The Radical Element by Jessica Spotswood (11)

I.

Susana and Martha stopped at the corner on their way home.

“Your turn,” Martha said. She untucked her blouse and handed over a tattered copy of Rosemary’s Baby, the cover sweaty from being stashed in her waistband since lunch. “You’ve got a week. Then it goes to Mina.”

Susana slid the book deep inside her bag. The girls in their civics class had been sharing it, though it gave them nightmares. The Sisters at Christ the King School had banned it, which was all the more reason to read it.

They started along again, arms linked, even though it made them look like old ladies instead of sophomores. Susana didn’t mind. At least Martha never teased about Susana’s faint accent. (Shicken, some girls mimicked.) She never asked unanswerable questions, either, like How do you say shithead in Spanish?

They had gone halfway up the block when Martha slowed and squinted at a point in the distance. “Is that his car?” she asked. She was so stubborn about wearing glasses. Susana always had to tell her what was written on the blackboard.

“Yes,” Susana said. “It’s Tommy.”

“He’s early.” Martha’s new boyfriend sat at the wheel of his yellow Mustang, the engine idling. The girls could hear the rumble from here.

“We’re going to Flushing Meadow to skate,” Martha said. “You could come along.”

Susana unlinked her arm and adjusted her book bag. “Not today,” she said, and smiled as best she could manage. “Too much biology homework.”

But they both knew it wouldn’t be today or any day in the near future. Susana’s parents had strict ideas about things, especially American boys.

When they reached the car, Martha hopped in and offered Tommy a peck on the cheek. Then she took Susana’s hand and squeezed it. “Call me tonight when you get to the good part.”

Susana waved as the engine roared and they pulled away.

Skating? she thought. Knowing Martha, definitely not.

II.

She sat reading on the closed toilet lid that night, while her parents entertained guests in their living room. The bathroom was the only place no one would come looking for her, asking her to join them.

This time it was a man named Gustavo, who had dark circles under his eyes. He’d come this morning to rent the studio apartment next door, only to be told that it had already been taken. Now, at ten o’clock at night, he’d come back to see her father for advice.

New arrivals from Cuba like Gustavo always made Susana nervous. They usually came to ask her father about jobs at the office building where he cleaned, but their mouths overflowed with stories of wives stranded on the island or in Spain, with tales of having been cheated by bosses, with despair. Their problems seemed too big and tangled for anyone to fix.

She got to the end of her chapter and put her ear to the door before opening it a crack. The smell of Gustavo’s cigarette smoke was overpowering.

“I’m not particular, you understand,” he was saying as he rose from his folding chair. “Un trabajo cualquiera, hermano, so long as it pays. I have my girls to think about.”

“Of course,” her father said, letting him out. “I’ll do what I can.”

Susana slipped quietly into her room to get ready for bed, listening as he chained the front door.

A book can bring bad dreams, but memories are more efficient enemies. Soldiers know this. Children of war. And Susana.

III.

“Remember Lázaro, who sold ice cream back in Sagua?” her mother asked.

Susana shifted a bit in the kitchen chair. Outside, a looping jingle was blaring from the speakers of the ice-cream truck that was still making its rounds, though it was already autumn. It made it hard to concentrate on her homework. Math had never been her favorite.

“The tall one?” Susana was always carefully vague in answering questions like this. Otherwise she could get stuck in one of her mother’s long stories of the past. They hadn’t lived in Cuba since Susana was four, but Iris still talked about neighbors and specific streets as if it had all been yesterday instead of twelve years ago.

“Sí, claro.” Iris turned from the stove where she was frying bananas. “He sold coconut ice cream. You were crazy for it and always begged Abuelo to buy you some. Lázaro had a lazy eye. Remember?”

“That’s right,” Susana mumbled.

Iris smiled, satisfied. She lowered the flame and speared the sliced plátanos with her cooking fork. “Si Dios quiere, when your grandparents finally get here, we’ll buy them all the ice cream they want.”

