Introduction

As irresistible as gossip, as addictive as soap opera, TOMORROW THEY WILL KISS opens up to us the lives of three proud, resourceful women who are unduly buffeted by the winds of fate in their pursuit of happiness.

Like her native Cuba, Graciela Altamira is beautiful, defiant, passionate, and constantly threatened with some kind of trouble.

Day after day she works a conveyor belt in a New Jersey toy factory, assembling baby dolls and watching them roll away to be packaged and delivered into the loving arms of their new owners. And every night before she falls asleep Graciela prays for the same deliverance--to find the loving arms of a man who can help her forget the sins of her past and the haunting memory of her homeland.

But how can she forget when she lives among the ghosts of that little Cuban town? With Caridad and Imperio--two women Graciela has known since girlhood--by her side in the factory, it seems she'll never be free of her past, never able to pursue the chance at true love that she finds quite unexpectedly in the cold, New Jersey winter.

Written with buoyant humor and a sharp sense of human desire, TOMORROW THEY WILL KISS is a story of love pursued at any cost, of how friendship and history unite us for better or worse, and of the hope for that redemptive kiss capable of reconciling estranged lovers and countries.

Caridad on Graciela

Editorial Review

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Excerpt

chapter one

Graciela

Telenovelas can be cruel with that first kiss. I sat in front of my television set and waited for the protagonists to finally find true love, the way farmers waited for the first rains of spring.

“Don’t worry, Graciela. Tomorrow they will kiss,” I sighed to myself with complete certainty as the night’s episode ended. I always watched as the names of the actors rolled across the screen while the romantic theme song played. This was my time. This was when, inspired by the music and the drama I had just watched, I allowed my mind and my heart to merge, just for a blissful moment, just until a screeching commercial message shook me out of my daydream. Used Cars! Used Appliances! Easy Credit! It was 1966 and everything offered to Latinos on the Spanish- language channel was just as used.

I turned off the set and went into the bedroom to check on my two boys. Ernestico, who was nine years old, slept curled up in a ball, his long legs tucked under like a cricket. Manolito, one year younger, slept on his back, his chubby self open to the ceiling, fearless.

I returned to the living room, unfolded the sofa into the uncomfortable bed it became every night, and lay down.

Alone, as usual.

But as always, with a little prayer to every saint and virgin I had ever heard about. Even the ones I didn’t believe in.

“Send me the right man,” I prayed, “or take away my desire to find true love.”

*

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, I waited downstairs in the cold, narrow lobby and that strange loneliness came over me again. I thought how warm and comforting it would be to have a man’s arms around me. My breath made a cloud on the glass door and I drew a heart in it with my finger. For a second, I imagined the face of Mr. O’Reilly, the foreman at the factory, in the middle of the heart.

Estás loca, I said to myself. You’re crazy. And using the same finger, I quickly drew an arrow through it.

A familiar car horn cut through the frozen darkness. I tightened my overcoat and rushed out into the wintry New Jersey wind, across the stretch of icy sidewalk to the idling van.

Five of us rode with Leticia to the toy factory every morning. Imperio and Caridad were already there, as usual. They were always the first to be picked up and the last to be dropped off.

Caridad was sitting in the front passenger seat and Imperio sat in the back, behind Leticia. When I slid open the door, a gust of cold blew into the overheated van, which always smelled like raw pork. Particularly in winter, when the windows had to be shut tight against the cold.

“Por Dios, Graciela, close the door,” Imperio said before I had a chance to sit down. It was as if she expected me to get in without disturbing the temperature.

Imperio had a sharp tongue that she tried to soften by constantly referring to God. “Por Dios,” she’d say, or “Dios mío,” or “Santa Madre de Dios.” But there was venom behind her benedictions. She was a short and skinny person and had always had, as long as I could remember, a nasty disposition, a tendency to complain and to order people around. Which was odd coming from such a tiny person. Even after she reached maturity she was built like a ten- year- old boy. Her dark skin had a reddish tint to it that became even more noticeable whenever her anger flared, which was frequently. She did not have any children of her own. Maybe this was because of her impossibly narrow hips and flat chest, or her sour spirit, or because she once saw a dog take his last breath. Or maybe because sometimes the saints really were paying attention.

