“Yes,” Schiendick said, spotting Josef’s father. “There he is.”
Schiendick and the two firemen stepped inside. Schiendick closed the door and locked it behind them.
“For your safety, this cabin must be searched,” Schiendick said.
“On whose authority?” Mama asked. “Does the captain know about this?”
“On my authority,” Schiendick told her. “The captain has other things to worry about.”
Schiendick nodded, and the two firemen ransacked the room. They swept Mama’s makeup and perfume off the vanity and smashed the mirror. They knocked the lamps off the bedside tables and cracked the washbasin. They opened up the family’s suitcases, which were carefully packed and ready to go to Cuba, and threw their clothes all over the cabin. They tore the head off Ruthie’s stuffed bunny. They snatched the book from Mama’s hands and ripped out the pages, tossing them in the air like ashes from a bonfire.
Josef’s mother cried out, but not so loudly that anyone else would hear. Papa wrapped himself in a ball and threw his hands over his head, whimpering. Josef huddled against the door, angry at his helplessness but scared that if he fought back, he’d only be punished more.
When there was nothing left to smash or scatter, the firemen stood behind Schiendick at the door.
Schiendick spat on the floor. “That’s what I think of you and your race,” he said, and suddenly Josef understood—this was payback for his father’s words to Schiendick at the funeral.
Schiendick snorted dismissively at the cowering man on the bed. “It’s time you had your head shaved again,” he told Josef’s father.
Otto Schiendick let himself and the two firemen out, leaving the door wide open. Josef’s mother slid to the floor crying, and Papa blubbered on the bed. Josef shook as he buried his face in his hands, trying to hide his own tears. He wanted nothing more than to run to his mother’s arms, but she felt a million miles away from him. So did his father. They were three lonely islands, separated by an ocean of misery.
Of all the things Schiendick and his fireman had broken, the Landau family was the one thing Josef wasn’t sure they could put back together.
“You said if I was quiet, if I stood very still, they wouldn’t come for me,” Papa said. It took Josef a moment to realize his father was talking to him. Josef’s breath caught. His father was talking about the medical inspection. When Josef had scared his father to get him to straighten up.
Papa looked up at him, his eyes red from crying. “You said they wouldn’t come for me. You said they wouldn’t send me back. You promised, and they came for me anyway.”
Josef felt like his father had slapped him, even though Papa hadn’t touched him. Josef reeled. He backed into his mother’s little makeup table, and one of the bottles Schiendick hadn’t smashed rolled off and shattered on the floor beside him. Josef didn’t even jump. He had lied to his father. Betrayed him. Made him think he was back at that awful place. Terrified him all over again. But that wasn’t the worst thing he had done.
Josef had made his father a promise he couldn’t keep.
Rain lashed Isabel as she shoveled water out of the boat. Scoop, pitch. Scoop, pitch. The bottom of the boat filled as fast as they could bail it out. Isabel, her mother, her father, her grandfather, Luis, Iván, Se?ora Castillo, they all worked feverishly, none of them talking—not that they could hear each other over the storm. The only ones not bailing were Se?or Castillo, who looked like a ghost, and Amara, who clung to the rudder with white-knuckled hands and tried to keep the boat turned into the churning waves so it wouldn’t capsize. The engine hadn’t worked since their escape from the tanker.
The storm clouds turned the day into night, and the driving rain soaked Isabel to the bone. She shivered in the cold wind, her feet numb in the water sloshing at the bottom of the boat. Sea spray stung her eyes, and in between scoops of water she dragged her arm across her face, trying to wipe away the saltwater tears.
As she watched the surging waves, Isabel remembered the last time she had seen her abuelita, her grandma. She remembered Lita’s hand reaching out for help as the tide swept her away. Isabel had been nine years old. Her parents had sent her to stay with Lito and Lita in their little shack on the coast. They hadn’t said why, but Isabel was old enough to know her parents had been fighting again, and they wanted to be alone while they worked things out. All that spring Isabel had waded without joy in the ocean, waiting for the storm to come that would tear her family apart.
And then the real storm had come.
It wasn’t a hurricane. It was bigger than a hurricane—a gigantic cyclone that stretched from Canada down through the United States and across Cuba and into Central America. Later they would call it the Storm of the Century, but to Isabel it was The Storm. The shrieking wind ripped roofs off houses and pulled palm trees straight out of the ground. The rain fell sideways. Hail shattered windows like a never-ending shotgun blast. And the ocean, the ocean rose up like a giant hand and reached inland, over Lito and Lita’s little house by the sea, smothering the house in its giant paw and dragging the shattered pieces back into its lair.
Lito and Lita hadn’t known the storm was coming or they wouldn’t have been there. They would have been inland. Found higher ground. Castro had promised he would protect them, but he didn’t. Not then. Not Isabel’s grandmother.
Lito had been able to hold on to Isabel, but Lita had been swept away. She had slipped under the waves, her arms still reaching for Lito. For Isabel.
And that was the last they had ever seen of her.
Lito’s arm found Isabel again now and wrapped her in a hug.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said close to her ear where she could hear him. “I’m thinking about it too.”
“I miss her,” Isabel told her grandfather.
“I miss her too,” Lito said. “Every day.”
Real tears came into Isabel’s eyes now, and Lito hugged her tighter.
“That was her song’s end,” Lito whispered. “But ours plays on. Come. Keep bailing, or soon it’ll be up to our eyeballs.”
Isabel nodded and went back to scooping water. What if her life was a song? No, not a song. A life was a symphony, with different movements and complicated musical forms. A song was something shorter. A smaller piece of a life.