Leaving Glorytown (11 page)

At that, I brightened. This was a minor improvement over being in jail. We had gone to see Tío William a couple of times since he had been in jail, and it had been a terrible experience. The visiting room was a filthy concrete hole, with creeping green mildew on the walls and the scent of urine in the air. It was obvious that Tío and the other men were trying hard to hide how miserable they really were. But if Papa was allowed home every once in a while, it wouldn't be so bad.

“What about his hernia?” I asked. Papa had hurt himself a couple of years ago, and he wasn't supposed to do any heavy lifting or other hard labor until it got fixed.

Abuelo waved this off. “Listen, niño,” he said, “God doesn't give us anything we can't handle. But if things ever get to be too much . . . He takes us up to heaven, where we live surrounded by His love and glory forever. There is nothing to fear, my boy. Nothing at all.”

I guess Abuelo could see I wasn't convinced, because he said, “Come inside with me for a moment. I want to remind you of something.”

In the house, we stood before Abuela's picture of Jesus, which, in defiance of all the laws of the state, still hung on the wall.

“This man, who was the Son of God,” Abuelo said, “bore the most terrible punishments that any human could endure. And He did it for us, to show us how powerful His love was. Your papa knows Jesus, and he knows His power. Whenever his life feels too hard, he knows that all he has to do is pray, and God will take over. The Lord will never abandon
your papa, and He will never abandon you, either, niño. You must never, ever forget that as long as you live. Promise?”

I nodded.

“I want to hear you say it,” Abuelo said.

“Yes, Abuelito. I promise I will never forget about Jesus.”

“Good boy. Now, it's time for school. Are you ready?”

“You mean, did I do my homework?”

“No. That is not what I mean.”

I knew Abuelo wasn't talking about my homework, and he knew I knew. He was talking about the things that happened to me at school. They also happened between adults on the street.

“Yes, I'm ready,” I said.

“What are you going to do when the teasing starts today?”

“What I've been doing since school started. Ignore it. Run away. Don't fight back.”

Abuelo nodded. “It is a hard pill to swallow, niño. But you must remember that your papa is making a huge sacrifice for you. And if you get into trouble, the authorities can take away your visa forever. That means the army for you, and it means your family will be stuck here. So control your temper, and don't let them get to you. Remember the Lord, niño. He can help you, too.”

“I will, Abuelo.”

“Then you'd better get going. You don't want to be late and give them one more reason to get you in trouble.”

School had ended up being no worse than usual that day—trouble didn't come until after school. As usual, my mother had come to get
Esther at noon, but my friends, for various reasons, weren't there to walk home with me.

I stood on the corner of a busy street, waiting for traffic to pass. Suddenly, a kid I didn't even know came up behind me and smacked me on the back of the head. I turned around and put my fists up. Then I remembered—no fighting.

“What the hell do you want?” I said. He was a few years older than I was, with a dirty face and patched-up clothes. He stood with his hands on his hips, a chilling smile on his face.

“You're Calcines, aren't you?”

“What of it?”

“Well, nothing, except I hear your mother is a prostitute,” he said.

I could hardly believe my ears. “
What
did you say?” I roared.

“You heard me. Everyone in the neighborhood knows. Now that your father is a guest of the state, your mother needs to find some other way to support her little brats. Your sister's name is Esther, isn't it?”

“Leave my sister out of it. She's just a little girl.”

“Who cares? A worm is a worm. Your mother probably is teaching her all the tricks of the trade. I hear that kind of thing runs in the family. What do you think your mother's been doing while you've been in school all day? Men have been coming and going through the front door like it was a train station. I would have gone myself, but I didn't have the five cents.”

“You piece of dog crap, I'm gonna kill you,” I growled.

“What? What did you say? Help! Police! A violent dissenter is making threats against me!”

I turned and ran across the street, not caring if I got hit by a car. As it happened, there was no traffic at the moment. But my new tormentor
followed me, trailed now by a small crowd of curious onlookers—both children and adults—who were laughing and encouraging him.

“Your mother is a whore!” he screamed.

I ran faster now, so angry I thought I was going to go off like a nuclear bomb. In that moment, if I'd exploded, I would have leveled the whole city.

I was smaller than this kid, but like everyone else he was probably tired and hungry, so I easily outran him. I could still hear his shouts as I made it to San Carlos Street and my own home turf.

What scared me most was that he seemed to know all about me. How had he known my sister's name? How had he known my father was at a work camp? Who had told him these things?

“The government publishes the names of dissenters,” Abuelo told me when I related what had happened. “That's how he knows. They print names, ages, even addresses.”

