by Alan Gratz
Isabel nodded and went back to scooping water. What if her life was a song? No, not a song. A life was a symphony, with different movements and complicated musical forms. A song was something shorter. A smaller piece of a life.
This journey was a song, Isabel realized, a son cubano, and each part of was it a verse. The first verse had been the riot: a blast of trumpets, the rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum. Then the pre-chorus of trading her trumpet for gasoline—the piano that gave the son its rhythm—and then the chorus itself: leaving home. They were still leaving home, still hadn’t gotten to where they were going. They would return to the chorus again and again before they were done.
But what was the refrain? And how many more verses would there be before they got to the climax of the song, that brash moment at the end of a son cubano that echoed the refrain, and then the coda, those brief few notes that tied it all together?
She couldn’t think about that now. All she could do now was scoop water. Scoop water and pray they didn’t drown in the mad conga solo that drummed against the side of their tiny metal boat.
The cold water was like a slap in Mahmoud’s face. Before he could think, he gasped, sucking in a mouthful of the dark Mediterranean Sea. He tumbled backward, head down in the murky water, his arms and feet thrashing, trying to right himself. Something else—someone else—fell on top of him, pushing him deeper down into the water. He choked. Coughed. Swallowed more water. Bodies tumbled into the water above him, beside him, below him. His knee struck something hard and sharp—a rock—and he felt a cold flash of pain that quickly disappeared into blind, senseless terror.
He was drowning. The rubber dinghy had burst against the rocks, and he was drowning.
Mahmoud kicked. Paddled. Flailed. His face came out of the water and he gulped down air, and then a wave washed over him again and he went down. He kicked his way back to the surface and fought to keep his head above water.
“Mom! Dad!” Mahmoud cried. His yells were mixed with the screams and cries of the other passengers who had made it back to the surface. All around Mahmoud, survivors thrashed and gasped, swamped by the choppy waves. There was nothing left of the dinghy. The engine had dragged the rest of it down.
Mahmoud saw something bobbing along the water, glowing. A cell phone! It was still sealed tight in its plastic bag, the air in the bag keeping it afloat. Mahmoud swam for it, ducking a wave and pawing the bag into his arms.
The glowing phone screen said 2:32 a.m.
“Help—help!” Mahmoud’s mother sobbed, her voice recognizable in the chaos. Mahmoud spun, oriented himself, and frog-kicked his way through the waves toward the shape he thought was his mother. He picked her pink headscarf out of the swirling pandemonium, and saw that she was fighting to lift something up out of the water.
Hana.
Mahmoud swam to his mother. Hana was crying—she was alive!—but it was all Mahmoud’s mother could do to keep the baby and her own face above the relentless waves. One or the other of them was going to drown.
Mahmoud put his arms around his mother and tried to kick her and Hana both to the surface, but half the time he felt like he was dragging them down with him.
“Fatima! Mahmoud!” he heard his father cry. Mahmoud turned to see his father with Waleed in his arms. “The life preservers are useless!” he roared, his head appearing and disappearing behind the waves. “They’re fakes!”
Fake?! Mahmoud was furious, but his anger quickly faded. Every ounce of his energy was focused on kicking, swimming. If he stopped, he and his mother and sister would drown.
There were other people around them, yelling, searching, fighting to stay afloat, but as far as Mahmoud was concerned his world was four meters round. Where did they go from here? How did they get out of the sea and onto dry land? They were lost in the stormy Mediterranean Sea in the middle of the night. Their dinghy was sunk, and though it had run into rocks, there wasn’t any land in sight.
They were going to die here. All of them.
Mahmoud breathed in seawater through his nose and hacked it up. He fought to breathe, the waves lapping over him, and rain and spray still lashing his face. But his baby sister’s cries refocused him. He could not lose her. He couldn’t lose any of them.
They came together in the water, Mahmoud and his mother and father, all of them helping Hana and Waleed and each other stay afloat. Other families and groups did the same, but eventually the little groups drifted apart from each other, none of them knowing which way they were supposed to go. All they could do was stay on top of the next wave, the next wave, the next wave.
