El Alemán rumbles into traffic, passes a mule hauling a cart, a guajiro. “On the fucking highway,” he says. “The highway.”
A jinetera studies, calculates. And, yes, offers sex sometimes, oftentimes. But so much more to give and parse and offer. And not just a listening ear or a compliment, these, too, the territory of prostitutes. One might, for instance, end up in a car with a US cousin and a German tourist because he wants to take us to a resort on Varadero Beach. One might put up with platitudes feigned as insight.
A lane switch and the landscape gets more rural. More sugarcane, less rubble. Billboards: THE REVOLUTION STARTS WITH YOU. ALWAYS WITH YOU, COMANDANTE. More palm, more sky, more valley. More bodies in truck beds, hair whipping in the wind.
“Ah, this is life,” says El Alemán.
“The poverty. The poverty is heartbreaking,” says Jeanette.
I just sink back. Time trickles. A countryside lullaby, highway rumble rocking. I close my eyes and picture what it would take to seduce a German tourist into falling in love with me, what it would take to convince a German tourist he needs to marry me, because he needs me, because in his mind I am everything a German woman isn’t. I am vacation, my body is vacation. What would it take to convince a German tourist to whisk me away? It happens often enough—Dianelys, Yudi, Leti, all of them somewhere in Europe. I picture how I would get from Germany to Spain, where work would be easier. Would I need to stay married for more than a year?
Then I am awake—a side-of-the-road pork shack, El Alemán nudging me and whispering, “Need you to translate, darling.”
We step out of the car to an onslaught of mosquitoes and calf-high saw grass, a shirtless guajiro stirring a vat in the shade of a palm hut. An hour nap? Two hours? I order three pan con pernil and the guajiro smears dripping pulled pork with mojo, a corn husk for a brush. El Alemán takes big bites, leaning on the car and bending forward as grease dribbles down his chin. Jeanette is dainty despite the oil shining her lips, the gnats circling.
What would it take to make a cousin send for me? What would it take to convince her she needs to support me until I can get on my feet in a place like Miami, where there are so many stories like mine? Maybe I could just travel back and forth. Which would require giving more of myself away?
“I need to pee,” Jeanette says halfway into her sandwich. She hands me her plate and opens the trunk, digs through her luggage. Toilet paper from the hotel room in hand, she elbows me and tells me to go with her.
We leave our paper plates in the care of El Alemán and trek into the grass, the guajiro watching us from the shack and swatting flies with slimy hands.
“How far we gonna go?” I ask.
“Shhh. I don’t even really have to pee.”
“What?” Jeanette grabs my wrist and pulls me closer to her. The grass has morphed into cane now. Gnats buzz in my ears when I wipe the slickness from my face. We both crouch in the shadow of the stalks like hiding prey.
“I just couldn’t wait,” Jeanette says. “Tell me what happened. I’m dying to know.”
What is there to say? To this cousin of mine whom I’d never met in person before? She is beautiful—fat black curls and deep-set, almond eyes. She has a strange, lopsided smile. I try to detect signs of what my aunt said when she sent the email announcing Jeanette’s trip—of the drug addiction that held her captive for years, of the drama of a failed relationship that tends to age a person. I can detect no signposts of hardship, only a brightness of the eyes, a conspiring touch on the arm that says, We never knew each other but blood is blood and we can be honest now.
So I’m as honest as I can be with someone whose life feels so far from my own. I tell her what happened last night after she left me on the long elevated patio of the Hotel Nacional and went to bed. We’d ordered mojito after mojito (even though technically Jeanette wasn’t supposed to drink), and tipsy, I’d glanced at the Malecón below, at the couples making out under salty mist, the peanut vendors with their paper cones and singsong advertising. And I’d considered the events of the night: the unattractive German man who’d chatted us up, who’d asked so nonchalantly if we’d like to join him on a trip to Varadero. Jeanette had said no. I’d said yes. Courage up from the rum warming my throat I’d pulled her into furtive whispers in the bathroom of the hotel, not unlike our huddle under the sugarcane. And I’d told her the truth: that he’d asked me up to his room and that I intended to go. If she was shocked, she didn’t show it in her face. If she’d wondered about my husband, she didn’t ask. Perhaps those are the signposts. My cousin knew life was complicated and none of us were fully who we pretended to be.
“But, Maydelis, what will you tell Ronny?” Jeanette slaps a mosquito on her arm and leaves a streak of blood.
“That we drank too much. That I decided to stay in your room. And I’ll tell him the truth about this—that we decided to leave to Varadero so you could see the beach.”
“But he won’t worry that he hasn’t heard from you since yesterday?”
“Sometimes I don’t come home, Jeanette. Sometimes he doesn’t either.”
There. The truth. It’s out and engulfing us with the sticky country air. Jeanette doesn’t press me further. But I know what she wants to know, so I add: “The sex was okay.”
I don’t add that he slipped me crisp euros “to buy some new clothes since you didn’t pack an overnight bag.” That something about
