Surviving Santiago Read online

  Praise for Gringolandia by Lyn Miller-Lachmann:

  2010 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults list

  2010 Bank Street College Best Children’s Books list, grades 9–12

  2010 Americas Award Honor Book

  2010 ALAN Pick

  2010 IPPY Gold Medal, Children’s Multicultural Fiction

  2011 Texas Library Association Tayshas High School Reading List

  “[T]he overarching exploration of injustice and its costs gives the novel memorable heft.”

  —The Horn Book Magazine

  “This impressive novel … skillfully incorporates elements of family drama, teen romance, and political thriller… . [A] rare reading experience that both touches the heart and opens the mind.”

  —School Library Journal

  “Heartfelt and strong, with an in-your-face immediacy, this novel is revelatory in its portrayal of repressive regimes, immigrants, and familial relationships.”

  —VOYA

  “This poignant, often surprising and essential novel illuminates too-often ignored political aspects of many South Americans’ migration to the United States.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This action-packed story is a wonderful work of historical fiction that is a must-have for any library or personal collection.”

  —Children’s Literature

  Copyright © 2015 by Lyn Miller-Lachmann

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  Printed in the United States

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

  Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014954486

  E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5635-2

  987654321

  Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

  Cover and interior design by T.L. Bonaddio

  Edited by Lisa Cheng

  Typography: Scala, Maxwell Slab, Special Elite,

  Filmotype Lucky, and Good Foot

  Published by Running Press Teens

  An Imprint of Running Press Book Publishers

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  2300 Chestnut Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19103–4371

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  www.runningpress.com/rpkids

  For Aunt Ruth

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER 1

  I’m not going to cry.

  My crew surrounds me, all of us in our stuffy clothes, fanning ourselves with our invitations—my best friend, Petra, and a bunch of my other friends who’ve come to see Mamá and Evan get married. They shield me from sniffling adults, and if I do cry they’ll rag on me and tell me that turning sixteen has made me old and no longer cool.

  Adults cry when they’re happy. I know that because Mamá’s eyes are shiny as she stands in front of the judge. And she blinks a lot.

  I’m happy for her … I think.

  She has Evan—an awesome guy who loves her.

  But Evan is not my father. Not the guy Mamá means when she says, half of you is him. My father lives at the ends of the earth, and I’m getting shipped there tomorrow—a pawn in a kicked-over chess set.

  Mamá may not be skinny anymore, but her lacy wedding dress makes her look like she’s still twenty-one, the bride from the album she brought with her when we moved to Madison from Santiago in 1981, eight years ago. Nearly nine years after soldiers arrested my father. Papá had wire-rim glasses and a beard like Evan, but he also had shaggy hair. Evan is going bald.

  Peludo como un oso, Mamá used to say. Whenever I paged through the album, she would look over my shoulder, her teardrops splashing onto the plastic that kept the photos dry. I would imagine Papá flying out of that prison and laughing at her. A big, laughing bear with a beard that covered half his face and wild chestnut hair that blazed in the sunlight.

  When I was your age, I didn’t cry for the whole year, he said on my seventh birthday after Daniel, my older brother, ripped the arm off my brand-new doll. You can be brave, too. Not like your mother who cries over every little thing. Papá twisted the doll’s arm back into its socket and stitched the torn shoulder as if he were a surgeon instead of a taxi driver.

  I didn’t cry for a whole month after that. Not even when I tripped on broken pavement and scraped my knee. Papá loved me, and his love made me brave.

  I had no idea it would be my last birthday with him, the way he used to be.

  Beside me, Petra uses her set of colored pencils to decorate the black-and-white Victorian house on the invitation. Evan bought the house from the city of Madison for back taxes two years ago. His sketch for the invitation doesn’t show the real story—the boarded-up windows, collapsed porch, and sagging roof. He calls fixing up houses his mitzvah, which is a Jewish way of saying “good deed.” I was supposed to help him finish this mitzvah house over the summer so our new family could move there in September.

  Now I’m going to Chile.

  “Dropped your purple,” I whisper to Petra. Trying to fetch her pencil from underneath my wooden folding chair, I rock on the inn’s bumpy lawn, which slopes down to the lake and nearly pitches me into her. I slide my left foot from my sandal and kick the pencil forward so I can grab it. The damp grass tickles my toes.

  “Thanks,” Petra says as she taps the invitation with the eraser end. Two rows in front of us, Evan’s mother’s chair sinks into the ground. My real grandparents, Mamá’s parents, aren’t here. They refused to come from Chile for the wedding because they consider divorce a sin—even though they also consider my father a subversive and a criminal who destroyed his family and deserved everything that happened to him.

