داستان کوتاه انگلیسی

Roller Skates to Revolution (part2)


“One day, I remember this so vividly, the school had very large wooden doors, but then they had a tiny little wooden door, like some of the churches and somehow I was able to get out. There was so much gun powder and ammunition being fired, helicopters, shooting. So, I got out and I ran because I wanted to go home. All of a sudden I see this military jeep barreling down towards me and my uncle just picks me up, boom, and just throws me right in…The day is still so vivid in my head, I can still see the day, the part, the sun, everything… He said how dare you get out of school; you know you are not supposed to leave. But I was so scared in school, I thought they are going to bomb this place and I am going to die in here.”

Everything had changed, Beby went from a carefree child, to a rebel target. Towards the end of 1961 Beby would go around handing out pamphlets against Castro and a family friend told her father that she needed to get out of Cuba, she was now a huge target and the only way for her to stay safe was to leave. On January 12, 1962 Beby and her older brother were finally able to get Visas to leave Cuba and go to The United States.

They were a part of the Peter Pan flights that carried political asylum seekers to the U.S. Before leaving, Beby did not want to go and leave her parents, friends, and her life behind. Her parents could not go with her because they would not let her father out. He was put in jail at least 15 times by the Castro regime and they struggled to get out. She remembers her parents telling her to not worry, she will only be gone for a year. However, Beby never went back to Cuba, and her biggest regret was not saying goodbye to her paternal grandparents, who she never saw again.

Once arriving in Miami, Florida, Beby and her brother, Abe, stayed with family friends who had left Cuba before them. They stayed with them for a few months until Beby and her brother were able to travel to Chicago, where one of her uncle’s had moved to in 1959. At that time in the United States, the government felt that it was inappropriate for Beby to live with her uncle, brother and now her mother’s dad since she was a girl. So, they tried to put her into foster care, like many of the other children who came to the U.S. without parents, seeking political asylum. Beby’s uncle was able to keep her out of foster care by enrolling her in a boarding school in Chicago instead. Sadly, Beby was now in a new country, a new school, away from the only family she had in America and she did not speak a word of English. Many nights were spent alone, crying, not knowing what the future would hold. Beby made her first American friend in a girl named Mary Ellen Boubniew.