31 DECEMBER 1960

They had woken up to a surprise. Tío Ernesto had been on the phone all morning making arrangements: “I’ve found us a car to borrow. Tonight we’re celebrating fin de año in Kendall. The whole family will be there.”

Jackie had said nothing at the time, while her cousins squealed about what they were going to eat and who they would see. Even Tía Isabel, who Jackie thought would understand, only fussed about having nothing to wear and what the other family members would think of her disheveled state, not having gone to a beauty salon in months.

When Victoria had asked her what was wrong, once the excitement had settled, Jackie reminded her that she’d only arrived the night before and was tired.

Now, hours into the celebration that would last all night (complete with fireworks and eating twelve grapes at midnight), the exhaustion weighed on Jackie even more. She was tired of pretending she was happy to be there. Tired of being reminded that she wasn’t at home.

“Jackie! Look at you, so big! You look just like your mother. Where is Larita?” gushed one of Papalfonso’s cousins, with her heavily made-up face inches from Jackie’s.

Jackie wrestled her cheeks away from the pinching fingers. What was it with old relatives and their need to grab her face? She wasn’t a baby, and she knew for a fact Clark didn’t like it either when his cheeks got pinched.

Her sister—Jackie could never remember the older distant cousins’ names—placed a somber hand across her heart. “Mi’ja, didn’t you hear? Larita is still in Cuba. She can’t get a passport, and Rodrigo refuses to leave.”

¡Ay, niña, la pobrecita!”

And again Jackie’s face was subjected to excessive handling. She forced a smile and inched away. Not that the sisters noticed. They continued to gossip about Jackie and Mima as if one of them weren’t present.

Last year on the farm, fin de año had been spent playing with the hoard of new toys she and her cousins got for Christmas, while deliberately dodging any relative with cheek-pinching fingers.

Any other year she would have loved to join the badminton game with the rackets and shuttlecocks a cousin had gotten for Christmas, but she felt too old to play games with the children. Especially with every other relative reminding her why she didn’t feel the excitement for a new year.

The cousins hosting the party were somehow related to some ancestor she’d never met, and they in turn had invited every Cuban currently in Miami who might potentially be related to them, which resulted in something like sixty or seventy people who mostly looked familiar. Jackie even recognized Pipo’s sister and her husband, whom Jackie had only met once or twice because they didn’t get along with her father.

She turned in the other direction, not wanting to hear their sympathies after years of bad-mouthing Pipo, and instead came face to face with Alto’s parents. She really should have joined the badminton game.

“Tell us, have you seen Alto?” Sonia, Alto’s mother, asked in a desperate whisper as she gripped Jackie’s arm tightly. Next to her, Berti, Alto’s father, leaned over to hear the response.

Jackie nodded. These two relatives she could talk to. They understood. They knew what it was like to leave behind immediate family. “Yes, two days ago. He made the arrangements for me to come here. He brought me my passport and ticket.”

“Gracias a Dios. We begged him to come with us, but he said he needed to stay to defend his country, ay, Dios santo.” Sonia crossed herself, but the tension she’d held in her shoulders visibly relaxed.

Berti gave his wife’s hand a squeeze. “He’s an adult; we couldn’t force him.”

Like Mima had forced her. Jackie really did understand their pain. “And now he can’t get a passport even if he wanted to leave.”

“He has one!” Again Sonia lowered her voice, glancing around to make sure no one could overhear. “He has a friend—goodness knows where he meets these people—who makes forgeries, and he got one for himself, just in case, he said. I just ask myself what case has to happen to make him finally use it.”

A lump rose in Jackie’s throat. So Alto had gotten a passport for himself that he had no intention of using, but not one for Mima? Since the family meeting Jackie and Victoria had overheard at the finca months ago, Mima had been saying that she wanted out. Why hadn’t he gotten her one too “just in case?” Too late now that his forger guy had disappeared. And Jackie had thought Alto would do anything for Mima. Before Fidel and the Revolution, he was always at their house.

“Excuse me.” Jackie forced the smile that would become permanently stuck to her face if she wasn’t careful. She wove through the party guests, who were dressed to the nines. For some that meant an ironed shirt and polished shoes. For others it was like they’d never left Cuba: all decked out in their jewelry and lavish attire. Either they had struck it lucky with very high-paying jobs, or they had somehow smuggled some of their wealth out of the country.

Past the terraza, an open lawn led down to a small lake or maybe a canal. Jackie sat on the bank, ripping up the grass under her hand. It wasn’t fair. Mima should be here. With her.

Behind her, music started playing above the crowd—trumpet, guitar, maracas, drums, and the raspy güiro. Someone started singing “Miñoso al bate,” and the whole celebration came together like only Cubans could do. Any minute they would start lighting the fireworks.

