Wednesday 27 January 2016

Dramatis Personae of a Previous Life in Havana

I can only imagine how carefully you applied make-up on your bruise. How long it took you to work around the edges of your battered eye. I can only imagine it. For I never saw you doing it. By the time I had come back from school, got changed into plain clothes and sprinted up to the third floor of my bloc of flats, you had mutated. The damage had been done and you had “moved on”. By the time the dominoes table had been set and you, your mother-in-law, one of your brothers-in-law and his wife had perched up together, you had put on the other face. “Nothing to see here. Shit happens. I caused the shit to happen. It was my fault. I’m the shit that makes the shit happen”. He was not there. He had already left for his beat, starched copper’s uniform, duty weapon in holster, probably whistling on his way down the stairs, José José or Emanuel (he was a romantic, after all); feeling like a man.

You, left behind. You, x-months pregnant. You, sitting around the dominoes table, smiling, laughing even, the corners of your mouth rising like the temperature outside in the sultry Havana heat. The others, reassuringly seeing calm after the storm.

I saw rictus.

Even at that young age, I could tell the truth behind the acting. It was a slow process, though. You set the stage for your one-act, one-actress play, but I never believed your silence-enforcing monologue. It was a performance-within-a-performance. I knew you had no choice but join this bruise-concealing farce, this confidence-destroying mise en scène. You were on your own, family-less, home-less, friend-less, a Cuban Easterner, palestina, looked down upon by habaneros. Habaneros like me.

We were the spectators. On the third floor, we were the audience during all the years you stayed in that house. That third floor was the observatory. To the outside world, never to the inside. The inside world was off-limits. It was known what was going on but… well, “shit happens.” That third floor was the balcony, the perfect site for the telescope that was missing but not needed. Around us the houses and apartments whose white-sheet-decked derelict rooftops cried out surrender. Surrender to the inevitability and the inevitable. Did anyone else see him raising his hand? Did anyone guess what was going to happen straight after? Did anyone notice the ever-growing bump, imperceptible still but noticeable once they came close to you? Did anyone care?

Every time you threatened to leave, every time, he laughed. I know, not because I saw him but because I heard him. The sarcasm-filled adverb. Destination? I did not need to see your face to know that in your head you saw a future of endless make-up-applying hours. The barrel of his duty weapon rammed down your throat as your pregnancy bulge kept him at arm’s length was evidence. The twelve-year-old secondary school girl he chased, groomed and started a relationship with was evidence. His own mother’s bruised arms the only time she very mildly dared to defend you were the evidence.

You did not seek help. In fact, you stood up for him. Some people said you had it coming. After all, you came from Oriente. What were you doing here? They asked. Correction: we asked. Also, why did you not leave him? Some others pointed at his outstanding attitude and behaviour in the community. Of course, sometimes he went a bit over the top.

I never asked you. I do not know if I would, were I to run into you now. After all, even you were aware that no matter how carefully you applied your make-up, we could still see your battered eye.

© 2016

Next Post: “Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On”, to be published on Saturday 30th January at 6pm (GMT)

21 comments:

  1. Heartbreaking!

    I wish you and yours a wonderful New Year!

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  2. Powerful and unnerving. It's fascinating how you can write about this difficult subject with such calm and objectivity. Well done.

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  3. Wow. This is so intense, compact and powerful. What an incredible piece of writing. I hope you submit it for a larger audience.

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  4. May be you knew her or someone like her.. and therefore you are able to feel and write so pointedly. For me, she is someone I read about on your blog - may be a real person, may be not. But she becomes real in your writing. To have made her come so alive that strangers like me feel her helplessness, you had to know her.
    This is such beautiful writing.

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  5. This was Havana - and could have been anywhere in the world. What's really important is that men like you are, at last, beginning to talk about it and admit that it's shameful. When men join in the condemnation, women might find the strength to make more noise about what happens to them.

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  6. Some people should be chucked in a deep dark hole and left there. Great piece of writing indeed.

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  7. A hearthurting powerful truth. For too many. Of us, and of them.

