Leaving Glorytown

by Eduardo F. Calcines

  I showed the girls the money and told them where I’d gotten it. “Maybe it will be enough,” I said.

  “But Abuela went without breakfast all those mornings!” said Esther. “Would she really want us to spend it on ice cream?”

  “Listen, hermana, we have to spend this money now, in Cuba,” I told her, “because when we get to America these pesos won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on. All together they’re not even worth one American dollar.”

  “Should we try?” Maricela asked.

  “Well, why not?” I said. Being the man of the group, it was up to me to brave the possible wrath of the government by daring to purchase ice cream.

  The girls waited for me outside. I went in, marveling that there was no line at the counter.

  “Can I help you?” said the attendant, a man in a white uniform.

  “Th—three chocolate ice creams, please,” I said.

  The man stared at me for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said.

  Well, that was all I needed to hear. I turned and headed for the exit.

  “Wait!” said the man. “What I meant was, you can’t have three. You can only buy one per person. That’s the rule.”

  I turned around again.

  “In that case, sir,” I said, “allow me to say that the other two are for the girls standing out there.” I pointed to Esther and Maricela.

  “Why don’t they come in?”

  “Too shy.”

  “Not from around here, huh?”

  “No, sir. We’re from Cienfuegos.”

  “We’re only supposed to serve tourists here.”

  “If it makes any difference,” I said, “we’re leaving the country tomorrow. So I guess you could say we are tourists—kind of.”

  The man smiled.

  “Your last ice cream in Cuba, eh? Well, then, I can certainly make an exception,” he said, and he dug down with his scoop and made three chocolate ice-cream cones. I didn’t tell him that this was also my first ice cream in Cuba. I was afraid he would laugh at me.

  Outside on the sidewalk, I watched the girls as they licked their treats, smiling delightedly. Then I started on mine. So this was ice cream!

  “Wow,” I said when I’d finished it. “I knew it would be good, but I didn’t think it would be that good!”

  “I wish we could have shared it with Abuela, is all,” said Esther. She started to sniffle. “Our poor grandparents, going without breakfast just so we can have ice cream! And it was gone so fast! Hermano, I wish we hadn’t done it.”

  “Hermana, let it go,” I said. “You’re depressing me. Believe me, Abuela wouldn’t mind. She knew it wasn’t going to buy us much. She did it because she loves us.”

  “I remember I had ice cream once a long time ago,” said Maricela. “But it didn’t taste as good as this.”

  “Where we’re going, we can have ice cream three times a day if we want to,” I said. But Maricela looked so upset at this that I instantly regretted it.

  “I’m sorry, Mari,” I said. “I don’t mean to rub it in.”

  “I know. It’s exciting. I just wish I were going with you, that’s all.”

  “Maybe someday you will come, too!” said Esther.

  “Maybe,” said Maricela, but she didn’t sound too optimistic.

  When we had licked the last smudge of chocolate from our fingers, we looked around for what to do next. Across the street, the ocean beckoned.

  “I want to go down to the beach,” I said.

  “No!” said Esther. “Mama and Papa told us not to go too far!”

  “It’s right there!” I said. “Come on. When are we ever going to be here again? We’re not going to do anything wrong. We’re just going to look.”

  Finally, I convinced Esther it would be all right. The three of us crossed the street, took off our shoes, and went down to the water’s edge. Varadero Beach was even more beautiful than the beach at Rancho Club, by Fort Jagua, which I had always thought was the most beautiful place in the world. As we stood with our feet in the warm surf, marveling at the shimmering beauty of the water and the glorious white sand, I remembered how the boys and I had sometimes bragged that we would bring our wives to Varadero on our honeymoons. In those days, I’d never seriously imagined I would be leaving Cuba. The telegram had seemed like a distant dream, not a serious possibility. Now here I was, about to leave. I wondered if my friends would ever even make it to this beach. Already, I had passed out of the sphere of everything that was familiar to us on San Carlos Street. My adventure had begun the moment we got into that taxi. I felt as if I were riding a rocket ship to the moon.

  Soon, we went back to the room to find Mama and Papa relaxing on the two small single beds. Tía Luisa was about to go for a walk, no doubt to see if she could find any new black market contacts, and Maricela went with her. It was the first time I had seen my parents so relaxed in ages. Mama sat up.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Eduardito bought us ice cream!” said Esther.

  “You kids are to stay close from now on,” said Papa. He wasn’t mad, just worried. Esther and I got into bed with him, and he pulled us close. For a moment, I flashed back to all those times we used to snuggle up with him when he came home for lunch from his job at Tío William’s.

  “Papa,” I said, “tell us more about Ritica la Cubanita.”

  “Yeah, tell us about when you were little!” Esther said.

  Papa sighed. “Those stories belong to a different time now,” he said.

  “What, you mean you won’t tell them anymore?”

  “No. I just mean that now we’re living in moments that will be the stories of the future. I feel funny, like I just had a glimpse through time. You kids will be telling your own children about this moment when they are small, about the time you left Cuba and came to America. Your children will be Americans. And your grandchildren, too. This moment will be repeated in stories for generations, how the Calcineses had to flee their homeland forever.”