“Yes.” Susana closed her book a little harder than she intended, thinking of Carmen at school, who now shared a twin bed with her aunt, who had arrived that July.

She went to the window and watched the kids outside clamoring for Bomb Pops. The truth was that when her grandparents finally arrived, Susana’s life would be upended, much like Carmen’s. Iris had it all planned, in fact. Susana would sleep near the stove in the kitchen’s eat-in alcove, a curtain strung up for privacy. Susana wouldn’t be able to sneeze without someone knowing.

Unless.

Rumors were circulating that President Nixon might soon suspend the Vuelos de la Libertad, which had been ferrying refugees to the States for seven years. Her mother had cried bitterly a week earlier when she’d heard about the precariousness of the Freedom Flights. “Then what happens?” she’d wailed. “Our family will never see each other again!”

It was a terrible thing to want. Heartless and selfish. Susana knew this. And yet, it was her only hope.

Susana didn’t like to remember Cuba, not Lázaro or ice cream or her grandparents or anything else that her mother mourned. What was the point? They were living here now. The break from their country had already knit together inside her, misshapen like unset bone, but done.

IV.

The newly elected leadership of el Club Cubano of Queens was waiting to enjoy finger sandwiches in the Riveros’ living room when the intercom buzzed. Martha was downstairs.

“We’re going to Rockaway to swim,” she said when Susana pressed Talk. “The water’s still warm. Come on!” It was September, but summer hadn’t released its heavy grip. Even with the fans blasting, Susana’s blouse was sticking to her skin. In this heat, she wanted to be anywhere but inside the plaster walls of their apartment in Corona. She decided to take a chance.

She released the button and found her mother in the kitchen.

“Can I go to the beach with Martha, Mamá? It’s just for a little while. And it’s so hot.”

Iris clicked her tongue. “Niña! And what am I going to do with all these ladies by myself?” She had just been installed as the president of the club, and this was her first official meeting. There were events to plan, finances to go over, and the Woolworth’s reimbursements to finalize.

“Please,” Susana said.

Iris gave her an exasperated look and tossed down her dishrag. Then she peered out the window at the street below where Tommy was parked behind a rented moving van. Susana’s stomach squeezed as she stood behind her mother. Iris had a long list of qualities for young people that she had dragged with her across the ocean. Decent girls, for example, should wear polished shoes and avoid torn jeans, which made them look like hippies. Susana had tried to explain that patches (KEEP ON TRUCKIN’ or even a peace sign) were just a fashion here, not character flaws. Even the nicest girls at school had jean jackets covered with patches that they melted on with irons. But Iris was firm.

Glancing down at Tommy, Susana knew it was hopeless. He wore mirrored sunglasses and smoked as he waited. A disaster.

“With that sinvergüenza? De eso nada,” Iris said. “Your father would kill me. Now, help me with these trays.”

Susana walked back to the intercom, hating herself almost as much as her mother. “Can’t today. See you Monday.” She didn’t wait for a reply. A moment later, the roar of the car came from below.

With a cold look over her shoulder, her mother uncovered the perfect tower of deviled ham sandwiches and headed out to the living room.

“¿Un bocadito?” Susana held out the tray for the club officers as her mother looked on in sickening approval. They’re too salty, Susana thought with satisfaction. Not that anyone would complain about her mother’s recipe. After all, everyone knew they were lucky not to be like their relatives back home, where there wasn’t a ham sandwich to be had, with or without a ration card.

The ladies were gathered on the plastic-covered sofa, thick legs crossed at the ankles. In no time they were chatting about towns Susana didn’t know and families she’d never met who had scattered as far as Canada, those poor frozen souls. The women smelled of Aqua Net as Susana leaned in to offer seconds, their hair sprayed expertly into more or less the same bouffant as her mother’s, acquired at Julia’s House of Beauty for three dollars on Fridays.

