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Of Women and Salt
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Chapter 7 Summary: “Privilegio”
(Ana, Irapuato, 2018)
Ana struggles to fit into Mexico. Although her Spanish becomes stronger, her native dialect differs, which makes it obvious to others that she’s an outsider; moreover, Mexicans complain about the gente de afuera (people from outside), just as Americans complain about undocumented immigrants. Gloria promises that they’ll return to the US, but it’s already been four years, and Ana is beginning to doubt that they’ll ever return. Gloria and Ana work as housekeepers for an American woman, Nancy, who married a wealthy Mexican man, Roberto. They got the jobs through a cousin of Gloria’s who lives in Irauato shortly after being dropped off in Mexico. Although only Gloria technically works for Nancy, Ana helps so much that she eventually convinces Nancy to pay her as well.
Ana gets to know Nancy better than Roberto knows her, as she believes one “[learns] these kinds of things about people […] when you [work] for them” (112). Some things are small, like Nancy’s habit of dripping water post-shower or sneaking cigarettes; others are big, like Ana catching Nancy kissing her Spanish teacher, or the fact that Nancy keeps a stack of cash hidden beneath a floorboard. Gloria and Ana’s place in the house is complicated in part because Nancy and Roberto view them differently. Roberto hadn’t wanted Salvadoran housekeepers, and Nancy had to fight for them; in fact, Nancy insists that they eat their meals with her and Roberto. At times she condescends to Gloria and Ana, explaining Roberto’s bigotry to them “as if Ana weren’t acutely aware of the bias she herself faced” (113); nevertheless, Ana comes to enjoy spending time with Nancy and no longer feels uncomfortable with Nancy’s insistence that they’re part of the family.
When Gloria eventually develops cancer, Nancy pays for her to see a doctor but explains that she can’t pay for her medical care long-term. However, it doesn’t matter: By the time Gloria sees the doctor, the cancer is already too advanced. Ana considers taking the money beneath the floorboard to pay for Gloria’s chemotherapy but is worried about what would happen if she got caught. The narrative indicates that nothing would have happened: Years later, Nancy catches Roberto cheating and leaves in a rage, completely forgetting about the money.
Chapter 8 Summary: “They Like the Grimy”
(Maydelis, La Habana, 2015)
Maydelis and Jeanette are driving out to the Cuban countryside with a German tourist. Maydelis met the man the night before and cheated on her husband with him; she justifies it by reminding herself that she and her husband are only still together because housing is scarce. Jeanette seems to want to hear the gossip, but Maydelis ignores her and hopes she’ll drop it. The German is angry that the rental car is Russian, complaining that Cubans are all “supposed to drive those neat 1950s Chevrolets” (118). Jeanette is surprised that the car has a cup holder; Maydelis bristles at this, annoyed that Jeanette would think Cuba is so backward that their cars lack cup holders.
Once they start driving, Jeanette and the German debate Cuba’s beauty. Jeanette is disheartened because she believes everything is crumbling; the German counters that Cuba, including the crumbling, is romantic and beautiful. Maydelis avoids rolling her eyes at them both, frustrated by how outsiders tend to impose their own beliefs on Cuba. On the way, Maydelis falls asleep. The German wakes her up when they stop at a pork shack on the side of the road so that she can translate. Maydelis thinks about what she’d need to do to get the German to marry her and take her to Germany or to get Jeanette to take her back to Miami, wondering, “Which would require giving more of [myself] away?” (122).
Jeanette says she needs to pee and asks Maydelis to go with her. However, it’s a ruse: Jeanette just wants to hear about what happened the night before. Maydelis says that the story unimpressive: The German asked them if they wanted to go to the beach, and she decided to sleep with him and go with him the next day. Jeanette is concerned about what her husband, Ronny, will say, but Maydelis tells her that they each often don’t come home—that no one will ask questions. They resume driving, but the German stops in a small town to pick up cheap liquor and avoid tourist prices. They buy three bottles of rum, but when they return to the car, it won’t start. The German thinks that one of the townspeople purposely broke the car in some scam, planning to steal from them. Maydelis thinks that’s ridiculous, and she asks the townspeople where to find a phone so that they can call the rental agency.
When she gets back to the car, the German has locked himself inside. When Maydelis tries to get him to make the phone call, he shouts at her, insisting that that’s where they’ll rob them. Jeanette, who’d agreed with the German, is now angry at him, and she decides to go with Maydelis and Reinaldo, one of the townspeople, to make the phone call. On the way, Maydelis explains that that’s not how scams work in Cuba: “You make friends, not enemies, if what you’re after is money” (128). Maydelis notices that Jeanette is calmer and looser when the German isn’t around. They arrive at the house of the woman, Lilia, who has the phone, and Maydelis gives her a few coins for the phone call. Maydelis contacts the rental agency and learns that it will take at least four or five hours to get someone out there. They begin to walk back to the German, but Jeanette suggests that they just leave him and pay someone to drive them to Camagüey so that she can see their grandmother’s house. Maydelis agrees—on the condition that they stop at Santa María del Mar for a few hours first. They lie to the German and say they need their bags so that they can go freshen up; then, once they turn the corner, they run to Reinaldo’s house, and he drives them away.
