The Covadonga was situated on Cienfuegos Bay, near Tía Luisa’s house at the port. Through the windows, I could see the beautiful sunset over the turquoise waters. Our dinner came—a big bowl of rice. There was almost no seafood in it at all. We didn’t care. We dug in and enjoyed it as though we were at one of Tío William’s old Noche Buena parties. The adults chattered away to each other like parrots. I scarcely heard a word. My head and heart were full, and soon my stomach was, too.
As we were finishing up, Papa turned to me and said, “Niño, I want you to look carefully out the window, because this is the last sunset you are going to see in Cienfuegos. Tomorrow we go to Varadero, and the next day we will go to the airport and then north, to America.”
At last, the moment came that we had been dreading—the hardest goodbye of all.
It was very early in the morning, and in my memory, my grandparents look just as they do in one of the few pictures I have of them, standing in front of their house on San Carlos Street. Tiny, fierce Abuela, whose body gave birth to so many children, and who became the matriarch of a vast clan; handsome, tall Abuelo, who was so proud of having worked his way out of the fields through sheer determination and ingenuity, and who loved his family more than anything else—the man who’d taught me that the world will respect a man who respects himself. They’d soothed my countless hurts, fed me countless meals, and taught me all they could about everything they believed was important. Most of all, they had loved me unconditionally. From them, I’d learned not just how to survive, but how to thrive. They had helped make me the person I was, and I was a part of them. Saying goodbye was as painful as having a piece of my heart ripped away. And I knew from their expressions that they felt the same. Of their five children who would leave for America, of all of their countless grandchildren and great-grandchildren, we were the closest.
There was no pretending anymore that this was just going to be hasta luego. They were too old now.
I stood before them, wearing the pants and shirt that I had worn to church years earlier, and which Mama had altered to fit me for the momentous trip to the airport. I felt like a dolled-up monkey. My awkwardness was made worse by my absolute misery.
“My boy,” said Abuelo, “I want you to remember two things.”
“Yes, Abuelo.” I could barely speak.
“First, remember that every day is a gift. Each morning, you should greet the sun as though it were your bride. Take pride in your appearance, and behave respectfully to everyone.”
“Yes, Abuelo.”
“The second thing I want you to remember is that you can be a great baseball player, if only you practice hard enough. In America, one can do anything.”
Abuelo’s silken, wrinkled hands caressed my face. He put one hand on my head for a moment, as if blessing me. Then he bent down, kissed me, and drew me close. I smelled his aftershave and hair pomade for the last time.
Abuela held me, not speaking, just rocking back and forth. I could feel the warmth of her aged body, her inner fire still strong despite being eighty-one years old.
“Remember,” she said, “this is what we wanted for you. We want you to be free, niño. This moment is sad, but . . .” She sighed. “Freedom is worth it, my boy. We fought the Spanish for it once, and someday Cuba will have to fight the Communists for it, too. But not us. Our time is over.”
“Will—will I see you again?” I said, gulping back my tears.
Abuela smiled and gently shook her head.
“You never know. Maybe not in this life,” she said. “On the other side, yes. But not for a long, long time. You have a long life ahead of you. You are taking the first step on a great journey, niño. And we will be watching you every step of the way.”
Then they said goodbye to Esther, who was inconsolable. Next was Papa’s turn. He and Abuelo had never hugged before, but now they met in an embrace full of warmth, strength, and respect.
“You’ve always been good to my little girl, and for that I will always love you, Felo,” Abuelo said. “I thank God that Conchita found you, and that you are such a good husband and father.”
Papa nodded his thanks, afraid to speak. Then he bent down and hugged Abuela.
“I always knew you would come back from that horrible place and take your wife and children to safety, Felo,” she said. “You didn’t disappoint us. Truly, the angels are smiling on you. God bless you. Go to freedom now, and don’t worry about us. We’ll be watching over you always.”
Then it was Mama’s turn.
