Dreaming in Cuban

by Cristina Garcia

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Dreaming in Cuban is a novel about the bonds and differences (political, geographical, and personal) of three generations of women in the del Pino family. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution.
Ordinary SeductionsOcean Blue
The narrative begins with the family’s matriarch, Celia del Pino, an ardent supporter of Fidel Castro (El Líder), proudly scanning the horizon for traitors as a lookout for Santa Teresa del Mar. Her recently deceased husband, Jorge, appears and mouths words she cannot understand, then disappears. She thinks of the revolution and her bond with her granddaughter Pilar. Very much in tune to the sway of the sea, Celia wades into the water, then swims back and watches the sea until daybreak.

Felicia, Celia’s troubled younger daughter, arrives having just received a call from New York (from older sister Lourdes) informing her of their father's (Jorge) death. Celia tells a distraught Felicia that she already knows because Jorge visited her last night. Herminia, Felicia's best friend, says Felicia must make peace with her father. They visit La Madrina, a Santeria priestess, where they sacrifice a goat to Elleguá, the god of the crossroads. Chapter 1 ends with Felicia passed out on La Madrina’s saint-room floor.
Going South
Early morning in Brooklyn, Lourdes gets ready for work, expecting her daughter, Pilar, to be at the bakery after school. Like Celia’s pride in her solitary guarding of Cuba’s coast, Lourdes enjoys her morning walk and the quiet of the bakery before it opens. When Jorge dies, Lourdes cannot reach her mother but does talk to Felicia. Lourdes has gained 118 pounds since her father got sick and came to New York. During this time, her appetite for baked goods and sex has increased. An exhausted Rufino, Lourdes's husband, is amazed that as her weight increases so does her sexual agility.

The day Lourdes learns of her father’s death, Pilar witnesses her father kissing another woman. Fed up with her mother’s intrusiveness and black-and-white worldview, and moved by a deep-seated urge to see Celia, Pilar decides to return to Cuba.

On the bus to Florida, Pilar daydreams. Pilar and Celia had written each other letters, but now, she mostly listens when Celia speaks to her at night. Pilar recalls how her father had to convince her mother to let Pilar go to art school, how her painting is becoming more abstract, and how her grandfather, Abuelo Jorge, told her that she reminds him of Celia. Pilar dreams she is on a beach, wearing white, surrounded by people praying, and she can see Celia’s face.

The House on Palmas Street
Celia waits for her twin granddaughters, Luz and Milagro, Felicia’s children, outside the Nikolai Lenin Elementary School. She considers her life of waiting: for her husband to leave so that she could play Debussy on piano, for rains to end, and for her lover to return from Spain. Before marrying Jorge, Celia fell in love with Gustavo, the true love of her life. When Gustavo returned to Spain, Celia was inconsolable. Her great aunt, Alicia, took her to a santera, who told Celia that she saw a “wet landscape” in her palm. Celia met Jorge, who insisted she write to Gustavo, and if he did not reply, she and Jorge would marry. Celia wrote a letter to Gustavo every 11th of the month for the next twenty-five years and stored them in a chest.

Celia takes Luz and Milagro home to Felicia, and then she takes Ivanito to their house on Palmas Street. Celia recalls the time she and Jorge stayed with them in the same house, concluding that the house “brought only misfortune.” Jorge was often away on business and his mother, Berta Arango del Pino, and sister, Ofelia,...

(This entire section contains 2351 words.)

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treated Celia terribly. Celia became pregnant and decided that if she has a boy, she will leave for Spain, hoping to find Gustavo. If it is a girl, she will stay. Lourdes is born, and Celia, just before she enters an asylum, hands the baby to Jorge, saying, “I will not remember her name.” Lourdes and Celia turn out to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