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  8. Thanks for your comments. Real story with real characters. He died last year. I haven't seen her for many years. Every time I go back to Cuba I get a different story. I saw their child (a 20-something-year-old now) only once. And for one moment I thought: "Please, don't copy, don't imitate. Don't do what your father did".

    The harsh and contradictory reality of being a humanist is how to fend off negative feelings about other human beings. He beat her up senseless. So it was always logical that I felt relief when I heard of his death. But that was followed by contrition. I regretted having those feelings. I felt at his same level, but instead of hating women (for he did hate women. He was a notorious abuser and sexual predator), I hated him and his like. Yet, what right have I got? I guess that is part of the humanist quest. To always ask that question: even behind the abuser there lies a - dare I say it - a human being.

    This post tonight was tough to write and it had been playing on my mind like a forgotten melody whose beginning and end you try to remember but whose middle section you remember to the letter. It was the rooftops that gave me the inspiration.

    Greetings from London.

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  9. Historia similar de la que se puede aplicar en otros casos.
    Un saludo

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  10. Oh my - heart-breaking and oh so well written!

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  11. i really enjoyed reading this essay. no, not the brutal subject or the violence on that woman. but how you wrote it so thoughtfully, but with such power in the words.

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  12. You write very well!!I quess trough your mind are manymany things!wish you could write a book sometime.
    She would be glad seing this, the woman you wrote about.May she rest in peace
    Greetings Anita

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment. She hasn't died, her ex-partner did, last year. Last I heard she was still alive! :-)

      Greetings from London.

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  13. When I was growing up, the story of men beating their wives was much too common. I lived in a neighborhood of row homes, so not only could I hear and see what was going on in my own house, but I could hear all of the screaming and fighting in the houses on either side of us. It was, sadly, a way of life, and the police rarely did anything about it, even if someone dared to call them. Worse yet were the times that the one doing the abuse was a member of the police force, like the man you wrote about. Women felt even more helpless then. Thankfully, society has grown to the point of seeing this kind of abuse as unacceptable, and now men go to jail for it... if the women are willing to press charges. In some cases, even if she refuses to file a complaint, the authorities take it out of her hands and throw the bum in jail anyway.

    Don't feel badly for feeling relieved to hear of his death. You have a tender heart, and felt for the women he hurt. I hope his widow finds some peace and happiness now.

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  14. This story is all too often reality for many women. I knew some men like this when I worked in corrections, but to a man they all were in prison for crimes unrelated to this behavior .... and, inexplicably, the women they had mistreated would come to visit them and often bring their children with them. It is a cycle of existence I will never understand.

    It is easier to "handle" such men when you believe good and evil exist as actual entities, and have the confidence to step into the fray rather than to stand on the sidelines .... if you catch my drift.

    Very evocative and forceful writing, CiL. It sort of stopped me in my tracks.

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  15. Powerful material and beautiful writing Cubano. Thanks, k.

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  16. Sad, but I enjoy reading your memories and find myself wanting to know more of your life in Cuba.

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  17. Too many sad secrets behind closed doors.

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  18. Such a heart-breaking scenario Cubano. I know that this is a memory that's hard to forget. I work as a domestic violence advocate and I can assure you, abused women want to leave but they rarely have the confidence or courage to go. There's not a lot of support for them and children usually keep them in situations where they rationalize that at least they have shelter and food. Policemen are notorious abusers, in any society. What i don't understand is why she was ridiculed for being from the East/ Was it because she was from the country?

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  19. This is very similar to my life, no bruises for my mother to conceal, nor - usually - for us, his children. This affected me deeply and routed a painful course for my life that I never would have chosen. I too, hated him for many years but have come to clarity, for me, in seeing the human behind that behavior...what had been the course of his life, to get him there. In that I can find some forgiveness.

    Do not think I mean to compare myself to this woman you write about, so eloquently, I only empathise. Her story is heartbreaking. It makes me wish I could have protected her, that we all could protect her and everyone who suffers in these painful situations. And I'm sad that this is a memory for you, if in fact it is, because anyone - listening - also suffers.

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  20. I can see why this memory haunts you. It's a tragic story but you tell it beautifully, especially that poignant last line. I wish tales like this one were only fiction.

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