The Hemingway Maid

I wondered if the kid took dollars.

I walked back to Sabrina in bare feet, and learned to quickstep around the rusty nail heads that popped up as you walked on the rough old planks of the docks. As I approached my home I saw piles of my clothes on the dock, odds and ends stacked in the cockpit, and I was just about convinced that I was being had, big time. But there was Ron, semi-conscious in his own way, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, his eyes half open with only the whites showing, talking with Pedro.

I guess I looked confused. Go figure.

So, let's recap here. I'm in the wasteland, holding on to my head, hoping I've stopped puking for good. Pedro is in animated discussion with Ron. My clothes are all over the dock, and Sabrina's cockpit looks like a garage sale is in progress. Ah, and as I get closer, I note that Sabrina is smoking down below, and that she smells like a West Texas BBQ joint.

The day was looking interesting.

The table was set up in Sabrina's cockpit and ready to serve three. Alright. I hopped on and Ron followed a split second behind me; Pedro walked off muttering expletives. I sat down on the far side, and Ron plopped down, firing off a string of instructions in Spanish down the companionway (that's the main hatch and ladder down into the boat. . .). Thin arms stuck up out of the companionway, holding plates of eggs and bacon and more fried plantains, and Ron took it from the slim arms and puts it in front of me. Another plate appears, and Ron took that one, too. Then the arms came up the companionway, attached to a body, and holding a third plate.

That was the first time I saw Elise.

I'd love to go on about how drop-dead gorgeous she was, how it was love at first sight, and that it was an enchanted moment. But that wasn't the case. My eyes were locked onto this plate of food in front of me that looked like it had just been flown down from the Culinary Institute of America. So shoot me, I'm an American. I guess it dawned on me after a minute that there was another person eating with us, and I looked up.

Elise was a nice looking woman, maybe thirty years old. Kind of long black hair, cute swooping bangs flanking her deep brown eyes, and light blemish-free ivory hued skin around a lean face. She wore eyeglasses that might have been stylish when Eisenhower was in office, you know the kind, the black horned-rimmed jobs. White cotton blouse, knee length light blue skirt (on a boat!), white socks and old navy blue Keds. She was trim, almost flat chested, but appeared very well groomed; just clean wouldn't quite describe Elise. Not that day, and probably not ever.

And it was apparent that she was reserved, maybe even shy. Almost Catholic.

But in Cuba, a godless communist state? Well, Fidel went to a Jesuit school.

Who knew the depths of human hypocrisy better than a Jesuit?

Ron introduced us. He told me that Elise was one of the "good girls" who worked on boats. Did cleaning and cooking, and nothing else. I met that comment with a blank stare.

Ron explained that outside the locked gates of the marina there was - on almost any given day or night - a queue of women who wanted to be engaged to clean and cook, and, uh, well be engaged in just about any other domestic chores the skipper wanted. All for less than a buck US a day.He also explained that Elise wasn't that kind of girl. If I was interested she would come by and clean on whatever basis I wanted, or cook, or any combination thereof. All I could think of, and I know this is really sick, was this plate of food in front of me.

Elise was, I felt certain, the Cuban goddess of culinary excellence.

I asked how much for her to cook all three meals a day, keep the boat clean and do my laundry. And I know what you're thinking . . . here comes another ugly American flaunting his wealth (Me? You got to be kidding . . .), and exploiting this poor woman. Maybe you're right, but you weren't there, you weren't looking at this Renoir of a meal in front of you. Nor had you been living on a boat for over a year by yourself, and tired of your own cooking. And you can probably clean up after yourself better than I do after myself, even on one of your bad days. And I hate, I mean really hate, doing laundry.

At any rate, Elise perked up at that. I didn't know it at the time, but I had just mentioned full time employment, under the table hard currency for someone struggling to survive in a black-market economy. I had just offered her a short-term ticket to security, Cuban style. She wasn't frowning, either. She'd just been dealt a pretty good hand, and she'd played it safe, hadn't had to debase herself by offering a devils bargain.

A good meal will do the trick every time, I always say.

