The girls tore away, and Josef huffed. They were right. A bar mitzvah alone didn’t make him an adult. Being responsible did. He walked on along the promenade, looking for a steward he could tell about the bathroom stalls. He saw two stewards who had stopped to look over the side at the sea and came up behind them.
“Must be doing sixteen knots, easy,” said one of the stewards. “Captain’s got the engines maxed out.”
“Has to,” the other said. “Them other two ships is smaller and faster. They get to Cuba first and unload their passengers, and who knows? Cuba might decide she’s full-up with Jews when we get there and turn us away.”
Josef looked out to sea. There wasn’t another ship on the horizon as far as he could see. What other ships were they talking about? More ships full of refugees? And why did it matter which one got there first? Hadn’t everyone on board already applied and paid for visas? Cuba couldn’t turn them away.
Could they?
One of the stewards shook his head. “There’s something they’re not telling us, the shipping company. Something they’re not telling Schroeder. The captain’s in a tight spot, he is. Wouldn’t want to be him for all the sugar in Cuba.”
Josef backed away. He’d already forgotten about the stalls in the women’s bathroom.
If he and his family didn’t make it to Cuba, if they weren’t allowed in, where would they go?
Se?or Castillo was in charge of the boat. No one had voted or named him captain, but he had built the boat, after all, and he was the one at the rudder, steering it, so that put him in charge. He didn’t look happy about it, though. He kept frowning at the motor and the rudder like there was something wrong, but besides a quick patch job of stuffing a sock into the bullet hole, everything was good. The lights of Havana had faded to a speck on the horizon behind them, and they had left all the other boats behind.
Isabel clung to the wooden bench she sat on, squeezed in between Iván and her grandfather. Their boat was barely big enough for seven people, and with Luis and his girlfriend they were practically sitting on top of each other.
“I think it’s time we met the other person on board with us,” Isabel’s grandfather said. Isabel thought he meant Luis’s girlfriend, but instead he pushed some of the sacks of food and jugs of water out of the way and pointed to the bottom of the boat.
Staring back up at them was the huge face of Fidel Castro!
Luis’s girlfriend gasped and then suddenly exploded with laughter. Soon all of them were laughing with her. Isabel laughed so hard her stomach hurt.
Even grumpy Se?or Castillo chuckled. “I needed something big and thick for the bottom of the boat,” he said. “And seeing as there were so many signs around with El Presidente’s head on them … ”
It was true. Castro’s face was everywhere in Cuba—on billboards, on taxis, in picture frames on schoolroom walls, painted on the sides of buildings.
Underneath this painting were the words, FIGHT AGAINST THE IMPOSSIBLE AND WIN.
“Well, Fidel is thickheaded,” Luis said.
Isabel put her hands to her mouth but couldn’t help laughing again with everyone else. You weren’t allowed to say things like that in Cuba. But they weren’t in Cuba anymore, were they?
“Do you know what the greatest achievements of the Cuban Revolution are?” Isabel’s father asked.
“Education, public health, and sports,” they all said together. It was a constant refrain in Castro’s lengthy speeches.
“And do you know what the greatest failures are?” he asked.
“Breakfast, lunch, and dinner!” the adults answered back, as though they’d heard that one many times before too. Isabel smiled.
That prompted someone to break out food and drinks, even though it was late.
Isabel sipped from a bottle of soda. “How long will it take to get to Florida?” she asked.
Se?or Castillo shrugged. “By tomorrow night, maybe. Tomorrow morning we’ll have the sun to guide us.”
“All that matters now is we get as far away from Cuba as we can,” said Luis’s girlfriend.
“And what is your name, pretty one?” Lito asked her.
“Amara,” she said. She was very pretty, even in her blue police uniform. She had flawless olive skin, long black hair, and full red lips.
“No, no, no,” Lito said. He fanned his face. “Your name must be Summer, because you’re making me sweat!”
The girl smiled, but Isabel’s mother slapped Lito on the leg. “Papi, stop it. You’re old enough to be her grandfather.”
Lito just took that as a challenge. He put his hands over his heart. “I wish I was your favorite song,” he told Amara, “so I could be on your lips forever. If your eyes were the sea, I would drown in them.”
Lito was giving her piropos, the flirtatious compliments Cuban men said to women on the street. Not everyone did it anymore, but to Lito it was like an art form. Amara laughed and Luis smiled.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about drowning,” Papi said, clutching to the side of the boat as they chopped into a wave.
“What do you think the States will be like?” Isabel’s mother asked everyone.
Isabel had to stop and think about that. What would the United States be like? She hadn’t had much time to even imagine it.
“Shelves full of food at the store,” Se?ora Castillo said.
“Being able to travel anywhere we want, anytime we want!” said Amara.
“I want to be able to choose who I vote for,” Luis said.
“I want to play baseball for the New York Yankees!” Iván said.
“I want you to go to college first,” his mother told him.
“I want to watch American television,” Iván said. “The Simpsons!”
“I’m going to open my own law office,” Se?ora Castillo said.
Isabel listened as everyone listed more and more things they were looking forward to in the States. Clothes, food, sports, movies, travel, school, opportunity. It all sounded so wonderful, but when it came down to it, all Isabel really wanted was a place where she and her family could be together, and happy.
“What do you think el norte will be like, Papi?” Isabel asked.
Her father looked surprised at the question.
“No more ‘Ministry of Telling People What to Think or Else,’ ” he said. “No more getting thrown in jail for disagreeing with the government.”
“But what do you want to do when you get there?” Se?or Castillo asked.
He hesitated while everyone stared at him, his eyes searching Castro’s face on the bottom of the boat as though there were answers hidden there.
“Be free,” Papi said finally.
“Let’s have a song,” Lito said. “Chabela, play us a song on your trumpet.”
Isabel’s chest tightened. She’d told her parents what she’d done, but not Lito. She knew he would never have let her do it.
“I traded my trumpet,” she confessed. “For the gasoline.”
Her grandfather was shocked. “But that trumpet was everything to you!”
No, not everything, Isabel thought. It wasn’t my mother and father, and you, Lito.
“I’ll get another one in the States,” she said.
Lito shook his head. “Here, let’s have a song anyway.” He began singing a salsa song and tapping out the rhythm on the side of the metal boat. Soon the whole boat was singing, and Lito stood and held out a hand to Amara, inviting her to dance.