Cuba 15 (21 page)

“You can put that off for a month or so,” I teased, knowing he’d never let the ironing go.

“No, no!” he protested. “I’m going to get right down there.” He picked at a pill on his pants.

“So. What is it, Dad? I know Abuela sent you in here.”

I’d pulled the plug, and I watched his false nonchalance drain away.

“Caramba,”
he complained, “she is like a tidal wave. She just keeps coming, and coming, and coming, until—
¡tan!
—you are flattened.”

“I know what you mean,” I said firmly.

He gazed up at the ceiling and studied a dark crack I’d made once while trying to smoosh a spider with a broom handle.

“What did Abuela do to you this time?” I asked, pretending I didn’t already know. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

He looked at the crack another moment, then switched his gaze to me. “Yes. Yes, there is,” he said. “You can find that permission slip for the Spanish trip and let me sign it.”

“You mean the one to Mexico?”

“Yes, yes, that’s the one. Even though you probably only want to go because all your friends are going. Young girls are like that, I suppose.”

“All my friends aren’t going,” I corrected him. “I want to go see what another country is like.”

He gave me a look that said, You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

“And it would be neat to go someplace where everybody speaks Spanish, huh, Dad?” Sort of like
Cuba,
I didn’t say.

The sound of the television drifted upstairs.

“I suppose it would.”

I hesitated, then asked, “Do you remember anything about when you were a baby? Before you came here?”

He scowled. “I was only a little over a year old when we left the island. I don’t remember anything.” He amended, “Well, only bits and pieces. I have . . . little bits of images.”

“Like—what?”

“Mmmm, the ocean, the color of the sea. The smell of the air . . . the way palm leaves flap in the wind.” He paused. “How
guayaba
tastes.”

“That sounds like a lot.”

He didn’t reply.

“I wish I could see it sometime.”

He looked up through fierce eyes. “So do I,” he said. “So do I.”

I opened the desk drawer and fished around for the permission slip. It was stuffed in a corner. When I pulled it out, it looked wrinkled beyond repair.

Dad got up from the bed and came over. “Maybe we can iron it,” he said, smoothing the edges with his fingers. Then something in the drawer caught his eye.

“What’s this?” he asked, sliding a blue card out. It read, “No. 147599 THANK YOU ______ FOR YOUR 5/2 TAX-DEDUCTIBLE $5.00 DONATION, CLERGY FOR CUBA/PEACE WITH CUBA FOUNDATION.” My raffle ticket. And beneath it, the leaflets I’d picked up at the rally. Dark clouds filled Dad’s eyes as he scanned them.

“Can you explain these to me, young lady? ‘Peace with Cuba’—that doesn’t sound like Tibet.” He shook the papers in my face. “Is this where you were last weekend?”

I stared at him.

“Well? Answer me!”

I gulped, not knowing what to say.

Slowly, he moved his head back and forth, a metronome of betrayal. “You lied. You lied to your mother and me?” he said with growing intensity. “
This
is what you go behind my back to do—getting involved with these political
sinvergüenzas
? If even one dime finds its way into Castro’s hands . . .” He waved the confiscated papers. “
¡Óyeme!
Did Luz put you up to this?”

As these last words sank in, something in my heart—I don’t know, snapped. Angry tears filled my eyes.

“No, Dad,” I replied curtly, “
I
did it. I did it on my own. I wanted to see what was really going on.” I spread my hands. “How am I supposed to learn anything about Cuba if you won’t even let me try?”

Dad’s face was full of fire. “This is precisely what I am trying to save you from, little girl!”

“
Dad.
I’m fifteen. I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“And this is how you prove it? By lying to your parents? By stabbing your father in the back?”

I swallowed. “All I wanted was some information. You’ll barely even mention the island! At least you were born there,” I said bitterly. “The rest of us have to find out for ourselves what being Cuban is about.”

He cocked his head. “Believe me, it is a long and winding road. And not an enjoyable one.”

“See? Every time I bring up Cuba, this is what I get.”

“That’s because you’re still too young to understand!”

I glared at him.

He held up the crumpled permission slip, fixing me with razor-sharp eyes. “So you think you can go off on some expensive trip to another country, thousands of miles away? You are far from being a responsible adult,
niñita
.” He balled the paper up in his hand and added it to the rest of the contraband, muttering something in Spanish. “You stay here in your room until I call you.”

