Leaving Glorytown

by Eduardo F. Calcines

  “I can deal with anything,” I said. “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle.”

  Talk of God was just as forbidden as talk of dissent, and Tito and Rolando automatically looked around to see if any teachers had heard. But I didn’t care. I could certainly put up with playground harassment until the day the telegram of freedom arrived.

  My only hope now was that the telegram wouldn’t take too long.

  Our troubles really began one night a couple of weeks later. I lay in my bed in the living room trying to sleep, but lately that had been hard. There was just too much going on in my head. I thought about the possibility that we would be moving to America, the “Land of Freedom to the north.” There would be chewing gum and ketchup, and all the food I could eat. Once again, I would know the pleasures of thumbing through a brand-new comic book, the delightful scents of ink and fresh newsprint filling my nostrils. I would have a bicycle. I would have new clothes, maybe. Papa would get a good job, and we would live in a nice house on a nice street. I would play baseball with American boys, and I would learn English. The Calcines clan would become American.

  Which meant, I guessed, that I would stop being me, and become someone else—someone who looked like me, and who had my name, but there the resemblance would end. Eduardo Calcines of Glorytown would cease to exist. I would be Eddy Calcines, American kid. It was all too much to think about, and I tossed and turned under my sheet.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard the sound that we had all come to dread: a military truck, turning down San Carlos Street. This was not a new sound—we often heard trucks pass our house. Then I would pull the covers up over my head and stick my fingers in my ears, because I knew what would happen next. There would be shouting, crying, screaming, breaking glass. Once I heard the terrifying sound of gunfire, though I never found out what it was about. I prayed that the truck would pass us by and stop in front of someone else’s house—someone I didn’t like, such as La Natividad, the crazy woman.

  But the truck didn’t pass us by. It stopped right outside our house. The squeaking of the brakes was like the howling of a legion of demons, striking terror into my heart.

  Soldiers jumped from the back of the truck; boots pounded on pavement. Their equipment jangled, and their weapons made eerie clicking sounds as they prepared them as if to fire. Some ran up to the front door and pounded on it, screaming for us to open up. Others ran to the back of the house to make sure no one escaped.

  I sat up in my bed, saw a soldier out the living room window, and for one unforgettable moment our eyes met. He was short, with a neat mustache, and even in the dim night I could see the hatred pouring from his eyes. This must be a mistake. This man doesn’t know us. How can he hate us this way? It was my first face-to-face confrontation with one of Fidel’s fanatics. One look at this man sent fear coursing through every speck of me.

  The officer in charge was yelling, “Worms! Traitors!” Mama came running to open the front door, wrapping herself in a bathrobe. The officer pushed past her, came over to my bed, leaned over, and stuck his face in mine.

  “Where is the worthless Yankee sympathizer known as Rafael Calcines? Let me see his filthy face—now!” he screamed. Flecks of spittle landed on my face, and I could smell food on his breath. Unlike us, he had eaten well that night. So it was true—the Communists favored their own, at least their officers, even though they said we were all equal.

  I heard Papa get up. He came out of his bedroom already dressed. Probably he had known they would come one night soon, and he didn’t want to have these animals in our house a moment longer than necessary. Yet he hadn’t said anything about this to us. Why not?

  “Here I am,” he said.

  “You! In the truck!” said the officer. “And don’t give me any trouble, or I’ll cut you down right here in front of your two little pups!”

  The other soldiers had all come in, too. They pointed their guns at Papa, ready to blow his head off if he made one false move. Esther and I started crying. Mama was doing her best to hold it together, but the tension got the better of her.

  “Where are you taking my husband?” she shrieked. “Why are you doing this? What gives you the right?”

  “None of your business,” sneered the officer. “He’s the property of the state now. You don’t like our Revolution? Fine! You don’t have to be part of it. Let’s go!”

  And with that, Papa was hustled out the door, put into the truck, and driven away. He barely had time to glance around and look at us, trying his best to smile. That was when I understood that this was a direct result of Papa’s application for the exit visa. The government was retaliating against us for implying that the Revolution was less than perfect. Now I understood why Papa hadn’t warned us ahead of time. There was no point in getting us worked up over the inevitable.

  “Mama!” Esther screamed. “What’s happening?”

  But for once, Mama had no words of reassurance. She remained silent, her face the color of the sheets.

  As soon as the truck had rumbled away, the whole neighborhood came out to see who had been unlucky this time. Abuelo and Abuela were the first on the scene, and they knelt to embrace us.

  “Don’t you worry,” Abuela crooned. “Your papa is strong, and he is smart. He will be fine. Just don’t worry.”

  “But where is he?” I cried. “Where is my papa? Where did they take him?”

  The grownups all exchanged glances.

  “He is going to do some work for the government,” Abuelo offered finally. “When his work is finished, then they will let him go. So don’t worry, my little baseball player. Everything will be all right.”

  I could tell Abuelo didn’t believe what he was saying, because he wouldn’t look me in the eyes. But I also knew that there was nothing to be done. Abuela and Abuelo went back across the street to their house. I climbed into bed with Mama and Esther and lay staring at the ceiling, kicking my legs under the blanket.

  “Eduar, stop that,” Mama said.

  “I can’t sleep!” I said.

  “Neither can I,” Esther said. “I’m worried about Papa.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “I already miss him. Where did they take him, Mama?”

