Two months had passed since Mother returned home from her surgery and went back to working at the apartment’s dining room beauty shop where Doña Catalina knitted and fanned her heart. In many ways, life remained unchanged.
But I had changed. My mind was clear and focused, at last. I understood that Mother needed to be with her own kind to rebuild a life independent from me. And I understood that if I were to ever be free to live my own life, she needed to build a life no longer consumed by controlling me or worrying about me. Methodically, I reached out to all her cousins in the States because I knew our time to leave Spain would soon come. I had to find a place for her, and in the short term, for me.
Many answers came, and I shared the responses with her. I even helped her see that staying with her cousin Marta in a New Jersey town called Union City was the best decision to make.
I held back that I wanted to live across the river from the great metropolis of New York. I didn’t tell her about Joaquín’s plans to apply for medical school in the States, or that New York City seemed like the most logical place for achieving such a thing. Why move to California, as Mother wanted to do, when Madrid was only a non-stop flight away from New York?
I had imagined a future with him attending medical school and me studying to become a nurse so I could help hurting people, just as the nurse at the charity ward had helped me. That nurse holding me in her lap and assuring me that Mother’s injuries were not my fault had allowed me to imagine a totally different world where I was no longer to blame.
I wanted to spend my life helping others, with Joaquín next to me. I’d found a purpose, and I had a goal. I’d found a way to share the value of my life.
d
Our journey day came in late February of 1971, as a seventeenth birthday gift to me, two years after arriving in Madrid. Despite the joyful news, sadness and loss lingered nearby as I faced walking away from Anita and Mariana, and even Doña Catalina’s comical fan.
The revolution had forged a world where strangers quickly came together in their shared adversity, built intense emotional bonds to survive, then just as quickly forced them to move on and reinvent their lives once more. I hadn’t understood this, until then. This had been the revolution’s greatest curse: turning the Cuban people into a band of itinerant vagabonds.
The evening before our departure, as Anita, Mariana, and I sat at the dining table, holding hands, none of us knew if we would ever be together again.
That night, as I sat on that folding cot for the last time, as I stared at the shadows brought to life by the dim light of my lamp—I was consumed by premonitions I couldn’t understand.
d
Mother and Pilar sat in the back of Joaquín’s little black car, and I sat in the front seat next to him. Joaquín and I were happy because of our plans. As for Mother, she seemed to exist inside some magical dream, almost unaware of what was taking place. Was she secretly dreaming of Valentín?
Only Pilar seemed sad, because she knew that her brother’s plans for school in the States would one day separate her from him.
d
Barajas Airport, with its shiny wide halls, was as it had always been. Everything seemed as familiar as the day of our arrival in Spain. Yet so much had happened in those many months. I was no longer a confused child who’d woven dreams from spun sugar and meringue. I had become a responsible young man with love and kindness in his heart.
d
Waiting for the flight to board, Joaquín, Pilar, and I held each other in a tight circle until the first announcement came. Then she pulled away to let him and me embrace with an affectionate public kiss. There—now the entire world knew.
“No te olvides de mí, mi amor.” Never forget about me, my love, he said.
“Nunca,” Never, I replied, as I let go of his hand, then turned around and walked away with Mother next to me. She seemed weak. Her skin glowed with a rare yellow tinge.
I turned back only once to see Pilar holding onto Joaquín as tears flowed from his eyes. I didn’t cry. I pushed ahead in defiant eagerness because I knew who I was, and understood that life could be whatever I wanted it to be. I was no longer afraid for Joaquín because we had made excellent plans. We knew that our life in the States would offer us a future filled with infinite opportunities.
d
Waiting for us on the runway, I didn’t see a sleek Iberia DC-8, with its swept-back wings and slender engines leaping forward like a gazelle. Rather, I saw a stout TWA 707, with its fat engines standing to attention like a general reviewing his troops. The sky was clear, and the sun felt warm against my face. There was no breeze. For a second, I heard a Russian communist march, but it faded away when I remembered that I wasn’t in Cuba. America—not the revolution—waited for me. I told myself that Castro and the revolution could never harm me again.
d
The crowd and the mood on board was quite different from our Iberia flight to Spain, because it felt as if we were attending a great social gathering. People wouldn’t stay in their seats. Instead they ran up and down the aisles like children playing a game. The games continued until the meat loaf and apple pie meal was served, and we all settled down to watch a spy movie about Cuba, which somehow confirmed for us all that leaving our beautiful island had been the right decision.
d
As I looked at the silver sky above the clouds, through the window on my right, my mind drifted away from the flickering on the small screen to build a cocoon where I could think about what lay ahead and what remained behind.
I wanted to receive a divine sign telling me that everything would turn out well for Mother, as well as for Joaquín and me. I wanted to push my mind forward in time, but no miracle revealed itself to me. It didn’t matter, I decided, for I held the power of hope and determination in my hands.
d
Our landing at New York’s JFK Airport brought thankful prayers of salvation which rolled back and forth throughout the cabin like waves: “¡Ay Bendito!” “¡Gracias, Señor!” “¡Santa Maria!” Oh, blessed one! Thank you, Lord! Holy Mary!
These prayers continued until the plane had come to a stop and the doors were opened, at last. Then chaos took over as the passengers fought to be the first to disembark. But not me. I wanted to be the last one to get up from my seat and leave. I wanted to take my time standing at the top of the staircase, just as I had dared to do on the day when I left my beautiful homeland.
d
I stood atop the platform, welcoming the sunlight reflecting against the snowy tarmac’s edge, and allowed myself, at last, to accept the sadness of my childhood, which I had always worked so hard to reject.
I understood then that I couldn’t have been at fault for all that had happened. I was a child—a virgin lump of clay to be molded by Mother’s emotions, Father’s detachment, Miguel’s betrayal, Sebastián’s self-hatred, Fernando’s act of rape, and by all the unshaven men and their lust.
A breeze, soft with the scent of rosewater, caressed my face and I felt Abuela’s kiss on my cheek. She was with me. She gave me strength. My soul finally lived in the present. I was liberated at last.
I inhaled my first American breath, followed by another and another until my lungs were full and the oxygen in my blood had been exchanged.
I took my first step down before reaching back to let Mother take my hand.