  “Eduardito is going to grow up and marry an American lady!” Esther giggled.

  “Shut up!” I said. I was still young enough for such talk to embarrass me, at least in front of my parents. “You’re going to marry an American man, too, Esther! He’s going to have blond hair and blue eyes, and you’re going to have to kiss him every day!”

  “Oh, no!” said Esther. “I’m not kissing anybody!”

  “Oh, yes, you are!”

  “Children,” Mama chided us. “Your father and I are tired. It’s already been a very long day.”

  Papa was caressing my face absentmindedly, as he did sometimes. Suddenly he sat up and took my cheeks in his hands.

  “Oh, no!” he declared, sounding horrified.

  “What? What?” I panicked, thinking he’d remembered some reason why I couldn’t go to America.

  “Your face!”

  “What about it? What? What?”

  “Mama, look!” he said. “Look at your son! Specifically, look right under his nose!”

  “I don’t want to know,” she said, in a tone that suggested she knew exactly what Papa was talking about.

  “Papa, what?” I yelled.

  “Come into the bathroom with me,” Papa said.

  He dragged me in front of the mirror and pushed my face close to it. He had me so worried I was nearly in tears. “I don’t see anything!”

  “You, my son,” said Papa, “need a shave.”

  “What? A shave?”

  “Yes. A shave. I see two, three, four, five . . . maybe ten whiskers there.”

  I began to laugh. “Papa, is that all? You scared me half to death!”

  “Listen, niño. If the authorities think you’re older than you really are, they might not let us go. So we’re going to shave off that mustache right this minute, and tomorrow, when you get on the plane, act as young as possible.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “I don’t know. Suck your thumb or so
mething.”

  “Papa! I’m not going to suck my thumb!”

  “Well, I was just kidding. But we do need to trim you up. Go and get my razor from my luggage. I’m going to teach you how to use it. And when we get to America, I will get you a razor of your own.”

  I fetched his razor, and Papa lathered up a bit of soap and made a big show of covering my whole face with it. Then, instructing me carefully, he let me shave myself.

  “It’s a proud moment in a man’s life when his son shaves for the first time,” he said. “I remember very well the first time I shaved. My older brothers taught me, because my father was already gone. That seems like a million years ago.”

  “How old were you then, Papa?”

  “I guess I must have been about the age you are now. We had already come to Cienfuegos.” Papa sighed, remembering. “How hard it was, that trip. I’ll never forget it. When we got to Cienfuegos, we felt we had arrived in the promised land. And now here we are, leaving it like it was a prison.”

  “It is a prison,” Mama called from the next room. “Are you done yet? Let me see my clean-shaven boy. I want to see a smooth baby face, not a hairy man face.”

  I went to Mama’s side. She touched my cheek, smiling.

  “You really are almost a man,” she said. “It’s hard for a mama to see her little boy so grown up.”

  “What do you mean, hard?” I snorted. “My whole life you’ve been telling me to grow up, and now that I am, you don’t like it!”

  “It’s complicated,” Papa said. “When you have children, you’ll understand how bittersweet it is to watch them grow older.”

  “Well, if you want, I can stay home and wear diapers for the rest of my life,” I said. “Would that make you happy?”

  Ordinarily, I might have gotten a tap on the bottom for such mouthiness. But under the circumstances, we all needed a good laugh. Mama and Papa and Esther were convulsed with mirth for the next few minutes. Even I had a good chuckle over my little joke.

  No one slept that night. We tossed and turned until finally a glimmer of pink began to show on the horizon. Papa got up and threw open the curtains.

  “Well, it’s morning!” he announced. “Time to get ready!”

  I was so dazed with exhaustion and excitement that I remember little of what followed. I presume we got washed and dressed, packed up our few belongings, said goodbye to Tía Luisa and Maricela, and then waited outside for the taxi to take us to the airport. Of the ride itself, I remember nothing, except that all of us were so keyed up we couldn’t sit still, not even Mama.

  The next clear memory I have is of standing on a runway, next to a giant Pan Am plane. Esther and I stared up at it, awestruck. The only airplanes we’d ever seen had been miles over our heads. Now we were about to go inside one.

  There was, of course, a uniformed military officer standing guard at the portable stairway. This one was a woman. When she saw us coming, she held up her hand for us to stop.

  “Calcines family?”

  “Yes,” said Papa, as he handed her the government release form.

  “There’s a problem,” she said.

  We all tried not to groan.

  “What’s the problem, ma’am?” Mama asked.

  “You haven’t been assigned seats yet. There may not be room for you on this airplane.”

  “What?” Papa said, desperation in his voice. “Ma’am, how can this be? They must have known we were coming. If we miss this flight, will they let us board another one?”

  The woman shrugged. “How should I know?” she said. “It’s not my problem. You want to leave the country like a bunch of worms, you have to take what you’re given. Maybe you think you deserve first-class seats, too. Is that what you think?”

  Aha, I thought. So this was the problem—they were going to take one last dig at us before sending us on our way.

  Papa began to lose his cool. His twitch, under control all morning, came back with a vengeance. He paced back and forth on the runway, just feet away from the stairs. Mama, Esther, and I stared up at the doorway of the plane, where a beautiful stewardess stood, smiling as the other passengers embarked.

