“But I wasn’t,” Josef’s father blubbered. “I wasn’t strong. I was just lucky. It could have been me. Should have been me.”
The Cuban doctor was getting closer. Josef had to do something. But what? His father was inconsolable. The things he said he saw—Josef couldn’t even imagine. His father had only survived by staying quiet. By not drawing attention to himself. But now he was going to get them sent away.
Suddenly, Josef saw what he had to do. He slapped his father across the face. Hard.
Papa staggered in surprise, and Josef felt just as shocked as his father looked. Josef couldn’t believe what he’d just done. Six months ago, he would never have even dreamed of striking any adult, let alone his father. Papa would have punished him for such disrespect. But in the past six months, Josef and his father had traded places. Papa was the one acting like a child, and Josef was the adult.
Mama and Ruthie stared at Josef, stunned, but he ignored them and pulled his father back in line.
“Do you want the Nazis to catch you? Do you want them to send you back to that place?” Josef hissed at Papa.
“I— No,” his father said, still dazed.
“That man there,” Josef whispered, pointing to the doctor, “he’s a Nazi in disguise. He decides who goes back to Dachau. He decides who lives and who dies. If you’re lucky, he won’t choose you. But if you speak, if you move, if you make even the slightest sound, he will pull you out of line. Send you back. Do you understand?”
Josef’s father nodded urgently. Beside him, Mama put a hand to her mouth and wept, but she didn’t say anything.
“Now, clean yourself up. Quickly!” Josef told his father.
Aaron Landau dropped his wife’s hand, dragged his oversized coat sleeve across his face, and stood rigidly at attention, eyes forward.
Like a prisoner.
The doctor came down their row, looking at each person in turn. When he got to Papa, Josef held his breath. The doctor looked Josef’s father up and down, then moved on. Josef sagged with relief. They’d made it. His father had passed the doctor’s inspection!
Josef closed his eyes and fought back tears of his own. He felt terrible for scaring his father like that, for making Papa’s fears worse instead of better. And he felt terrible for taking his father’s place as the man in the family. All Josef’s life, he had looked up to his father. Idolized him. Now it was hard to see him as anything but a broken old man.
But all that would change when they got off this ship and into Cuba. Then everything would go back to normal. They would find a way to fix his father.
The Cuban doctor finished his rounds and nodded to the ship’s doctor that he approved the passengers. Josef’s mother wrapped his father in a hug, and Josef felt his heart lift. For the first time all afternoon, he felt hope.
“Well, that was a sham,” said the man standing in line next to him.
“What do you mean?” Josef asked.
“That was no kind of medical inspection. The entire business was a charade. A giant waste of time.”
Josef didn’t understand. If it wasn’t a proper medical inspection, what had it all been for?
He understood when he and his family lined up at the ladder on C-deck to leave the ship. The Cuban doctor was gone, and he’d left Cuban police officers behind in his place. They were blocking the only way off the ship.
“We’ve passed our medicals and we have all the right papers,” a woman passenger said to the police. “When will we be allowed into Havana?”
“Ma?ana,” the policeman said in Spanish. “Ma?ana.”
Josef didn’t speak Spanish. He didn’t know what ma?ana meant.
“Tomorrow,” one of the other passengers translated for them. “Not today. Tomorrow.”
Isabel hit the water and sank into the warm Gulf Stream. It was pitch-black all around her, and the ocean was alive. Not alive with fish—alive like the ocean was a living creature itself. It churned and roiled and roared with bubbles and foam. It beat at her, pushing her and pulling her like a cat playing with the mouse it was about to eat.
Isabel fought her way back to the surface and gasped for air.
“Isabel!” her mother shrieked, her arms stretching out for her. But there was no way her mother could reach her. The boat was already so far away! Isabel panicked. How was it so far away already?
“We have to get the boat turned!” Isabel heard Luis cry. “If we don’t meet the waves head on, they’ll roll us over!”
“Dad!” Iván yelled.
Isabel spun in the water, and a wave slammed into her, filling her mouth and nose with salty water and sweeping her under again. The wave passed and she broke the surface, gagging and choking, but she was already moving toward the place where she had seen Se?or Castillo’s head before it went under.
Her hand struck something in the dark water, and Isabel recoiled until she realized it was Se?or Castillo. The sea was tossing him around, but he wasn’t moving on his own, wasn’t fighting to get back out of the water. Isabel took in as much air as she could and dove down beneath an oncoming wave. She found Se?or Castillo’s body in the dark, wrapped her arms around him, and kicked as hard as she could for the surface. The ocean fought her, sweeping her legs out from under her and spinning her all around, but Isabel kicked, kicked, kicked until her lungs were about to burst, and at last she exploded up into the cold air, gasping.
“There! There they are!” Iván cried.
Isabel couldn’t even try to look for the boat. It was all she could do to keep Se?or Castillo’s lolling head above water and catch quick breaths before the waves rolled over them both.
But the waves seemed to be smaller now. Still deadly, but not as high and fast. Isabel began to feel the rhythm of the sea, the singsong lullaby of it, and it was easy to close her eyes, to stop kicking, to stop fighting. She was so tired. So very, very tired …
And then Iván was there in the water with them, his arms around her, like they were back in their village playing together in the waves on the beach.
“Here! Here! They’re here!” Iván shouted. Their boat was now alongside her, and her head thumped into the side of it as a wave washed over her. Hands lifted Se?or Castillo from her, and soon they dragged her over the side too. She splashed back down into the half-meter of water that filled the boat. But she was away from the waves, the never-ending waves, and she collapsed into her mother’s arms.
“Rudi! Rudi! Oh, God,” Se?ora Castillo cried, clutching her husband’s hand. Se?or Castillo was unconscious. Luis and Papi had laid him out on one of the benches, and Isabel’s grandfather was pumping his stomach like an accordion. Seawater burbled up out of Se?or Castillo’s mouth, and he suddenly lurched, coughing and spluttering. Lito and Papi and Luis rolled him over, and he retched up the rest of the ocean he’d swallowed.
“Rudi—Rudi!” Se?ora Castillo said. She wrapped him in her arms and sobbed, and then everything was quiet and still, but for the gentle lapping of the sea against the side of the boat and the sloshing of water inside it.