“Come on, man, what are you talking about?” said Luis. “It’s not like he’s going tomorrow or anything.”
“I have a feeling, that’s all,” Rolando said. “I can see the future.”
“Here he goes again,” said Tito, rolling his eyes.
“No, it’s true,” Rolando insisted. “Calcines is going to get out of here. Luis, too. But you and I, hermano”—he shook his head—“the only way we’ll ever make it to freedom is if we try to escape. Our parents will never apply for a visa. Even if they did it now, it would be too late for us. It wouldn’t come before we’re drafted.”
“You never know what could happen,” I said. “Maybe Fidel will die of a heart attack tomorrow. Maybe the Americans will invade again.”
“Yeah, keep dreaming,” Tito said. “My brother is right. The only way we’ll ever get out is to sneak out.”
“You were kidding about hijacking the boat, right?” said Luis. “Because you know what would happen if we did that, right?”
“Okay, so that wasn’t such a great idea,” said Rolando. He got quiet, and stared out at the water, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth. “If this Revolution is so glorious, then why are people risking their lives to get out of here?”
It was the question that hung over us all the time. But no one dared to voice it. Simply to think such a thing was a crime against the government. You could get twenty years for a thought like that. I didn’t believe the Communists had figured out a way to read minds yet, but I had no doubt they were close.
“I wish Fidel were dead,” I said. It seemed that if I was ever going to say it, this was the moment.
“I wish,” said Rolando.
“We all wish,” said Tito.
“What do you want him dead for?” Luis asked. “You’re getting out of here. You’ll be safe.”
“Look at what he’s done,” I explained. “Our lives are ruined. We live like prisoners in our own country. We have no freedoms. We have no food, man. People can get sent to prison just for complaining about being hungry. We’re all doomed to be drafted, and if that happens, our lives will be misery. Life used to be good in Cuba. Now it’s worse than bad. And it’s Fidel’s fault!”
The other three nodded. It was the first time we had ever spoken so openly with one another. A deeper bond was being forged between us. Rolando had been right—it was a good idea for us to come out here today.
“Just don’t forget us when you get to America, Calcines,” Rolando said. “Try to send us stuff if you can. Gum. Comic books. Stuff like that.”
“And see if you can get a tortoiseshell comb,” Tito said.
“A what? What the heck do you want that for?”
“I don’t know. I just do.” Tito shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I read about it somewhere, and it seems like it would be a nice thing to have.”
“Okay, a tortoiseshell comb it is,” I said, laughing.
“Great. Now, remember, no one says a word about what we’ve talked about today.”
“No way,” said Luis.
“You don’t have to worry about me blabbing,” said Rolando.
“Hey, Rolando. When you look into the future, what do you see for yourself?” I asked.
Rolando didn’t say anything. I looked at him to make sure he’d heard me.
“Rolando?”
“I don’t know what I see,” he said quietly. “Just . . . nothing.”
We fell silent again, listening to the throb of the boat’s engines and watching as the setting sun painted the sky, then faded into blackness.
Late that night, my rear end still sore from its recent encounter with Mama’s hairbrush, I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Despite my richly deserved punishment, I was in a reflective, almost peaceful mood. It had been an important day. Something had shifted, and I felt different. Rolando said he saw me in America, living life to the fullest. I still could not even imagine what kind of person Eduardo Calcines would be if he became an American. I couldn’t imagine anything about my life at all. Here I was, about to enter the ninth grade, and I had no dreams or aspirations for the future except to get out of Cuba. Beyond that, everything was just as blank as Rolando had said his own future was.
Suddenly, I heard shouting from Tía Silvia’s next door. I recognized the voice of my cousin, Oscar, raised in anger. I sighed. They were at it again.
Tía Silvia’s family, like so many, was torn about whether they should stay or go. She and my tío were considering leaving, but their son, Oscar, wanted to stay. Neither of them could understand why he would want such a thing, and it had become the subject of nightly battles, all of which we could hear through our open windows.
