Free Tomorrow They Will Kiss by Eduardo Santiago

even if it was just a greasy mechanic’s shop or a seamstress’s workshop. People
     had a very definite way that they wanted to raise and educate their own children.
    When the private and religious schools started to close down because they refused to change to Marxist textbooks, many decided
     to keep their children home instead of sending them to public schools, where communist indoctrination had already begun. When
     the officials started to notice that there were many children who were not completely taken in by their propaganda, that parents
     were keeping their children out of school, a terrifying rumor began to circulate, throwing everyone into a frenzy. A frenzy!
    It all started when someone said that Fidel was going to send his twelve- year- old son, Fidelito, to the Soviet Union to
     be educated by Russians. On the day we were all whispering this rumor, my younger sister, Clarita, ran into my house in tears.
    “They say they’re going to send all children from twelve to fifteen years old to the Soviet Union,” she said through a runny
     nose and slurpy sobs.
    “It makes perfect sense to me,” I told her. “From twelve to fifteen, they go to the Soviet Union to become perfect little
     communists. Then they return, and from ages fifteen to eighteen, they are thrown into the military. After that, they’ll be
     pissing Red.”
    Maybe I am too practical, too sensible, and too realistic. Maybe what they say about ice water in my veins is true. Por Dios,
     I see things for what they are. Of course, this wasn’t what Clarita wanted to hear, but I can only tell the truth. I felt
     that if she was going to make the right decision, she needed to have all the information. To just console her with lies would
     have been criminal.
    In a panic, parents started to send their children to the United States to stay with relatives or with church groups, just
     temporarily, to keep them safe. We could not imagine what would happen to a child in the hands of the Russians or how they
     would endure those harsh winters without the comfort of their family. Twelve- year- olds are still very young. My friends
     tended to pity me because I never had any children. Never to my face, of course, but I could see it in their eyes. Well, I
     pitied them! And now I felt, not quite superior, but certainly blessed.
    When it came to children, my sister Clarita won the lotería, vulgarly delivering five kids in about as many years, each more
     annoying than the next. Unlike me, Clarita was voluptuously endowed with wide hips and large, soft breasts. And our natures
     were at opposites too. Clarita did not possess one ounce of suspicion and could never hold a grudge. Whenever there was something
     about a neighbor or a friend that I wanted to discuss, she always pushed me away and told me that she was too busy taking
     care of her family to think about such things. She’s too kind, too softhearted, my sister. Her kids ran circles around her,
     and her house always looked like a tornado had hit it. Sometimes I thought it would serve her right if they took away some
     of her damn kids and sent them to Siberia. Maybe an experience like that would pull her head out of the sand. She was trapped.
     She couldn’t suddenly pick up everything and move with five kids to the United States.
    At the time, though, most of us were sure Castro couldn’t last, and we were determined to continue our lives just as we always
     had. A lot of people had already left everything behind, thinking that when they returned a few months later, it would be
     there waiting for them. But I knew that was not true.
    I knew that once one of those guajiros got into your house, you’d have to set fire to it to get them out.
    It was in this time of rancor, suspicion, and regret that Graciela made her biggest mistake. Por Dios, whatever she got, she
     had coming. If you tied a rope around your neck, there were plenty of people in Palmagria who were more than happy to lead
     you