About a week ago the sun was mercilessly beating its rays across all of Havana. The sky was cloudless as the sun touched everything in sight – tops of heads, necks, the backs of legs and faces. Heat steamed from the earth and from sidewalks, mixing with exhaust and too-hot bodies moving around each other, getting in and out of cars and buses and taxis. Eyes squinted, hands covered faces and towels wiped brows. Mothers shielded their babies’s faces with umbrellas and blankets. Old men stood under trees catching what shade they could as they talked dominos and people watched.
Walking along the exposed street with not a patch of shade in my path until finally unlatching the gate and entering the house where I live. A blanket of fresh, cool air now fills the space around me. Instantly refreshed. None of the lights are on in the house and the only light streams in from slanted window shades – allowing some warm light to fill the room, while keeping heat shut out. The hum of AC motoring in all of the foreigners rooms. The tick-tick-tick of the fan in the family’s bedroom and the murmuring of the television as the grandmother sits before it, getting her dose of reality outside the house – a house she hasn’t left in over a year.
I put my book bag on the bed in my room and head to the kitchen to talk with Cuca, the mother of the house. Normally our exchanges are something of: “Everything good?” “Everything good! And you?” “Everything’s great!” and so on. But today I caught her as she was looking down at the little turtle in it’s container. I stand beside her as she talks about the turtle in her hands. It was a gift from a long time friend who works at the house as a maid, brought to her one day after traveling for three hours on the bus. Wrapped in a cloth and the length of an inch, she placed her little turtle in a white plastic bowl and named it Cuki, after herself.
She narrated to me a string of thoughts as she began the process of cleaning the turlte and its water: emptying the container of its contents, filling it up, washing the turtle, then turning the container over to empty and filling again and so on.
Cuca spoke about the turtle. How sweet and curious it was, always scratching to explore beyond the container it lived in. She touched its hard shell on its back, amazed at the coloring, exclaiming what a beautiful shell it was and how incredible it was that something so beautiful was a product of nature. Standing beside Cuca, absolute in awe of her gentility and kindness as she stands in awe of the little turtle in her hands she gently cradles in the soft shade of the house as she rinses its back and belly before finally filling the bowl up with water for the last time, and leaving Cuki to swim in new, fresh and clean water.
So much of Cuba is rushing around, sweating under the beating sun, people yelling, whistling, cackling or drinking rambunctiously. I love that. I love the vigor and the liveliness of it all, but I also love to be able to take a break from that – having the ability to have that space outside, and separate myself once I step in the quiet sanctuary of the house.