The Red Umbrella (2 page)

Frankie took a deep breath and turned back to Mamá. “Well, Señor Pedraza told us to close our eyes again and this time to ask Comandante Fidel for ice cream. A few minutes later, a lady brought enough for the whole class. Señor Pedraza said that El Comandante wouldn’t leave anyone out. If one kid was going to get ice cream, then it was only right that we all got some. Now, I think
that
was super fair.” Frankie licked the
croqueta
crumbs off his fingers.

Mamá shook her head. “It’s not so simple.”

“Yeah, goofball. God doesn’t give you everything you ask for … if He did, I’d be allowed to wear makeup.” I gave Mamá a playful look.

“All I know is that we got to eat ice cream, and that never happened when Padre Martín was in charge.”

“But you understand that Fidel isn’t better than God, right, Frankie?” Mamá asked.

Frankie slowly nodded.

Mamá stopped playing with her ring and rubbed her hands together. “I thought this whole Fidel thing would’ve been over by now. That everything would return to normal in time, but …”

I poured myself some
café con leche
. “Don’t worry, Mamá. Nothing really changes around here.”

Mamá bit her lip and shook her head. “No, Lucía,
things
have
changed … in big ways, even here.” She paced around the kitchen. “First they kick out the priests, then they close the schools, and now …” Mamá paused to watch the orange-striped curtain flutter in the kitchen window. She nodded as if in response to some silent question. “Your father and I have decided that you two need to stay home for the next few days.”

“What? But there’s no school!” I couldn’t believe what Mamá was saying.

“I know, but your father and I talked it over.”

“What about if we go together to the beach? We were there yesterday,” Frankie argued.

Mamá combed his hair with her fingers.
“Mi hijo
, it’s not safe. I don’t want to get into it right now, so just do this for me and stay inside. Understood?”

Frankie crossed his arms and pulled away from Mamá’s touch.

I thought for a moment. “Does this have to do with the soldiers that drove by the beach yesterday? Is that what has you worried? It’s not that big a deal. We don’t have any anti-revolutionaries in Puerto Mijares. Nothing will happen.”

Mamá’s jaw dropped and she quickly made the sign of the cross. “You ran into them?
¡Dios mío!”

I rolled my eyes. “So that
is
why you’re acting like this!”

“You don’t know …” Mamá looked away.

“But I have plans with Ivette. I have to go out!”

“Ivette can come over here,” Mamá offered.

I pushed back my chair. “What for? To be a prisoner with me? Ivette wants to go downtown, go to the movies, hang out at the beach. No one knows when we’re going to have to go back to school; we have to take advantage of the time now.” Anger rose in my chest as I saw that Mamá was not going to change her mind. “You convinced Papá to do this, didn’t you?”

“No, Lucía, he’s actually the one—”

“You always treat me like a little kid, like Frankie. You won’t even let me cut my hair!”

“Lucía, you have such beautiful long hair, cutting it would be a disgrace. A few inches shorter would be fine, but why cut it to look like everyone else?”

“But it’s
my
hair!” I tried one last time. “Mamá, please, let me go with my friends today.”

Mamá shook her head. “I said no.”

“Call Papá,” I demanded.

Mamá raised her hand to end the discussion. “No. Your father and I both agree on this. I don’t ask much from either of you, but you will do as I say.” Her voice got a little louder. “Now promise me that you will not leave this house. Promise me!”

Frankie nodded.

“Lucía?”

It was pointless to argue.

“Fine,” I muttered.

*  *  *  *  *

My fun-filled day dragged slowly by as the morning blended into the afternoon. I had called Ivette right after breakfast and pretended to be sick. I didn’t want to admit that I was being held hostage by my irrational mother.

“Listen,” Frankie called out from the window seat, where he’d been reading a comic book. “Did you hear that?”

I walked over to him. Something was causing the window to rattle.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” he asked. “The soldiers.”

“I don’t know.”

Frankie glanced around. He pointed toward the back door.

I paused to consider it, but then shook my head. “Mamá doesn’t want us outside. We might get caught.”