“I can’t leave!” Oscar screamed now. “I want to go into the international forces and spread Communist values of fairness and equality throughout the world.”
“Listen to him!” my uncle said. “He sounds just like those idiots on the radio!”
“Oscar, please, listen!” pleaded Tía Silvia. “Don’t you understand? It’s all a bunch of lies! You’re just going to end up getting killed in some godforsaken place, and no one will even know where your grave is! Is that what you want? You want to sacrifice everything for nothing?”
“It’s not nothing! At least I have goals!” said Oscar. “I have to work with what I’ve got, not run away like a coward!”
“Running away from Cuba doesn’t make you a coward,” said Tía. “It makes you a survivor.”
“Yeah, right,” sneered Oscar. “Listen, if you two want to go, go. Run away with the Calcineses. Maybe you remember better times, but those are long over. This is the reality of my life. You think I want to grow old in a country where it snows every day, and all the people are drunk, fat, and lazy?”
“That’s not what America is like!” Tía said. “The people are very nice!”
“They are trying to sucker you with their propaganda!” Oscar said. “Everyone knows that.” I recognized some of the things Oscar was saying from the propaganda we were taught in school from the age of five onward. The Communists had done a good job on him. It was as if they owned his mind.
“It doesn’t snow in Florida,” observed Tío. “Florida is just like Cuba, I hear. Same weather, same everything.”
“Yeah, and plenty of wealthy capitalists ready to get rich from your labor,” sneered Oscar. “I’ve learned all about that precious America in school. You know how blacks and Latinos are treated there? Like second-class citizens. You’ve seen the same footage I have of black people being attacked in the street by the police while they were marching for their rights. Americans have no understanding of equality. The whites have the best of everything. It’s everyone else who has to do the dirty work, and get paid almost nothing for it.”
“We are white, too,” Tío said. “We have European blood.”
“Don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter!” Oscar yelled. “Once they hear that Spanish accent, you can consider yourself lucky if they let you clean their toilets! You think you’ll be better off, but you won’t! You’ll be worse off!”
On and on the battle raged, as it had for the last several nights. I didn’t even have to get out of bed to hear every word. I heard the door slam as Oscar stomped out of the house and sat on his porch, crying.
I snuck out of bed and went to the refrigerator, where I retrieved the sliver of gum I’d stored there for safekeeping. I popped it in my mouth, then slipped out the front door and over to Oscar’s house.
“Who’s there?” he whispered as I approached through the darkness.
“It’s me, your cousin.”
“Hey, primo.”
“Hey. I heard you fighting again.”
“Sorry, man. Things are tense right now.”
“I know. You really believe all that stuff about America?”
“Well, what do you think? You’ve seen the same films I have,” Oscar said.
We all had seen the footage of what happened to the demonstrators in the civil ri
ghts movement—the Communists made sure that it was shown before each and every feature film in the theaters. Think America is the land of freedom and opportunity? Think again—especially if you have brown skin!
“Yeah, I know. But it’s not like that all the time.”
“How do you know?”
I shrugged, but he couldn’t see me in the dark, and he took my silence for defeat.
“Look, primo, I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” Oscar said, “but I really think you and your family are doing the wrong thing. Don’t you believe in the values of Communism even a little bit? Don’t you at least think there’s something good about it?”
“You know what? I actually do think there are good things about it,” I said. “It would be nice if everything really were fair. If everyone shared everything, then no one would go without. But look around you, Oscar. That’s not the way it is. Everyone is terrified of the government, the military, and the police. No one has enough to eat. And the Communists are a bunch of liars. In Havana, they eat the best of everything every night. The higher up in the Party you are, the more stuff you have.”
“Are you saying Communism is a lie?”
I wasn’t afraid to say what I really thought to Oscar. He was family. “Yes,” I said. “That’s just what I’m saying.”
