90 Miles to Havana (6 page)

“Hey, Julian, don't you think you're too old to still be drawing on the wall?” Gordo yells from across the room. I don't answer.

My mother used to get really angry when I drew on the wall, but lately she hasn't had the time to notice what I draw, where I go, or even to talk to me.

At night all she ever talks about are the lines. The lines she has to stand in all day to get one signature for our visas, just so she can go to the end of next line to get them stamped.

Every time I ask her about the camps where we're going, she always says the same thing, “The camps are beautiful. There are horses, lakes, and pine trees.” Then
knowing what my next question is going to be she adds, “And don't worry, we'll be there before you know it.” I don't know why, but I get the feeling she's not telling me something and she's not as sure as she's trying to sound.

When I asked my brothers about where we're going, Alquilino looked away and said, “Don't worry, it's going to be just like she says it is.” Gordo just stood there with a big smirk on his face like he and Alquilino were in on the joke and I was the one who didn't know the punch line.

When my mother marches into our room, I don't even try to hide my drawing.

She stops at my suitcase first. Her fingers run along the inside walls, slowing down to a walk at the corners. I know she's feeling for the secret compartment she had put in behind the blue lining. Her golden swallow with the ruby wings—the one we rescued from Alida's house—is sleeping in its own secret, blue pocket.

“If I wasn't looking for it, I'd never find it,” she says, sounding satisfied.

“It's going to break my heart to sell it, but we're going to need money when we get out,” she says, and checks the sides again. “Fifty dollars and one change of clothes is all they'll let us take out, and the government keeps everything else,” she huffs. “Does that sound fair to you? How can you start a new life on fifty dollars?”

I know it's not a good time to ask, but I heard Alquilino tell Gordo that they search everybody at the airport.

“What if they search me and they find it?”

“Don't worry, Julian. They won't look in your suitcase. They search the older kids like your brothers and I told you already why it has to go in your suitcase. If they catch them trying to sneak jewelry out of the country they'll keep them here—make them join the army—and then we'll never get them back.”

“Alquilino said—” I start, but she cuts me off.

“Julian,” she says, her voice rising, sugary sweet. That's the fake sweet voice she uses when she wants me to do something that I don't want to, or forget why I'm mad. “At first I wasn't going to tell you about the swallow—even your brothers thought I shouldn't tell you. We were afraid you might give it away. But I think you can keep a secret.”

“You told them and you weren't going to tell me?” I say pointing at my brothers as Gordo glares over his comic book at me. “I can keep a secret as well as they can.”

“I'm sure you can,
querido
,” she says and then draws an imaginary veil across her forehead. “All you have to do is forget it's there, wipe it right out of your mind.”

Then Gordo says, “The real reason she told you was because we might get separated.”

“Gordo, mind your own business!” my mother snaps.

“We might get separated?” I ask. “You never said that before.”

My mother looks at her watch. “Not another word! We don't have time for this!” she says, her voice dropping back to the hard commanding tone of the last few weeks.

My mother starts checking the new clothes that I packed. “Two pairs of pants, three shirts, and socks, very good. You have to take good care of these, we don't know how long they are going to have to last,” she warns.

“Before, you said it would be a few weeks, maybe a month, now you don't know, do you?”

“I'm doing the best I can, Julian.”

I turn away and press my face into the wall. The plaster feels cool against my burning cheeks.

“Turn around. I have something for you,” she says, her voice higher and syrupy sweet.

When I turn around she's holding out a small plate with one name tag on it. She couldn't just hand me the paper; she has to serve it on the plate I bought for Papi on Father's Day. It has a big marlin jumping out of the dark blue water, just like the one that got away.

The plate and her fake sweet voice are not going to work this time. “I'm not a little kid anymore!” I yell into the wall.

“I know, I know,” she says, her voice fraying at the edges. “I want you to pin this on your shirt when you get to the airport,” she says and pushes the paper in front of my face.

