Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

Everly was going to a pool party for K. C. Stites’s fourteenth birthday, and the other kids would be in shorts and pullovers and tennis shoes. Her mother wanted her to wear a dress. Everly didn’t have the heart to explain that it only emphasized their own lower social status to go fancy and formal to a pool party. People with something to prove went fancy, and those with nothing to prove let their kids wear whatever they wanted. Pullovers and shorts. But because it would please her mother, she put on the stiff white kitten-heeled patent leather shoes, which dug into her feet and made them bleed, and carried the matching purse, although she couldn’t think of anything to put in it.

How can these things let everyone know I’m a young lady, she wondered, if they seem so unlike me? But maybe they were her, she thought, and she just didn’t know it. If she’d never seen a mirror, she wouldn’t recognize herself in one and would have to learn what she looked like. Without a mirror she’d be as blind to herself as the eyes on Mrs. LaDue’s peacocks, which weren’t really eyes, just blue-black blots. Mrs. LaDue treated the peacocks better than she treated Poncho. “Poncho needs discipline,” Mrs. LaDue said. “He’s an unruly child.” Everly doubted that a grown monkey had the character of a child. Poncho had taken to spitting at Mr. LaDue, and now they wanted to get rid of him. No takers yet, despite the four-season wardrobe with accessories — belts, ties, hats, socks, and shoes, even monogrammed handkerchiefs — that Mrs. LaDue was offering complimentary to whomever might be willing to adopt Poncho. Everly put on the dress and kitten heels and hoped they would have the same effect as learning what she looked like in a mirror. Her mother said she looked just darling, that she was starting to fill out and come into her own. Later, after they’d moved back to Tennessee, Everly was elected May Queen and her mother said she wasn’t a bit surprised. But her mother was surprised, which was why she insisted on denying it. She’d always said that redheads were not conventional beauties, but an “acquired taste.” So I’m like aspic, Everly thought.

She’d had a dream about a woman who walked through a room wearing nothing, just a towel held up to her front. What a lovely way to assert yourself was her dream sentiment, watching the woman stride through the room, her backside bare. When she woke up, it still seemed lovely, even if it was a nonsense dream. Maybe the dreams she had about going to school in her underwear — everyone had them — were not about anxiety, but about wanting to be naked, and in front of everyone.

The day of K.C.’s party, there was a get-together for the adults as well, at the Pan-American Club. A matinee, the people in Preston called daytime parties. Everly’s father was tired from working all week and didn’t want to go, but her mother said he should do more hobnobbing. And that he should wear a bracer.

“Dear, I’m not wearing a girdle,” her father said. “It’s ridiculous. Men wearing girdles.”

“It’s not a girdle,” her mother said. “It’s a bracer .”

Her mother had ordered it from the Sears in Havana. George Lederer’s reduction diet wasn’t working, so they’d fired Flozilla, whose cooking was too fattening. Before she came to Nicaro, Flozilla had been a cook for Batista’s brother over in Banes. Batista was overweight. You could see his belly when he appeared on television. Marjorie Lederer was convinced that the president’s belly was connected to Flozilla’s cooking and that Flozilla made people fat.

Everly didn’t miss Flozilla, who had been nice sometimes and mean other times. Like when she told Duffy, who believed her, that the ñáñigos would get them when they were sleeping, and boil them down.

“Why?” Duffy asked, beginning to panic.

“To get a powder,” Flozilla said. “Boil you down and extract it. A special powder they need from white children’s bodies.”

Everly pictured translucent grains, like uncooked rice, in the paper fold of an envelope.

When Duffy caught a fever, Flozilla said white children got sick because they weren’t hardy. “If you grow up in the bush,” Flozilla said, “eat guava, go barefoot, bathe in the river, you strong. Strong enough to fight off a fever. But you not strong,” she told Duffy, who shivered under a pile of blankets. “You weak. And you sick with a fever.”

They still hadn’t found the right cook. One of the women who came to interview had good credentials, her mother said, but she was an albino. Everly’s mother said a Negroid albino was the saddest thing in the whole world. Too sad to have in the house, although she’d been pleasant enough. Nothing sadder, her mother said, than a Negroid albino.

Their laundress had been cooking, filling in until they could hire someone new. But she knew laundry and not cooking and burned everything. Everly had started going to the club after school, filling up on cheese and crackers the bartender gave her. Gouda cheese and saltine crackers, on a plate she’d carry over to the little library in the corner, where she sat in one of the club chairs and looked for the hundredth time at the books on the shelves, all donated by the U.S. government. They were mostly biographies. The Life and Leadership of Rafael Trujillo, President of the Dominican Republic . A painting someone had done of Trujillo decorated the inside cover. Under the image was the mysterious caption “Photograph of His Benefactor by R. R. Martinez.” The Life and Fortune of James D. Dole, Pineapple King . Everly had read it twice. James D. Dole had married Mrs. Belle Dickey of Honolulu and made enormous profits once he figured out how to can pineapple. “After they began canning the fruit,” the author said, “the life of James D. and Mrs. Belle Dole was one long, sweet song.”

One sweet song. Like canning syrup. How dull, a life that was only one song.

The servants had built an elaborate sunshade of palm fronds on the patio of the Preston pool. They’d hung Chinese paper lanterns from the sunshade, pink and yellow and baby blue, which bobbed in the wind. One long table was decorated with bunting and streamers, with a place card at each table setting. “You’re right here, dear,” Mrs. Stites said to Everly, patting the seat next to hers, “between me and K.C.” Mrs. Stites leaned close, close enough that Everly could smell her flowery scent. She said she was glad Everly was there to celebrate with them and that it hadn’t been an easy time. With Del gone and everything so — she sighed— unsure. Her eyes welled with tears. “Anyway,” she said, retrieving a handkerchief, smiling weakly and blotting the tears, “I’m so glad you’re here, Everly. And you look lovely. Doesn’t she look lovely, K.C.?”

K.C. was just sitting down. He looked at Everly, at the white handbag in her lap, and said yes, she sure did look lovely. He said it carefully, like he was speaking to Everly and not to his mother. Everly’s face went hot.

When the party was over, K.C. insisted on escorting her to the dock. The other Nicaro kids were walking in front of them. They were near the seawall when he stopped her. He said he had something to give her, that it was private and he didn’t want to give it to her in front of the others. They could hear people drifting out of the Pan-American Club, which was right next to where the Nicaro yacht was anchored. Mrs. Billings’s high-pitched voice. “No, really, I mean it. That’s what he said! I swear to you — you can’t make these things up.” K.C. reached into his pocket, retrieved something, and placed it in Everly’s hand. It was smooth and metal, a mechanical part to something. It took her a minute to figure out what it was: a gold faucet handle.