sorry.” She patted Lucy on the back, but it only made her friend cry louder. The floodgates were open and there was no stopping the deluge. “I know this freaking sucks right now.” Desiree continued over the loud sobs. “You feel like absolute shit and it’s that fucking dickhead’s fault. Pero te lo juro, you’re going to find way better. Way better. I promise. This is just a little clump in your mascara, that’s all.”
Eventually, Lucy’s racking sobs trickled to sniffles.
“That’s my girl,” Desiree said. “Why don’t we get you into the shower? What do you think, Lululemon? It’ll make you feel a million times better, I promise.”
A few minutes later, Lucy was standing under a hot stream of water. But no matter how hot the water was, she felt as though nothing could melt the icy mass at her core.
When she stepped out of the tub, Desiree was sitting on the toilet seat leafing through a glossy magazine.
“See, don’t you feel like a new person?” she asked, wrapping Lucy’s body, limp as a rag doll, into a towel. Lucy stayed quiet while her friend rubbed her head and arms with the scratchy fabric.
“Shit’s going to get better, you’ll see. I mean, it can’t get much worse, am I right?” Desiree laughed before carrying on. “We’re going to find you a new man. A real hombre—one with cojones. And a job, sin problema. I’m still working at the ER but I’ve got this side gig at a catering company. I’m sure they’ll hire you.”
Catering? Lucy thought to herself. Not in a million years. But she nodded, her mouth in a grim line.
“You hungry?” Desiree asked.
“What?” Lucy mumbled, pulling a shirt over her head.
“Hungry? Like, you know, lunch?” Desiree rubbed her stomach in an exaggerated motion.
Lucy couldn’t remember the last thing she’d eaten.
In the kitchen, the counters were still a disaster from Arminda’s breakfast/lunch operation. In the fridge, Styrofoam cartons tried their best to contain Mami’s ropa vieja from last week’s business lunch. Jars of old salsa littered the shelves, along with half-eaten plastic yogurt cups and crusty cans of garbanzo beans. Not a single vegetable in sight.
Lucy slammed the door shut. She thought back to the farm and their fridge full of homebrewed beer and farmstead cheese that they traded veggies for at the farmer’s market; fresh eggs from their flock of heritage hens lived on the chipped countertop and disappeared as quickly as they were laid.
Summer evenings on the farm were spent chopping an assortment of vegetables and tending giant pots of ratatouille or tomato sauce that were then ladled into mason jars and pressure-canned for longevity. They literally bottled summer in that kitchen, to be enjoyed in the depths of winter when life seemed to stand still.
While the jars cooled on the counter, the farmers meandered through the fields picking a head of lettuce, the ripest cherry tomatoes, a handful of snap peas, an ear of corn: dinner.
But here in this crazy Cuban kitchen, nothing was farm fresh.
“Let’s go out to lunch,” Desiree said, steering Lucy towards the front door. “My treat.”
“I’m not hungry,” Lucy said.
“It’ll be good for you to get out of the house, Lulita. Put your sandals on.”
As Lucy sat on the front stop, struggling with the straps of her sandals, Desiree peered into her friend’s station wagon.
“¡Qué reguero! How the hell did you drive all the way down the eastern seaboard when you can’t see out your back window?”
“I managed,” Lucy said. She didn’t want to remember the cold afternoon she had spent shuttling all of her possessions from the barn to the car, her steps wearing a dark path in the white snow, like a smear of dirt on a clean cheek. Snowflakes collected inside the boxes holding the flotsam of her life: scuffed work boots caked in last season’s soil, ears of dried corn, scraps of paper decorated with dirt and harvest numbers – 68 bunches of Swiss chard, 42 heads of lettuce, 50 pounds of carrots.
“You planning on unpacking anytime soon?”
Lucy shrugged.
“Bueno, do what you want.” Desiree started down the driveway.
“Wait,” Lucy said, stopping mid-step. “Let’s bring Fifi. I’m sure she’d like a walk.”
Desiree waited as Lucy searched for the dog leash and snapped it onto Fifi’s red collar, the dog’s little body writhing with anticipation.
“You’re a good little pup, aren’t you Fifi?” Desiree asked, tousling the dog’s fur as the three of them started towards the loud avenue a few blocks away.