“Kick off your shoes,” Mahmoud’s father told them. “Anything to lighten you.”
Time passed. The rain stopped. The waxing moon even peeked out from behind a cloud. But just as quickly it was dark again, and the cold wind and the salty spray and the swelling sea still tormented them. Mahmoud’s legs were numb with cold and exhaustion. They felt like two lead weights he struggled to lift and churn to stay afloat. His mother had been quietly sobbing for what seemed like forever. Her arms no longer held Hana above the water, but just on top of it, like she was pushing along a tiny barge. Mahmoud’s father did the same with Waleed, trying to save his strength. Hana had gone as quiet as Waleed, and Mahmoud wondered if they were still alive. He couldn’t ask. Wouldn’t. If he didn’t ask he couldn’t know for sure, and as long as he didn’t know for sure, there was a chance they were still alive.
Mahmoud slipped beneath the waves once more, longer this time. It was getting so hard to come up again, to keep himself afloat. He rose again, pushing air out his nose, but he was tired. So very, very tired. He wished for a respite from swimming, just a moment to sit without working his arms and legs. To close his eyes and go to sleep …
Water was sloshing in and out of Mahmoud’s ears, but he thought he heard a drone just above the howl of the wind. In Syria that sound would have sent him ducking for cover, but now it made his eyes widen, his legs kick just a little harder, a little higher. There—coming at them out of the darkness—another dinghy full of people!
Mahmoud and his mother and father waved their arms and cried out for help. At last, the people on board saw them, but as the dinghy came closer it didn’t slow down.
They weren’t going to stop!
The front of the dinghy chopped past Mahmoud, and he lunged for one of the handholds on the side. He caught it and grabbed his mother before the dinghy pulled him away. He swung Mom to the side of the dinghy and she grabbed hold, the wake from it almost swamping Hana.
Behind them, Mahmoud’s father also reached for the dinghy but missed. It churned along, bouncing in the chop, and Mahmoud’s father and brother disappeared into the darkness.
“Dad—Dad!” Mahmoud cried, still holding on to the dinghy.
“Let go!” a woman in the dinghy yelled down at him. “You’re dragging on us!”
“Let us in! Please!” Mahmoud begged. It was all his mother could do to hang on to the dinghy and to Hana.
“We can’t! There’s no room!” a man inside the dinghy yelled.
“Please,” Mahmoud begged. “We’re drowning.”
“I’ll call the Coast Guard for you!” a man said. “I have their number on my phone!”
Another man reached down and tried to pry Mahmoud’s hand from the dinghy. “You’re tipping us!”
“Please!” Mahmoud cried. He sobbed with the effort of fighting off the man’s fingers and hanging onto the dinghy. “Please, take us with you!”
“No! No room!”
“At least take my sister!” Mahmoud begged. “She’s a baby. She won’t take up any room!”
That caused much yelling and discussion on the boat. A man tried to pry Mahmoud loose again, but he hung on. “Please … ” Mahmoud begged.
A woman appeared at the side of the boat, her arms reaching down to Mahmoud’s mother. Reaching for the baby.
Mahmoud’s mother lifted the little ball of wet blankets up to the woman. “Her name is Han
a,” she said, struggling to be heard above the roar of the engine and the splash of the waves.
Someone finally pried Mahmoud’s fingers off the side, and he slipped into the water and tumbled in the dinghy’s wake. When he came up, he saw his mother had let go of the dinghy too. She was crying great howling tears and tearing at her clothes. Mahmoud swam over to her and wrestled her hands into stillness, and she put her head on Mahmoud’s shoulder and sobbed.
Mahmoud’s sister was gone, and so were his father and brother.
Josef tried to hang on to the chair, but his father was still strong enough to yank it out of his hands. Papa stacked it on the tower of furniture he’d already piled up against the door.
“We can’t let them back in!” Papa cried. “They’ll come for us again and take us away!”
