Small turbulence She must be kidding I looked across the aisle at my father He was as white as a mushroom He was gripping the armrests of his seat his eyes shut tight My mother’s face was all wrinkled up like she was trying to imagine she was somewhere else Next to me Max began to pull everything out of his backpack His stuffed penguin his comic books his flashlight a banana his underwear you name it At the very bottom of his pack he found what he was looking for His Batman mask He put it on and smiled Batman to the rescue he yelled My little brother can get the weirdest ideas He probably thought he could save the plane by looking like a superhero Max is always very helpful in dangerous situations All of a sudden like night and day the sky outside changed And the plane stopped shaking The flight attendants went up and down the aisles picking up the luggage that had fallen from the bins They gathered up the burp bags from the passengers who had used them I looked out the window again The black clouds had disappeared and the sun was shining on a green island shaped like a crocodile floating on a turquoise sea We had survived Our vacation was about to begin The pilot’s voice came on the speakers Thank you for your patience We will be landing shortly at the José Martí International Airport in La Habana Bienvenidos a Cuba
After picking up our bags we walked to the passport control The officer looked at our passports Then he looked at us Then he looked at the pictures on the passports again He pointed at Max his black eyebrows bunching up in a frown under his official cap Quién es he barked Who is this Max hid behind my mother This is our son Max said my mother He doesn’t look like a Max He looks like a Batman The customs man burst out laughing Batman en Cuba increíble I think maybe we need him here Everyone in the line was staring at us Sometimes Max can be so embarrassing that I pretend he isn’t my brother We hurried out of the airport terminal and stood on the sidewalk Every few seconds a man would come up to us and shout Taxi very loudly in our faces We did not need a taxi Someone was supposed to be waiting to drive us to where we were staying But how would we recognize the person Then I caught sight of a tall brown man with a huge mustache that hung like a pair of curtains on both sides of his mouth He was leaning against a car holding up a sign with our names on it His car was older than he was and you could practically see through it it had so many holes from rust My father saw him too Buenos días he said to him The man grabbed my father’s hand and shook it really hard Soy Ledesma buenos días Buenos días my father repeated as Ledesma went on
squishing his hand Buenos días buenos días My father was stuck on repeat Finally he turned around to me Uh Charlie I was learning Spanish in school and I had a few classmates from Mexico The first thing you find out when you try to learn a foreign language is that you can’t be afraid to make mistakes I made one mistake for every word I said but that didn’t matter I found out what I needed to know This man named Ledesma with the walrus mustache was going to drive us to Señora Gloria’s house where we would be staying Yes Señora Gloria that’s it that’s where we’re going my mother said very excited as if we had all just been saved from drowning Ledesma took the suitcase out of my father’s hand He might have been older than my father but he had hands of steel He held the heavy bag with just two fingers Okay muchachos he said to us Then he bowed to my mother And the señora too My father patted the car delicately so it would not collapse into a heap of rusty metal flakes It’s a Lada he said A Russian car
I had never been in a Russian car before I wondered how this one had ended up on an island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea We all piled in Ledesma insisted that my mother sit in front That must have been the most comfortable spot In the back the seat was so low I felt like I was sitting on the street My mother patted the orange fur that covered the dashboard just the way she does with our cat Miro Lion said Ledesma stroking it He gave a great big laugh Then he looked at Max in the rearview mirror and shouted Hey Batman in Cuba Before we drove away Ledesma reached out grabbed hold of the small black statue that was hanging from the mirror and kissed it Maybe that was what you did when you drove a Russian car or a Russian car with holes in the side Then he pulled into the traffic behind a dump truck that was shooting out so much black smoke it looked like it was on fire Maybe Max had the right idea with his mask My mother was staring at the spider web of cracks in the windshield She was probably wondering if it was going to end up in her lap Meanwhile Ledesma was talking to her at a hundred miles an hour I could not hear what he was saying since we were sitting in back with the windows open My mother smiled and nodded which is what you do when you don’t understand what someone is saying After a while Ledesma must have gotten tired of the one-way conversation He turned on the radio and loud music poured out It was dance music but the only thing dancing was the car jumping up and down over the bumps and rolling from side to side like a ship in a storm