Chapter 9 Summary: “People Like That”
(Jeanette, Camagüey, 2015)
Jeanette, Maydelis, and Dolores are sitting in rocking chairs outside Dolores’s house when a young, Black neighbor named Yosmany comes over to say hi, having heard that an American was in town visiting. When they go inside to get him a beer, Maydelis calls him a repartero, a derogatory term for a “low-class” person in gaudy dress. Jeanette doesn’t know the word and asks her to translate; she gets the sense that Maydelis is tiring of her, but she’s also frustrated that Maydelis only wants to talk about what it’s like in the US. Yosmany invites Jeanette to ride horses with him; Jeanette wants to go, but Dolores says no because it’s late and they go to bed early. Yosmany instead asks Jeanette about the US, but Dolores again interjects, saying that she wishes Cuba would become capitalist so that everyone could see how bad capitalism is.
After Yosmany leaves, Dolores’s cat jumps into Jeanette’s lap. Jeanette thinks back to a time when she was caught stealing, and her mother chastised her for not knowing how lucky she was to be in the US—she claimed that everyone was hungry and that there were no cats, insinuating that Cubans must eat cats to survive. Jeanette isn’t sure if things were different then, but her mother’s description doesn’t align with her experience now. Maydelis tells Jeanette that Yosmany probably just wants Jeanette to whisk him off to America or get her to buy him “a pair of sneakers and an iPhone” (139); Jeanette doesn’t mention that Maydelis had her bring a pair of Nikes when she came to visit. Dolores says that you can’t trust Black men, which throws Jeanette for a loop—she wasn’t expecting so much casual, blatant racism when she first came to visit. However, she also thinks that Black Cubans experience similar racism in Miami, “where racism is just slightly more polite” (140).
After Dolores goes to bed, Jeanette and Maydelis stay up talking in the hallway, where a bookcase holds many books. Maydelis is uninterested in the books, but Jeanette is fascinated by the old ones, especially Cecilia Valdés and Les Misérables. Jeanette realizes that despite her current sobriety, she still looks at valuable items and wonders how much Oxycontin she could buy if she sold them; she then remembers that she needs money anyway since her mother has cut her off. After Maydelis goes to sleep, Jeanette takes Les Misérables. She doubts that her grandmother will ever notice. However, a week later, Dolores notices the missing book; she assumes, though, that Yosmany took it. Jeanette is surprised to realize that her grandmother is aware of the book’s value and fascinated to learn that Dolores had once hidden it in the walls. Dolores threatens to call the police, but Maydelis insists on talking to Yosmany first. When no one’s looking, Jeanette sneaks the book back onto the shelf and lets Maydelis find it. Though she intends to keep it a secret, she comes clean to Maydelis; as it turns out, Maydelis already suspected that Jeanette took it. Maydelis then admits that she was hoping Jeanette would send for her once they’d spent some time together but that she’s since realized Jeanette wouldn’t do that; Jeanette is taken aback and denies it, but she admits to herself that Maydelis is right, as Jeanette can barely even take care of herself. Their remaining interactions are tense.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
The bulk of this section juxtaposes Maydelis and Jeanette during Jeanette’s weeks-long trip to Cuba, which demonstrates the complexity of relationships not just between Cubans and outsiders but more specifically between Cubans and Cuban Americans. Maydelis’s chapter is first, and it’s the only chapter in the book told from the perspective of someone living in modern Cuba. Maydelis is critical of outsiders because they tend to force their own perspectives and ideals onto Cuba: As she notes, some tourists are only interested in hearing about how bad Cuba is, while others are only interested in romanticizing it (hence the chapter title, “They Like the Grimy”). The truth is more complex, but no one is interested in that; as a result, Cuba becomes whatever they want it to be, and Maydelis (and by extension, other Cubans) lean into that, which in turn makes Maydelis question her sense of self. Jeanette’s conversation with the German (“El Alemán” literally translates to “The German”) exemplifies this difference: Jeanette sees Cuba as sad and broken down, whereas the German thinks it’s romantic and beautiful, even in its being sad and broken down; meanwhile, Maydelis thinks about rolling her eyes at them both.