“There’s so much freaking grass here,” Lucy said, waiting for Fifi to sniff a frangipani tree, her eyes squinting in the sun. “It’s awful.”
“What’s wrong with grass?”
“It’s useless, that’s what’s wrong with it. I mean, look at that lawn.” Lucy pointed to a little house surrounded by a giant green space. “They could be growing so many vegetables!”
Desiree burst out laughing. “Yeah right, Lucy. You couldn’t pay people around here to plant a cucumber! Or eat one, for that matter.”
As they neared the corner of 25th street and Yolanda Avenue, Lucy smelled the fried pork sizzling in its own fat before she could hear the salsa music blasting from the speakers.
“Holy chicharrones.” Desiree took in a long inhale.
La Casita was bursting with lunchtime life. A congregation of old men stood at the outdoor counter, sipping their cortaditos and yelling over one another. One of them wearing an avocado green guayabera nearly choked on his cafécito when he saw the girls approach.
“¡Lucila!” he cried. “¡Mi sobrinanieta! ¿Qué haces aqui?”
“They didn’t tell you?” Desiree called out. “She’s back!”
“¡Nadie me dice nada!” the old man said, pulling Lucy into a big hug.
“Tio.” Lucy breathed in the familiar mustiness of cigar smoke on his clothes, a smell that she knew shouldn’t bring her as much joy as it did. Tio was the brother of the grandmother she’d never met, and he’d lived next door to her and her mom as long as she could remember.
When he was done engulfing Lucy, he did the same to Desiree. “¡Mi niña, hace tiempo que no te veo!”
“Yeah, it’s been a while,” Desiree said, giving him a hearty thump on his back. “¿Cómo te va, viejo?”
“Aquí, aquí,” he said.
“Bueno, tenemos hambre. Seriously starving. ¿Has comido?” she asked.
“Sí, ya comí.” He gestured towards the restaurant. “Vayan.”
Desiree tied Fifi’s leash to a chair and the dog circled the cement for a few rounds before settling on a perfect nap spot. Lucy gave her great-uncle a kiss on the cheek and squeezed his shoulder. She was surprised by how strong his build was for an octogenarian. The other men took in the scene, all eyes on this gringa-looking girl carrying on with one of their own; she had forgotten how much her blond hair made her stick out in Miami.
Lucy followed Desiree inside the crowded cafeteria. Ceiling fans rotated from dangerously low ceilings, circulating hot air. Hordes of people fought to give their order to one of the overworked ladies behind the counter. Although they wore hairnets, their faces were caked with concealer and their eyelids painted with shimmery shades of rose gold and stardust.
“What do you want?” Desiree shouted over Marc Anthony’s sugar-soaked voice. “Carne de res? Puerco? Pollo? Pescado?” With each word, she pointed towards a different glass case bearing heaps of steaming food.
Lucy hadn’t seen so much meat since the last time they’d roasted a goat on the farm a few summers back. She took in the rest of her choices. Heaps of yellow rice with specks of green peas and red peppers. Piles of stringy white yucca boiled with chunks of garlic. White rice tainted gray with black beans—a dish with a most politically incorrect name that would certainly make her friends back on the farm cringe with white guilt: moros y cristianos.
“What are those things called again?” Lucy called out, pointing to a pyramid of burrito-like bundles with strings wrapped around them.
“You forgot what a tamal was called?!” Desiree shouted back, a sharp eyebrow raised. “Look, I’m just going to get a bunch of things and we’ll share, okay?” She disappeared into the masses, pushing her way towards the front.
Lucy stood on the edge of the crowd, her back pushed up against the wall as customers vied for their lunches like wrestlers in a ring. The smell of pork lingered in the air, mingling with the intense sweetness of guava paste. People shouted in Spanglish and coffee grinders chewed on glittering beans grown in the Caribbean sun. The pulsing reggaeton beat had switched to bachata, but the volume was still on high.
Looking out the smudged window at the greyed men standing in loose circles, Lucy watched Tio leaning back on the counter, tiny cortadito in hand, listening to a friend shout emphatically with hairy hands waving in the air. She hadn’t expected to feel so emotional about seeing her great-uncle again. Something about his presence made her feel safe in a way she hadn’t in a long time.
