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Isabel and her grandfather set her papi in a chair in their little kitchen, and Isabel’s mother, Teresa Padron de Fernandez, ran to the cabinet under the sink. Isabel hurried after her. Mami was very pregnant—she was due in a week’s time—so Isabel knelt down to find the iodine.
Isabel’s father, Geraldo Fernandez, had always been a handsome man, but he didn’t look it now. There was blood in his hair, and the area around one of his eyes was already turning black. When they pulled his white linen shirt off him, his back was covered with welts.
Isabel watched as Mami cleaned his cuts with a washcloth. Papi hissed as she disinfected them with the iodine.
“What happened?” Isabel’s mother asked.
An Industriales baseball game played on the television in the corner, and Isabel’s grandfather turned down the volume.
“There was a riot on the Malecón,” Lito said. “They ran out of food too fast.”
“I can’t stay here,” Papi said. His head was bent low, but his voice was loud and clear. “Not any longer. They’ll come for me.”
Everyone was quiet at that. The only sound was the soft crack of a bat and the roar of the crowd on the television.
Papi had already tried to flee Cuba twice. The first time, he and three other men had built a raft and tried to paddle their way to Florida, but a tropical storm turned them back. The second time, his boat had a motor, but he’d been caught by the Cuban navy and had ended up in jail.
Now it was even harder to escape. For decades, the United States had rescued any Cuban refugees they found at sea and taken them to Florida. But the food shortages had driven more and more Cubans to el norte. Too many. The Americans had a new policy everyone called “Wet Foot, Dry Foot.” If Cuban refugees were caught at sea with “wet feet,” they were sent to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, at the southern end of Cuba. From there, they could choose to return to Cuba—and Castro—or languish in a refugee camp while the United States decided what to do with them. But if they managed to survive the trip across the Straits of Florida and evade the US Coast Guard and actually set foot on United States soil—be caught with “dry feet”—they were granted special refugee status and allowed to remain and become US citizens.
Papi was going to run away again, and this time, whether he got caught with wet feet or dry feet, he wasn’t coming back.
“There’s no reason to go throwing yourself onto a raft in the ocean,” Lito said. “You can just lie low for a while. I know a little shack in the cane fields. Things will get better. You’ll see.”
Papi slammed a fist on the table. “And how exactly are they going to get better, Mariano? Do you think the Soviet Union is going to suddenly decide to get back together and start sending us food again? No one is coming to help us. And Castro’s only making things worse.”
As if saying his name made him appear, the baseball game on television was interrupted by a special message from the Cuban president.
Fidel Castro was an old man with liver spots on his forehead, gray hair, a big bushy gray beard, and bags under his eyes. He wore the same thing he did every time he was on television—a green military jacket and flat round cap—and sat behind a row of microphones.
Everyone got quiet as Lito turned up the volume. Castro condemned the violence that had broken out on the Malecón, blaming it on US agents.
Papi scoffed. “It wasn’t US agents. It was hungry Cubans.”
Castro rambled on without a script, quoting novels and telling personal anecdotes about the Revolution.
“Oh, turn it off,” Papi said. But before Mami had reached the set, Castro said something that made them all sit up and listen.
“We cannot continue guarding the borders of the United States while they send their CIA to instigate riots in Havana. That is when incidents like this occur, and the world calls the Cuban government cruel and inhumane. And so, until there is a speedy and efficient solution, we are suspending all obstacles so that those who wish to leave Cuba may do so legally, once and for all. We will not stand in their way.”
“What did he just say?” Mami asked.
Papi’s eyes were wide as he stood from the kitchen table. “Castro just said anybody who wants to can leave!”
Isabel felt as though her heart had been ripped out of her chest. If Castro was letting anyone leave, her father would be gone before the sun rose the next day. She could see it in his wild look.
“You can’t go now!” Lito told Papi. “You have a family to take care of.
A wife! A daughter! A son on the way!”
Isabel’s father and grandfather yelled at each other about dictators and freedom and families and responsibility. Lito was her mother’s father, and he and Papi had never gotten along. Isabel covered her ears and stepped
away. She had to think of some answer to all this, some solution that would keep her family together.
Then she had it.
“We’ll all go!” Isabel cried.
That shut everybody up. Even Castro stopped talking, and the TV went back to showing the baseball game.
“No,” Papi and Lito said at the same time. “Why not?” Isabel said.