Along those lines, it’s also worth noting Maydelis’s perspective on Jeanette: Whereas Jeanette sees herself as Cuban—as if she’s “coming home”—Maydelis sees her as almost as much of an outsider as the German. This highlights the complex relationship between the children of immigrants and their “home” countries: In the US, Jeanette is Cuban American, and while she acknowledges that Cubans consider themselves white, she also knows that many Americans don’t consider Cubans white. However, Cubans likewise consider her an outsider, making it difficult for her to really belong anywhere. In many ways, this feeling doubles the pain of her trip. She went to Cuba because she didn’t feel like she had anything in the US, yet she doesn’t feel at home in Cuba either: Her cousin looks at her as just another American, and her grandmother’s love feels forced rather than natural—understandable, given their lack of a relationship.
Likewise, though, when the narrative switches to Jeanette’s perspective in “People Like That,” it shows how many of Maydelis’s critiques of Jeanette and other outsiders—even other Cubans—could just as easily apply to herself. For example, she “jokingly” criticizes Yosmany’s interest in Jeanette, claiming that he probably only wants valuable items from the US or to go to the US; however, Jeanette doesn’t mention that Maydelis asked her to bring her sneakers from the US, and (as the narrative makes clear) Maydelis herself wants Jeanette to send for her in Cuba. Moreover, while Maydelis tires of people romanticizing Cuba, in Jeanette’s eyes Maydelis romanticizes the US and won’t stop talking about it—which frustrates Jeanette given that she went to Cuba to escape the US.
Jeanette’s chapter title, “People Like That,” comes from the way Carmen—and, she discovers, Dolores—refers to non-white people by using a racist code. This is a way to express their racism without overtly stating it. Likewise, this chapter deals more directly than the rest of the novel with issues of racism and colorism in modern Cuban culture. Jeanette is surprised to discover that casual, blatant racism exists in Cuba, erroneously assuming that Cuba’s push for economic equality automatically translates to racial equality. (Maydelis’s discussion of jineteras and colorism further complicates this narrative: She notes that dark-skinned jineteras make more money, but this in turn has its roots in a racist exoticism that tourists exhibit.)
However, she finds that Cubans, especially those of the older generations like Dolores, still view Black Cubans with suspicion. She realizes, though, that this doesn’t much differ from the US except that in the US racism is often hidden or made more “polite” so that it can be ignored. What’s particularly interesting about these thoughts and exchanges is that the narrative reveals their familial lineage—that María Isabel was herself mixed race and that therefore her descendants are also mixed—while Jeanette recalls ways that Carmen works to look more white. Maydelis’s explanation of separate groups in Cuba is a microcosm of this larger need to divide and classify that lurks in the background throughout the novel and finds expression in the racism that simultaneously shocks and does not shock Jeanette.
Chronologically, these two chapters take place between the narrative’s introduction of Jeanette in 2014 and Carmen’s Thanksgiving dinner party in 2016, which places things at a particular moment in Jeanette’s life. In 2014, Jeanette is newly sober and is still talking to Carmen; in addition, she tells Carmen that she’s been writing letters to Maydelis. In “People Like That,” Jeanette notes that she’s been sober for a year—likely since she and Mario split up and went sober in “Everything Is Holding You Now.” She also states that her mother paid for her trip to Cuba but didn’t know that she was going to see Dolores. In 2016, however, she tells a friend that she exchanges email with Maydelis often and that she’d love to go to Cuba. This raises some questions because she implies that she’s never been to Cuba, though she’s clearly been there at some point. One possibility is that she’s lying about her exchanges with Maydelis, that their exchange at the end of “People Like That” was a falling-out from which they never recovered. Moreover, Carmen doesn’t interject, whereas in “People Like That” Carmen was the one who paid for the trip.
Ana’s chapter, “Privilegio,” gives insights into Ana and Gloria’s story while passing the torch from mother to daughter: Ana is growing up, and the narrative increasingly focuses on her perspective rather than her mother’s. However, this change also further complicates race and nationality issues. Like Jeanette, Ana has no true home: She left El Salvador when she was just a baby, but as an undocumented immigrant is considered an outsider in both the US, where she herself feels most at home, and Mexico, the place where the US so unceremoniously deported her and Gloria. Ana notes that Nancy, despite being a white, red-headed American and despite the city’s low population of ex-pats, seems to fit in more easily in Irapuato than Gloria and Ana; and even Ana’s language marks her as different—not only because she’s initially more comfortable in English but because her Spanish isn’t the right kind. Interestingly, Nancy sticks up for Gloria and Ana to Roberto, who is himself bigoted against Salvadorans; however, the novel suggests that Nancy’s defense of Gloria and Ana itself comes with a different form of racist condescension, as Nancy feels that she must explain to Gloria and Ana the bigotry they experience on a daily basis.
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