Leaving Glorytown

by Eduardo F. Calcines

  The charges were serious, and we were very worried. But then Abuelo Julian contacted an old friend, a lawyer who was now serving as a prosecutor for Castro’s “killing courts.” We called them by that name because they sentenced so many innocent people to death. The accused weren’t even allowed to have legal representation. They were charged, summoned to court, found guilty, and either sent to jail or stood up against a wall and shot.

  Again, we got lucky. This lawyer friend became our angel. He helped to find Tío William guilty of a lesser offense, condemning him to prison for only two years. My mother sighed with relief. But my father once again swelled with anger that he could barely hold in.

  “Why should we consider ourselves lucky that William is going to jail for two years?” he said, disgusted. “Why should he go to prison at all? Before the Revolution, he was a model citizen. Now he’s a criminal? It’s insane!”

  Probably because of this powerful lawyer friend, Tío was allowed to keep his distribution company open while he was in prison. But for how long? Another day, week, or year? We knew that at any moment, the government could step in, close the whole thing down, and confiscate everything: the fleet of trucks, the tools to repair them, the metal cylinders the gas was delivered in, the building itself. Who was going to say no? My father told me that all over the country, business owners like Tío were losing everything they owned. The Communists were nationalizing everything, he said. When I asked Papa what “nationalize” meant, he said, “It means they’re stealing in the name of the state.”

  I also heard Papa tell Mama that Tío could be away a lot longer than two years, depending on whether or not he was considered “rehabilitated as a member of the Revolution.”

  “How can robbing a man of everything he has worked for, everything he holds dear, possibly win him over to your cause?” Papa raged.

  Mama said nothing. What was there to say?

  Tío’s prison sentence struck terror in me. The grownups tried not to talk about it in front of the children, but I heard enough to know it was bad. Once, I listened as Papa and my uncles talked about how the prison system operated on snitching. If you ratted someone out, you would be rewarded by the guards, but you would be hated by the other prisoners. If you didn’t rat, the guards could be brutal, but the prisoners would respect you.

  That fall, Esther started kindergarten and I began fifth grade. I walked her to Mariana Grajales Elementary School with my own group consisting of Rolando and Tito—who, even though they were sons of Communists, were still allowed to play with me—and my primo, or cousin, Luis, born one month before me. Tito was about ten months older than Rolando, but we were all in the same grade. These three had always walked to school with me, and we formed a phalanx whose job was to keep each other safe. Esther, our princess, now walked in the middle, protected by all of us.

  “Calcines!” said Tito one day as we headed to school. “How come your dad doesn’t join the Communist Party, like our dad?”

  “What!” I said. “The Communists locked him up in that theater for three whole days during the Bay of Pigs. They took away Tío William. They hired thugs to make everyone’s lives miserable. Why would he want anything to do with them?”

  “If he was a Communist, he would have a job for life,” Rolando explained.

  “You don’t have any more than we do,” I retorted. “You still have to carry the same stupid ration books as everyone else, don’t you? And don’t you get stuck eating the same canned horse meat from Russia as the rest of us?”

  “Yeah! And you have to go to those marches all the time!” Luis chimed in.

  “Aiee, I hate those marches!” Tito said, rolling his eyes.

  “Me, too,” Rolando said. “They’re endless! And the blisters!”

  “And those speeches!” said Tito. “How many more times is Castro going to promise us that things will get better tomorrow? Why don’t they just get better, already?”

  “Because,” Rolando explained to his brother, “the worms who don’t agree with the Revolution are holding the rest of us back. That’s what Dad says, anyway.”

  “That’s a bunch of crap,” I said. “It’s the Communists’ own fault that nothing works and nobody has enough food. They just don’t want to admit it.”

  “That’s right,” said Luis. “No one is trying to stop the Communists from making Cuba a better place. They’re just too stupid to get it right.”

  “Tell it like it is, primo,” I said. Luis and I slapped each other’s palms.

