“Joaquin, what’s wrong?”
“Amy,” I say, “I …” My breath catches. I haven’t ever cried in front of her. But my voice cracks.
“Amy, I have to get out of here,” I say, my voice dropping down to a whisper.
She frowns, confused. “You mean here, like the restaurant?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears.
“No,” I say. “Here … like my family. Here like this town.”
When I open my eyes Amy’s face is twisted with confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I just can’t be here anymore. I have to go away.”
“Next year we’re going to Austin,” she says, gripping my hands in hers. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
I pull my hands away, otherwise I’ll never be able to do this. She winces.
“I know but …” I can’t find the words to explain it to her but I still try, telling her what happened the day before when Mami and Elena engaged in their warped mind games. “I … I have to leave now,” I say, finishing the story. “Like right now. I have to get out before I get sucked in.”
“Hey, we can figure this out,” she says, and now she is crying, tears streaming down her face. “Maybe you can stay with Carlos? Or get your own apartment if you pick up more shifts at the restaurant?”
I close my eyes again and shake my head.
“Amy,” I tell her, “if I don’t leave Mariposa Island now I’ll never get out.”
When I open my eyes, her cheeks are red, and even though she is still crying, when she speaks her voice is fierce with anger.
“Are you breaking up with me?” she asks, incredulous. She sniffs and uses her free hand to wipe her eyes. “Is that what you’re saying? We’re just … done?”
The way she spits out the word done makes my heart sink. I give in to my own tears at last, letting them fall down my face.
“Amy …” I don’t have the words.
“I can’t believe this,” she presses, crossing her arms over her chest. She looks away, but she doesn’t move from in front of the door.
“Amy, I’m sorry,” I mumble at last, crying hard now, barely able to see. I walk past her—it’s the only way out—and I push open the break room door and race through the restaurant, still wearing my waiter’s apron. When I get outside El Mirador, I head toward the side of the building where Amy and I used to talk and flirt when we first met. Now I stand there alone, gulping for air until the tears stop at last.
The week between my deciding I’m going to leave and the morning Carlos is supposed to give me a lift to the Greyhound station in Houston goes by in almost total silence—at least between Mami and Elena and me. Well, Mami and Elena still talk. I can hear their back-and-forth at night as they watch television.
A few days before I’m taking off, I’m busy digging through books and T-shirts and flyers from old punk shows and way too many cassettes, trying to figure out what I can part with and what I have to take. There are a few cassettes I’d like to leave Amy, but she’s not talking to me anymore. She asked Carlos to schedule us on different shifts.
Suddenly, I hear the front door open. It’s Elena, back from being out with J.C.
Her steps are loud and heavy. She drops her keys. Once. Again.
“Damn,” she mutters. Then she appears, suddenly, at my bedroom door. “Hey. Hey, you.”
I turn to look at her, tilt my head, and decide to make it light. “Did you break into the Callahans’ liquor cabinet again, Elena?”
She rolls her eyes and falls back onto my unmade bed.
“I drank allll of their vodka,” she answers, her face full of mock shame. “I’m the worst babysitter on the planet.”
She’s being like old times, silly. Goofy. I know it’s because she’s drunk, but at least she’s talking to me.
“You packing?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I tell her. I pull an old T-shirt from the closet, the one from my LBJ High track days. I toss it toward her and it lands on her face. She yanks it off and tries to focus her gaze on it.
“You can keep that one,” I say. “You were always stealing it out of the laundry anyway.”
Elena clutches the T-shirt to her chest, then curls up on her side. “Thank you, big brother,” she whispers.
Like a knife is sliding through my chest.
“Elena,” I say, taking advantage of the situation. It may be my only chance. “Elena, can we talk about why I’m moving? I mean, are we ever going to discuss it?”
Elena closes her eyes. “Joaquin?” she says.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to have this talk right now, okay?” she tells me. “Okay? It’s fine. You’re going to California, not China. I’ll see you again.” She opens her eyes and stares at me, suddenly lucid. “I mean, I will see you again, right?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, Elena, you’ll see me again. Maybe you can come out and visit.”
Elena laughs, roll over onto her back, my T-shirt still in her hands. “Not likely. Not unless the Callahans plan a trip to Disneyland and hire me as a mother’s helper. But something tells me Mami won’t buy it.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say.
“You know what?”
“What?” I ask.
“The Callahans are going back to Houston this week. School’s starting.”
Tears start running down her face.
“Elena?”
“How can I see him if the Callahans are leaving?” she says, sitting up suddenly. “I don’t want to not see him.”
Maybe not seeing him wouldn’t be the worst, I think to myself. But I need to tread lightly if I don’t want her storming out on me, ignoring me and not saying goodbye.
“Hey,” I say, sitting on the bed next to her. “Hey, you’ll figure it out.” What shitty advice. But I don’t know what else to say.
Elena shrugs. Sniffles. “I guess,” she says. “I guess I wish the Callahans could just move here permanently. But he has this amazing job in Houston, so …”
“Maybe you can find another family to babysit for,” I suggest. “Or get some sort of real job.”
