90 Miles to Havana (27 page)

A gray-haired teacher is wagging her finger at me; my ripped sleeve is lying on the boy's chest like a deflated snake. I twist and wiggle as far away from her as I can,
without her yanking my ear off, and make a stab for the sleeve. The teacher pulls me back. I yell,
“¡Caramba!”
Then she lets go and I grab my sleeve.

“I am Mrs. Johnson.” The teacher introduces herself. Then she launches into a lecture about fighting. “Are you listening to me?” she asks. I can understand what she's saying but I don't answer. I'm trying to slip my arm back into the empty sleeve.

Then she shakes me. “Can you hear me?” she asks as I just stare up at her strange, metal gray eyes.

“Do you understand me?” she asks, and looks at me as if I'm a two-legged riddle, a problem that she has to solve. Without waiting for an answer she hurries me through the crowded hallways.

“After we get you settled, I'll send you down to get your hearing tested,” she says loud enough for everyone to hear. She leads me into her classroom and then props me up in front of the class.

“This is
Julie-Ann
,” she says—I wince when she mispronounces my name. “He's from the tropical island of Cuba.”

I try to correct her. “My name is
Who-li-an
,” I say, but it's too late.

“Julie-Ann is from a tropical island,” I hear a boy snicker.

Mrs. Johnson pulls down a map of North America that covers the blackboard and points at “my tropical island.” On this map it looks like a short hop from the tip of Florida to Havana—a lot shorter than I remember it.

“Do you have any questions for your new classmates?” Mrs. Johnson asks.

A girl with fire-red hair raises her hand, but Mrs. Johnson ignores her, pointing at a sleepy-looking kid in the back of the room instead.

“Oscar?”

“Did you live in a tree house like Tarzan?” he asks, and the class laughs.

“Did you have a T.V.?” “Where did they put the antenna?” “Did you eat off plates?” The questions tumble out of the laughing class, each one sillier than the last, and I stare at my two-toned shoes.

The red-haired girl still has her hand up but now she is waving it back and forth like she's washing a big window.

“Yes, Darlene, do you have a question?” Mrs. Johnson asks and then warns, “Just one, Darlene.”

“My mother read in the paper that parents were sending their children out of your country all alone. Is that how you came?” Darlene asks and calmly arranges her braids. “My mother said that she would never, ever send me away like that—all alone to a strange place, even if it was the United States of America. I mean, why didn't they just buy a ticket and leave with you? Didn't you miss them and who took care of you?”

If I could talk, I would tell her that I had asked myself the same question over and over again. Then I would tell
the class that we have houses, cars, and televisions just like they do here and that we watched Tarzan movies in a brand-new theater that had the coldest air-conditioning in all of Havana. I would even love to tell them about the camp, Caballo, and the trip on Tomás's boat, but I feel naked standing up here with just one sleeve and I'm afraid if I open my mouth the words won't line up, and then they'll really laugh at me.

“I mean how bad could it be that they would . . .” the girl continues.

“Darlene!” Mrs. Johnson shouts. “I said one question!”

Then Mrs. Johnson takes me to my seat in the back of the room. I open the desk and stick my head inside as if I'm looking for something. It smells like old milk in here, but it feels good to be out of sight, even if it is just for a second.

I try to follow what Mrs. Johnson is saying, but the words I don't understand start to pile up.

From the last seat of the last row all I can see is the back of everyone's heads. It looks like they're walking away from me, moving ahead, but I'm stuck behind a pile of words that I can't climb over. I'm getting left behind, and I can't tell them to stop. I don't belong here and I guess it doesn't matter.

I never felt this way when I was on Tomás's boat. There, I made a difference—he told me so. It mattered that I was there.

I rummage through the desk and find a stack of white paper and colored pencils. I'm never lost when I draw, so I
start a picture of our house with a television antenna on the roof—our car in the driveway. The next one is of the man with the beard, pointing his cigar—dictating; then a golden swallow with ruby wings flying over Tomás in his boat with fifteen grateful people waving and smiling on deck. I draw one picture after the other until I run out of paper. When I look up, Mrs. Johnson is busy writing math problems on the blackboard. I follow along for a little while, happy to see that math is the same in English as it is in Spanish, but it doesn't take long to get bored; we did the same problems last year.

I gaze out the window at the strange red trees and discover that they are not always red—they're turning red. The trees in Cuba would never turn red for no reason at all. I could ask Mrs. Johnson why, but I think she's forgotten about me. She hasn't called on me or come back here all day. Maybe I've become invisible. Maybe that's good because then she won't notice if I drift off into a daydream.

It's easy to turn the red leaves into a blue sea and then to imagine a fishing boat bobbing on the waves. My father, Bebo, and my brothers are all standing around the fighting chair as I work the rod. I can hear the reel singing, my brothers cheering me on. My arms are tired but I'm not letting go. I am about to land the biggest marlin we've ever hooked, when I hear a bell ringing off in the distance. A gray calico pattern appears like a transparent screen between the fish and me. When the pattern shifts, the boat, the blue sea, and my brothers all disappear, and Mrs. Johnson
is standing over me in her gray calico dress. The class is up and gathering their books, chattering away as they file out of the room. Mrs. Johnson is holding my drawing of Dolores with her meat loaf and the tin-can spaceship in orbit behind her.

“Hoo-lian! These drawings—they tell your story?” she asks, then she points at Dolores. “And who is this?”

“Dolores,” I say and sit up.

