Before We Were Free (14 page)

Tía Mari suggests we entertain ourselves playing cards, but when
Mami sorts through the deck, she says, What on earth happened to the
queen of hearts?

July
30,
1961,
Sunday—most BORING day so far!

This morning, the Mancinis drove out to the beach for the day to see
the kids, so it has been like a tomb around here. All I’ve done is read and
nap and look at magazines and eat the leftover waterbreads from breakfast, and now I’m going to try to write—

We’re
in
the
crawl
space—and
I’m
scribbling
down
this
note
by
flashlight
just
in
case
anyone
finds
this
diary—

—There
was
a
huge
roar
in
the
backyard
like
a
plane
landing—now
a
crashing
sound
at
the
downstairs
door—

Oh
my
god—they’re
coming
through
the
house!!!!

My
hand
is
shaking
so
hard—but
I
want
to
leave
this
record
just
so
the
world
knows—

ten

Freedom Cry

“Anita,
por favor,
” Mami calls from the other room. “Turn that thing off.”

I’m sitting in front of the television at the Hotel Beverly, where my grandparents have been renting an apartment on the top floor. We’ve been in New York City already over a month and a half. I mark off every day on the calendar. Today, I made such a heavy X that I tore through the paper. September 18, 1961, isn’t even over, but it’s already gone!

The days are getting cooler. Down on the street, ten flights below, the little toy trees are beginning to turn reddish, like someone is lighting a match to them.

Every time I get a chance, I watch TV. I tell Mami that I want to learn more about this country. But really, I just want to keep my mind off everything I could be worrying about right now.

Like the phone call Mami is about to make from the other room. Twice a week, she calls Mr. Washburn in Washington to find out if there’s any news about Papi and my uncle. We all sit around—my grandparents, Mamita and Papito, Lucinda and Mundín and me—watching the reactions on her face.

“With Mr. Washburn,
por favor,
” I hear Mami saying. I go up to the television to turn it off, and just then, she comes on, the only Spanish lady I’ve ever seen on TV. There’s also a Cuban guy called Ricky Ricardo, who has a wacky American wife who reminds me of Mrs. Washburn. This lady carries a big basket of bananas on her head like the
marchantas
in the market calling out their wares.

I turn down the volume and sing along under my breath.

The first time I saw her, I couldn’t believe what she was saying:
“I’m Anita Banana and I’m here to stay.”

“NO!”
I screamed at the TV and clapped my hands over my ears. “I am not staying, I am not staying!”

Lucinda ran into the room. “
¿Qué pasa?
What on earth are you screaming about, Anita?” Thank goodness Mami and Mamita and Papito were out with Mundín, getting him a winter jacket, otherwise my screaming would have shot their fragile nerves. “You want us to get thrown out of here?”

I nodded and then shook my head. Of course I didn’t want to get thrown out and sent back to live in a closet. But I wanted the dictatorship to be over so we could go home to live as a family again. “The lady,” I said, pointing to the silent screen.

“What about her?” Lucinda asked, turning the volume back up. She watched the rest of the commercial. “You’re crying about her?”

“No, not about her, about what she said.” I explained the lady’s prediction as if the television were a crystal ball.

Lucinda let out one of her long-suffering sighs. “Ay, Anita, that’s not what she’s saying.” Lucinda swirled her hips, imitating the lady. “She’s saying Chiquita Banana, not Anita Banana and she’s here to say, not stay!”

I guess my nerves were pretty shot, too.

I’m still seeing ghosts and signs everywhere. And Chucha isn’t around to help me interpret them.

“I am so sorry to be molesting you, Mr. Washburn,” Mami is saying as I come in the room. Lucinda has explained to her that
molestar
does not mean
bother
in English as it does in Spanish. But Mami says how is she supposed to remember all the crazy ways the Americans have changed Spanish around. Sometimes, sad as I am, even I have to smile at Mami.

“Yes, yes, I understand, yes, Mr. Washburn,” Mami is saying. With each
yes,
I can hear her voice getting weaker. Her knuckles are bone-white from holding the receiver so tight. “No news
is
good news. You are right. We are so much in gratitude to you,” she says at the end.

“Nothing,” Mami says quietly after she hangs up. “They’re trying to put pressure on Trujillo Junior to leave the country. Then the prisoners will be released. We just have to keep hoping and praying,” she adds more cheerfully. She doesn’t sound very convinced.

“¡Exactamente!”
my grandfather agrees, trying to inject confidence into all of us. But my grandmother begins weeping.
“Mis
pobres hijos, mi pobre país.”
Her poor sons, her poor country!

