“They should send you all back to your country. You’re a bunch of rotten apples!” The priest slipped inside the building, and Mr. Handsome launched a rock that hit the door just as the priest shut it tight.
“You son of a—” Mr. Handsome started, but I interrupted him, shocked at his audacity.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Stay out of this, Madrid,” he jeered.
Manuel grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back. The boys all began picking up rocks and lobbing them at the church’s stained-glass windows, swearing and laughing like maniacs. For them, the Catholic Church was the enemy, and they could not understand the religiosity of the Mexicans.
The windows shattered under the onslaught, the fragments scattering over the street in a rain of colors. Inside the church building, praying women began to scream.
Mr. Handsome ran toward the building, flung open the door, and together with his cronies started throwing rocks at the wooden statues. Once satisfied with their mess, they ran out and toward another church building, calling to another group of Spaniard boys to join them.
“Let’s get back to the school,” Manuel said, pulling on my sleeve.
“But we have to tell the police!” I was worried. If we were accused of destroying churches a few days after arriving in the town, I didn’t know how long Mexico would put up with us. I had gotten my hands on a newspaper a couple days earlier and had read about how things were going in Spain. The fascists kept advancing, and from all indications, the war would last another year or two.
“But they’ll blame us for what’s happened,” Manuel said.
I had made up my mind to go find the police when we saw the rabble-rousers headed straight toward us with dozens of angry Mexicans on their heels. We didn’t think twice. We ran back to the school as fast as we could and slammed and bolted the gate shut as soon as all the Spaniards were inside. From our cover inside the main building, we could hear the wooden gate creaking and Morelia’s townsfolk shouting for the vandals to come out.
Major Godínez found us hiding in our room and asked what had happened. I ran through the situation, and he went out to speak to his countrymen. First, he asked them to calm down, and then he opened the gate. We crouched down behind the windows so they wouldn’t see us.
One of the Mexicans said, “These Spaniard children are little devils!”
“They’re just children,” Major Godínez said, “and things are different in Spain. Over there, the church is against the Republic, just like it was here during the revolution. This won’t happen again.” His pudgy, friendly demeanor didn’t quite divert the rage of the angry parishioners of the vandalized churches.
While Major Godínez tried to calm down the crowd, one of the teachers called the police to come protect the school. Soon the police had cordoned off the buildings and asked the crowd to disperse. People trickled away, but for several days we weren’t allowed to leave the school grounds, and police were stationed on guard.
* * *
Life in Morelia eventually fell into a routine. Things had calmed down after the incident with the vandalized church, though the bullies still had free rein at school. Manuel and I had joined forces with some Asturian boys in an effort to protect some of the Mexican students, especially Gaspar and Baltasar, who had become our good friends.
One morning a few weeks after the church incident we heard screams coming from the yard outside. It was the voice of Saturnino, one of the guards in charge of opening and shutting the gate.
Manuel turned to me. “Did you hear that?”
We dashed down the stairs and out to the yard. Saturnino was bent over next to the gate, and a child’s body lay beside him. We ran to him and found little Paquito, who was motionless.
We looked at his blackened body. Some of his hair was missing, and his face was contorted in frozen pain.
“What happened?” we asked Saturnino.
“I don’t know,” he answered in a daze. Then we heard voices on the other side of the gate.
“Open the gate!” we insisted. Saturnino hesitated for a moment, then unlatched the lock and pulled back the wooden doors. Four trembling girls stared at us for a moment, then threw themselves into our arms, sobbing.
“What happened?” we asked.
“We don’t know,” said Paquito’s younger sister. “Yesterday we went to the movies, and we got back a little late. We knocked at the gate, but nobody answered. We were scared, so we beat and kicked at the gate, but the guard told us the gate was shut and he couldn’t open it after hours. Paquito started climbing the wall to jump over so he could open it up himself. We saw him get to the top and jump, but then we heard a scream and saw a big spark.” She dissolved into tears. Paquito was her only sibling, and now she was truly alone in the world. Her friends hugged her while dozens of kids ran out of the building and gathered around the corpse.
Lamberto Moreno, the director, showed up half dressed. When he saw the boy’s scorched body, he started screaming like a madman. “Bloody Spaniards! Curse my luck! Get away from here, all of you! Back to your dorms!”
We headed back inside with our heads hung low. As I sank down onto my bunk, I was grateful my sisters hadn’t been there to see the body.
“Why did they bring us here anyway?” Manuel demanded, fuming.
“To kill us,” one of the Asturians snapped.
I wanted to cheer them up, to assure them it would all work out, but nobody had the energy for that. I was also wondering what we were doing on the other side of the world where nobody cared enough to take care of us. In Spain, despite the war and the hunger, at least our parents loved us and would never have allowed something like what happened to Paquito to occur.
That day lasted forever, and nobody got much sleep that night. Early the next morning would be the burial. Four of Paquito’s friends carried his white coffin down the streets of Morelia while the rest of us followed in silence. The little kids cried openly, but we older ones swallowed back our tears in fury and fear.
