Author Adrianne Miller's Blog

Alberto Muller  was one of three very young men who founded the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (Revolutionary Student Directorate) known as the DRE, in opposition to the Castro government.  He spent fifteen years in various prisons in Cuba.  It is an honor to have Alberto as a guest on my blog.  I admired him while a young student in Cuba and my admiration grew even more after I heard stories of his courage while in prison from my father who spent three years at Isla de Pinos Prison and witnessed Alberto’s spiritual and moral fortitude during a painful time in their personal histories.  My father thought Alberto was one of the bravest men he ever met.  My father’s praise was not easily won.  Alberto, I have no words to thank you for sharing your experiences on my blog.

Alberto is a journalist and author who also teaches Journalism at the University of Miami.  He has his own blog titled Para Leér Si Queda Tiempo  http://albertomuller.net/

Justice in a Dictatorship  Part One

Fidel Castro, like a well- trained and loquacious parrot, continues to repeat that since he took power in 1959 no one has been tortured, when in reality torture has been applied in Castro’s Cuba with an uncommon zeal.

One has to be careful not to become overly passionate when one has been a witness to the exception, having suffered demeaning and unimaginable abuse that violates the most elementary rules of justice and tramples the dignity of the human being; abuses that try to erase from this earth any semblance of universal human rights.

Today I share with you my personal story, having been one of the many who suffered merciless torture at the hands of the Castro government.  I ask your forgiveness for the graphic description of what I suffered and what I witnessed.

Justice in Cuba, in any form, was dead on arrival the moment Castro took power.  The word justice does not fit his government’s paradigm.

In its purest terms, justice means that every person in a society has the precious right to follow his or her own path and to receive what is rightfully his or hers with dignity.

Injustice happens when someone robs another human being of those rights.  It is that simple.  And that is precisely what has happened in Cuba.  The government has usurped all human rights in the totalitarian system that has existed on the island since 1959.  In Cuba, something has gone awry with justice.  Two thirds of the Cuban people would abandon the island if they were allowed to leave.  More than ten percent of the population has already left the country, and at this moment four hundred thousand young people have requested permission to leave the country through the United States Interest Section in Havana.

What is happening in my country, CUBA, that the majority of its citizens yearn to escape?  The reason for this potential stampede lies in the fact that injustice is rampart on the island, injustice that is part of the skin of the Communist government.

Here are some facts:

If we were able to videotape daily life in Isla de Pinos Prison we would witness scenes of inconceivable abuse.  I can assure you that after viewing such a tape, the audience would feel morally bankrupt.

If you could see my right leg, you would see two bayonet scars I received during one of the most sordid and criminal events in Isla de Pinos shortly after the beginning of the revolution as a result of the Forced Labor Plan instituted by the government in its zeal to imitate the concept of the Russian Gulag.

At noon on a sunny day, myself and political prisoners Emilio Rivero Caro, and my brother Juan Antonio, were forced into a ditch full of the excrement from the prison and ordered to clean it up.

I asked myself how it was possible that one could clean a ditch where excrement flowed continually?

I felt I was living in a scene from Kafka, a scene that defied my own imagination of what a prison could be.  When we refused to clean the damned ditch, the guards attacked us with their bayonets until we were all severely wounded.  Believe me when I tell you that this memory of blood, sun and beatings while bathed in excrement is only a snapshot of what occurred to those of us who experienced the inhuman privilege of suffering the intense karma of the regime’s anthology of tortures.

During this period, a young introverted prisoner, Ernesto Díaz Madruga was killed by a bayonet that penetrated through his rectum and destroyed his intestines and his liver.

Other prisoners were violently killed:  Julio Tang, Roberto López Chávez, Eddy Alvarez Molina, DannyCrespo and Paco Pico, among others.  These abuses alone would earn Fidel Castro and his accomplices a trial by International Tribunal of Justice

I remember the interrogations in the cells of men condemned to death in the Castillito del G-2 of Santiago de Cuba, where I spent 90 consecutive days waiting my turn to stand in front of a firing squad.  The cells were dark, a darkness totally devoid of any light.   Only the arrival of our meals, a breakfast of hot water and sugar and a tasteless and meager dinner helped us maintain some notion of time.

The interrogations generally occurred at dawn, in a very cold office.  We were stripped naked prior to entering the office with the object that the extreme cold would chill us to the bone and make us tremble.  It was a sophisticated psychological torture.

The night before I was transferred to this center of terror, in the encampment of Las Mercedes, I was taken out by six guards armed with rifles and forced to walk in front of them down a narrow path near the prison barracks.  Behind me I felt the guards readying to fire.  My own private firing squad.  At that moment I put my life in God’s hands .  Images ran vividly through my mind of my parents, my brother, of the men who had fought beside me, of my family…I looked to the heavens where the stars were my only companions and my only witnesses that dark night.

I said a simple prayer that helped me to come to terms with the logical anguish that I felt at the thought of dying so young:  “My Lord, everything I have done has been for Your greater glory.  I entrust myself to you.  Please wrap me in your merciful love.  Help me…and forgive them…

My fear of death was real, but I awaited death with gladness and with courage, comforted by the idea that I would be reunited with my martyred friends who had preceded me in this experience.

I stayed in this trance between life and death for about twenty minutes.  Twice I was ordered to stop walking and twice the sergeant in charge said I would be executed immediately.

Each time I again thought my last moment had come; the moment of the infinite goodbye.  It was a tense wait fraught with emotional intensity.  Remaining in a trance awaiting death second by second, is not easy to assimilate nor easy to forget.  Life ebbs out of me by simply remembering the experience.

At last I was asked to stop.  Three of the guards tied my hands behind my back with a thick rope.  I was quickly shoved into a waiting military vehicle and transferred to Castillito prison.

I wonder…could there be a worse torture?

In my memory I carry the indelible memory of the loneliness, the love and the humility of that night when I was forced to rehearse my death by firing squad.

I think that at least I was able to show those men what a man of faith and courage could endure.  But wait.  There were worse things to come.

I recently saw a documentary about Cuba’s Pedro Pans.  In the documentary there is an interview with Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana, a book you might want to read if you haven’t done so yet.  In that interview Carlos says that at least a couple of times a month he sits at his desk, turns on his computer and looks at a satellite image of his childhood home in Havana.    “For me,” Carlos says, “Cuba is like some other dimension, like another planet, because I can’t go there.  So checking in with this and seeing that it is a place on earth to me is just mind boggling.”

Cuba is a place on earth.