It had taken Josef and his mother a night and a day to put their cabin back together after Otto Schiendick and his goons had torn the place up. But in the span of fifteen minutes his father had undone it all again, snatching up anything that wasn’t nailed down and stacking it against the door.
Ruthie crouched in the corner, crying and hugging Bitsy. Josef’s mother had sewed the stuffed bunny back together first thing, before Ruthie had seen it headless.
“Aaron. Aaron!” Josef’s mother said now. “You have to calm down! You’re scaring your daughter!”
He was scaring Josef too. Josef stared at his father. This skeleton, this crazed ghost, this wasn’t his father. The Nazis had taken his father away and replaced him with a madman.
“You don’t understand,” Josef’s father said. “You can’t know what they did to people. What they’ll do to us!”
Papa threw an open suitcase on the pile, spilling clothes all over the room. When he’d put everything he could on the barricade, he crawled under the desk at the back of the room like a child playing hide-and-seek.
Mama looked frightened as she tried to figure out what to do. “Ruthie,” she said at last, “put your swimsuit on and go to the pool.”
“I don’t want to go swimming,” Ruthie said, still crying in the corner.
“Do as I say,” Mama said.
Ruthie pulled herself away from the wall and picked through the clothes on the floor for her swimsuit.
“Josef,” Mama said, low enough for just him to hear her, “I’m going to go to the ship’s doctor for a sleeping draught for your father. Something to calm him. I’ll take Ruthie to the pool, but I need you to stay here and watch your father.”
Papa was still curled into a ball under the desk, rocking and muttering to himself. The idea of being here alone with him filled Josef with dread.
“But if the doctor knows he’s unwell, they might not let us into Cuba,” Josef whispered, desperate to find some reason to keep his mother with him.
“I’ll tell the doctor I’m anxious and haven’t been sleeping,” Mama said. “I’ll tell him the draught is for me.”
Josef’s mother helped Ruthie finish putting her swimsuit on, and together they were able to pull the haphazard pile of furniture far enough away from the door to open it. Josef’s father, who’d been so set on building the barricade just minutes before, was so lost in his own mind he didn’t even notice.
Josef didn’t know what to do with himself, so he started to put the room back together. Papa stayed quiet and still under the desk. Josef hoped he had gone to sleep. Mama came back within minutes, and Josef felt an immense sense of relief—until he saw the dull, panicked look Mama wore, and he got scared all over again. She stumbled as she entered the cabin like she couldn’t remember how to walk, and Josef hurried to help her to one of the beds.
“Mama, what is it? What’s wrong?” Josef asked.
“I—I told the doctor the sleeping draught was for me,” she said, her words slow, “and he made me—he made me take it right there.”
“You drank it?” Josef said.
His mother’s eyelids fluttered. “I had to,” she said. “After I told him—after I told him … Couldn’t let him know Aaron was really the one who … ”
Mama’s eyelids closed, and she swayed.
Josef panicked. She couldn’t go to sleep. Not now. How was he supposed to take care of his father? He couldn’t do this alone!
“Mama! Don’t go to sleep!”
Her eyes jerked open again, but they had lost their focus.
“Your sister,” she said. “Don’t forget … your sister … she’s at the pool … ”
Her eyes flickered closed again, and she rolled back onto the bed.
“No. No no no no no,” Josef said. He tried patting his mother on the cheeks to wake her up, but she was out cold.
Josef got up and paced the room, trying to think. With his mother asleep, he had to watch his father every second. Josef glanced at him under the desk. Papa was quiet now, but the slightest thing could set him off. Josef couldn’t go for help anyway. If anyone knew his father was unwell, he’d be barred from entering Cuba. But Josef also had to go get Ruthie at some point, and make sure she got dinner and was put to bed.
Suddenly, Josef was the man of the family—the only adult in the family—whether he wanted to be or not.
“Have you ever seen a man drown?” Papa asked in a whisper, and Josef jumped. Josef wasn’t sure if Papa was talking to him, or just talking, but he was afraid to answer, afraid to break the quiet spell his father was under.
His father kept talking.