Lucinda joins in, and before long, Mami and I are also crying. Mundín hurries off to the bathroom, where I’m sure he cries, too.

My grandfather puts on his overcoat and heads for the drugstore to get my grandmother some more of her blood-pressure medicine.

I want to go with him, but I can’t because it’s sort of illegal that we’re staying in their rooms with them, as they would have to pay more. Papito has told the doorman who’s Puerto Rican that ours is “a temporary situation,” and the doorman says he understands, just to be
discretos
. So we try to be discreet and go out one by one, so it doesn’t look like we know each other but are just separate people staying in the hotel rooms on the lower floors.

I go stand by the window and watch for Papito to come out downstairs, an old man in a Panama hat—one of the few familiar faces in this country where the only people we know are the ones who came with us.

The day we were surprised in our hiding place, I had no idea that it would be my good-bye to my country. I actually thought the SIM had discovered us and it was good-bye to my life.

That’s why, scared as I was, I kept writing in my diary. I wanted someone to know what had happened to us.

But when the crawl-space doors were thrown open, it was Wimpy and his paratroopers coming to the rescue! The Mancinis, who were away at the beach, didn’t even know that the airlift would be that day. A number of things had to fall in place for our evacuation, and that Sunday, July 30, they came together at the last minute.

I had been about to stash away my diary under a loose board. But Wimpy grabbed me and picked me up, and the diary came away with me in my hand. An unmarked helicopter was waiting on the embassy grounds to airlift us out, and there wasn’t a minute to spare. Outside on the streets, an angry rally was going on, and the SIM were too busy with crowd control to notice a dragonfly helicopter flying by with a terrified mother and daughter inside.

North of the city, we landed on an abandoned airstrip, where a cargo plane was waiting. A van drove up with some other people, some of whom I recognized. Wimpy helped everyone climb on board, a grim look on his face, his eagle tattoo pumping away. As our plane took off, I glanced out the window at the cracked tarmac and the swaying palms waving good-bye, and I thought I saw a flash of purple getting back into the van with Wimpy.

We flew higher and higher, over green valleys and dark, ridged mountains, and then over the coast, waves breaking on the white sands. Miles below, Oscar was in one of those tiny beach houses . . . maybe looking up! How long before he returned home? Would he realize right away that I was no longer hidden in his parents’ closet, using his queen of hearts to mark my place in
The Swiss Family Robinson
?

So many people and places I might not ever get to see again! Looking down, I saw a quilt of faces and memories spreading out over the sea—Monsito carrying our sack of
plátanos
in his wheelbarrow, Tío Pepe with his white socks, Porfirio watering the ginger plants while singing his sad songs—and the purple thread stitching piece to piece was Chucha, my dear Chucha, who had helped me survive this year of my life falling apart!

I stared out the window, too shocked even to cry, until we climbed into the clouds and there was nothing else to see. A little while later, I leaned against Mami and fell asleep.

When she shook me awake, it was dark outside the plane. We had landed. Somehow, I stumbled in my half-sleep across a run-way, Mami holding on to me, to a bigger airplane taking us to New York City.

The next I knew, I was looking down at the view I had seen on the postcards Lucinda used to send us that left even Chucha speechless—buildings so tall that I couldn’t quite believe they were real, and patches of green like scatter rugs, and tiny antlike people whom I could blot out just by putting my hand on the small square of the window. How could I live in this world full of strangers and gray light instead of a country of cousins and family and family friends and year-round sunshine?

We landed and entered a terminal where officials took us into a room to issue us special papers. Then one of them shook our hands and said, “Welcome to the United States of America,” and pointed us out of Immigration. And there was my answer to how I would survive in this strange, new world: My family was waiting for us—Mundín and Lucinda, my grandparents, Carla, her sisters, and Tía Laura and Tío Carlos and Tía Mimí—all of them calling out, “Anita! Carmen!” Carla says my face was worth a thousand bucks as the family rushed forward and locked us in their arms.

By the end of September, we still have no news of Papi and Tío Toni. The Garcías have invited us to move out to their house in Queens, but Mami won’t hear of it. Any day now, we will be returning home. The
campo
suburbs are for those who have decided to settle down in the United States, like the Garcías. New York City is where you stay on your way back to where you came from.

While we are waiting around, Mami decides that we should learn perfect English. Lucinda already is a pro from being here since February, but Mundín and I could use practice. “Papi will be so pleased!” she says excitedly. There is an uneasy silence when she says these things. But I so want to believe her that I’ll do anything,
anything
that might help make this happen.