But in the heart of the exile, Cuba is a memory.

It is a memory of the bluest of skies and clouds that are shape shifters.  Of standing immersed in the salt water of its clear and warm blue ocean and joyfully offering up the body to bake in its merciless sun.  It is a place where uncommon friendships flourished in the hearts of young children and where it was easy to become inebriated by the combined smells of Cuban food and Partagás cigars and the enchantment that permeates its music.

But Cuba is also a real place on earth.

It is a place from which I was once banished by other people’s choices and a place that will not welcome me back now because I choose to speak about its history and not its story.

So I have to wait until “things change” and I wonder….when?

When will our exile be over?

When will our people be free?

And what will that freedom look like?

I thought it might happen in February of 2008 when Fidel announced he was stepping down from the presidency of the State Council and his position as Commander in Chief and appointed his brother Raúl to take his place.  I didn’t hear about the announcement for hours after it happened, because here in the Northwest Cuba may as well be the moon.  I sat at my computer and watched the short-lived celebrations of my countrymen in Miami for the day or two that hope dared to reside in our hearts.  Cubans took to the streets in their cars, on foot, waving their Cuban flags, and wearing expressions on their faces that could only be understood by a man savoring the first drops of water after being lost in the desert for too long.  The exiles tried to scream across the ocean to their countrymen. “Now!  Seize the moment!”

I tried to imagine what the Cubans in Cuba were feeling that first day without the looming shadow of their dictator in almost half a century.  Did the air on the island feel different?  Could they breathe deeper?  I hoped the Cuban people would take advantage of the sudden weakness in the power structure and rise.  That they would wake up from their fear induced stupor and take to their streets and reclaim them.  Instead, the Cuban people remained at home.  They remained silent.  What else would they do?  Learned helplessness. Stockholm Syndrome.  How could David make sure that Goliath was truly dead?

So we wait.  Carlos Eire looks at satellite pictures of his house in Havana.  I wait for THE email to come.  And we continue our amazing lives in our new country while a piece of our heart held captive by a beautiful island awaits its freedom.

When?

MY MEMOIRS. THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. 1962.

By Horacio Toledo

Any wrong decision on the part of the world leaders and we would be victims of a nuclear war. The city of Havana with one million plus inhabitants (in fact most of the island of Cuba) where I was born and raised could be obliterated.

I was standing at the tennis courts in an exclusive club in Tampa, Fl. accompanied by Juan Weiss former tennis champion of Cuba when we looked up at the blue sky.  It was probably about five in the afternoon of a clear day. It was a scene that those who witnessed it shall never forget.  Literally hundreds of Air Force planes were flying in close formation over us ready to land at Mac Dilll Air Force Base, an important military base next to Tampa.

We knew that several of those bombers carried atomic bombs. We knew that they had been ordered to attack the Russian missiles in Cuba on short notice.  And those of us in Tampa as well as people in Miami and any other Florida city within reach of the Russian missiles could become victims just as well as millions of innocent Cubans.  It was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war!

I went back to the Tampa Terrace Hotel in downtown Tampa where I was staying.  The elevator was packed with young Army soldiers and my first thought was that many of them standing right next to me could well be dead in the next few days.  They were so young, so innocent and yet so patriotic.  One Cuban standing in a packed elevator surrounded by young American kids in military uniforms willing to land in Cuba and die in battle was one very dramatic experience for me.

As a Cuban I felt guilt for not having done enough to eliminate Castro, it was also embarrassing to be surrounded in an elevator by young men willing to fight for me a foreigner and I also felt a gut fear of knowing that thousands or more Cubans would die in just a few days, some of them were part of my family, some were nephews and nieces of my wife.  That night while trying to sleep I would not be able to erase from my mind the scene when I lifted my head looking up to see hundreds of planes flying over me, each and every one of them on a mission to kill my countrymen.  It was extremely difficult to control my emotions that fateful evening.

The pact made was that the U.S.A. would never attempt to invade Cuba in exchange for eliminating some missile bases in Turkey and parts of Europe that were a threat to Russia. It would allow Castro to continue his communist dictatorship in Cuba while the imperialist Russians could be safe from any attack from the Turkish missile bases.  It allowed a gangster such as Castro to continue subverting Latin America while guaranteeing the Russians the U.S. would eliminate their defense of European countries by dismantling their military bases in Turkey. It was a win-win situation for the Russians. They won on two fronts:  (a) Cuba would not be invaded so Castro could continue as dictator (b) the Russians need not worry about the threat from the U.S. military missiles in Turkey.

We were saved however from a nuclear confrontation although the opportunity to free Cuba from the dictatorship of Castro was sacrificed.

The Cuban missile crisis lasted 14 days, a stressful and tense drama for all who experienced it, I among them. God was with us.

Emy’s Pedro Pan Story

It was a beautiful sunny morning in Santa Fe Beach.  The sounds of the waves and the moving water could be heard through the open windows of our home located on large corner lot and secluded within high concrete walls.  The Boxers were playing and barking outside on the ample patios.

The news was that we had electricity therefore the Invasion had failed. There had been a leak…anyone considered a “gusano”, was at risk. A general feeling of uneasiness permeated the island and no one felt safe. My mother had been trying to exchange our house for a house in the province of Pinar del Rio.  The laws had changed and houses could no longer be sold, but they could be traded for houses of the same value. Her efforts to convince my father to leave Cuba had failed and she thought a move would keep him safe until she could persuade him to change his mind.   Many believed the communist dictator could not last too long, being so close to the US as it represented a risk for the rest of Latin America to allow for such a cancer to flourish. My father was one of those.

I heard Waldo, our cook, gently knock at my parents’ bedroom door. Carrying two cups of espresso on a small tray he announced “Café”.  When my father opened the door to take the tray he became immediately aware of the militiamen behind Waldo. “Dr, they come for you”. My father pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the militiamen.  Unprepared for his swift reaction they had no time to take out their guns and ran out of the house and down the stairs, hiding behind the front walls of the house where they joined a whole army of them maybe 35 or 40 then who were already congregated in front of our house armed with guns and rifles.

Inside the house my father quickly told my mother: “ Take the children downstairs…they’re not taking me alive!”  My mother obeyed him without question and we hurried down the winding staircase that connected our living space to the first floor where my maternal grandmother and my aunts Anita and Chata lived. We all lay down on the bedroom floor …my brother and I went under my grandmother’s bed.