“Santa Madre de Dios, I can’t stand this cold wind one more minute,” Imperio said. “I’ll never get used to waking up while it’s still dark out and spending the rest of the day in dusk until nightfall. It’s inhuman.”

“Imagínate,” Caridad said with a delicate shiver. “They say it’s going to drop below zero again tonight.”

Caridad was thick of build, but not fat. She looked luxuriously stuffed and upholstered, like an expensive sofa. Her skin was very pale, and she carried herself with an elegance that, as a girl, I had admired from a distance. Her big brown eyes were always in a state of surprise or discovery. She wasn’t stupid. She just wanted everyone to believe that she was as innocent and sheltered as a society debutante. That she was the type of person who had never been touched by the cruelties of the real world. That at the slightest provocation she could swoon.

“Imagínate!” she’d gasp whenever something offended her fragile sensibilities. More often than not during such exclamations, a pale hand clutched at the invisible pearls around her neck.

Every morning Caridad came to work in a starched blouse, freshly powdered, creamed, and perfumed as if she was sitting on a breezy veranda. She loved powders and creams, and she did without essentials in order to purchase expensive products from Spain. They had all but vanished from Cuba, but she could now find them at any Puerto Rican bodega. They were kept behind the counter, inside a locked glass case, and had to be asked for.

She bought and used them carefully, applying the rose- scented Maja de Myrurgia, the delicate lavender of Lavanda Puig, and particularly the cream from Heno de Pravia in tiny dabs to her plump, aristocratic hands. She would never offer any to the rest of us, even in winter, when all our hands were red and chapped. Caridad only had one daughter, the unfortunate Celeste, who was born with the wizened, crinkly eyes of an old man. Celeste, I’d noticed, wasn’t developing like a normal child; she was slow to reason, had trouble speaking, and never smelled as sweet as her mother.

A few blocks later, we stopped for Berta, who was in her sixties and came from Formento, a town in central Cuba that none of us had heard of before. Berta had been in the United States since she was a young girl, long before the Revolution. She came to Union City to work in the lace factories, and even though the lace business had long since dried up, she never went back.

“I always meant to return,” Berta said, “and now it’s too late.”

Berta’s legs swelled up like hams from standing at the assembly line all day long. As soon as she got in the van, she took off her shoes and massaged her legs, which were blue and knotted with varicose veins. All the way to the factory, she moaned as she squeezed. “Ay, ay, ay.”

The last woman to be picked up, and always the first one we dropped off, was Raquel, who was younger than Berta but often looked much older. And her legs didn’t swell up.

Raquel could try anyone’s patience, even of those, like me, who liked her. All she ever talked about was what she, in Union City, had too much of, and what her husband and the others back in Cuba had to do without. Her husband was serving fifteen years in one of Castro’s jails. She would never say why, which drove Imperio and Caridad wild with curiosity.

“Chá,” Raquel said whenever they brought it up. Not a word, but a sound, hard and final. Her husband was not a character in a telenovela. He was not up for discussion.

Raquel had arrived in the States with just her three daughters. Most days she wore her dark hair in a dirty ponytail that sat on top of her head like a little fountain. The only vanity she allowed herself was the orange lipstick that she carelessly ran over her thick lips.

Some mornings it was painfully obvious to me that Raquel had been up all night crying, and I knew that it wasn’t because the telenovela had taken a tragic turn. I imagined her in her cold little apartment with her little girls huddled around her, all staring at a picture of the missing husband, the missing father. Their sad faces lit by a votive candle—their hearts sick with fear. I imagined her waking up with a pillowcase covered with orange kisses. I knew only too well what it was like to be that lonely.

“They don’t even have toilet paper in that country,” Raquel said as soon as she took her seat. “They have to use newspapers to wipe.”

“Por Dios,” Imperio said. “Those newspapers are just filled with pictures of Fidel and his useless promises. Even if there was plenty of toilet paper, I’d still wipe my ass with it.”

“Chá,” Raquel said.