She didn't speak English too well, and my Spanish reeked, so Ron consummated the deal. Elise cleared the table, made the v-berth, and did the laundry . . . all before lunch. Now I knew why all the boats around the Marina Hemingway were spotless, and why all they divorced-white-guys were sporting hefty paunches. Hell, for divorced-white-guys fleeing women's lib and the IRS, this place was fucking heaven.

So, I got to work changing the oil in the generator under the cockpit (you know, oil, grease, kind of a guy thing) and sewing a new piece of hardware on a sail (sewing? Oh, well . . .). This marina gig was going to be all right with me.

Pedro returned before lunch with a small cart full of groceries, and passed them down to his sister. He told me Ron had given him money to get supplies for his boat and mine, and he gave me a receipt. I paid my half, about five bucks for a weeks worth of food. A quick run through the numbers and I was shocked at the results. It was going to cost less than a hundred bucks a month for a cook, cleaning service, laundress, groceries, and rent at the marina.

I looked over at Blade Runner; the boat was bobbing up and down and there was a fair amount of moaning coming from down below.

I guess Ron had one of those full service models. Oh, well, lunch anyone?

+

After about a week I noticed that I was getting, well, a little full around the middle. I didn't have anything to do anymore. Elise did everything. She always had a smile on her face, too. Occasionally she even had a song to sing as she worked away inside the boat. She was always done by mid-morning, and would take off for a while, return to cook lunch, then be off again until evening. After she had finished cleaning up after dinner she would pack up her things in a little black net bag and say adios and be gone. Until the next gastronomic blowout the following day. She really seemed to enjoy cooking.

Ron had pretty much the same deal going on, but like I said, his girl was obviously on a different meal plan, because Ron wasn't gaining weight like I was. I decided to ask Ron what the score was. He did, in his roundabout way. He told me about all the different girls who worked in the marina, who was screwing whom, which girls didn't do that sort of thing, which situations were turning into Peyton Place dramas, and which ones were getting serious romantically. Quite a tale itself. Suburbia had come to the workers paradise.

Ron's girl, Rosalita, was acknowledged by all I'd talked to as the finest looking girl in the marina, and while not the best cook, she could hold her own. She didn't have to clean all that much because Ron was an obsessive neat freak, and from what I could tell they were screwing just about all the time anyway. And, Ron said, it wasn't a money thing, these girls weren't in it for the bucks.

They kind of chose you, would offer to move in full time if you wanted them to.

Oh.

Maybe it was a ticket out. Maybe it was better than taking their chances on a raft.

I couldn't get that little kid floating in the water out of my head after Ron clued me in on the Rosalita deal. Wasn't I just taking advantage of another person's misery, fucking this poor soul in a figurative sense? What if I got pangs of social conscience and booted Elise off the boat; would she be better off with her return to poverty? What would happen to Pedro?

In the end, I felt that by screwing Elise I was at least not turning a socially awkward and perhaps ethically neutral situation into a morally repugnant one. Such was, at any rate, the course of my rationalizations. I'd always heard, thanks Dad, that a stiff dick has no conscience, but what did I know about empty bellies and the ethics of starvation?

Well, I was about to get my first real lesson in Third World ethics.

+

Ron finally gave me the real scoop on Elise. She had been the Minister of Something-or-other's mistress from the time she was a teenager. He related that she had been some kind of cute back then. Like any good communist, Comrade Minister had sent his main girl to Paris, to school at the Sorbonne, then on to the Cordon Bleu to learn how to whip up a soufflé. Thus educated, she had returned to Havana to take up life as Sugar Daddy's little secret on the side. Ron explained that she had been one of the privileged elite, or at least, one of their playthings, until Comrade Minister had fallen into disfavor. In case you've forgotten about what life was like in a Soviet client state, that meant Comrade Minister disappeared. Or was killed, if you just want the basics, and that had been accomplished with Elise looking on. Elise had found herself a persona-non-grata in the aftermath, exiled into homeless oblivion, her parents murdered in retribution and the rest of her family ruined in consequence. Elise became a shell, she had been murdered - if not in a literal sense, then in a figuratively spiritual way.