“Susana, you have gotten so beautiful,” Blanca said. “Just like your mother.” The new treasurer was a round-faced woman with large brown eyes. “My Enrique tells me you are the number one student in science class this year. Is that true?” She plucked a particularly fluffy triangle from the tray and sank her dentures into the bread.

Susana’s cheeks flushed. The smell of ham and the heat were making her dizzy, so she glued her eyes to the colonial scene on the platter’s edges. The blue-and-white images were like something from her fourth-grade American history textbooks. (North American history, her father liked to correct.) Ladies in big hoopskirts, holding parasols.

“Mi amor, habla,” her mother coaxed. “She’s so shy, Blanca. I’m sorry.” She gave Susana a pained look and motioned her toward the other ladies, still waiting.

“I just like biology, I guess,” Susana replied glumly. (A lie.) “It’s not very hard.”

“Maybe you’ll be a nurse, then,” Frida said, surveying the tray Susana offered. She had worked in a pediatric ward in Havana, but English had been her undoing and kept her from passing her exams here. At her age, Frida claimed, a new language was practically insurmountable. For now she worked at Flushing Hospital in the cafeteria, telling the Dominican cooks racy jokes. She served as secretary for the club, too, and her typed directory almost never had errors.

“Or even a doctor,” Iris added. “Hoy día . . .” She twirled her wrist as if flicking off a concern and then lowered her voice, a habit from when her husband was home. “No one has to wear an apron anymore, you know.”

The ladies nodded and laughed.

A doctor? Susana bit her tongue as she kept circulating. God forbid! She did have good grades, but she had absolutely no interest in medicine. She found the smell of alcohol unnerving, and even paper cuts made her queasy.

“Médico, enfermera . . . it doesn’t matter. She’ll be something wonderful, and she’ll make enough money to take care of you when you’re old,” Blanca said brightly.

Susana glanced at the clock. Was it stuck?

“You know,” Blanca continued, “I have a handsome nephew who is thinking of studying law one day.” She arched her brow coyly at Susana. “Te lo voy a presentar . . .”

Susana’s tray lurched to the right, and a few sandwiches tumbled into Frida’s lap.

“Careful!” said Iris, steadying it.

“Sorry,” Susana mumbled. Her mother’s friends had begun making alarming personal offers like this lately, hoping for una muchacha fina! Someone they could talk to without a Spanish-English dictionary in their pocket. Their clean-cut sons came to the club dances twice a year to sit with their families, sweating in their polyester blend shirts. But they seemed as dull to Susana as the sandwiches on the platter — and left her just as thirsty, too.

Susana had dark longings for another kind of boyfriend altogether, someone American and a little indecent, if possible. Maybe she’d take up with a boy who had thick sideburns or even long hair. (How her mother gossiped about boys with melenas!) She wanted someone like one of stars of The Mod Squad, a show her mother had despised after she’d learned the backstory of the young detectives on the show: A drug addict. A criminal. A runaway. “¡Qué barbaridad!” she’d said. “Delinquents! Even worse than the Beatles!”

It boiled down to this: Susana didn’t want to be the good Cuban girl the ladies imagined for their sons. She had been raised right here in Corona. She’d grown up on Romper Room, not Olga y Tony.

Iris dabbed her upper lip with a napkin and took the tray from Susana’s sweaty hands to keep it safe. It was her nicest one, bought after months of saving green stamps at the A&P.

“You’re flushed, Susana. Let’s open more windows, mi vida,” she said. “Lift the ones in your bedroom to get a cross breeze.” She turned to the ladies. “Remember those delicious breezes back home?”

Relief washed over Susana as she left them behind and retreated to the back room. She threw open one of the windows and sat at the edge of her carefully made bed. For now, this space was still hers, right down to the Twiggy poster her mother didn’t like (“¡Ay qué flaca! Es puro hueso!”), and the transistor radio that her father had won in the holiday grab bag last year at work.

She lay back and stared at the cracks in the ceiling as the ladies’ voices lifted and fell in the other room. The quilted satin spread that her mother had given her for her fifteenth birthday felt luxurious beneath her, but the plastic doll that sat wide-eyed against her pillows had to go. Iris had brought it home from work last week.