My father had several guns, and he started shooting at the militiamen from different windows. He had a good reputation as a “marksman” in shooting competitions in his youth and he managed to kill a couple of the militiamen.  We could men screaming: “Coño se murio!” (Damn he killed them!) We could hear their cursing and their rage through the ample windows in my gandmother’s room where the glass now shattering made us scream.  Hearing the loud bullet sounds so near us, we were crying.

I remember thinking how little time my brother and I were to live. I was sure we would be killed. I started to pray so I would die praying….

Outside the militia kept getting re-inforcements and by now they had brought a bazooka/machine gun on a truck. Somehow, my father was thin and fast…and managed to keep up the shooting, but when they brought the bazooka on the truck, they also had a loud speaker and said “Botet! give yourself up or we’ll kill your kids too” and as they said that, they increased the shooting against the front walls of the house which  broke some more glass windows…..we all screamed again…

My father came to the entry of the stairs and said to my mother: “Are all of you alright? Is anyone hurt?” My mother answered: “We’re alright” and he said to her: “This is over!”

My father screamed at the militiamen from his front bedroom window: “Alto el Fuego! Cowards maricones, que vienen a atacar a una familia con un batallon de asquerosos milicianos”…suban a buscar a un macho, pero muerto porque vivo no se lo llevan”.  (“Halt your fire you cowards, maricones, you come to attack a family with a batallion of stinking militiamen!  Come up here to get this man.  But come and get me dead.  You will not take me alive!” In the following silence we heard the sound of “one bullet” coming from inside our house.

Our mom said: “el se mato”….ya acabó….it’s over, he shot himself…

The autopsy would later reveal that he died “instantly”. He was such a good shot that he hit the center of his aorta.  This was confirmed by his own brother who performed the autopsy, Dr. Jose Francisco Botet.

The militia then ran like a herd of savage bulls into the house.  They started opening drawers and stealing our possessions, putting my mother’s jewelry in their pockets and my father’s belongings as well, and taking anything they liked in the way of clothes, etc.

A group of them came to where we were and said: “Maten a la mujer y a los hijos” “kill the wife and the kids”. We were stunned.  My mother and my grandmother put their bodies in front of my brother and myself, but just in the knick of time amongst all the chaos of the moment a young tall officer with an olive green uniform and a green beret pushed his way through the crowd, like an Archangel, and jumped in front of us screaming with authority to the mob: “ Paren!” Stop! Leave that family alone!!!  He put his arm around our mother and us and led us to the 2^nd floor to my father’s office and as he locked the door he said to my mother:  “Señora! que horror! Is this how we’re going to run this country? I  have lost all my faith in Fidel Castro after the things I’ve witnessed. But Señora please, get these kids out of the country immediately….we don’t have any control in this country now.  Sell your cars…sell as much as you have left of value.

My mother told me to call my father’s family from the neighbor’s house, since our phone lines were cut off. I remember walking in a daze to tell the story to my father’s family so we could prepare the funeral and burial.  My mother counted on me as of now to act like an adult. My childhood had ended.

As of that day, our house became an outpost for the militia because we had a beach where another invasion could land and enter through the back of the house with the protection of the walls and the isolation offered by the location.  They remained there until my mother and my aunt Chata were allowed to leave in 1963.

My mother sold the cars and started to research the way of getting us out of the country through the Pedro Pan flights. Although we were supposed to leave together, they separated us and my brother was sent alone first, in Aug/61. As he walked up the stairs of the plane he waved good-bye and turned his back to us because he did not want us to see him crying. I’ll never forget that scene.  I so wanted to go with him in the same flight, being the older sister.

I was allowed to leave in Dec 7/61 and was happy to leave Cuba with the limitations of living in fear. But I still cry when I remember my grandmother Mercedes and my Tia Anita waiving good bye as I entered the taxi.  I would never see them again.  Although mami and Tia Chata were waiving too…I would be re-united with them 3 ½  years later…

In Florida City I ran into childhood friends and was quickly offered a foster home in Chicago, Ill.  About two weeks later I was part of the first group of Pedro Pans sent to the Windy City where I lived with a very nice family from Winnetka, Ill and where I finally reunited with my brother .  I still remember though, feeling that I was in a dream or in a movie…events were happening one after the other and my life kept changing so fast…I remember the sadness when I had to leave my house parents and girlfriends in Florida City, just when I was beginning to bond into a family again. Then again in Chicago, while waiting for the foster parents to pick each one of us from our group, I knew I would miss the friends I had made on the trip there in the few days we gave company to each other while we wondered what our foster families would be like and we had to speak English all the time, a skill we rapidly acquired.  The snow was everywhere, a stark contrast from our tropical home.

My foster parents were wonderful warm people. He was a lawyer,like my father had been, and she was a teacher.  She helped me with my homework, and I loved their kids and their dog Pepe who lived in a cold basement and didn’t seem to mind.

Our mother and aunt Chata were able to leave Cuba in the Summer of 1963, we moved closer to the city and eventually re-settled in New Orleans, LA in 1964,  in search of a warmer climate. While in Winnetka I had saved all my babysitting money and had a few hundred dollars so we could buy pots and pans and necessities our mother would need when we finally were able to be together.

I have never been back to Cuba. I hope some day I can walk through that house and see it again. The bullet holes are still on the outside walls. Many in that beach community still recall the event.  My relatives tell me that people still bring flowers and leave them at the front gate in memory of my dad’s soul.

Emy Botet and I went to Merici Academy together during our grade school years.  She grew up to become a successful realtor in South Florida and now resides with her children and grandchildren in Georgia where she continues to dabble in real estate.

Port of Havana

July 4, 1961

We arrived at the Port of Havana sometime before 11 a.m.  The ferry boat, the J.R. Parrot, was scheduled to leave at noon.  This was the fourth of July, 1961.  I had some awareness that this day was Independence Day in the United States.  At the moment what mattered most to me was that it was going to be my personal independence day.

My parents and my brother Javier accompanied me to the ship.  I think that they might have been allowed to go up the ship deck with me and take a look at the cabin.  It was a small cabin, and it had a small number of beds, 8 or perhaps 10.  The ferry had been built to transport train cars from Florida to Havana, and vice versa.  I believe the ferry also transported automobiles. But now the ferry was being used to transport people out of Cuba.  I don’t remember how many passengers were on the ferry that day, but certainly, there were many more than could fit in that cabin space.