“Would you tell me about Dolores?” Mrs. Johnson asks.

I stare into her eyes. Now they're sparkly blue with curiosity.

“You want me to tell?” I ask, surprised to see she's interested. She's the very first person to ask. No one in my own family has asked; they say they're too busy, but I have a feeling that they're just not interested. After all, how interesting could the story be if it happened to me?

Mrs. Johnson sits down on the windowsill next to me. I start by telling her about Dolores, how she met President Kennedy, and her delicious, soon-to-be-orbiting meat loaf.

“Julian, your classmates would love to hear that story, especially since tomorrow is the day they're planning to launch an astronaut into orbit! Tomorrow morning I'll put your drawings up on the board, and you can start telling us about Cuba and how you got here. The children will love hearing about your great adventure.” Then Mrs. Johnson smiles and says, “Julian, we are glad that you're here.”

As I walk across the schoolyard I spot the boy who
ripped my shirt standing in front of the door of my bus. His friends, standing by the swings, are watching me as I slow down to try to think of something I can say or do to get on that bus without fighting. Then Darlene, the girl with the red braids, runs up and starts walking next to me.

“Watch,” she says as we get near the bus. Darlene gets right in the boy's face and snarls, “You have to move.” She's one head bigger than him and by the tone of her voice I can tell she's not going to back away. I think the boy knows that, too.

“This has nothing to do with you, Darlene,” the boy warns as he shifts nervously from one foot to the other.

“This has nothing to do with him, either,” Darlene snaps back. “You don't even know him well enough to like or dislike him!”

When the boy hesitates, I step forward and thrust my hand out. First he looks back at his friends, and then at me, and—surprise—he shakes my hand.

“I'm Julian.”

“I know, I know,” he says, as I pump his hand.

“I'm Chuck,” he mumbles, pulls his hand back, and then walks away.

“You're home free for today!” Darlene says and pushes me into the bus. “Get in there before his big brother shows up.”

“Big brother?”

Darlene laughs. “Don't worry, I'll show you how to get
around him tomorrow.” She flashes me a sly smile, and says, “Julian, you're not alone here.”

On the way home I'm thinking about Mrs. Johnson's blue eyes, Darlene's sly smile, and what she said. I'm not too worried about meeting his older brother. He couldn't be worse than Caballo.

At the bus stop Gordo takes one look at my sleeveless shirt and dirty pants and laughs. “Looks like you lost,” he says. “What's his name?”

“I didn't lose and I can take care of myself.”

When I get home my mother is sitting at the kitchen table with a small cardboard box in front of her on the table. She hands me the box and doesn't ask about my clothes.

“This came special delivery for you,” she says.

I recognize the neatly printed address immediately. “It's from Tomás!”

I carefully pull off the tape, then lift out a folded Pirate Angel place mat. The golden swallow with ruby wings is sleeping peacefully on a bed of shredded newspaper.

“It's here!” I yell and wave it around for all to see, and then I hand it to my mother. The instant her finger touches it, the icy, bitter expression on her face starts to melt, and I can almost see the old sweetness in her eyes.

“Julian, I'm sorry I doubted you. It's been so hard, first to lose you and your brothers, and now your father.” My mother lowers her head.

When I hug her, I hear something rising from deep
down in her chest. Her sobs sound like little waves breaking and then breathing back to sea.

We all crowd around the small kitchen table to hear my mother read the letter from Tomás. The two families listen quietly as my mother reads about the stolen compass, the trip in a leaky boat with a fickle old engine, and how we snuck into Havana Harbor. When she gets to the part about how I kept the old engine going with tape and a paper clip, Gordo and Alquilino both raise their eyebrows and look at me as if she's talking about a different Julian.

“Without Julian and that little bird, fifteen people would not have been reunited with their families. You will always be welcome in my home. Someday and over dinner and a cold glass of Tomás-ade, I would love to hear about your trip.”

When she finishes, she puts down the letter and starts clapping slowly. My aunt Marta and my uncle José stand up, then my little cousins join in. When Alquilino and Gordo finally get up, they clap a couple times like their arms were really tired and then sit back down. My mother puts her arms around me. “Julian, you did the right thing. Tonight you can start telling me the whole story. Tomorrow I'm going to sell this little bird, and we'll have enough money to get Papi out. Then our family will be together again.”

We all raise our glasses, cups, and flan dishes, anything we can click together. “To our new home,” Aunt Marta says.

“Where anything is possible,” my mother adds.

It's a school night but we stay up talking and joking like we used to. By the time we finally get to bed the sad dark cloud that hung over our heads is in tatters. I can feel it blowing away.

For the second day of school I'm dressed like a normal person. I let Alquilino and Gordo walk ahead of me on the way to the bus stop. The little transistor radio they bought is pressed in between their heads. They look like Siamese twins, joined at the ear.

Suddenly, Gordo jerks his head back and yells, “
Apollo
is in orbit!”

Alquilino points at the sky. “The astronaut—he's up there in a tin can!” He's shouting but I can barely hear him. Bulldozers are gobbling up the green pastures on either side of the busy road, turning them into little patches of lawn.

Just then a dump truck growls by, and my brothers disappear into a cloud of dust. There is a whole tree—leaves, roots, and all—in the back of the truck, as if a giant had just yanked it out of the ground. The tips of the roots look like hands waving—waving up at the man in orbit above us. I bet that astronaut is eating Dolores's deluxe meat loaf for lunch. Why not? My mother said that almost anything is possible here. What a place to begin again!