He shut the door hard on his way out.

A wave of helplessness crashed over me. The tide had turned so suddenly. And none of this was my fault, I told myself.

I cried some, until the guilty feeling in my stomach was gone and only the anger remained.

34

The chain of command had broken down. I was no longer a general or a princesa or a quince-babe, or anything else—just me, Violet Paz. And it was time to face the firing squad.

The real generals sat me down at the kitchen table: Mom, Abuela, and Abuelo, looking grave, and Dad, looking beyond disgusted. I scowled back at them.

Mom asked me to explain why I’d lied about the rally.

I avoided Dad’s eyes. “It was just one of those ‘peace with Cuba’ deals,” I said, playing my one card. “Does it really matter which country it was? You’re for peace, right?” I asked the group.

“It’s what I’m against that you should be worrying about,” snapped Dad.

“Now, Albert . . . ,” Mom murmured, though not pleased herself.

I tried to keep it simple. “How can peace be wrong? Explain that to me.”

Dad and his parents exchanged looks.

“These groups,” Dad began, “they
say
peace . . .”

“But they mean
comunismo,
” Abuelo put in sourly. “These
grupos, siempre
they are hiding the real motive. There are many of them in Miami.”

“Qué
descarados,”
added Abuela disparagingly.

“But these groups are legal, aren’t they?” Mom asked. “Just as the anti-Castro groups are?”

“All this stuff is legal,” I said. I knew this from the Web sites. “Right to assembly, free speech . . . And they aren’t just a bunch of Communists.” There were Democrats and Independents involved, lobbyists and housewives, bikers and schoolkids and clergymen. I’d seen their pictures, seen some of them in person at the rally. “Anyway, who’s to say Communists don’t also believe in peace?”

“Peace is one thing, Violet,” Dad said through clenched teeth. “Political contributions are another.” He waved the evidence.

“Come on, Dad! It was a five-dollar raffle ticket.”

But to Dad, it was everything. “You
know
how I feel about Castro’s government”—he nodded at Abuela and Abuelo—“how your grandparents have suffered, and yet you pull a stunt like this.”

“And just when you are making your
quince,
” Abuela said in a voice strained to splinters.

“That’s right!” Dad pointed a finger at me. “Look what you are doing to your grandmother. Maybe you don’t deserve to have this
quince
. In fact,” he said, nodding, “I think we should cancel it. What do you think, Diane?” he asked Mom.

Mom’s green eyes were a sea of trouble. “Well, after this incident, I don’t know. . . . Maybe she
isn’t
mature enough. We could always send back the pledges. Return the gifts. Violet was the one who didn’t want the party in the first place.”

“¿Qué?”
Abuela winced.

“Oh, that’s just fine!” I muttered. “I finally figure out this
quince
deal and try to explore my Cuban roots and all that, and you suddenly tell me I’m too young to understand. So, what? I’ve been slaving away over the last nine months for nothing?”

Just then, Mark stuck his head in the kitchen. He must have been eavesdropping, and he saw me in the hot seat. “What happened to Violet?” he asked.

Mom blinked at him. “Upstairs, young man.”

Mark froze.

“This doesn’t concern you,” snapped Dad.

Mark still didn’t budge.

I blew out a hot breath. “Don’t you get it? It does concern him. That’s exactly what forced me to go around behind your backs, looking for answers.”

“Answers to what?” asked my brother, even more curious now.

I glanced from Mark to Dad. “See?”

“That’s it!” Dad threw up his hands. “We’re calling the whole thing off.”

A knife edged my gut, and I was surprised to feel it cut more with fear than with anger. I didn’t want to lose this. I might not have seen the
quince
for what it was at first, but now I really, really wanted to go through with it. Needed it, somehow.

“You wouldn’t take this away from me!”

“Don’t think I won’t!”

We locked eyes.

“Well, then,” I said, “you’d be taking it away from yourselves too.” I knew that Dad knew how much Abuela wanted this for me.

We all looked at Dad: Mark, jumping with questions; Mom, ready to yield. Abuelo edged closer to Dad. Abuela, her face a confusion of emotions, teetered somewhere in between.

Anything else I said would only get me in deeper.

Mom watched me wrestle in silence. “Let’s think about it, Albert,” she said.

