Cuba in my Pocket

Santa Clara, Cuba April 1961

This is not my home.

Tía Carmen’s kitchen doesn’t have my model of a P-51 Mustang or scattered pieces of Erector set. Instead of a mango tree out front with a tocororo nest in its branches, there’s a crowd of soldiers, slapping one another on the back and firing their rifles into the night air.

My cousin Manuelito slaps another domino down on the table. “Doble ocho, tonto,” he cackles. His stubby fingers fidget over the remaining dominoes in front of him.

“Don’t call me stupid,” I say, narrowing my eyes. Mami paces behind Manuelito, twisting a red dish towel in her hands. She reaches for the cross at her neck, and I hear her mumble the Lord’s Prayer. “Padre nuestro, que está en el cielo.”Sharp shouts outside Tía Carmen’s house cut off the rest of her prayer.

“Mami?”

My little brother, Pepito, starts to get up from his chair, but Mami puts her hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, nene. It’s fine.” Mami and Tía Carmen exchange worried looks.

They may be fooling Pepito, but they’re not fooling me. Fidel’s soldiers defeated a force of Cuban refugees who had fled to the United States and were trained by the American government. The refugees tried to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, but Fidel’s army quickly overtook them. From what Papi told me, this was our last hope of ridding our island of Fidel’s oppressive government.

“Keep playing, Cumba,” Mami says as she waves her hand at me. The candle on the table where Manuelito and I sit flickers, bouncing long shadows of dominoes across the plastic floral tablecloth.

I try to focus on the tile in my hand, but the shouting outside increases. I shake my head and slap another domino down on the table. “Tranque. I blocked you.”

The waistband of my pants digs into my stomach, and I fidget in my folding chair. The chair squeaks, prompting Mami to give me a quick look from the window. She dries the same bowl over and over until the dish towel is limp in her hands. Tía Carmen tries to turn the radio up, but Mami snaps the volume dial down. “I don’t want to listen to that foolishness,” she mutters.

Manuelito looks at me from across the table. The light from the candle turns his eyebrows into thick brown triangles, and his fat cheeks cast a shadow on his neck.

“Your papi come home yet?” He sneers, and the candlelight elongates his front teeth into fangs. Tía Carmen crosses the kitchen in a blur of blue cotton flowers. She slaps Manuelito on the back of the head, his neck snapping forward and flipping his brown hair into his eyes. “Cállate, niño,” she hisses.

Manuelito’s being told to shut up offers little consolation. He doesn’t know. He has no idea that at this moment, my papi is tucked in a corner of our house, hiding from Fidel’s soldiers. He sent us to Tía Carmen’s when Radio Rebelde blasted the news of the impending Yanqui invasion.

“I don’t want you here if they come for me,” he said as he ruffled my hair, the smile on his lips failing to hide the nervousness in his eyes. Fidel’s soldiers were rounding up anyone who had worked for former President Batista. Papi was a captain in the army. Even though he was just a lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s unit, those two bars on his uniform made him look important.

I wrap my feet around the legs of the folding chair to keep myself from kicking Manuelito. He’s a year younger than I am, and he prides himself on being the most annoying eleven-year-old in the world. Manuelito lowers his head closer to the table, his eyebrows thickening and his fangs growing longer. He whispers, “It’s not gonna work, you know. Fidel always wins.”

I unwrap my left foot from the chair and kick him in the shin. Manuelito winces. That was for Papi.

Tía Carmen turns up the radio by the sink, and Mami purses her lips. “¡Aquí, Radio Rebelde!” shouts a deep voice from the speaker. “The Yanqui imperial have failed, are failing, and will fail to overthrow our glorious revolution!”

News of the Bay of Pigs invasion fills the kitchen. Fidel has been giving speech after speech, taunting the Cuban exiles and their American supporters. The anthem of the 26th of July Movement, Fidel’s government, blasts from the radio, and Mami turns it off.

I sigh. Manuelito, Pepito, and I try to concentrate on our domino game. But it’s no use. You’re supposed to play with four people. Normally, Papi would’ve been our fourth.

Pepito lays down a new domino, and his eyes grow wide. “¡Ay, caramba! ¡La caja de muertos!”

He slaps his hand over his mouth before Mami can hear him curse. Pepito has always thought the double-nine tile was bad luck because it’s called the dead man’s box. When I hear the stomps and shouts outside, I’m reminded that there are worse sources of bad luck than a little white tile.

“It’s okay, hermanito. Don’t worry,” I reassure him.