“Remember the doll collection Abuela had for you in Cuba?” she had asked, fluffing the toy’s skirt as she placed it on the bed. “The pretty ones with the porcelain faces?” Then, quietly: “Who knows where they ended up?”

Maybe with a little girl who actually likes dolls, Susana had wanted to say. But she knew it wasn’t the dolls Iris was really wondering about. It was all their belongings. The milicianos had taken meticulous inventory of their home’s contents when they had applied for exit visas. Nothing was theirs after that. Dolls, curtains, beds, rocking chairs, spoons. It was all to become property of la revolución.

Susana kicked the doll to the floor and closed her heavy eyes in the heat. It wasn’t long before she was dreaming.

V.

Susana woke with a start in the quiet apartment. The bedspread beneath her was damp with sweat, and the sky outside was darkening. Had she slept all afternoon?

She crossed the room to open the second window. They almost never opened this one due to the building rules, which Iris followed to the letter. (You never knew who was watching you.) Nothing was permitted on the fire escape. No plants or grocery carts or drying laundry, even if your apartment had small closets.

Certainly no people.

But that was precisely what Susana found when she finally cracked the dried paint and opened the sash with a shotgun bang.

A blond woman not much older than Susana stood on the other end of the escape way, right outside the window of the apartment next door. She turned at the sound and smiled.

“Hello.”

A shocked giggle rose to Susana’s lips as it always did when she was nervous — a habit she had tried for years to break, especially at funerals. Her eyes flitted below, in case the super was lurking.

The girl’s paisley minidress ballooned in the breeze, but if she was concerned about the old men in the courtyard looking up her dress (as they certainly were), she didn’t show it.

Then Susana’s eyes fell on the girl’s white patent-leather boots. They reached all the way up over her knees and seemed to glitter in the waning sunlight.

“This heat’s a bitch, but I love them,” said the girl, as if reading Susana’s mind.

Susana couldn’t speak. Her mind raced for something to say, but her natural shyness thickened her tongue.

“Are you the new neighbor?” she finally managed to ask.

“Just got here today.” She tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear and grinned.

“Susana!” Iris’s voice startled her from the other side of her bedroom door. “Are you feeling better? What was that noise?”

“I take it that’s you? Susana?” said the girl.

Iris knocked louder and opened the door. “You were feverish, so I let you sleep.”

Susana dropped her curtains over the window just in time as her mother stepped into the room. She climbed back into bed, her heart racing, as Iris handed her two aspirins and poured the chamomile tea. She drank down the lukewarm brew, annoyed; she hadn’t had a chance to even ask the girl’s name.

VI.

All that week, Susana found herself checking the windows as she did her homework, but she didn’t see the girl in the boots again. Finally, on Friday, as she was waiting on the stoop for the postman, she realized he might be able to help satisfy her curiosity.

“It’s a real roaster out here,” he said as he pushed his cart inside the vestibule. He wore shorts, dark knee socks, and a pith helmet to guard against the sun. His face was shiny with perspiration. “Hope it breaks soon.”

Susana followed him inside. “Anything for us today?” She stood as close to his pushcart as she dared so that she could get a good look at the letters. It wasn’t that unusual for Susana — or any of the Riveros — to be eager to see what had arrived. Over the years, the mail carriers had seen her mother rip open onionskin envelopes right there in the lobby.

“I don’t see any airmail today, Miss Rivero,” the mailman said gently. “Sorry.” He turned his master key and pulled open the brass plate covering all the mail slots.

Susana shrugged. “Next time, then.”

But she watched carefully as he sorted the letters into the right spaces. Was she becoming a North American version of Fela the Spy? It was a troubling thought, but at least she wasn’t searching for contraband food or taking bribes to keep quiet about it.

Just then came a stroke of good luck: the mailman finally deposited a letter for the tenant next door. It was addressed to Linda Turner.

