Cubans flee the communist island

ADRIFT



Luis giggled from nervousness and anticipation as he and his escapee fellow travelers shoved their raft into the warm shallows. Pedro, who was the serious one, did not giggle: He checked over his shoulder for the headlights of beach patrol vehicles, although the gasoline shortage probably assured that none would be coming that cloudy night. “Silence,” he whispered. They gulped air and pushed harder, scraping the air-filled metal drums over the submerged sand.

At last the raft bobbed up with a wave, pushed by the surf’s surge back at them –stubborn as if still wanting the things of the island, belonging to the island – then dived forward into the trough and crunched the fore drums with a hollow bass echo against the sandy bottom. The rafters stumbled and splashed, taking nosefuls and mouthfuls of salty spray, but clenched the wet ropes binding the metal drums to the wooden platform. The next wave crashed, but this one lifted the raft and them and suspended them for a desperate moment. When their feet hit bottom and scrabbled for purchase, the raft didn’t touch.

They pushed harder; Luis grunted and the next wave lifted their feet permanently from the island.

They scrambled aboard. Luis and Jesus lifted Natasha on their shoulders, so she could roll onto the platform; the men were afraid that the push through the surf had exhausted the pregnant woman, though she was strong for her size. Last on board, thin Guillermo, the youngest, struggled.

Natasha centered herself on the platform while the men grabbed their makeshift paddles – plywood rectangles nailed or lashed to broom or mop handles – and paddled north. Because all the men had gloves, they felt they had an edge on other rafters, and this edge would help them to cross the water. Natasha had been a schoolteacher, so she had no gloves, but she could borrow others since only four could paddle at once from the four corners of the raft.

. . . .

Natasha thought of her unborn baby whose growing had prompted their going. As she had felt it grow inside her, she had worried about its future. One night her crying awakened Jesus, who was usually a sound sleeper, and he turned to her and asked, “What is it?”

“I want my baby to have a future,” she replied in a tight, tense voice.

“So do I.”

“I want him to grow up in the United States, where he has a chance for a life.”

“Yes, Nati, but how?”

“People are leaving every day. You know they are. We can go, too.”

“But our visas wouldn’t be approved.”

“There are other ways.”

“Rafts? Boats?”

“Why not?”

“But only the two of us? You’re pregnant. We’d need others.”

She had gotten the first other, Luis, who taught sports at her school. Luis’s eyes had betrayed his dissatisfaction: Every year he had less equipment, and had to make do by fixing the old, and the students had less energy because everyone had less food, and then with the gasoline shortage, team sports had been limited to intramurals. Nati had seen him tossing the equipment around. She had seen him kicking the patched soccer ball around the dusty field during winter. She had cornered him one day and begged, “Come with us, Luis. Together we can make it.”

He had not hesitated. “You are an angel. Sign me up.”

Later, Jesus had found Pedro, whose produce distribution Jesus had inspected many times. One day he had told Nati how as they had chatted – the lack of traffic was mentioned and how Pedro was employing bicycles instead of trucks and how he couldn’t assure a job to even his little brother Guillermo, who had finished high school – Jesus had blurted, “It’s over, don’t you think?”

Jesus said, “He's going north with us, Nati, and bringing his little brother, too. He's got plenty of stuff to build a raft.”

. . . .

An hour into the wash, Pedro said softly, “Let’s stop now for a moment.” Everyone paused and turned to look back at the island, which had been swallowed into the darkness except for a dim glow to the west–Havana. For one moment, they seemed to be praying to some lost god. Pedro lifted his shoulders and sighed. “From now on,” he said, “two should paddle while the others rest. We need continuous progress.” He and his father had fished in the ocean, so he knew they had to push through the Gulf Stream’s liquid locomotion. “Luis and I will paddle first, then Guillermo and Jesus. If any of the men tire early, then Nati can row for a while.”

Jesus lay next to Nati and soon slept. Soon after Jesus, Guillermo drowsed off.

As Luis paddled, he said to Pedro, “Do you know Maria Isabel Rosario”

“You mean the one everyone says is a witch?”

