Flight to Freedom
FIRST PERSON FICTION
Freedom
Ana Veciana-Suarez
For my children, Renee, Leonardo,
Christopher, Benjamin, and Nicholas,
so they will always remember
Here we are, you and I, alone together. Forever. Or until these pages are filled with my handwriting. You are my first diary. Papi gave you to me this morning, before he left for the countryside. “For my studious daughter,” he said. (That's me.) He had tears in his eyes when he said this, and his square chin quivered.
He gave Ileana, who, at sixteen, is three years older than I, a beautiful tortoiseshell compact with face powder, and for our younger sister, Ana MarÃa, a small rag doll with embroidered eyes and yarn for hair. I do not know if he got anything for Pepito because my brother was drafted into the army last fall. Our gifts are treasures in these rationed times, so I thanked him with many hugs and kisses. I did not want to cry in front of him because that would make him feel worse, so I tried to concentrate on his thick, black mustache.
Papi must work in the fields, harvesting coffee, so we can leave Cuba. The government assigns all the heads of households to
la agricultura
before a family
can emigrate. Working the fields can be backbreaking toil under terrible conditions, especially for men like my father who are city folk and know nothing about farming. But what else can he do? Like everyone who requests permission to leave the country, he was fired from his job. We have had to depend on our savings and the generosity of family. Some do not even have that to fall back on. “All in all,” Mami keeps reminding us, “we have been lucky.”
We do not know exactly when we will be allowed to travel, but Papi has already been told that our exit permits and U.S. visas are being processed. When the paperwork is complete, we will board an airplane for Miami, to join my father's brother and his family. My paternal grandparents, Abuelo Tony and Abuela MarÃa, are there, too. We will be gone only a short time, Papi said, until the political situation improves here on the island. To prove she believes this, Mami had her long brown hair, which she liked to wear in a chignon, cut short like a boy's. She will grow it back only after we return. She has offered this as a sacrifice to Our Lady of Charity in hopes that our stay in the United States will not be long.
Ana Mari came home crying because other pupils in her school are calling her
gusana.
Everyone calls the Cuban exiles in Miami “worms,” and since we will soon be going there, they insult us in that way, too. Those who know we have applied to leave the country think we are turncoats because we are abandoning the revolution and fleeing to the imperialist
yanquis
in the north. Papi says we must leave because the government has made indoctrination more important than the study of mathematics and grammar. Two years ago, when Ana Mari was entering kindergarten, the teacher asked her class if they believed God existed. Ana Mari and a few other students said yes, and were told to close their eyes and ask God for a piece of candy. When they opened their eyes, their hands were empty. Then the teacher asked them to close their eyes again and ask Fidel Castro, leader of the revolution, for candy. When they did, the teacher placed a piece of candy in each of the outstretched hands.
“There is no God,” the teacher told the class. “There is only Fidel.”
Oh, Papi was angry when he heard that! He got so
red in the face. I think that is when he decided we could not continue living here.
April is the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs battle, when a group of exiles, with the help of the United States, tried to attack Cuba but failed. In Ana Mari's first grade book, there is a poem titled “Girón” that talks about the invasion. “One time, in April,” it says, “the Yankees attacked us. They sent a lot of bad people. They wanted to destroy the free Cuba. The people defeated them. Fidel led the fight.”
We hear stories like this all the time in school, and my parents worry that the government is trying to poison our minds. Mami and Papi tell us not to believe everything we hear in the classroom because it is Communist propaganda. The only way to get away from this is to leave our home, yet I am scared. I am scared of a strange place, a strange language, a strange people. I am scared of leaving my friends behind, and my maternal grandparents, and my brother. When will we see them again?