Aware that she was reading over his shoulder, he held out a stack of the Riveros’ bills and frowned. “These are for you,” he said pointedly.

Susana blushed as she accepted them. “Thanks.”

She climbed up the stairs, satisfied. Now at least she had a name for her next-door neighbor.

Linda. She rolled the name on her tongue in Spanish, dragging out the e to say the word. Leen-dah. How wonderful, she thought, to have a name like Pretty.

A week later, even better information came her way. Susana was home for Columbus Day while her parents worked. She was on the way to the cellar, a basket of her father’s undershirts perched on her hip, when she heard footsteps from below. Linda Turner was climbing up the steps with a bearded guy in tow. Susana nearly swooned when they came into full view. The visitor was shaggy and handsome, and he held Linda’s hand. Susana pressed herself against the wall as they edged past.

“Hey, kid,” Linda said, pausing. “Susi, right?”

“Hello,” Susana replied softly, not correcting her. She coughed to mask her nervous giggle as the couple climbed past her. She didn’t move until she heard Linda’s door click shut behind them.

Susana loaded the dirty shirts into the machine, her imagination filling with ideas about the couple’s risqué romance somewhere above.

She pushed the button marked Hot. Some girls, she decided, had all the luck.

VII.

“Where are her parents, even an aunt or a cousin?” Iris asked. Susana and her parents were standing at the cash register at Wilkins. They were opening a layaway account for a vibrating recliner Iris had seen in the display window.

Word about Linda Turner had spread through the building in the usual way: at the bus stop, on the stoop, in the laundry room. Iris wasn’t too pleased about this type of girl-next-door. She didn’t call her Linda. She called her esa — that one. Esa was a rule-breaker in every way. She was inconsiderate for leaving her things in the dryer after her time was up. Their shared fire escape was now cluttered with plants. What if there was a fire? They’d all burn to death thanks to that selfish girl! And more ominously, the smell of incense wafted in the hall outside her door. It was a known fact, Iris said, that drug addicts tried to mask the smell of marijuana with incense.

Susana felt annoyed on Linda’s behalf. “She’s just a college student, Mamá. She carries books all the time. Haven’t you noticed?” It was true. Susana had spied Linda waiting for the bus at the corner stop, a book bag slung over her shoulder.

“College students,” her father muttered darkly as he signed the layaway form.

Susana fell silent as the old grievance filled the space. The university where her father had once been a beloved professor had been shuttered to stop student activists, among them Iris’s younger brother, Eduardo.

But when the campus reopened under Fidel a few years later, the purge of antirevolutionaries was under way and her father found himself out of favor.

“What kind of worm turns his back on his country?” Eduardo demanded when he found out that Iris and her husband had applied for exit visas.

It wasn’t long after that the once “esteemed Dr. Rivero” was relieved of his post.

Whenever Susana’s father told the story, he called the incident an ax that had cleaved their family in half.

“She’s harmless,” Susana insisted.

But Iris was still spitting tacks. “But indecent! Living alone and inviting men to see you at all hours? And those boots . . . ¿Viste? She looks like a . . .”

Susana’s cheeks blazed as her mother’s voice trailed off into unspoken accusation. She adored Linda’s boots, their shine, the color, the way they made the girl look so carefree. Susana had even window-shopped downtown, hoping to find a pair exactly like them in one of the shoe stores. There was something almost magical about those boots that her mother would never understand. Maybe they were enchanted, Susana thought, although she was sure Iris would say cursed, like the tannis root from Rosemary’s Baby.

And yet.

Susana locked her bathroom door the next day and stood before the full-length mirror. Still in her school uniform, she rolled down the waistband of her plaid skirt. With two fistfuls of her father’s minty shaving cream, she covered her legs, just over her knees. If she squinted, they looked like boots. She stood on her toes, pursed her lips, and jutted out her hip like . . . a go-go dancer. If only her hair were blond, she could look like Linda or even better: like Goldie Hawn from that show Laugh-In on TV.

