Flight to Freedom (14 page)

Mami has given up on any calls coming from Cuba. She says the dream was just that—a dream.

Papi said yes. Yes, yes, yes! I am going on the car trip with Jane. Here I come, Key West, Saint Augustine, Cape Canaveral, and Tallahassee! I've started counting the hours. I'm already thinking about what I will pack. Jane says we will be staying at motels with pools, so I most certainly will pack my swimsuit.

We were spending the day at Crandon Park when Papi announced the good news. I had been moping all morning, remembering Efraín and how he had shown us the zoo and the roller rink last summer. But the idea of the trip perked me right up. Even Abuelo Tony was excited for me. “You will get more of an education by traveling than by sitting in a classroom,” he said, and hugged me tight.

I've got to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming.

I have lots of homework, and enough tests to bury me. I must write you about the photographs we received from Cuba, the ones Pepito promised. The person in the photographs hardly looks like Pepito. He is almost twice as tall as Abuelo Pancho, and his face is long and it ends in a square chin. He has serious, hard eyes. He looks thinner than I remember, too, but maybe it is just his uniform. I feel cheated. Instead of making me happy, the photographs gave me this ripping sensation in my chest. Of course, I didn't say anything to my parents. Why make a bad situation worse?

At least I have the trip to look forward to. Jane gave me some brochures from Cape Canaveral, and we saw pictures of Saint Augustine in a book in the school library.

Hip, hip, hurrah for me. I received Best Mathematics Student award in a school ceremony for eighth graders. I was so surprised. Never in a million years did I expect this. Though my lowest mark in any examination
or quiz was a 95, I still thought that Mrs. Boatwright did not like me because she would never smile at me and was always so strict. Last week the school sent home a note announcing the ceremony, but I did not think it was important and threw it away. Had I known, maybe Abuela or Abuelo could have come to school to see me receive the award.

As soon as Mami and Papi came home from work, I showed them the certificate. We immediately went to the shopping center to buy a frame for it and hung it on one of the bedroom walls. Papi said I inherited his way with numbers. Mami said that was fine as long as I didn't inherit his stubbornness. They laughed and kissed, and I decided that seeing them act silly was better than receiving the award itself.

Alina must attend summer school because she failed two classes. (She won't tell me which.) I think she is working too many hours. She should concentrate on school. Srta. Reed gave her some books to help improve her English. One is titled
Direct English Conversation for Foreign Students
by Robert J. Dixon.
Most of the lessons are vocabulary that I already know, so I promised to help her when I return from the car trip.

Abuelo Tony died. He died. He's gone. My
abuelito.

I write those words and still can't believe it. He had a heart attack. By the time the ambulance came, the paramedics could not revive him. Tío Pablo had to give Abuela medicine to calm her down because she was hysterical. She would not let the ambulance people take him or come near him. Now she has been sleeping all afternoon.

Oh, my
abuelito.
My dear, dear
abuelito.

No more tears, no more tears. I have cried myself out. I tried to be strong for Ana Mari because she has taken this very hard, but I got a horrible headache from holding in all my crying. So I went for a walk. Without telling any grown-up, either, which is a big no-no. I just forgot. I walked and walked and walked.
I was sweating rivers from so much walking. I went to all the places Abuelo and I would go during our exercises. I saw all the plants he pointed out to me and I tried to name them. Some I knew, others I had already forgotten. And the more I walked, and the farther I got from home, the more I was able to cry. I could let it all out without the worry of upsetting anybody. When I got to that pretty garden we saw a few days ago, I stood in front of the
framboyan
and cried even more. I am glad it was hot because no one was out in the streets. It would have been embarrassing if somebody had seen me.

I cannot believe I will never hear my Abuelo's voice again, or touch his hand, or see him walking beside me, panting because Ana Mari and I are moving too fast. Death is so final, so absolute, so unfair. I do not want to think about it.

I had never been to a funeral until this day. I hope I never have to go to another one. This one was a traditional Cuban wake. The funeral people had fixed Abuelo Tony up and dressed him in a fancy suit, so he
could lie in an open casket. They put makeup on his face, too. When I knelt on the cushioned pew in front of the coffin to say a prayer, I looked at his fake smile and closed eyes and I knew for sure he was dead. Papi wanted me to kiss him, but I was afraid. He looked so…so unreal, like a wax doll. I did touch him, though, and he felt very hard and cold.

Efraín came home from boot camp this morning, but he must leave tomorrow afternoon. I hardly got to talk to him because the men mobbed him and asked him all kinds of questions. The funeral parlor was full of relatives and friends, all of them talking too loud. The old women sat in big chairs lining the room. Abuela was in the corner closest to Abuelo's body, sniffling and dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. Every time someone new came up to her, she began to weep all over again. “Leave her alone,” I wanted to scream. She kept complaining it was cold, and Tío Pablo gave her his jacket until Mami went home to get her a sweater. The air-conditioning was very, very cold. My fingernails were purple the whole time.

Everyone wore black, even Jane and Mrs. Henderson. Mr. and Mrs. F., from the craft store, came, and so did
Tommy and a few of Ileana's girlfriends, and Alina with her family. I was surprised how people kept coming in and out of the parlor with little plates of pastries or cups of
café
they had bought at a cafeteria down the block. To me all the commotion felt more like a party than anything else. I hated the noise and the relatives hugging me tight. I did not care for any of them. All I wanted was my Abuelo back. There were lots of flowers, too, so many that Ileana sneezed all afternoon. Mami gave her a special medicine to make her stop.

