Café con leche

Sara was the color of a regular coffee from a Flatbush bodega – lots of cream and two sugars. Jamie was black coffee, straight up. When they ran back to their parents’ umbrella at Hilton Head – just days before everything changed – her father laughingly announced their arrival, “café con leche!”

This had been a long-standing joke in their family. But now it posed uncomfortable strategic questions about which one of them would wear their only hoodie, disappearing as far as possible into its shadows. It was best when Jamie wore it, even though it was ridiculously huge on him. It was easier to protect him when he was hidden. Of course, Sara wasn’t really leche, but she could pass.

It wasn’t a war, exactly. More like wars, plural. It broke along race in many places. In other places it was between haves and have-nots, or some blown up bit of the culture wars. It was so many things. All the fear, distrust and paranoia turning into barricades, bombs, and daily incidents of violence that no longer caught the attention of anyone but the victims. It spread like an epidemic, first in D.C., Detroit, Seattle, and then expanding out in all directions. You know how no one can really explain WWI and why everyone cared so much about some archduke? Future textbooks, if there are any, will have an even harder time explaining what happened in 2022.

The upshot was that lots of people died, lots more holed up, communities and neighborhoods walled up against each other, and everything broke down. Fighting over “values,” whatever that means, turned into fighting over resources. A completely preventable scarcity crashing down on everyone. If you need to imagine it had just two sides, think of it this way – the whites were older, but they were more organized and had more guns. The others were less unified, but they were younger, more agile and dynamic. It was a balance of power that stuck.

Their family had been renting a beach house in North Carolina. You don’t want to be in the South when everything goes south. The owners came back, escaping Atlanta, and of course they kicked them out. They thought they could ride it out with nearby white relatives, but no one anticipated it would turn out like it did. And the longer they stayed, the more whispers among the neighbors. Quips about city folk degenerated into sneers about thugs, and finally race traitors. They had to go.

The only way to avoid D.C. – this was a must – was to go around, the long-long way, through West Virginia. This posed obvious risks for a family like theirs, but their father insisted. North had to be better, he said. They would never find out.

In Virginia they stopped at an abandoned Waffle House. Their parents studied a tattered map while Sara took Jamie around back to do his business. They joked, wistfully, about the last time they had waffles. And suddenly their mother screamed. There was a scuffle, and then squealing tires.

The car, and their parents, were gone. Sara and Jamie stood in the weeds for a long time, dumbstruck. Eventually Sara noticed their mother’s purse in the ditch. Was it an accident, or one final act of mothering? She ran to it. Two hundred dollars, granola bars, Kleenex.

And then a van came out of nowhere and a woman slid open the door, waving wildly. “You can’t stay here!” she urged, quickly pulling them in. Another family that looked like them.

There were still plenty of good people, like the ones that took them in that day. Safe places. But the in-betweens were never safe. America had become unpredictable and dangerous. In some ways it had always been. There had always been the threat of trouble from people who couldn’t fathom a white woman with a black man. But now that rage was entirely realized; no shame, no niceties. Nothing below the surface. Their very existence was an afront, in different ways to different people. And yet to others they were still a beacon of hope, even when they had run out of hope themselves. To Sara they were simply alone, sixteen and six, café con leche.

Six months had passed since then. No trace of their parents. Nowhere they could stay for long. Nothing was getting any better, anywhere.

Everything is so fragile. Sara looked up at the canopy of mangroves as their boat slid through the water. She kept her eyes roaming, peering into the shadows of the lanky trees with their strange roots, making sure they were alone. The gators worried her less than the possibility of people. Jamie huddled on the bottom of the boat, swimming in the hot, sticky hoodie. She wouldn’t let him take it off until it was dark, or they made it to open sea. So not for a while. Florida was no place for a little black boy. Not anymore. At least the bugs won’t get him in there, she thought, as she slapped her arm.

The hum of insects and the gliding water lulled Sara, giving her time to think. A year ago, her world was big and full of promise. Didn’t the world seem like it was on the verge of getting better – really better? It was just a mirage, though. Golf courses turned into No Man’s Land. Malls filled with squatters. Every opaque window another question of, friend or foe? She had cinched the hood over Jamie’s face when they passed the carnage at the Greyhound Station. And other places.

A loud snap brought Sara’s mind back to the present. She squinted intently into the shadows. Nothing. She put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder; it was meager comfort. She watched two nostrils slowly ease out of the water before disappearing down below again. Sara took a deep breath and recommitted herself to The Plan.

The troubles had spread around the world, she knew. Echoes of hate and violence reverberating globally. But people said the U.S. had it the worst. That some places had a deeper well to draw from, to build back. She didn’t know. Wasn’t she still a child? How could she know?