I could almost feel Raquel’s relief when the van pulled into the factory’s parking lot. As soon as it had stopped, she jumped out and rushed in ahead of the others, steam trailing from her nostrils.

“She’s wasting her time waiting for that man,” Imperio said as we hurried across the freezing stretch of concrete. “He’s not coming back. I’ll bet you any amount of money that he’s been executed. Por Dios, who knows what he did to those men in the beards.”

“You know how it is back there,” Leticia said. “All you have to do is look at them wrong and they shoot you.”

“Is that true?” Berta asked. “Has it gotten to that point?”

“And worse,” Caridad said.

“What could be worse?” Berta asked.

Imperio and Caridad exchanged looks and moved on ahead with Leticia. I fell behind with Berta. It was much too cold for simple answers.

*

RAQUEL COULD GO day after day in silence, but then, when least expected, a lament inevitably popped out of her orange mouth. It was almost like a nervous tic. As unpredictable, uncontrollable, and annoying as that.

“They have apagones every night,” she said as we drove home one night. Blackouts. “They live in darkness.”

It was a dark blue night in Union City too; the streetlights hadn’t gone on yet.

“Raquel,” Imperio said, “why don’t you get a really long extension cord and run it from your house to Cuba? Por Dios, mujer, you could bite it between your teeth and dog- paddle back. It’s only ninety miles from Key West.”

“Imagínate!” Caridad said, moving a hand delicately to her neck.

Raquel smiled too. But embarrassment turned the orange smile crooked. I only half listened. I kept my eyes on the dark road, waiting for the magic moment when the streetlights would go on.

“Niiiiñas, let’s talk about something else,” Leticia sang out. She always used the word niñas to get our attention, extending the first syllable like a telephone ringing. She called us niñas, the girls, as if she were the benevolent headmistress of a private school.

“Niñas,” she said, “did you watch Cadenas de Amargura last night? It’s getting good! La solterona, the spinster, is not as innocent as you think. I suspect she’s been secretly married before and that Jorge Alberto is really her son, and that he’s the one who paid for her operation.”

Leticia wasn’t just fanatical about the telenovelas. She was obsessed. She talked as if she was a part of them and delighted in figuring out what was going to happen next, what dramatic new turn or twist the plot would take. She was the first to start watching them. Now we were all addicted. All except Raquel, who daily endured our frivolous chatter.

“How can I enjoy a telenovela when the people back in Cuba are living in despair?”

I felt terrible for poor Raquel. I knew that her husband never wrote to her. I knew that all the information she got was through his family, that their letters painted as bleak a picture of life in Cuba as possible. I knew those letters always included requests for money—but never a word or mention about her husband’s situation. Was he dead? Ill? Had he been transferred to another prison? Why didn’t he write? Raquel knew nothing. But she held on to the memory of her husband with both hands. She told me that she was sure that one day they would be reunited, and that she didn’t care how long she waited or what sacrifices she had to make.

“But why doesn’t he write to you?” Imperio asked one day.

“Chá,” said Raquel. “Do you think they let prisoners anywhere near a pencil? Or a stamp? He’s a prisoner, and back there that means you don’t exist.”

Imperio and Caridad liked to pretend that they were concerned for Raquel. I knew they just enjoyed taunting her, getting the kind of pleasure children get out of picking at a scabby knee. But with those two it was better to just ignore them, as I had been trying to do for most of my life. Unlike the other three who rode in the van, Imperio, Caridad, and I came from the same small town in Cuba: Palmagria. And if you want to know the truth, it was a stinky little town just like Union City, except the weather in New Jersey was worse. It was a place I thought I would never get away from. Then everything changed. Caridad and Imperio left, and then three years later I did. I truly believed I would never see them again. Which would have been just fine. After the way Caridad and Imperio had treated me. After the things they said behind my back. After what Imperio’s husband, Mario, had done to me. But in those days, if you were Cuban, you went to Miami or Union City. There were times when I wished I’d stayed in Miami, but I’ve come to understand why I had to leave.

As the van traveled through the New Jersey gloom, I looked out the window and watched the streetlights turn on, as if a joyful fairy was rushing ahead of me, unfolding the longest diamond necklace in the world. I tried to think of my life that way, as if something beautiful was flying ahead of me, lighting the way, illuminating the darkness. My future was bright. I just had to figure out a way to get there.