I swipe my hand over the dominoes we’ve laid down, erasing our careful rows. Game over. I show Pepito how to line up the dominoes in front of one another and knock them down in a cascade. He claps his chubby hands and starts to set up the dominoes himself, sticking out his tongue in concentration. Mami sets down a glass of water in front of me, and I pretend not to notice her shaking hand. A sharp pop of gunfire explodes outside, making us all jump.

“What are they doing?” Pepito asks.

Mami lets out a long sigh. “They’re celebrating, nene.”

Pepito scrunches up his face. “That doesn’t sound like celebrating to me. There isn’t any music.”

Eventually they will have music. Of course they will have music. And parades. And speeches. So many speeches. That’s what they always do. But there are always guns first. More pops of gunfire burst outside. We hear a whizz and snap as a bullet hits the concrete wall of Tía Carmen’s house. Pepito, Manuelito, and I instinctively duck our heads, and Mami shouts a word she’s smacked me on the back of the head before for saying. Laughter erupts outside along with shouts of “¡Patria o muerte!”

Manuelito, Pepito, and I try to line up the dominoes again, but our hands shake too hard. The tiles keep falling over prematurely. Manuelito gives up and starts gnawing on his fingernails.

A sharp knock interrupts our game, and Tia Car men opens the door. A man in green fatigues stands in the doorway. His black, greasy beard glistens in the candlelight coming from the kitchen.

“Good evening, compañera. Wonderful evening for the revolution, no?” he sneers, looking Tía Carmen up and down.

She crosses her arms in front of her. “What do you want?” The soldier raises his eyebrow. “You hear we defeated the Yanquis?” “Everyone’s heard your nonsense.” Tía Carmen clicks her tongue and stares hard at the soldier.

From the kitchen, Mami hisses, “¡Carmencita!

¡Tranquila!”

The soldier pushes past Tía Carmen, the rifle slung over his shoulder smacking against the door frame. He stands over us sitting at the kitchen table with our dominoes. My palms start to sweat and stick to the plastic tablecloth.

“You boys should be proud. You have witnessed the power of the revolution over the Yanquis. The power of Cuba over the imperialists,” he declares, hands on his hips.

Tía Carmen rolls her eyes, and Mami elbows her hard in the ribs.

The soldier turns on his heels and stands an inch from Mami. “You know, compañera, the revolution is always seeking young men for the cause of freedom.”

Mami grips the kitchen towel in her hands until I think her knuckles will burst through her skin. I crane my neck to see her face, but the thick stock of the soldier’s rifle is in the way. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, making it nearly impossible to hear what he is saying.

“Do you need anything, compañero?” Mami asks, clearing her throat. I know she’s trying to distract the soldier from his current line of thought. In the last few weeks, rumors have grown about boys my age and older being shipped off to the Soviet Union to train for the military. Last week, Ladis lao Pérez quit coming to school, and Pepito swears he’s on a boat headed straight for Moscow. I might think that wasn’t true if it weren’t for the soldiers’ hungry eyes sizing me up every time I walk past the garrison.

The soldier runs his hand through his inky beard. “A glass of water. It’s hard work celebrating our victory.”

The soldier winks at Mami, and my stomach churns.

Mami fills a glass and hands it to him so quickly water sloshes out onto the tile floor.

The soldier takes a long drink, water droplets sit ting in the curls of his coarse beard. He saunters over to our table. “You need a fourth,” he says, picking up a tile. The soldier slams his glass onto the table and sets his rifle against the empty chair. The blackbarrel points at an angle toward Pepito. I grip the table hard, staring at Mami.

She hurries over to us and places both hands on Pepito’s shoulders. “They were just about to go to bed,” she says, her voice fluttering.

The soldier flips a tile between his fingers and looks at me with black eyes. “And how old are you?”

I swallow hard, almost forgetting my age.

“Twelve,” I manage.

The soldier places his hand on top of my head and ruffles my hair. His hand is heavy and hot. Mami’s grip on Pepito’s shoulders tightens.

A sneer grows across the soldier’s face. “I imagine we’ll be seeing you at the garrison soon. All the sons of Cuba must do their part.”

Hot liquid rises in my throat. I think I might throw up.

The shouts increase outside, and the soldier tosses the tile onto the table. He slings his rifle back over his shoulder. Brushing past Tía Carmen and Mami, he exits into the night with a raised fist and a shout of “Venceremos!”

I pick up the soldier’s discarded tile and flip it over in my hand. Eighteen dots stare up at me like a spray of bullet holes.

The dead man’s box.

“If your mami sees that cat, she’ll string you up by your toes and dangle you over a pit of crocodiles. You know that, right?”

My friend Serapio punches me in the arm and winks. He shoves another ajonjoli into his mouth, the sesame seeds and sugar leaving a sticky trail at the corner of his lips.

