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Isabel watched as Papi, Señor Castillo, Luis, and Amara huddled over the boat engine, trying to figure out why it wouldn’t start. It had something to do with it overheating, Señor Castillo had said. Amara was pouring seawater over it, trying to cool it. Meanwhile, Iván and Isabel had been tasked with scooping the water back out of the bottom of the boat. The sock stuffed into the bullet hole was soaked through, and it drip-drip-dripped water onto Castro’s face at the bottom of the boat like a leaky faucet.
They had been drifting north in the Gulf Stream with the motor silent for more than an hour now, and no one was singing or dancing or laughing anymore.
Ahead of Isabel, her mother and Señora Castillo slept against each other on the narrow bench at the front of the boat, where the prow came to a point. Lito sat on the middle bench, right above Isabel and Iván.
“You do have family in Miami,” Isabel’s grandfather told her as she and Iván worked. “When that news lady asked you if you had family in el norte, you said no. But you do,” Lito said. “My brother, Guillermo.”
Isabel and Iván looked up at each other in surprise.
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Isabel said to her grandfather.
“He left in the airlifts in the 1970s. The Freedom Flights, when the US airlifted political dissidents off the island,” Lito explained. “But Guillermo was no dissident. He just wanted to live in the US. I could have gone too. I was a police officer once, like Luis and Amara. Did you know that? Back before Castro, when Batista was president.”
Isabel knew that—and that Lito had lost his job during the Revolution and been sent to cut cane in the fields instead.
“I could have pulled strings,” Lito said. “Called in favors. Gotten me and your grandmother off the island.”
“Then you would have been born in el norte!” Iván told Isabel. She paused in her scooping, thinking how different her life might be right now. Born in the United States! It was almost inconceivable.
“We stayed because Cuba was our home,” Lito said. “I didn’t leave when Castro took over in 1959, I didn’t leave when the US sent planes in the ’70s, and I didn’t leave in the ’80s when all those people sailed out of Mariel Harbor.”
Lito shook his head at the tight cluster of people worrying over the engine at the back of the boat and thumped his fist against the side.
“It was a mistake, leaving on this sinking coffin. I should have stayed put. All of us should have. How is Cuba worse now than it ever was? We’ve always been beholden to somebody else. First it was Spain, then it was the US, then it was Russia. First Batista, then Castro. We should have waited. Things change. They always change.”
“But do they ever get better?” Iván asked.
Isabel thought that was a good question. All her life, things had only gotten worse. First the Soviet Union collapsing, then her parents fighting,
then her father trying to leave. Then her grandmother dying. She waited for Lito to tell her different, to tell her that things would get better, but he looked out at the black water instead. Isabel and Iván shared a glance. Lito’s silence was answer enough.
“Someone would have done something,” Lito said at last. “We should have waited.”
“But they were going to arrest Papi,” said Isabel.
“I know you love your father, Chabela, but he’s a fool.”
Isabel’s cheeks burned with a mix of anger and embarrassment. She loved Lito dearly, but she also loved her papi, and hearing Lito speak ill of him stung deeply. What made it worse was that Lito was airing his grievances in front of her best friend. She shot a quick glance at Iván, who kept his gaze fixed on his work, pretending not to notice. But with them so close to Lito, he could hear every word. And Lito wasn’t finished yet.
“He’s risking his life—your life, your mother’s life, and the life of his unborn child. And for what?” Lito demanded. “He doesn’t even know. Ask him why he wants to go to the States and all he’ll say is ‘freedom.’ That’s no plan. How will he provide for you any better than he did in Cuba?” Lito’s eyes locked on Isabel. “He’s taking you away from who you are. How will you ever learn to count clave in Miami? The US has no soul. In Havana, you would have absorbed it naturally. Clave is the hidden heartbeat of the people, underlying whatever song Batista or Castro is playing.”
“Oh, hush, Papi,” Isabel’s mother said sleepily. She had been awake enough to catch the tail end of the conversation. “Miami is just North Cuba.”
Mami shifted and drifted back to sleep, but Isabel couldn’t shake her worry. Lito’s words gnawed at her. She had never mastered clave, but she had hoped it would come to her in time, that the rhythm of her homeland would eventually reveal itself to her. But now, she wondered if she had traded her music—the one thing truly hers—for the chance to keep her family together.
“We should go back,” Lito said. He wobbled to his feet. “We’re not too far gone, and with Castro being so lenient right now, we won’t be punished for leaving.”
“No, Lito,” Isabel said. No—as much as she feared the loss of her music, her soul, she wouldn’t trade that for her family. She grabbed Lito and held him back. “Don’t. We can’t go back. They’ll arrest Papi!”
Panic rose like the distant rumble of thunder in Isabel’s ears. But then Iván and Lito both looked up, like they could hear it too.
It wasn’t Isabel’s fear that shook her deep down to the pit of her stomach.
It was the enormous tanker headed right for them.
