Orchids in the Shadows: Between Darkness and Light in Cuba

By Betty Viamontes

They are both on a collision course with destiny. Amelia, a single woman of faith in her mid-forties, lives with her family in the town of Remedios, located in the center of Cuba. For over twenty years, she has lived her life caring only for others and neglecting herself.

In 2022, Frank leaves his home in Miami, Florida to learn about his deceased mother’s life by visiting the town of Remedios. Once in the town of his mother’s birth, he forges a friendship with Amelia, who connects him to his past, not knowing how much he will impact her life in the process. A creature of habit, Amelia resists his idea at first. Yet, that is about to change.

But there is more to Remedios than meets the eye. It is a town struggling between darkness and light, a pillar of faith among despair, a place fighting for its own survival. In a town of ghosts and parrandas, people rooted in traditions still embrace hope as their world crumbles.

Orchids in the Shadows, darkness can only be fought with light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Betty Viamontes
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215603017

Betty Viamontes

Betty Viamontes was born in Havana, Cuba. In 1980, at age fifteen, she and her family arrived in the United States on a shrimp boat to reunite with her father after twelve years of separation. "Waiting on Zapote Street," based on her family's story, her first novel won the Latino Books into Movies award and has been selected by many book clubs. She also published an anthology of short stories, all of which take place on Zapote Street and include some of the characters from her first novel. Betty's stories have traveled the world, from the award-winning Waiting on Zapote Street to the No. 1 New Amazon re-leases "The Girl from White Creek," "The Pedro Pan Girls: Seeking Closure," and "Brothers: A Pedro Pan Story." Other works include: Havana: A Son's Journey Home The Dance of the Rose Under the Palm Trees: Surviving Labor Camps in Cuba Candela's Secrets and Other Havana Stories The Pedro Pan Girls: Seeking Closure Love Letters from Cuba Flight of the Tocororo Betty Viamontes lives in Florida with her family and pursued graduate studies at the University of South Florida.

Book preview

Foreword

Betty Viamontes has dedicated over twenty years of her life to documenting the lives of Cuban exiles. This time, however, her writings take her to a small religious town in Cuba, a town that has been slowly disappearing.

Her narration is purposely simple, but the issues she exposes are complex. The cast of characters introduced in the chapters illustrate various aspects of life in Remedios. But in a small town like this one, tarnished by hardship and a bleak economic reality, making connections is as important as breathing.

The small town of San Juan de los Remedios, or simply known as Remedios, is a place of ghosts and legends, of church-going people hanging on to faith as a castaway to hope. Their resilience is often tested.

Betty bases their stories on true events, on the lives of families that reside in this town. Within the reality of these stories evolve elements of fiction, aimed at intriguing and engaging the reader, but within an accurate historical context.

Life for its main character, Amelia, is by any definition boring. An attorney by education, she has no other option but to work at a church—actually, two churches. Why would an attorney work at a church? Betty explores the reasons and the need to conform to the incomprehensible.

However, everything changes when a stranger, Frank, comes to town. The Miami, Florida resident is searching for people who may have known his mother. Amelia connects him with his past and both their lives change in more ways than they ever anticipated.

As each character is introduced, their mutual connection is not immediately apparent. However, each character is linked to the other in aspects they will discover. These ties might be the key to their own survival.

Written by Susana Jiménez-Mueller

Author of Now I Swim

Co-author of Flight of the Tocororo

Author and producer of The Green Plantain – The Cuban Stories Project podcast

Chapter 1

San Juan Bautista de los Remedios

(The church)

Built in 1548, I have been standing in the town of Remedios for hundreds of years, witnessing it all from grieving parents to children’s faces decorated with the promises of a better future.

My orange and white colors make my presence known right across from the main square— lined with cafes, an ATM, a cigar shop, and a little market. Tourists visit me often, and tour guides talk about my history, architecture, and original wood carvings plated in gold.

For centuries, I have observed thousands of baptisms and weddings and listened to an equal number of sermons for the departed. Weddings have changed over the years from sumptuous gowns—six decades ago—to today’s simple dresses made at home or passed from generation to generation.

Everything is different yet the same. Fewer people leave money in my donation box. And I have seen many notable visitors through the years, even the president of the island, a recipient of significant criticism from the townspeople. This resentment explains the disappearance of familiar faces from my benches.

It saddens me that so many young adults, tired of waiting for a change, have left the country. And those who stayed behind now fill my rooms with more poignant prayers.

God, I pray for my daughter to make it safely to the United States, I heard a mother say.