A priest came in the evening to recite the rosary. I just mumbled the words to go along. I wished he would go away, too, and he finally did, but not before coming to pat each of us on the head. I wanted to ask him why my Abuelo had died. Why didn't somebody else die, somebody mean, like Fidel Castro and those dictators in Russia and that man who killed Robert Kennedy and the other fellow who murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. Why?

We had to come home after the rosary because it was almost eleven o'clock. All the grown-ups will stay the night with Abuelo's body, then tomorrow after
church we will bury him. I can't stop thinking about how Abuelo worried he would not ever see his homeland again. Maybe he knew something we didn't.

Early in the morning, before we left for the funeral parlor, I ran around the block collecting all the flowers I could see. I picked ixoras and marigolds and pentas and tiny lantanas and gardenias and appleblossom cassia and frangipani and allamanda and oleander. Back in the kitchen, all the names came to me suddenly, in a rush, as I wrapped their fragile stems in a moist napkin and then wrapped them again in foil.

At the parlor, when we went to say our final goodbyes to Abuelo, I put my special bouquet inside the casket. I am sure no one except Ana Mari understood what I was doing, and when she saw the beautiful flowers, all those bright colors against Abuelo's dark suit, she came over to hug me. Together we cried.

Now he is gone, and I miss him so much. So very much.

It has rained for days. I feel like the heavens are crying with me. How I wish my
abuelo
were here. And my brother, too! And Efraín. It is so difficult to be away from people you love. I feel as if I cannot breathe, as if there is not enough fresh air to go around. I now know better than ever what Papi means by exile because in certain ways death is a form of exile. It is separation and finality and the ability to remember without the joy of touching or seeing or hearing.

It hit me: I am finally leaving on the trip tomorrow. I'm so excited.

We toured most of Saint Augustine today, though it was so hot we kept having to stop at different places to get a drink. This place reminds me a lot of Cuba, especially the Castillo de San Marcos at the edge of Matanzas Bay and Fort Matanzas, which is much smaller than the Castillo. We took lots of photographs.
When I phoned my parents—I must call every evening—I felt a little homesick. That surprised me because I so much wanted to leave on this trip.

I'm having a great time with Jane and her grandparents. They insist I call them Gramps and Grannie, which I do, and they let us eat ice cream every day.

I haven't forgotten you, but I have so little time. Today we motored around Lake Okeechobee with a fishing guide. This lake is so big it looks like an ocean. We also saw a lot of people in bus-like cars that Jane says are called recreational vehicles. People camp in them. I had never seen one before.

I'd write more if I weren't so exhausted.

I'm back! It was the most fantastic vacation I have ever had. Jane's grandparents treated me so nicely. We swam in the ocean, we jumped from diving boards, we saw rocket ships, we sat on old Spanish cannons, we
saw a sunset in Key West, we went fishing on a boat in Lake Okeechobee—oh, we did so many things that I will need a new diary to write them all.

Today is Independence Day, and it is celebrated with picnics and fireworks, but we did nothing except work around the house. I helped Mami refinish a dresser that she rescued from a trash pile on her way from work earlier in the week. “Amazing the usable things
los americanos
throw out,” she says. “This is a country of such abundance.” Her statement reminded me of those long lines we used to wait in for everything—soap, beans, rice, shoes, clothing. Abuelo Pancho used to say Cubans queued up for everything except death, and now poor Abuelo Pancho is still there in Cuba, standing in lines. When I told Mami what I was thinking, her eyes misted. She said it was not always like that in Cuba. Years ago, before the Communist revolution, when I was a little girl, you could buy most anything at any store if you had money. Now, even with money, there's nothing to buy.

In the late afternoon when it was a teensy bit cooler, Tía Carmen barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers. Then we went through some old photo albums that Abuela had brought from Cuba. We could
not bring any of ours, so these photographs of our childhoods are very precious. Staring at them, I felt like I was spying on someone else's life, someone who looked like me but was existing in a parallel world of scalloped photo paper. It made me wonder what kind of life I might have had, the kind of life
all
my family would have had, if the Communists had not taken over our country. It would be very different if we had stayed behind. For one thing, I would not know any English. I would have never met Jane nor gone on that wonderful trip. Mami would not have learned to drive—at least not for a long time. Ileana would not have a job, and Papi would not have ever trained with those militias in the swamp. How strange that one event, one decision, can change so many parts of so many people's lives!

At night we saw the fireworks on television from the United States capital. It was beautiful to watch the night sky lighting up in what we knew were fantastic colors, even if it was only on a black-and-white screen and not in person. Next year, though, Tía Carmen has promised we will go to a park to see the fireworks and festivities. We will bring a blanket and lie on it and stare up at the darkness. (She always tries to be optimistic.
It must be so hard for her to keep smiling while Efraín is away.)

“The colors of the fireworks in the night look like exploding flowers,” she explained. “You will see what I mean next year.”

So what do you think Papi said to Tía Carmen? One guess. That's right. He said, “Next year we'll be in Cuba.” And he said, too, that instead of staring into the dark sky, we will be taking an evening swim in Guanabo. I wish I could believe him.