  The last time I saw Papá was three years ago, after they let him out of prison. He stayed with us in Madison for six months I wish I could forget. He no longer had a beard. His hair hung limp and stringy, and an eyelid and the corner of his mouth sagged. He sat in our apartment drinking wine like it was water. When he left for Chile to work underground against the dictatorship, I thought I would never see him alive again.

  As the judge officially turns my mother into Mrs. Evan Feldman, I focus on Petra’s invitation. Mint-green siding. Light and dark purple trim. Gray roof. Bright blue front door.

  The first bars of “Mellow Yellow” float in the ai
r while Mamá and Evan are still kissing—not a restrained peck but a madly in love newlyweds’ smooch in front of a hundred people that goes from cute to embarrassing by the end of the first verse. Petra holds up her invitation and raises her voice above the psychedelic music and the buzz from sappy comments around us. “I’m giving this to Evan.”

  Mamá and Evan walk arm in arm down the aisle, Donovan crooning from the speakers behind them. The top of Evan’s head shines in the sunlight. His skin is starting to go pink, so I make a mental note to tell him: sunscreen. I reach for the rose petals in my purse and toss them over Petra’s head toward my mother. A couple land in Petra’s blonde hair, and their scent mixes with her Herbal Essences berry shampoo. After the song fades and everyone stands, my friends and I hug each other.

  Max asks, “Do you really have to leave tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. They wanted me out so I wouldn’t have a party with fifty people in our itty-bitty apartment while they’re gone.”

  “So does the water really go down the drain the opposite way there?” Petra says.

  “Don’t remember.” I wriggle my foot back into my sandal. “How about if I do an experiment? I’ll flush my summer down the drain and see which way it goes.” A few of my friends laugh. In my mind summer dissolves into yellow and green paint circling clockwise instead of counterclockwise.

  “Will it be snowing?”

  “Do you have to go to school?”

  “Are you gone the whole vacation?”

  “They can’t make you, can they?”

  I sigh. “Guys, we wouldn’t be having this wedding if I didn’t agree to go. They don’t allow divorce in Chile, so my father let it happen here in exchange for visitation rights.”

  “That sounds like he’s taking you prisoner,” says Max.

  Prisoner. That’s the exact wrong word. “It was my decision… .” My voice comes out funny. I clear my throat.

  Mamá wouldn’t have gotten to marry Evan unless she divorced Papá. And if Papá demanded visitation rights, it means that he wants to see me, that maybe he still loves me. Me, his little Tina. Not just Daniel.

  Petra clutches my wrist and drags me away from the others, toward the food table. Silently, I thank her. “You can come back sooner, right? When your mother gets home from her honeymoon?”

  I lower my voice. “It depends.” On whether he’s my old papá again.

  My old papá drove us to the beach in his beat-up green taxi. We ran into the ocean and let the waves chase us back to shore. But I was too small, so he lifted me onto his shoulders. My hands squeezed his hair like a horse’s mane.

  “Would he, like, get really mad if you left early?”

  I shrug. Petra never met Papá. Never knew what he was like before. Or after.

  “You said every time he and your mother talked on the phone during the divorce, he acted like a jerk and she ended up crying. Maybe she can use that as evidence.”

  I run the back of my hand across my eyes. One teardrop. Doesn’t count.

  “Or remember that short story we read freshman year?” Her voice rises. “‘Ransom of Red Chief’ or something.”

  “Yeah, I could totally act up so he sends her money to get rid of me.” Or he could yell at me and slap me. And so could my aunt, Tía Ileana, who lives with him. She doesn’t have kids of her own, and even though she never spanked Daniel and me when we were little, she often yelled at us for making noise and running around too much.

  Petra pivots toward our friends, but her spiked heel slides into a mole hole. She trips and crashes into Evan.

  “Oh, sorry, Ev—, uh, Mr. Feldman.” She lifts her foot from the hole, brushes her hair back, and hands him her invitation. “Look, I picked out some colors for the house.”

  Stroking his beard, Evan studies Petra’s artwork and smiles.

  “We can use a stencil when we do the inside. Tina can hold it up while I paint. You know I cut my own.” Petra taps the card, and I bite my lip to keep from laughing. Her signature stencil is a marijuana leaf. “You guys will have the most amazing house in Madison.”

  That’s why Petra’s my best friend. It’ll suck not getting to hang out with her this summer.

