Luisito was very tired from all the sightseeing in Maryland. He slept heavily, but woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, opening his eyes and looking around for Abuela. He had shared the living room with Abuela for so many years. He could just imagine she was there beside him as he lay in bed. He finally fell back to sleep. Hours later, he woke up to a strange noise that sounded like frogs croaking. He jumped out of bed only to discover that it was Tommy’s alarm clock.
He knew he would be going shopping with his mother and Rosie for school clothes this morning. He was excited. He rushed to the living room.
“Hey, Tommy, you want to come? I am going shopping,” Luisito said excitedly.
“Heck, no!” Tommy said. “I hate shopping! Then I have to help carry all the shopping bags. That’s all right. I will stay home and watch TV.”
Did he say all those shopping bags? Luisito thought. What a great day!
Luisito wolfed down his breakfast of toast with butter and café con leche and joined Rosie, his mother, and Sonia in the car.
“Come on, Luisito. The stores are just around the corner,” Rosie said. But Luisito figured that in Maryland around the corner meant at least a thirty-minute ride.
The stores were nothing like Luisito imagined.
“Is this just one store?” Luisito asked.
“No, there are many stores in this one building. It is called a mall,” Rosie explained. “It’s better this way because you can walk inside without dealing with the hot or cold weather.”
They entered through the perfume department. There were so many different smells that it drove Luisito crazy. His mother tried on many different perfumes. She looked like a kid in a toy store. Luisito wanted to leave this part of the store before he spent the whole day smelling like a girl!
Then they stepped onto the escalator to the second floor. Luisito pretended he wanted to see something downstairs again so he could ride on it one more time!
“This reminds me of El Encanto,” Elena said. “It was a beautiful store in Cuba before the revolution. It sold items from Europe and from the United States.”
“From the United States?” Sonia said, surprised.
“Yes, and what a store it was!” Elena said. “There were such helpful employees who had been working there for years and knew so much about their products. The items you purchased were often delivered to your house.”
“I remember El Encanto, as well,” Rosie said joining in the nostalgia. “A few days before we left Cuba my mother took me to buy a coat. You could see that many shelves were empty. It was evident that things were going downhill in our country.”
As the foursome walked around the store, a man in his thirties, blond and wearing a t-shirt and jeans, watched them from afar. At first, Elena didn’t pay any attention. Then the same feeling she had in Cuba came back to her. She realized that the man, who was pretending to look at the merchandise, was also keeping a steady eye on them. The man glanced at two other men a few yards behind Elena. These men had dark hair and looked Hispanic. They wore checkered shirts, dark slacks, and black shoes. Was something going on between them? She had seen those two men at the perfume stand.
Luisito also noticed the men. Were they all together? Were they planning to mug them? The two dark-haired men pretended to read the label on a box of men’s slippers, but the box was upside-down. When they saw that they had been noticed they turned around and left quickly. These men look familiar—but that couldn’t be possible, Luisito thought. He had only been in this country for a few weeks.
The blond man watched the two men leave, and he continued to keep an eye on Luisito and his family.
“I think that guy likes you, Sonia,” Luisito said. “He keeps glancing this way.”
Sonia smiled at Luisito and twirled her hair.
“How can anyone resist?” she said jokingly and then looked in the general direction of the guy. “Eww, he is ugly!” she said.
“Niña, que te oye,” her mother said, reprimanding her for saying that out loud.
“I am not rude. He is the one staring,” she said turning around.
“Kids!” her mother said, rolling her eyes and smiling at Elena.
Elena continued to have an uneasy feeling but she dismissed it as a result of having lived so many years in constant fear. They continued shopping and the man kept his distance. At a certain point they realized he had disappeared as well.
Rosie bought Luisito several pair of jeans, shirts, shorts, long pants, one nice, dressy, black pair of shoes, and a pair of sneakers. They also bought a dark blue coat, mittens, and a cap for the winter. Then they purchased a few items and a coat for Elena as well. Miguel had been shopping the day before with José to buy clothes for work.
After they left the mall, Rosie took them for lunch at another restaurant where they ate hamburgers. Apparently a common dish in this country, Luisito thought.
When they sat down they saw the same young man who had been following them sitting in a corner booth eating a burger.
“Isn’t that the blond guy from the store?” Luisito asked.
“Well, this restaurant is not that far from the store,” said Rosie.
Then Luisito saw the other two men who had also been following them.
“I don’t like this,” Luisito said, mumbling a Spanish proverb. “Te conozco bacalao aunque vengas disfrasao—I know you, codfish, even if you are in disguise. Those guys over there are Cuban and they are purposely following us.”
“It’s nothing, please, just a coincidence,” Rosie said, smiling nervously. “I am Cuban as well. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes, but the way they were following us and looking at us straight in the eyes is just like the intimidation they used in Cuba,” Elena said.
“I am going to the bathroom,” Sonia said, standing up and heading toward the back of the restaurant.
Rosie quickly excused herself and followed after her.
“Are you crazy, Sonia? You shouldn’t be going anywhere by yourself. Those guys could be murderers on the loose stalking us!” Rosie said.
“Well, what happened to ‘It’s all a coincidence, this place is close to the store?’” Sonia said.
“I don’t want to scare them, because they just came from Cuba, but I am not taking any chances,” Rosie whispered to Sonia, taking her daughter’s hand and pulling her back toward the table.
“But, I need to go!” said Sonia.
“Hold it till we get home,” said Rosie. “We are not going into that bathroom by ourselves.”
“Shall we ask more people to join us?” said Sonia, smiling sarcastically, but Rosie ignored her comment and directed her right back to the table.
The men kept glancing toward their table as they spoke.
“Okay, that is it!” Sonia said. “I am going to go right up to him and ask him if he knows us.”
The two Hispanic men threw their leftovers into the trash can by the exit and disappeared. A few minutes after the blond man did the same.
“No, he’s leaving,” Rosie said, grabbing Sonia by the arm. She looked playfully at Elena. “This girl could have never survived in communist Cuba.”