My grandparents held their baby girl for a long time, whispering into her ear, stroking her hair, consoling her. When the taxi had pulled up to the curb and we could wait no longer, Papa touched her on the arm.
“Concha,” he said.
“No!” Mama said. “It’s too hard. I can’t do it. I can’t!”
Abuela took Mama by the chin and looked into her eyes. “You are going to do it, for the only good reason there is,” she said.
“Yes, for your children,” said Abuelo.
Mama understood then. She kissed them each once more, then stepped back, sniffling. Without another word or glance, she got into the backseat of the cab. Esther got in next to her. Papa sat in front, next to the driver.
“Let’s go,” he said to me.
I turned and looked at Tito. He was the only one of my friends to come that morning. Luis had had another asthma attack, and was stuck in bed. Rolando had come over alone at the end of the day yesterday to say goodbye, after admitting that it was going to be too hard for him to see me off. It wasn’t that he was jealous. He felt too upset about my leaving, and he didn’t want to make a scene. I understood. I told him we would be friends forever, even if we never saw each other again. He liked that. I think it made him feel better.
“Good luck, Calcines,” said Tito. “Take care of yourself over there. Eat a hot dog with ketchup for me.”
“I’ll never forget you guys, no matter what happens,” I said. It seemed like a stupid thing to say, but there were no good words for such a moment. It was too hard.
Then I got into the taxi. We drove down San Carlos Street, past a sea of faces and waving hands, and the Calcines family left Cienfuegos forever.
Flight to Freedom
Leaving Cienfuegos was like leaving behind a part of my soul. As the taxi left Glorytown, I tried to look at everything all at once, because I knew I was seeing it for the last time. But it was impossible. All four of us were crying. The taxi was filled with the sounds of sniffling and choked sobs. Even the driver blew his nose long and loud, as if he, too, were caught up in the emotion.
In the blink of an eye, the taxi was out of Glorytown, and in another blink it was at the limits of Cienfuegos, on the main road headed to the capital. Our destination was Varadero Beach, east of Havana. It took over four hours to get there, and it was a journey I tried to savor every moment of—but it has fled my memory completely, except for one sight: campesinos, farmers, riding their horses along the ancient trails that the modern highway followed. I smiled, because they reminded me of Papa’s stories of his youth, when he, too, had been nothing more than a simple peasant. And now here he was, about to get on an airplane to America.
Then we were in Varadero. As we drove slowly down the wide oceanfront boulevard, we rolled down the car windows and inhaled the fresh sea air.
I had scarcely ever been outside Cienfuegos. I’d been to Havana twice: once for one of the eye operations when I was an infant, and another time at age seven, when we came to visit one of Papa’s sisters. But nothing could have prepared me for the sight of this carefully constructed tourist town. Well-fed people from other Communist countries were walking up and down the sidewalks in shorts and T-shirts, taking pictures and buying souvenirs. The shops were full to bursting with anything you could name—including food. It was mid-morning, and my stomach was rumbling. None of us had been able to eat breakfast, not that there had been much to eat, anyway.
“Look at this place!” I s
aid. “It looks like heaven!”
“You see?” Papa said. “This is how—”
Mama nudged him sharply in the side, reminding Papa that there was a stranger in the car. For all we knew, the driver worked for the C.D.R. It was not too late for the government to change its mind about letting us go. We could still be reported.
“This reminds me,” he said instead, “of the time we had to bring you to Havana for your operation, when you were just a baby, niño.”
“I remember that!” said Esther.
“You weren’t even born yet, Esther,” said Mama.
“The nurses at the hospital told your mama that she had to leave for the night. But you know what she did? She hid under your bed and slept there, in case you needed her. That’s what a fortunate kid you are, hijo. To have a mama like that is the greatest gift a child could receive. She lay there all night, holding your little hand. In the morning, when the nurses found her, they couldn’t believe it. After that, they let her stay as long as she wanted.”
