90 Miles to Havana (3 page)

At the stroke of midnight we throw confetti at our parents and then jump into the boat yelling,
“¡Feliz Año Nuevo!”

My father and Mr. Garcia look annoyed. “You're making
too much noise!” my father growls. My mother and Alida look down at the pink rolls of confetti still in their hands and smile politely.

“It's New Year's Eve!” Angelita mumbles. “We're supposed to make noise!”

Just then three sharp, loud metallic pops slash through wood and cement above us on the dock.

“Everybody down!” my father yells.

We're huddled under the table and the only thing I can think of is that real gunshots are nothing like the ones in the movies. Real gunshots are like the roar of a lion compared to the meow of a cat.

I peek out at the men in jackets and ties shouting and waving pistols over their heads on the dock above us.

“We're free! The dictator has flown away!” they yell.

Then one of the men aims his pistol in our direction.

“He's going to shoot at us!” I scream and duck back under the table as the windscreen in front of the wheel shatters and diamond nuggets of glass rain down all around us.

“¡Viva la revolución!”
he shouts. Then he gathers his group and they dance away.

My father is the first one standing. I hear him crunching around on the broken glass. “The party's over. Everybody in the cars,” he says, trying to sound calm. But there's something different about his voice; I think it's fear.

We throw the dinner plates and the food into a basket as Bebo and Mr. Garcia sweep up the glass. My father locks
up the boat, and then we jump into our cars. I'm waving good-bye wondering if Pepe or Angelita noticed that my hand is trembling.

Bebo's driving slowly down the Malecón, a broad avenue that runs between the sea and the city. My father is looking out the passenger side window at the dark churning sea.

“I guess we didn't see this one coming,” he says and points at the dark gray clouds rolling over us.

Just ahead a big wave crashes against the seawall, and rises like a white-foam hand reaching for the delicate old houses across the boulevard. A noisy crowd has gathered in front of the corner house. Bebo slows the car down to a crawl.

People are chanting and dancing on a carpet of paintings, curtains, and clothing. They cheer when a man walks out onto the balcony, waves, and then says something to the crowd. As soon as he walks back inside it starts raining chairs. They come spinning through the windows, flying over the railing and crashing dangerously close to the wild mob, but no one seems to mind.

My father signals Bebo to keep moving. As we drive away, four men are lifting a black piano up onto the railing of the balcony.

“Papi, why are they throwing all the furniture into the street?” I ask.

“That house belonged to the president,” my father says.

“I have a very bad feeling about this revolution,” my mother grumbles.

“They're taking back what he took from them, but they'll settle down when they even the score,” my father says as the car creeps forward.

“I don't see anyone keeping score. Do you?” my mother asks.

On the next street my mother points out a group of men pulling the parking meters right out of the cement with their bare hands. “Don't look away boys, I don't want you to ever forget what a revolution looks like.”

When Bebo turns onto Quinta Avenida, he accelerates. As we fly down the long, straight avenue toward home, my father and my mother are listening to the radio. A man with an unusually high, nasal voice is announcing that our dictator-president has left Cuba. He loaded up three airplanes with his family and all the money they could carry, and then flew away.

Airplanes stuffed with bags of money, chairs flying out the windows, people pulling out parking meters—I'm starting to get this scary feeling that anything could happen anytime, anywhere. It's like the glue that kept everything and everyone together started to dissolve right after I lost the big fish.

I'm watching the little muscle twitching in Papi's jaw, wondering if he's thinking about the year's worth of luck that I let swim away.

The next morning I get up early and go down to the kitchen. Before I push the door open, I stop and listen to make sure it's safe. I hear Bebo humming a familiar tune to the chop, chop . . . chop beat of his knife on the cutting board.

“Everything is normal so far,” I say to myself, and then swing the door open.

Bebo greets me without looking up from the green peppers he's cutting. “
Hola
, Bebo,” I say as I lay out a fresh sheet of paper and open up my box of pencils.

“Are you going to make me a drawing of our wild New Year's Eve, Julian?”

“Sure, Bebo.”

Bebo doesn't think I'm too old to draw, but my brothers do. They are always telling me that drawing is for little kids, that it's one of those things you leave behind when you grow up, but what do they know?

My father draws all the time, too. Once I saw him draw a building on a napkin, and then after he had his coffee, he folded it up and stuck it in his pocket. A few months later he drove us to a construction site and there was the building he had drawn, rising out of the mud.

I don't know how he did it, but he turned a few lines on a napkin into ten stories of real bricks and cement. That's when I started thinking that drawing is like magic. When I draw I have X-ray vision. I can see how all the parts fit together and then I understand how things work and sometimes how I feel.

When I finish, I put the drawing next to Bebo on the counter. He stops chopping and looks over at the drawing. “Look at that!” he exclaims. “You got everything moving around. The chairs flying out the window, people dancing. I can almost hear them yelling!”

“Bebo, can I ask you a question?”

“Claro, chico,”
he says as he studies the drawing more closely.

“What is a
revolution
? I mean I know that people want things to change—I heard it on the radio—but why? Why are they acting crazy? Why are they so mad? What do they want?”

Bebo wipes the knife on his apron, then says carefully,
“Maybe you should ask your father or mother. They went to college, they should know.”

“You know how they are, Bebo. Even if they try to explain it, they'll make something up because they think I can't understand. They won't explain it like you do—like it is.”

