They Took Tomas

"I'm pregnant."
Adela lay stretched on Matilde and Nestor's bed and leaned into the headboard. Lydia lay nestled into her with Clotilde curled up on her belly. She sat up. "Abuela, abuela, she's having a baby. " She grabbed her baby doll Little Jimmy, by one of his cloth arms and swung him in the air. Little Jimmy was dressed in faded blue clothes, real baby cothes given to her by Nati which had belonged to Guille. The baby clothes had grayed from dragging and squeezing by Lydia. Lydia ran out screaming, "Adela va a tener un baby." She called Nestor away from his television cabaret show. Within minutes he stood at his bedroom door. Matilde sat beside Adela, kissed her hand. Nestor crossed his arms and hugged his chest. "Does your father know?" Adela closed her eyes."I'm telling people slow." Matilde slid behind Adela, cradled her head in her lap and stroked loose strands of brown hair back into her pony tail."That's how it is with the first. You're afraid if you tell you'll give it mal de ojo. Pero me lo imaginaba. I heard you throw up in the mornings and I imagined this. Didn't I tell you, Nestor?"
"Not much goes on here Matilde doesn't know. Call your father." Nestor bent over Adela, and kissed her on the forehead. Lydia threw herself on the bed beside Adela clutching Little Jimmy and whispered to the doll. "I wish we could tell my Mami." The adults' gazes met for an instant and bounced away. Nestor clenched his hands and sped out of the room on his leather slippers back to his tv set. They could hear the rumba music of the show's closing theme. He'd missed his favorite, the half undressed dancers doing the rumba closing.
"Manana llamamos a tu Mama. We'll phone her first thing in the morning." Adela looked Lydia in the eyes. “I promise you we’ll call her tomorrow.” Lydia squeezed herself between Adela, Matilde and the dog and hid her face against Adela's belly. "I'm thinking to the baby. I'm thinking to the baby that he's lucky you're his Mami."
Noel called through the window. "It's getting late. Are we going?"
She stopped by her room and picked up the folder with her meeting report. Noel drove in silence through the deep blue dusk to the InfoDes building. Adela took his hand as they entered the ground floor meeting room. She walked along the narrow side aisle and looked at her comrades seated on metal folding chairs. She felt protected by Pulgarcito's secret presence from her usual feeling of being pierced and crucified by their gazes. She noticed she felt dizzy and reached in her purse for her soda crackers. But this wasn't pregnancy nausea. She'd had none for two days. This was what she always felt when addressing the Comite but never noticed fully until now. Given Pulgarcito she was closer to being whole, less numbed by her need for approval, even acclaim. She remembered this was September 5, by chance the meeting was being held on the 20th anniversary of Leo's exile, the day when Leo took them away from Ventura, had them flown in a tiny Piper airplane over the mountains to La Isla, running away from the socialism he had at first embraced, when it was theoretical, and rejected when the schools were nationalized. He'd never forgiven her for becoming a socialist anyway. How could a history professor be completely ahistoric? How could he not know which movements were forward, which backward? Even if up close they sometimes looked the same. She sat beside Arminda who was nipping at her heels wanting her Party job. Yes, up close, any given person's ambition might smell the same in Leo's Partido Constitucion, but it was only her own Partido Liberacion which could claim to be in the lineage, the direct lineage, of Tomasa Monte and which was moving toward the future. Leo had brought them into exile and loosed this legacy of error that choked her voice today. How had she ended up in the wrong country, in the wrong life, in the wrong body? Only Pulgarcito was absolutely, completely right, and he was in her.
She rattled through her report on propaganda, deadlines missed, flyers produced, pamphlets almost ready to go to press. She saw Arminda take notes, furiously searching for her opening. She wanted to say, "I'm pregnant. Take this job." She faced the serious, thoughtful faces of the militants and never once looked at Marisela and Enrique who sat at the podium to her left, until her very last phrase. "I'm pregnant and hereby request a leave from my duties by doctor's order." She held Marisela's gaze for a moment then picked up her papers and walked back to her place. Resigning from a Party post was not possible. It was a breach of discipline, a cause for discipline, punishable by expulsion! Yet getting pregnant and disappearing without complaint was how it had gone with most of the young mothers in the Party. She wished to disappear, to cave into her terror of Marisela. Or to at last say to her, 'I won't be scared of you anymore,” and walk away. Still she had resigned in public. Noel's expression showed surprise and maybe saw some admiration. She sat back down on the second row beside him and clutched his hand as she sat through the remaining reports, not listening. When it was over she raced to the car, kissing few faces, and hearing few congratulations, wanting to be gone before the crowd swarming Marisela and Enrique thinned and Marisela could approach her, tell her it wasn't so simple. Tomasa Monte would not have run away from history. But she was only Adelita Ramos. Would Pulgarcito be enough to get her Father back into her life? They'd seen each other at Elsa Mirta's death bed, but he'd never spoken to her since he'd seen her byline in Verdades on an article about propaganda policy. The article had almost no words of her own by the time Marisela had finished editing it.
She wanted to cry but she didn't know how and on the drive home the tears gathered pressure around her eyes. She would have a migraine. She could barely focus when she stepped out of the car and almost bumped into her neighbor Irma who was pacing outside their two houses.