I looked at Mama and smiled. She smiled back, or tried to.
“What’s the matter, Mama?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Just tense, that’s all,” she whispered.
I understood. I feared the same thing she did—that we would be turned back at the last moment. But then I was distracted by the sight of the beautiful sugar-white beaches of Varadero.
“Wow! We don’t have beaches like that in Cienfuegos!” I said.
“Ah, our beaches are pretty close,” said Papa, ever the proud Cienfueguero.
“Can we get out and walk around?” Esther asked.
“Not allowed, young lady,” said the driver kindly. “This area is strictly off-limits to Cubans. Tourists only.”
“How can Cuba be off-limits to Cubans?” Papa said.
Mama nudged Papa again. This was exactly the kind of comment that could get us into a lot of trouble. The driver said nothing in reply, but then, apparently remembering we were dissidents and not likely to report him, he nodded, then shrugged his shoulders. I saw his eyes meet Papa’s in the rearview mirror as a silent conversation took place between them. I was old enough now to understand—the driver, too, was opposed to the regime. He thought the way we did about Castro and Communism. But after ten years of oppression, the habit of keeping one’s thoughts to oneself was too deeply ingrained.
“Cuba today . . .” The driver let his voice trail off. This was the closest most people would allow themselves to come to complaining. Then he changed the subject. “You folks are going to Miami?”
“Yes.”
“How exciting! My brother is there.”
“Do you want us to take him a message?”
“If you happen to bump into”—he said his brother’s name—“tell him you were in my cab today. And we miss him.”
“We will make a point of it,” Mama said. “It will be the first thing we do.” And she got out a piece of paper and a stub of a pencil and wrote down the man’s name, checking twice to make sure she had spelled it correctly.
Our first stop was the government inspection office. This proved to be a fancy, white, colonial-era mansion on the beach. The driver pulled up in front of it, and we gawked in disbelief.
“Can you wait for us?” Papa asked the driver. “We have to get our papers checked.”
“Of course,” said the driver. “I don’t have to be anywhere else.”
“This is a government office?” I said. “It’s the nicest house I’ve ever seen!”
“You see? It’s as I always told you,” Papa murmured. “They kept the best for themselves, while the rest of us live in filth and ruin.”
“Felo! Shh!”
“Sorry.”
“Children, you wait out here,” said Mama. “Papa and I have to go talk to the immigration people. Sir, do you mind?”
“Not at all. I have five children myself, and three grandchildren,” said the driver.
“We won’t be too long. You kids behave yourselves, and listen to this nice man.”
Esther and I watched as Mama and Papa mounted the broad marble steps of the building and disappeared behind the massive white doors. I was so impressed with the gravity and majesty of the moment that I decided to follow them.
“Hey, boy! Where are you going? Your parents told me to watch you!” said the driver.
But I ignored him, and he let me go, thinking, no doubt, that he wasn’t being paid enough to discipline me.
I worked up my courage and opened the door, stepping inside. If I thought the outside was grand, the interior was ten times more so. A thick, soft carpet covered the floor, while potted plants and revolving fans made the house seem like a palace. Uniformed guards were everywhere, their clothes and hats spotless, their weapons gleaming and deadly. I wondered if they ever shot people in here. The thought was terrifying, mostly because it was so believable. Then I saw that Mama and Papa were talking to a lady at a desk.
“Well, how should I know? That’s not my problem, is it?” the woman was saying in reply to something they had asked. Her tone was brusque and rude. Papa then replied in a low voice, and the woman again answered him rudely, as if he were no more than dirt. But my parents simply took it, standing before her as humbly as two peasants before a court official.
Then a large man in a suit came out of some back room somewhere and bellowed, “Mr. and Mrs. Calcines!”
My parents drew themselves up stiffly.
“Yes, sir,” Papa said.
“You, Calcines, come with me. You, señora, you will go with her.” The man indicated a different woman in an olive drab, governmentissued skirt suit, with her hair in a bun and a cold, severe expression on her face. “You will be interrogated before leaving.”