“Yeah. Last year she went to Miami to visit her grandchildren. When she came back, she brought T-shirts stenciled with sports team logos: basketball, baseball, and American football: Bright fish, flaming balls in the colors of tropical islands. I bought one with an angry bird and Hurricanes in orange letters–a week’s wages it cost me, and I couldn't wear it outside.

“She showed me pictures of stores packed with merchandise–more shoes than an army could wear, more appliances than anyone could use in five lifetimes–but most amazing, a meat market overflowing with hams and steaks and roasts and chickens and fish and sausages and pork! Can you believe so much food exists! She said she ate so much she nearly popped!”

Pedro said, “Don't talk about food so much.”

“I was just thinking. Maybe for Christmas we can roast a whole pig–like Grandpa used to do.”

Pedro loved a good meal and had been portly before rationing cinched his belly. He was stouter than most Cubans, thanks to being a produce distributor and able to snatch some extra food. “Hey, Luis, if a patrol boat comes, my wife–that fidelista–will have sent it.”

“How did you keep her from knowing what you were doing?”

“I told her I was working late, but she didn't believe me. She thought I was doing another woman on the side. She accused me. I said, ‘Believe what you want.’”

Natasha woke suddenly and knew not where she was; she thought she dreamed the flying, fluffy clouds and a dark tapestry of twisting zodiac that clouds flew over. She was above the clouds and flying herself over the lights of a city. The swishing paddles and the salty sea smell brought her back to the center of the raft. She sat up. The two paddlers looked back; Luis smiled, then both resumed paddling.

Had the baby kicked? Was that what had awakened her? “Where are we?” she asked.

Pedro replied, “Several kilometers out. The current is helping us now, but it won’t always. It changes. Sometimes west, sometimes north, sometimes, who knows? We must always paddle.”

Natasha looked ahead north toward Florida where her mother lived with a new husband whom Nati had never met. Mama will be happy to see us. We can live with her until we're settled. I hope the new husband is agreeable. To have the grandchild born near the grandmother will be so nice and seems the natural thing. Nati touched her fingers to her belly and said, “I’ll row now for a while.” She sat behind Luis and stroked.

. . . .

Luis, despite his athleticism, was feeling each stroke as the sky lightened in the east. His muscles were tight like ropes wet then dried, and his stomach was as hollow as the drums on which they floated. He heard Pedro say, “Nati, wake the others. We need a break and some food. Feed them first, then send them over.”

Nati tapped Jesus and Guillermo. “Wake up. Breakfast time.”

The two groaned awake, short of usual sleep. Guillermo raised dreamily onto his elbows and blinked. Jesus reached over and touched Nati’s thigh. “Good morning, my love.” She bent down and kissed him on his salty forehead; almost every morning of their marriage, he had said, “Good morning, my love,” and every morning she had kissed his forehead. Jesus pushed Guillermo’s shoulder, “Hey, boy, are you ready? It’ll be our turn soon.”

She handed them a jug of cold coffee. “Take a drink of this, then eat some bread with fish spread or a banana. Then you paddle.”

After the shifts switched paddles, Luis and Pedro ate their bananas and their thin pieces of bread, but instead of coffee, they took long swallows of water from another jug and went to sleep. However, before Pedro slept, he addressed the paddlers. “Keep headed north. If you get hot – and you will – don’t take off your shirts. Have Nati pour water over you. If a boat approaches, wake me up.”

At first, Guillermo passed time watching the small waves dancing and hoped to see some fish. Occasionally, he heard a splash, but could never see what had made the noise. As he paddled, he noticed the water changing from gray to purple to green-blue.

He said, “Jesus, do you know it’s Saturday?”

“I guess so.”

“If I were home, I’d be playing baseball now. My friends and I always play baseball on Saturday. I’m a pretty good fielder.”

“Which position?”

“Right field.”

“Oh.”

“Aunt Lili will be really pissed now because she’ll know Pedro and I are gone.”

“Nothing she can do now. I wonder how long it’ll take to get a job in Miami? I guess we all have to learn English now–except Nati, of course.”