Elena blinks back her tears and nods. “Maybe she’ll let me. Shit. I am almost seventeen.”
“You’re almost an adult,” I remind her. The statement is laughable, but I say it anyway.
Elena yawns, falls on her back. A moment passes and then I hear her snoring lightly. I dim the lights in my bedroom, cover her with my blanket, and keep packing. When the clock makes it past midnight, I head into Elena’s bedroom and collapse onto her bed, trying to block out the streetlight shining through the window and the smell of cigarette smoke on her sheets.
The night before I leave I barely sleep at all. It’s still dark when I finally get up, shower, dress, and haul my bags to the porch. I open the front door slowly, but it still creaks. The morning humidity is thick as a milkshake already.
After I set down my bags, I come back inside and head toward Mami’s door. I open it an inch.
“Mami,” I say into the dark room. “Mami, I’m leaving now.”
Silence.
Hell. She’s my mother and I’m leaving. What can happen to me now? I go ahead and walk in, crossing the floor to her bed. She’s wide awake and lying on her side, her head on the pillow, her eyes staring out at the wall. She looks so much older without makeup and with her hair a morning mess.
“Mami, I’m leaving, okay?” I say.
She nods wordlessly.
“I’ll call when I get there, all right?”
Again she says nothing, just nods. No eye contact. I stand there, not sure what to do next. I can’t remember the last time we hugged.
The eyes of my Cuban grandparents look down on us from photographs, strangers to me.
“Mami,” I say. Because I must. Because it really is true. “I love you.”
At this Mami curls up, pushes her face into the pillow.
“Be safe,” she murmurs.
I close the bedroom door behind her and discover Elena waiting for me in her long white nightgown, her arms crossed in front of her. She yawns.
“It’s so early,” she whispers.
“I know, but Carlos is picking me up at six. I want to get the bulk of the trip out of the way today. Tonight I’ll be in Phoenix and then tomorrow I’ll be there.” Elena knows this already. It’s just talk to fill the moment.
“Well, call when you get there,” she says. “Call collect if you have to.”
I nod. I open the front door and peer outside. Carlos has just pulled up and parked, the engine of the Chevette idling.
“Well,” I say, “looks like I have to go.”
“You don’t have to,” Elena says, but she says it gently. Like a joke.
Once, when we were small, Elena and I had played hide-and-seek in this house and I’d hidden in my bedroom closet and fallen asleep. When Elena finally found me, she was sobbing and mad. So mad she’d shoved me hard in the chest.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again!” she’d yelled. “Promise!”
I had promised. But this isn’t hiding. She knows where I’ll be. She knows how to find me.
I find myself praying to God—something I never do. God, please watch out for Elena.
Carlos honks his horn—two short, little staccato beats.
“Don’t make him wait,” Elena says, and she’s not even crying. She’s keeping her face nice and calm. Even.
“Elena …” I say.
“Just hug me and go, Joaquin.” She opens her arms wide and I do hug her, but it’s light and quick. We’re not in the practice of hugging much, either.
When it’s over, she offers me a smile and steps back, almost pushing me out the door.
“Elena, I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says, still smiling.
And then the door shuts.
I head down the front steps and toss my bags into the back of the Chevette and get in the front passenger seat.
“You ready, man?” asks Carlos. He scratches the back of his neck and yawns.
“Yeah,” I answer. He pulls the car out onto Esperanza Boulevard.
I don’t look back.
JOAQUIN FINNEY
Los Angeles
1987
THE AWFUL SONG WAS RIGHT. IT NEVER RAINED IN southern California. In fact, it was always sunny with a chance of sun. And the beach was glorious. Wide and sugar-white, bordering a deep blue ocean that made the waters off Mariposa Island seem like God’s joke version of the sea. Back in Texas, Joaquin never cared one way or another about living by the water, but in his new home when he had an afternoon off he often found himself sinking into the sand, staring out at the waves crashing one on top of the other. It was easy to be there alone. He liked it, like he liked his new life in L.A.
He had an apartment, an efficiency the size of a postage stamp, and a job, at a Mexican restaurant that Carlos hooked him up with because his cousin worked there. Joaquin looked forward to coming home after work to an empty apartment, playing his favorite music as loud as he could, eating whatever he wanted. He enjoyed the feeling of waking up in the morning and knowing there was no one in the apartment whose complicated personality he had to navigate. No one whose day-to-day life he had to worry about. He stopped biting his nails.
On the weekends, Joaquin went exploring. Even though it was touristy, the Griffith Observatory became a favorite spot. He’d people watch and stare out at the Hollywood sign, which was still weird to see in actual, real life. He had no intention of becoming an actor or a musician. He had no idea what he wanted to become here in Los Angeles, but he didn’t mind being an anomaly. And anyway, there were a million possibilities in this world.
