No Way Home: A Cuban Dancer’s Story

CARLOS ACOSTA

No Way Home

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

My Family

I grew up in Los Pinos, a neighbourhood in the suburbs of Havana, a combination of city and country where asphalt streets and wooden houses vividly contrast with the vegetation that fills every available space and lends the landscape infinite varieties of green. Los Pinos was famous for La Finca, a leafy area of fruit trees and red earth covering some five square kilometres, extending as far as the Quinta Canaria Convent to the east, the district of La Güinera to the north and Vieja Linda to the west. Legend had it that La Finca was inhabited by spirits who turned themselves into owls and hooted not only at night-time but also during daylight hours.

To reach La Finca you had to climb a hill past the Russian lorry repair shop and carry on until you got to Cundo’s place. Cundo was the best known salesman in the neighbourhood. His house was essentially a small cooperative which sold sugar cane, coconuts, fresh goat’s milk, mangos and tobacco. A few metres on were the fibreboard caves – half-finished abandoned houses, their floors lined with pieces of cardboard, with grass and weeds growing high around them. This spot was commonly known as the Place of Infidelity. After crossing the first of several streams, where you could fish for prawns, there were natural caves draped with green creepers and huge malanga plants known as elephants’ ears. From there you could no longer see the lorry repair shop, nor Cundo’s house. The tall royal palms and the avocado and mamey bushes blocked out the sun, making the air dank and humid. The terrain became increasingly irregular. Hills would suddenly loom up that were awkward to climb. You had to part the undergrowth with a garabato, a hooked stick usually made from a tree branch, then help yourself along by grabbing on to tree trunks. The atmosphere was full of enchantment as the spirits-turned-owls hooted out their sorrows and songs all around you.

After scaling the biggest hill you came to a rocky, sandy plateau. This was the only place that was not shaded by trees and people would dry themselves off there after bathing in the pool, which was an abandoned reservoir about four metres long and three metres deep, filled with filthy, contaminated water. At the bottom there were channels and holes full of broken beer bottles and empty cans. Many people got ill after swimming in that water, one or two drowned. Parents used to forbid their children from going there, warning that they would get worms, or they would threaten us, ‘If you go into the forest, the owls will eat you.’ Nevertheless, whenever we were out of the house, we could always be found in those pestilential waters, or standing on the sandy plateau, looking out towards the distant streams in the west, the tobacco crops and the fields of cows.

Most of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood were workers, country people, hawkers and street-traders. Carriages pulled by horses took adults and children alike for a ride for a fee of one peseta, and people used wooden handcarts to carry their food. The noise of those rudimentary vehicles echoed through the streets, mingling with the cries of the scissor-sharpener, the mattress- stretcher and the fruit-seller.

Each house had a ration book. Foodstuffs that were rationed, such as grain, oil, salt and sugar, came into the grocery store once a month. It was the same with meat at the butcher’s, fish at the fishmonger’s and milk products at the dairy. We would queue from early in the morning, and at nine, when the grocery opened, there would be a giant snaking line of handcarts and people holding sacks, bags, jars and casserole dishes. Similar queues would form to buy bread, and the three toys that each house was allocated by the government every year. Everybody waited their turn patiently, telling each other their problems and sharing the latest neighbourhood gossip. People would play dominoes, drink rum and dance salsa together. You lived as part of a community and were grateful for the achievements of the Revolution, even though you might secretly listen to the rock music that was synonymous with imperialism.

In the eighties, nearly all the families in my neighbourhood received the minimum wage of about 70 pesos a month, with the exception of a few who earned a little more or a little less. The contrast between families was not really visible. Nobody had washing machines or dishwashers and the few households with television sets would watch them in black and white. Most people got their information from the radio. Electrical appliances from the fifties still survived thanks to people’s inventiveness. It was very common to find an American-made refrigerator or cooker functioning with Russian parts. The inside of every house reflected the country’s recent history.