One of the crew members told me that since there were so few beds, passengers would have to take turns during the night so that each one would have a chance to rest at least a few hours.  Where I would sleep that night was of no concern to me at the time. I had been told that the trip would take 24 hours, since this ferry would arrive at the Port of Palm Beach.  My biggest concern was to take a last look at the island as the ship sailed away from the bay of Havana.  I rushed to get a good spot on the deck, by the ship’s railing.  I waved good bye to my mother and father and to my brother Javier.  Long after I could no longer see them, I continued to stare at the Morro Castle, my last view of Havana.  The plan was for me to spend about one year in the United States where I could safely attend school and then return after the certain fall of the Castro regime. Nevertheless, I wished to have that image of the bay of Havana seared into my mind and into my heart.

I remember the blue ocean, the blue sky, and the sun.  I remember eating dinner that 4^th of July in a small dining room that had a long table.  I remember eating several slices of white American bread with butter.  Although food was not yet rationed in Cuba, the quality of most foods had increasingly deteriorated.  So this first meal was a delicious treat.  After the meal, I returned to the ship’s deck.  I stood by the railing again, this time to watch the sunset at the sea. Twenty four hours at sea was indeed long.  Some time after the sun had finally set and the sky and ocean had turned pitch black, my tiredness took the better of me.  I relented and finally agreed to take a turn on one of the cabin’s bed and get some hours of rest.

Port of Palm Beach, Florida, United States of America

July 5, 1961

Breakfast was as delicious on the morning of July 5^th as dinner had been the day before.  I drank white milk for the first time and actually liked it.  Cow’s milk in Cuba had never tasted good to me.  My mom always prepared our morning “café con leche” with reconstituted condensed milk.

The J.R. Parrot arrived in Palm Beach at noon.  Elena Dussaq, a young woman in her twenties, was engaged to my cousin Juan Antonio Muller, a political prisoner in Cuba, and resided in Palm Beach with her family. She came to meet me at the Port of Palm Beach. I hugged and kissed Elenita, as we called her. She bought me a Coca Cola from a vending machine.  Coca Cola had always been available in Cuba, except during the last few months.  What a treat that was!  And it was the biggest Coca Cola bottle that I had seen in my life.  I drank it all.

After a short visit at the Dussaq home, one of their relatives drove me in her car all the way to Miami.  I think this kind lady’s name was Elena Montero.  It was another long trip though I did not have a watch to keep track of the time.  I had never seen such wide highways with so many lanes.

We arrived at the home of Graciela and Ectore Reynaldo in N.E. 82^nd Street in Miami, close to dinner time.  Graciela was my aunt Sarah’s niece.  At the time, a total of 14 people lived in their three bedroom house.  I think that the main course for dinner that evening was meat loaf. Whatever it was, I savored every bite.

After dinner Graciela and her sister Elena, and her two daughters Georgina and Gracielita invited me for a walk to the nearby shopping center.  I agreed.  I was completely astonished by the Walgreen’s and the dime store where we went that evening.  It was still daylight.

It was on the way back from the shopping center that the significance of all the events of the past three days shook me up from inside.  I was hit by a sudden jolt of acute homesickness.  I made a Herculean effort to hold my tears. “I can’t go back this time,” I said to myself.  It was not long roads that separated me from my parents and brothers.  It was the vast ocean that separated me from them. I realized that I could not go back. No one was going to cut their vacation short to take me back. No one would do it because no one could.

I remember that moment as the time when I grew up.  In one instant I ceased being Elena the child. I had left my parents and brothers behind. I became Elena, the no longer child. No one noticed.

We continued our walk until we reached Graciela’s house. There, one day after Independence Day, I spent my first night in the United States.

Elena currently resides in Boynton Beach, Florida

For months, too, longer than the time I had been pestering my mom to allow me to have a pet rabbit, I had been wanting to leave Havana.

Initially, when my brother Alex told me that he had overhead our parents “plotting” to send us alone to Miami I had rejected the idea. On November 16, 1960, I had written to my dear friend Ofelia Villamil who was already in Miami:  “…my parents are plotting a trip but I think that I am not going to accept it because it would only be Alejandro and I going to my uncle’s house who lives there.  And though I love my uncle very much and I would love to stay with them, I love dad and mom and Javier, Carlos, Maria Antonia and Cuba more.”

But since that day in mid -November of 1960 the situation in Cuba had only grown progressively worse. On May 25, 1961 I had written my friend Ofelia:  “ … I really want to go there even though I know that I am going to miss mom and dad a lot and pretty Cuba but there I will be able to study and have the peace and quiet that is totally absent here, one day you wake up hearing airplanes and bombs.  At night the gunshots from the accidentally discharged bullets and those fired on purpose don’t let you sleep, if you hear a car you think it is a plane, if it thunders, it seems like an air raid, a door that is shut hard sounds like a bomb and finally thousands of things that keep one in continuous shock.”

I was ready, or so I thought, to leave my family and my country. I went back to my neighbor’s yard and broke the news to her: “I can’t take the rabbit. Tomorrow I am leaving for Miami.”

My mom and I had been packing my suitcase months in advance. She was an expert seamstress who always made my dresses. I remember walking the streets of Havana with her, looking for a coat that I could take on my trip.  She did not feel that she could make one herself.  And after much walking from store to store we finally found a golden vinyl coat.  “That should do it,” we both thought. It would protect me from the cold up North. I remember packing only clothes, shoes, and hair clips. And, of course, the golden coat.

I had never really been able to be away from my parents for too long. I remember spending one weekend at Varadero, Cuba’s most famous beach, with a friend named Alicia and her family. We had left on a Thursday.  By Saturday I was so homesick, that I started crying and my friend’s family had to cut their weekend short and bring me back very early on Sunday morning.  Other than that, I remember spending one night at my friend Elizabeth’s house, which was not too far from my house.  I could only stay away from home for several days at a time at my uncle Panchito’s home in Tarará, a beach in the outskirts of Havana. And I remember spending two nights at my uncle Enrique’s apartment in El Vedado. My longest trip ever had been to Cienfuegos, probably a four hour car ride, where I had spent two days visiting my uncle Alfredo. But I had made that trip with my brother Carlos and his wife Maria Antonia.

Elena’s story will continue tomorrow.  Elena was my classmate the last year that I attended school in Cuba.  We have recently found each other again fifty years later.

I was eight years old when my parents decided that we would be safer in Miami, even though they had no clear idea what actually awaited us there. At the airport, my father, very serious but still managing to smile, handed us each a box of good Cuban cigars. My mother was straining to hold it all back, her face quivering like a rain drop that’s about to burst. It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I began to understand the power of all that water she was holding back that day.