  “Ah, whatever,” said Rolando. “Talking about politics gives me a headache.”

  “Me, too,” said Tito.

  “You know what I miss? Ketchup,” I said.

  “Me, too!” said Luis.

  “Us, too!” said Tito. “Man, if I had a bottle of ketchup, I would drink the whole thing right now.”

  “Gross! I would eat it little by little, to cover up the taste of that horse meat they give us,” I said.

  “What’s ketchup?” asked Esther.

  “You see? This is how bad things are! My poor sister doesn’t even know what ketchup is!”

  “You know what I miss?” said Luis. “Gum!”

  Tito, Rolando, and I groaned. It had been so long since I’d had a piece of gum I’d forgotten all about it.

  “What’s gum?” Esther asked.

  “What’s gum, she says!” Luis howled. “Oh, man, Esther hasn’t ever had gum!”

  “Gum is this great stuff you stick in your mouth and chew but don’t swallow,” I explained. We rounded the corner, approaching the school. I kept my voice down, lest anyone hear me wax eloquent on yet another failure of the Communist government: Cuban children’s lack of American chewing gum. “It gets all soft in your mouth, and you can blow bubbles with it, and it stays tasty forever!”

  “Well, that depends on what kind you get,” Tito reminded me.

  “That’s true, Calcines,” said Rolando. “Some kinds of gum last longer than others.”

  “Me, I like Juicy Fruit!” said Luis. “Oh, man, what I wouldn’t give for a stick of that right now!”

  “Juicy Fruit is okay,” I allowed. “But I like Big Red better.”

  “Will you get me some gum someday, Eduardito?” Esther asked.

  “Of course I will,” I assured her. “I promise.”

  “Where are you going to get it?” Luis asked. “Get me some, too!”

  “Yeah, Calcines!” said Tito. “I want to get in on some of this gum action.”

  “No,” I said. “You guys can take care of yourselves. Esther has never had gum. I want her to know what it’s like. It’s the best stuff in the whole world!”

  “Good morning, boys. Good morning, Esther,” said the principal, a blond woman who stood outside every morning to greet the children. “What is the best stuff in the whole world, Eduardo?”

  “Nothing, ma’am,” I said. “We were just talking about—uh—”

  “About pumpernickel bread,” said Luis quickly.

  “Ah, yes. Well, have a good day, and study hard for the glory of the Revolution!” she said, motioning us inside.

  We boys said goodbye to one another, promising to meet in front of the school after class was over, as usual. I walked Esther to her room, but before she went in, something possessed me to lean forward and whisper in her ear: “Esther, I promise, someday I’m going to get you all the gum you can chew.”

  Esther smiled. For a moment I wished I’d chosen my words more carefully. Would I be able to live up to my promise? But her faith in me was touching, and it moved me to make yet another one.

  “I’m going to take us to America,” I whispered. “That’s where the best chewing gum is. Ketchup, too. We’ll have all the food we want, and no one will bother us anymore. Don’t tell anybody, though, or we’ll get in trouble. Okay?”

  “Okay!” Esther whispered back. There was no doubt in her mind that her big brother was going to do what he said. She squeezed my hand and gave me a peck on the cheek. Then s
he turned and went into her classroom, and I went on my way to mine.

  Well, I had dug a big hole for myself now. There was not a Calcines yet who had failed to keep his word. I was committed. Now the only question was: How would I do it?

  Frankly, I had no idea. But I was sure that something would turn up.

  In the meantime, it was back to the same old thing—keeping my head down and making sure I stayed out of trouble. So, with a heavy heart, I went into my own classroom and sat at my desk, resigning myself to another day of Communist propaganda from our teacher.