Elise's older brother Miguel had managed to flee to Florida in the days that followed, and had been working in Miami ever since. He soon co-owned two successful Cuban restaurants there, as well as one in Naples. He had managed to get rich the good old fashioned American Way in less than two years, but the rest of his family had been left behind in Cuba, and there was no way to get them out. He couldn't even get money to them.

Word of their brother's success finally filtered through to Elise and Pedro, and this only served to drive them into complete despair. Pedro and Elise were starving to death, living in total misery on a beach outside the western fringes of Havana. They could see the lights of American towns looming over the horizon at night, taste forbidden opportunities through their hunger, dream sweet dreams of families that would never be.

Then, about a year ago, Pedro had managed to get a job at the marina washing boats, and found that he was good at dealing with the itinerant boaties that came and went. He was promoted to dock-boy, soon made friends with various gringos, and became a fixture around the docks. He also made some hard cash, and at thirteen years old was taking care of his almost catatonic older sister. In a country with free medical care, Pedro could not get her help; as a persona-non-grata, Elise was refused all government services and assistance.

One of the first long time residents of the marina Pedro had befriended was Ron, and through Ron's efforts Elise had begun to make a modest comeback. But it had been rough, she was really damaged goods, Ron said. He had brought her to the marina to cook for him, and she had tried to cook for others, but she just hadn't been able to adjust to being around other people, especially men. A lot of the guys in the marina were pretty rough, not the sort to take in or care for a shattered soul, and Elise had just drifted in and out of the potential opportunities found there.

And then Sabrina had come to the Marina Hemingway. Ron had apparently been sizing me up that first day (and, I assume, that abominable night) and thought Elise might find me tolerable. So . . .

. . . Elise had been spirited into the marina and onto my little boat while I had slept in the cockpit that first night. Probably not the best first impression I ever made. At any rate, now I had a pretty fair grasp of what Elise had been through, and I felt even worse about my performance as an Ugly American. Ron tried to set me straight, tried to convince me that I was doing her a favor.But that just didn't ring true.

One thing was certain, however. I was sure the next time I saw her I would try to find out more about her feelings; not just about her past, but about her working for me on Sabrina.

+

It was cool the next morning when Elise came walking down the dock toward Sabrina. I guess she was attuned enough to her environment to figure out something was off. Maybe the smell of cooking coming from below as she stepped on board, or that the table in the salon was set for breakfast as she came down the companionway. Hell, just the fact that I was awake before ten in the morning must have come as a physical blow to the poor girl. Any way, she was on guard, looked wary, but not quite suspicious. I asked her to sit, then passed over plates of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and some juice. Not up to her standards, I'm sure, but it was the best I could do.

We ate in silence, passed the pitcher of juice a couple of times, but otherwise the tension must have been unpleasant, if the way I felt was any indication. I cleared the plates, washed the dishes, and just asked her to sit there until I finished cleaning up. Then . . .

I sat across from her in the salon. I thought I would start simply. You know, like tactfully.

"Elise, would you tell me the story of your life," I asked. "Please?"

"I haven't the heart left for that story, Mr. Jim, and I doubt very much if you would have the stomach for it, either." Elise now spoke with almost no trace of an accent, and her English vocabulary was obviously much more extensive than she had let on. So, the mystery was going to go a lot deeper today. "What is it you want to know?" she asked me with almost no trace of emotion in her voice. Perhaps she heard the wings of poverty and hunger beating the air around her lost soul as she braced herself for the uncertainty of my questioning. But I could feel her pain in the air around me, no doubt about that.

"Elise, it's more what I want you to know, about me. O.k.?" She just looked at me and made not one comment or motion. "There's a part of me, Elise, that feels very bad about having you here on Sabrina. You do a very good job here, and if I keep eating your cooking I'm going to explode; hell, I'm getting so fat so fast I can't believe it. But that's not the problem. The problem, Ellsie, is all of the people on the other side of the fence who are starving to death . . ."

"Mr. Jim," she interjected.

"Just Jim, please, Elise."

"Jim," she paused, rolling the name around in her mind's eye, "Jim, you aren't going to fix the things in Cuba that are wrong. So . . ."