I tried to act nonchalant, cool like my older brothers, but when they opened the door to the runway the fumes and noise of the airplane engines came roaring into the waiting room like an angry animal. My cool started to melt.

As I ran across the hot tarmac, trying to catch up to my brothers, my legs went numb, feet left the ground, I was rising. Floating behind them, pulled along like a balloon, I floated up the stairs to my seat, to Miami, past the man who took my box of cigars and then gave me ten dollars. I floated into camp, to my uncle’s house, through schools, jobs, a marriage.

Then one day I floated back to Havana, and as I walked the resonant brittle streets, I felt a strange sensation buzzing up my legs, shooting arrow straight to my heart. Laying in bed that night I remembered that before we left, my father had taken us to a moonlit beach where the sea turtles bury their eggs. He was hoping that we’d get to see them hatch. He told us that the peseta sized sea turtles will float away on the restless current and then years later return. I realized then that the feeling coursing up my legs was the same magnetic pull of true home that will guide the wayfaring turtle back to the same grain of sand on the same beach, and the same brittle empty shell where it all started. With my feet firmly planted on the ground, I came to understand my need to float, and the reason I became an artist.

And for the first time, I was conscious of the slightly bitter taste of the exile’s nostalgia I was raised on. I found this poem in the journal I kept on that first trip back to my magnetic home.

Habana Dulce

Sweet Havana,

brittle honeycomb,

paper thin walking bones.

All that remains in this sinking reliquary,

are the hushed amber memories of honey flesh,

and the ghosts

With their satchels of sighs

they brush my cheek as they whisper by

to scribble over thresholds stuttered monologues

that rustle the veils.

And the translucent walls speak,

of chance encounter, sudden rains,

a fist in the pocket, a cloud of cologne.

Dropped coins, and youth in the gutter.

The broken hearted pray for redemption,

but they’ll settle for revenge,

luminous confection in this carnival of dust.

THANK YOU TO ENRIQUE FLORES GALBIS, A TALENTED CUBAN PAINTER, TEACHER, LECTURER, AND NOVELIST AND FELLOW PEDRO PAN FOR GRACING THE PAGES OF MY BLOG.

ENRIQUE IS THE AUTHOR OF TWO YOUNG ADULT NOVELS.  HIS FIRST NOVEL TITLED RAINING SARDINES WON THE AMERICAN AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT FICTION BASED IN LATIN AMERICA.  HE RECENTLY PUBLISHED HIS SECOND NOVEL TITLED 90 MILES TO HAVANA.

It is not generally known that after Fidel Castro assumed command in Cuba there was a vast antirevolutionary movement actively working to topple the government.  There were guerrillas fighting in the Sierra Maestra and the Escambray, the very places where Fidel and his men had fought led by men who had once stood by his side who now felt betrayed as the promise of democracy gave way to the offering of our island to the USSR.  On the night of the 28^th of September of 1960 amidst the din of guns and bombs going off in the distance as Fidel was speaking to a large crowd, he became visibly upset.  He paused and stated:

“We will establish a system of collective revolutionary vigilance.  They are playing with the people and they don’t yet know who the people are; they are playing with the people and they don’t understand the revolutionary force that dwells in them.”

And so it was that in every block of every street of every neighborhood and of every city in every province of my entire country the Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (Committees for the defense of the Revolution) were born.  It was their job to make sure that any suspicious activity in any house on their block was reported to the appropriate authorities.

The creation of these committees eroded trust between citizens.  We had become each other’s watchers long before the arrival of “big brother” anywhere else in the Americas, and forgot how to be each other’s keeper.

In the next few days along with my own posts I hope to share with you the posts of other Pedro Pans. You will find many similarities in our stories and at times references to the aforementioned committees.  I say I hope to share their stories because Pedro Pans are generous with their stories within their own website, but not always with those “who would never understand”.  We have all experienced the disbelief of those who cannot step into our reality and despite the need for our stories to be known, fear wins out in the end for many of my sisters and brothers.

Here is the first such story by Yolanda Cárdenas Ganong, posted with her permission.   She and I met on the Pedro Pan site last year and became friends.

Yolanda’s Story

A story teller once told me that all stories begin in the middle. As I write this, the middle of my story has 17 years on one side and 47 on the other. For thousands of us Pedro Pan children, the middle of our story falls on the day we left Cuba.

Outside the Havana airport my parents and grandparents hugged me and kissed me as if it would be for the last time. No one could talk. Finally my father said in a broken voice, “Hija, we gave you the best education we could, morally and academically. It should serve you well. Your mother and I trust you to make good use of it.” Then he said angrily between his teeth, “C—o, que por lo menos allá vas a tener libertad para criticar al gobierno sin que te metan presa nada más que por hablar.” (“D—m! At least there you’ll be free to be to criticize the government without being thrown in jail just for talking.”) I begged him to be quiet. He assured me that he would keep his opinions inside a closed mouth. He also said that we would all be together soon. Believing that helped us keep going.

While some of my memories are somewhat blurred, that scene and others are as clear as if preserved in a video archive inside my head.

Dreamily I recall happy memories of growing up with my loving family in Cumanayagua, Cienfuegos, Santiago de Cuba and finally in La Habana. As a child I was aware of problems during the Batista dictatorship, but I also remember that people were supportive of one another and believed that things would change for the better.

In January 1959, when the “rebeldes” descended triumphantly from the mountains, I was transitioning into adolescence. My life was full of fun and excitement –for about a year. Drastic changes came rapidly with the new regime. The collective reaction of Cubans ranged from complete embrace of the revolution, through shock, distress and skepticism to condemnation and rejection. The people now in charge tolerated nothing short of complete embrace of their ideology. Cuban citizens were warned that we had to be with “La Revolución” or suffer the consequences if we opposed anything. The “revolucionarios” constantly shouted, “Al que no le guste –QUE SE VAYA.” (Those who don’t like it –leave.)

Members of my family who had never been actively political began to suffer for disapproving of the revolution’s methods. Would we have to leave Cuba?

Early in 1960 my father, a CPA at a well-known accounting firm, came home very upset from work one day. The firm had been intervened and his boss, an experienced professional, had been replaced by a “mequetrefe,” a nincompoop whose only qualification was having declared himself a communist. Papi told Mami that we needed to get out of Cuba. “For a few months… This madness cannot last very long,” he reasoned.

We prepared to go to Spain, but just before we paid for the ship’s fare Fidel ordered a change of currency, our “surplus” funds were confiscated and we did not have enough money left to travel together. Papi began looking for other ways to leave Cuba.