  Esther elbowed me.

  “Look at that lady!” she said. “She has blond hair!”

  “She sure does,” I said. It wasn’t the first time we had seen a blond person, but something about the sight of this woman seemed auspicious. Soon we would be in the land of blond people. The fact that she was there was comforting, as if she were an angelic ambassador sent to make us feel welcome.

  After a while, and for no discernible reason, the woman officer who was holding us back said, “Well, I guess you can board now.”

  “Well, thank you very much,” said Papa, obviously trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

  We mounted the stairs and climbed into the plane. The stewardess said something to us in English. We smiled politely and followed as she led us to our seats. These were more luxurious and comfortable than any piece of furniture we had ever owned. I was captivated by the fact that I could raise and lower the back, and I spent several minutes experimenting with the best position. Finally, the gentleman behind me cleared his throat, and Papa told me to cut it out. Then Esther discovered a little drop-down table in front of her and undid the latch. The table flopped open with a clatter.

  “Don’t!” I said, pushing it back up. “You want to get us kicked off the plane? You’re going to ruin everything!”

  “I’m sorry,” Esther whispered.

  Just then a stewardess came by with a trolley.

  “Coke while we wait for takeoff?” she inquired sweetly.

  I looked at Papa, who looked at Mama, who looked confused.

  “What did she say?” Papa asked.

  “She wants to give us something,” I said. “Coca-Cola, I think.”

  “Tell her we can’t afford it,” said Mama.

  “How am I supposed to tell her that?” Papa said. “What am I, a professor of English all of a sudden? Hijo, you tell her.”

  “Me! I can barely speak proper Spanish!” I exclaimed. “How am I going to tell her?”

  This debate might have gone on for another hour if the woman hadn’t figured out what was happening. In a few deft moves, she had unlatched all our tables, opened four cans of Coke, and set them before us—along with plastic cups of ice and bags of peanuts. We were as stunned as if she had just turned into Santa Claus and filled our laps with presents.

  “It’s free!” Papa said.

  “Free? How can they give it away for free?” Mama wondered.

  “Who cares!” I said. I poured myself a drink of Coke on ice and took a long, slow sip. It was the most delicious beverage I’d ever tasted in my life. Then I opened my bag of peanuts and crunched each of them one by one, making them last as long as possible. If only the boys could see me now!

  The stewardess began to collect cups and an intercom crackled to life, and a voice began to ramble in English. As I listened, I realized with a sinking heart that somehow I was going to have to master this language, and that it was going to be very hard.

  “It sounds like plates breaking,” complained Esther. “How can people make those noises?”

  “We’ll have to learn this kind of talk,” I told her.

  “Well, how are we going to do that? I can’t understand a word!”

  “I guess from practicing.”

  “Great.”

  Then the captain switched to Spanish, a language with which he was clearly not comfortable.

  “Hello, traveling peoples!” he said. “You are going now in an airplane. We are going to take a short flight. We are going to Miami of Florida of America!”

  We looked at one another, amused.

  “The time of our flying will be forty-five little minutes,” continued the captain. “If you are wanting something, just ask the pretty ladies! They help you good. Have nice days!”

  “That was the worst Spanish I’ve ever heard,” Papa said in wonderment.


  “He gets an A for effort,” Mama said.

  “His Spanish is better than our English,” I reminded them.

  Then the plane began to move. I looked out the window as the landscape rolled past, slowly first, then faster and faster.

  “Papa, look how fast we’re going!” I said.

  “Shh, niño! I need to concentrate!” Papa said.

  I looked at him. His eyes were shut, and he was gripping the arms of his chair as though trying to fly the plane through sheer force of will.

  “Felo! Relax!” said Mama. “You’re going to have a heart attack!”

  “Let the pilot fly the plane, Papa,” I said. “Your job is just to sit here.”

  At that moment, the nose of the plane lifted, and the ground began to fall away beneath us. Papa began praying out loud to Santa Barbara. Mama put her hands to her mouth and watched in disbelief out the window as we rose toward the clouds. Esther and I giggled and nudged each other as we looked down at the ground, now far, far below us. The ocean came into view, breathtaking and dazzling in its glory. Then, suddenly, we were surrounded by mist.

  A few minutes later we came out on top of the clouds. At this, I was full of astonishment. I knew airplanes went high, but not that high. I stared out at the fluffy white floor. It looked solid enough to walk on.

  I had barely had time enough to look at everything when the captain came on the intercom again and prattled in English for a while. Then he switched to Spanish.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said casually, “we have just come inside the airspace of America. Welcome to the United States.”

  It took a few moments for his words to sink in, and then we hugged and cried.

  We were free!

  Epilogue

  As for me today, I am only a man who is striving to live each day in a state of humility. I live in Tampa, where I own a couple of small businesses. I ran for the office of state representative in 2000, and although I was not elected, I felt a great sense of joy and success in having attempted to give back to a land that I love, the land that had adopted me and granted me freedom. Just being able to run in the election meant a lot to me, because obviously such a thing would never have been possible in Cuba.