The funeral was short and sterile, and we clamped our mouths shut in a pact of silent suffering. For the first time since our journey had begun, we realized that something had linked us all together in a bond that could never be broken. We belonged to the army of the defenseless, the poor Children of Morelia. Yet we were eager for justice. We knew who was guilty of Paquito’s death: the director and his henchmen who from the very start had treated us with indifference or outright contempt.
When the unemotional funeral was over, the gravediggers lowered the body of our classmate into the grave. With each shovelful, the sound of dirt hitting the newly hewn wood concentrated our indignation. One of the older boys couldn’t hold it in anymore and started yelling at Moreno. He grabbed a rock and threw it at the director, though he missed. Moreno stared at him, then took off running toward the church. The rest of the teachers followed their leader even as more and more children picked up rocks to throw. The adults shut themselves inside the church before the onslaught, but we pushed our way inside the church and gave free rein to our pent-up fury, destroying everything we could touch. I couldn’t think straight. I had never given my rage such complete control over my body. It slowly worked its way out in that frenetic, uncontrolled mob.
Moreno managed to escape and headed back toward the school. We followed and cornered him along with several other caretakers and cooks who had done nothing but disparage us for the past weeks. One of the adults, Cabanillas, screamed from the other side of the door they were hiding behind that we lowlifes had gotten what we deserved.
The police showed up to rescue the director and his assistants, who filed out of the school with security. That was the only good thing to come from the sad death of our classmate. We had begun 1937 in Spain with our families, but we now found ourselves in a foreign country, under the care of malicious, lazy people who had stolen the money the Mexican government had set aside for our upkeep.
I went and found my sisters in one of the rooms in the gi
rls’ building. They looked as sad as the day we said goodbye to Mom in Bordeaux. I embraced them both, hoping that at least the warmth of my body could help pull them out of this terrible day’s gloom. Isabel’s eyes begged for help, and that night I swore we’d go back to Spain. I wanted to die in our land, next to the people we loved most in the world. It didn’t matter how long it took us or how awful the journey might be. Nothing could keep us apart from our parents. We would overcome every obstacle along the way because we were fueled by the greatest strength a human being can experience: the invincible power of love.
Chapter 21
The Story of a Journey
Morelia
January 6, 1938
In the months after our arrival, some children went to live with family members who were already living in Mexico. Others went to live with extended family in Mexico or were sent to Mexico City because they were too old for the program.
The winter days got cooler. Though the temperature in that region of the country nearly always hovered around 68 degrees, some mornings were chilly. Christmas was coming, and we were all feeling glum. We hadn’t heard from our parents, and the prospect of celebrating Christmas in a faraway place seemed dismal. Even though we didn’t celebrate like the Catholics, we still were used to spending time with our families and enjoying a special meal.
Christmas came and went without much ado. Then twelve days later, the magic night when mythical beings bring presents to girls and boys was one of the saddest nights in Morelia. In Spain, most of us hadn’t celebrated the arrival of the magi—also known as the three wise men, or the three kings. In many places in Spain, the event was no longer commemorated, and the people of Madrid substituted three magic queens for the kings, as a joke on Christianity.
Manuel, some of my friends, and I had gathered some items together to surprise the younger kids, including my sisters. We’d hidden our loot in one of the workshops, and when everyone else went to sleep, we retrieved our gifts and left them beside the little boys’ shoes. Then some of the older girls did the same for the younger girls. After setting out all the presents, we went to our bunks.
“What are you thinking about?” Manuel asked me.
“I don’t know. This just isn’t at all what I’d imagined. Things are going from bad to worse.”
“I heard they’re bringing us a new director.”
I sighed. “I hope so too, but don’t count on it being any better.”
We slept so deeply that we didn’t wake up ’til we heard the little kids screaming. We thought they were screaming with delight, so we ran toward their room, but soon we could tell they were not screaming for joy. Manuel and I looked at each other in disbelief. What had happened? We figured the older boys had been messing with us again. The little kids carried on with their tears. As Manuel and I went toward them, one little boy named Miguel ran up and threw himself into my arms.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Our shoes!” he moaned, pointing.
We stepped toward the shoes and were repulsed by the stench. They boys’ shoes were filled with feces. Someone had spent the night stealing their presents and leaving behind a mess.
“This is the last straw!” I roared.
“What are you going to do?” Manuel sounded worried.
I dashed back to our dorm. Five of the big bullies were roaring with laughter at the cries of the poor children. I stood to my full height in front of the ringleader and stared into his face from a distance of mere inches.
“What’s eating your lunch, Madrid? Did the wise men forget to leave you a present? I thought the reds didn’t believe that garbage.”
“You monsters! How could you do that to those little kids after everything they’ve been through? What kind of savage beasts are you?” I raged.
“The kind that’ll rip your guts out if you don’t get off our backs. At least we can have a bit of fun. Those little snots have to learn what life is really like since Mommy and Daddy aren’t here to spoil them anymore.”
