The night sky was so clear Isabel could see the Milky Way.
Her gaze was on the stars, but she wasn’t really looking at them. She wasn’t really looking at anything. Her eyes were blurry from tears. Next to her, Señora Castillo sobbed in her husband’s arms, her shoulders heaving.
Like Isabel, she had been crying ever since Iván died. Señor Castillo stared out over his wife’s head, his eyes vacant. Luis kicked out at the silent engine, rattling the bolts that held it down. He buried his face in his hands, and Amara hugged him tight.
Iván was dead. Isabel couldn’t grasp it. One minute he had been alive, talking to them, laughing with them, and the next he was dead. Lifeless.
Like every other Cuban who had ever died trying to get to el norte by sea.
But Iván wasn’t some nameless, faceless person. He was Iván. Her Iván. He
was her friend.
And he was dead.
Isabel’s eyes drifted down to where Iván’s body lay, but she still didn’t look right at him. Couldn’t. Even though Papi had taken down the shirt he’d
draped over Mami to shade her and laid it across Iván’s face, Isabel couldn’t bear to look.
She knew Iván’s face. His smile. She wanted to think of him that way.
Lito sang a low, sad song, and Isabel retreated into the arms of her mother and father. The three of them huddled together, as if what happened to Iván might happen to them too if they came too close to his body. But the real threat was the sinking boat and the sharks that still circled it, following the trail of bloody water that started at Isabel’s feet.
Fidel Castro had Iván’s blood all over him.
Isabel remembered the wake for her grandmother. It had been a quiet, somber occasion. There hadn’t even been a body to bury. Those who had come had spent most of their time comforting Lito and Mami and Isabel, hugging them and kissing them and sharing their grief. Isabel knew she should do that now for the Castillos, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
How could she comfort the Castillos when she still needed comforting herself? Iván was their son, their brother, but he was Isabel’s best friend. In some ways she knew him better even than his family did. She’d played soccer with him in the alley, swum with him in the sea, sat next to him in school. She had eaten dinner at his house, and he at hers, so many times they might as well have been brother and sister. Isabel and Iván had grown up together. She couldn’t imagine a world where she would run next door and he wouldn’t be there.
But Iván wouldn’t be coming over anymore.
Iván was dead.
The loss of him ached like a part of Isabel was suddenly missing, like her heart had been ripped out of her chest and all that was left was a giant, gaping hole. She shook again as her body was wracked with sobs, and Mami pulled her closer.
After a time, Isabel’s grandfather finally spoke.
“We need to do something,” he said. “With the body.”
Señora Castillo wailed, but Señor Castillo nodded.
Do something with the body? Isabel looked around. But what was there to be done with Iván’s body on this little raft? And then Isabel understood.
There was only one place for Iván’s body to go: into the sea. The thought made her recoil in terror.
“No! No, we can’t leave him here!” Isabel cried. “He’ll be all alone!
Iván never liked to be alone.”
Lito nodded to Isabel’s father, and the two of them stood to lift Iván out of the small boat.
Isabel fought to get free of her mother, but Mami held her tight.
“Wait,” Señora Castillo said. She pulled herself away from her husband, her face streaked with tears. “We have to say something. A prayer.
Something. I want God to know Iván is coming.”
Isabel had never been to church. When Castro and the communists had taken over, they had discouraged the practice of religion. But Spanish Catholics had conquered the island long before Castro had, and Isabel knew their religion was still there, deep down, the way Lito told her clave was buried beneath the audible rhythms of a song.
Lito was the oldest, and had been to the most funerals, so he took charge. He made the sign of the cross over Iván’s body, and said, “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.”
Señora Castillo nodded, and Lito and Isabel’s father picked up Iván’s body.
“No—no!” Isabel cried. She reached out as if to stop them, then pulled her hands back and clasped them to her chest. She knew they had to do this,
that they could not keep Iván on the boat with them. Not like this. But as she watched Lito and Papi lift up Iván’s body, the empty place inside got bigger and bigger, until she was more empty than full. She wished she was dead too. She wished she was dead so they would put her into the water with Iván. So she could keep him company in the deep.
Señora Castillo reached out and took her son’s hand one last time, and Luis stood and put a hand to Iván’s chest—one last connection to his brother before he was gone for good. Isabel wanted to do something, to say something, but she was too overcome with grief.
“Wait,” Luis said. He pulled his pistol from his holster. His face turned mean as he aimed it over the other side of the boat, at one of the fins that skimmed the surface. Isabel was ready for the shots this time, but they still made her jump. BANG! BANG! BANG!
The shark died in a bloody, thrashing spasm, and the other sharks that had been following the boat fell on it in a frenzy. Luis nodded to Lito and Isabel’s father, and Señora Castillo looked away as they slipped Iván off the other side of the boat, away from the sharks, where he sank into the black sea.
No one spoke. Isabel cried, the tears coming without end, flowing up from the hollow place in her chest that threatened to consume her. Iván was gone, forever.
Isabel suddenly remembered Iván’s Industriales cap. Where was it?
What had happened to it? It hadn’t been on him when he’d been put back in the water, and Isabel wanted to find it. Needed to find it. That was something she could do. A piece of him she could keep close to her. She pulled away from her mother and searched the little boat for it. It had to be somewhere … Yes! There! Floating upside down in the bloody water,
underneath one of the benches. She plucked it up and held it to her chest, the only part of Iván she had left.
“I wanted to open a restaurant,” Señor Castillo said. He was right next to her, and the sound of his voice, almost a whisper, made Isabel jump. “When we were talking that first night, everybody was telling each other what they wanted to do when we got to the US,” Señor Castillo went on, “but I never said. I wanted to open a restaurant with my sons.”
Something sparkled on the dark horizon, and at first Isabel took it to be one of the stars in the white scar of the Milky Way twinkling in her watery eyes. But no—it was too bright. Too orange. And there were others just like it, all clustered in a horizontal line, separating the black waters from the black sky.
It was Miami, at last. Iván had just missed seeing Miami.