Dad thought about it, all right, and he determined that Leda was my partner in crime. First, Mom spoke to Beth Lundquist, since Dad couldn’t be trusted to be polite. She learned that I’d said yes, my parents knew where I was going that day—which was true, I pointed out. The community center in Aurora. This defense got me a pair of pursed lips and another stint in my room. I couldn’t commiserate with Leda or Janell, whom I’d informed in the cafeteria earlier that day, because my phone and e-mail privileges were a thing of the past.

Then Dad blamed the public school system. It was Señora Wong, after all, who had got me started on my research. He even checked the family computer to see which Web sites I’d been frequenting. He stormed up and down and threatened to send me to boarding school. But even Mom, the scholar, didn’t go along with that.

After dinner that evening, as everyone held their breath wondering who would be attacked next, the perfect scapegoat for Dad’s ire walked in the front door: Tía Luci had arrived.

My heart sank when I saw how cheerful Luz was, excited about the music she’d brought for the
quince
—and unaware of the previous night’s argument. She kissed Abuela and Abuelo and sat down next to them on the living room couch.

Usually, Dad was happy to see her. That day, she was the instigator of all evil.

“Well, if it isn’t my well-meaning little save-the-world sister,” he started in. “You’re the one who got my daughter mixed up in these doings in the first place.”

“Is there a problem?” Luz asked flatly.

Mom summed it up.

Luz turned her dark eyes on me. “Is that true?”

I nodded, feeling small at my perch on the piano bench. What would Luz have done if she’d been me? She would have just come out and said where she was going and let the dominoes fall where they might.

“I substituted Tibet for Cuba when I told Mom and Dad,” I said, “and I know that’s wrong. And I’m sorry. But Dad never would have let me go, and there wasn’t anything dangerous, or bad, or illegal, about it.”

“That’s also probably true,” Luz assessed. “So what’s at stake here?”

“I am thinking of calling off the party,” said General Dad.

Again, Abuela looked pained, and I felt a sharp twinge inside. All her hard work.

“That seems excessive,” Luz said. “She did say she was sorry.”

Dad’s wall of sternness didn’t crack. “She also said she knew better. No thanks to you.”

Luz ignored the slur. “It seems to me the real problem is Violet’s interest in Cuba relations, not that she lied.”

Abuela stepped in. “Interest is no the problem.” She leaned forward. “Is the type of information she is getting.”

Dad and Abuelo nodded.

“Well,” Luz said, “with all those
cubanos
in one place, a
quince
party is the perfect place for a young woman to learn everything about Cuba, firsthand.”

Touché.

Abuelo spoke up slowly. “
Pues,
punishment
o
no punishment,
tenemos otro problema,
” he said to Dad, patting Abuela’s leg. “According to your
mamá
here, ees too late to cancel the rental of the hall.”

This got Dad’s attention. The ensuing discussion, full of its own roller coaster of ups and downs, determined that the party would have to go on. There were too many contributors and too much invested already.

“Well, Violet,” said Dad with an angry sigh when it was all over, “you will have your little party. But this doesn’t mean I condone your behavior. And I’ll tell you one thing,
muchachita,
” he said, rising from his easy chair. “I won’t be there.”

I had to drag myself to dress rehearsal. What was the point? Without Dad, the whole show was fluff. Where there had been a meaning to things before, now there was just an empty hole. When I tried to beg off, Mom insisted I go through with the rehearsal and the party.

Seeing my friends throw themselves into their routines only made me feel worse. Mom sat in a corner of the studio, watching soberly as I danced the waltz with Señora Flora leading.

After we dropped Janell and Leda off, as we drove toward Woodtree Lane, Mom said quietly, “The party won’t be the same without your father.” She paused. “I hope you’ve learned something from this experience, Violet.”

I was still feeling offended. “About how stubborn Dad is?”

Her face softened. “Stubborn, yes. But he feels bad about what’s happened too.”

“Then why make a big deal out of it?”

She considered this. “Your father is a very . . . principled man. Maybe a little too much so, sometimes.” She turned a corner. “And maybe not entirely rightly so,” she added. “But that is his business for him to handle.”

“What if he’s not handling it?”

“That’s up to him.”

We were silent a moment.

“So what’s my business?”

“Your business,” she said as we pulled into the driveway, “is being Violet, my dear.” She shot me a look. “Whatever that entails.”