*

WE ALL LIVED in the same neighborhood in Union City, just blocks from one another, except Raquel, who lived out toward Newark, where apartments were even cheaper. Imperio and Caridad lived in the same building but on different floors, so they were always together, just like in Cuba. None of us had learned to drive except for Leticia, who charged us each seven dollars a week, which was how she made the monthly payments on her van.

Riding with Leticia was more expensive than the bus, but to me it was worth every cent. She picked us up at our front doors every morning and brought us back every night. Although Leticia was a recent exile just like rest of us, she had managed to get some money out of Cuba, and with that money she bought a used, bright yellow Ford Econoline, tropical yellow, the color of the noontime sun. Imperio and Caridad said Leticia had dollar signs in her eyes, like a cartoon character.

The van had two purposes. Leticia’s husband, Chano, used it early in the mornings to deliver pork to butcher shops. He started his rounds at three a.m. and was done by seven. Then he went home and slept all day. Leticia insisted that he clean it up before he handed it over to her. We could always tell when he was running late, because the van smelled like a raw pig. Sometimes the floor was still sticky with bloody water from the packing ice. It could be disgusting. But after a while I didn’t even smell it anymore. It’s amazing what people can get used to.

“It wasn’t money she smuggled out,” Imperio often said, “it was jewelry, and who knows where she had it hidden.” Caridad always laughed at this, one of her little embarrassed laughs, like a geisha’s.

Imperio swallowed her curiosity for as long as she could, and one day she just couldn’t hold it any longer. We were all in the van when she finally dared to ask what she had long wanted to know. First she looked at Caridad with an evil grin. She knew very well that what she was about to ask could put both of them on a bus.

“Oye, Leti,” Imperio said in her chummiest voice. “Is it true that you took jewelry out of Cuba in your chocha?”

Leticia didn’t bother to answer. She ignored the question the way she ignored the honking drivers who regularly lined up behind her. Leticia’s hands, big as a man’s, held the steering wheel so tight I feared she would snap it in two. From where I sat I could only see the right side of her face, her thick, square jaw set firm. Leticia had an impressively strong face. Caridad once said it was mannish. Imperio, behind her back, called her cara macha, man face, and once even suggested that Leticia had hair on her chest.

“Comemierda!” Leticia shouted at the traffic. “These Americans drive like they own the road.”

She hit the brakes hard to keep from slamming into a passing truck. There was a collective outcry from the backseat as we toppled forward. Even Caridad, who from the front seat saw it coming, had to place both hands on the dashboard to keep her head from crashing into the windshield.

The van continued on, and everyone, a bit shaken but unharmed, settled quietly back into their seats. Dresses were smoothed over knees, hair patted back into place. For the moment, the subject of Leticia’s smuggled jewels was dropped. Caridad turned her head back slightly, just enough to exchange a knowing smile with Imperio that said, “It’s true, the lack of denial makes it so.”

To them it was a big joke, but I wondered what that day had been like for Leticia, squatting in a dirty airport bathroom stall and shoving a handful of rings and necklaces into the most private and sensitive part of her body.

I felt safe with Leticia, even though she sailed through red lights as if they were only decorations and was frequently trailed by a chorus of angry, honking drivers. But her driving record was good, just two minor incidents in the time I had been riding with her. Imperio said that Leticia drove like a crazy woman on purpose.

“She had those accidents to make driving look difficult, to scare us out of getting our own licenses and our own cars,” Imperio said when Leticia was out of earshot.

“Imagínate!” Caridad said. “She put our lives in danger just to keep collecting our money.”

Not that any one of us could have dreamed of buying a car. Our little salaries barely covered rent, food, and the monthly payments to Crazy Manny’s for our television sets. We left everything behind in Cuba, arrived with absolutely nothing. No china, no family silver or photos, and definitely no toys for our children. Only Leticia had had the good sense and the courage to shove a handful of valuables into an unmentionable place, and now she alone reaped the rewards. Leticia and Chano, with their three incomes, were the rich ones.

