Our common cause and mutual drive forced Mother and me to work together. There was no sense in wasting time arguing over details when there was so much that needed to be arranged.
There were birth certificates to gather and passports to apply for. There were letters to cousins, relatives, and friends, begging or shaming them into wiring us the more than $300 in passage money that we each needed to present our claim. There were visas at the Spanish embassy to obtain. And there was the day when the authorities came to conduct a full inventory of everything we owned because becoming a gusano—a worm who abandons the cause—meant that every glass, plate, knife, and fork belonged thereafter to the people and the revolution, and not to us anymore.
Overnight, everyone knew. The world turned into competing camps between those who were staying behind and sympathized but kept away in fear, and those who hated our cause and belittled us at every turn.
Then the block’s revolutionary committee began its patrols, where one individual or another walked by the house at all hours of the day and night, asking for the name of any visitor whose face they didn’t recognize. And there was the talk in the principal’s office at school, where I was told that I was being watched so that everything I did and said could be reported to those who kept the records of our case.
Long months of waiting were to follow without ever hearing a word. Panic-filled months of knowing that they could stop us from leaving over something as trivial as me thinking the wrong thought. Endless months of knowing that even something as simple as a missing dish could bring the dream to its end on the day the departure orders arrived, and the final inventory was conducted again.
Underneath the calm façade I presented to the world, I was panicking. What if the orders didn’t arrive before I turned fifteen? Then I’d have to wait a decade before asking again for permission to leave. How does anyone survive in a world where they are neither wanted nor free?