  I’m not going to cry.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Pasaporte.” The uniformed customs officer holds out his hand. I can’t tell how old he is because of his military cap and lack of a mustache or beard, but his hand is callused and wrinkled. His other hand rests on the automatic pistol in his holster. I hand him my dark red Chilean passport and the notarized permission forms, which I already showed the soldier at the immigration window. “Cristina Isabel Aguilar Fuentes,” the officer reads. “¿Nombre de padre?”

  “Marcelo Leonardo Aguilar Gaetani.”

  “Marcelo Leonardo Aguilar Gaetani.” The officer’s lip curls into a sneer as he says, “alias Nino.”

  I nod slowly. The name Papá used when he worked underground is no secret to the dictator’s people now. After all, Papá calls his daily radio show Oye, Nino. And my brother said it’s one of the most popular talk shows in the country.

  “¿Madre?”

  “María Victoria.” I hesitate, because her name changed only two days ago. “Fuentes Rubio … de Feldman.” I never liked the de part, which makes it sound like women are the property of their husbands.

  He switches to heavily accented English. “What is the purpose of your trip?”

  “Visiting my father. My parents are divorced.”

  I shift from one foot to the other. People on the lines next to me pass straight through while the guy examines my passport and the letters from my parents that prove I’m not a runaway or a sex slave. Then he uses a two-way radio to call someone else.

  Sweat tickles my neck and chest, though my hands are ice-cold. I remind myself to be careful and say as little as possible. He is still in power—Pinochet, the dictator who led a violent military coup that brought down our elected president just three months after I was born. Unlike Daniel, I didn’t know what it was like to live in a democracy until I moved to Wisconsin.

  People think a little kid doesn’t notice the difference, but I did. Even if I didn’t know who told the tanks and soldiers to be there, it was hard to miss them. A bunch of times, I saw soldiers—like the one in front of me right now—beat people up in the street. Daniel would try to cover my eyes while Mamá would grab Papá’s arms and beg—think of your kids, Chelo—so he wouldn’t run to help the people. Daniel saw Papá get beaten and arrested in our apartment in Santiago while I was asleep. It’s not something my brother talks about, but before he left for college, his bedroom and mine shared a wall, and whenever he cranked up his music in the middle of the night, I knew he was thinking about it.

  And when I think about what they did to Papá in that prison—torturing him so he’d name his sources and associates, beating him into a coma when he refused, sticking him into solitary confinement, even though the left half of his body didn’t work… . It’s like our whole family got twisted around this man with his military uniform, his gray mustache, and his pompous smile.

  Two more men show up. One looks young and carries a machine gun. The other one has wrinkles around his eyes and a gray mustache clipped the same way as the general’s. He wears a special uniform.

  “Open the bag,” the man in the special uniform says. He has almost no accent in English.

  I unzip my duffel. The man paws through my stuff and pulls out the plastic bag with the medicine my mother sent for Papá. After exchanging smiles and nods with the customs official that make my insides clench, he takes out the pill bottles one by one. He and the customs official count them out, all twenty-five of them, and examine their labels. He tells the other two to wait while he gets a camera.

  Sweat drips down my back. My knees go weak.

  I’m screwed. How do I get the next plane home?

  The special uniform guy returns with a Polaroid camera. “Why are you bringing all these pills in?” he barks. “Are you planning to
sell them?” The man with the machine gun writes something in a small note pad, using the gun’s stock as his surface.

  “They’re for my father. The prescription’s there, too.”

  The customs officer takes a piece of paper from the bag. “Here it is.” He hands the prescription to the guy with the camera, who I guess is his boss.

  “What does he need them for?” the boss asks me in English.

  I stare at my sneakers and mumble, “He has seizures.”

  Because of what you people did to him. This I cannot say out loud. Rule number one: no discussing politics with anyone besides Papá, Tía Ileana, and their friends. Even though Papá’s side won the plebiscite, the election to decide whether or not Pinochet would rule for another ten years, the general is still around until next March and a lot of his supporters are mad that they lost.

  Daniel said I’d be safe if I followed this rule. I’m not so sure. A month ago I overheard Mamá on the phone, arguing with Papá about a musician who got beaten up in the street. The government media called it a drug deal gone bad. Papá thought it was a political attack and wanted to investigate, but Mamá told him to let it go until after my visit.

  The customs official steps toward his boss and says in hurried Spanish, “I need a picture of his kid, too.”

  I step backward and cover my face. Why?

  “Hands at your sides, please,” the boss orders in English. He gives the customs official a quick glance, then takes one photo of me standing alone and one holding the pill bottles and the prescription. Like I’m a mule for a drug cartel. And after sixteen hours on three separate planes and zero sleep, I wonder if I look like those grim-faced, glassy-eyed people in police mug shots. The boss shakes the two photos dry, but I don’t get to see them.