Make It Home

NOELLE AND EMBER

ZAX, KALIX- 1994

Ember opened her eyes and lowered the trumpet from her lips and Noelle completely stopped her movements. They were sure they had just heard the sound of breaking glass, but cars and bicycles kept streaming by under the bright sun on the Malecón like nothing had happened. Noelle and Ember shook their head, convinced they're hearing things, Ember put her lips back to her trumpet and Noelle did her starting pose again.
Then suddenly a woman screamed, a pistol fired—pak!—and the world went crazy.
People rushed out of the side streets. Hundreds of them. They were men, mostly, many of them shirtless in the hundred-degree August heat, their white and brown and black backs glistening in the sun. They yelled and chanted. They threw rocks and bottles. They spilled into the streets, and the few policemen on the Malecón were quickly overwhelmed. Noelle saw the glass window of a general store shatter, and men and women climbed inside to steal shoes and toilet paper and bath soap. An alarm rang. Smoke rose from behind an apartment building.
Zax was rioting, and her father and grandfather were somewhere right in the middle of it.
Some people fled from the chaos, but more people raced toward it, and Noelle and Ember ran with them. Car horns beeped. Bicycles swung around and pedaled back. People were as thick on the ground as sugarcane. Ember weaved in and out among them, her trumpet tucked under one arm, looking for Papi and Lito.
"Freedom! Freedom!" chanted some of the rioters.
"Ledger out!"
"Enough is enough!"
Noelle couldn't believe what she was hearing. People caught criticizing Marco Ledger were thrown into jail and never heard from again. But now the streets were full of people yelling, "Down with Marco! Down with Marco!"
"Papi!" Noelle cried. "Lito!" Ember called out. Their grandfather's name was Myles, but Noelle and Ember called him Lito, short for Abuelito—Grandpa.
Rifles boomed, and the girls ducked. More police were arriving by motorcycle and military truck, and the protest was turning bloody. The rioters and police traded rocks and bullets, and a man with a bloody head staggered past Noelle. She reeled in horror. A hand grabbed her, making her jump, and she spun around. Lito! She threw herself into her grandfather's arms and felt her sister do the same.
"Thank God you're safe!" he told her.
"Where's Papi?" she asked him.
"I don't know. We weren't together when it started," her grandfather said. Ember thrust her trumpet into his arms. "I have to find him!"
Noelle quickly changed her shoes and gave the salsa ones to Lito and ran after her insane sister "Ember. Wait up!"
"Chabela! Mi Diamanté" their grandfather cried. He used their childhood nickname, like he always did. "No! Wait!"
Noelle and Ember ignored him. They had to find their father. If he was caught again by
the police, he'd be sent back to prison—and this time they might not let him out.
Ember dodged through the crowds with her sister right behind her, trying to stay away from where the police had formed a line. "Papi!" Ember called. "Papi!" Noelle tried but they were too short and there were too many people.

High above her, Noelle saw people climbing out onto the big electric sign hanging from the side of a tourist hotel, and it gave her an idea. She grabbed her sisters hand and worked her way to one of the cars stuck in the riot, an old American Chevy with chrome tail fins, still around from before the Revolution in the 1950s. She climbed up the bumper and onto the hood and pulled Ember with her. The man behind the steering wheel honked his horn and took the cigar out of his mouth to yell at them.
"Chabela! Mi Diamanté " her grandfather shouted when he saw them. Ember quickly scurries to Lito "Just so you know, this was HER crazy idea"
Lito ignored her and tried to Noelle down "Mi Diamanté, get down from there!"
Noelle ignored them both and turned this way and that, calling out for her father. There! She saw her papi just as he reared back and threw a bottle that smashed into the line of police along the seawall. It was the last straw for the police. At a command from their leader, they pushed forward into the crowd, arresting rioters and hitting them with wooden batons.
In all the turmoil, a policeman caught up with her father and grabbed him by the arm. "No!" Noelle cried. She leaped down off the hood of the car and pushed her way through the pandemonium. When she got to her papi, he was balled up on the ground and the policeman was beating him with his nightstick.
The policeman raised his truncheon to hit her father again, and Noelle and Ember jumped in between them. "No! Don't! Please!" Ember cried.
The policeman's eyes flashed from anger to surprise, and then back to anger. He reared back again to hit Ember, and she flinched. But the blow never came. Another policeman had caught his arm! Noelle and Ember blinked. They recognized the new policeman. He was Liam Callava, Brian's older brother.
"What do you think you're doing?" the older policeman barked.
Liam didn't have time to answer. A whistle blew. The police were being summoned elsewhere.
The angry cop yanked his arm free from Liam and pointed his nightstick at Papi. "I saw what you did," he said. "I'll find you again. When all this is over, I'll find you and arrest you, and they'll send you away for good."
Liam pulled the angry policeman away, pausing just long enough to give Noelle and Ember a worried look over his shoulder.
Liam didn't have to say anything. As her grandfather arrived and helped the girls get their father to his feet, they understood.
Papi had to leave Kalix. Tonight.