It was thrilling to look so untethered from her parents’ judgments and fears, so scandalous and, well, American. So far from revolutions, and family axes, la lucha y el desespero.

“I’m out of shaving cream again,” her father complained at dinner. Now he would have to use the Ivory soap, which gave him neck rashes. “I think they’re cheating and not filling the cans up at the factory.”

Susana pushed her rice and beans around the plate to cover the ladies in their hoopskirts. Susi, she thought, her calves still tingling. Susi Go-Go.

VIII.

The big news didn’t come in a letter. Instead, a pimply courier delivered it by telegram on a quiet Wednesday afternoon.

Susana was busy doing her homework in the living room while her mother plodded through her English lessons aloud. She had been reading the practice dialogue from the book.

How do you do? It is a pleasure to meet you, Sylvia.

The pleasure is all mine.

Susana’s father answered the door and rushed in a few seconds later, waving the note from Western Union. “Iris! They were assigned a flight! They’ll arrive at JFK on Friday!”

“Who?” Susana asked.

“¡Tus abuelos!”

“¿Qué dices?” Iris shot out of her seat and ran to him. “This Friday? How can that be?”

“That’s what it says. Look!”

Iris pored over the telegram and then pressed it to her chest, thanking Dios y la Virgen for the news.

Susana tried to will herself to be happy. Her own flesh-and-blood grandparents would finally be able to reunite with them after all this time. They’d be a family, and the holidays would include grandparents at the head of the table, the way they should.

But the walls of the kitchen still felt as if they were closing around her, and weariness and shame crept up her spine. There would be more late-night pencil-and-paper budgets worked out at the kitchen table. Their only television would be tuned to el canal en español instead of her favorite shows in English. She’d be called on to translate at social services, at the doctor’s office, at the checkout line of the supermarket. And, of course, these strangers would expect the little girl she had been, the one who loved coconut ice cream and dolls.

“Pobrecita,” her mother said when she saw the lost look on Susana’s face. “You’ve been overwhelmed with emotion.” She gave her daughter a squeeze and then ran off to the phone to see about buying Frida’s old twin bed for the kitchen.

IX.

Susana tossed and twisted in her sheets for hours that night before she finally sat up in bed.

Down the hall, her father was snoring, as he always did after he drank. Her parents had toasted the good news of their family’s impending arrival with friends from el Club Cubano. They’d come home laughing, any worries numbed by rum and their eyes glassy with hope.

Susana slipped out of bed and went to the window to see if the night air might clear away the dream. Why wouldn’t dreams leave her in peace? Why did they chase her into the past, alone and defenseless against memory? She pulled up the sash and leaned out the window to take a deep breath. The temperature had finally started to drop, and a chilly gust of air moved the curtains like spirits all around her.

That’s when she saw them.

Linda’s white go-go boots were on the other side of the fire escape, near the potted plants, drooping lifelessly to one side.

Susana had no right to them. They weren’t hers. But she suddenly craved those boots more than anything she had ever wanted in her life. Before she could stop herself, she stepped onto the fire escape. Shaking, she forced herself not to look down at the street, four dizzying stories below. She crawled slowly across the metal expanse. What am I doing? she wondered. She despised heights. In all the years her family had lived here, she had never dared to venture out her window.

When she reached Linda’s window, she peered inside like a burglar to make sure she wouldn’t be seen. There was no sign of her neighbor, and the bathroom door was closed. Susana lingered, taking in the studio. A television was tuned to a late show. A small dining table sat in one corner, and a large unmade bed was pushed up against the wall. Clothes were piled on the floor, some still in boxes.

Susana pressed herself down until she was almost on her belly and crawled the rest of the way to the boots. When she reached them, she pulled them close, sniffing at the scent of leather and something like alcohol. Against her cheek, they were as soft as she had imagined. She slipped them over her bare feet carefully, pulling them on like a pair of silk stockings that hugged her calves. When she was done, she stretched out her legs to admire them, wiggling her toes against the unfamiliar ruts of a stranger’s feet. She stood up slowly and looked down at herself. There, in the middle of the night, hair loose and wearing only her baby-doll pajamas, she felt dangerous and strong, like someone else entirely.

