The Apartment

Praise for The Apartment“A dazzling inquiry into the disquietudes of time and place, of past and present, and the global exiles who inhabit the realms in between. Menéndez’s exquisitely wrought stories—emanating from the life span of one modest Miami apartment—offer us no less than the world. A masterful, poetic achievement.”—Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban“Stunning in its intimate yet vast portrayal of humanity, The Apartment tenderly summons the power of our bonds to place and community, evoking the grace of human connections that save us time and time again. A balm for our deeply divided times.”—Richard Blanco, presidential inaugural poet, author of The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood“Ana Menéndez gives us an intimate, picturesque tale that grows into a mysterious and supernatural journey through time as the conflicted narrators become ghosts and echoes of each other. Striking and haunting, this powerful novel battles between gut-wrenchingly lonely and harrowing moments in America and the multifaceted, resilient, and radically caring community that has blossomed against them. It’s a reminder that we breathe new air everyday, that we are always connected to each other, that we survive when we stick together.”—Xochitl Gonzalez, author of Olga Dies Dreaming“Menéndez writes from the gut, expertly crafting the tensions and bitterness of misplacement, the suffocation of place. She also writes from the spleen; Menéndez’s acerbic wit finds its way interstitially through the pages of this book, finding another gear for an already beautiful prose. The array of characters, all of whom have jumped out of a frying pan and into a fire, and specifically, into apartment 2B of the Helena, are escaping a past that won’t let them be. They’re immigrants and refugees whose hopelessness at times obfuscates their political realities: here isn’t always better than there. At the center of this book, Menéndez has constructed a home, a building, a city; she’s also drawn a line—possibly a circle—that stretches from imperialism to mental health.”—Alejandro Varela, author of The People Who Report More Stress“Ingenious in its construction, intimate in its storytelling, and illuminating in its insights, The Apartment is both an unforgettable reading experience and a fascinating character in itself: like the mysterious stranger next door whose history, hopes, longings, secrets, and surprises thrillingly reveal themselves over time.”—Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men“Ana Menéndez should be donned the poet laureate of South Beach—not the South Beach of Versace mansions and trendy nightclubs but a more human place where wanderers seek the kind of quotidian security that often proves so elusive for us all. The Apartment is a jewel of a novel that dares question the very notion of what we consider home—a stunning meditation on the ghosts we leave behind and the phantoms that are perennially our companions in exile”—Ernesto Mestre-Reed, author of Sacrificio“An exquisite palimpsest of culture, memory, and place, Ana Menéndez’s The Apartment is the Canterbury Tales ALSO BY ANA MENÉNDEZAdios, Happy Homeland!The Last WarLoving CheIn Cuba I Was a German Shepherd In memory of my grandmothers There is no face that is not on the verge of blurring and fading away like the faces in a dream. Everything in the world of mortals has the value of the irrecoverable and contingent.—JORGE LUIS BORGESThe dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.—ANNE CARSON ContentsSophie, 1942Eugenio, 1963Sandman, 1972Isabel, 1982Margot, 1984Susan, 1988Marilyn, 1994Beatrice, 2002Pilar, 2010Lenin, 2011Lana, 2012AcknowledgmentsCreditsAbout the Author A serpent coils through the underbrush of palmetto and coco plum. It’s a still, dry afternoon, so the woman hears the creature before she sees it. A crackle of brown leaves, like a fire starting. She stops, instinctively raises her basket of turtle eggs. Death wouldn’t be so bad as the loss of the evening meal. She scans the mesh of roots. A flash of red and yellow, and the woman goes cold. But then the small bands of black slide into view as the snake undulates past. The woman relaxes her arms. Harmless, this one. This time.She doesn’t count the years the way the strangers who have begun appearing on these shores count the years. Next season, a new traveler will appear, body covered with too much clothing, like all his kind. He will introduce himself as Menéndez de Avilés. The following season, the woman’s mother will struggle to breathe for five nights and then die. Others will develop the same strange sickness. Generations later, the weakened tribe will fall to the invading Uchises and Yamases. The survivors will flee to a great new city called Havana, where most of them will die. The survivors of the survivors will return, thin and scarred. More clothed men will arrive to build first one hut, then another along the sea-facing shore. Then great machines, of the kind the woman cannot imagine, will occupy this slender island. Men will lay down planks to ride their machines from the mainland.By then the woman’s tribe will have vanished from this barrier island. Their three souls—eyes, shadows, reflections—will be left to wander without rest. The only evidence that they lived will be a mound of skulls that a future tribe of speculators will uncover a half day’s walk north of the spot where, on this day of the distant past, the woman gathers her family’s meal. To her, time is ripples on the water’s surface, concentric circles that form and re-form: The season of biting insects, the season of storms, the season of turtle eggs, the season of blue skies, and then the season of biting insects, the storms, the turtle eggs . . . The world turning again and again,