Leaving Glorytown (16 page)

“Look who's such a big talker,” said Rolando.

“Dare him! Dare him!” said Luis.

“Good idea,” said Rolando. “Calcines, I hereby officially dare you to break into La Natividad's house tonight while she is gone, and if you don't do it, you are the biggest chicken in Cienfuegos.”

“I accept,” I said.

“Now we're going to have some action!” Tito said, rubbing his hands together.

“How do you know she's going out tonight?” said Luis.

“She goes out every night,” Tito said. “I have no idea where, or for how long, but I can guarantee you this—it has something to do with the Devil. Of that, I am positive. Just ask anyone. They'll tell you.”

There was silence as we pondered this weighty information.

“So we'll have to move fast,” said Tito.

“We? What is this ‘we'?” said Luis, alarmed.

“Well, if Calcines is going, I'm going,” said Tito, “and if I'm going, my brother is going, and if we're going, you're going, Luis.”

“I see,” said Luis. “In that case, I'm going home now to say my prayers, because tonight is the night we die.”

That evening, the four of us watched from behind the fence around my yard as La Natividad came out her front door, then went down the steps and through the gate. As usual, she was wearing all black, and she was clutching a large, shapeless black bag. Even stranger, on this night she held an umbrella over her head—even though it was dark out, and not a drop of rain had fallen in days! It was such an odd sight that fingers of fear began to tickle my spine.

“Man, she really is nuts!” Luis whispered.

“Shh! Quiet!” said Tito. “She can hear a frog croak a mile away.”

“She can see the freckles on a frog's ass a mile away, too,” Rolando said. “Keep it down until she's gone.”

La Natividad looked around. She was always suspicious of everyone and everything, but she seemed especially on guard tonight. I wondered if she'd sensed us. Then she moved on, disappearing around the corner.

The four of us swung into action. We ran down the street and flattened ourselves against the wall until we were sure no one was watching
. Then I pulled on the rusty old gate. As I'd expected, it was locked.

“Great,” I said. “We have to go over the wall!”

La Natividad's property was surrounded by a concrete wall about six feet high. Once there had been iron stakes stuck in the top of it, but a lot of them had rusted and fallen out over the years, leaving gaps that a boy could wiggle through.

“What about her dogs?” whispered Luis.

“Oh, yeah!” said Tito. “The dogs!”

“How could we have forgotten about the dogs?” Rolando said, slapping his forehead. “What are we, idiots?”

La Natividad's dogs were two large, vicious black mutts, with yellowed, dripping fangs and beady, malevolent eyes. They were one of the many reasons we usually didn't walk near La Natividad's house. If we did, they would come charging up to the gate and bark madly until we were gone. But she must have left them in the house, because there was no sign of them in the yard.

“Well, over we go,” said Tito.

The four of us hoisted ourselves over the wall and dropped to the ground on the other side. There, in front of us, were the mangos, some of them rotten, others as fresh as if they had just fallen that day.

“Look at them all!” said Luis. “Wow, do they look good!”

“I wonder if they're cursed,” Tito mused.

“Well, I'm starving,” said Rolando. He was about to bite into one, but I stopped him.

“Listen, man, every fairy tale I've ever heard about witches starts just like this,” I said. “Some kids are about to steal the gold, but they see some food, and they stop and eat until they're as fat as pigs. Then the witch comes back and cooks them!”

“You're right,” said Rolando. “I've heard those stories, too.”

“Good thinking,” said Tito.

“We'll get the mangos on the way back. Let's go up and try the door.”

“Oh, man, Calcines, I don't know.” Rolando groaned. “Maybe this wasn't such a great idea.”

“You were the one who dared me!” I said. “You can't back out now. If you do, you have to wear a dress to school every day for a week.” That was the punishment we had devised for anyone who backed out of a dare. So far, it had never been enforced, but we took it very seriously.

“I'm not wearing any dress!”

“Then let's go,” I said.

We slunk like ninjas up the crumbling concrete steps, until we were at La Natividad's front door. I could smell some strange odor, no doubt the smoke lingering from one of her magic ceremonies. It was an exotic, intoxicating scent.

“Wow,” I whispered, turning to face the boys. “Whatever this lady is up to, it's something really—”

“Yaaaaaaaaagh!”
screamed Luis, falling backward down the stairs.

I whipped around to see what had frightened him so. The front door had opened, and there stood La Natividad, leering horribly down at us. Behind her, I could see two slavering sets of jaws, and I heard the sound of guttural growling.

“It's her! She flew back on her umbrella!” Tito yelped.

I said nothing. I was too busy running. I leapt down the stairs four at a time and headed straight for the wall, but I wasn't moving fast enough to escape the dogs, one of which was right behind me. I could
feel its hot breath on my calves as I dived for the wall and pulled myself up. A pair of fangs grabbed my shorts and refused to let go. I kicked madly behind me until I heard a yelp and a thud, and then I was over.

Catching my breath, I looked up to see Luis sitting beside me.

“How did you get here so fast?” I asked, astonished.

“Fear,” he answered.

Tito and Rolando were not as lucky. Luis and I could hear their pathetic screams blending with La Natividad's screeching as she urged the dogs on. Suddenly their heads appeared above the wall, and they, too, dropped onto the sidewalk. Tito was bleeding from a gash on his leg. Rolando had lost his pants.