As the narrative returns to the present, Celia begins working in the sugar cane fields. She returns one day to find Felicia incoherent. She takes the twins to Santa Teresa del Mar. Ivanito will not leave his mother. Celia recalls how Hugo Villaverde, Felicia’s first husband, had beat her and returned from a trip to sire Ivanito and give Felicia syphilis.
Celia’s Letters: 1935-1940
Celia tells Gustavo of her marriage to Jorge and the birth of their daughter Lourdes. Writing from the asylum, she meets Felicia Gutíerrez, who had killed her husband by lighting him on fire. Celia says “they,” perhaps the asylum orderlies, burned Felicia in her bed, although it may have been a suicide. Celia names her second daughter Felicia and Jorge thinks this will doom her. Although still in love with Gustavo, Celia writes that she is surprised how affected she is when Jorge is in an accident. While Jorge is recovering, Lourdes does does not leave his side, and the two of them ignore Felicia’s cries for attention.
A Grove of Lemons
Pilar arrives in Florida and looks for her cousin, Blanquito. Unable to reach him, she seeks refuge in a church where she remembers being kicked out for comparing Spanish inquisitors to Nazis. At Blanquito’s house, she spies his mom, Rosario, and her paternal grandmother, Abuela Zaida, whom Pilar describes as “fakely pious” and generally superficial. As it starts to rain, Pilar falls asleep on a lawn chair and is discovered by Tia Rosario. Pilar is sent back to Brooklyn.

Forty days after his death, Jorge visits Lourdes. She wonders if she is losing her mind. She remembers leaving Miami with Rufino and Pilar, urging them north as if they are escaping the south. Two months prior to their emigration, Lourdes had a miscarriage. Shortly after, with Rufino away, revolutionary soldiers had come to claim the Puente estate. She tore up the document, and they beat and raped her.

As the narrative returns to the present, Lourdes again hears from her father, who comforts her by saying that someday Pilar will learn how to love her.
The Fire Between Them
Felicia, now delusional, remembers how Celia had forbidden her to visit Herminia because her father was decried as a witch doctor. She remembers falling in love with Hugo Villaverde immediately, learning of his abusive nature only after they married. She recalls the time she tried to kill Hugo by setting him on fire, laughing as he left the house screaming. Felicia sleeps and dreams she is grieving for anonymous rape victims, prostitutes, and lost children.

Ivanito and Felicia dance and sing to Benny “Beny” Moré records and play strange games such as "speaking in green." Luz and Milagro tell Ivanito they have seen their mother like this before. The twins are loyal to their father, and they tell Ivanito that he is likely to end up crazy like his mother.

Celia visits Felicia and recalls the time Jorge smashed a chair over Hugo’s back and warned Felicia never to return if she left with him. Felicia becomes more distant and paranoid. Celia returns home with the twins. That night she hears voices telling her to run to Herminia’s house, knowing somehow that Felicia had attempted suicide.
Celia’s Letters: 1942-1949
Celia writes about the civil war in Cuba, WWII, and the tidal wave that hit Cuba: the world carves up the political geography, and the waves naturally redesign the coast. In 1946, her son, Javier, is born with a caul (part of the amniotic sac) on his head, which Jorge said is good luck. She asks Gustavo about obsession and ordinary seductions. The section ends with her asking him what separates suffering from imagination.
Imagining WinterThe Meaning of Shells (1974)
Not remembering how she got there, Felicia finds herself marching with other women in a revolutionary boot camp. She was sent there for nearly killing herself and her son, and Ivanito was sent to boarding school.

Serving as civilian judge, Celia takes pride in her part of the revolution, other individuals’ lives, and in general a “great historical unfolding.” However, she feels distanced from her children. Only Javier shared her enthusiasm for the revolution. He has since moved to Czechoslovakia in 1966, married, and had a daughter. Celia also feels that her connection to Pilar has died.

Luz speaks of the unbreakable bond with Milagro and how their mother cannot penetrate it with her pretty, meaningless words. They refer to Felicia as their “not-Mama.” After receiving a postcard from their father (Felicia had hidden all previous mail), the twins go to see him. Initially scared at his disfigured face, they continue to visit him in secret. They take Ivanito with them one time, only to walk in on their father having sex with a masked woman.
Enough Attitude (1975)
Lourdes becomes an auxiliary policewoman. Distanced from Rufino and Pilar, she only feels normal with her dead father. Walking her beat, she yells at a shadowy figure to stop. The figure jumps into the river; she jumps in after. It is the Navarro boy who sells marijuana outside the liquor store. His mother had worked at the bakery, but Lourdes fired her on her first day for stealing. The boy does not survive.

