Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

In the morning they went shopping at the United Fruit commissary. George Lederer said everybody could pick something, but it was like at Sears again, and what Everly chose wasn’t “acceptable.” Duffy got a toy six-shooter, though they took it away from her right outside the store because she wouldn’t stop pointing it at her own head. Stevie chose a Little Lady box set with eau de cologne, soaps, and powder. Everly wanted a pair of lazy tongs that were hanging on a nail behind the counter. “What on earth do you need those for?” her father asked. “Don’t you want a Little Lady box set like your sister?” She insisted on the lazy tongs, which turned out to be as much fun as she’d predicted, though later, when they had settled in Nicaro, they banned her from bringing them in the car after she used the tongs to pinch her father’s ear while he was driving. “I’m just reminding you I’m here, ” Everly said. “Don’t be sassy,” her mother replied, “that was an accident.” They’d forgotten her at a gas station in Mayarí, on a trip into a town one Sunday for church services. She’d gone to use the bathroom as the attendant was filling their car. She didn’t really need to use the bathroom. She had a National Geographic and wanted a few minutes alone, reading her magazine on the toilet. She lost track of time, and when she came out, they were gone. “Are you scared?” the gas station attendant asked her in Spanish. “No,” she said, knowing the car would reappear in the station and that they’d be arguing in the front seat about whose fault it was, everyone rankled like it was she who’d done something wrong. The attendant gave her a cup of cane juice and let her sit in the office, but she’d barely begun to relax and enjoy herself when she saw the Studebaker pulling up.

Preston was a whole day of visiting before they got on a boat for Nicaro in the early evening. Lunch at Mrs. Stites’s, and then afternoon tea at the LaDues, because Mr. LaDue’s cousin knew the pastor at the Lederers’ church in Oak Ridge. It seemed like her mother’s version of her father talking to strangers in line at the post office and the bakery. I was barefoot and I stepped right in it. They cut around my footprints and sold it anyway. But perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this. You might be buying cheesecake! The stranger’s shut-down look. Polite, but hoping not to encourage him. Her mother “networked.” Her father was “inappropriately friendly,” which was why her mother managed him in social situations, hovered close, and intervened if she didn’t like what he said.

Mrs. Stites had a gentle manner and a pretty smile, and she smelled faintly like flowers. The Stiteses had a baby grand piano, and when her mother mentioned that Everly had taken lessons in Oak Ridge, Mrs. Stites asked if she would play them something. Everly was embarrassed and didn’t want to, but Mrs. Stites was so nice about it, it seemed like she actually wanted Everly to play. She agreed, and not because it was something her mother wanted her to do. She chose a Mozart piece she knew by heart, but she flubbed a difficult trill and then lost her place and couldn’t finish. Mrs. Stites acted as though nothing was wrong and Everly’s behavior was the most normal thing in the world. She told Everly she could come and play their piano anytime she wanted. Usually it was Stevie whom the adults took a shine to. But Mrs. Stites chose Everly, despite the tantrum she’d had right in the Stiteses’ living room. Everly figured there must have been some mistake. But Mrs. Stites was insistent and said to come back the next weekend, that they’d have lunch and play duets together.

The boys, K.C. and Delmore, both had sun-bleached hair and tanned skin like they belonged on a Coppertone billboard. Delmore was about Stevie’s age, but he didn’t express much interest in talking to her. K.C. took them into his father’s private train car, red velvet drapes, red velvet-upholstered seats, and red carpeting. It looked like the inside of a mouth. Lining the walls above the windows were mirrors tinted a goldish-pink — champagne, Everly later learned, was the name of the color. K.C. said the mirrors were there so you could see the landscape twice — out the windows, and also in reflection. Why look at a mirror, Stevie asked, when you could just look at the real thing? But Everly liked the idea. Maybe you’d see something in the reflection that you’d missed in the landscape itself. And besides, it would be goldish-pink now. Even I look okay, she thought, in a gold-pink mirror.

Two girls, an older and a younger one, poked their heads into the Pullman car. The younger one had a huge birthmark around her eye. She asked if they were going on a trip. “I forgot to tell you,” K.C. said to Everly and Stevie, “that this is actually Panda’s Pullman car.” “No, it isn’t!” the girl squealed, delighted by the idea that maybe it was.

The two girls tagged along with them as they walked around town. Click click click click went the older girl’s shoes. They were tap-dancing shoes. “Why are you wearing those?” Stevie asked. “Because I feel like it,” the girl said. Later, Everly suspected they were the only shoes Giddle Allain had. But maybe it was how she got to be such a good tap dancer. She was already wearing the shoes and could practice at any moment. K.C. took them by the Allains’ and they met the whole family. They were each offered a piece of cut sugarcane, which Hatch Allain sent Mitty to retrieve from a cane car just beyond the house. Hatch showed them how to strip it and eat it.

“We do not say ‘Chinaman,’” her mother scolded, when Everly and Stevie returned to the hotel.

“But it’s his name! That’s what they call him!”

Which only confirmed to Marjorie Lederer that the Allains were not just common but downright crude. “Roughnecks,” her father called them. Giddle Allain had invited Everly and Stevie to come back sometime to spend the night.

“They can’t stay at your house!” Duffy blurted, when Giddle and Panda came to the dock to say good-bye as the Lederers were getting on the launch for Nicaro. “Mother won’t allow it!”

“She just likes us to sleep at home,” Everly said as hurt rolled over Giddle’s face. Rolled over but then was gone. Giddle didn’t care what people thought. None of them did. Roughnecks or not, the Allains, as Everly got to know them, did not cry or complain. No one watched out for them and told them to clean up or wear a dress or do their homework. They dressed themselves and told themselves where to go and what to eat and who to hang around with. They didn’t sleep on ironed sheets. They didn’t have sheets. Everly saw the beds in the room the three girls shared — just mattresses, with the striped mattress ticking you weren’t supposed to see unless the maid was changing the bed. Panda was the only one who might have been the least bit delicate. Traipsing around in her nightgown, clutching a piece of foam rubber like it was a teddy bear. On the foam, which looked like a hunk of ceiling insulation, she’d written “Panda’s pillow” in magic marker, so no one else would use it.

Marjorie Lederer took notes on everything she observed at the Stiteses’ and the LaDues’. She said these people had been living in Cuba for a long time and knew how to make a life in the jungle. She would pay attention. Everly had paid attention and took her own notes, like never to hold Poncho again if they were invited back to the LaDues’ house.

“He doesn’t bite,” Mrs. LaDue had said, encouraging Everly to hold him. “Snuggle her baby” is how Mrs. LaDue had put it. And if he did bite, she added, it wouldn’t hurt because Poncho’s teeth had been removed. He didn’t scratch because his fingernails had been removed. And he wasn’t aggressive because he’d been “neutered.” Everly held him and he really was like a baby, curled up against her, his long, thin fingers playing with the buttons on her shirt. Although he didn’t have nails, his fingers were as careful, deliberate, and wrinkly as human fingers. His eyes, as moist and expressive as human eyes.