  “They took him—”

  Mama stopped, choking up. She hated to let us kids see her upset. It was a mother’s duty to remain strong and unshakable in front of her children, and the worse the times, the more serious that duty. But her husband had just been yanked out of bed in the middle of the night by jackbooted thugs with automatic weapons. The sanctity of our home had been shattered, our protector kidnapped. How was a woman expected to act as though nothing were wrong?

  “They took him to a special camp,” she finally said.

  “Papa is going camping?” Esther said. She sounded unconvinced.

  “Not exactly,” Mama said, sniffling. “The government needs his help. They’ve taken him to a place where he can do work for them. Important work. Only Papa can do it. They wanted him specially, and they needed him right away.”

  “Then why was that man yelling at us and calling us names?”

  “Oh, he was probably just in a bad mood,” Mama said. “Maybe his wife burned his dinner.”

  “Maybe he stepped on a nail,” Esther suggested.

  “Maybe he fell into an outhouse,” I said.

  “That’s probably just what happened,” Mama said. “Now let’s all try to get some sleep.”

  So I lay there and kept staring up at the ceiling, trying not to kick my legs, imagining Papa on a camping trip with lots of men with machine guns. I hoped he was having a good time, but somehow I doubted it. I was already as cynical and worldly-wise as someone twice my age. I knew full well that Papa wasn’t on any camping trip, and I knew that the officer hadn’t simply been in a bad mood. The government was coming after us now, and we were at their mercy until they decided to let us leave.

  Remember the Lord

  That first day after Papa was taken, I w
oke up feeling as if I were on a long slide into a dark abyss. Suddenly nothing seemed real to me anymore. Now that the privacy and security of our home had been shattered, it was clear to me that our lives were nothing more than illusions. The walls and roof could not protect us, but more than that, the very idea of “home” was gone. Our identity as a family had been destroyed. But, not quite eleven, I couldn’t put this feeling into words, so I was stuck with a feeling of all-consuming emptiness. It was worse than hunger, worse than sadness, worse than fear. It was the feeling that there was nothing good left in the world.

  I did what I always did when I felt low—I went across the street to my grandparents’ house and climbed up the avocado tree onto the roof. The birds were singing as though everything was fine. I had come to love the sound of birds for that very reason—because they always seemed so close to me, and yet so distant from the problems of the world. I longed to fly away like them. Since that was impossible, I became proficient at bird calls.

  I could, and often did, have long conversations with any winged friend that stopped by to roost in one of the fruit trees. I would think about all the things that were bothering me as I whistled, screeched, and clucked. I believed that the birds really understood what I was saying, and that their responses to me were words of comfort: Don’t worry! Everything up here is fine! Just fly away like us! How I wished that I could.

  Wild parakeets and parrots abounded in Cuba, and I had become adept at mimicking them. Another frequent visitor was the mariposa, which means butterfly, but is also the nickname given to the painted bunting, a colorful relative of the cardinal. Mockingbirds, doves, and hummingbirds were common. My old friend Pichilingo was still around, too. He was getting up there in rooster years, but his comb still stood upright and flaming red, and he still scratched and crowed and strutted around manfully in front of his few remaining hens.

  Abuelo Julian came out into the yard. Normally he would have warned me not to break any of the roof tiles. But this morning he said nothing of the sort. I knew he was trying to be respectful of my feelings. This made me feel even worse. I wanted so much for things to go back to normal.

  Instead Abuelo just stood there, sipping from a little cup of coffee. When he finished it, he looked up at me and tried to smile.

  “You’re getting so good at those bird calls, I couldn’t tell at first if it was you or a parrot,” he said. “If I hadn’t heard you climb up the avocado tree, I wouldn’t have known you were here.”

  I said nothing.

  “You want to play catch?” he offered. “You have some time before school.”

  “No, thanks,” I mumbled.

  “You’re worried about your papa.”

  I nodded. Tears threatened to wash down my cheeks. I tried Mama’s trick of opening my eyes wide and looking up, but it didn’t work.

  “Come on down, niño. Let’s talk.”

  Abuelo and I sat under the avocado tree. Abuela came out with a fresh cup of coffee. She seemed about to say something, but then, seeing that we needed to have a man-to-man talk, she went back inside. I’d managed to stop my tears, but I still sniffled. Abuelo rubbed my head with his strong and capable hand.

  “Your papa,” Abuelo said, “is a very brave man.”

  I nodded.

  “He knew this would happen, and yet he went ahead with his decision anyway,” Abuelo went on. “That takes a lot of courage.”

  “I know. But, Abuelo, where did he go?”

  “What did your mama tell you?”

  I snorted. “She gave us some line about how he went camping. But that was for Esther. I don’t believe it.”

  Abuelo nodded. “Maybe you’re old enough to be told these things,” he said. “I never thought that shielding children from the truth of the world was a good idea. Better they should know what’s really going on, because they have to deal with it anyway. Niño, your father has been taken to a prison work camp.”

  “He’s in prison?” This was my worst fear come true. I nearly started to cry again.

  But Abuelo said, “No, not prison, really. He’s lost his freedom, but he’s not in a jail cell. They’ve taken him out to the country, not far from my sugar mill. He’s going to be working in the cane fields. This is what they call ‘agricultural reform.’ They’ll work him hard, and they won’t be polite about it. But I know Felo, and he will survive. And he’ll get the chance to come home one weekend a month, to see you, Esther, and your mama.”

  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?”

  “Wha
t 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!”