  149901

  The government’s thirty-day allotment of food rations was barely enough to keep one person alive, let alone a whole family, so by the end of each month we’d often run out of rations. This meant we had to scrounge whatever we could on the black market along with whatever fruit was in season that we could find on the trees. We were luckier than others, though, because of Papa’s trips to the country on Tuesdays and because Mama was resourceful and always managed to come up with one meal a day. When our bellies rumbled, she would hand Esther and me a piece of hard bread and a cup of sugar water. “No complaining!” Mama would say, but I could see in her eyes that she knew the situation was pathetic.

  If it had been possible for our parents to sacrifice any more, they would have. But it wasn’t possible. They ate only as much as they needed to stay alive, leaving the rest for us. Most of Abuela Ana’s chickens had been slaughtered. There were just a few scrawny survivors now, plus the indomitable Pichilingo. Someday, I worried, it would be his turn for the pot. I knew Abuela was saving him for truly desperate times. But I couldn’t bear to think of eating my old friend, so I prayed that Fidel would die before my rooster lost his head.

  The food situation was even worse for my classmate Tito Bemba, whom we all called Quco. I had always liked Quco. He had the biggest pair of lips in Glorytown, and he loved to pucker up and chase the girls around, threatening to kiss them. But he was one of eight children, and I could always tell when his family’s rations had run out, because he would sit quietly on the playground instead of playing, in order to conserve energy.

  “Quco!” I said to him one day. “What’s up? Why are you just sitting here?”

  “Aiee, Calcines, man.” He rolled his eyes. “If I stand up too fast, I get dizzy.”

  “You’re that hungry?”

  “You have no idea, Calcines. We haven’t had anything to eat for two days. Not a bite.”

  “Listen, you come home with me after school,” I said. “Maybe I can get you a little something.”

  “Forget it, Calcines. It’s nice of you, but I don’t want to take food out of your family’s mouths.”

  “No, really. It’s okay. Mama always manages to come up with something.”

  Quco finally agreed. I took him home to my place, and we went into the kitchen, where Mama was mixing brown sugar with water—about the only two things we had plenty of. As usual, she greeted me with a big kiss, and she offered Quco a pleasant hello, asking how his family was doing.

  “Mama,” I said, “Quco hasn’t had anything to eat in two days. Can we give him something?”

  “Of course,” Mama said. She went to the freezer and pulled out a tray. “This is all I have right now, boys, but you are welcome to it. It’s durofrio.”

  Durofrio, literally “hard and cold,” was one more trick Mama had come up with to stave off our hunger pangs. It was nothing but brown sugar water, frozen into cubes. But it filled the belly for a little while, and the sugar gave us a little energy boost, though often afterward I would feel even more tired than before. I was disappointed that this was all we had to offer, but Quco’s family didn’t even have a freezer. His eyes lit up as though he’d just been invited to a banquet.

  “Thanks, Señora Calcines!” he said, and promptly helped himself to a piece of ice. I did, too. We stood in the kitchen, sucking on our durofrios and chatting with Mama, until Quco felt a little better. He thanked her and said he would be on his way.

  “Wait, Quco,” said Mama. She got a clean kitchen towel and wrapped up a bunch of durofrios for him to take home. “Hurry and get these back to your house before they melt,” she instructed him. “I’m sure all those brothers and sisters of yours will want a little something to nibble on.”

  Quco’s eyes got big and misty.

  “Thank you, Señora Calcines,” he said. “Thank you very much. And God bless you.” He grabbed the towel, said, “See you tomorrow, Calcines,” and scurried out the door.

  Mama watched him go. Then she shook her head and went back to her work.

  One day I heard my mother and a neighbor whispering.

  “Suicide. He committed suicide!” the neighbor said.

  “It’s the hunger, the propaganda, the executions. We’re not even allowed to go to church or play dominoes. What do you expect?”

  “He couldn’t handle the pressure. Every day, he thought he might be arrested for no reason at all. And why stay alive just to go into the army and get killed? How can we all live like this?”

