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8/15/2019 China Cups

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Cuba, I Remember You

China Cups

My aunt Mercedes died just recently. She always went by “Chea”, a nickname

that in Cuba was given to those named “Mercedes”. To me, she was, of

course, unique. But I am certain we all have known someone like her, perhaps

we have someone like her in our families, or maybe we have a friend like aunt

Chea. They are quiet people, always in the background in family photos.

When they die, though, we suddenly realize how much their lives have truly

filled ours.

I said the eulogy at her funeral in Los Angeles three days after her remains had

been flown back from Miami, where she had been in a home since her sister,

my aunt Carmen, had died two years before. The two had lived together all

their lives, first in Cuba and later in the U.S., and they had both lived into their

nineties. My cousin Pepe lives in Florida, so he and his wife, Alicia, would

always look in on aunt Chea, just to make sure she had everything she needed.

She never lacked for anything.

Aunt Chea died, amazingly enough, at the age of ninety. This was almost a

miracle in and of itself, especially for someone who had always been very

sickly, with all kinds of mysterious and intractable problems, surgeries, etc..

She was a petite woman, never weighed more than eighty pounds in her life.

She had olive skin and, when she was young, jet-black hair. And she had been

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young. Once, long ago, before I was even born. By the time I knew her, she

was already well into middle age. But her eyes had remained her most

beautiful feature, big and soft, dark and warm, like strong Cuban coffee.

Everything about her was delicate, from her hands to her features, all finely

chiseled like a cameo. She looked so delicate that she gave the impression that

the least wind would snap her in half. And yet she had not been snapped. She

had had a long and at times hard life but she had outlived all of her four

siblings, including my father, who had been the baby of the family.

Of all my grandparents’ children, aunt Chea was the only one who never

married. She was the only one who had never left her parents’ home to set out

on a life of her own. She had never held a job. One time, by now almost lost to

memory, she had had a fiancé. I don’t know anything about this man but soon

after he declared his intentions, a conspiracy quickly formed in our extended

family against the whole idea of Chea marrying him. Some people in the family

felt that no man could really be interested in Chea. They suspected he only

wanted “her money” and that was the real reason why he was courting her,

after all, she was already past her first youth, reasoned the conspirators.

These conspirators eventually sent the man packing. After that, there was no

more talk of fiancés, no more talk of engagements, no more talk of marriage or

of a family of her own. Aunt Chea, who had always been in delicate health,

suddenly became chronically ill and soon discovered what some have called

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“the tyranny of the sick”. She made certain her frail health was never

forgotten. Grandma Pastora, for one, had to make innumerable trips to

Havana to take Chea to the most prominent specialists on the island. This was

always done at great expense and it required much time and energy since Chea

always “needed” to travel first-class, in the best sleeping cars available.

Besides her poor health, aunt Chea had two other obsessions, fine jewelry and

fine china. I don’t remember much of her jewelry but I do remember distinctly

her porcelain collection. It consisted, and this was a fine irony indeed, of a

never-completed set of miscellaneous tea cups, this from someone who never

“received”, who had few or no friends, and who would never have dreamed of

actually using her collection for anything as prosaic as pouring some beverage

into her “collectibles”. They were beautiful and delicate; they never left the

house; and they did not serve any practical purpose, except to exist in all

their delicacy.

Each day, aunt Chea would exchange her everyday clothes for her a gown that

to me resembled a kimono since there was something colorful and Oriental

about it, full of black, and orange, and green. This was her special gown. She

would retire to her bedroom and, not in secrecy but in great privacy, she would

ever-so-carefully take down from the high dresser where the kept her

collectibles each cup and its saucer. She would do this one at a time, with

great ceremony, and while talking to herself in very quiet tones. God forgive

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me, but as a kid, it always reminded me of the local priest at Mass before the

consecration of the wine and the Host. She would then dust each cup and

each saucer, exercising unusual care and using a fine cloth that was

“guaranteed to leave no scratches”. In the same ceremonial way, she would

then put each cup and saucer back exactly in its precise place, just as before.

The Universe of the Collectibles was a perfect one, so flawless continuity was

one of its absolute requirements.

Over the years her collection had become vast but, like a true connoisseur with

good taste, she only kept “the favorites” on top of that extremely tall dresser in

her room, like the altar of the Holy Grail. My personal favorite was the

cappuccino-colored one. I thought it was really clever of the makers to have

made a cup that outside looked exactly the same color as the drink that was

going to be poured into the inside.

From here aunt Chea would, in due time, glide to her other domain, the

museum-like formal living room (see “A Home for All”). Like her bedroom, the

living room was pregnant with an absence of sound, an absence of people, an

absence of everything that makes up common, everyday life. It existed only for

one purpose: to be itself, to be seen, to serve no other goal but beauty itself.

In her peculiar quasi-Japanese outfit, aunt Chea would go around and

carefully dust all the Rococo bric-à-brac in the living room, with their

suggestively erotic French decorations of sleeping shepherds, handsome and

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young, and of pretty young countesses who secretly watched over them from

their hiding places, fans daintily concealing their passions. Chea would

tenderly cradle each item, look at it for a second longer than most others would

have, and then lay it back, exactly where it had been before. By now it was

four o’clock. The hour had arrived.

