Flight to Freedom by Ana Veciana-Suarez

tramp or a nobody. You cannot meetmen anywhere they want to and at any time. If a young man wants to court you, he must do so the correct way.”
    She then lectured us about a girl’s virtue being the most important quality she can give her husband. Los americanos, she said, give virtue away as if it were no big deal.
Monday, 5th of February
    We received two letters from Pepito today. One was dated in August, a few days after we had left, and it was older than the one we got before Christmas. I don’t understand why this one took so long to get to us. The second letter was dated in December. They were both short, and his handwriting was very difficult to make out. In the first letter, he writes about how he is building strong muscles because he is getting lots of physical exercise. He has also made new friends and is playing second base and batting third in the lineup. (We don’t know what baseball team this could be, but Papi figures it might be from Pepito’s own platoon.) He asks Ileana to save him any magazine stories about Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Hesounds just like Pepito. But in the second letter, a whole section is blacked out in pen. Papi said that is what the Cuban government censors do if a letter writer reveals something that makes the government look bad. I wonder what that could be. Maybe something awful has happened to Pepito. Maybe they are feeding him food with worms and making him do horrible things. The other parts of the letter we can read fine, but he doesn’t sound as upbeat as in the one from August. He writes that he misses us and is sorry that he will not see us for a long time. “I fear that Ana Mari will forget what my face looks like.” That’s what he wrote. “I will not forget her or her laughter. Does she still laugh like a hyena?” (Ana Mari did not like this part of the letter, but what Pepito writes is true. She does have a funny laugh.)
    As I listened to the letter being read aloud, I felt my eyes grow hot. I looked over at Mami, but she was not crying. She was staring straight ahead with a hard face, her chin jutting out. The rest of the night she was very absentminded. She even burned the chicken in the oven, and we had to pull the toasty skin off and eat the rest because we can’t afford to throw food away. The chicken was hard and rubbery.
Tuesday, 6th of February
    A group of teenage boys threw eggs at Alina’s firstfloor apartment. They scared her grandparents, mother, and little brother half to death. “Go back where you came from!” they shouted. And they also screamed, “Spics!”
    Alina has no idea who these boys might be. She is certain they do not live in her apartment building. The incident upset her mother tremendously. She and her grandmother had to clean the egg goo that came through the window screen, and it stained the sofa.
    Alina’s mother now makes sure the windows are closed at all times, which turns the inside of the apartment into a furnace. The family must go around in their underwear and sit in front of the fans to keep cool. Alina says it is impossible to concentrate on homework. She dreams of moving to New York or to Chicago because she has read that it snows there a lot and that no one is ever hot. I feel sorry for Alina, but I do not know what to do.
Wednesday, 7th of February
    Mami still works at the shoe factory and Tía Carmen at that laundry place, but now they have new night jobs. Abuela helps them. They are sewing pearls and sequins on sweaters and are paid by the piece. A man delivers the sweaters in one big box, and the sequins and pearls in another. He is a friend of Efraín’s boss at the craft store, and he allows them to work from home, which is why they took the job. At first Papi didn’t want Mami to do it because it would mean more time away from us girls, but she assured him that she would work only after dinner and after we had finished our homework.
    Mami and