“C’mon, it’s just the yard. We’ll just go, take a look, and then sneak back in. Mamá is upstairs cleaning our rooms. She’ll never know.” Frankie tossed aside the comic book and stood up.

I grabbed him by the arm. “We promised.”

“I had my fingers crossed.”

“We don’t know what’s out there.”

“Exactly!” Frankie twisted around and broke free of my grasp.

“Francisco Simón Álvarez, get back over here!” I said in my loudest whisper. “Or I’ll tell Mamá.”

“Fine, be a tattletale. But I’m still going, and it’ll be your fault if something happens because you let me go by myself.” Frankie dashed out the back door.

I had to make a decision. Keep my promise or follow Frankie. What if there
was
some sort of danger and Frankie got hurt because he was alone? I stopped thinking and darted out the door.

“I think the noise is coming from over there.” Frankie pointed toward the high school up the street before sprinting past the front of the house.

I glanced around the neighborhood. It was strange that barely anyone was outside. “He’s going to get us into so much trouble,” I said to myself as I ran low to the ground so that Mamá wouldn’t see me.

Soon I caught up to Frankie. He already had his eye pressed against a hole in the school’s tall wooden fence.

“Okay, let’s go.” I tapped him on the shoulder. “Mamá is going to kill us if we get caught.”

He flicked my hand away. “Whoa, wait till you see this!”

“What?”

“You’re not gonna believe it.”

“Let me see.” I pushed him out of the way.

Peering through the hole, I could see several bearded men wearing fatigues. They were unloading boxes from army trucks while others, with rifles slung over their shoulders, walked around belting out orders. They seemed to be setting up some sort of camp behind the high school. Never had I seen so many soldiers. There seemed to be a hundred … or more.

From the middle of the school’s baseball field, a deep voice cut through the surrounding noise. A hush fell over the soldiers as everyone stopped to stare at the small group of men that had gathered near the pitcher’s mound.

“Gusanos
, worms,” yelled one of the soldiers, “tell us what we want to know!”

They were shouting at two men in business suits who were holding something behind their backs.

From where I stood, I could only see one man’s profile, but he looked a lot like Papá’s boss at the bank, Señor Betafil. It can’t be him, I thought. He’s such a sweet old man. Always giving us candy whenever we go to see Papá. What would they want with him?

“¡Comunista!”
The old man spat out the word.

Another soldier came up from behind and struck him with a rifle butt.

“Oh!” I gasped, and turned away as the old man fell to his knees. I slowly peered through the hole again. Then I realized that the old man wasn’t hiding something behind his back. His hands had been tied!

“Tell us!” The soldier pushed the other man onto the ground and placed a foot on his neck while aiming his rifle at the man’s head.

I couldn’t take any more. I looked away from the fence, but Frankie continued to stare at the scene through an opening at the bottom.

“Frankie, we need to go back.” Mamá had been right … this was bad. Real bad.

“Shhh.” Frankie crawled toward the corner of the fence. “I just want to see if that’s—”

The sound of gunfire splintered the air. Frankie froze. Our eyes met. Neither of us made a move to see what had just happened, and a forced silence fell over the area. Not even the birds made a sound. For what seemed to be a lifetime, but was really a split second, I could only hear the soft sound of the breeze blowing through the palm trees.

Then the intensity of the soldiers’ shouting and laughing swallowed me. I grabbed Frankie by his shirt collar. “Let’s go. Now!”

*  *  *  *  *

Mamá peeked around my bedroom door.
“¿Todo bien, mi hija?
You’ve been so quiet all afternoon. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

I put down my copy of French
Vogue
. “Everything’s fine.” I gave her a half-smile.

Before sneaking back into the house, Frankie and I
had agreed not to say anything about the soldiers. If Mamá found out, we’d be punished for a month. Plus, for all we knew, the soldiers were just trying to scare Señor Betafil and no one really got hurt. Or maybe it wasn’t even Señor Betafil. And if it was him, maybe it was the other guy who got shot because he’d done something really bad. I’d heard stories on TV of traitors being executed, but those people were trying to harm us. Could that other man have been a traitor? He must have been. The revolution wouldn’t execute innocent men.