Mama and Papa looked at each other. They touched hands. Papa yanked at his shirt collar. Suddenly, his head twitched to the side, and he shrugged involuntarily. This was a twitch he’d developed over the last couple of years. It became worse every time he got upset or excited. I began to worry that they would think he was deranged. On the other hand, I thought maybe they would let us go sooner if they thought Papa had something contagious.
Mama and Papa followed the man and woman into separate rooms. Then the lady at the desk noticed me.
“What do you want?” she barked. “Do you have permission to be in here?”
“N-n-n-no, ma’am!”
“Outside!” said the lady.
I obeyed at once.
For the rest of the morning, Esther and I had to entertain each other on the sidewalk, under the watchful eye of the extremely patient taxi driver. Every time we asked him how much longer our parents would be, he gave the same philosophical shrug and said, “It will take as long as it takes, no more and no less.”
Finally, after two hours, Mama and Papa came out the front door and down the steps. Both of them were pale and sweating. Papa had a piece of paper in his hand.
“Where have you been?” Esther shrieked. “We were getting scared!”
By the expressions on their faces, I knew the interrogations hadn’t been pleasant. But by now I knew better than to ask what had happened. The only thing that mattered was that we were getting out.
“They’re still letting us leave, right?” I asked.
Papa nodded. “I have our release form.”
“Well, then, things are not so bad!” the driver said, his voice full of cheer.
Papa gave him directions to the place where we were to stay that night. It was a small room near the beach.
“Twenty-five pesos, please,” said the driver when he dropped us off.
Twenty-five pesos was equal to about eight or nine American dollars. Mama reached into her purse for the money, which she had earned selling panetelas. I’d seen her count all of her money about thirty times on the way here, just to make sure she hadn’t lost it. She handed the twenty-five pesos over. I had never seen so much cash before. I was impressed by how casually the driver tucked it int
o his shirt pocket. I wondered how we would have been able to afford the taxi if not for Mama’s efforts, and all my trips to the port with those bags of panetelas.
The driver wished us well and asked that we please remember, if at all possible, to let his brother know he was okay. Then he was gone.
Tía Luisa and her daughter, Maricela, met us there, as we had arranged beforehand. They had come to Varadero to make sure that everything went well for us. It was only lunchtime. We had eaten nothing all day, and now, faced with the prospect of having the rest of the day and night to kill, I was hungry and restless.
“Let us kids go out and walk around,” I said to Papa. “We’ll be good, I promise.”
Mama shook her head. “No!” she said. “It’s too risky. All we need now is for you to get into trouble, hijo, and that is one thing you’re very good at.”
“Not today, Mama. I promise. I’ll have Esther and Maricela along to keep me straight. Please, can we? What are we supposed to do, just sit in here all day and look at the floor?”
Finally they gave in. After ten minutes’ worth of instructions and admonitions, we were set loose on Varadero Beach amid all the foreign tourists, in the place where no Cubans were supposed to go.
For at least half an hour, we did nothing but walk around and look at the stores. There were no soldiers or other security personnel in sight. I could hardly believe it. I couldn’t even remember a time when armed people in uniform weren’t standing around, watching our every move.
“This is what it will be like when we get to America, and even better,” I told Esther. “Stores everywhere, all full of wonderful things, and no army men around to watch us.”
“I’m nervous,” said Maricela. “What if they are watching us?”
“Just act natural. Look, what’s that shop?”
“It’s an ice-cream parlor!” said Esther. “Oh, I wish we had money!”
As a matter of fact, I did have money—three pesos, which Abuela Ana had given me the night before. She’d earned them by selling eggs from her chickens, eggs that she and Abuelo were supposed to be eating for breakfast every morning. I also had the American dollar Papa had given me on my birthday, but I was certainly not going to spend that—at least, not until we got to America.
Leaving Glorytown Page 17