Bebo smiles and looks up at the clock. “
Muy bien
, Julian. I'll give it a try.” He pauses to gather his thoughts, “Ask questions,” he says, and then picks up my drawing. “This is a good picture of a revolution but it's only one part of it. To really show what a revolution is, you'd have to draw at least three pictures. A before, a during, and then an after.” Bebo stops to look at the clock again. “But I have to get breakfast ready. The Garcias are coming over,” he complains and then starts cutting the onions into thin slices.

“What else? You can't just leave it at that. Before, during, and after—what does that mean? That's how my parents would explain it.”

Bebo looks at me like I just insulted him, then he shakes his head. “
Niño
, you're persistent!” he says, and then chuckles, “
Muy bien,
but a revolution is harder to explain than an internal combustion engine. So you better pay attention.”

Bebo picks up five brown eggs in his big hand. “This is before,” he says, holding up the eggs like a magician about to make them disappear. “Inside these eggs are all the important things that everybody needs: schools, houses, food, and money. For one reason or another a few people have gotten hold of all the eggs and they don't want to share
them.” Then he starts cracking one egg after the other. The slippery yokes slide out, and then chase each other around the white bowl. “This is during. Things get smashed and cracked, everything gets cut loose, and everybody starts grabbing. That's what we saw last night. It's what's happening now,” he says as he pokes at the five yolks with a fork, and then scrambles them into one big yellow lake.

“The after is the important part!” he announces and tips the bowl so I can see the bubbling yellow stuff inside. “You can make a lot of different omelets out of this stuff depending on what you add to it, and how you cook it,” he says as he looks over his shoulder at the kitchen door. “Some people are going to love the new omelet, and some are going to hate it. But there's one thing I can say for sure Julian: once you crack those eggs, nothing stays the same.” Then Bebo smiles at me. “There's your revolution,” he says as tears well up in his eyes.

“Bebo, are you worried that you won't like the new omelet?” I ask as he wipes his forearm across his eyes.

“No, I think I'm going to like it,” he says.

“Then why are you crying?”

Bebo is pushing the onions around the chopping board. “Me, crying?” he says as if I insulted him again. “I've got to concentrate on this omelet; the Garcia's will be here in a few minutes. The lesson's over for today. Go play somewhere else.”

As I push the door open, the chop-chop starts up again, and I hear him grumble, “Damn onions.”

The Garcias were unusually quiet at breakfast. Every time I looked at Angelita she would look down at her plate. My mother fiddled with her water glass, my father pushed his omelet around the plate.

“This is going to be our last breakfast together,” Alida finally announced. “We're leaving the country.”

Angelita was still looking down, her hair, like a black curtain, hanging over her plate. I could tell she was crying.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Miami,” Mr. Garcia answered.

“We're leaving tomorrow.”

My father put down his fork. “José, I think you should wait. This will all get back to normal soon.”

“I don't think so,” he said. “We've had a lot of revolutions here but this one is different. Mark my words.”

We fell into a strange, uncomfortable silence, eating without looking at each other, thinking thoughts that were too sad to put into words.

Alida was the first to start crying, then my mother. We said good-bye to Angelita and Pepe as if they were just going away on a short trip. We were all trying to act as if we never had that sad thought, the thought that none of us could talk about: this could be our last good-bye.

This morning a black car and an army truck drove up in front of the Garcias' house, but Mami wouldn't let us go over. When she walked away we snuck up to her bedroom
and climbed out the window to the roof that overlooked Angelita's side patio.

Below us there are three men in green uniforms lounging in the shade of the mango tree. It's strange to see Alida's red kitchen table on the patio with three rifles leaning against it.

When a small dark-haired woman marches through the kitchen door, the three
militianos
grudgingly stand up. She's wearing Angelita's shiny black church shoes. They make her old dress look even shabbier.

“That's the lady that moved into Kiko's house right after he moved out,” Alquilino whispers.

Kiko lived across the street; his family was one of the first to leave.

The very next day her husband was walking around the neighborhood in Kiko's father's guayaberas. His son followed him around dressed up in a white shirt and red bandanna, the uniform of the new government's youth brigade.

Gordo is sure that they sent them here to spy on us. He says there's one just like her in every neighborhood in Havana.

The Garcias walk out onto their patio carrying their suitcases and then, one at a time, put them up on the table for the woman to search. She tumbles through their neatly folded clothes and then she slides her hand along the sides and bottom of the suitcases.

“She's looking for secret hiding places,” Alquilino whispers.

Before I can ask, he adds, “Alida said they couldn't take anything with them—just a little money and the clothes that fit into one suitcase each.”

When the woman is satisfied that they are not trying to sneak their own jewels and money out of the country she gestures for them to close the suitcases. But Angelita is not listening; she's slowly folding her clothes, then carefully putting them back. The woman puts her hand on the lid threatening to slam it closed, but Angelita continues folding her clothes. The woman steps in front of her, closes the suitcase and then wags her finger under Angelita's nose. She's lecturing her about something, but Angelita is looking up at the clouds, pretending not to listen. Then the woman points at Angelita's necklace.

Alquilino is leaning out dangerously close to the edge. “That's the necklace I gave her for her
Quinceañera
,” he says, just a little too loud.

“You're going to fall,” Gordo says, grabbing the collar of his shirt, then gently pulling him back from the edge, as the woman looks up at us.