two weeks past

What is the kitchen? Where is the kitchen? One observes that the kitchen is more than the kitchen but extends to the dining room, the washing machine hallway, the residence’s rooftop. In the kitchen is the empty fridge. It doesn’t work. In the dining room is the working fridge. This is where the food is refrigerated- the juices, the water, the bottom drawers full of tomatoes. But not all of the produce is kept in the fridge. Boxes of lettuce, spinach and pineapples are kept neatly stacked in the little through-way that holds the washing machine, also connecting the kitchen to the door out to the hallway. If produce is not kept here you may find it outside on the roof in the open closet-like alcove next to the empty swimming pool, best view of Havana. In the alcove under the ladder with a sheet hanging to dry is a bag of potatoes, a box of plantains. Sometimes we find boxes of larger tubers and then we know that we will be having malanga for dinner soon.

The eggs, stacked 4 flats high, 30 small eggs to a flat, are kept not in the fridge, not outside of the fridge, but on top of the fridge, not the dining room fridge but the kitchen fridge, the one that does not work. We put cakes on top of the fridge, too, though these go on working fridges. At Casa de las Américas, Morgan’s birthday cake was kept on top of the fridge in the school’s kitchen. When I came back to the residence carrying the cake I asked Marta where to place it, followed her to the dining room fridge and, thinking she meant inside the fridge, opened the fridge. Her hand began smacking the top, “No. Aquí! Aquí!,” and then it occurred to me that perhaps the on-top-of-the-fridge resting place for cakes was a universal practice in Cuba.