The rest of us were poor, and painfully aware of it. So the fact that for the past three months Raquel and Berta had been stealing from the factory hardly bothered us at all, until Mr. O’Reilly posted a warning sign near the entrance. It was white with big black letters. The word crime was in red! A Spanish translation, roughly scribbled on a piece of cardboard, was tacked just below it.

THEFT IS A SERIOUS CRIME.

THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED

TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW.

THE MANAGEMENT

*

THE DAY THE SIGN FIRST APPEARED, I walked through the narrow door of the factory ahead of the others, found my time card, and clocked in. I walked right past it. I didn’t stop to read it, didn’t comment on it.

Jacinto Ramírez, the security guard, stood in front of the door that led into the work area. He was long- necked and long- nosed; every inch of his skin wrinkled and sagged. Jacinto was from Havana and, just because he came from the capital and now wore a uniform, thought himself superior to us.

“Buenos días, Jacinto,” I said and tried to get past him.

“Buenos días, Graciela,” Jacinto said. I stopped four feet before him, and even from that distance I could smell his dentures. I tried to continue, but he blocked my way, peering into my plastic bag.

Factory policy demanded that all female employees carry their belongings in a clear plastic drawstring bag that dangled from their elbow like a purse. No actual purses were allowed in the factory. My plastic bag contained a wallet, the key to my apartment, a compact, a hairbrush, and a sanitary napkin (for emergencies).

I hated those bags. But they didn’t seem to bother the English- speaking employees—las gringas, las negras, las boricuas. None of them seemed to give the bags a second thought.

Us Cubans, we worked alongside black ladies who kept to themselves, Puerto Ricans who refused to speak in Spanish to us, and some white, stringy- haired girls so skinny they looked like they’d blow over if you whistled at them. They knew the rules and accepted them. We didn’t.

“The situation is getting serious,” Jacinto said, pointing at the sign and stepping in front of me as if in a mambo. “Too many people with sticky fingers.”

The others had stopped behind me, their arms folded protectively across their chests. I could hear them murmuring. Imperio, not known for her patience, walked right up to him.

“Look, Jacinto,” she said, waving her bag in his face, her little body erect and sharp as a switchblade. “If you’re insinuating something, just come out and say it.”

Caridad took a deep, loud breath, so loud I could hear it. Her hand sprang to her throat. Leticia, Berta, and Raquel stood beside her. Their eyes tracked from Jacinto to Imperio and back again.

“No señora,” Jacinto said, flashing his false teeth. “Adelante. Come in, come in.”

Imperio didn’t return the smile.

“If they dock us for being late,” she said, “you’re going to hear from me.”

“Imagínate,” Caridad said as we entered the main floor. “I can understand inspections on the way out, but does that crazy man think we’re smuggling toys into the factory?”

“This is getting worse than Cuba,” Imperio said.

“Niiiiñas, I think he just wanted an excuse to frisk us,” Leticia said. We all laughed louder than the comment deserved and continued walking with our plastic bags banging against our hips.

In spite of the laughter, the sign made us nervous. Not that anyone in the van ever thought of Raquel and Berta as thieves or criminals.

For what?

For stealing little plastic doll parts?

No.

Not after all we’d been through. We’d lost our country, had been forced into exile, while the Americanos had stood by and done precious nothing. They owed us, and some free dolls were a small price to pay.

Raquel and Berta innocently believed that by harmlessly stealing a leg here, an arm there, they would have a few complete dolls by Christmas.

*

“STEALING ISN’T THE PROBLEM,” Berta said as the van pulled out of the parking lot that night. She dug into her brassiere, pulled out a little rubber leg, and handed it to Raquel.

“You’re right,” Raquel said as she casually took the little flesh- colored limb and dropped it into her clear plastic bag, where another little arm or a torso she had stolen that day was waiting.

“The real problem is that we work on so many different dolls that the arms and legs never match.”

We worked on all types of dolls. Dolls that cried, dolls that peed, dolls that pretended to drink from a bottle, cute little baby dolls and frightening baby dolls as big as an actual baby. Dolls that walked, dolls that crawled. Dolls like little fashion models with perfect figures, exotic ball gowns, and accessories: necklaces, bracelets, combs, hand mirrors, little purses, even a complete set of matching luggage.