"But neither am I going to take advantage of other people's misery and misfortune."

"Jim, all people are to some degree well grounded in hypocrisy. Yours is a gentle hypocrisy, you must understand that. You can not blame yourself for being an American, for the blessings of your American material prosperity. If you were not here my brother would have less money to buy food. And there are many children that work here who are like Pedro, Jim. Desperate, nowhere to go. And they are the fortunate ones. The government disenfranchises many families, dissidents whose actions the government disapproves of are systematically exiled from whatever benefits that might normally accrue to them in a communist state. So, in a land where homelessness and starvation are simply not allowed to exist, where medical care is a basic right, there are thousands of families that starve to death in the streets, die of diseases so easy to cure that it is simply a crime that it is allowed to occur. But these people, people like Pedro and myself, do not exist, we have been erased. We must find our own way to survival, and it is through your blessings that we might survive. So, Jim, I can appreciate your concern for Pedro and myself. But you must know, I mean really know, that without you our lives would be almost unendurable."

"Where do you live, Elise?"

With this question, Elise looked down to the floor. She was silent.

"I want to see where you live, Elise. Now. Let's go."

"No, Jim, that I cannot allow."

I was headed up the companionway, then turned to look at her. How could I do this without even implicitly threatening her. "Elise, please, come with me. I need to talk to you, tell you a story, please come and keep me company." I held out my hand, I reached out to help her make the leap to trusting another human being.

She took my hand, came with me into the cool morning air.

We walked out of the marina, turned to the west as we exited the secured gates. I ignored the looks of the security people as we passed, and though I could feel Ron and Pedro and a host of other gringos looking our way, I kept Elise's hand in mine. I told her of my trip through the Straits not so long ago, of the boy falling in the water, of the helplessness my father and I felt as we confronted so much unmourned misery. I talked of my father's life, encouraged her to talk about hers. I listened when she spoke, but in truth, I think I talked the whole time as we walked to the west.

We walked a long way from the marina, through a small suburb of modest beachfront houses and stores. We walked though the dusty, poor neighborhoods that lay further to the west. After more than an hour we came to the end of the outlying homes, and walked into a jungle of exposed mangroves and palm trees and fairly heavy undergrowth. The way was sandy, full of mosquitoes and, I assumed, other less friendly creatures. Here and there were scattered little houses. Houses made of remnants of boxes, scraps of wood, walls made of tarpaper, roofs of thatched palm leaves or rusty sheets of galvanized steel. We walked past starving children, their bellies bloated and their faces an open wound of insect bites. We walked to Pedro and Elise's home.

I stooped to enter the juxtaposed construct of shipping crates and tarpaper, and walked into a bare little space that was a little larger than a king-sized bed, the ceiling height a little shy of five feet. There were two little beds made of burlap sacks stuffed with palm fronds laying on the sandy floor, and a small stove that had obviously come from someone's boat was sitting on a flat wooden box top in one corner. A half-burned candle in an old Campbell's Soup can provided the light that might keep the night at bey. If, I assumed, they had a match.

The space was clean, however, and did not smell of filth or decay. I entered and sat on the sand floor. Elise followed me in; she sat across from me on the warm-shaded earth. Her little black net sack hung on the wall from a nail; there was another shirt in the sack. That was, I presumed, the extent of her wardrobe. She looked at me with all of the dignity humanity lacked on her care-worn face. She was not ashamed, was not asking for pity. And while I was appalled at my total unawareness of her circumstances, I too was amazed at the complete serenity I found in Elise's eyes. She had seen the depths of hell that man all too often visits on his fellow man, and made her way to peace with that knowledge. That had been, I thought, one remarkable journey.

We had no food with us, and there was none in the little house. Yet we talked through the morning, and into the afternoon. We talked about her experiences in Paris in that other lifetime, and we found that we had places and restaurants in common that we had loved. We had wandered the same corridors in the Louvre and D'Orsay, strolled , perhaps, under the same trees in the Tuilleries. It was a small world we discovered that day, and in the sharing of those distant memories we came to know each other in a new, completely unexpected way.