Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner

Author:Rachel Kushner
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2008-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

Christmas in Havana

The morning we were leaving, Del kept us waiting. His bags were packed and in the hall with mine and Mother and Daddy’s, but there was no sign of him.

Crushing season was set to begin just after the New Year, and people were going to Havana or Miami or New York to get a proper holiday before the sugar mill started running around the clock. This was December of 1957, just before the big cane fire. Before anything, really, had started to go wrong. We were going to Miami for the annual shopping spree, then to Havana as guests of Deke and Dolly Havelin.

Del knew what time we were supposed to be at the airstrip to meet the company plane. He’d gone off somewhere earlier that morning. I stuck around the house. Curtis Allain came by, and we killed time pitching rotten fruit at the mamoncillo tree, trying to get bats to fly out of it—they sleep in mamoncillo trees. The Allains weren’t going anywhere. I think Rudy and Hatch were supposed to be around all the time, keeping an eye on the mill. I can’t imagine the Allains going on a vacation anyhow. Pearly sure didn’t like to go anywhere, not even to Mayarí. “Can’t blast her out of there with dynamite,” Rudy joked. Mother had gone up to Nicaro that morning. The roads were good, and Hilton Hardy took her in one of the Buicks. She wanted to bring a Christmas ring to the Lederers, and she’d bought a gift for Everly—I think a bottle of perfume. Mother had invited Everly to come with us to Havana, but she couldn’t for some reason that I don’t recall, and Mother was sad about that. As I said, she had a real soft spot for Everly Lederer. She had our piano tuned religiously, even after Everly stopped coming over to play it. Mother felt that she had a unique personality—very “individualistic” is what Mother said. She loved us boys to death, but I think it was a special treat to have a girl around.

When Del didn’t show up on time, we all figured he was off sulking. Daddy had enrolled him in military school in Georgia starting in the spring, and Del didn’t want to go. He was too old for the Preston school. I was almost too old for it, and would be enrolling at Ruston Academy in Havana the next fall. Del had been doing Calvert home schooling system by mail. After Phillip Mackey was caught helping the rebels, Daddy said it was proof enough to him that the humidity was making these older boys soft in the head. Del would go to the States and have a drill sergeant teach him some common sense.

We’d waited maybe thirty minutes when Daddy started getting anxious. “Screw him,” he said. “He’s sixteen and he can take care of himself. Let him eat cat food.”

The entire staff of servants had the week off, except the company guards and Ho, the Chinaman who tended our flowers.

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