I read it without picking it up:

“Pedro Pan,
Please Take care of my son Julian.
God Bless You.”

“I don't want to wear that!” I say, turning around to point at my older brothers. “How come they don't have to?” Alquilino and Gordo are still reading the old comic books. You could never tell that they're about to leave everything behind, and maybe never see our parents again.

I crumple up the paper and throw it on the floor. “I'm not wearing it!”

Gordo slaps down his comic book and starts walking in my direction. He looks angry. As I scramble away, I accidentally knock the plate out of my mother's hand; it shatters on the tile floor. “Julian, what's gotten into you?” she asks.

I know what's gotten into me. Until this morning it had all seemed like a dream—a dream about some other kid—but now I know this is real. Now, every time she says, “we don't know” or “maybe,” she blows a little more haze away from that dream. I used to believe that my mother and father knew everything, and everything went the way they planned, but now I'm not so sure about that. Now I'm wondering what's going to be waiting for us at the other end.

My mother hasn't told me everything because she thinks I'm too young to understand and she doesn't want to scare me. But I'm not too young to know that it's not her fault, and that she doesn't really want to send us away to a strange country all alone, and I'm not too young to feel terrible about it.

I take a handkerchief from my suitcase and start picking up the jagged pieces of sky and sea. “I'll glue it back for you, Mami, I promise.”

I wrap up the pieces in my handkerchief and slip them into my pocket and then pick up the name tag.

“I'll put it on when I get there,” I mumble, but I'm not sure she heard me. She's staring past me, her face is a closed door.

When we get into the car she turns around and looks at us for a second like she wants to say something, but then she turns away and hangs her head.

The airport is crowded with bored soldiers, nervous parents, and dazed children. When they call out our name we're led into a small room. The man behind the desk points at the envelope my mother's holding, she hands it to him and he spreads out our passports on his desk. He's matching the passport photo to the face, then the name. “Alquilino, Eduardo.” I had almost forgotten Gordo's real name. Then he looks at me. “Julian?”

I'm trying my best to look bored like my brothers, but then he points at me.

“Search him,” the man says.

Why me? I panic, but I try to keep smiling just like my parents, so he won't know just how scared I am. I follow the guard and my suitcase into another small room across the hall wondering why he picked me.

The guard is a big guy, stuffed into a khaki shirt with the collar buttoned up too tight. His head looks like it's going to explode as he swings my suitcase up onto a metal table. He's looking right at me as he tumbles through my clothes, then runs his hand along the inside wall of my
suitcase—right where the bird is hidden. I concentrate on the bulging vein splitting his forehead in half. I don't want to look down and give it away.

His hand stops near the corner. Did he find the suspicious edge behind the blue lining? Now I can't look away.

Gordo told me once that when you're in trouble and can't think of anything else to do, you yell.

“Papi!” I scream. The guard's face flushes a weird pink.

“Quiet!” he growls, as he tries to find the edge again.

Then I yell even louder. “Mami!” the sound bounces off the bare cement walls.

He claps his big hand over my face. “What's the matter with you?”

I wiggle free and jump out into the hallway; he grabs the back of my collar and lifts me off the ground.

“Can't breathe!” I gasp.

Then I hear my mother, “
Ay dios,
Julian!” She's running down the crowded hallway yelling, “What are you doing to him?”

A crowd gathers, and soldiers muscle the onlookers against the wall—no one dares to push back—no one says a word. They watch silently as the two guards push my mother and me into another small room where my father and brothers are waiting.

My father stands up. “Señor, I apologize. He's not used to being searched.” He looks at his watch and smiles at the little man behind the desk, “
Por favor, capitan
, our plane leaves in three minutes.”

“Getting your children on the airplane is not my department. My job is to make sure that your papers are in order,” the little man says, and then orders the red-faced guard to go ahead and search my brothers. He checks the passports very carefully. When my mother sees me staring at the man she raises one eyebrow and nods toward the door. “Julian, why don't you wait outside.”

