Dreaming in Cuban: Baskets of Water Summary & Analysis

Ivanito. Ivanito started teaching himself English out of his Abuelo Jorge’s old textbooks. At school, students are only allowed to study English with special permission; most study Russian. Ivanito’s Russian instructor, Sergey Mikoyan, tells him that he has a gift for languages. Mr. Mikoyan is especially fond of Ivanito. After class, he tells Ivanito stories about Russia and quotes Tolstoy. Ivanito longs to live in a world that, like Russia, preserves its history.

One day, after class, Mr. Mikoyan stands close to Ivanito and says that he’s going back to Russia. He warns Ivanito that he might hear “vile” rumors. When Ivanito turns to look at his teacher, Mr. Mikoyan suddenly embraces Ivanito fiercely and strokes his hair, repeating his name. Ivanito runs. Much later, he hears cruel jokes about Mr. Mikoyan’s “indiscretions.” They start teasing Ivanito, too. Ivanito doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to.

1978. This year’s Santería forecast is mixed. On one hand, the dead are benevolent toward the living; on the other hand, the living must strive hard to get what they want. Felicia knows exactly what she wants: another husband. Early in the year, she visits a santero who’s known for his divination skill. Though the santero casts the shells repeatedly, he gets repeated predictions of misfortune. He tells Felicia that “water cannot be carried in a basket.”

The santero gives Felicia a simple spell to perform in order to cleanse herself of evil. Felicia intends to follow his advice, but instead, on her way home, she falls in love with Ernesto Brito. He pedals past her on a bicycle, then falls to the ground on a sharp turn. Felicia helps him up and comforts him, then pulls him into her car. Four days later, Ernesto, who’s a restaurant inspector, dies in a grease fire in a hotel.

At Ernesto’s small funeral, Felicia is hysterical. She knew almost nothing about Ernesto—she was his first lover, and they’d spent three days sleeping together, insatiably. Felicia finds out that she and Ernesto had been born on the same day and year, just minutes apart. Felicia writes to El Líder, demanding an investigation into Ernesto’s death. He doesn’t respond, so Felicia becomes convinced that El Líder must have specifically plotted Ernesto’s death.

Felicia even becomes convinced that one of her beauty shop customers, Graciela, is a government spy who must have been complicit in Ernesto’s murder. She coaxes Graciela into coming to the shop for a special hair treatment, then mixes lye into a paste which she rubs into the woman’s scalp, burning her. After that, Felicia doesn’t remember anything for a long time.

Felicia regains awareness in an unfamiliar room. She hears carnival noises outside. Felicia dresses in a dirty set of men’s work clothes she finds in a closet, eats some food she finds in the oddly familiar kitchen, then ventures outside. A passerby tells her it’s July 26, 1978. As she walks around the carnival, men in similar work clothes call her name and blow kisses. A bearlike, barrel-chested man calls Felicia over and fondles her. He tells her he’s talked to a friend about catching a boat to Key West; then, he wants to settle in Minnesota with Felicia and open an ice rink. But all Felicia cares about is getting her clothes back.

Felicia spends the next week trying to piece her memories back together—she can’t remember anyone except Ivanito. For his part, Otto Cruz adores Felicia. He’d discovered her wandering around the spare-parts warehouse the previous winter and married her the next day. He finds her “crazy and beautiful and mysterious” and does whatever she wants. One night, she leads Otto to the carnival’s roller coaster. They end up having sex during the ride, and when the car pauses on a hill, Otto somehow falls from the car and is killed.

The day after Felicia’s incident with Graciela, Celia’s son Javier comes home from Czechoslovakia, terribly sick. He sleeps for three weeks, occasionally telling her bits of his story while in delirium. Celia learns that Javier’s wife ran away with another professor and that their daughter went with them. Celia spoon-feeds her son and reads him poetry, wondering if Javier “inherited her habit of ruinous passion.” Of all her children, she sympathizes with him the most.

After two months, Javier gets out of bed, but he spends wads of American cash on black-market rum, his condition worsening. Celia cuts back on her work, even resigning from the People’s Court. Her last case is sentencing a 15-year-old boy, found guilty of writing antirevolutionary stories, to work as a theater apprentice, educating peasants in the countryside. She hopes the theater work will channel the boy’s talents toward the revolution instead of away from it.

Celia now spends her time tending to Javier as if he’s a little boy. She doesn’t even think about Felicia, who’s gone missing, or her faraway grandchildren. She decides to track down the santera from east Havana who’d helped her as a young woman. The santera, now elderly, remembers Celia and kindly accompanies her home. She prays a series of Catholic prayers under the tree in Celia’s front yard, and then her eyes roll back in her head; she abruptly crumples to the ground and disappears, smoking. Celia doesn’t know what to do, so she just folds up the santera’s shawl and goes inside. She finds that Javier has gone. She also finds a lump in her chest and, within a week, her left breast is removed.