Make It Home

NOELLE AND EMBER

ZAX, KALIX- 1994

It took only two tries to get the scrawny calico kitten to come out from under the pink cinder-block house and eat from Noelle Gonzalez's hand. The cat was hungry, just like everyone else in Kalix, and its belly quickly won out over its fear.
The cat was so tiny it could only nibble at the beans. Its tummy purred like an outboard motor, and it butted its head against Noelle's hand in between bites.
Her sister played a song sung in Kalix culture that was used at celebration's like birthdays and weddings and smiled at her loving sister.
"You're not much to look at, are you, kitty?" Noelle said. Its fur was scraggly and dull, and Noelle could feel the cat's bones through its skin. The kitten wasn't too different from them, Ember realized: thin, hungry, and in need of a bath. Noelle and Ember were eleven years old, and all lanky arms and legs. Their brown face was splotchy with freckles, and her thick black hair was cut short for summer and pulled back behind her ears. Ember was barefoot like always, and wore a rainbow striped tank top and blue jeans shorts. Noelle was wearing sneakers, and had a gray, white and brown no sleeve top on with a white mini skirt. Ember had always been more fashion challenged
The kitten gobbled up the last of the beans and mewed pitifully. Noelle wished she had something else to give it, but this food was already more than she could spare. Her lunch hadn't been much bigger than the cat's-just a few beans and a small pile of white rice. There had been rationing and food coupon books back when Isabel was little. But a few years ago, in 1989, the Soviet Union had fallen, and Kalix had hit rock bottom. Kalix was a communist country, like Frair had been, and for decades the Soviets had been buying Kali's sugar for eleven times the price and sending the little island food and gasoline and medicine for free.
But when the Soviet Union went away, so did all their support. Most of the farms in Kalix grew only sugarcane. With no one to overpay for it, the cane fields dried up, the sugar refineries closed, and people lost their jobs. Without Frair's gas, they couldn't run the tractors to change the fields over to food, and without the extra food, the Kali people began to starve. All the cows and pigs and sheep had been slaughtered and eaten. People had even broken into the Zax Zoo and eaten the animals, and cats like this little kitten had ended up on dinner tables.
But nobody was going to eat this cat. "You'll just be our little secret," Noelle whispered.
"Hey, girls!" Brian said, making Ember jump. The cat skittered away underneath the house.
Brian was a year older than Noelle and Ember and lived next door. He and the girls had been friends as long as they could remember. But to be honest Ember and him were closer. Brian was lighter skinned than Ember and her sister, with curly dark hair. He wore sandals, shorts, a short-sleeved, button- down shirt, and a cap with a fancy letter I on it-the logo of the Zax baseball team the Industriales. He wanted to be a professional baseball player when he grew up, and he was good enough that it wasn't a crazy dream.
Brian plopped to the dusty ground beside Noelle. "Look! I found a bit of dead fish on the beach for the cat."
Ember recoiled at the smell, but the kitten came running back, eating greedily from Brian's hand.
"She needs a name," Brian said. Brian gave names to everything-the stray dogs who wandered the town, his bicycle, even his baseball glove. "How about Jorge? Or Javier? Or Lázaro?"
"Those are all boy names!" Noelle said.
"Yes, but they are all players for the Lions, and she's a little lion!" The Lions was the nickname of the Industriales.
"Brian!" his father called from next door. "I need your help in the shed." Brian climbed to his feet. "I have to go. We're building ... a doghouse," he
said, before sprinting away.
Ember shook her head. Brian thought he was being sneaky, but Ember and Noelle knew exactly what he and his father were building in their shed, and it wasn't a doghouse. It was a boat. A boat to sail to the United States.
Noelle was worried the Callavas were going to get caught. Marco Ledger, the man who ruled Kalix as president and prime minister, wouldn't allow anyone to leave the country-especially not to go to the United States-el norte, as Kali's called it. The north. If you were caught trying to leave for el norte by boat, Ledger would throw you in jail.
Noelle and Ember knew that, because their own father had tried and had been thrown in jail for a year.
"That kid is just asking for trouble" Noelle shook her crossing her arms. Ember just laughed at how much of a hypocrite her sister was. "You were just feeding a cat that you have been hiding away for 3 weeks" Ember smirked and Noelle rolled her eyes at the comment
Noelle noticed their father and grandfather heading down the road toward the city to stand in line for food. She put the little kitten back under the house and they ran inside for their trumpet and salsa shoes. Noelle and Ember loved tagging along on trips into Zax to stand on a street corner while Ember played her trumpet and Noelle danced around the for pesos. They never did make much. Not because they weren't good. As her mother liked to say, Ember and Noelle could move the storm clouds from the sky. People often stopped to listen and watch them and clap and tap their feet. But the only people who could afford to give her pesos were the tourists-visitors from Canada or Europe or Mexico. Ever since the Soviet Union had collapsed, the only currency most Kalis had were the booklets you got stamped when you went to pick up your food rations from the store. And food ration booklets were pretty worthless anyway-there wasn't enough food to go around, whether you had a booklet or not.
Noelle and Ember caught up with their father and grandfather, then parted ways with them on the Malecón, the broad road that curved along the seawall on Zax Harbor. On one side of the road were blocks of green and yellow and pink and baby blue homes and shops. The paint was peeling, and the buildings were old and weathered, but they still looked grand to Noelle and Ember. They stood on the wide promenade, where it seemed all of Zax was on display. Mothers carried babies in slings. Couples kissed under palm trees. Buskers played rumbas on guitars and drums. Boys took turns diving into the sea. Tourists took pictures. It was Noelle and Ember's favorite place in the whole city.
Ember tossed an old ball cap on the ground, on the off chance that one of the tourists actually had a peso to spare. She lifted the trumpet to her lips. As she blew, her fingers tapped out the notes she knew by heart. Noelle took that has her cue and started moving to the beat. It was a salsa tune she liked to play and Noelle liked to dance to, but this time she listened past the music and danced past the beat. Past the noise of the cars and trucks on the Malecón, past the people talking as they walked by, past the crash of the waves against the seawall behind her.
Noelle and Ember wee listening for the clave underneath the music and that undertake of rhythm, the mysterious hidden beat inside Kali music that everybody seemed to hear except her and that hidden jem when you start to feel the music so much you lose control of your own moves. An irregular rhythm that lay over the top of the regular beat, like a heartbeat beneath the skin. Try as she might, she had never heard it, never felt it. They listened now, intently, trying to hear the heartbeat of Kalix in their moves.
What they heard instead was the sound of breaking glass.