“I guess.”

“The climate in Miami is a lot like Cuba’s.”

“They play baseball, too.”

“And make lots of money doing it. I’d like to go to some games.”

The sun burned hotter each passing minute. Guillermo wanted to take his shirt off, but when he stretched and squirmed, Nati said, “Don’t,” and splashed him with seawater. His muscles struggled to move the paddle because his youthful leanness required more fuel than the others. He found he had to concentrate hard to keep going and he focused on an image: a polished, bright red car–at first, just a box with wheels, but the more he concentrated, the more he began to see details: chrome bumpers, convertible top, a little hood ornament like a winged horse. “Hey, Jesus, when I get some money, I'm going to buy a bright red sports car.” But there was another part of the vision: his buddies standing around admiring the car. That image made him laugh. “I’d like my buddies to see that.”

“How’d you get it to Cuba?”

“I don't know.” Guillermo shrugged his shoulders. By the time he had the car completely constructed in his mind, his shift ended.

The midday sunlight sizzled on the water as Pedro and Luis lifted their paddles.

As he had awakened like a mouse coming out of a hole, Luis had noticed keenly all the parts of the raft, and a single idea came: The raft was a little Cuba supported by the excess of other nations. The 50-gallon oil drums on which the raft floated were Russian; the ropes binding everything together, Polish; the platform of pine, East German; the plastic containers of food, Czech; the canvas bags, Romanian. They were floating on the flotsam and jetsam of communism, just like the island itself. He shivered.

Pedro paddled but kept an eye out for boats. They were out of Cuban waters, but not yet into heavy shipping lanes. The sooner they were spotted, the better. They had brought enough water for six days; but their food would be gone in five. Already one day had passed, so four more days of food remained.

Nati had wanted to teach them some English, and she had mentioned the idea when all had been awake during the change, but the two coming off shift were too tired, and the two going on were too engrossed, so she dropped the idea. Instead, she checked to see that everything on board was secured and tightly packed before she lay down with her husband.

Lying there, looking at his firm body, she wished they could make love then and there.

The second night passed. The men slept soundly when their shifts ended and paddled quietly, earnestly when they worked. Nati slept on and off, and in between she thought about her mother not seen for years. How many has it been? Seven years since Papi had died in prison, imprisoned for black market enterprise, released forever by a sudden seizure which had hurled him against the stone walls and unconscious onto the dirt floor where his cranium had filled with blood from a ruptured vessel. Her reason for staying on the island gone, Mama had waited a year and then disappeared and later resurfaced in Miami.

Nati thought about her father, who had wanted a prosperous life. He had propounded three virtues: hard work, truthfulness, and education. Nati had gotten the education, and for that he threw her a party. He had worked hard as a bus driver, but had little to show for it. He had realized that he could do better with a side business selling smuggled tennis shoes and secret crops of sweet potatoes and corn. He had felt the truth of his personal enterprise superior to the “truths” of the fidelistos. He was not ashamed, so when the block watcher had knocked on his door to tell him that his activities were known, he had said, “Then do you want to buy some corn?” A few weeks later, he had been arrested, claiming no one else had been involved.

Thinking of her father brought her peace because when she measured her action against his values, they matched. Once again, her individual truth was greater than the “truth” of the state. She thought that her father would be proud of her.

Then Nati noticed a light, curling whiff of something, barely perceptible, on the horizon to the east. She stood up shakily in the center of the raft.

Jesus, thinking of the child, said, “What is it?”

“Smoke, I think.”

All carefully stood and gazed eastward as she was. Sure enough, a thin spiral of smoke snaked heavenward in the distance. A boat surely.

Luis shouted, “Ha! We're gonna make it! Here’s to you, Fidel!” and he raised the fist of his right arm and grabbed his elbow with the other hand in a gesture of defiance at the island.

Pedro put his hand on Guillermo’s shoulder. Guillermo smiled.

The funnel of smoke transfixed them. It became their hope, their fulfillment. The men sat down and paddled harder–all four at once–toward the smoke. Nati said, “I don’t think that’ll help. The boat has to come to us. We can’t catch it.” So they sat and watched as the smoke became thicker and rose higher. Their hearts rose with it. They all smiled and looked at one another.

