Free Cuba 15 by Nancy Osa

behind her ears. “Yeah, well, Rick doesn’t usually coach Oratory, but he said he had an opening for a sophomore.”
    Rick? This was too much. “I’m going to tell him that you’re only fourteen!” I threatened. “That you’re a sophomore in name only. You should still be buying elevator passes and paying cafeteria tolls with the freshmen.”
    Leda stuck her tongue out at me. “I got here fair and square,” she sassed. “I can’t help it if I’m gifted.”
    “We’ll see how gifted you are when the competition starts,” Janell said, stuffing her books in her dance bag. “I’m going to go get in some horn practice before dinner.” She got up. “You guys have been a real big help. Looks like I’ve got some more reading to do before I can pick my routine.” She looked at us sympathetically. “I’m glad I don’t have to
write
it.”
    “Hey, are you coming over this weekend?” I asked. It was party time at the Paz house. Abuela and Abuelo had invited all their old friends over for a domino marathon. Dad was moving the extra back-porch furniture out to the garage to make way for more playing tables, and Mom was already cooking. People would come and go all weekend, and the domino matches would never end.
    “Can’t,” said Janell. “We’re visiting my cousins in Kankakee.”
    “I’ll be there for some of it,” said Leda. “I can practice my Spanish on your relatives. But on both days we’re collecting donations for a homeless shelter. Beth signed us up for six suburbs. I’ll probably still be out there Sunday night, canvassing in one of those coal miner’s hats with a flashlight on it, trying to make quota!”
    “Jeez,” I said. “I thought they were going to lay off.”
    She shuddered. “Speech team can’t start soon enough for me.”
    “First tournament’s in three weeks,” I said. “Hang in there.”

11
    Señora Wong impaled us with the vocab test. She made us fill in the blanks in a paragraph with nouns we were supposed to know, and write out complete sentences using forms of suddenly unfamiliar verbs. Howls of anguish erupted when kids saw that memorizing the word list wasn’t going to cut it.
    “We are supposed to be learning to
eh
speak
el español
,” said the ruthless Señora Doble-U, who claimed to have learned the language as an exchange student in Mexico. “Do you expect
el presidente de España
to fax you the vocabulary for your interview when you are big
reporteros
for the
Tribune
?” This class was beginning to sound like my house.
    Afterward, a solemn Leda low-fived me on the way out the door, wishing me a
bueno jour
.
    Things improved later in the day in Ms. Joyner’s class, as usual, when we got to watch a video of Richard Nixon’s famous televised “Checkers” speech. Checkers was this cocker spaniel that some dude in Texas sent Nixon, and Nixon’s kids fell in love with the dog. In answer to rumors of a campaign slush fund and in the interest of full disclosure, “Tricky Dicky” informed the American people that, concerning Checkers, “regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”
    I sort of liked the guy for that, until he came to the end of his speech. He said that no matter what people said about him, he was going to keep fighting, “until we drive the crooks and Communists . . . out of Washington.” Like he should talk.
    I knew that Cuba had been forced into Communist rule when Fidel Castro took over. Now, it seemed, there was Communism where, before, there had been people. I couldn’t connect the two. To me, Communism was this mean junkyard dog I’d never had any personal quarrel with but that had bitten others one too many times. It was the reason I’d never seen the town in Cuba where my dad was born; that was the only bone I had to pick with it. Say the word at home, though, and I’d get an earful about
socialismo
in Spanish or the Russian occupation of Poland in English, depending on which parent was around. Mom and