Lourdes asks Pilar to paint a mural for the grand opening of her second bakery. She paints a punk rock Statue of Liberty. Upon its unveiling, someone calls it garbage, Lourdes attacks the critic and Pilar loves her mother for this.
Baskets of Water (1978)
Felicia visits a santero, but before following his advice, she falls in love with Ernesto Brito, who dies in a hotel fire shortly after they are married. After being mentally lost for months, she pieces together her recent past and finds herself at a carnival married to Otto. They ride the Ferris wheel: while at the top, she performs oral sex, closes her eyes, the wheel descends and Otto is gone. It is unclear whether he fell or she pushed him.
Javier returns from Czechoslovakia. His wife had left him for another man and taken their daughter with her. Javier has a tumor, begins drinking heavily, then disappears. Celia feels a lump in her breast and has a mastectomy.
Celia’s Letters: 1950-1955
Celia writes about living with her insufferable in-laws and the increasing distance between her and the children. Batista has taken over Cuba, but revolution seems imminent.
A Matrix Light
Lourdes stops eating and loses the 118 pounds she has gained. Pilar comes home on Thanksgiving and is amazed. Lourdes starts eating again and eventually gains the weight back.

Pilar catches her boyfriend cheating on her, scans personal ads, spies one selling an acoustic bass and she buys it. Playing to The Velvet Underground, she says, “I can feel my life begin.”
God’s Will
Herminia is concerned with Felicia’s worsening physical/mental condition. Felicia starts attending Santeria meetings and becomes a priestess. At the height of the initiation, Celia walks in, curses them as witch doctors, and Felicia dies.
Daughters of Changó
Jorge tells Lourdes he cannot return anymore. He asks her to apologize to Celia for leaving her with his family and then for leaving her at the asylum as a means to break her love for Gustavo.

At a botanical/spiritualist shop, a man tells Pilar to finish what she started and gives her rituals to perform. Although not religious, Pilar is anxious to carry them out. She is accosted by three boys but seems unaffected. On the ninth day of bathing with herbs and oils from the shop, she tells her mother they are going to Cuba.
Celia’s Letters: 1956-1958
Zaida Puente, Rufino’s mother, hijacks Lourdes and Rufino’s wedding from Celia. Celia likes Rufino but despises his family’s grandstanding and their role as a mafia-tied, rich landowning class.
The Languages LostSix Days in April
Celia sees Hugo at Felicia’s funeral. That night, Celia puts on Felicia’s bathing suit and swims out to sea. Lourdes and Pilar arrive in Cuba the next day to find Celia, still in the bathing suit, sitting on her swing. Lourdes chastises the locals for living in relative squalor in support of the revolution. At night, Celia tells Pilar about Gustavo and that women who outlive their children (Felicia) are orphans. Such orphans can only be rescued by granddaughters.

Lourdes, Pilar, and Celia go to see Luz, Milagro, and Ivanito. Lourdes later revisits the Puente ranch, where she lost her second child and where she was raped. She worries angrily that these events are as insignificant as falling leaves.

Ivanito opens up to Pilar, and they go to Herminia’s house to learn more about Felicia. Pilar starts painting Celia’s portrait. It looks unhappy. Celia gives her the box of letters to Gustavo and a book of poems. Pilar starts dreaming in Spanish for the first time. She wakes up feeling fundamentally different and decides she belongs in New York more than in Cuba.

El Líder appears at the embassy, telling dissidents they are free to leave. Worried, Lourdes packs a bag for Ivanito and tells him to get out of the country: he goes to Peru. With Lourdes, Pilar, and Ivanito gone, Celia alone wanders into the sea at night. She drops both pearl earrings in the water and it is unclear whether she returns to shore or drowns herself.
Celia’s Letter: 1959
Pilar is born on her fiftieth birthday. Celia says she will no longer write Gustavo, because Pilar will remember everything.

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