Victoria came over and sat next to her on the bank. “I brought you some turrón and membrilla. I don’t remember which turrón you like so I brought you all three. Also some Gouda and guava. I’ve never been this full in my life and yet I can’t stop eating.”

Jackie absently took a piece of soft turrón de Jijona made with ground almonds and membrilla paste—quince, she remembered, in English. Combining the two had always been her favorite treat. Now she barely tasted them.

“It’s not the same without your parents and Mamalara.” Victoria tried again. “I miss them too.”

Jackie’s hand grabbed something else from the plate; she didn’t care what it was. “Except you have your parents here.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Jackie squeezed her eyes shut. She shouldn’t take it out on Victoria, not when her cousin had come looking for her and was trying to cheer her up with comfort food. Jackie knew that Mamalara had been the one to raise her, and it was no secret that Mima loved Victoria in a way Tía Isabel, Victoria’s own mother, never had or could. Never once had Jackie seen Victoria’s parents embrace her.

In one breath, Jackie revealed the main thing weighing on her mind. “I want Mima, and I don’t care who knows it. Do you think your dad can get her out of Cuba? Wasn’t he going to leave via Costa Rica if they didn’t let ingenieros out?”

“We can ask him, but I don’t think it’ll work.” Victoria shook her head. “Costa Rica was an option for him because his father was born there during the Ten Years’ War.”

Jackie grumbled. Of course that would have been too easy. “In that case, we need to get Mima a fake passport so she and the rest of them can get out of Cuba. Pipo won’t leave.”

Jackie expected Victoria to argue, to say that it was impossible, too dangerous, that they were just proper young ladies in a foreign country. Instead Victoria nodded vigorously. “Agreed. Who knows how much longer we’ll be here, but we can’t do nada in the meantime. What’s your plan?”

This time Jackie nibbled on a slice of guava paste with cheese, feeling on her tongue the smooth yet almost gritty texture of the guava. “I don’t know. Alto’s guy on the island disappeared—you know what that means. So we’ll need to find a forger or a passport on the black market here and somehow get it to Mima—maybe the nuns who brought me here could smuggle it in their habits. They said they were returning to Cuba to escort more children out of the country.… Doesn’t matter right now. According to Pipo, we need something like a hundred and fifty dollars to get a fake passport.”

Victoria sighed as she reached for a treat herself. “We can’t ask Papi; he’s already complaining that he doesn’t have anything to spare.”

Jackie heard the resentment but said nothing. Back home, Victoria’s father would buy his children anything they wanted, while Pipo had given Jackie an allowance so she’d learn about the value of a peso. Here, a person would have to be unconscious not to notice the cramped apartment. When she’d woken up for a midnight snack, she’d found nothing but a pitcher of water in the refrigerator. And Jackie had thought they’d been living like royalty in Miami.

Victoria continued. “I don’t think I can save more than a penny or two a week from the grocery money Papi gives me.”

For dinner tonight, several tables had been placed together and laden with multiple pots of black beans and white rice, platters of pork and chicken, tostones and maduros, pasteles wrapped in banana leaves, cut pineapple and mangos. Jackie had watched Victoria pile her plate with three helpings of everything. A banquet like no one had had in months—but even when there wasn’t much to spare, Victoria had reminded her that Cubans excelled at feeding one another. Jackie could hear the apology in Victoria’s voice now: that on a regular day, they didn’t eat like queens.

Jackie now reached for the hard turrón de Alicante. The extra crunch from the whole almonds helped her think. “At my old school, I knew two boys on scholarship. Because they lived in el campo, they couldn’t go home for lunch, so the school paid for them to receive a sandwich from the bodega every day. I remember them saying that estadounidense schools give poor kids free lunches. Maybe the school here does that too.”

In the moonlight, Victoria’s face glowed with anticipation. “And if we can get free lunches, so can Inés and Nestico. That’s”—she paused to think about it—“about one dollar and forty-two cents we can save per week. I’ll ask Marge the school secretary when we return in January. Ay, if I never have to eat another grape-jelly sandwich again, I’ll die happy.”

Jackie wasn’t as good at mental math as Victoria, but she could do basic calculations. Even if they managed to save a dollar fifty a week, it would still take about two years to save up for a fake passport for Mima. By that time, the Cuban government could have come up with all sorts of new restrictions for their residents—all flights from the island could cease, for example. No, that wasn’t going to cut it.

The time to act was now.

“One forty-two a week is not enough,” Jackie said. “I need to get a job.”

Again, Victoria agreed immediately. “We need to get a job.”