As dusk fell, she helped Jamie pull the dripping hoodie over his head and gave him a long drink of water. He munched on corn nuts and Sara studied his profile as it disappeared into the growing darkness. Before he had been such a chatterbox, but now he rarely spoke. Her heart seized at the thought of everything he had lost.

She knew The Plan was a huge risk. But Jamie was exhausted, and she was out of ideas. They had to try. Tío Paz would know what to do. Right? She didn’t know; she had never met him. Did he even know they existed?

They emerged onto open water as the last bit of light disappeared behind the horizon. They couldn’t wait for a full moon; Florida had become too dangerous. So they would have to manage under this ominous half-moon.

Which is meaner, shark or alligator? This was the kind of silly game she used to play with Jamie, before. But she knew better than to pose such a question now. She hugged him tightly and sang his favorite lullaby – something he would have never tolerated before, now that he was a big boy.

Sara dozed. Orange light flickered in the distance – explosions over the Keys. She thought for a moment she heard another boat, then changed her mind. It was peaceful and terrifying at the same time. Think of it this way: imagine yourself in a small, aluminum boat in the middle of the ocean. No weapons. You feel exposed and afraid, right? All that darkness in every direction, concealing who knows what. And yet for Sara, it was the safest and most invisible they had been since it all began. She wanted it to last forever, or at least until they ran out of water.

They were approaching land as the sun crept up the next morning. Sara’s heart raced. Jamie looked apprehensive and so, so tiny. When they got to the beach, Sara quickly pulled Jamie to a cluster of palm trees. She was consumed with competing thoughts: they made it! what next? how to satisfy this gnawing hunger? – and, is this really Cuba?? All of those thoughts, and the irony of two gringos washing up on Cuba’s shores, seeking refuge, was entirely lost on her.

The beach was really just a narrow strip of sand against a rocky hill. Iguanas darted over the rocks in the early morning sun. It was so empty and quiet that Sara and Jamie simply had no idea what to do next. But then they remembered their hunger and she pushed him up the hill. As they neared the crest, they become aware of people. Not the sounds of people who didn’t want to be heard, but regular sounds. At the top of the hill, they found the ruins of an old Spanish fort, teeming with Americans, clumped in large groups and lines around tents and tables.

A refugee camp.

A man in dirty white shirt grabbed Sara’s wrist. “Americanos?” he hissed.

“Yes,” Jamie whimpered as Sara’s mind raced. How to explain? How much middle school Spanish could she muster?

“Ayúdanos, por favor,” she stuttered. “Mi Tío Paz…”

The man took Sara by the arm and gruffly deposited them at the nearest table, where their names were logged, they were assigned tents, and given ration cards. To everyone they met, American and Cuban, they were just two more nearly-drowned gringos with nothing to complain about.

They weren’t allowed to leave the camp. They didn’t have to look over their shoulders every second, but it was hot and boring. Over time Sara felt more and more helpless.

Finally, after months of begging everyone they met in broken Spanish, a man came to their tent one evening after dinner. She immediately knew the twinkle in his eye, even in the low light of dusk. Just like papá.

“Tío Paz?”

“I am Paz Contreras,” he responded. “But I do not know you.” His figure filled the opening to their tent.

“We are Elián’s children!” Sara jumped up. “Tío, please, please, help us.” She pulled Jamie to standing and gently pushed him toward his uncle.

Paz’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Elián? How do I know you are Elian’s?” He looked at them curiously. “So many gringos, and I have so little. I cannot help you all…”

Sara pulled the heart-shaped locket from inside her shirt and showed Paz the tiny picture: her parents, smiling, Sara in a goofy curtsey, her father’s hands on her shoulders, and Jamie in their mother’s arms.

“Elián!” Paz whispered. “Oh, mi niños!” He gathered them into his big, safe arms.

Cuba has long been a living museum for a time that has already passed. The cars, the sounds, the smells, the colors. They are poor, but they are together. And they are generous.

Even so, they could not share with every American who found their way to their shores. Such desperate times. Some they pushed on to Puerto Rico. Some they sent back. Some they advised, wrongly, to seek refuge in Hispaniola. But had Hispaniola succumbed to the same disease as the U.S… And Puerto Rico was so far away.

The lucky ones were allowed to stay. Enough food. A roof. For Sara and Jamie (his uncle insisted he was Jaime), a family and a home. “Mis cafés Cubanos,” Paz lovingly called the pair.

It hurts your head to think of how tiny Cuba is, in the scheme of things. One little island. Of course, Cuba has its problems. But for Sara and Jaime, it was everything: a chance to be children, to laugh, to be loved.

The rest of the world be damned. And, indeed, it was.