didn’t take much for me to assume that the idea of sending me away was really not my mother’s idea but Saul’s. Still, the words coming from my mother’s mouth punched me right in the gut. My mother just stood watchfully at the kitchen counter—her distant stare, her trembling bow legs, her thinning blonde hair tucked behind her ears accentuating her thin, pointy nose. All the while, I kept my eyes on Saul who had snuck in, wearing only his faded blue and white boxer shorts, to stand just beyond her; tense and towering as always, his thin lips curled upward in a victorious evil grin.
I took a deep inhale of air and considered this latest challenge. My chest heaved with a sharp, stabbing pain. A small defiant giggle escaped from my throat.
This has to be a big joke at my expense. My own mother would never send me away…would she?
Mamá’s admonition trapped me. I didn’t want to leave my friends and family behind, and I didn’t want to leave Cuba behind either. Even at a young age, I understood that this tiny island nation in the Caribbean took us in at a time when few others around the world would. In school, I remembered learning the story about the MS St. Louis debacle, about Cuba’s government closing its doors on a shipload of Jews trying to escape Nazi Europe and ultimately having them turn back to their demise at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Nonetheless, thousands of Jews had made their way to the island before and after that, and Cuba had become a new safe haven—a small remote place in the world, however temporary, but valuable and precious to us just the same. In the long run, Cuba had given all of us a safe place to call home, a respite from our inevitable and horrible twentieth-century wanderings. And just like that, I now had to pick up and leave also?
Cornered and standing in front of my mother and Saul in the kitchen, I took another deep breath, my whole torso filling with burning acid. I let out a long frustrated sigh and tried to relax.
This is what my ancestors must have felt when they had to decide where to run next?
Trapped, I could feel tears welling up in my eyes and blurring my vision, but I wouldn’t give Saul the satisfaction of seeing me cry. One of these days, Saul.
Collecting myself, taking control of my emotions, I changed the course of my thoughts. I forced my natural curiosity and appetite for adventure to surface and take over my anxious unease. I was scared of what might be waiting for me on the other side of this decision I was being forced to make, but I wasn’t going to let that show. Especially not in front of Saul. Instead, youthful stubbornness and insolence pushed me forward. Like it or not, I had to make a choice.
I picked up my passport from the table and pondered the choices in front of me. The following night, back at my grandparents’ place, the answer became crystal clear. I listened to the announcement of the winning bolita numbers—sixty-seven, seventy-three, and eighty-seven. Punch, suitcase, and New York.
Well, Tío Daniel, I guess it’s time for us to finally meet.
8
Beto and Chaki had been fortunate enough to escape the chaos that night at the nightclub, but El Bobo wasn’t as lucky. Typical. He spent two nights in a jail cell until I was able to come and pay the hefty fine to get him out. Abuelo accompanied me to the police station; as a successful private business owner in Havana, he did have some influence with the authorities. But he wasn’t at all happy about having to get involved with more of our childish shenanigans.
“What a bunch of guajiros you boys are! Ignorant bumpkins!” he roared when he first heard what had happened. “Josef is not the only bobo in your group—you are all a bunch of burros estupidos!”
This time, I didn’t dare argue with my grandfather.
And I didn’t dare ask Abuelo to pay a single peso for Bobo’s release either. I paid the fine from my secret stash of pesos that I kept hidden inside my conga drum. It killed me to hand over the cash because I knew full well that it would end up in the pocket of the crooked Sergeant Perez who happened to be on duty at the police station that day. But paying the fine was all I could do. I had to help Bobo. Pobre Bobo. The guy always had such stupid, rotten luck.
We spent my second-to-last night in Havana together at the beach at Calle 21 y O. Immersed in the dubious celebration, we danced, drank, smoked cigars, and sang all night. The briny aroma of the sea tickled my nostrils and teased my senses; it was a smell I swore I would never forget. Cheap rum, the color of dark amber, burned a hole in my belly and coated my gut. Crowds of people, old and young, locals and tourists, formed around us wanting to join our party, completely unaware of the inner anxiety and fear that truly accompanied Los Cuatro Compadres that night.
I pounded out familiar African rhythms on my conga drum that flowed through my body and out my nubby fingers as naturally as the blood that flowed in my veins. While my palms grew numb and red from beating on the drum, cigar smoke filled my fragile lungs. The physical aches and stings, however, could not stop the party. Nostalgia was wearing me down, and my sadness could be heard in every sad slap of my heavy hands on the tight skin of the drum. Still, I buried my grief and, with a false bravado, continued the celebration.
As the night wore on, the music vibrated in the humid air, and the smell of pungent sweat mixed with the salty sea air, stale cigar smoke, and tangy beer. We didn’t stop the party until the next morning when the sun peeked through the dreamy Caribbean sky. Behind me now was the familiar, soothing “dancing waters” of the Parisien Cabaret. In front of me lay a blurred, hazy horizon beyond a vast ocean of uncertainty.
I had said my final goodbyes to my compadres the night before, and I was spending that last night with my small immediate family—my mother (minus Saul), my grandparents, and my Tía Cecilia (Mamá’s older sister). The five of us gathered in the second floor apartment above my Abuelo’s shoe factory and shuffled nervously around each other. The large and airy apartment seemed unusually crowded and I felt claustrophobic. Abuela called us all to the dining table for what I figured to be our version of ‘the last supper.’ The mounds of food, lovingly prepared by my grandmother as a feast for a king, tasted bland and mushy in my mouth. I have never been able to eat cholent and liver with onions again. What were then my favorite dishes and smells became reminders of loss and sadness.
Tossing and turning in my bed that last night, haunted by dreams and the tiny voice that followed me everywhere, I was as restless as an animal trapped in a circus cage. Alone in my familiar bed, a flood of emotions overtook me; tears gushed like a busted water pipe from my bloodshot eyes and saturated my pillow with pools of sorrow. Over and over, I swore to myself and made fearful promises to my father that I would make him proud of me. With all my might, I hung on to the hope of what was to come. I would not disappear and become a forgotten nobody.
I woke up groggy the next morning, and I staggered out of bed. That was it—my last sunrise in Havana. The air was already damp with the steamy humidity that I had come to love; the sky was a clear blue and the sun was not yet visible above the horizon. I forced myself out of the house before anyone else woke up, despite my pounding headache and the nausea that was bubbling in my stomach. I couldn’t say why, but I felt an urgent impulse to go to the cemetery by the synagogue where my father was buried.
The sun was just beginning to kiss the horizon as I sat at my father’s burial place. Alone, I let myself cry, and I pounded my fists into the stone slab covering my father’s grave. Finally, Papi, I have to leave you here now…but I will always carry you with me. I patted the photo that rested snuggly in the shirt pocket over my racing heart. I got to my feet. I placed a smooth round stone and a shiny kilo on top of the grave marker. I swiped my dirt-covered hand over my cheeks to clear away any traces of tears and attempted to gather all the strength I could muster before returning home. I recited my morning prayers there at the cemetery before turning my