I had attended Colegio La Luz and had transferred to the Instituto del Vedado for the 1959-60 school term. On my second year there I joined a resistance group organized by older students to protest against two new regime’s mandates: that teachers teach Marxism or face removal from their posts and that upper level students abandon their studies and go to the countryside to “alphabetize” illiterate peasants. It was not true that there was widespread illiteracy in Cuba. The so-called Alphabetization Campaign was clearly a scheme to begin a large-scale indoctrination in the Marxist ideology of the revolutionary leaders.

One day, after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961, I arrived at school to find “milicianos” at the door frisking people. I had a large black crayon in my handbag with which I intended to write on the walls protesting the new government decrees. Lucky for me that they did not find it. Inside the school I found a nightmare.

All students were assembling in the central courtyard. The militiamen had arrested several young men who were manacled and lined up on a raised platform. When the doors were bolted shut frenzied speakers began to accuse the boys of being traitors to our country. Many in the crowd began to chant the word “PAREDON” (execution) over and over. I was stunned to see people mindlessly demanding execution for our own fellow students. When later I asked some classmates how they could participate in such savagery, they called me a gusana (worm) and said: “If you don’t like it, leave.”

My parents were horrified when they heard what had happened.

Then we heard that two of my cousins, 17 and 18, had been apprehended in Cienfuegos for “counterrevolutionary” activities. (They were to spend 18 and 20 years respectively as prisoners of conscience in Castro’s jails.) Two of the manacled boys from that day in my school were executed. One had been the fiancé of a girl I knew. Not too long before they had been joyfully planning their wedding after graduation.

My brother’s Catholic school, run by the Marist Brothers, was also intervened and our parents decided that neither of us would return to school. Instead, we went to visit relatives and to the beach a lot, but it wasn’t all fun. We lived evading the vigilance of the CDR representative (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución) in our building while Papi kept looking for ways to leave Cuba.

My parents heard about the visa waivers for minors to travel to the US and were told to contact the priests at my brother’s school, who were not allowed to teach but were still confined in their quarters. Papi called the residence and asked to speak with one of his former teachers. Someone answered claiming to be Brother X— and told my father to come to Villa Marista at 7:00 PM –and to bring the family.

We arrived and found the iron gate locked, not a soul in sight. Mami said to Papi, “Esto me da muy mala espina. Vámonos de aquí.” (This looks fishy to me. Let’s get out of here.) He rang the bell anyway. A buzzer disengaged the electrified lock and we went in. As we reached the building our next surprise was to see a “miliciano” open the door. There was no turning back. He ushered us into a small room and we stood there until a small hunchbacked man arrived wearing a crisp miliciano uniform and a black beret on his large head. I never forgot his eyes and the way he looked at us -something cruel and sinister emanated from that strange man.

He greeted us with sarcastic cordiality, inviting us to sit. My father, full of Cuban bravado, demanded to know where Brother X— was.

“What do you want with Brother X—?” asked the miliciano.

“He’s my former teacher and we came to visit him,” said Papi.

Sinister Eyes laughed. “Could it be that you are here to see about certain visas to leave the country?”

Papi repeated his former statement and there ensued a tense philosophical discussion between him and the miliciano. Mami kept trying to signal Papi to shut his mouth. I was sending him telepathic messages to please stop arguing with that awful man. We were all sweating in fear of what would happen next when Papi began telling one of his corny jokes!

None of us ever remembered how long we were in that room or how we were let go. I think the joke must have worked, in spite of Mami’s exasperation with Papi’s sense of humor. Once outside we all became aware of the bilious taste of fear in our throats. We learned later that Villa Marista became a place of detention and torture for opponents of Fidel’s revolution.

My parents eventually managed to get a visa waiver for my brother and on April 24, 1962, 11 year-old Conrad (a.k.a. Rafe) was on a Pan Am flight to the United States. Our sweet grandmother cried so much that her eyes bled. During the next weeks we all cried as we wondered how Rafe was. I knew how they would feel when I too was gone and I wanted to stay until we could all leave together, but they persuaded me that my brother needed me more.

My own visa waiver arrived and I said good bye to relatives and friends while I waited for the “telegram” notifying me of my departure. I “celebrated” my 17th birthday and two weeks later, on August 4th, 1962, I boarded a Pan Am plane, destination Miami.

Before leaving for the airport at 5 am, my grandmother gave me a bowl of her super nutritious and delicious chicken broth –Para que te dé fortaleza para el viaje. (To fortify you for the journey.) I could barely swallow, but I drank it gratefully. The love my “Bella” put in it has been giving me strength ever since.

The scene at the airport was like a bizarre dream: Everywhere there were people crying, heartbroken, confused, desperate, anxious and terrified…

Right before entering the “pecera” enclosure, I was approached by a pretty young woman holding the hand of a small boy. He was elegantly dressed in suit and tie and looked very frightened. She told me he was her brother and traveling alone, headed for Florida City, and asked if I would I please look after him. She was relieved to hear I was heading for Florida City too, that my own brother was waiting for me there. Juanito became my other little brother that day.

A tumult of emotions drummed in my chest as that plane rose from Cuban soil at noon of that clear day. I stared back at my brightly colorful island until it disappeared from my sight, then I looked down and saw the ocean changing from a deep blue to an unfamiliar light turquoise where the Florida Keys materialized. Over southern Florida I marveled at how many vehicles on the roads were tugging boats. The straight patterns of many canals and their dark water looked gloomily unnatural to me. I perceived a contrast between the vividly green vegetation of Cuba and the darker shades of the foliage below.

In the plane someone yelled “¡A comer jamón!” and people cheered. I couldn’t comprehend how, having just left family and a troubled country behind, people would cheer about eating ham! Many of us were crying quietly.

At the terminal someone from Catholic Services greeted Juanito and me. I remember using English for the first time in a real life situation. We had to wait for the second plane of the day in case more children came, so I stepped out to the waiting area and saw two friends from church. We fell into each other’s arms and sobbed inconsolably.

I think that only Juanito and I were in the van heading for Florida City. The ride on the freeway was exhilarating with its overpass bridges and its speeding cars, but I was missing Cuba’s beauty already.

My arrival at Florida City camp is another scene that replays clearly in my mind:

My brother is perched on the chain link fence and some kids run to open the gate. The van rides in and keeps going for about half a block while Conrad runs alongside, his little face radiant with excitement, yelling “¡Llegó mi hermana! – My sister’s here!” The van stops. I bolt out and we hug each other for a long time, sobbing and grinning.