TÃo Camilo came into town from his farm in Matanzas and brought us all kinds of fresh fruit, a big ham, and a pork leg. Mami immediately hid whatever she could in the freezer and kissed and hugged her older brother as if he were one of the Three Kings bearing gifts on the Epiphany. In a way, I guess he is. It is impossible to find the food he brought us in any of the stores of the city. He also risked being thrown in jail for transporting these goods without government approval. But TÃo Camilo doesn't seem to mind the danger. When Mami warned him to be careful, he told her, “Sister, under this government we must get approval to breathe. What am I to do? Suffocate?”
He complained that Fidel Castro had sworn to the people that his revolution was as Cuban as the palm trees. “Ha! Ha!” he laughed. “With all those Russians crawling around, no? This revolution is more like a guava fruitâgreen on the outside and red on the inside.”
You would not believe what happened when I was waiting in line with Mami for our soap ration. She had heard from a neighbor, who heard it from her cousin's mother-in-law, that a shipment had arrived, so off we went at dawn. By the time we got there, there was already a long line, but we waited anyway. And waited. And waited. The day was hot and people were acting nasty. A fight broke out between two men ahead of us, but nobody tried to stop it because no one wanted to lose their place in line. Some people were cheering the tall skinny man, but I thought the fat, bald one was getting in more punches. As the men began to circle around each other, an old lady behind us screamed. It was a scream to make your hair stand on end.
Mami and I turned around and saw an old man in a yellow
guayabera
shirt lying on the street in a crumpled heap. The fat man and the skinny one stopped fighting, and people began to call out for a doctor. Finally a young woman broke through the ranks and identified herself as a medical worker in a lab. She bent over the man and pressed her fingers to his
wrist. She said he was dead. We all sighed, but nobody moved. My mother's hands were shaking and her face was white. She ordered me to face the front and stop staring, but when she wasn't watching, I sneaked some peeks at the dead man. As the line moved, the people behind us simply stepped over him. Eventually two men in blue uniforms came with a stretcher and carried him away.
By the time it was our turn, the government store had already run out of soap. We wasted all that time, and now I cannot get the image of the dead man out of my mind. How horrible to die that way, without family or friends around you, waiting in line for some stupid rationed soap.
While waiting for the bus, Ileana spotted her best friend Carmen across the street. (Actually, I should write
former
best friend. They haven't talked in two or three years.) Ileana called to her and Carmen turned to look at us, but then continued on her way as if we didn't exist. Maybe she did not recognize who we
were. But Ileana says she ignored us on purpose. Ileana and Carmen used to do everything together, so much so that Mami named them The Twins. But Carmen's father became a bigwig in the Communist Party, and he even has a car and a driver and is allowed to travel outside the island. So now Carmen refuses to speak to Ileana. She does not return her phone calls and ignores my sister as if she were a dead cockroach. Ileana does not blame Carmen. She is sure Carmen's parents prohibit her from socializing with our family because we are counterrevolutionary.
A lot of friends, neighbors, and even relatives do not get along anymore because the grown-ups argue about who is making the country's rules. After the husband of Mami's cousin Cynthia was executed by the
paredón
firing squad for trying to overthrow the government, Cynthia moved back to her parents' farm in Camaguey. Before she left, members of her neighborhood's Committee for the Defense of the Revolution threw tomatoes at her house, and she was fired from her secretarial job. I will never forget the pain and anger I saw in Cynthia's eyes on the day she left, the same look our old dog Mancha had when we found her after she was hit by an automobile.
I have already packed for La Escuela al Campo program in Pinar del Rio. My small suitcase bears my name: Yara GarcÃa. We will be gone for forty-five days in this school-to-country program, but we are not allowed to take muchâa few changes of clothes, a bucket for our baths, the standard wooden flip-flops, and a hat. In school we are told that the purpose of this special school is to educate students in agriculture and farmwork because they are important parts of the island's economy, but no one believes that line. Papi says it is just an excuse to obtain free farm labor.
Though I am finishing the seventh grade, this will be my first time at the country school. Last summer my parents were able to get a medical waiver because I had mononucleosis. Poor Ileana has never been excused. She has left home every year since she was twelve to help harvest the tobacco crop. She does not like to talk much about her experiences, except to say that it is hard work. We are supposed to attend school in the afternoon during this program, but Ileana says that rarely happens because there is too much to do in the fields and you work from dawn to nightfall, six days a week.