For six months, she came in, sat on one of my wood benches, and prayed. One day, she stopped coming. Parishioners said her daughter died in the Darien Jungle in Panama. They told the grieving mother that her daughter was in a better place, that she was finally free. In honor of the deceased, the family organized a service. Everyone in town came to pay their respects. Then, life went on.

Recently, I have experienced some renovations that made me look quite beautiful, if I may say so myself. I wish the townspeople could keep their houses in the same state.

All the repair materials are controlled by the government, a parishioner whispered. And repair materials we could purchase in the black market are unaffordable.

I heard a parishioner tell a priest that a piece of their ceiling fell off and almost killed his grandmother while she was in the kitchen. The priest empathized. But his most important job is to tell parishioners about God. Yet, in this town, it is becoming easier to lose one’s faith. My purpose here is to help them preserve it.

I’m only about three miles from the northern coast, in the middle of the island—a pillar of faith among so much despair. The priests and nuns do what they can to help parishioners. However, they can't do much about the lack of food and medicine, nor can they get involved in politics. They must remain as neutral bystanders, which can be difficult at times. God knows that if the people lose their faith, they will have lost it all.

And so, I will continue to stand here—if these walls don’t crumble under the pressure of misery—offering hope, allowing visitors to sit on one of my benches to rest their tired feet, and bearing witness to the destruction of a nation that refuses to die.

Chapter 2

The Blackout

(Amelia)

Every day is a race against the blackout. We know it will arrive but not when. And when it does, the heat will grow, that heat that melts sidewalks and our very souls.

When darkness comes, I rush to light the candle I left on top of the square dining-room table, a table not big enough for the seven people who live in our house: my mother and uncle, my two nieces and their parents, and me. Then we sit around the table.

Mami, Tío, do you want me to splash some water on your face? I ask my mother and my uncle, who walk aided by metal walkers.

Maybe a little later, she responds. Stay here now.

Tía Amelia, tell me a ghost story, my six-year-old niece says.

That’s what my mother named me, Amelia, which in Hebrew means work of God and in Germanic connotes fertility and industriousness. Some might say that I do the work of God when I organize activities for a group of teenagers in church, other people’s children. But I will never bear children or have a husband. Helping the children of others will have to do.

From the day of my birth—on March 15, 1977—forty-five years ago, I seemed predestined to live in darkness. Yet I bring light into my life by stepping into the faded splendor of an old church in the town of Remedios—in the province of Villa Clara, Cuba—a town of legends, ghosts, parrandas, and pirates.

I feel at peace when I enter the church, and the sound of my footsteps echoes on the tiled floors. The walls protect me from the outside world, from the soldiers that monitor the square. The saints inside it bear witness to my prayers. They stand tall, offering comfort.

God, we pray a miracle. Please save us from the ruthless and the godless. Give the people in this town hope.

After talking to God and doing the sign of the cross, I step into a small office where my responsibilities await. Using the old computer, which sits on a cluttered desk, I record each birth, death, and wedding.

Josefa Rodríguez Pérez was born on the 15th of September 2022 in the town of Remedios to her parents Antonio Rodríguez Coto and Leila Pérez Fernandez. This is one of many entries. But in the past twenty years, the population has declined by over 25 percent.

Less than 34,000 people live here now. The average age is forty-two. Ten of Remedios’s inhabitants are over one hundred years old. Somehow, they have managed to survive. They have seen it all. Such a blessing and a curse to live that long.

I like talking to Teresa, one of the oldest women in town whose mind is still intact. Teresa remembers better times when it wasn’t necessary to have long lines, when milk was not restricted based on age, when a slice of cheese was not a luxury.

Teresa can no longer make the long lines to buy her monthly quota, but some of us take turns helping her. My mother says we are angels who still walk among us.

Watching the town’s population decline makes me wonder if one day Remedios will cease to exist. But I cannot worry about such things. More pressing and immediate problems trouble me.

I don’t make much money, even though I am an attorney by education. The church is the only employer that hires a blacklisted person like me, so this will be my job for as long as I live: recordkeeping for this church that glows on sunny afternoons and changes color throughout the day—from bright white to yellow orange when the sun begins to set in the horizon.

Sometimes, I wish the sun would shine day and night, so I don’t see the ghosts who come to haunt my evenings, like that of my Spanish grandfather, Manuel. I wish I could see the real him, not his ghost. I want him to pat me on my head, like he did when I was a child, and tell me there will be better days.

I miss the times when my grandfather and I visited El Parque Vidal in Santa Clara, thirty miles away from Remedios. That park was the center of life in that city and our special place, a place that held so many memories. These outings were his way to fill the void my father left when he died a few days before my eighth birthday. When we sat on a park bench under the shade of a Flamboyant tree, he would tell me stories about his beloved