The brown tabby cat purrs and rubs against the leg of my black pants, making me trip on the dirt road as Serapio and I walk home from school. It jumped out as we passed the post office and fol lowed us, hoping Serapio would drop some of his sesame candy.

“Oye, Cumbito,” Serapio says. “I’ve got a winner for AFDF.”

I’m not really in the mood to play our usual game of Antes de Fidel, Después de Fidel, where we try to top each other with the most ridiculous ways our lives have changed from before Fidel to after Fidel. I rub my thumb over the domino tile in the pocket of my pants. I’ve kept the dead man’s box tile with me ever since the soldier tossed it onto the table in Tia Carmen’s kitchen last week. We returned to our house the next day, Papi emerging from the back bedroom, dark circles under his eyes revealing his long night of sleeplessness and worry. The tile pressed into my leg as my arms cramped from hugging Papi tighter and tighter, fearing he’d disappear if I let go. Since then, Mami and Papi have tried to act like everything is normal, but each time I close my eyes, I feel the soldier’s heavy hand on my head and his snarling voice inviting me to the garrison.

“Mira, it’s the best,” Serapio continues. “So, before Fidel, we had regular chickens.”

He pauses and raises his eyebrow at me, expecting me to say something.

“And what do we have after Fidel?” I humor him and ask.

Serapio grins. “After Fidel, we have socialist chickens. They poop in everyone’s yard equally.”

Serapio’s laugh bounces off the stone wall we’re walking past, and I groan. I don’t offer my submission to Serapio’s game because all I can think of is that before Fidel, my family wasn’t hiding in fear. After Fidel, I jump every time I hear the stomp of a soldier’s boot on the street.

“Oye, Cumbito. I’m telling you. That cat has mal de ojo. Your mother is going to lose her mind,” Serapio mumbles as bits of candy fly from his mouth.

He tries to shoo the cat away, but his hands are covered with sticky sugar syrup from the ajonjoli. He only succeeds in getting brown fur stuck to his fingers.

I shrug. “Doesn’t matter if this cat has the evil eye. It could hold an allegiance rally to Mami with all the animals in Cuba and she’d still run screaming for the hills.”

“I’ve never met anyone as scared of animals as your mami.”

“Tell me about it. She almost burned the house down that one time Pepito brought three lizards home.”

The cat darts behind my legs as a cluster of scowling soldiers shoves six men toward the garrison with their rifles. Yellow shirts hang from the prisoners’ slumped shoulders as they shuffle in a line, faces downcast and arms tied behind their backs. I grab Serapio’s arm. “Wait. They’re marching more prisoners.”

Serapio scans the faces of the men, his fists clenched and his face white. “You don’t think my dad…?”

He swallows hard instead of finishing his sentence.

I shake my head. “No. I don’t see him.”

Ever since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion a week ago, the government has been rounding up the exiles who fought and anyone else who helped them. A whisper from the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution and you land yourself a yellow shirt and spot in jail.

Serapio’s dad was one of the invaders.

We continue down the street, avoiding the prisoners. We pass a tall stone wall, dented and marked with bullet holes. I don’t think about what was between the guns and the wall.

The cat abandons its ajonjoli mission and makes a new mission to rub as much fur on my pant leg as it possibly can. I can feel Mami’s smack on the back of my head already.

I turn the corner at my street, hoping the cat will continue with Serapio toward his home, but it sticks with me. I pause a block from my house and try to brush off as much of the cat hair from my pants as I can. The cat looks at me with amusement. It heads over to a wall where the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution has glued up new posters. ¡HASTA LA VICTORIA, SIEMPRE! Scream large letters over the image of a bearded man in green fatigues and a beret. The cat stretches upward and drags its claws along the bottom row of posters, tearing one down the middle.

I’m starting to like this cat. HASTA LOS GATOS, SIEMPRE, if you ask me.

I go in the side gate and through the backyard to our kitchen. We never enter through the front of our house because that’s where Mami runs her dental practice. The front room of our house is filled with a dentist chair, a desk, and all of Mami’s tools.

We know not to disturb anything. And definitely not to let any animals in.

When I enter the kitchen, our maid, Aracelia, is singing at the kitchen sink, her dark curls bouncing along with her hips. Pepito sits at the table behind her, sneaking galletas from a plate on the table. I understand now why he didn’t wait for me after school and rushed home before I could catch him. He remembered today was Aracelia’s usual day to make cookies.

I brush my hand along the corners of my mouth to show Pepito he has evidence he needs to get rid of. He winks and reaches for another cookie. Aracelia turns from the sink. “¡Ay, niño! What are you thinking?” she exclaims, waving her hands.

