A new historical novel from Serena Burdick, the author of THE GIRLS WITH NO NAMES, based on the true story of Estelita Rodriguez, a Cuban-born Hollywood actress and singer, as her daughter Nina traces her mother's life from Cuba to Hollywood to understand her mysterious death, think NEXT YEAR IN HAVANA meets THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO.
Cuba, 1936: When Estelita Rodriguez sings in a hazy Havana nightclub for the very first time, she is nine years old. From then on, that spotlight of adoration—from Havana to New York’s Copacabana and then Hollywood—becomes the one true accomplishment no one can take from her. Not the 1933 Cuban Revolution that drove her family into poverty. Not the revolving door of husbands and the fickle world of film. Not even the tragic devastation of Castro’s revolution that rained down on her loved ones.
Thirty years later, her young adult daughter, Nina Rodriguez, is blindsided by her mother’s mysterious, untimely death. Seeking answers no one else wants to hear, the grieving Nina navigates the troubling, opulent memories of their life together and discovers how much Estelita sacrificed to live the American dream on her own terms.
Based on true events and exclusive interviews with the real Nina Rodriguez, Find Me in Havana weaves two unforgettable voices into one extraordinary journey that explores the unbreakable bond between mother and child, and the ever-changing landscape of self-discovery.
One
Big Sur, 1966
CLIFFS
Mother,
In August, Big Sur crackles with drought. Grass dries to a
crisp and turns gold as ember. Rattlers lay in wait. Fat insects purr, and
banana slugs languish. The air is ripe with eucalyptus, their slender, green leaves
blanketing the canyon paths. Poison oak claws the hillside. This is not the
season of lemons trees or emerald hills or crisp sunshine. Summer on the coast
is a season of bone-chilling fog.
Overlooking the Pacific, I stand on Nepenthe’s stone patio,
the restaurant’s windows spilling light around me as I watch the gray mass of
fog crawl and heave up the cliff. You would have liked it here, Mom, but we
never drove up the coast together. We never had the chance. I close my eyes as
the fog settles over me, damp and soft as a whisper. Below, the surf thunders
against the rocks, and I feel the sway of the sea in my legs and picture myself
stepping over the low stone wall and lifting my arms into the air. The ocean
will catch me, release me, hollow out my body and wash it up on the shore like
an empty shell.
I need a shell. Hard skin. A barrier against the world of
missing you.
How is there no you left? No Mom. No Wife. No Movie Actress.
No Singer. There are photographs and moving pictures where you swing your hips
and make funny faces, but I cannot touch or smell or feel or speak to this
two-dimensional version.
I want an explanation.
Memories root and twist inside me, blossom, grow thorns,
beautiful and gnarled, but the truth remains hidden, and I am left with the
image of the bathroom floor and the weight of you in my arms.
I do not want this to be our last memory.
Opening my eyes, I take a deep breath, let the cool wetness
lie over my tongue. Next to me, a fire crackles in the open hearth warming one
side of my leg. I think how outdoor fires do this, warm only one side of you
while the other side freezes. I wear a short skirt without pantyhose, white
tennis shoes and a tight, knit sweater. The guests have all gone, the movie
stars and bohemian artists, the former donning glitter and fur, the latter
beads and loose-folding fabric, each hoping to authenticate themselves in
originality. Each failing.
“Nina?” I jump at the
sound of my manager’s voice. He stands in the open patio doorway of the
restaurant polishing a wineglass. “Your ride is here.”
He looks at me kindly, unconcerned. He doesn’t know anything
about me. I feel the warmth of the fire on my backside and think how cold it
will be in the hollowed-out redwood tree where I sleep.
“I’ll just wipe down
the tables,” I say, stalling. I don’t want to face my ride any more than I want
to face the cold night on the forest floor with the insects.
My manager is a slender, vigorous man who looks as if he’s
been breathing ocean air since birth. “It’s late,” he smiles. “You go on home
now. I’ll take care of the tables.”
Walking away from the restaurant, the stone path slick with
moisture, I dig my doll from the bottom of my bag and tuck her under one arm.
She has a cloth body and a plastic head with blue eyes that open and close when
you tilt her. Her plastic head is dotted with dark holes where her carefully
arranged hair used to be. On her stomach is a scar—held together with a safety
pin—from the time I cut her open and pulled out the stuffing.
Bret waits in his mint-green Volvo with the engine running.
He is smoking a joint and doesn’t open the door for me. I slide into the
passenger seat and he leans over and gives me a sloppy kiss, his hand pressed
to the back of my head as if this is something romantic. His tongue tastes of
stale smoke and alcohol. “Hey, baby,” he breathes into my face and passes me
the joint. I take it, inhale and try to stifle a cough as Bret maneuvers the
car onto the dark road.
