“Your father, he must be a thief,” Officer Padron said through the translator. “Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in the se?ora’s eyes.”
Josef finally understood—it was some kind of compliment about how pretty she was. His mother smiled politely but impatiently. “Officer Padron, what about my husband?” she asked. “Is he all right? They won’t let me go ashore and see him.”
The policeman took off his hat. “I am so sorry. So very sorry. Se?ora Landau, yes? Your husband is alive,” he said through the interpreter. “He is in the hospital. He has been … ” Officer Padron said something more, but the translator frowned. It was beyond his limited Spanish. Officer Padron could see his confusion, and he pantomimed what he meant by turning his wrists upside down, closing his eyes, and lolling his head back like he was asleep.
“Sedated,” Mama said. There was pain in her voice. Josef knew she blamed herself. The whole reason her husband was gone was because she had been sedated and unable to stop him.
Officer Padron nodded. “It’s not good,” he said through the interpreter. “But he will live.”
Josef’s mother took both of the policeman’s hands in her own and kissed them. “Thank you, Officer Padron.” She spoke in German, but the policeman seemed to understand. He blushed and nodded. Then he spied Ruthie half hidden behind her mother’s skirt and knelt down to her. He put his policeman’s beret on her head and said something in Spanish, and she smiled.
“He says you’re the policewoman now,” the translator said. “He will be the criminal. You must catch him!”
Officer Padron led Ruthie on a merry chase around the room, Ruthie squealing. Josef’s mother laughed through a sob. It was the first time Josef had heard her laugh or seen her smile in months.
Officer Padron let Ruthie catch him, and he plucked the hat off Ruthie’s head and put it on Josef’s head, speaking in Spanish again.
“He says it’s your turn,” the translator said.
“Oh, no,” Josef said. He waved a hand to make sure the policeman understood. He wasn’t in the mood for fun and games, and besides, he was too old for that kind of thing.
Officer Padron tapped Josef’s chest with the back of his hand, urging him to play.
“He says he is the passenger,” the translator said. Officer Padron raised himself up in mock anger and spoke in Spanish. “You! Se?or Policeman!” the translator said. “When will we leave the ship?”
The happy mood suddenly disappeared. Josef and his family and the translator all looked at each other awkwardly. Officer Padron had only meant to mimic what everyone asked him all the time, but the question made Josef sag. It felt like they were never getting off this ship. Officer Padron realized his mistake immediately and looked anguished at having brought it up. He nodded in sympathy. Then, in unison, he and Josef spoke the answer all the Cuban guards always gave:
“Ma?ana.”
Isabel slipped over the side of the boat into the sea and sighed. The water was warm, but it felt much cooler than being in the boat. The sun was just setting on the western horizon, turning the world into a sepia-toned photograph, but it still had to be close to a hundred degrees outside. If it wouldn’t have swamped their boat and drowned them all for good, Isabel would have prayed for rain to break the muggy heat.
Isabel’s father had rigged up a makeshift sunshade out of his shirt for her mother, and she seemed better now. The aspirin had kept Mami’s fever down, and though she was still exhausted and near to bursting with Isabel’s baby brother, she seemed at peace somehow. Hot, but at peace.
If the rest of them wanted relief, they had to wait for their turn in the water.
Again, Isabel thought about their journey as a song. If the riots and trading for the gasoline were the first verse, and the tanker and the storm the second verse, this part of their trip—the long, hot, stagnant day and a half they had been traveling from the Bahamas to Florida—this was the bridge. A third verse that was different from the others. This verse was death by slow measures. This was the down-tempo lull before the coming excitement of the climactic last verse and coda.
This was limbo. They could do nothing but wait.
The last sliver of sun finally disappeared below the waves, and Luis cut the engine. The world went silent but for the soft lapping of water against the hull and the creak of their disintegrating boat.
“That’s it,” Luis said. “With the sun down, we won’t be able to navigate as well.”
“Can’t we use the stars?” Isabel asked. She remembered reading that sailors had used the stars to navigate for centuries.
“Which one?” Luis asked. None of them knew.
Amara lifted one of the gasoline jugs and swished around what little there was left in it. “Saves us gas, anyway,” she said. “The thing’s been eating it up. We’ll be lucky to have enough to get to shore when we see land.”
“When will we get there?” Iván asked. He was bobbing in the water just ahead of Isabel, hanging on to the hull like she was.
“Tomorrow, hopefully,” Se?or Castillo said from inside the boat. It was the same thing he’d said yesterday, and the day before that.
“Ma?ana,” Isabel’s grandfather whispered. He was treading water on the other side of the boat with Se?ora Castillo, his head just visible over the side. He’d been whispering that word off and on since yesterday, and still seemed shaken up somehow. Isabel didn’t know why.
“We’ll see the lights of Miami sometime tomorrow, and we’ll head straight for it,” Mami said. She shifted and winced uncomfortably.
“What is it? Are you all right?” Papi asked.
Isabel’s mother put a hand on her belly. “I think it’s begun.”
“What’s begun?” Papi asked. Then his eyes went wide. “You mean—you mean the baby’s coming? Here? Now?”
Everyone in the boat perked up, and Isabel and Iván pulled themselves up on the side of the boat to see. Isabel was a jumble of emotions. She was excited to see her brother born after waiting so long, but suddenly she was also afraid. Afraid for her mother to have the baby here, on this fragile raft in the middle of the ocean. And worried too, for the first time, about how her baby brother would change her fragile family.
“Yes, I think I’ve gone into labor,” Isabel’s mother said calmly. “But no, I am not having the baby here and now. The contractions are just starting. It took Isabel another ten hours to come after my contractions began, remember?”
Isabel had never heard her mother talk about her birth before, and she was both curious and a little weirded out at the same time.
“What are you going to name him?” Iván asked.
Mami and Papi looked at each other. “We haven’t decided yet,” she said.
“Well, I have some good ideas, if you want some,” Iván said.