Thinking she’s caught Pepito the Cookie Thief, I laugh. Then I feel a warm body brush against my leg. The cat followed me into the kitchen. “Por Dios, get that thing out of here right now!

Did you mail your brain to the United States?” Aracelia waves a dish towel at the cat, but it bats its brown paws at the dangling cloth. I pick up the cat, tossing it outside. It gives me a dirty look, then saunters down the street.

Turning back to the kitchen, I spot Pepito nabbing another cookie. “Would it help to say the cat ripped up a poster of Comandante Che?”

Aracelia sighs. “That’s all we need. An antirevolutionary cat in the house.”

Pepito chuckles, and cookie crumbs spray from his mouth.

Aracelia puts her hands on her hips and lowers her eyes at Pepito. “If I remember correctly, there were ten galletas on this plate. Niños, you’re both worse than el cucuy.”

I scuff my feet on the floor. In my opinion, there are worse things to be afraid of now than stolen cookies, stray cats, and the boogeyman. The bullet-marked walls and marching prisoners remind me every time I walk to and from school.

Pepito shoves the plate of cookies away when he sees Mami and Papi enter the kitchen. Papi’s linen suit hangs on his thin frame. He takes off his hat, running his hand through his slicked-back hair. Papi opens his mouth to greet us but shakes his head and closes his lips. He shuffles down the hall to their bedroom, shoulders hunched and head bowed.

I start to ask Mami what’s wrong, but she claps her hands together. “Bueno, niños. How was school?” Pepito points a finger and looks at me with devilish eyes. “Cumba brought a cat home.”

One of these days, I’m going to design a house and put Pepito’s room in a hole in the backyard. “Pepito probably won’t need dinner, Mami. He’s been stealing cookies from Aracelia.”

Mami shakes her head. “Ay, I should sign you both up for the Committee. You’re too good at telling on others.”

There’s no way I’d ever work for the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. First, their name is completamente ridículo. Second, they’re just a bunch of tattletales that spy on their neighbors and report to the government. Buy meat on the black market? The Committee will report you. Listen to antirevolutionary radio La Voz de las Americas? The Committee will report you.

Manuelito would probably jump at the chance. Last week he told Tía Carmen that Mami traded extra sugar rations for Doña Teresa’s teeth cleaning.

The sound of Papi’s clarinet flows down the hall way from his bedroom, and for a moment, we are all swept up in Brahms’s clarinet trio. The sad notes swirl around the kitchen, and the song increases speed. It sounds like a storm rolling in from the ocean.

Papi played in the orchestra when Presidente Batista was still in power. Now there’s no more orchestra. No more music. The song Papi plays usually has a piano and cello as well. Now it’s only Papi.

I wander down the hallway, past pictures of Mami and Papi on their wedding day, Pepito as a chubby baby, and me as a skinny baby.

I open the door to Mami and Papi’s room and see Papi sitting on the bed. Standing in the doorway, I watch him play. With each breath, his shoulders rise and he sways the clarinet from side to side. At the last note, he lifts the end of the instrument in the air, filling the room with sound. Finishing the song, he lowers the clarinet to his thigh and sits in silence. “That was good, Papi,” I offer.

Startled, he turns and looks at me. I notice tears at the corners of his dark eyes. “Gracias, niño.”

He pats the bed, and I move to sit next to him, putting my head on his shoulder. He wraps his arm around me and envelops me in the smell of tobacco and oaky cologne. We watch the tocororo jump from branch to branch on the mango tree outside the bedroom window. Its red, blue, and white feathers match the colors of the Cuban flag. It hops to the ground to pick at a fallen mango.

A scream from the kitchen breaks our silence, and the tocororo flies away.

“¡Ay! ¡Me está mirando!”

The cat must’ve wandered back into the house. And now Mami is screaming because it’s looking at her.

I get up to save Mami from the feline apocalypse, but Papi puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Niño, ‘pérate,” he says.

I sit back down on the bed. Papi reaches into his pocket and takes out a piece of paper. It’s been folded and unfolded so many times it’s about to fall apart at the creases.

Papi hands me the paper, and I begin to read. All sons and daughters of Cuba must do their duty for the glorious revolution… Pioneers against imperial ism must train… Military service is required of Cuba’s children…

My heart pounds in my throat, and black spots float in my eyes, keeping me from reading further.

Papi lowers his head and mutters, “They say they’re sending children to the Soviet Union for military training.”

The hot breeze from the open window sticks to my skin, and my chest heaves, trying to catch a breath.

Swallowing hard, I look at my dad. “Papi, no qui ero ir. ¡No quiero ir!”

Papi grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Don’t worry. You aren’t going. I will not sacrifice my son to Fidel.”

He clears his throat and stares out the window. “You’re going to the United States.”