As stories of the military’s defeats circled more and more, Dolores began to see. She began to see, in whatever lay on the other side of the regime, something akin to her own do-over. If the rebels in the mountains succeeded, if her husband left and died a hero, if she woke up a new woman in a new country. She might dare to seek a future, any future, that wasn’t this.
As it happened, Daniel did leave to the mountains after a skirmish with Batista’s men depleted the ranks of guerrilleros and Fidel once more put out a call over Radio Rebelde. But before he did, Dolores came closer to death than she ever had before, even with her ribs broken, with her mouth pouring blood and her tooth in her hand, even closer than that.
Two months after Daniel killed a man for the first time, he looked for something, who knows what. He’d ducked under the bed and seen the curious slash in the mattress. And when he found the wad of money, when he dug his hand into the exposed spring coils and came out with a fistful of cash, he grabbed a sobbing Carmen and Elena by their hair, threw them into the bedroom they shared. Then he took Dolores by the neck as she washed dishes at the sink. He took her by the neck with one hand and with the other ripped off her dress and left her in her slip. He dragged her through the door.
He beat her as he usually did, except this time he did it right outside their house, where Dolores stood crouching and shivering, horrified that a neighbor might pass at any minute and witness her shame, her C-section-scarred belly and quivering thighs. When he was done pummeling her at the door, when he’d drawn a bloody gash across her cheek and punched her eye shut, he grabbed her by the hair and threw her back into the house, to the bedroom. Then he pulled his machete from behind the bed and held it over her.
She was aware, from movies and such, that some people saw their lives flash before them at the moment of death. But that didn’t happen to her. She didn’t see a montage: Dolores as a giggling child in her own mother’s arms; Dolores wiggling up palm trees to knock down coconuts; Dolores afraid and exhilarated when a handsome man came looking for her; Dolores and a bloody, beautiful Carmen; Dolores nursing Elena as her mother lay dying. None of that happened.
Dolores didn’t see. She felt: a roaring beast in her gut, salivating, frothing for another chance to open her mouth and form a word, any word. The beast found ferocity in her she’d never again recover. She apologized, of course. Sobbed and begged and pleaded and summoned her daughters’ names in the hope of reaching the humanity in Daniel. But he swung. He swung and her hands sprang and she grabbed the handle with such strength, with such rage, that the machete halted inches from her face. Inexplicable. A Hollywood-worthy ending. She felt like Marilyn Monroe. A Cuban Marilyn Monroe in underwear with one eye swollen shut and smears of her own blood, who knew from where anymore, soaking her slip.
It was enough to stop Daniel: miracle. He crumbled to the floor, panting, then threw the machete across the room. “You fucking puta. You’re lucky I didn’t slit your throat.”
She was Marilyn Monroe, and she had never felt more certain she could survive without Daniel.
And then Daniel left for the mountains again.
But this time, she listened to Radio Rebelde every day he was gone. She listened for any sign of defeat, that bombs would rain over the tropics. That Daniel would walk into a campo town thinking he’d meet sympathizers but then—gunshot to the face. That a snake the size of a palm trunk would slither into his tent, crush his neck in the night. Her money gone. He’d taken the cash from the mattress. But she didn’t care. If she’d learned one thing from that beast in her, that beast that had absorbed death so she could live, it was this: She would survive. No matter what.
When news of Batista’s defeat reached Dolores, she sat at her sewing machine, mending trousers for some wealthy city people, a job she’d secured via her underground typewriter-ladies circle. Circle of saviors. She wept before the silk dresses and pleated pants, waiting for Carmen to arrive home from school. Wept as Elena tugged at her hem and said, “Mamá café. Mamá café.”
And then in the afternoon, to the city again. How the plaza came alive that day, rumblings and murmurings, singing peanut vendor, nannies with smiles on their faces patting little blond heads, Carmen and Elena making wishes over fountain coins that weren’t theirs. Dead? Alive? Surely dead. For days, she waited for the postman with a letter announcing her widowhood or perhaps a compañero from the mountains with a beret in his hand over his heart … I’m so sorry to inform you of this, comrade …
Instead, Daniel showed again. Came through the door at dawn on a Wednesday before Dolores was up, when it was still dark outside. Walked right into their bedroom and kissed her atop the head.
“We won,” he said to her. “Get up and get the cafetera going. Did you hear Fidel himself is coming to the city? Perhaps today, even.”
She had no words. All Dolores could do as she lit the gas and placed the rusted metal contraption over the fire was think of the machete she’d purchased when Daniel left, tucked under the big guava bush behind their house. She’d sharpened it herself. She’d practiced the blow that could
