Free Tomorrow They Will Kiss by Eduardo Santiago Page B

have a child,” Imperio said, “I’m not stupid enough to risk my job for a plastic doll.”
    “You don’t know what it’s like, Imperio,” Raquel said. “The girls want things that I can’t buy for them.”
    “Personally, I don’t see the harm in it,” Berta said between her “ay- ay- ay” and the rubbing of her legs. “The factory owners
     will never miss it. They’re richer than God.”
    “The poorhouses and the jails are full of honest people,” Raquel added.
    “I don’t know why you put up with it, Leticia,” Imperio said. “These two could get all of us fired. Fired!”
    “Or imprisoned,” Caridad added with a tremor. “Imagínate! Then where do we go? Our reputations will be ruined. No one will
     hire us ever again.”
    “Niiiiñas, calm down,” Leticia said as she took a turn so close to the curb that two wheels of the van bumped over its edge
     and onto the sidewalk. “No one’s getting fired; no one’s going to prison.” She maneuvered the van back into traffic.
    Raquel wanted dolls for her daughters. And Berta had seven grandchildren from her grown son, who lived in Venezuela and barely
     kept in contact with her.
    “In Cuba, it would be different,” Raquel said. “In Cuba, families stay together.”
    Sometimes we drove past the department stores where our dolls were sold, and there they were, blond and shiny, smiling through
     the clear cellophane windows of their pink- and- yellow boxes. We knew how much they cost. We knew we couldn’t afford them.
    “That’s money we can send back to Cuba,” Raquel said.
    “You’re sending money again?” Caridad asked. “Then what’s the point of the embargo?”
    “Raquel,” Imperio said, “how are we going to get Fidel out if you continue to send him money?”
    “It’s just twenty dollars a month,” Raquel said. “They can do a lot with twenty dollars back there. They send me letters.
     Those letters will break your heart.”
    “Don’t read them,” Imperio told her.
    “Don’t you understand, Raquel?” Caridad asked gently, as if talking to a child. “It defeats the purpose.”
    “Por Dios, Raquel, do you want to stay in this country forever?” Imperio almost shouted, her face starting to flush with frustration.
     “Do you want to work in a factory all your life and freeze every winter? Do you want to end up old and crazy and eating cat
     food in a shelter? Think about your girls. Your husband did whatever it was he did without thinking of the consequences.”
    “He did what he did,” Caridad echoed. The words just hung there. Raquel said nothing.
    “Whatever it was,” Imperio added.
    Then everyone fell silent for the rest of the way home.
    Raquel didn’t care. She continued sending money home, and she and Berta continued stealing doll parts.
    It was just a little leg here, a little arm there. Mostly on Fridays, sometimes on Wednesdays. Or Mondays, depending on how
     things went that day. Sometimes they felt particularly lucky, or safe. They played a careful game. But not everyone was as
     careful. Some people always went too far. Calixto Guiñón’s sad example haunted us.
    *
    O N CHRISTMAS EVE, what we call Noche Buena, the good night, we gathered in Leticia’s apartment because it was the biggest. She had two bedrooms.
     Chano got pork at a discount, so that’s what was in the oven, a big, fat hunk of pork. I sat in the kitchen with Imperio and
     Caridad, sipping from a glass of red wine while Leticia cooked. She was making congri and yucca, and the whole apartment smelled
     of olive oil, garlic, and laurel leaves.
    The men stayed in the living room. From the kitchen I could hear Mario going on and on, but not a word from Caridad’s husband,
     Salud, or from Leticia’s husband, Chano.
    “Where are the Americans?” Mario said, his voice getting louder. Salud didn’t answer. His best defense against Mario’s rants
     was to let him go on and on until he ran out of steam.
    “All I see are judíos, negros,