Even though it was a poor neighbourhood, everyone had their pride. Every Sunday voluntary work groups were organized, where people would cut lawns, paint houses, sweep pavements and collect litter to compete with the other blocks in the area. A delegation organized by the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution would pass through block by block examining everything, from the lawns to the houses, even the lampposts, and the next day everybody would know which block had won. There were also el Plan de la Calle, ‘Street Plan’, competitions, which were big community parties that included singing and dancing contests, sack-races and hundred- metre running races. People sold home-made refreshments like ice- lollipops, meringues, meat and potato croquettes and soft drinks to the hundreds of people who came to the parties from the nearby neighbourhoods. The smell of ripe fruit that was characteristic of our neighbourhood was so strong that it impregnated the very fabric of our clothes and cancelled out all other odours. The inhabitants of Los Pinos smelt of guava in April, of custard apple in May and of mango in June. It was the aroma of those people, combined with the humility that poverty brings, that made Los Pinos a magical place.

It was in that little town, surrounded by music, dominoes, rum, the smell of fruit and the hooting of owls, that I spent my childhood. Most of the houses on my block were made of wood, but ours was a strange edifice consisting of six apartments divided by a staircase. Our apartment was in the upper part of this two-storey building. When I was a little boy, it seemed enormous, but it was really a miserable hovel without running water, either because of a problem with the plumbing or by some greater design of God, which meant that we had to carry that precious liquid, bucket by careful bucketful, up and down the many stairs. It was a narrow house, with rustic furniture and cracks in the walls where families of voracious termites lived. Shining empty beer cans added colour to the interior decoration, as did the black doll that represented one of the goddesses of the Yoruba pantheon, and the vase of sunflowers, usually wilted, that sat on one side of the shelf among photographs of relatives, faded by time, and a painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a feature commonly seen in humble homes like ours.

In one corner of the living room, my father, Pedro Acosta, hid his shrine, which comprised a pot of long nails, the kind that are used to secure railway lines; a small bow and arrow; miniature tools made of iron; a stone with shells stuck onto it to represent the eyes and mouth of a face; and a long-stemmed iron cup with a cockerel on top of it, which must never be allowed to fall over, or something terrible would happen. My father was a zealous devotee of Santería and he lost no opportunity to venerate the African gods with offerings and prayers, even though in those days in Cuba it was a sin against the state to have religious beliefs. Nothing and nobody could come between him and his devotions. Every so often he would leave a buffet at the disposal of the saints: juicy guavas, bananas ripening to yellow perfection, little cakes and sweets. At times like these, we asked ourselves if he had gone mad. We very rarely had enough to eat; the rice had to be eked out in order to last the month, as did all the other rationed foodstuffs, but the saints were provided with all that luxury despite the shortages. It was terrible profligacy. One day, unable to resist temptation, I shooed away my pet rabbits, Negrito and Canela, who were investigating the shrine, and ate everything: the guavas, the sweets, the piece of cake, even the ants that regularly fed on my father’s offerings. When my father found out what I had done, he could only just resist the temptation to crack my head open.

My mother did not agree with him feeding food to his saints. She said it was a waste. But it did seem to work, because whenever things were getting bad, as if by magic, my father would be sent on a trip to the centre of the country and would earn enough money to buy our entire food ration for the month.

My father drove a lorry transporting fruit, breaking his back for a monthly salary that was barely enough to feed us. Most of his journeys were inter-provincial, which meant that he was often absent for weeks, even months. We got used to living on very little. Every fortnight, my mother would go to the countryside taking our soap and toothpaste rations to exchange for beans and other provisions from the country dwellers. Sometimes she managed to get hold of some clothes for my sisters or a pair of shoes for me. On rare occasions, my father would turn up with some tinned fruit, and we would eat it with such desperation that we woke up with stomachache. Once I came home from school and was greeted by the unfamiliar smell of roasting meat. I rushed into the kitchen only to find my rabbits, Negrito and Canela, cooking in a pan. I ran out into the living room and cried and cried until I gave myself a terrible headache. It had been a long time since we had tasted any meat, however, so my mother made me have some. That would be the last time I would ever eat rabbit in my life.