Remembering that moment still tightens my throat.

Four Sisters of St Phillip Neri welcomed us. They were our guardian angels during our stay in the camp. My first houseparents were Mamí and Papí Espinosa. Three months later Gloria Nodarse and Joaquín Rodriguez-Haded took their place. I am deeply grateful for all of them.

The Russian missile crisis happened two months after my arrival. I remember standing with other children by that chain link fence watching trucks rolling nearby loaded with huge missiles while military planes from the Homestead Air Force Base zoomed above. We were very anxious, sensing that the destruction of Cuba was imminent -and our loved ones were still there! The worst did not happen, but now our families were trapped in the island and we were trapped in Camp Limbo.

No one was prepared for this turn of events, but soon enough life in the camp took on a certain normality. Communication with Cuba was complicated, but it continued. In January we high-school age girls commuted by bus daily to Immaculata Academy in Miami, everyone went to school somewhere.

We studied hard. We all needed distractions from our peculiar predicament, so we also sang, danced, played, and we hiked to a pathetic park to socialize with hordes of bugs and snakes. We were driven occasionally to “El Charquito” –an undefined body of water. We became family with one another.

We wrote letters and waited anxiously for letters from home. We prayed much.

Some kids eventually went to the homes of relatives or friends. Juanito was one of these. He vanished from my life as suddenly as he had entered it –I don’t know how he fared.

Many more of us were sent to various destinations all over the US. Each ADIOS was soon followed by another, every one as heart-breaking as the goodbyes in Cuba. We had more letters to write and read, more sorrow, more tempering for our character.

In September of 1963 Conrad and I were part of a group going to foster homes in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He and I stayed at the home of a nice Hispanic family, the Luceros. I loved New Mexico’s western charm, but I yearned for green vistas, abundant waters and for my family.

I graduated from Valley High School in June 1964. That same month our parents left Cuba for Mexico City. A month later they flew to Florida and I rode for three days in a Greyhound bus from Albuquerque to Gainesville, FL, where we were reunited on the day after my 19th birthday. Conrad arrived two months later. He was almost 14 years old and over a foot taller than when our parents had last seen him.

We settled in Gainesville thanks to the kindness of Jewel and Carl King, an American couple who, with their five children, had befriended Conrad and me while we were in Florida City. They had recently moved back to Gainesville, Mr. King’s hometown. They shared their modest home with the four of us for about three months, until our parents found jobs. Our gratitude to them is everlasting.

Three of my beloved grandparents died within four years after I left. My maternal abuelito was able to join us in April of 1969. He died 23 years later at home with my parents.

In 1969 I graduated from the University of Florida, became a US citizen, and married Tony, a Southern Gentleman and fellow Gator. A son and a daughter were born to us in St. Augustine, Florida. We have been in Columbia, South Carolina since 1977. We are now retired. Our children are very fine and interesting adults.

I was a teacher in private and public schools (English and Spanish). I taught English to adult immigrants in night school. (Helping immigrants and refugees has been a constant in my life.)

My parents lived in Gainesville until 2004 and then came to be with us. Death came in October 2007 for Papi at age 85 and for Mami two years later, one week after her 86th birthday. They always missed Cuba, but had a fulfilling life here and never regretted sending us out when they did. We are so grateful for having them all these years!

After high school, my brother moved to Boston, MA, where he still resides and runs his own business.

This is not the end of my story. My children and my husband want to see Cuba someday. Maybe… when the Castros and their wretched revolution have passed on to history I might go with them to look for what is still beautiful and good in the ill-fated island that continues to be my heart’s home.

Cuba me duele todavía.

Looking out the dining room window I catch a glimpse of Piti’s house.  Our friendship thrives to this day and to our amusement and despair we have begun to resemble our now dead mothers.  I can hear our little girl voices singng “yo me llamo Sin, yo me llamo San, yo me llamo SinSan que casualidad”.  And behind us always the shadow of our very own Angel, her cousin Angui, who to this day is like the glue that holds all the Cuban friends togehter, scattered as we are in our interminable exile.  Living proof that love can last forever.

Turning away from the window I glance at the house’s innermost room where all of us gather to escape the bombs and bullets.  We have agreed that when the bullets and the bombs come we will crawl here from wherever we are in the house and meet in this room.  Breathless minutes pass as we all scan the darkness making sure no one is missing.  Finally, all are accounted for; nine adults and a child lying guiltily in their midst knowing she has stolen chemicals from her school’s lab and helped her friends’ older brothers make the very bombs that now frighten them all.  My heart drums in my ears and I rely on the hardness of the tile and the thickness of the walls to keep us safe.  Gratitude washes over me when the silence comes.  We are all safe.  The house isn’t always so lucky.

I stand up and continue down the hallway, my senses overcome by the smell of Lola’s cooking.  The cook from heaven!  Alas, I was never allowed to step into Lola’s kitchen.  Any attempt to cross the threshold was immediately thwarted by some voice screaming:  “Sal de ahí que te vas a quemar!” (Get out of the kitchen; you’re going to get burned!)  I was an excellent audience, though.  I would stand outside that kitchen with my feet right on the tile line that separated it from the butler’s pantry, and watch Lola cook.  I can see Lola standing very still, her arms rhythmically whipping eggs in such a way that they appeared to be suspended over the bowl she held.  Lola could work magic in her kitchen!

Mimi’s bedroom beckons and I dare not not enter the room of my mother’s madness.  I force myself to stand on the doorway and see my mother rigid against a wall with hatred filling her eyes as she glances my way.  Then, with a determined look she faces the opposite wall and takes off at a run.  She purposely hits that wall head -first and the sound is much like that a coconut makes when it falls from a beautiful palm tree.  Her demons are back and yell at me.  The Revolution has been too much for such a fragile mind.

I run to the safety of Aunt Isel and Aunt Celia’s room where I first found refuge in the writings of Dostoyevski, Tolstoy, Dickens, Twain, Alcott, and Dumas, but on the way there the sight of another door almost makes my heart stop.  I halt abruptly as I see three militia- men armed with rifles dragging a naked man.  I have never seen a naked man.  The naked man is my father who has come out of hiding to attend his father’s funeral.  I remember running yelling “nooooooo! Hijos de puta, ese es mi papá, suéltenlo cabrones!”, and hanging on to one of their beards while I kicked whatever body parts I could come in contact with.  At first, the militia men laughed.  When I wouldn’t let go, one of them hit my face with the butt of a rifle and I fell.  My father made a move to help me and they struck him hard.  They laughed again as they led my father away to Mimi’s bedroom.  They came back out a few minutes later.  They had allowed my father to dress.  My father made eye contact with me, and I saw in his eyes a warning to be still, and in his bearing a mixture of fear, anger, and courage.  I recognized one of the militia-men as a man named Fermin; a man who had once been my father’s friend.  I am alone except for Lola who helplessly watches the unfolding scene from the kitchen powerless to help.  The family is at the cemetery and left me behind fearing that saying goodbye to my grandfather would be too difficult an emotional strain at my age.