“You look like Wonder Woman,” a voice said from behind her.

Susana whipped around, startled, and nearly lost her balance. To her horror, Linda stood at her window, smoking and regarding her in amusement.

Susana’s tongue became a brick; her face burned. She grabbed the edge of the fire escape to steady herself.

“I’m sorry. I was just — ”

“Stealing my boots.” Linda gripped her cigarette between her teeth and swung her legs — pale, unshaved — over the ledge to reach the fire escape.

Would a girl like Linda get angry? Susana wondered. Shove me to the pavement below? She laced her fingers tightly around the metal banister just in case.

She must have looked horrified, because Linda suddenly rolled her eyes. “Be cool,” she said. Then she took a deep breath of the night air and leaned against the building. “I broke a heel and glued it back, just so you know. They’re out here to dry.”

Susana glanced down at her feet. The left boot had a light yellow line of goop at the seam. The funny smell, she realized, was like Duco cement from a model building kit.

Linda took a long drag and flicked the ashes down below. “So what brings you to my patio in the middle of the night?”

Susana struggled to loosen her tongue. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh. An insomniac.” Linda squinted one eye as she took another drag. “Maybe you’re feeling guilty. Are you a night thief or something?”

Susana’s heart raced. She felt so foolish. “No. I’ve never stolen anything.”

Linda arched her brow, waiting. “Really?”

Susana sat back down and stared at the incriminating evidence on her feet. What had she been thinking?

“I’m sorry. I’m not myself,” she began. But the words dried up on her lips. The truth was that she had no idea what being herself actually meant. “It’s that . . . my relatives are coming,” she finally whispered.

Linda frowned. “That won’t hold up in court, miss,” she said. “A family visit doesn’t make it cool to take a five-finger discount on my boots, if you know what I mean.”

“I wasn’t stealing them,” Susana mumbled. “I was trying them on — that’s all. And it’s not just a family visit. They’re coming from Cuba. To live.”

Linda’s eyebrows shot up. “Cuba?” she said brightly. “It must be beautiful there.”

Susana fell silent; in truth, she didn’t know. All she had were Iris’s stories and those awful scraps of memories.

“And El Che was gorgeous,” Linda added. “So sad about him. Damn CIA murderers. They’re killing all the heroes.” She shook her head and took another deep drag.

Susana flinched at the mention of the guerrillero’s name. It wasn’t allowed to be spoken in their apartment. He’d been executed in Bolivia a few years earlier; that much she knew. But these days, his face was on posters in even the most unlikely places. Iris had been recently stopped cold in front of a record shop window on Main Street, staring at a velvet interpretation of El Che in horror. He’d been Fidel’s handsome number-one man, the soldier who had led the firing squads of Batista’s old sympathizers. That’s all Susana knew. But what if her parents weren’t telling her everything? Was he a hero or a villain? Who got to decide the truth?

Disoriented, she began again. “They’re finally getting out. They weren’t allowed to leave. But now we’ll all live together.”

Linda shrugged. “I take it you don’t dig them?”

Susana’s thoughts jumbled into a thicker knot. Did you get to dislike your family — even if you didn’t remember them? Even if they had been trying to reach you for years? “I’m not sure,” she confessed. “It’s been twelve years since I’ve seen them.”

“Twelve?” Linda repeated. Then she smiled. “I’ve got a few relatives I wouldn’t mind losing for twelve years.”

Susana regarded her quietly. Linda Turner, the American girl. Linda, whose name meant pretty. Linda of the peace-sign earrings. Linda, who went to college in stylish boots and had good-looking boyfriends following her every move. Everything was easy and happy for Linda. She was older by at least three years, but suddenly it was Susana who felt as if she had lived an entire lifetime more than her neighbor. How was that possible?

