Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

One afternoon, Mrs. Stites suggested that K.C. take Everly out on a popshot — a little open railroad car that you pumped with a hand lever. K.C., two of the Allain boys, and Everly piled on. One of them somehow put tar in Everly’s hair. She was walking up the path from the Nicaro dock, almost home, and realized that she’d been absentmindedly pulling at these mysterious sticky clots on the ends of her hair. Her mother and Flozilla washed the tar out with gasoline, and the parts they couldn’t clean, they cut out with scissors. Everly said that K.C. might have done it. “Why would that angel of a boy put tar in your hair?” her mother asked. No one was an angel. Except maybe Duffy, who walked around so softly spying on people that she practically floated on wings. All night Everly smelled the gasoline in her hair. Even while she was sleeping she smelled gasoline. “At least your hair’s not long,” her mother said. There had been a girl in Everly’s class in Oak Ridge with hair that fell to her waist. People said it was “fine,” meaning it was silky and delicate. The girl leaned over one of those automatic washing machines like Everly’s mother wanted to buy — round, like a drum. It was in the spin cycle, and the top had been removed. The spinner in the machine grabbed the girl’s hair and ripped it right off, along with her scalp.

K.C. delivered a note of apology in his own writing. Mrs. Stites had probably made him do it, but the fact that he’d consented seemed an apology enough. Everly understood why he might not want his mother doting over a child who wasn’t even related to them. When the Lederers hired Willy as their new houseboy, Everly started making excuses so she could stay home and follow Willy around on Saturdays, instead of pretending to be a model child for Mrs. Stites.

Every afternoon, Marjorie Lederer had Willy clean the dust from the outside of the house with a garden hose, clean the dust from the windows with crushed newspapers and vinegar, and wash the Studebaker. But the dust always settled again on everything by the next morning. It churned twenty-four hours a day from the nickel plant chimneys, sounding like a giant waterfall. Dust hung in the air, and on overcast days it smudged the bottoms of the clouds a dirty red. At night it hovered low and mixed with the fog that crept in off the bay. Cars would come up the road where the Lederers lived, blurry in the thick fog, headlights making two lit cones.

The town was a pinkish red, and the jungle beyond it was green. Everly’s father was color-blind, and said he saw red as green and the reverse. He claimed he couldn’t tell the difference between the two colors. Everly found this hard to believe, although she didn’t think he was lying. He’d get dressed and come in the kitchen and she and her sisters would make a game of telling him he had to change because his clothes were unmatched. What color, Everly would ask him, is the dust from the plant? “Red!” Duffy would shout. “I don’t know what color it is,” her father would answer. Everly tried to picture colorlessness and only came up with gray.

“You got to get the television box, Mr. Lederer,” Willy had said.

“The RCA. Or get the Du Mont, it’s the biggest. No one here going to have a Du Mont. You going to be the first, Mr. Lederer. The only one.”

Willy was right about the television. No one else had a Du Mont. The Lederers were the second people in Nicaro to have any television at all, never mind the largest model available. The first Americans, Everly’s mother said, because Lito Gonzalez had one before the Lederers, brought it back from Havana in the trunk of his enormous Cadillac.

Willy had read about television in Popular Mechanics . He looked at all the Lederers’ magazines, even the boring ones such as Forbes and Time, flipped through the pages as if he would know it if he came upon something interesting. He seemed to be absorbed in what he was reading, confident that he could recognize what was worth paying attention to. Everly picked up her parents’ magazines and turned the pages, looking for what she guessed Willy might look for, wishing she had that same confidence. She suspected that the best way to pay attention to Willy was to be as interested in everything as he was, do whatever she saw him do. She watched him turn the pages and looked at his pink palms. Willy’s hand was black. The pink was on display, tender-looking, like a hand that had been pricked with pins, or plunged in scalding or icy water.

Willy said television would be the new way to learn about things and keep up on the world. He said Cuba needed news, and maybe American news would be better than the news from Havana, which was all biased. What did biased mean? That it isn’t news, he said. It’s what President Batista wants people to hear. He explained that Cuba didn’t really have a free press, that the newspapers were all censored by the government, and any news that made the president look bad wasn’t printed. It was important to keep up on politics. If you didn’t, you chose, by not choosing, to accept the way things were. Everly wondered about her own parents, who never mentioned politics. Were they choosing for things to stay the way they were? Maybe they weren’t hungry for information the way Willy was. Willy said that Cuban radio was as bad as the Cuban newspapers, but at least it was good for tuning in to dance music. Batista censored the CMQ news, and all they had for talk programs was a faith healer. Willy said lots of people practiced superstition instead of putting order in their lives. Willy didn’t waste money on lottery tickets and holy water. He had plans, not pipe dreams. “I save my money, and who knows? Maybe someday I get my own house. If you spend it on lottery tickets and holy water, you guarantee you end up with nothing.” On his day off, Willy polished Mr. Gonzalez’s Whitewall tires and picked up odd jobs from the other Americans. Word had gotten around that he could fix things, appliances and even cars, and that he was a patient tutor of Spanish and French. “How come you know so many things?” Stevie asked. Everly knew why. Because he listened, and because he was smart. She could tell that when he worked around the house he was absorbing everything. He had a trick of not looking at whomever it was he was listening to most intently. If someone was having trouble, Willy was right there to help. Like when George Lederer, working at home one afternoon, was trying to adjust the tabletop fan on his desk and the fan wouldn’t stay in the right position, just kept flopping over and blowing papers around. He grew frustrated and started banging the fan on the desk. Willy asked if he could have a look. He got a screwdriver and carefully tightened the spring on the fan.

Everly’s mother arranged a kids’ party to debut the Du Mont television — Nicaro kids, the Stites boys, and a few others from Preston. The Allain children were not invited, and Panda cried because she wasn’t allowed to come. Duffy’s mean streak had compelled her to announce to Panda that the Lederers owned the largest television in the Western Hemisphere and would be watching cartoons and eating cupcakes the next Saturday. “Do you even know,” Stevie asked Duffy, “what a hemisphere is?” “A place,” Duffy said. “It’s a place !” Stevie was of the growing opinion that Duffy was turning into a monster. Stevie had developed a habit of flirting with Tico Leál, a Cuban employee at the nickel plant. Duffy spied on her older sister, going so far as to lie flat on the floor outside Stevie’s bedroom, her ear to the draft under the door. “Shhh…” Duffy said to Everly, who caught her one afternoon and asked what she was doing. “Stevie is talking to someone,” Duffy whispered. “A man — he’s in the yard talking to her through the window.” One afternoon Stevie opened her bedroom door, and practically stepped on Duffy. Stevie told her to knock it off, and said that if Duffy ever mentioned a word to their mother, she would live to regret it. “Are you threatening me?” Duffy asked. “Definitely,” Stevie said. Duffy seemed satisfied by the answer; a threat was a threat, and she kept her mouth shut, at least for a while. Tico Leál continued to visit Stevie at the window, and elsewhere, too. Everly saw them in the bleachers of the Nicaro baseball diamond, kissing. Stevie started sneaking out her window at night. From her own bedroom, Everly would hear Stevie’s window sliding open. Everly didn’t think Duffy was a monster. Duffy was “amoral,” which meant neither moral nor immoral. Morals were learned, and Duffy hadn’t learned hers yet. And maybe there was something to be said for a child who was a monster. She would make a good killer, because she didn’t care and it wasn’t her job to care. If you told Duffy to slam someone over the head with a heavy book, or maybe a brick, she would immediately do it. Not just gladly, but with delight.