Half of my dad’s friend’s house sat right over the water. The boys would have access to the bay without being noticed by anyone by lifting the floorboards of the house. The plan was to stay in the house until evening, hidden under the floorboards until the sky was dark and the tide was high. And then they’d jump in the water and make a swim for it.
Their plan became slightly more complicated when their friend’s father came home unexpectedly. They scrambled to hide under a bed, waiting still and in silence until he left. I don’t know if they hid from his father for fear of being ratted out to the neighborhood watch or just fear of being forbidden to go. But like I said, you learned to keep your door closed and your mouth shut, no matter who you were talking to.
My father also hadn’t told, his mother, my grandmother. He knew she would never let him leave and he also knew there was nothing to discuss. He was convinced. So he told Concha, his aunt, with specific instructions:
We both know how mami is. She’ll look for me and set the neighborhood on fire until she finds me and she can’t do that. People can’t wonder where I am. She can’t call attention to me being gone. So before that happens, find her and tell her I’m gone.
Like all people that left Cuba in this era, when you left, you left with a small suitcase and you left forever. No one knew for certain when – or if – they’d ever see anyone again.
I wonder if he thought about the conversation with his Tia Concha as waited, crouched underneath the floorboard. What did he think about? Was he sad that he’d never go back home? Scared to leave his mother? I’m 37 years old and still grow a lump in my throat whenever I think of leaving my mother… and I talk to her daily. Did he second guess his decision? Think about not going? There was a fifth companion to the story that decided, last minute, not to go. My dad could have changed his mind at any time. I wonder if companion 5 ever regretted his decision?
My mom shrugs it off to my father’s age. “You do crazy things like that when you’re young porque when you get old…” She’s probably right. Sixteen-year-old courage is a level all its own. The world can’t touch you then and you have no idea what you could lose.
But I don’t know. I tend to think that he would have done it anyway. My dad, not being a man of many words, has always been a man of action. He doesn’t talk, he shouts; he doesn’t think, he does; he doesn’t argue, he reacts. And his 16-year-old self (as absent to consequence as it might have been), as young as it was, had enough sense to intelligently plan and escape a communist country. Armed with the knowledge he needed and the courage to follow through, he waited under the floorboard until it was time.
* * *
As a kid that grew up in a fisherman village, he knew the ocean; he was born to it. He was a natural swimmer, a strong swimmer. As a kid, I can’t count how many times he’d frighten me and swim so far out into the ocean that I could barely see him. Or he’d fall asleep in a raft and let the ocean sweep him into the distance. I’d yell at him from the shore to come back like I was his mother. And he’d laugh at my trepidation becuae he felt safer in the water than he did on land.
He was as much a fish as the ones the fishermen caught in Caimanera. And when you are from a fishing town, you know when the tide will be at its highest. You know when the Coast Guard was patrolling and where. You know at what time during high tide would have the right ebb and flow to make floating with only your face to the moon most possible. And swimming had to be minimal or you’d risk being seen and shot.
TO BE CONTINUED…
P.S. The advice my dad never gave and what my mom will never say.
Drinking the Whole Bottle
this is the next part of the story… but it’s no wonder my father loves you all so much.
María M Kramer Legra
I remember so well when your father escaped and our reunion 6 months later in New York City. For a while we were living, all 14 of us , in a railroad upper west side apartment. We were all so young and full of dreams.