Mamá sat on my bed and started brushing my hair. “I know staying home is hard, but you and your brother have been very good.” She reached over and put the silver-handled brush back on my vanity.

I bit my lip and looked down.

“You’re growing up right before my eyes. In a few months, you’ll have your
quinces
and a year after that I’ll be chaperoning you on dates.” Mamá gave me a little squeeze. “Seems like only yesterday your grandmother, God rest her soul, was chaperoning your father and me.”

I looked out the window. I hated keeping secrets, but what choice did I have?

“Escucha
. I think I hear your father.” Mamá patted my hand. “Why don’t you get your brother and wash up for dinner? I made my special
flan
for dessert. Today I didn’t forget.”

“Sure.” I got up and walked across the hall to Frankie’s room. From the doorway, I watched as he lined up several toy soldiers along the windowsill. He had other groups of green army men scattered on the floor.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” I announced.

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled, focused on balancing a soldier on top of a lamp shade.

I took a step into his room. “Remember what we talked about. Don’t say a word, no matter how bad you feel.”

Frankie ignored me and kept playing with his toys.

“You know what I’m talking about.” I knelt down next to him and lowered my voice. “What we saw … what the soldiers did. I think they were just trying to scare those men, but still …”

He paused to look at me and then turned back to his make-believe battlefield. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Hijos
, where’s your mother?” Papá stood in the doorway wearing his banker’s uniform … dark suit, white shirt, and blue tie.

I jumped up to give him a hug, clinging to him a bit longer than usual, thankful to have him home.

Papá bent down to give me a kiss on the forehead.

I took a deep breath. I loved the way he smelled after coming home from work. A mix of cologne and the cigar he always smoked on the drive home.

“I think Mamá’s in the kitchen,” I answered.

“Y tú
, Frankie?” Papá held his arms open. “You getting too big to welcome me home?”

Frankie shrugged.

“¿Qué pasa?
What’s wrong, son?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “He’s just tired of being inside all day.” I glanced over at my brother still sitting on the floor.

“Oh, of course.” Papá paused. “Perhaps not going outside at all
is
a bit drastic.” Papá stooped down and tousled Frankie’s hair. “I’ll talk to your mother. I think playing in the yard would be fine.”

“Fernando, I thought I heard you in here.” Mamá joined us in Frankie’s room. She’d put on lipstick and fixed her hair. It made me smile, how she always wanted to look nice when Papá came home.

“Sonia, I need to talk to you.”

Mamá gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Well, dinner is almost ready….”

“It’s important, but …” Papá gestured toward us.

Mamá nodded.
“Niños
, go downstairs and set the table for dinner.”

“Do I have to?” Frankie asked.

“Frankie…,” Mamá answered.

He raised his hands in surrender. “I know, I know.”

“And no nibbling on the
flan,”
Mamá warned as Frankie’s stomping turned into a full sprint down the stairs.

“Lucy …” Papá looked at me.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m going, too.”

Frankie’s bedroom door closed behind me. I waited a moment, then pressed my ear against it.

“Well?” Mamá asked.

“It’s the bank. They want me to be in charge—”

“A promotion! That’s wonderful, what did Señor Betafil say?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t Señor Betafil with the soldiers at the school. And if Papá got a promotion, that’d mean we could afford an even bigger
quinceañera
party in November. I smiled. Laura Milian was going to be so-o-o jealous.

“Sonia, that’s the thing…. Betafil didn’t give it to me. It came from Havana; they’ve taken Betafil into custody. They’re holding him indefinitely. He …” Papá’s voice trailed off.

It felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I turned around and pressed my back against the door.
Señor Betafil was arrested?
My heart pounded. There was a ringing in my ears. I was going to be sick.

“Phone for you, Lucy,” Frankie yelled from downstairs.

I didn’t want to believe that the man I’d seen with the soldiers had been Papá’s boss, but it had to be true. I needed to find out more. Who was that other man with Señor Betafil? Why were they there? What had they done? I put my ear to the door again, but now there
were just hushed whispers. I felt stupid and selfish for thinking about my birthday party when so much was happening. I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter if I had a party at all. But part of me kept thinking that the soldiers might leave by November, so I could at least have a little celebration.