“You look nice in your white dress, my child, and it is such a beautiful day. We should remember it.”
I stood in front of the Capitolio, and the photographer set his camera on its tripod and snapped the picture. After a few moments, he handed me a square of paper, still wet, bearing an image of me smiling into the camera. The first picture of me in Cuba.
I stared at the girl in the picture. Was this really me? Esther from Govorovo? I didn’t recognize myself. I had changed in the last few months. I stood straighter; I was more sure of myself. And now I looked like I belonged here. The white dress caught the rays of Cuba’s sunshine and it seemed as if I was glowing with happiness.
“Muy bonita,” the photographer said. Then he added with a chuckle, “Hold the photo by the edges until it dries. That way it will last until you are old like me.”
Papa and I continued on, and as we got closer to El Encanto, I began to feel nervous. But the guard who had told me to leave the last time now opened the door. We entered, and the store was all lit up and glittering, with glass counters filled with perfumes and powders.
We went up to a pretty woman wearing red lipstick who stood behind one of the counters and asked if she knew how to find Isabel de la Fuente.
“Is she expecting you?”
Papa nodded.
“She’s on the fourth floor. You can take the elevator.” She pointed to the end of the hall.
An elevator? What was that? Both Papa and I were too embarrassed to ask.
We went in the direction she pointed and saw people entering what looked like a steel closet. A woman dressed in a stylish suit with a lapel flower sat on a small stool. “Entra, entra,” she said.
We squeezed in, along with many other people, and she pressed a lever. The contraption took us into the air. Even though I was standing still, it seemed like I was flying.
“Primer piso.”
“Segundo piso.”
“Tercer piso.”
The elevator stopped on every floor and people poured in and out, some proudly holding shopping bags filled with the things they’d bought.
Finally I heard, “Cuarto piso.”
Waiting there to greet us was Isabel de la Fuente with a big smile.
“¡Bienvenidos! ¿CÓmo están, Señor Abraham y Señorita Esther?” She gazed at my dress and said, “How lovely you look, like a palomita.”
I didn’t mind being compared to a little dove.
How wonderful it felt being treated not like an annoying fly, but like an important person.
Isabel de la Fuente led us to the salon de señoritas, where they sold clothes for young girls.
Here, she said, was where they wanted to sell my dresses. Her boss thought my designs would be very popular with the girls and their mothers who shopped at El Encanto. But there was a problem. She lowered her voice to a whisper. She’d kept it a secret from her boss that I was a refugee. The law in Cuba didn’t allow refugees to work. Also, I was too young. But Isabel de la Fuente had a suggestion. “Since your father is your guardian, and he is a legal resident in Cuba, we could name him in the contract. Is that all right with you, Esther?”
I tried to answer as best I could, with Papa helping me with some Spanish words.
I told her, “All the dresses I am making are for one reason—to bring my family here from Poland. My mother, my grandmother, my sister, and my three brothers are waiting for us to send them their steamship tickets. I will be happy to have the contract in my father’s name.”
“Muy bien,” Isabel de la Fuente said. “Then we can work together. You won’t have to sew all the dresses yourself anymore. We have a factory, and the dresses can be made there.”
“A real factory with many workers and many sewing machines?”
“That’s right,” she said, and smiled.
“So what will I do?” I asked.
“You’ll design the dresses, creating the samples for us, and then we will make them.”
This was going to be so much easier than working for Rifka Rubenstein! I could still sew a few dresses each week for her, but now I’d be able to experiment with different designs and they’d make as many copies as they wanted for El Encanto.
When Isabel de la Fuente told us what we’d earn for the sale of the dresses, Papa and I hugged each other. We’d be earning triple what Rifka Rubenstein paid for each dress!
“If the dresses sell, we can pay you more,” Isabel de la Fuente added, and I thought to myself, Pooh, pooh, this is too good to be true.
Isabel de la Fuente said they liked the designs of the dresses they had borrowed with the buttons down the front and the pockets at the hips and planned to make them in many sizes and fabrics. If we gave El Encanto permission, they would start sewing those right away in their factory.
Papa looked at me to be sure I agreed. Then he said yes and he read through the contract carefully before he signed it.
“Look, my dear Esther, see what it says here.”
Papa smiled and pointed to the part that said the label on the dresses would read, “Designs by Esther. Exclusively for El Encanto.”
“Is that all right with you?” Isabel de la Fuente asked me.
“¡Sí, sí!” I replied, almost fainting with joy.
“I had a good feeling this would all work out, so we prepared an advance for you,” she said, holding out an envelope. “I am so pleased for you both.”
Then Isabel de la Fuente praised my designs once more and asked if I could come up with two or three new designs by the end of June.
Of course I said I would.
Everything seemed to glitter afterward, not just El Encanto, but the whole world. We stopped at Rifka Rubenstein’s to deposit the money in her safe, and when Papa saw how much Isabel de la Fuente had given us, he exclaimed, “She is an angel God has sent to us. Now we’ll take a stroll on the Malecón to celebrate. Remember, Esther, how you wanted to go for a stroll on the day you arrived in Havana and we didn’t have time? Today, we make time!”
We crisscrossed through the crowded streets of Old Havana and found our way to the Paseo del Prado, an elegant boulevard lined with marble benches and shaded by a canopy of trees. Sculptures of lions stood regally on each corner.
“They say Havana is the Paris of the Caribbean,” Papa remarked. “I doubt I’ll ever get to visit Paris, but this seems like a very fine city to me.”
“I don’t know how Mama ever got the idea that Cuba was one big jungle. Papa, look at that mansion! It’s like a frosted cake!” I pointed to a tall building with elaborate designs and a curly balcony on its third floor.