Then the smoke began to thin and move away to the north. Everyone slumped. Pedro said, “It’s turned into the Gulf of Mexico–heading to Tampa or New Orleans.” They sat for a long time, not saying anything, not moving. Nati’s eyes teared, but she wiped away the nascent emotion with a swipe of her forearm.

. . . .

The third day brought hunger. Jesus estimated that among the bananas, bread, rice, and beans, they were each getting at least 1200 calories a day, but because of the hard work paddling, they were burning it all, plus extra. Therefore, although they weren’t feeling hunger pangs, they began dreaming their favorite meals: yellow rice and chicken, pork with black beans and rice, fried plantains, steamed yuca, baked red snapper with lime juice. Though all dreamed, none dared talk of food.

The third day was quiet, disciplined, with each one grimly focused on each task, thinking separate thoughts. They realized that they had crossed a point of no return. If they tried to go back to the island, they wouldn’t make it, but would end up north or south of Haiti, or maybe in the Bahamas and in many more than five days. They could only push ahead and hope. That realization made them more determined, so always two people paddled.

That night a small storm blew over. They recognized the storm clouds building at sunset and felt the cool wind rising. By twilight, a solid, dark bank of clouds covered the horizon to the east, and that bank preceded by a rain scrim seemed to march relentlessly toward them. At nightfall, the waves danced and spewed little whitecaps, and the raft tossed and dipped. Pedro yelled, “Make sure everything is tied down tight!” They scrambled to and fro and gathered around them things not lashed down. The wind picked up and sprayed salty caps over the raft. Then the rain came with the darkening sky; hard and full it fell, but Nati opened the nearly empty water containers and cupped her hands over the mouth of one, so the rain came down and filled it. The others did likewise. And when the plastic jugs were full, they were recapped and re-lashed while the raft bobbed and bucked. In the middle of the storm, a large king mackerel flopped on board with a swell that washed over the stern. Luis trapped it and held it down until it stopped flopping. Luis didn’t enjoy the catch with pleasure like a lucky fisherman but held the fish desperately with the good luck that comes rarely during a long journey.

The storm passed and the waves receded and left them under a black sky. The rain left them cold and shivering in their sleep until the sun rose on the fourth day.

. . . .

Jesus swigged some of the night’s water-catch and pronounced it palatable, if a little salty – sea spume mixed with the rain. Pedro took Luis’s mackerel and said, “Hah, fortune is smiling on us. This is a good sign. We’re going to make it.” Then he gutted it and quartered it and filleted it and spread the fillets to dry over the deck. Six fillets: one for each man and two for Nati and her unborn.

Guillermo said, “I miss my friends.” The others had little energy to spare, but his brother asked, “What are you saying?”

“Nothing.”

Guillermo’s mind settled on Ignacio and Ignacio’s skinny frame and large brown eyes as if Ignacio were standing near the raft. “You know Nacho, Pedro?”

“The runt that’s always bothering people with questions?”

“Yeah, him. He loves spiders. He’s always got one, but he’s never been bitten. He says, ‘They like me, Guillermo. See. They know I won’t hurt them.’”

“He’s a strange kid.”

“He’d say, ‘If there is no God, why do so many people believe? Why isn’t Maria Isabel Rosario ever arrested? Everyone knows she’s a witch.’

“’If everything is all basically the same atoms, why can’t we be stone one day and water the next?’ I remember that one.”

“Nacho.” Pedro heard this and asked again, “What are you saying?”

“Nothing.”

Guillermo wouldn’t tell since he didn’t want his brother to think him weak, but his stomach gnawed, and he lost strength. Whenever his shift ended, he felt weak and after the small supper, slept immediately. Then, when he awoke, he felt neither rested nor satisfied. He mumbled. “If the stomach is flesh, why doesn’t it digest itself?”