My mother is very proud of those passports. I don't know how, but she found a master forger, “an artist” she called him, who changed the dates of my brothers' birthdays so that they could get out.

I sit down on the floor, put my suitcase across my legs like a table, and take out the handkerchief. The first few pieces of the plate fit together perfectly; no chips or cracks. If I had some glue, you could never tell it was ever broken. But when I put all the pieces together there is still a hole right in the middle where the palm tree should be; I'm missing one piece.

Twenty minutes after the airplane is scheduled to leave, my father opens the door. “Let's go!” he says. I swipe the plate into the napkin, shove it into my pocket, and run to the room. Inside, my mother is checking her lipstick in a little mirror. Finally, she snaps her pocketbook closed, grabs the passports, and leisurely strolls out. She's too proud to let the little man get the best of her.

When my father closes the door, her expression changes from poker face to pure panic. “Run!” she yells as Alquilino and Gordo walk out into the hallway.

We arrive panting at the gate; the propellers on the silver airplane are spinning. A man in blue coveralls is standing on the wing getting ready to close the door as my mother waves our forged papers at the guard.

“Here,” my father says as he hands me a box of cigars. “They can't get the good Cuban cigars in America. Even the president is looking for them. They're as good as dollars up there,” he says.

I'm not sure what he means, but I tuck them under my arm and look away as he pulls me in. I want to tell him I'm sorry for losing his lucky fish, and breaking his lucky plate, but I can't.

Then he looks into my eyes. “I know what you're thinking, Julian. It wasn't your fault,” he says. “This was all coming long before you lost that fish.”

Just to hear him say “you lost that fish” makes me flinch. He hugs me one more time, pressing my nose into the scented handkerchief in the pocket of his suit.

Then my mother whispers, “I love you.” She kisses me on the forehead. “Take good care of my little swallow; we're going to need it when we get out.”

I can tell she's trying to control herself, but I know she can't hold back for long. Her face looks like a big raindrop that's about to burst.

Then someone pulls me out into the heat and noise of the runway. Alquilino and Gordo are running ahead of me into the midday glare. I'm trying to catch up but I can't
feel my legs on the hot cement. I'm floating behind them like a balloon on a string.

As we run past the man in the blue coveralls he waves at the pilot. We walk up the steps, onto the plane, and then the big door closes behind us.

As we bank over Havana the broken plate in my pocket is poking into my leg, reminding me that it's not a dream—everything has fallen apart. One minute we were together and safe, and the next minute, everything is broken and dangerous.

Outside my little window the thunderheads are rolling white-cloud boulders into castles, high in the deep blue sky.

Our new dictator can wave his cigar, wag his finger, make people stand in lines, fill the streets with tanks and soldiers, close my school, turn everything upside down, but he can't tell the clouds what to do. Every day, like clockwork, the clouds still build their castles, then they come tumbling down with the afternoon showers.

“We're about to land,” Alquilino says. I can barely hear him over the roar of the engines. Two ladies across the aisle are frantically fingering their rosary beads as the tires screech on the Miami runway. Everybody's waving and shouting as if a great miracle has occurred.

Gordo is already standing up in the aisle as Alquilino leans over me. “Julian,” he says softly, “grab the cigars!”

When we step out of the airplane, I stop on the first step to look out at the flat landscape. The rising thunderheads almost look the same as the ones I left behind, but then the slap of the gasoline breeze wakes me up and everything looks very different.

Alquilino prods me down the steps. “Pay attention, Julian, look where you're going,”

At the bottom of the stairs a man in a dark suit smiles and reaches in for my box of cigars.

“
¡Oye! ¿Que haces?
What are you doing?” I clutch the box tightly, but the man pulls even harder. “¡Alquilino,
mi tabacos
!” I yell. What luck, the first person I meet
en los Estados Unidos
is a cigar thief. When he realizes that I'm not going to let go of the box, he waves a ten-dollar bill in front of my face.