We met five months ago when I first arrived in Big Sur. My
friend Delia and I had eaten a handful of mushrooms and were dancing around a
bonfire at a beach party when Bret slipped into the wavy, illuminated light of
my vision. His embroidered shirt rippled over his chest and I thought he was
something supernatural. The next morning when I woke up beside him on the
beach, he’d turned solid. He was nothing more than a thin-chested man with a
tangled beard and skinny legs sticking out from his cutoff jean shorts.
Bret hooks the car around a sharp bend, and the wheels kick
up gravel that makes a sound like thunder under our feet.
“You’re going too
fast,” I say, pressing my hand flat against the passenger window.
He grins and steps on the gas, a man who likes to challenge
a woman. This is familiar to me. I watched men challenge you your whole life,
each one of your four husbands, in their own way, pushing you to the edge.
Despite your effort to understand them, to please them, it was, in the end,
your unwillingness to be controlled or possessed that got you killed.
The car takes another corner, and the cliff drops to my
right at a precarious angle where sumac and sagebrush cling to the edge. People
love Highway 1 for its beauty. They think it cuts a benevolent path along the
ocean cliff for our pleasure. What I see is a snake luring us with its
curvaceous body, a thing of nature waiting for us to step on it so it can
strike and fling us off.
I squish my doll’s head in, making her face look like
something in a distorting mirror. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I say,
watching the doll’s features slowly inflate and pop back into place.
Bret’s profile remains neutral, his eyes on the road as he
reaches over and strokes my thigh. “Don’t be like that, baby. This is good.”
I’ve tried to break up with him before. I don’t know why he
won’t let me go, or how he can feel anything for me when I feel nothing inside.
After your death, they sedated me because I was angry and didn’t behave
properly. Now, I do what I can to sedate myself.
“I mean it. I’m
done.” I shove his hand away, and this makes him angry.
He puts both hands on the wheel, grips it with white
knuckles, his eyes forward, his jaw clenched. “What the fuck, Nina?” he says.
The headlights strike the road. Yellow lines blink past like
winking eyes.
His anger scares me. “I’m sorry,” I say. I’m not good at
this. Charming men. Giving them what they want. Doing what I watched you do,
for the good ones and the bad. You appeased the good men, hoping they’d stay
with you; placated the bad ones, hoping they wouldn’t hurt you. With each
husband you tried a little harder, stayed a little longer, so certain you’d get
it right.
If Bret is any indication, I won’t get it right, either.
Looking at him, his hard profile reflected in the dashboard lights, his scruffy
beard and long hair curling at the base of his neck, he reminds me of the rebel
soldiers in Cuba.
This is not a memory I want. “Bret, I really can’t do this.
Please, pull over. I need to get out.”
“You don’t know what you need.”
The arrogance in his voice disgusts me, the anger I’d been
tamping down with drugs is now rising in my throat. For all his meditating and
chanting and seeking enlightenment, Bret is a prick. I am twenty years old, you
are dead, and there’s no one to tell me what to do anymore. You are not here to
laugh it away, or tell me to chin-up, to silence me or put me in a mental
institution or stick me in a boarding school. “Fuck you, Bret!” I shout. “Pull
over. I want to get out.”
“Fuck me?” He speeds up, swerves the car near the shoulder
of the road, gravel and dirt hitting my window and ricocheting off the glass
like buckshot.
I suck in my breath and grip the door handle. “Don’t do
that!”
“Do what? This?” He swerves again, and all I see, for a
moment, is empty, black space.
What I should do is calm him down, convince him I’m sorry
and that I won’t break up with him. Stop the car, and we’ll talk about it, I
should say, but a part of me wants him to do something drastic. To pull the
trigger for me.
We are crossing Bixby Bridge. The fog has receded, and I can
see all the way down to the dark strip of beach where the waves crash and foam
like a giant frothing at the mouth. I know, in that split second right before
Bret takes us over the edge, that he’s going to do it. It’s not the plunge into
water I’d imagined on the patio at Nepenthe. I am not sailing peacefully off
the cliff with my arms out but trapped in a metal box that jerks to the right
so abruptly my head smacks the window. I expect free fall, silence, stillness,
but the air is sharp and compact and splintered with glass.
And then you are in my arms, your face flushed, your dark
hair limp on your wet forehead, vomit ringing the corners of your mouth. “Help
me,” I plead, even though you are the one dying. “Don’t go,” I cry. “I need
you,” but I have already hit bottom, and the world has gone quiet.
Excerpted from Find Me in Havana by Serena Burdick,
Copyright © 2021 by Serena Burdick. Published by Park Row Books.
Serena Burdick graduated from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in California before moving to New York City to pursue a degree in English Literature at Brooklyn College. Author of the International Bestseller THE GIRLS WITH NO NAMES and GIRL IN THE AFTERNOON, she lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and two sons.
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