Celia del Pino, equipped with binoculars and wearing her best housedress and drop pearl earrings, sits in her wicker swing guarding the north coast of Cuba. Square by square, she searches the night skies for adversaries then scrutinizes the ocean, which is roiling with nine straight days of unseasonable April rains. No sign of gusano traitors. Celia is honored. The neighborhood committee has voted her little brick-and-cement house by the sea as the primary lookout for Santa Teresa del Mar. From her porch, Celia could spot another Bay of Pigs invasion before it happened.
This is the opening of the novel as far as openings go, it’s a pretty darn good one. There is suspense: why does Celia think there could be another Bay of Pigs? There is ironic humor: really, a lookout wearing a housedress, earrings and seated in wicker? A possibility raised that perhaps—just possibly—Celia is, well, living in her perceptual reality, let’s say: neighbors gave her the job of sitting in a housedress on the lookout for the next failed American attempt to overthrow Castro? For life? At this point in the narrative, this seems like a story that could go off in any number of conflicting but equally interesting directions.
June 11, 1955
Gustavo,
The rebels have been released! Now the revolution is close enough to smell. We’ll get rid of Batista the way we did that tyrant Machado. But this time, mi amour, we’ll make it stick like roe to a pot.
Love,
Celia
The narrative perspective of this novel shifts from time to time. Like the opening paragraph excerpted above, the narration is primarily simple third-person point of view. However, some sections feature first-person narration that offers a subjective point of view of events through the eyes of a particular character. And then there are the short sections comprised of letters written by Celia. Obviously this particular short and emotion-driven missive took place before the Bay of Pigs and, for that matter, before Castro even came to power. Seen in this context, the retrospective nature of the letters does a lot to explain why she was chosen to be the watchful guard in the opening scene as well as filling in the mystery gaps of why a watchout appears as she does.
I wonder how different my life would have been if I'd stayed with my grandmother. I think about how I'm probably the only ex-punk on the island, how no one else has their ears pierced in three places. It's hard to imagine existing without Lou Reed.
Here is an example of a chapter narrated in the first-person by Pilar, Celia’s granddaughter who lives in New York. Pilar and Celia have a very good relationship despite it being hampered by distance and that long-lasting arbitrary ban on traveling to Cuba. The generation between—Lourdes—does not get along particularly smoothly with either one. As opposed to her mother’s adoration of Castro and the communist cause, Lourdes is a diehard capitalist. And since Pilar shares her grandmother’s rebellious streak—though mostly manifested at this point in her embrace of punk rock—it is a matter of course that the mother/daughter dynamic is as rocky and the daughter/mother relationship. Pilar, of course, is spot on about Lou, so you know she’s going to be okay.