“Run!” Luis yelled.

We needed no further urging. New speed records were set as we disappeared down San Carlos Street. We didn't even bother saying goodbye as we escaped into our houses.

Somehow, I was able to make it through the front door and into bed without Mama hearing me. But as I lay there pretending to sleep, I could hear La Natividad's dogs barking, furious at having lost their chance to sink their teeth into our bottoms. After an hour, they settled down, but I knew that I could never go within a hundred yards of that house again.

How had La Natividad gotten back into her house without our noticing? She must have used witchcraft; there was no other explanation. It occurred to me that she might have a back door, but I dismissed that as too commonplace. I could more easily believe that she'd flown through the air than that she'd gotten the drop on us by sneaking around the block.

If I was going to escape Fidel, I thought in frustration, then it would have to be without the help of La Natividad's magic charms.

As the barking faded, there came another, even more ominous sound. From the vacant field nearby, I could hear a drum start up, followed by chanting and the beating of a tambourine. The santeros were at it again. I was sure that La Natividad had summoned them to cast a magic spell on us. I waited all night for some demon to come slinking through the window and steal my soul. But I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, it was morning, and I was still the same old troubled boy, waiting for his telegram to come.

O
ne day I looked at the calendar, and I realized we'd been waiting for our telegram for nearly a year. The suspense was starting to feel like a wasting disease. I could feel it taking another little bite out of me each day. The worst part was that I couldn't even talk about it with anyone. Mama and Esther felt the same way, so there was no point in complaining to them.

“Complaining only makes things worse!” Mama would say, and Esther would get upset if she saw that I was upset. I couldn't talk to the boys about it, either. They talked about nothing but my impending escape to freedom. I was sick of their wild speculations about blond girls, hot dogs, and apple pie. So I kept my agony to myself.

Papa continued to slave away at the work camp, month after month. He was one person I didn't want to complain to. Compared to what he was going through, my life was like an amusement park. He said the guards were always threatening to take away his furloughs, but so far that hadn't happened. We looked forward to those weekends with tremendous yearning, for we missed Papa fiercely. Each time we saw
him, he looked thinner and more exhausted. But Papa had not earned his reputation as one of the strongest men on the docks of Cienfuegos for nothing. He had the endurance of a draft horse, and he swore that he would not let the Communists beat him down.

“Look at it this way, hijo,” he said during one of his visits. “We may not know what day that telegram will arrive, but God knows. And every day that passes brings us one day closer to that moment.”

“But I want to know when it's coming!” I said. “And what if they don't send it at all? What if they forget or they just decide not to let us go?”

Papa drew me close and gave me a bone-crushing hug.

“Sometimes the hardest thing about life is not knowing,” he said. “Not just about this, but about everything. It's not an easy lesson, but you'll have to learn it, son. M'entiendes?”

“Yes, Papa, I understand.”

Just before school started, the Caballero brothers and I decided to make a trial run to Nguyen Van Troy Middle School, which was much farther than Mariana Grajales—at least a mile and a half. To get there, we had to cross through the territories of three or four gangs. We wanted to find a safe route. Luis would have been with us, but he'd had a bad asthma attack and was stuck in bed.

Rolando was very quiet and I thought it was probably because he hadn't been promoted. Rolando was an even worse student than I was. The thought that he was going to have to spend another year in sixth grade was eating him alive.

“Ah, don't worry about it, Rolo,” I said. “Who cares anyway? At least you don't have to walk so far.”

Rolando snorted. “Who the hell is Nguyen Van Troy, anyway?” he said. “What kind of dumb name is that?”

“He's Chinese,” said Tito.

“No, he's Russian,” I said.

“That's not a Russian name,” said Tito.

“Well, one thing's for sure. He's a Communist. Probably some kind of hero or something,” said Rolando.

“There are no Communist heroes!” I said.

The brothers instinctively looked around to see if anyone was listening. Then Tito turned to me. “Calcines, if you want to get your butt thrown in jail, that's your problem. But leave us out of it.”

“Sorry. But it's true. They renamed all these schools after people we've never heard of, and they expect us to care? What's wrong with our own Cuban heroes? We have plenty of them!”

From Papa's stories of Ritica la Cubanita, I knew an assortment of tales dating from the war against the Spanish colonialists. For the rest of our walk, I regaled the boys with anecdotes about José Martí, Antonio Maceo, and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, men of dignity and courage who had sacrificed everything to free us from Spanish control.

“How do you know all this stuff?” Rolando asked. “You can barely read!”

Far from insulting me, Rolando's comment jolted me into a realization: I
was
capable of learning—as long as it was something I was interested in.

“I just don't care about learning the crap those Commies are always
trying to shove down our throats,” I said. “I know the
real
history of Cuba. All they teach us in school is lies and more lies.”

We arrived at Nguyen Van Troy without getting into any fights. I stared solemnly at the crumbling brick edifice that would be my new home for the next three years . . . or until the telegram came. There was no way it could take
that
long. With a shudder, I realized that if it hadn't come by the time I finished ninth grade, I'd be too old to leave the island. The army would have its claws in me then. My old, familiar fear began uncoiling from my belly like a snake and crawling up through my chest. With an effort, I pushed it down again, willing myself to be a man and not a boy.