Nati worried about Guillermo. She heard him muttering to himself. “If the world is round, when is our turn coming? I don’t understand that question at all. Why are beauty and evil often together? There is no answer to that one.” When his midday shift ended, he ate bread and beans and fell immediately asleep, but a restless sleep.

The others grew apprehensive at his listlessness, but their own energies flagged, especially after Nati discovered that the last jar of rice was gone. “It must have been washed overboard in the storm,” she said, almost in tears. “We got the fish, but lost the rice.”

“Such is life,” said Luis.

In the night, Guillermo disappeared.

. . . .

When the shifts changed, Nati, who had risen to make breakfast, saw that Guillermo was missing. “Pedro,” she shouted, “your brother is gone!”

“What!” Pedro could not believe and looked back and forth. He cupped his hands and yelled, “Guillermo!”

Jesus and Luis followed, and they yelled in different directions, “Guillermo! Guillermo! Guillermo!”

No reply except the lapping of the waves.

Then they tired, but none could eat or sleep. One by one, they sat on the raft and wept, not only for Guillermo but also for themselves and their weariness and their hunger. Pedro said, “We came so far . . . now for this to happen . . . What went wrong? Did he fall off in his sleep? Did he get confused? My god, how can this be? I need to know.”

Luis commented, “I thought he was acting a little strange yesterday. He kept mumbling people’s names, you know.”

“Yes, but what is it about?”

They had no will to paddle, but the current took them steadily north as they sat on the drifting platform.

They drifted until Jesus said, “Nati, you and I will paddle. Nothing can be done about Guillermo, but we have our own to think of. Come.” They ate their last bananas and washed them down with the briny water. However, after a couple hours, neither could paddle any longer. They drank more water and slumped together, worn out. Luis and Pedro had both finally slept. Nati asked, “Shall I wake them?”

“No, let them wake when they are rested.”

The rays of the noon sun bore down. Jesus saw a hand rise from the water. Guillermo! He thought and raised himself on all fours and squinted into the sun-splashed waves. The flesh was too large for a hand. It was gray-blue and pushed a crest before it. “Shark,” he hissed, startling Nati. She sat up.

The fins rose like the teeth of a monstrous dragon’s jaw until the sea chopped with the slashing triangles. A bump halted the raft an instant. Nati and Jesus grabbed each other as remembered man-eating fish ran through their heads.

Luis stirred but did not awaken.

Jesus could see the closest sharks–long, streamlined shadows gliding silently to and fro underneath the raft–Angels of Death, waiting, cruising, and biding the moment. The churning and turning of the shapes around the raft clocked many minutes. Nati’s fingers dug into Jesus’ flesh; her knuckles whitened.

Suddenly, the sharks left as if recalled to Death’s side.

Pedro’s eyes betrayed his grief and anxiety when he and Luis finally struggled awake. The two ate their final bananas, drank, and paddled. Pedro said to Nati, “You should have shaken me. I had a dream that we should go back.”

Luis, Nati and Jesus shared glances. Pedro’s comment was not unexpected given his brother’s sudden disappearance, but no one knew what to say. They empathized, but everyone knew there would be no turning back.

“I don’t mean to go all the way back to Cuba. I mean we should go back an hour or so. Maybe we’ll see Guillermo.”

Luis growled, “Damn, you can’t be serious. You know that would put the rest of us at greater risk.”

“He’s my brother.”

Nati said, “Pedro, it could’ve been any of us. It just happened.”

Pedro’s voice sharpened a desperate edge. “I really think we should try to find him.”

Luis said, “No way, man.”

“Maybe I can make you.” Suddenly Pedro turned and he had a knife in his hand.

Jesus grabbed a paddle and stood up. “What’re you doing? Are you crazy?”

“Let’s go back! I had a dream. We went back. We found him.”

Nati said, “No, Pedro, we can’t go back. That would be suicide. Dreams are just dreams. What’s wrong with you? You are the one with the sense. You should know this.”

Luis slowly stood and gripped his paddle with both hands as if it were a baseball bat. Pedro flashed the knife at him. “Don’t come any closer.”

Jesus said, “Pedro, put up the knife. What’re you going to do, kill all of us?”