“Your mother is pregnant, for one thing!” Lito said.
“There’s no food to feed the baby here anyway,” Isabel said. “There’s no food for any of us, and no money to buy it with if there was. But there is food in the States. And freedom. And work.”
And a place where her father wouldn’t be beaten or arrested. Or run away.
“We’ll all go, while Castro is letting people out,” she went on. “Lito too.”
“What? But, I— No,” Lito protested.
They were all quiet a moment more, until her father said, “But I don’t even have a boat.”
Isabel nodded. She could fix that too.
Without saying anything, Isabel ran next door to the Castillos’s house. Luis, the older boy who’d saved her from the policeman’s nightstick, wasn’t home from work yet, and neither was his mother, Juaneta, who worked at the cooperative law office. But Isabel found Iván and his father, Rudi, right where she thought they’d be—working on their boat in the shed.
It was an ugly blue thing cobbled together out of old metal advertisements and road signs and oil drums. It barely qualified as a boat, but it was big enough for the four Castillos—and maybe four more guests.
“Well, if it isn’t Hurricane Isabel,” Señor Castillo said. He had white hair that he wore swept back on his head, and even though there was no food, he had a middle-aged paunch to his belly.
“You have to take us with you!” Isabel said. “No, we don’t,” Señor Castillo said. “Iván, nail.” “People are rioting in Havana!” Isabel said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Señor Castillo said. “Iván, nail.” Iván handed him another nail.
“My father was almost arrested,” Isabel said. “If you don’t take us with you, they’ll throw him in prison.”
Señor Castillo paused his hammering for a moment, then shook his head. “There’s no room. And we don’t need a fugitive on board.”
Iván looked at him funny, but only Isabel saw it.
“Please,” Isabel begged.
“We don’t have any gasoline anyway,” Iván said. He put a hand to the motorcycle motor they’d mounted inside the boat. “We’re not going anywhere soon.”
“I can fix that!” Isabel said.
She ran home again. Her father and grandfather were still arguing in the kitchen, so she slipped in the back way. She grabbed her trumpet, gave it one long, sad look, and ran out the back door. She was already in the street when she stopped, ran to her backyard, and snatched up the little mewling kitten too. With the trumpet in one arm and the kitten in the other, she ran the few blocks to the beach, where she banged on the door of a fisherman her grandfather knew. His gas-powered fishing boat rocked gently at a little pier nearby.
The fisherman came to his door, licking his fingers and frowning. Isabel had caught him at dinner. Fried fish, it smelled like. The kitten’s nose
sniffed eagerly at the air, and it meowed. Isabel’s stomach growled.
“You’re Mariano Padron’s granddaughter, aren’t you?” the fisherman said. “What do you want?”
“I need gasoline!” Isabel told him. “Izzat so? Well, I need money.”
“I don’t have any money,” Isabel said. “But I have this.” She held out the trumpet. Isabel regretted that its brass was a little tarnished, but it was the most valuable thing she owned. The fisherman had to take it in trade.
“What am I going to do with that?” he asked.
“Sell it,” Isabel told him. “It’s French, and old, and plays like a dream.” The fisherman sighed. “And why do you need gasoline so badly?”
“To leave Cuba before my father is arrested.”
The fisherman wiped his lips on the back of his hand. Isabel stood for what seemed like hours, her insides churning like a waterspout. At last, he reached out and took the trumpet.
“Wait here,” he told her.
Isabel held her breath, and soon the fisherman came back with two enormous plastic jugs of gasoline. Each one came up to Isabel’s chest.
“Is it enough?” Isabel asked.
“To get you to Miami? Yes. And back again.” Isabel’s heart soared, and she hopped up and down.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!” Isabel told him. “Oh, and you have to take the kitten too.” She held the wiggling creature out to him, but the old fisherman just stared at it.
“Izzat so?” the fisherman said.
“Please,” Isabel said. “Or else someone will catch her and eat her. But you have fish to eat. She can eat the scraps.”
The fisherman eyed the cat suspiciously. “Izzit a good mouser?”
“Yes!” Isabel said, though she was sure that even a mouse would give the scrawny thing trouble. “Her name is Leona.”
The old fisherman sighed and took the squirming kitten from her. Isabel smiled, then noticed how big and heavy the gas cans were. “Oh, and I also need you to help me carry these back.”
