Grieving for Guava by Cecilia M. Fernandez

Author:Cecilia M. Fernandez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Button Box

The memories of childhood are like clear candles in an acre of night.

—Carson McCullers

Hidden in a floral-scented drawer in Tía Margot’s walnut armoire, a delightful treasure, buried in layers of imported silk, linen, and cotton sateen, awaited discovery. Each Sunday I dug it out, a carved wooden box filled with buttons, my imagination conjuring scenes of queens and princesses decorating their robes with these very same disks and spheres. Had these royals nervously fingered the cool marble, the reflecting glass, the intricately carved wood as they waited to waltz in the court of the king?

In those prerevolutionary days of dictator Fulgencio Batista, Tía Margot’s house in Guanajay emanated the opulence of Cuba’s upper middle class, under siege by armed Fidelista zealots hiding in the mountains. Just thirty minutes away from La Habana, this three-story tree-shaded nineteenth-century town house looked like a Spanish castle. Medieval turrets decorated the roof on both sides. Coral tiles led the way from the narrow street to thick mahogany double doors with brass knockers in the shape of lions’ heads. Thick walls, built from jagged rock blocks, cut the hand like a blade.

At the door with my parents on those sweltering Sundays, breezeless and cloudless, I was the first to cross the threshold into a dim foyer. Porous cream-colored limestone walls inside invited roaming fingers to rub shallow crevices. Marble slabs slipped under my feet as I trotted down a hallway and stepped onto the yielding fiber of a multicolored Persian rug in the sitting room. A circlet of lightbulbs in a dripping crystal chandelier pushed out the darkness.

Tía Margot, with smooth, alabaster complexion and humid black eyes, never forgot to warn me not to go into the courtyard because the dog was crazy.

“Está loco,” she said in a whisper scented with café con leche.

My mother walked left and sat down with cousins, aunts, and uncles in overstuffed sofas and wing chairs. My father turned right, following Tío Lorenzo to an office whose gleaming white walls showcased imposing medical instruments. A long wooden examining table covered with a white sheet and outfitted with stirrups for gynecological examinations stood prominently in the center. Lorenzo eased into a delicately carved Louis XV chair next to a matching desk piled with charts and X-rays.

“Tío, how did Joseito make out after surgery?” My father and Lorenzo, both physicians, spent hours in this room discussing patients, but I, impatient, rushed straight ahead, past the tantalizing smells of roast pork that the family would soon have to stand in long lines to get on the island, through the sitting room whose furniture would be sold to buy toothpaste and toilet paper, and into Tía Margot’s elegant bedroom, where I yanked open the heavy drawer and reached inside, lifting the magical box out of the tangled mass of fabrics.

The scent of rose sachet flew into my face like butterflies. I climbed on a footstool, box in hand, and jumped on the bed covered with silvery satin sheets. Dislodging the top, I dug

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