Mami goes to a nearby Catholic school and asks the principal if we can sit in on any class till we go back home. The principal is a nun with a bonnet like a baby doll, except it’s black. She is a Sister of Charity, and maybe that is why she is so kind and says yes, she will put us wherever there is a spot.

The next day, I don’t think she is so kind. I am sitting at a small desk in the second grade, the only elementary classroom that had extra space. The teacher, Sister Mary Joseph, has a sweet face with pale whiskers and watery blue eyes as if she is always in tears. Her breath is musty, like an old suitcase that hasn’t been opened in years.

“Annie is a very special student,” she tells the class, “a refugee from a dictatorship.” When she says this, I stare down at the wooden floor and try not to cry.

“She came here with her family in order to be free,” Sister Mary Joseph is explaining. But my family is not all here, I feel like saying. And how can I be free when my mind is all worried about Papi and my whole self is so sad, I can barely get up some mornings?

“Would you like to tell the class a little something about the Dominican Republic?” the old nun prompts me.

Where do I begin telling strangers about a place whose smell is on my skin and whose memory is always in my head? To them, it’s just a geography lesson; to me, it’s home. Besides, talking about my country would make me too sad right now. I stand in front of this roomful of staring little kids, not saying a single word. At the very least I should show them that I can speak their language, so they don’t think I’m a complete moron who is almost thirteen and still in the second grade.

“Thank you,” I murmur, “for letting me into your country.”

Sister Mary Joseph gives me an assignment to do on my own. I am to write a composition about what I remember from my native country.

“Maybe it’ll be easier to write down memories rather than just think on your feet,” she suggests. She shows me how I’m supposed to make a little cross at the top of each page, and then print the initials
J.M.J.,
dedicating my work to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Below, on the first line, I am to put my own name, which she writes out as
Annie Torres,
and the date, October 4, 1961.

I bend to my work, make my little cross on top of a clean page, dedicating my composition to J.M.J. But then, I add M.T. & A.T., Mundo and Antonio de la Torre.

“What’s that?” Sister Mary Joseph says, peering over my shoulder.

“My father and my uncle.” I point to each set of initials.

She is about to protest, but then her watery blue eyes get even more watery. “I am so sorry,” she whispers—as if Papi and Tío Toni are dead!

“I will be seeing them soon,” I explain.

“Of course you will, dear,” Sister Mary Joseph says, nodding. Today, her breath smells like the sachets my grandmother sticks in her underwear drawer.

As the class goes over cursive letters, I work on my assignment. At first I can’t think of what to say, but then I pretend I’m writing in my diary again. Soon I’m filling page after page, making lists of people and foods and places I miss, describing them using metaphors like Mrs. Brown taught us. I also write down my favorites of Chucha’s sayings:

With patience and calm, even a burro can climb a palm.
Dress the monkey in silk, he’s still a monkey.
You can’t dry yesterday’s laundry with tomorrow’s sun.

As I write, I can almost hear Chucha at my side whispering,
“Fly! Fly free!”
Those were the last words she ever spoke to me. But how can I be really free without Papi in my life? If something happens to him, then the part that is the wings in me would die.

When I hand in my composition, Sister Mary Joseph reads it over, marking pencil in hand. I stand by her big desk, watching her pencil dip down, correcting my mistakes. She chuckles when she gets to the page with Chucha’s sayings.

“Very good,” she remarks, although the pages are full of little red marks.

By the end of October, Papi is still in prison and Trujillo Junior is still in power. He is getting crazier with revenge and refuses to cooperate with the Americans, so even Mr. Washburn doesn’t have a whole lot of details. I decide to write to Oscar, who always seemed to know about everything, and ask him what he knows.

I’ve tried writing him before. But every time I sat down, I felt a wave of homesickness, and I had to put the letter away.

But this time, I have a mission, though I’ve got to be extra careful on account of the censors. I start out telling him all about
Nueva York;
how cold it’s gotten and how uncomfortable it is to wear so many heavy clothes; how the people don’t smile a whole lot, so you can’t really tell if they like you or not; how I am in school learning lots of English (I leave out the part about second grade); how my teacher, Sister Mary Joseph, is making me write down stories like the girl in
The Arabian Nights
; how she did a whole geography segment on the island, and Mami fried
pastelitos
for me to take in, which everyone liked a lot. I mix in the good and the bad and sometimes, I admit, when there’s not much good to report, I make some things up.