Luis added, “You can’t paddle by yourself. You’d just die out here.”

“Just go back an hour. I won’t hurt anyone.” Pedro’s voice pleaded.

Nati said, “Pedro, Pedro, we might as well all jump in the water and have done with it then. Because if we go back, it will be the same.”

“But, Guillermo . . .” Then Pedro cried, first a tear rolled from his left eye, then his lips curled down, and a great sigh left his throat, and his body shook. He moaned.

Jesus reached over and took the knife away. Luis exhaled and sat down, the paddle across his knees. Nati went over and put her arms around Pedro. No one said anything until Pedro stopped crying. Then he said, “I’m okay now. Let’s paddle.” He grabbed his paddle and pushed it fiercely into the water.

The day seemed long and hot–each minute stretching into an hour, the sun spotlighting every moment with enervating heat–so when at last the sun dipped below the waves, the weary rafters welcomed the night with whispered, rasping prayers.

Nati and Jesus paddled that night, but their motions slowed and weakened and their strokes lessened from the first days. The paddles seemed twenty pounds heavier and the sea fought liked syrup against their shoving. Their throats dried and when they swallowed, little moisture was available, mere cotton teasing their tongues. Shortly after midnight, they surrendered to weakness and huddled together and slept.

. . . .

Hunger woke everyone before dawn on the sixth day, but there was nothing to eat and nothing to drink except the sea-salted rainwater. Luis and Pedro tried paddling, but long before noon, exhausted, drank more water, lay on the platform and let the sun beat them. The sea did not care.

The rafters transformed as if they believed their best hope was to lie as still and quietly as possible like children at naptime under the stern eye of their guardian. Occasionally, one sighed or grunted or moved slightly, adjusting a numb shoulder or aching joint. To a seagull flying over, they looked moribund.

Night was no relief though cooler. Strength dribbled out their bodies. They drank a cup of water each, but no one had energy to paddle or talk. They didn’t speak what they had begun to think: that perhaps they wouldn’t survive, that perhaps they would perish, and that perhaps their flesh would shrivel, their hearts would weaken and life would leave their carcasses annealed to the planks of the raft.

. . . .

By dawn, they knew the sun was not their friend, but a merciless eye, burning and searing. Each woke, drank some water, then lay back again, fearing the dehydration that weakened their bodies and minds. The sun burned their eyes. The salt crusted their skin. Their tongues swelled. Their breath came hot. No one talked. No one paddled. Aboard the raft was only the slow, occasional movement to get some water and then return to immobility.

Shortly after noon, Nati felt herself swooning, but she was already lying down, so she merely passed from a state of exhaustion into a state of disorientation and dizziness. Although she was slightly nauseated, her dominant feeling was that she was tied to a rack and the rack was spinning into a chasm, but she could do nothing. Her arms were tied and she couldn’t raise her head. If she tried to open her eyes, the sun scorched her retina and forced her to squeeze down her lids and cry. She passively wondered, Is the world burning? Is this the last day? The end will not be undesirable. The hunger will go away. The heat will abate. These are things to be hoped for. And the baby will never know the sorrow of the earth. She heard a droning, humming sound and thought, Is the planet rending itself? Are we about to be hurled into the abyss? The sound grew and then diminished and then grew again. Someone whispered into her ear, “Los Gusanos!” Yes, she thought, the worms. After death, the worms. That is what we all end up as – food for worms. Another voice rasped, “Los Hermanos!” Yes, the worms are our brothers, have been our grandfathers and grandmothers, and will be our sons and daughters. Then Jesus’ voice said, “Nati, open your eyes. We’re saved.” Her lids retreated until a crack of light let in the sky and she saw a body descending on white wings. So there are angels after all, she thought. I am ready. Let them come. Take me to the promised land.

End of "Adrift"
 
I wanted to capture the struggle and time in between two possibilities: Nothing is more representative of such than a move from one life to another.  Of course, I chose the Cuban experience because it is one with which I am familiar because I have heard the stories of people I have met here--associates, students, and others.  It is a human story that happens every day in many ways.
 
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