I balled my hands up and lunged at the ringleader’s neck. We fell to the ground, and he easily pinned me, raining his fists down on my face. Manuel shoved him back and tackled him, while the Asturians and the two Mexican brothers went after the rest. As I struggled to my feet, I smiled through my blackening eye. The jerks got what was coming to them for once.
Eventually we heard the approaching footsteps of adults. We must have really been making a ruckus for them to care enough to investigate.
After they separated us, my friends and I went outside, pleased at finally having stood up to the bullies. At least they would know from then on that they couldn’t get away with cruelty without tasting a bit of their own medicine.
Chapter 22
Costly Change
Morelia
January 10, 1938
A few days after the magi incident, the school’s new director arrived. We didn’t have much to lose. After the horrible experience with Moreno, we assumed anyone could do better. But, to our surprise, our circumstances worsened. The new director showed up incognito a few days after Three Kings Day and interviewed some children under the guise of being a newspaper reporter. He was trying to discover what really happened at the school. The next day he revealed his actual identity, to the consternation of the students who’d talked about the cruelty and mistreatment by the previous director.
His name was Reyes Pérez, and he was relentless. From the start, he wanted to impose military-style discipline in both buildings. I’ve never liked military discipline or people barking commands at me. Things would’ve worked much better in the school if they’d thought about solidarity and basic principles for getting along. Instead, they focused on authority.
Reyes Pérez showed up in a uniform, high black boots, and a khaki combat jacket. He didn’t have a soldier’s build, but he made up for it with his demeanor.
“Boys and girls from the Motherland,” he began, “your first six months in Mexico have been difficult, but things are about to change. The first thing I can promise is that you’ll be able to write your parents. I’m aware that up to now they’ve not been able to contact you, but I’ll ask for just a little more of your patience. Tomorrow we’ll gather up the letters you want to write, and we hope that within two months you’ll receive an answer. The food, cleanliness, and upkeep of our campus will improve. We plan to disinfect everything, get organized, and help you become useful men and women. When you return to Spain, you’ll take back to your great nation the knowledge you acquire here to help the Republic put itself back together after the war.”
His words cheered us. Despite what adults often think, adolescents appreciate discipline and clear rules and boundaries on their lives. Children raised in anarchy become insecure, fickle, unhappy adults. What we didn’t yet understand was that we would pay for these school improvements through suffering.
“To maintain order and discipline, and to be able to work better together,” Reyes Pérez continued, “we’ll adopt a hierarchy. I’ve chosen the most capable students from among you, those who demonstrate leadership qualities. They will receive a higher rank, and the rest of the students will obey them as if I myself were giving the commands. Do you understand?”
We nodded and answered in unison, “Yes, sir!”
Then the director named the students who would be our leaders, and he pinned badges on them so we would recognize their new roles. I was dismayed to see that most of the students named were the wretched bullies I’d had run-ins with on several occasions: Mr. Handsome, Luis, and others who were even worse. Such were the ones the new director handpicked to impart order. Most of the children in the “shock troops,” as Reyes Pérez called them, were the ones who threatened the other students, harassed the girls, skipped class, and stole things in town. Among the teachers, Reyes Pérez selected a group of communists as hardline as himself.
The last student’s name to be called for the shock troops was my own, which dumbfounded me. Perhaps he had h
eard rumors of my fight with the bullies on Three Kings Day.
Contrary to our initial hopes, the changes instituted at school only made things worse. It’s true that food and hygiene improved and that our schedule ran like clockwork, but these came at a price. The school became an environment of terror because the bullies could and did do anything they wanted. I was a brake on their train, but when I wasn’t around, they had their way with the others.
That afternoon of Reyes Pérez’s initial speech, we got busy writing letters to our families. I went to look for Isabel and Ana, and we sat under a tree to write.
At first, we didn’t know what to say. So many things had happened, and we didn’t know what to tell them and what to leave out. We didn’t want them to worry even more than they likely already did.
“What are you saying?” Ana asked me. She’d only jotted down a couple lines.
“Want me to read it out loud?” I asked. They nodded, so I leaned over the yellow paper and studied my fine, nearly perfect script.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I hope you’re both healthy and safe. We haven’t had news of you in six months, and we really hope you’re all right. We don’t know what is happening in Spain. We don’t get much outside news here.
The trip to Mexico was pretty calm. Though it isn’t easy crossing the sea in a boat, we got to Cuba without any major catastrophes, and the people there welcomed us enthusiastically and affectionately. From there we went on to the port of Veracruz.
The Mexicans received us with open arms. They gave us everything they had, especially their kindness. The people and the climate on this side of the world are very warm. They’re always smiling and happy, and they like to sing and celebrate, though they take more care with their language than we do.
The thing we liked most when we got to Mexico was the fruit. It’s like ours but tastes so much better. Mexican food is pretty spicy, and it’s really different from what we eat in Spain. We don’t care for it much, but we’re getting used to it.
Remember Me Page 13