“After the evening roll call, they would choose someone to drown. One every night. They would tie his ankles together and his hands behind his back and tie a gag around his mouth, and then they would hang him upside down, with his head in a barrel. Like a fish. Like a big fish on the pier, hanging upside down by its tail. Then they would fill the barrel with water. Slowly. So they could enjoy the panic. So they could laugh. And then the water would rise high enough to cover his nose, and he would breathe in water because there was nothing else he could do. He would breathe in water like a fish. Only he wasn’t a fish. He was a man. He would thrash around and breathe water until he drowned. Drowned upside down.”
Josef’s breathing stilled. He caught himself hugging Ruthie’s stuffed bunny tight.
“Every night they did it, and we all had to stand and watch,” his father whispered. “We had to stand and watch, and we couldn’t say a word, couldn’t move a muscle, or we would be next.”
Tears rolled down Josef’s cheeks. He thought about how he’d treated his father at the Cuban doctor’s examination. How he’d made his father believe he was back in that place, where he’d seen so many awful things.
“I can’t go back there,” his father whispered. “Can’t go back.”
His father closed his eyes and put his head between his knees, and soon he was asleep. Josef sat with his sleeping parents until the cabin started to get dark and he couldn’t put off finding Ruthie any longer. He would just have to be as quick as he could.
Josef left the cabin and found his sister splashing around in the pool with the other kids. Josef asked a steward to bring their dinners to their cabin tonight, and as he led Ruthie back he congratulated himself on surviving his first day as an adult.
Until he opened the door and his father was gone.
Josef dropped Ruthie’s hand and got down on his hands and knees to search under the beds, but his father wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the cabin at all.
“No. No!” Josef cried. He shook his mother, begged her to wake up, but the sleeping draught was too powerful. Josef spun in the room, trying to figure out what to do.
He snatched up Bitsy and put the little stuffed bunny into Ruthie’s arms.
“Stay here,” he told Ruthie. “Stay here with Mama, and don’t leave the cabin. Understand? I’ve got to go find Papa.”
Josef ran out the door and into the passageway. But where to now? Where would his father go? Papa hadn’t left the cabin the whole trip, and now he had decided to leave?
Josef heard a commotion, and he sprinted up the stairs to
A-deck. Up ahead, a man was helping a woman to her feet, and both of them were looking angrily over their shoulders, the direction Papa must have run.
And that’s when Josef remembered: His father had left the cabin before. To watch them bury Professor Weiler at sea.
Somewhere up ahead, a woman screamed, and Josef took off at a run. He felt as though he was outside himself, like he existed outside his own skin, and he watched himself slam into the rail and look over the side.
Someone yelled, “Man overboard!” and the ship’s siren shrieked.
Josef’s father had jumped into the sea.
Isabel woke to a warm orange glow on the horizon and a silver sea stretching out before them like a mirror. It was as though the storm had been some kind of feverish nightmare. Señor Castillo woke from his nightmare too, parched like a man who’d been lost in the desert. He drank almost half of one of the few gallons of water they had left in one long chug, then laid back against the side of the boat.
Isabel worried about her mother. For Mami, the nightmare was just beginning. The illness she’d felt as the storm began had gotten worse in the night, and now she had a fever hotter than the rising sun. Lito dipped a scrap of shirt into the cool seawater and draped it across his daughter’s forehead to cool her, but without the aspirin from the lost medicine box there was no way to bring the fever down.
“The baby … ” Mami moaned, holding her stomach.
“The baby will be fine,” Lito told her. “A good strong healthy baby boy.”
Lito and Señora Castillo took care of Isabel’s mother. Papi and Luis got the engine restarted, and bathed it with water to keep it cool. Amara, at the rudder, steered them north now that the sun was in the sky. Everybody had a job, it seemed, except Isabel and Iván.
Isabel bumped shoulders and stepped on toes as she wobbled her way over to Iván in the prow of the boat. She sat down beside him with a huff.
“I feel useless,” she told Iván.
“I know,” he said. “Me too.”
They sat for a while in silence before Iván said, “Do you think we’ll have to do algebra in our new American school?”