The memory becomes so vivid that I lose touch with my surroundings for a moment and then collapse on the floor and weep.  I can feel the pain on my right jaw as I did then.  I wonder if whoever lives in the house at San Mariano 102 can sense my presence, feel the destruction of my child-heart.

I smell the scent of my first perfume.  My tata irons a beautiful blue dress for me.  I am no longer a cross-eyed child but a beautiful fourteen year old that has garnered the attention of a hero of the Revolution.  His black limousine drives by my house almost daily hoping for a “chance encounter”.  Pleasure and terror become one as I go to my room and open my nightstand to find the three bullets from Ché.  The telegram that makes me disappear is not far behind and I cannot bear to look further.

I lie on the floor remembering how good the orange juice in my bottle tasted as I watched my toddler toes make wiggles in the air.  I run to the yard with my bottle, my tata chasing me afraid that I will stumble and I finally find a resting place on the grass under a zapote tree.  I am safe, enchanted by cloud shapes, in a place where the vendors call out their cantos and the Caribbean sun’s caress is its own lullaby.

Finally, I grow tired and assuming my current form walk reluctantly through the porch surrounded by the Greek columns, catch the subtle scent of the roses bidding me good-bye and walk out through the iron gate.  I am back “home” now where I live cradled in the arms of the man I love surrounded by the fog and the rain of the Northwest.

End of The Dream.

Copyrighted material 2008 Adrianne Miller

For the next few days I will be sharing this with you.  It was written a few years ago when I had not yet considered writing my memoir, and it contains the seeds of what later became Ordinary Terror and then The Long Night of Whispers.

The Dream

For years I have journeyed back in my daydreams and night dreams to my grandmother’s house at San Mariano 102 in Havana, where I spent most of my childhood.  Like a ghost, my spirit haunts that house; a purposeful exercise I liken to astral projection, although I am no shaman.  I always pause at the front gate and grasp the hot black iron with my hands.  Only lately have I noticed the hands are no longer the hands of a child but the wrinkled hands of a sixty two year old woman. I open the gate with a child’s heart, aware of the discrepancy.

It is a clear day and heat waves under the sparsely clouded Cuban sky cause the white house encircled by its carefully tended gardens to shimmer in the sun.  The Greek columns look splendid and immutable.  I slowly breathe in the air pregnant with the scent of a multitude of tropical flowers and let it fill my lungs.  I linger there, breathing heaven.  After a while I amble toward the intricately tiled front porch as my grandfather’s carefully tended roses greet me.  I always pause to look at the roses and to honor them, for I am sure that my attention pleases them and him.  The child has not forgotten.

Entering the house I walk to my grandfather’s study.  The Capestany coat of arms adorns a wall next to the Cuban coat of arms.  My grandfather’s desk is positioned in the center of the room, his chair facing the door that is always open in welcome.  He cherishes his time with me in his study and often uses our time together to teach me about the world as if he knows that someday I will need this knowledge to survive.  On his desk is the telegraph key that he uses to teach me Morse code.  How I love the times we spend together “talking” to one another!   Dot dash, dash dot dot dot dot dot dash, dot, dot, dash dot dot, dash dash dash dash, spells ABUELO: grandfather.  Also on his desk are his unique glass paperweights displaying his favorite quotes in beautiful calligraphy, all except for one that features a picture of a broadly smiling cross-eyed little girl.  Me. His “Yolandita”.

Sometimes my grandfather reads the paper to me.  I savor the sound of his voice forming words.  I am pleased by the attention he gives me and proud that he considers me smart enough to understand what he is sharing.  This day my newfound sophistication crumbles as he reads the headline: “Patricio Lumumba Trata de Mantener la Paz en Katanga”.  The African sounding names are foreign to my ears and they strike my funny bone causing an interminable burst of giggles.  In his wisdom, he allows his own laughter to join mine and the moment remains forever in my memory.

Giant bookcases fill the walls of my grandfather’s study and my eyes immediately seek out their greatest treasure:  Enciclopedia De La Mejor Musica del Mundo; several tomes that begin with simple tunes and increase in difficulty through fifth-year piano and beyond.  In the months after the Fidel’s militia destroyed the chapel in our school and attending school was no longer an option, I taught myself to play every piece of music on every page of every tome, allowing the music to drown out the sound of death and desperation that surrounded me and to fill the silence left behind by my imprisoned father and my disappearing friends.

I turn my attention to my grandfather’s first editions of the classics; veritable treasures rest inside those bookcases!  By the time I left my Cuba I had read them all.  Books and music were my refuge from the terror.

After a time I wander to the family room and sit on my grandmother’s rocking chair and rock as she once did.  She spent hours and hours on this rocking chair saying the rosary during Lent while she sometimes watched movies of the crucifixion.  I wonder for what or whom she prayed, and suspect many of her prayers went unanswered.

Suddenly, I become uneasy.  I remember sitting on this very spot when I was twelve, directly across from my grandfather’s dead body.  His weak heart had finally stopped beating; too many heart wounds in too short a time.  Looking through the haze of the Revolution, he could glean nothing but suffering for himself, his family, and his country.

I rise from the chair and turn away from the horrible tableau of all the weeping women dressed in black.  My grandmother stands stone-faced, not joining in because weeping was foreign to her or perhaps because she had long ago run out of tears from burying six brothers and sisters when she was a child, dead during a smallpox epidemic.

I amble to the formal living room.  I caress the ivory keys of my piano and play Lecuana’s La Comparsa.  I get lost in the music just as I did then.  I am so glad to be back in that room, at that piano.  Slowly, the music fills all the grieving spaces.

When I am ready, I gently close the piano cover, get up and stroll through the rest of the house.  I touch the walls, the floors and the furniture in a futile Braille-like attempt to suck all of it into myself until my senses are full to the brim and can hold no more.  I must never forget.  So many memories…..

Copyrighted material

Adrianne Miller 2008