  Surely it was gossip, I thought. But then over the next few months I began to hear Mama, Abuela, and Madrina Magalys whisper more and more names of the dead men. Hugo, Ernesto, Gerardo. I knew them all! They were only boys. I could see their faces in my mind, and they began to haunt me. Suicide is a sin, but if God was watching what was going on in Cuba, surely he would understand. I thought of the boys as martyrs to the cause of freedom, and in my daydreams they took on a heroic status. It required guts to kill yourself.

  A lot of young men were choosing suicide over being drafted into Castro’s brutal army. Suicide was not a coward’s way out if one had no other choice. It was the ultimate act of defiance against the government, a reminder that Castro could never really control the people the way he thought he could. His armies and thugs might take away our livelihood, our food, our peace of mind, but they could never touch our souls. I prayed that the boys who killed themselves would find peace in the next life.

  Even though I was still a kid, in a few short years I would be fifteen, old enough to be drafted. It could take that long for us to get permission to leave Cuba. The lesson of the suicides was not lost on my parents. If we were going to get out, we would have to start making plans now. Otherwise, it might be too late.

  One night toward the end of August 1966, I was listening to Papa and Mama talk as they lay in bed. I could hear every word through the wall, and I remained still and silent, absorbing everything.

  “We have two choices,” Papa said. “We can do it the legal way, or the illegal way.”

  The legal way, I knew, meant applying to the government for an exit visa. But what about the illegal way?

  “Well, I can tell you right now that I am not putting my children on an inner tube and pushing them off into the ocean!” Mama said, tears in her voice. “You know what the military does to those people they catch trying to leave!”

  So that was what she meant. Even I knew all about the people who tried to get to America across the Straits of Florida, clinging to anything that floated. With American soil a tantalizing ninety miles from Havana, it wasn’t hard to see why so many people made the attempt to escape the island prison. The Gulf Stream passed Cuba and went right by Miami, and it was tempting to believe that one could get to America in a few short hours. As long as the Cuban navy or the sharks didn’t get you, and as long as you didn’t get caught up in a storm or somehow end up floating in the wrong direction, you could make it. It had been done.

  But nobody knew how many people had died trying. The government wasn’t exactly forthcoming about how many escapees they murdered every month, but the stories I heard whispered on the streets were chilling. When the navy came across boat people, regardless of how many or how old they were, they all got the same treatment—a burst of machine-gun fire. Then the sharks got a free lunch.

  “Shh, Concha,” Papa soothed her. “Yes, I know. And I will not put my family in such a position.”
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  “I would do it if there was no other way.” Mama sobbed. “I would. But as long as we have a chance to get out safely, we have to take it. For the sake of the children.”

  “Yes,” Papa agreed. “For the sake of the children.”

  “We’ll do it, then?”

  “Yes. I’ll go tomorrow and make the application.”

  Mama was quiet for several moments.

  “I’m glad.”

  “Me, too.”

  “But I’m scared.”

  “Me, too.”

  I thought I knew why Mama was scared. I was scared, too, and as I lay in bed I had to fight to keep the panic from rising in my chest. People who applied for exit visas were subject to a kind of public ridicule that could, and did, break even the strongest wills. I had seen it on the playground. The children of those who had declared their discontent were called gusanos—worms—and were beaten and tormented constantly by the other kids. I never participated in this bullying. It was mostly the children of the Communists who did. Rolando and Tito stayed out of it as well. They said it gave them a bad taste in their mouths to see the way those kids were treated.

  But the worst of it was that even the teachers got in on the act. The previous spring, I’d witnessed a terrible thing. A boy whose parents had recently applied for an exit visa was getting beaten up on the playground by three or four bigger kids. A teacher, a young man I didn’t know, walked over to where the beating was taking place. Those of us who were watching expected him to stop it and punish the bullies. But instead, to my astonishment, he said, “That’s right, boys! That’s what happens to those who doubt the power of the Revolution! If you don’t like this treatment, you little worm, then maybe you should go home and tell your father to reconsider!” And with that, he walked away.