Patricia Engel - The Veins of the Ocean

It reminds me of Carlito’s prison days when Dr. Joe told me that even though most inmates fantasize about the day they’ll be released, a lot of them don’t actually want to be freed; they’ve been in the system too long and in some cases, through generations, the claw of the law present from the cradle.

“Incarceration is contagious,” Joe said. “It becomes a state of mind, and once it penetrates a prisoner’s psyche, it’s very hard to remove. Inmates will become so emotionally destroyed that they will internalize their surroundings and forget about the world outside, and where they came from. They start to believe prison is their natural habitat.”

“I don’t think prisoners ever forget where they are.”

“You would be surprised, Reina.”

“You try living the rest of your days in a cell. See how natural it feels to you.”

“That’s exactly the point. Isolation is designed to break a person’s consciousness. For some, the only way to endure it is by losing one’s mind.”

I wake earlier and earlier, dreams pulling me out of sleep. I dream of the Santo Toribio church, of the muralla where I used to hide from my mother and grandmother and slip off to with Universo. It is always night in my dreams and I am always alone.

I shake awake to find Nesto beside me. In the morning, I’ve gotten into the habit of telling him my dreams, which he says come through Olokun, orisha of the deepest part of the sea, who brings messages from the ancestors.

Then I think of my mother, who believed it was no good to ponder dreams. “It’s like looking for hairs in your soup,” she’d say. “You’ll never be happy with what you find.”

Cartagena. Always Cartagena.

After his sentencing, Carlito made me promise to go back to Cartagena for him, so I could tell him about the colors, the smells, and the sounds, and he could close his eyes and pretend for a moment he’d been there with me.

“Maybe your dreams are telling you it’s time to go back,” Nesto says.

“I guess it would be nice to see if it’s as I remember.”

“Nothing is ever as one remembers it. That’s the point of memory. So you can keep the pictures of your life you want to keep and forget what you need to forget. The only reason to go back is to see the place as it is now, and to see how you feel in it.”

On our next Sunday phone call, I ask my mother if she’d be interested in going back to Cartagena with me, tell her it’s something Carlito always asked me to do. I hope she thinks there might be something special about taking that kind of journey together, maybe it could give us peace to move forward with, but she says she won’t leave Jerry alone to go on vacation anywhere.

I tell her she can bring him along though the last thing I want is to travel with the guy, but Mami dismisses me and finally admits Jerry refuses to travel to a country he considers “uncivilized.” Maybe in the future we can all go, she offers, after they’re married.

“What about you?” I ask Nesto. “Would you go with me?”

“I would. But I have to go home first.”

He’s still waiting to hear from the agency if a slot has opened up for him to go as a mula. Mo agreed to give him the days off without pay.

Mornings my dreams wake us up, Nesto and I don’t go back to sleep. We lie in the cool predawn darkness, listening to the morning birds make their calls, waiting for sunrise to lift away the night.

On one of those mornings, I tell Nesto to come with me out to the dock. Dawn has broken and I know Jojo will be coming around the bend of the canal any moment on his boat. Nesto kicks his feet around the dock impatiently.

“What are we doing out here, Reina?”

“Just wait another minute with me.”

Sure enough, there’s Jojo, turning out of the canal passage. I wave him down and he comes closer to the dock. I ask if he can take both of us out with him. I want Nesto to see what I’ve seen the few mornings I’ve gone out with Jojo.

Nesto and I sit together on the bench at the back of the boat while Jojo drives out. The morning sky swirls with orange and pink. Jojo calls to us to look to the right and there, just like the first time, a group of dolphins swims against the waves to keep up with the boat. Jojo finally cuts the engine and the water slowly flattens, the dolphins turning over the surface, their backs glowing in the light of dawn.

Nesto stands up to get a better look and I see his tired face brighten. We watch for a while as the dolphins vanish underwater, reemerging on the other side of the boat, and rushing against each other.

The sun is higher now, and we know it’s time to go back so we can make it to work on time.

While Nesto gets his things together to head to work, I lay out the morning grapes for the iguanas, something he always laughs at. There are no iguanas left in Cuba, according to Nesto, because they were all skewered during the Special Period along with the banana rats, squirrels, and just about every other edible species one could catch and slaughter to feed one’s family. Even the zoo population thinned out in those days, pigeons and tortolas picked off park grass, manatees pulled out of canals to feed a whole barrio, and the pasteles sold on street corners were rumored to be packed with vulture and totí meat. But it happened a long time ago. These were things people didn’t talk about over there anymore.

“Then why do you talk about it over here?” I asked.

“Because if I don’t tell you, you will never know. And I think it’s important that you do know. It’s part of who I am. I had to eat things I never thought I’d eat too.”

A pair of red parrots fly over the cottage and land atop a high palm leaning over the roof, birds that might even have come from as far Colombia, before they could be stolen from the rainforest, wrapped in newspapers, stuffed into suitcases, and smuggled out of the country to be sold for thousands in North America: exotic pets turned escapees.

When Nesto finally comes out of the cottage, keys in hand, to head for the truck, I reach for his arm to stop him on his way and tell him what I’ve had on my mind for days.

“I think we should let her go.”

“Let who go?”

“The new dolphin.”

He looks at me sideways, his brow high. “Let her go where?”

“Set her free.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s not trained. She won’t even eat. She hits her head against the fence all day and all night. She knows where she is and what’s outside the pen. She knows the gulf is her home. She wants to get out. We just have to give her the way.”

“She’s their property, Reina.”

“She’s nobody’s property. She belongs in the ocean. You know that.”

He takes a few steps away, turning his face from me to the path that leads to the beach.

“And how are we supposed to get her out of there? Build her a ladder?”

“You put that fence up. You know how to take it down.”

Nesto sighs so long it turns into a whistle.

“I’m not a citizen yet. I can’t commit crimes. If I got arrested, I’d risk everything.”

“Just listen,” I say, walking toward him, reaching for his hand so he’ll come back to my side by the porch railing. “During one of your maintenance checks, all you have to do is unscrew the clasps from the fence to the poles. Then, at night we’ll take Lolo’s boat, drive around to the back of the pen, and we’ll dive under and pull it apart so the fence wall falls down and she can swim out.”

“You know they say they won’t swim through anything. They can’t tell it’s an opening.”

“She will.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know it.”

“What if she doesn’t come out? We’ll be wasting our time.”