Back inside, Desiree had finally maneuvered her way to the front of the crowd; Lucy could see her haggling with the attendant as she pointed at various trays.
Finally, the girls stumbled back outside, the moist heat barely providing any respite from the temperature inside. Fifi scrambled to her feet, hoping for a treat, and Tio broke away from his compañeros to join them.
“¿Y tu novio?” he asked as the three of them sat down at one of the round mosaicked tables with matching cement benches, the kind that scratched the backs of your legs.
Lucy winced. Novios and novias were everyone’s favorite topic in this city of sex and vices.
“We’re not talking about that maricón,” Desiree said, opening one of the two bulging containers to reveal a colorful medley of pork, rice, beans, and quién sabe qué más.
“¡Yo lo sabía!” Tio shouted, bring a withered hand down on the tiled tabletop. “You can’t trust those gringos, mi niña.”
“As if Latin men were any better,” Desiree scoffed.
Lucy busied herself by inspecting the contents of the containers. Each food item had been designated its own square but refused to stay in its place, spilling languidly over Styrofoam boundaries. Syrupy black beans oozed into sweet plantains glistening like golden eels. A red sauce carrying plump shrimp tainted a mound of white rice.
“Doesn’t this look amazing?” Desiree asked, spooning portions of each food onto a plate. “Tio, can you believe this rubia forgot what a tamal was?”
“No me digas,” he said, shaking his head in mock disgust.
“I haven’t had a tostón in forever,” Lucy murmured, picking up a yellow disk crispy with grease. Her stomach jolted with desire for the first time in a week. She bit gingerly into the fried plantain that was picked green and cut into rounds before being submerged in bubbling oil, fished out and pressed flat, and then submerged once again. Somewhere in this process, she knew, the plátanos were soaked in saltwater to infuse them with flavor.
“No tienen eso en Massa – ” Tio stalled.
“Massachusetts, Tio.” The tender banana meat burnt the top of Lucy’s mouth in a way that reminded her of nights spent sitting on phone books at long tables covered in crinkly paper at Versailles or Casa Havana, her whole family talking over one another, reaching across elbows and plates of food, the conversation alternating between the latest gossip – Did you hear about Veronica’s son? Turns out he likes that pinga! – and life on la isla maravillosa.
As she blew on the greasy tostón before taking the next bite, she considered Tio’s face. His features had always been painted with age, but the lines on his face were longer now, like tears of rain making their way down a windshield. His skin was the color of the ash she used to brush out of the wood-fired oven on the farm. As a kid, she marveled over pictures on the mantel showing him as a young man, hair slicked back, a smirk on his lips. How could he ever have looked so young, with skin so tan, a jawline so taut?
“Lucila, mi niña linda,” he said, snapping her from her plantain-induced reverie. “¡Qué bueno que has regresado a Miami! You’re the smartest girl in this family, ¿sabes? ¡Eres una niña muy inteligente! ¡Muy inteligente!”
Lucy ran her tongue over the raw burn on the roof of her mouth. This was an old refrain in their family. She’d been the one to get a full scholarship to college. She’d been the one to move away from Miami. Certainly, she’d be the one to do something special with her life, something truly spectacular.
“He’s right, Lucinda,” Desiree said, unraveling the string holding her tamal together. “You’re freaking brilliant. You’ll figure out something great to do here, now that you’re back home.”
Lucy looked down at the table, trying to make sense of the mosaic design peeking from beneath the collection of Styrofoam. The faith her family and friends had in her always made her nervous, and now more than ever, she didn’t want to be the girl on the pedestal.
She was just a girl who’d given her heart to a man and the life he’d promised her, a life built from soil, seeds, and sweat. She’d walked brazenly down the path and, just as brazenly, that path had been snatched from her. Gone was the barn filled with braided garlic hanging from the rafters and onion bulbs drying like a carpet on the wood-paneled floor. Each week, she’d sifted through onions to pick out the season’s best to send to market. She’d loosened those garlic bulbs from the fall soil and braided the stalks as if they were her own child’s hair.
But the barn was not gone. The garlic still hung snug in the rafters, and the onions were all cured by now. The farm remained as it had always been. It was only she, Lucila, who was gone.
Images: “Still Standing” and “Miami Lilly” (acrylic on canvas paintings) by Hialeah artist Grisell Gajano.