“Por Dios, Raquel, it’s going to take you forever. And even if you get all the parts, what will you do about its head?” Imperio asked.

“They’re never going to let a Cuban work with heads,” Caridad said. “Not after the problem with Calixto.”

Caridad nodded in agreement.

“Calixto was an idiot,” Leticia said. “Se pasó de mano.” He went too far.

A few days ago we had watched as Mr. O’Reilly escorted Calixto Guiñón, who worked in shipping, out of the factory.

“What did I do?” Calixto had shouted. “You got no proof. No proof.”

Jacinto walked just a few steps behind, acting as if he had nothing to do with the firing of a fellow Cuban. That day Jacinto became a traitor and Mr. O’Reilly, the enemy. From that moment on, Jacinto was pointedly ignored. “He’s dead to me,” Imperio said. To the foreman, the Cuban women only offered insincere, lipstick- smudged smiles.

Mr. O’Reilly, whose first name was Barry, didn’t seem so awful to me. He did what he had to do. But even before the incident with Calixto, the others in the van had been suspicious of him. Mostly because he wore his hair in a long, blond ponytail and had a pierced ear with a small, silver crucifix hanging from it.

“There’s something wrong with that one,” Imperio whispered to Caridad, making circles around her ear with her index finger.

Barry O’Reilly never sat with the other employees in the lunchroom. Instead he read paperback books by himself. During the little free time I had at lunch, I spied on him.

I was intrigued by the covers of those books of his. I loved the exotic illustrations of dragons, spaceships, and fiery planets, sometimes even alien creatures and robots. I looked forward to new ones he would start.

I was even a little envious that Mr. O’Reilly, for a half hour each day, could escape to such exotic destinations. My escape, the telenovelas, just took me to the same place every night, a mansion or country estate filled with conventional, earthbound romance. Sometimes I wondered if the day would come when I would know English well enough to read the kinds of books Mr. O’Reilly read. I wondered how that would change the way I looked at the world. But to the others at the assembly line, Mr. O’Reilly remained a danger, as if getting too close to him would expose us to a grave and contagious disease.

“Only a drug addict would read those kinds of books,” Leticia said as she plugged a little flesh- colored leg into its little flesh- colored socket. She said something similar every time Mr. O’Reilly walked by.

“Por Dios,” Imperio said. “I’m shocked at the number of people who use drugs in this country. I see it on the news. They’re everywhere.”

“Imagínate,” Caridad said, waving a little leg in the air. “We saw them at the park, in groups, young people with long hair, bare feet, and crazy eyes. It gives me escalofríos.” Shivers.

“And it’s not just los negros, like in Cuba,” Leticia said, tapping the skin of her arm with two fingers.

Mr. O’Reilly displayed every symptom described in the news: the long hair, the weird books, faded denims, his slow and drowsy way of speaking, and his habit of going into the wilderness for entire weekends. Having lost our country to a man who came down from the mountains, Cubans didn’t trust anyone who would actually choose to go camping. But Mr. O’Reilly treated us with respect and seemed to enjoy working with Cubans. Oblivious to the contempt around him, he often dropped a word or two of high school Spanish into his greetings.

Every morning he walked past us on his way to his office and said, “Buenos días,” and we chorused the same back without looking up, sounding as if someone had let the air out of our tires. We didn’t take our eyes off the black conveyor belt and the hundreds of little limbs and torsos it constantly delivered to us.

Personally I thought it was very sweet of Mr. O’Reilly to try to talk to us in our native language. One day I looked up as he approached. I tried to meet his eyes and give him a bit of a smile, just to let him know that even if the others didn’t, I appreciated his effort to communicate with us in Spanish. He sort of smiled back, his face reddened, his feet stumbled a little, and the rubber sole of his shoe made a squeaking sound on the polished cement floor.

After he moved on, I found that I liked thinking about him. He had a nice face, once I got past the long hair and the earring. But the hair could be cut, the earring removed. His eyes were blue and calm, his nose small and straight and sprinkled with just enough light brown freckles that I could almost see the child he’d once been. Yes, a very nice face.