On Sunday nights Joaquin called home, but on the rare chance his mother was the one to pick up the phone she refused to talk to him, passing the phone over to his sister Elena, who questioned Joaquin about the weather, his apartment, his job. He answered carefully, trying to picture where Elena stood in the house as she took his call. The beat-up couch in the den. The screened-in porch. Joaquin was keenly aware of the fact that his mother was listening in on everything being said, but truth be told this didn’t even anger him. “How’s your year going?” Joaquin would ask Elena, eager to keep the spotlight on her.
“It’s fine,” she would answer, her voice tight.
One Sunday evening he asked, “Is J.C. still around?” He lowered his voice just in case their mother was too near the receiver.
“Yeah,” Elena answered after a beat. Her voice grew more strained. Joaquin didn’t ask about the Callahans or how Elena was managing to get out of the house. Instead, he talked about superficial things and paced in his microscopic kitchen for as far as the cord stretched. When he said goodbye, his stomach hurt, and even though his heart broke a little each time, he was so happy he could hang up the phone and be alone in California.
He wrote letters to Elena. It was the only way Joaquin could think to tell her what was really on his mind, at least in a way he couldn’t during the phone calls monitored by their mother. He knew the mail always came during the day, and Elena was always the first one to get to it. So Joaquin took his spiral notebook and found a comfortable spot on the cheap carpet and settled in, his back pressed against the bare wall, his fingers gripped around a ballpoint pen whose ink ran spotty and rough. He wrote without stopping or censoring himself. He told his little sister about what was going on in his life, of course, but he also wrote to tell her he was worried about her and about what was going on with J.C. He told her he was anxious about how she was being treated, not just by J.C., but by their own mother. He told her he could understand if she was mad at him for leaving, but he tried to explain why it was something he had to do.
Joaquin asked Elena if the Callahans would be back next summer.
When he could afford it, he slipped a five-dollar bill from his tip money in with his letters, and he mailed them on his days off from the restaurant. Grinning politely at the women working behind the counter at the post office, he licked his stamps and centered them carefully, officially, like the last piece of a puzzle. Then he slid the slim envelopes across the counter and hoped for the best. Because in all those many months of settling in, finding a job, renting an apartment, Joaquin had never gotten a letter back from Elena. Not even once.
Sometimes, in the still of the night or while standing on his balcony overlooking the parking lot, Joaquin liked to imagine Elena climbing the front porch steps to the mailbox when she came home from school, her beat-up red backpack slung low off one shoulder. Her hair in a messy ponytail. He pictured her standing on the porch that needed painting and flipping through bills and glossy circulars and finding his letter in the thick of it all. Her name in his most careful print. Joaquin could see her holding the letter up to her face, right near the thin, straight scar on her chin, as she opened the envelope carefully so she didn’t tear the paper inside. He visualized her tugging at his letter, unfolding it right there on the porch and reading it over and over again. Maybe she even breathed the letter in, anxious to catch a bit of the Los Angeles air that traveled with it. Maybe she was happy to hear from him.
God, he hoped she was.
In Joaquin’s mind’s eye, Elena clutched the letter for as long as she could, contemplating it, and even after she folded it up and placed it in the back pocket of her jeans, it thumped like a heartbeat there. It beckoned like a talisman. Or a promise. And then, he hoped she’d take a moment to glance back at the streets of Mariposa Island and consider all that was around her, all that was waiting for her—both there and elsewhere—before she opened the door of her childhood home and went inside.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Like Elena and Joaquin’s mother, Caridad, many Cuban children were spirited out of Cuba after Fidel Castro and his followers officially took power on January 1, 1959.The Peter Pan movement, known as Operation Pedro Pan, was a real, mass exodus of 14,000 children out of Cuba to the United States
in the early 1960s. The program was run by the Catholic Welfare Bureau, and as part of the program Cuban children were placed in private homes and orphanages all over the U.S. Most, but not all, were eventually reunited with their families. Like Caridad, many children who came to the United States through the Pedro Pan program can recall la pecera, or fishbowl—a glass enclosure that separated children from their parents in the moments leading up to their departure.
During the Cuban Revolution and the time shortly before Castro’s control of the country, there were several bombings that took place on the island during the years 1953 through 1958.The bombing of Caridad’s quince is wholly fictional.
Elena refers to herself as Hispanic in this novel. While this word is still in use today and was a commonly used term in the 1980s, Latino, Latina, or Latinx are often preferred today.
This book is inspired by an episode of the radio program This American Life titled, “Yes, There Is a Baby,” which originally aired on January 5, 2001.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the generosity afforded to me by my mother and her three sisters, all Cuban-born women who fled their homeland after Fidel Castro took power. While my mother was not part of Pedro Pan, she, too, left Cuba as as an unaccompanied minor and remembers the painful experience of saying goodbye to her parents through the glass wall of la pecera. It took two years for my mother to be fully reunited with all of her sisters and both parents. My mother’s openness in discussing this period in her life as well as her memories of the Cuba of her childhood helped to shape this book. It is my wish that one day she will visit a free Cuba. Thank you to my maternal aunts for their willingness to answer questions about their memories on the island and to my mother and father for their assistance with the Spanish language portions of this book.
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