Without being conscious of it, we learnt through our parents’ example that the only way to achieve something in life was through hard work. We knew that the reason we never celebrated birthday parties or other special occasions was because of the lack of money. We accepted without question the peso that each of us received as a birthday present to pay the entrance to the local cinema. We played with wooden pistols, with chivichanas (rough wooden scooters) and other contraptions that my old man used to dream up in moments of inspiration. When the clothes that we wore could not take any more repairs, we walked around with our butts hanging out.

My father was an impatient man with little time for children’s games. At home, he always had to have the last word. I remember him playing with me only once, when he taught me how to ride my sister Berta’s old bike. It was an awesome machine with huge wheels like a figure of eight and I was terrified of it, but I was even more terrified of my father, who sat me on the bike, gave me a push and then let me go. I crashed into the first lamppost I encountered and went home crying with a bump on my head. My mother screamed at my father, telling him that he was an insensitive brute and that I was never going near that damn bicycle again. He calmly retorted that it was the only way to make me lose my fear. The following morning he seated me on that heap of junk once more and I promptly smashed into the lamppost again. After numerous bumps on the head, I finally managed to do what my father wanted, though, far from losing my fear, I developed a genuine terror of the bicycle that I never overcame.

My father never spoke much about his past. I learnt only recently that my grandfather died when my father, Pedro, was six, and his mother was the daughter of slaves who had been born on the sugar mill belonging to the Acostas, a well-known Spanish landowning family from the town of San Juan y Martínez in Pinar del Río. From them came the surname that, after my grandfather died, would later be passed on to the rest of my family. When he was nine my father started to sell newspapers, hawking the latest news around the streets of Pinar del Río. After the death of his father, he had no alternative but to grow up prematurely in order to help his mother and his younger brother. As an adolescent he worked in the docks as a stevedore, loading bags of sugar. By the time his voice broke, his experience was already that of a man twice his age.

My father was born in 1918. His youth was marked by the great inequalities of race and class that existed at that time, when the poor man had to swallow his pride and collect the crumbs that the rich man swept from his table. It was during those days of his youth that my father saw ballet for the first time, in a silent film. The cinema was reserved exclusively for whites, but Pedro managed to sneak in. He did not know what the peculiar dance was, but the ballerinas immediately spoke to his senses as they spun round like Japanese parasols, elegant, delicate and light. My father lost himself in that unfamiliar world, but all too soon the usher arrived to remind him that he was poor and black, and to kick him out into the street. From that moment on, the ballet had captured him for ever.

In our house, my father slept on mats which he threw down onto the floor of the tiny living room in the space between the wicker armchairs and the ancient sideboard that groaned under the weight of the old American-made, always-broken television, and the Siboney brand Russian radio. On moonless nights his black skin was camouflaged by the darkness, and you had to follow his cigarette as it floated in the air in order to find him. My parents had already divorced and shared the house out of convenience. Neither of them had anywhere else to go. Mamá slept with me in the single bed that was jammed up against the wall that divided the bedroom from the living room, whilst my sisters slept in the double bed on the sagging mattress with sharp springs that poked through the lining. You had to memorize exactly where those springs jutted through in order to avoid getting snagged. Sometimes I had to sleep in the big bed and the springs would catch my right thigh and ankle and my back. My sisters, Marilín and Berta, knew the position of each and every spring, but I always had trouble remembering where to find them. When, years later, my father brought home a rustic pine bunk bed he had found, it became almost impossible to move in the bedroom, everything was so crammed that you could only walk through in single file. My father moved to the lower bunk bed, Berta to the top, and I moved to the double bed with my sister Marilín, though I never got used to sleeping without my mother’s blonde hair spreading over my face.

Unlike my father, when my mother started to talk about her childhood we could not stop her. We knew that her father’s family had arrived from Spain in the 1920s and had settled in Almendares, a middle-class district of Havana. My grandfather Carlos Quesada, a tall fair man with green eyes, had lent his name to my baptism. Grandfather grew up with few traces of his European roots. He soon identified himself with the cause of the Cuban poor, with those who did not have opportunities, forgetting all about his own status. Not unnaturally this was seen as a great misfortune by his parents, who were horrified that he cared nothing for his social standing. How had they failed? Why had destiny played them such a bad hand? They tried to make Carlos change his opinions, but all in vain. My great-grandparents died in the 1950s within a month of each other, both still relatively young. My mother would never agree with me, but I think they died of grief.

