He walked as far as Máximo Gómez to kill time, bought a coffee from the thermos of a paletero selling frozen treats and sat down on a low wall outside the Supermercado Nacional. He was still running from his mother’s gaze, like a teenager. He didn’t want to hurt her anymore, he didn’t want to deceive her. But he also didn’t want to answer her questions about Cuba. What could he tell her about? Susana? Bengoa? Vantroi? Now that he really thought about it, though, she wasn’t going to ask him about the past. The only thing that mattered to her was the future: what plans he had, how he’d make a living, whether he’d go look for work the next day. He went into the supermarket. He had a few pesos left from what he’d taken from Bebo. He bought milk, passion fruit juice, and a few plantains. On the way to Niurka’s he stopped twice to fix his shirt in a car window and to confirm that the bags under his eyes were not as big as he’d thought. When he got to the parking lot he found Etelvina leaning on the hood of her car, talking on her cheap little cell phone. When she saw him, she hung up without saying goodbye and walked toward him with open arms. He put the supermarket bags on the ground in order to return her hug, happy with the effect his little bit of theater had had on her.

“Mijo, how handsome you look,” she said, her eyes tearful, still holding on to his arm as they climbed the stairs.

“Thanks, Mami. You look really good, too,” he said, and kissed her head. In reality, he thought she looked much older. New and deeper wrinkles, for which he felt responsible, had appeared by her eyes and mouth.

Now, in Niurka’s apartment, they put on the coffee and drank it while eating some garlic casabe, as Argenis recounted some anecdotes about Cuba’s general poverty. His mother had abandoned all her Castroist dreams long ago, one of the many dreams that had died during her relationship with José Alfredo Luna.

Etelvina believed in nothing and he had only seen her praying once. It was 1987, and against all predictions Balaguer was president once again. Bundled up against the strange Caribbean cold of the start of the year, fathers, mothers, grandparents, and children were all waiting their turn in the annual Epiphany toy handout at the president’s house. His mother had asked him to go with her, because this year they were going to give out sewing machines to the first 500 mothers in line. His father cursed it as “disgusting Balaguerist alms,” so they agreed not to tell him.

Etelvina was praying she wouldn’t be seen; not by her friends, or her leftist ex-friends, not by anyone. The line was long – it reached all the way to the National Theater, even though the sun wasn’t yet up. Every year, there were injuries. Mothers who came to blows over a bicycle, old men capable of poking each others’ eyes out to grab a rubber baby doll, children who were crying because they only got an inflatable beach ball. Argenis and Ernesto didn’t want toys anymore: they asked Etelvina for clothes, brand-name sneakers, cash; things that she would get for them by saving up the little extra money she got from tutoring. Her schoolteacher’s salary was only enough for what was absolutely necessary. She had been promised a position as a professor in the Autonomous University, and although she didn’t believe in anything, she prayed that she would get it, as she waited in this line that smelled of the fried salami sold on the sidewalk.