"Adela se llevaron a Tomaas." Irma grabbed Adela's shoulders and reached for Noel's hand. “They took Tomas. I went with him to the night school I've been wanting to enroll him in. You don't know what it took me to get him to agree to meet me there. We met there after work and he saw me in the crowd milling outside and put his arm around me. Do you believe it? You know how many months its been since my son put his arm around me." Irma sobbed. She brought her forehead to touch Adela's who now, at last, was sobbing with her. “We got a number for the intake interview and sat down close to the back, by an aisle, to wait to be called. Tomas saw a friend sitting up front and he called out, Pana. It was noisy so he called out louder until at last his friend heard and they began to carry on a conversation loud over the voices from the back of the room to the front. I should have stopped him. I always fail to protect my son. A woman on the other aisle called out: keep it down. Her hostility was gasoline to his flame and he talked louder. A man from behind us, a small thin man, called out shut up, and when Tomas turned to face him, he yelled, “There are no punks here.” Then another man stood up, a short squat man old enough to be Tomas' father. He screamed, shut up punk, and put up his fists and shoved his body at Tomas. In an instant Tomas was flinging his fists. He knocked the man's glasses off and might have knocked him out if two cops hadn't right that minute taken Tomas from behind, one by each arm, pulled his arms behind him and cuffed him.
"I screamed at the short squat man, What's more important, silence in this room, or not hating? What's more important, silence in this room or not hating? But I was hating him for hating my son. I would have killed him if I could kill. And sometimes I wish I could kill, Adela. Tomas was so happy, Adela. He was going to go back to school. He thought the world was maybe, maybe ready for somebody like him. But he was wrong." Irma sobbed. "And now I don't know where he is. I don't know where they've taken him to be arraigned or when they'll arraign him or how long they'll keep him or what they'll charge him with. God knows what he had on him. No wonder he has to smoke to numb himself to this."
Adela held her tight.
He doesn’t have to smoke, she wanted to say. He’s got to make a revolution. But Irma was the divorced wife of a big teniente. She knew Adela worked at InfoDes and even wrote for Verdades but they never talked directly of politica.
Noel put his arms around both women. "I'll drive you to the precincts." With this kindness Irma's knees buckled. "What will I do with Tina?" They walked into the house, Noel picked up the sleeping Tina in his arms. They lay her in Lydia's bed. Both girls half waked and sat up with puzzled expressions. "Am I dreaming?" Lydia said. Adela hugged them both. "We have to go help Tomas and everything will be fine in the end." By the door Noel explained to the sleep dazed Matilde that they were going to look for Tomas at all the nearby precincts. She nodded and lay on Lydia's bed with the two girls. "Me quedo hasta que se duerman."
The women stayed in the car and Noel strode past the policemen in their riot gear and into the precinct closest to El Llano which had no precinct of its own. He was gone an hour and he came out knowing nothing. Adela held Irma's hand with one hand and lay the other against her belly. She was bringing Pulgarcito into a world where boys were endangered, a targeted group. She trembled. Not until the third try, and by now it was three in the morning, did Noel uncover where Tomas was being held and which court he would be arraigned in. They drove to Old City. They waited in the car, slumped together, dozing on the front seat, until 6. Already there were other Mothers, other Fathers ahead of them on the line to enter the court room. Noel remembered Adela must eat and crossed the narrow street to an all night cafeteria. He brought back media noches and mamey milk shakes. Irma took one bite, one sip, then shook her head. They weren't done eating when their turn came to file through. The guard grabbed their food to toss it but Noel gave it to the young woman behind them on the line. "No lo tocamos." The woman hesitated, then took the food. "It's my third time this week. I'm looking for my husband."
So they were among the fortunate because as the detainees filed through they saw Tomas, hands cuffed behind his back, his body turned to face the wall. Irma moaned and gave way. Noel held her up. "No matter how many times I've seen it, I want to scream and kill when I see my son with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Irma held Adela close. “This is your son. Your son. Your baby boy." The women cried hard. Irma touched Adela’s belly. Adela held her friend close. Her own son barely showed yet but she had thrown him out into the world today and already she wanted to take him back, protect him.
Just then Tomas glanced behind him. He saw Irma. His eyes held on his mother’s and softened for a second before he turned back to face the wall.
They chanced to get seats on the last row of the courtroom and waited all morning staring at the dingy gray walls, as son after son filed through, hands held behind him, to face the judge, a plump woman with a tired expression. Adela spoke into Noel’s ear. “It breaks my heart to see them holding their own hands behind their backs.” Noel nodded. “As if they’re saying, the cuffing is now inside me.” The guard tapped Noel hard on the shoulder. “Be quiet or wait outside.”
Just before the session ended at one in the afternoon, Tomas walked up to the judge, head bowed, hands clasped behind his back. Irma moaned. She gripped Adela’s hand. She balled her rosary inside the fist she made with her free hand. Within minutes Tomas had been released with a sentence of community service. “Gracias a Dios.” Irma kissed her rosary.
He’d run into some friends inside who waited for him outside the Old City Central Youth Court. They walked ahead to Adela’s car. “The judge was hungry, she let you go so she could get some lunch.” The yellow eyes boy said. They laughed and patted each other on the back and slapped hands. “Did you see Pardo?, the taller boy said. “He was going to get off cause that judge is like that, and then she saw his other rap sheet. They hooked up his alias.” They laughed. The yellow eyed boy said, “She wasn’t buying his story that his girl is pregnant and he’s looking for a job.” Tomas nodded. “So that was why he screamed. I heard him scream when he got remanded but I didn’t know the reason why.”
They’d reached the car. The three boys filed into the back seat. Just as they she was sliding into the front seat Irma held Adela back. “You hear them?” She spoke in a loud whisper. “You hear them? They should be trading stories about school, or girls, or sports, or dreams they’ve got for their own lives. But this is what they get. This is all they get.” Tomas poked his head out the back window and tugged at his Mother’s hand. “Hey Ma. This is a happy ending. Get in the car. We’re hungry.” All the way back to El Llano the boys told war stories of their stays inside. Everybody laughed so hard their faces were soaked with tears.