“But why?” I shouted. My grandparents sat and listened, Abuela's hands wrestling each other in her lap, Abuelo sipping a little cup of coffee. “If they hate us so much, why don't they just let us leave tomorrow? It's cruel! They're doing it for fun!”

Abuelo nodded. “That's right,” he said. “They are doing it for fun.”

“But what kind of people would do such a thing?” I raged. “Who would say these things about Mama? Abuelo, I've never been so mad in all my life!”

“Eduar, one of the hardest lessons in life is that there are evil people in this world who take pleasure in hurting others,” Abuela said. “They have no sense of right and wrong, and they don't care about your feelings.
They are so unhappy and so far from decency that the only time they feel good is when they make others feel as bad as they do.”

“I can't do this,” I said. “I just can't. I felt like I couldn't even breathe. I'm—I'm—”

“Angry,” observed Abuelo.

“Yeah,” I said.

Their calmness and acceptance helped me to relax, and my shoulders slumped. My fists, which had been clenched all afternoon, became hands again.

“Abuelo, please help me. What should I do?” I asked.

Abuelo gave me a kind smile. Then he turned his eyes up to the wall, where the picture hung.

R
ight after Papa was taken away, the government finally did what we had been dreading. It closed Tio William's distribution company and confiscated everything: trucks, tanks, hoses, tools, and building. Tio had employed ten people, and he had hundreds of regular customers who depended on him for the gas to run their cars and the alcohol to fuel their stoves. We'd been allowed to keep the business running in his absence, but now those ten employees and their families, plus Abuelo Julian and Abuela Ana, who had also needed his help in spite of Abuelo's job, plus anyone who might have depended on Tio's drivers for black-market food, were out of luck. We realized we were about to join the masses of Cuban poor.

One day I walked in on my mother sitting alone in the kitchen, crying.

“Mama, what's the matter?” I asked.

Mama hated to be seen like this. She'd always despised the image of women as weaklings, and she never wanted her children to sense the despair that was taking over her heart. But she couldn't hide her tears, no matter how fast she dried them with her apron.

“I just feel so bad for poor William,” she said. “He started out with a wagon that he pulled himself, because he couldn't even afford a horse! Twenty years later, he had a fleet of trucks with his name on them. He was an important man. And now these animals just step in and steal everything. Why?”

“Tío is tough,” I said. “He'll figure something out.”

“Aiee, Eduar, I know he will,” said Mama. “I'm not worried about that. It's just . . . these are terrible times for Cuba. Terrible times. Everyone is being pushed to the limit, and some people can't handle it.”

“You can handle it, can't you, Mama?” I asked, worried.

“Of course I can handle it,” she snapped, straightening her back. “As long as I can draw breath into my lungs, I will survive, and so will you. So let's not have any talk about not handling it. Sometimes I wish things were the way they used to be, Eduar, that's all. But there's no use complaining about what you can't change. Remember that, niño.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

“But I do have to find a way to make some money,” Mama said, sighing.

I knew that my many aunts and uncles had offered to do what they could, but Mama was too proud to accept handouts. Besides, everyone else was suffering just as much as we were.

“I can quit school,” I told Mama. “I can find a way to make money.”

“Are you crazy? The Communists would never allow it,” she said. “Once they see you're gone, they'll come looking for you. And that's the kind of attention this family does not need.”

“Well, if we don't get some money somehow, it won't matter what the Communists think, because we'll all be dead!” I said.

“Niño, you go to school, and let me worry about feeding us. I'm your mother. That's my job.”

So I prayed that Mama would find a way to make enough money to keep on feeding us at least one meal a day.

Time passed slowly. Papa came home from his first month at the work camp on a weekend furlough. He looked sunburned and exhausted, and he was stooped with pain from his hernia. When he walked in the door, Esther and I were so happy that we cried, and once again Mama opened her eyes wide and looked up at the ceiling.

Mama had cautioned us against asking too many questions, but Esther and I were burning to know what life was like at the work camp.

“They work us like slaves,” he said. “We spend fourteen or fifteen hours a day out in the fields. We get practically nothing for breakfast and only slightly more than that at lunch. At dinner, we get wormy hard bread and canned meat. Then we sleep like dead men until the sun comes up, when they wake us by screaming in our faces and pushing us out the door again.”

“Felo, you don't have to talk about it,” Mama said, her voice trembling.

“No, I want them to know.”

“But they're only children!”

“The Communists don't care if they're only children,” Papa said. “To them, we're just worms. So I want you to listen, kids. This is how the Communists treat people who dare to disagree with them. We sleep in an old chicken pen, and believe me when I say they didn't clean it
out first. After all day in the fields, they herd us into a stall and hose us down with cold water.”