I heard the boards of the porch creak as he stood up.
“Then, primo, maybe Cuba really is better off without you and your family,” he said. “As long as we have to put up with this kind of thinking from people like you, then we have to be strict. People have to be reeducated to see things the right way. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years, and sometimes you have to do it by force.”
“Right,” I said. “Like how my papa had to go to a labor camp. He’d be there still, if not for his hernia. Is that the kind of re-education you’re talking about?”
“I always felt bad for your papa, but—”
“Save it,” I said, cutting him off. “You know what, Oscar? I think you gave up thinking for yourself. I don’t even believe you ever knew how to use your brain. You just swallow all the crap they shove down your throat in school. You’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re just like the people who sent Papa away. You don’t care if people get hurt or killed. You don’t care if families are torn apart. You’re blind. Completely blind.”
Oscar was silent for a long moment.
“It’s too bad we can’t see eye to eye on this, primo,” he said finally.
“Yeah, it is too bad,” I said. “Maybe if your papa ever gets yanked out of bed by the military in the middle of the night, you’ll understand why I don’t think this Revolution is so glorious.”
We stood in the thick, moonless Caribbean night, barely able to see each other. I chewed my gum ferociously, loudly, defiantly.
“Where did you get gum?” Oscar asked.
“Tía Dinorah sent it from Milwaukee.”
There was a long pause.
“Gum will rot your teeth,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
After a moment, he said, “Good night, Eduardo. And good luck.”
I knew by the way he said those words that Oscar and I wouldn’t be talking much anymore.
“Good night, Oscar,” I said, “and good luck to you, too. And God bless you. You’re going to need His help a lot more than I will.”
I turned and went back into my house before he could say anything else. I put my gum back in the fridge—I would keep it there for weeks, until it was too flavorless and disgusting to chew anymore. Then I got back into bed and tried to sleep. Oscar had gotten me worked up, and I was mad. But I was sad, too. Our clan had begun to split about ten years earlier, when Peruchito joined the military. Now there were whole families that weren’t speaking to other families. Family gatherings, even if they’d been allowed by the government, would have been impossible, anyway. Half the people weren’t speaking to the other half.
I grew drowsy thinking about Rolando’s words. He’d seen a vision of me in America, he said. And Luis was there, too. We would make it to the land of freedom and opportunity—giant hams, no lines, chewing gum, ketchup, blond girls . . .
With those thoughts comforting me, finally I slipped into my dreams.
Planning to Escape
Saturday, October 4, 1969: my fourteenth birthday. As usual, I awoke at sunrise and stepped outside to greet the soft morning. The songs of countless tropical birds filled the air as the sky became first a fiery red, then orange, then settled on blue. Normally, I would have whistled back to them, but today I had no stomach for it. I felt as if they were singing my death knell.
More than three years had passed since Papa had applied for the visa. On every birthday since then, I’d sworn that the next one would be celebrated in America. I’d even dared to imagine it: I’d have a big chocolate cake with vanilla icing, and maybe even ice cream, too—a delicacy I’d never tasted.
But this birthday was like a bad dream. Even if Mama had come parading out of the kitchen with the most beautiful cake in the world and all the ice cream I could eat, it would have tasted like mud to me. I was six months away from being too old to leave the country because I’d have to serve in the military first, and we were still stuck. I was beginning to believe that the government had simply flushed our application down the toilet. I could picture Fidel rubbing his hands together, cackling with glee. That stupid Calcines thinks he’s going to get away from me? Well, I’ll show him that it’s not so easy!
Soon I heard Papa moving about the house as he made himself some of the bitter Russian tea he was forced to drink when our monthly coffee ration ran out and the new jars hadn’t arrived. Then he came outside and sat with me on the front step.
“Happy birthday, niño,” he said.
“Thanks, Papa.”
“Fourteen now! I can’t believe it. Soon you’ll be a man.” He took a sip of tea and made a face.