After a long romance, Grandfather Carlos married Grandmother Georgina, an olive-skinned lady with a strong constitution, a broad nose and legs of steel. They had three daughters to add to the daughter that my grandmother already had from a previous marriage. The oldest of their three children together they named María. This girl, who would one day become my mother, exuded vitality from every pore. She lost her virginity to a local boy at seventeen and was soon obliged to put her childhood games away, for less than nine months later, on the 25 December 1965, she gave birth to my half-sister Berta. This prompted disagreements with my mother’s half-sister, nicknamed ‘La Nin˜a’, who, being married and with three children of her own, considered herself to be head of the household. There was not room for them all in the house, she said. My mother and her sisters, Aunt Mireya and Aunt Lucia, and baby Berta had to move into the garage at the back of the house. Grandmother Georgina, who was intimidated by La Niña’s husband, did little to stop the move. Grandfather Carlos objected, but his words held little weight. He had already been diagnosed with the cancer that would make him disappear.

Berta had dark brown hair, a slim nose and green eyes like Grandfather Carlos. Her father hardly bothered with her when his relationship with my mother was over. When Berta was one and a half and already starting to show signs of a strong character, she carelessly threw a ball into the street and a black man kindly retrieved it for her. My mother thanked him and the man rewarded her with a wide, warm smile that revealed two gold crowns nestling amongst his upper teeth. It was the start of a new love affair. At first, my mother and the man who would become my father saw each other secretly – after all, he was nearly thirty years older than her, had been married several times, and had eight children already. Soon, though, the romance became public knowledge. The family, the neighbours, the whole world condemned María, railing, ‘What are you thinking of? Have you gone mad? Honestly! Setting your sights on a black man!’ In the late sixties, the man joined a government fruit and coffee planting initiative called Cordon Round Havana. After a year of work he came back looking for his love bearing the key to a house in his hand. In that house that same black man would one day give shelter to all those who had opposed the relationship: my grandmother and my aunts, the whole lot of them.

My sister Marilín was born on 25 July 1969. Berta was three and a half years old and had been living in Los Pinos since she was two. Marilín is what is called in Cuba, ‘mulata criolla’, a perfect mixture of black and white. As a child, she had a wide smile with teeth that looked as though they had been carefully chiselled by an artist, slanting eyes like my mother’s, dry hair like my father’s and an athletic body with silky skin. Berta wanted to carry her around the whole time and comb her hair as if Marilín was a toy that could talk and laugh.

My grandmother and my aunts occasionally visited our house, especially my aunt Mireya who often came to take Berta to the beach at Varadero. Marilín could never understand why she could not go too. Aunt Mireya would tell her that there was not enough room for everyone as she climbed into her boyfriend’s car and drove away, leaving Marilín crying. This gave Marilín an inferiority complex that she would never really manage to shake off. My mother always told her that my aunt Mireya loved both her nieces equally and that they were like roses that were beautiful but different.

‘Then why is my rose the one that has to stay behind?’ my sister would ask tearfully, and my mother would reply that Marilín herself was the rose and that next time it would be her turn to go to the beach at Varadero.

But the next time Mireya would say, ‘Let’s go, Bertica. Sorry, Marilín, there’s not enough room for everyone.’

And Marilín would be left behind in tears once again.

I was the last one to arrive, born on 2 June 1973. My father said that I was born at night and my mother said it was in the daytime, so I have never known the exact hour of my birth. My mother had to have a caesarean because I was coming out feet first. According to my father I swallowed some of the amniotic fluid and nearly died because the nurse took so long to attend to me, finally paying attention only after my father threatened her with a pistol, shouting, ‘If you don’t put him on a drip right now, I’ll kill you!’ The nurse, trembling with fear, inserted the drip via my nostrils.