Mami worries about the bad influences I will encounter. I have no idea what she means and, quite honestly, I am a little excited about being away from home for the first time.
My best friend Ofelia will be going to a different Escuela al Campo. She was heartbroken that we would not be together, but her parents have arranged for her to join the Communist Youth Union, and I think that may be why she will attend another program. We are all members of the Pioneers in school, and we are instructed to perform neighborhood watches to keep an eye on neighbors who might not be completely committed to the revolution. Most of my friends do not take this role very seriously because none of us cares too much about politics. We would rather play among ourselves or get together to listen to the radio. But when you are part of the Communist Youth Union, as Ofelia is, this is serious business. She will have to take part in conferences, marches, rallies, and undergo military training. I cannot imagine Ofelia doing this. She would prefer to
dance or drink a tropical fruit juice with that Luis boy she likes so much, but I guess she has to do what her parents tell her to. Like the rest of us.
I must write quickly and without making noise. I do not want the teachers or the other girls to figure out that I am not really in need of this toilet except as a makeshift desk. Earlier today we arrived at La Escuela al Campo after a long, miserable, dusty bus ride. The boys took one bus, the girls another. Though a lot of the older girls were singing and carrying on, I was miserable and scared. The scenery, at least, was beautifulâgreen rolling hills and tall palmsâand whenever we passed a
guajÃro
leading his mule or oxen, we waved. The farmer would wave back.
A barbed-wire fence circles the compound. There's a row of small outhouses behind our dormitory, which is a long, crude building made of the woody part of palm fronds. When the wind blows, it whistles right through. (Sometimes the sound, high-pitched and off-key, reminds me of my grandmother singing one of her favorite songs, “Bésame Mucho” or
“El Manisero.”) It gives me goosebumps, the wind's howling.
The beds are deplorable.
Beds,
is that what I wrote? They are really pallets, burlap stretched between two logs, and there are dozens of them, each lined up no more than two feet from the other.
Because we are divided by age, I have not been able to speak to Ileana yet. She sleeps on the other side of the dormitory. I would crawl over there in the dark if I could, just to see a friendly face, even if only to hear her say, “Boba-bobita,” which is what she likes to call me, but I am afraid to get caught.
We are awakened by the teachers before the rooster's crow, and we must get ready in ten minutes in the dim light of kerosene lamps. (It is like traveling back in time. Kerosene lamps, imagine!) A lot of the girls fumble and curse and yawn loudly while they dress. They even pass gas right there, without apology or embarrassment.
There is no privacy or propriety here. It truly makes sharing a room with Ileana look like paradise. And to think I never appreciated it! Our breakfast consists of hard bread and strong coffee and occasionally slop that is impossible to identify. Oats, maybe. (Sometimes at night, I fall asleep thinking of my hot
café con leche
and toasted Cuban bread, slathered with butterâif my mother has been able to get butter and milk that month with her ration coupons, of course.)
Then we go to work in the fields or in the curing barns. Some of us have been assigned to stack the dried tobacco leaves in piles called
pilones.
We must do this in a rectangular compact mass, and then cover it with plantain leaves. I am not quite sure what Ileana does, but I think that because she is older, she must help in the harvesting. Morning is the best time of day in the barns, because it is not so hot and there is often a breeze. In the afternoons, it is sweltering and unbearable. Several girls have already fainted, but I refuse to give anybody the pleasure of seeing any weakness in me.
Most of the girls I already know from school, but we do not have much time to talk when we are
working, and at night we are all too exhausted. I also remember what Mami told me: “Keep to yourself. Don't trust anyone.” I talk mostly to a girl named Alina, but never for long and only of frivolous things. I feel sorry for her. She has terrible acne, and the other girls call her Granito.