“Soon I’ll be drafted, you mean,” I said. “My very next birthday, they’re going to come for me. And if that stupid telegram doesn’t get here in the next six months, it will be too late, anyway.”
Papa shook his head. “No, niño. We’ll be gone by then.”
“You say that every year.”
“This time I mean it.”
“You say that every year, too!”
Papa smiled. “You have the memory of an elephant,” he said. “Let’s not worry about anything today. Just enjoy the feeling of being fourteen. Here, I got you a little something.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an object that he kept hidden in his hand.
I held my hand out. He dropped a crumpled piece of green paper onto my palm. Carefully, I unfolded it and held it up to examine it. “What is it?”
“It’s an American dollar bill.”
I’d never seen American money before. It looked like a message from a different planet.
“Wow! Where did you get this?” I asked.
“I found it when I was cleaning a street downtown. Someone must have dropped it. I’ve been saving it for you.”
“But where can I spend it?”
“Don’t spend it! Save it. Think of it as a good luck charm. If you keep it with you, it will remind you of where we’re going. Positive thinking has real power, niño. If you want something to happen bad enough, it will.”
“Thanks, Papa.”
“You’re welcome. So, what will you do today, on your special day?”
I shrugged. “Nothing different, I guess. The boys and I will hang out in front of the theater like always.”
“Well, don’t flash that dollar bill around. You can show it to your friends if you want, but make sure no one else sees it, especially the C.D.R. Otherwise, you might have some explaining to do.”
“Okay, Papa,” I said.
But I had no intention of showing the money to the boys. I would keep it safe in my pocket, and once in a while I would touch it, just to remind myself that if Papa hadn’t given up yet, then neither would I.
Rolando had failed the sixth grade yet again. He now stood at least six inches taller than everyone else in his class, and the shame he felt at being lumped in with a group of babies when he himself was starting to shave had become too much for him to take. He was starting to act really strange.
“Rolando, man, I don’t get it,” I told him. “You’re not stupid. You’re the best chess player around. You can even beat your teachers. What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you pass the sixth grade?”
“That’s easy for you to say,” he snapped. “You’ve got your whole future to look forward to! What reason do I have to study? None!”
“You don’t know what the future holds,” I objected. “Anything could happen. You just don’t know!”
“I don’t care what happens,” Rolando said. “I just show up to class and sit there. I don’t care if I pass or not. I’m going into the army soon, anyway. Maybe I’ll kill myself.”
“Rolando! Don’t say that!”
“What? Who cares? Why shouldn’t I? I can starve to death as a civilian or I can get shot as a soldier. Or I can take matters into my own hands. That’s my right. It’s my life.”
“Suicide is a sin!”
“Have you forgotten?” Rolando sneered. “God doesn’t exist anymore, remember? Fidel says so. So there is no such thing as sin.”
Sometimes I felt as if I didn’t know Rolando at all anymore.
At least I was a ninth grader now, which meant deliverance from Señora Santana and her broken glasses. Now I could walk by her classroom with relief instead of dread. True, she still glared at me sometimes from the doorway, but I just ignored her. I had new teachers this year, and though they were just as disdainful of my family’s political position, they didn’t go out of their way to make my life miserable. I wasn’t worth their time. They simply stuck me in the back of the room and forgot about me. That was just fine. I was free to stare out the window and daydream about girls, food, and freedom.
Olga and I barely even glanced at each other in the hallway now. I’d long since moved on. Besides, Olga had joined the Young Pioneers, the Communists’ national youth organization, and she wore the bright red neckerchief with pride. To me, that neckerchief seemed like a collar, a symbol of submission. It was like announcing you had given up thinking for yourself. Even if she’d come crawling back to me on her hands and knees, begging me to take her back, I would have refused. I would have been ashamed to be seen with such a girl on my arm.
Leaving Glorytown Page 15