“Twelve years,” Susana said again. “They’ll need my room now, and we’ll take care of them. Everything will be different.”

An ambulance raced down the street, flashing lights but no siren, like a silent scream. Linda finished her smoke quietly. “Well, I’ve got an early class tomorrow,” she said, her blue eyes resting on the boots.

Susana started to pull them off, but Linda held up her hand. “Keep them,” she said, shrugging. “The glue won’t hold for long, anyway.” She held up two fingers. “Peace.”

Then, nimble as a cat, she slipped back inside.

Susana stayed on the fire escape for a long while after the light in Linda’s apartment went out. She watched the night world go by beneath her as she sat thinking. One thing was clear: these boots were fashion to Linda, nothing more. A girl like Linda could give them away without a look back. Nothing would change for her if she discarded them.

But what if you were a different sort of girl? Susana wondered. What if you wanted all that breezy happiness but already knew the sting of having the most important things taken?

X.

That Friday, Susana waited in the kitchen for her grandparents’ arrival from the airport. She had barely slept the night before, so her mother had allowed her to stay home from school. She had, however, left clear instructions.

Susana had made ham sandwiches and wrapped them as her mother had asked. She had dusted the apartment, put clean sheets on her grandparents’ bed and on the cot that was now pushed up near the kitchen window. There was fresh fruit on the kitchen table to welcome them. The coffee pot was loaded with Café Bustelo.

The last thing her mother had asked was that she look nice. “Ponte linda,” she’d said. Get pretty.

When the cab pulled up to the curb, Susana was ready.

She watched as her father paid the cabbie and then pulled the single suitcase from the trunk. The elderly couple that stepped out from the backseat wore gray coats that looked too heavy. But at the sight of them, Susana’s heart squeezed into a fist. She could hear her patent-leather shoes clicking against the shiny airport floor. She could feel the heat of someone whispering in her ear: Quiet, now, mi amor, until Fela leaves. She could smell lilac water caught in the fabric of her drying sundress.

The intercom buzzed a few seconds later. Susana’s hands trembled as she pressed the button that let her family into the lobby. Then she checked herself in the full-length mirror one last time. First impressions, as her mother always said, were the most important.

She opened the apartment door and paused at the top of the landing, listening. There was no sign of Linda next door, just the faint scent of incense.

The sound of footsteps grew louder until her relatives rounded the corner of the staircase and came into view one floor below. Her grandparents looked around the gloomy hallway in uncertainty.

“We’re one more flight up,” Iris said, out of breath, pointing up the stairs. “This way.”

That’s when her eyes fell on Susana. She frowned, and her mouth dropped open.

But before Iris could scold her, Susana swallowed hard and climbed down the steps. She was dressed in a miniskirt and V-neck sweater, both borrowed from Martha. And on her feet were the recently shined white patent-leather boots, glue and all.

“Susana,” her mother began in a sharp tone. “What’s this?”

She glanced down at her boots and smiled. “You said ponte linda, and I did.”

With that, she walked directly to her grandparents. “Soy Susi,” she began. But then, all she could do was search their faces.

Her grandfather bit his lip as he regarded her with watery eyes. When he pulled her close, she was surprised by the earthy scent that was at once familiar, like palms and tobacco, like an old wooden swing that she suddenly recalled without the slightest prompt from her mother.

Then her abuela nestled in for her turn. The embrace was long and sweet, and Susana felt something open gently inside herself, a small crack that seeped drops of all that had been missed and erased. They stood together for a long while.

If her grandmother was surprised by what Susi was wearing, she didn’t say so. Instead, when she finally pulled away, she took Susi’s face in her freckled hands and gazed at her. They were Iris’s eyes and Susana’s, too.

“I would have recognized you anywhere, mi vida,” Abuela whispered. “How I’ve waited to see you again, Susi.”

And with that, Susi took their hands and led them on the steep and uncertain climb for home.