As the living room was separated by a long corridor from the only bathroom

with a shower, aunt Chea could be heard wearing her wooden sandals, her

orange kimono just a blur, rushing to her next important appointment of the

day, The Afternoon Shower. Always at four. You could set your watch by it.

Click, click, click, click. Everyone in the house knew what was happening.

Unless illness confined her to bed, this ritual brought her afternoon to its high

point. Afterwards, aunt Chea would get all dressed up, even on weekdays, and

take her rightful place in one of the big wooden rocking chairs on the front

porch of the house.

At that time of the afternoon, more often than not, she would be there by

herself. Others would be busy leaving work, or picking up their kids after

school, or rushing to a new date with someone they thought would love them

for who they were. From here aunt Chea would silently watch life go by until

supper. I do not remember her ever going anywhere to pay anyone a visit, at

least anyone outside the family. I also do not remember many people coming

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by to look in, specifically, on her. Yet, she would always be there, right after

her shower, right up until supper.

Since she had never married and Grandma Pastora had babied her all her life,

my cousin Rita and I, the only two kids in the extended family at that time,

thought of Chea as a kind of big kid. Whereas we would not have dared

provoke other adults in the family into playing with us, to us Chea was

different. And she enjoyed it. She would pretend that our antics were

irritating her beyond human endurance but she would always play along and

secretly enjoy it.

One of our favorite games was the “trespassing” game. This would require

violating the sanctity of the museum-living room, thus, provoking aunt Chea’s

“wrath”. Rita and I would sneak into the living room and hide somewhere for a

while, just before aunt Chea would come in to do her daily dusting. We would

let her get started and after a while she would begin to talk to herself. This

was the part we loved the most!

On the count of three, my cousin and I would begin to repeat loudly, in parrot-

like fashion, everything aunt Chea had said up to that point and then we would

take off running. We would run around this sanctum sanctorum while aunt

Chea would curse at us and threaten to beat us within an inch of our sorry

lives. To make her threats “stick”, she would eventually reach behind a sofa

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and pull out “the big guns”. This was a piece of some old leather strap,

probably from a horse saddle from grandpa Manolito’s ranch, that Chea had

baptized Juana-Julia. Yet another mystery: where had she dreamed up that

name for this frightful instrument of torture? She would chase after us and

threaten to whip us until we would finally learn not to come into the living

room and not to eavesdrop only to later repeat what she had been mumbling.

Most kids, who were not in on the joke, would have blanched and fainted at

just the mere sight of Juana-Julia: about five feet long, three inches wide, and

about an inch and a half thick. If aunt Chea had made a single mistake and

actually even tapped us with that strap, we would have ended up at the

emergency. However, she would have been right there with cookies or some

other treat to make sure we clearly understood it had been an accident. But

she never slipped up.

The game would finally end when all three of us would not be able to stand all

that laughter anymore and so would just stand there, staring at each other,

our stomachs sore from all the laughing. Drying those happy tears, my cousin

and I would leave the room for our next adventure and aunt Chea would go

back to her dusting or off to take her shower. Rita and I never asked ourselves

whether aunt Chea missed not having kids of her own. She was just aunt

Chea. Those questions just did not come up.

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At other times, quiet times, she could also be wonderful company. She and my

mother’s sister, my aunt Olga, were always my favorite visitors when I was sick

in bed. Aunt Olga made a wonderful café au lait , so I always looked forward to

her visits since sometimes she would bring me some in a thermos. Aunt Chea,

in turn, would arrive all dolled up in her fifties-style crinolines, spaghetti

strings, and very high Cuban heels, looking all cool and bird-like. She would

perch on one side of my bed and begin by asking me how I was feeling.

As a chronic sick person, she would make all the professional inquiries of a

consummate physician and even help me along if I was being a bit slow in

understanding her queries. Then, she would continue by telling me something

about her day back at grandma’s. Suddenly and irreversibly her story would

take an unexpected turn and we would be off and running into a world of

stream-of-consciousness, where one idea would lead to another and that one to

another and that one to another, and so on and so on. This was the perfect

conversation to have with a little kid since a great attention span was never

demanded. By the time she was through, aunt Chea had started twenty five

different stories, had not finished one, and had made me laugh the whole time.

She was indeed a bird of paradise. Like my father (see “My Favorite Story”),

aunt Chea was a superb storyteller, all words, and eyes, and hands. It was live

theater by a sick boy’s bedside. Who needed television? After just a few

minutes with her, I would not remember what was ailing me and would sit up

in bed, entranced by her tales.

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Like aunt Chea’s china tea cups, now and then I take down each memory, one

at a time, I dust it with care so its individual beauty will shine like a Cuban

sun, and then I place it back, lovingly, where it rightfully belongs, on a tall

dresser, somewhere in my heart, until the next time.

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Aunt Chea (in stripes) as a wedding gualso Carmita and Esther;

tía Chea (rayas), invitada a una boda, Carmita y Esther

My aunt Chea;mi tía Chea

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