To the others he looked like any other Americano, like the countless others that populated our new town. They were everywhere: walking down the street, driving past in cars, staring blue- eyed from billboards, holding a glass of Johnnie Walker Red or inviting you to walk a mile for a Camel. They were the enemy and Mr. O’Reilly was too, even though he could have had Calixto arrested but didn’t. Never mind that Calixto had been caught smuggling boxes of toy trucks that he planned to sell for profit. Even after witnessing Calixto’s downfall, Berta and Raquel continued to steal.

*

ALL THE DOLLS we worked on were female, and they all had yellow hair and round, blue eyes. But none of us would ever be allowed to touch one of their heads. The head was the last thing that got attached before the doll was dressed and packaged. The Cubans, they said, were too new to work with heads. Only the older and more trusted employees, usually American women, pale, trembling, and docile, were allowed to handle complete toys because of all the theft.

“I think it’s bad enough that we have to carry our belongings in plastic bags,” Caridad said.

“Even if there is good reason,” Imperio said with a shaded look to Berta and Raquel, “I think keeping us away from heads is an unforgivable insult. Por Dios, we’re not all thieves.”

“In Cuba, everyone gets to work on everything without discrimination,” Raquel said with the voice of a petulant child, her orange lips puckering into a pout.

“Raquel, in Cuba kids use empty rum bottles for dolls,” Leticia said.

“Not in my house they didn’t,” Caridad said, almost in a whisper.

“If you think it’s better in Cuba,” Imperio said to Raquel, glaring now, “I’m sure Fidel will welcome you back with open arms and a bag full of toys.”

Caridad didn’t say anything, but she nodded her head in solemn accord.

“Chá,” Raquel said. “I’m not talking about Cuba as it is, I’m talking about Cuba as it was.”

Imperio and Caridad didn’t seem satisfied with her answer; they couldn’t stay out of other people’s business.

“What good’s a rumor if you can’t spread it?” Imperio often said.

“Every rumor has a little truth in it,” Caridad always added.

That day I took one look at Raquel’s face, pinched to the edge of tears, and couldn’t stop myself.

“Raquel,” I said carefully, “I don’t know why you even bother to open your mouth around these two.”

Caridad turned until her round eyes met mine with a look of disbelief. Then her eyebrows lifted almost imperceptibly and her lids opened slightly so that I felt like I was falling into the dark pits of her pupils. Then, just as quickly, Caridad’s eyes returned to normal size and she turned back to face the road.

I knew what that look was about.

That look was a warning.

I had secrets.

Copyright © 2006 by Eduardo Santiago view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions from the Publisher's Reading Guide:

1. What do you think is the significance of the novel's title? What information does the title convey? What function do the telenovelas serve in the novel? What function do they serve for its characters?


2. Graciela's frame of mind changes over time. Identify at least three significant moments of such change. How do you feel about Graciela at these points in the story? Did you sometimes sense your loyalties shifting as you read?


3. Caridad and Imperio rarely describe their own problems, while they focus intently on Graciela's shortcomings and scandals. Did it change your understanding of Caridad and Imperio when, at the end of the novel, Graciela provides a window into the dramatic hardships that they both suffer? What does the author make us understand about Caridad and Imperio by allowing their secrets to come to light in this manner?


4. How does Tomorrow They Will Kiss change or contextualize your understanding of Cuban American identity? Do you see this story as representative of the experience of many Cubans who came to the United States in the early 1960s?


5. What did you know about the Cuban Revolution before reading this book? What do you think you gain from reading a novel built around such an event, as opposed to reading a more strictly historical account?


6. Why do you think the men in this story are so absent from the plot? What do you take from that?


7. In the penultimate chapter of Tomorrow They Will Kiss, Caridad says, "I had never seen Graciela laugh so much, she could hardly stand from laughing. Is that what happiness looks like? I wondered. Like insanity?" What did those few lines make you feel?


8. What lessons do we draw from Graciela - at an individual level, and also in terms of the larger ideas of assimilation and acceptance?

Copyright 2006 by Hachette Book Group USA

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