Before We Were Free Read Free Page A

glance out the window.
    A half-dozen black Volkswagens are crawling up our driveway.
    Before the cars come to a complete stop, the doors open, and a stream of men pour out all over the property. In their dark glasses, they look like gangsters in the American movies that sometimes come to town.
    I run to get Mami, but she’s already headed for the door. Four men stand in our entryway, all dressed in khaki pants with small holsters at their belts and tiny revolvers that don’t look real. The head guy—or at least he does all the talking—asks Mami for Carlos García and his family. I know something is really wrong when Mami says, “Why? Aren’t they home?”
    But then, instead of going away, this guy asks if his men can search our house. Mami, who I’m sure will say, “Do you have a
permiso
?” steps aside like the toilet is overflowing and these are the plumbers coming to the rescue!
    I trail behind Mami. “Who are they?” I ask.
    Mami swings around, a terrified look on her face, and hisses, “Not now!”
    I race to find Chucha, who’s in the entryway, shaking her head at the muddy boot prints. I ask her who these strange men are.
    “SIM,” she whispers. She makes a creepy gesture of cutting off her head with her index finger.
    “But
who
are the SIM?” I ask again. I’m feeling more and more panicked at how nobody is giving me a straight answer.
    “Policia secreta,”
she explains. “They go around investigating everyone and then disappearing them.”
    “
Secret
police?”
    Chucha gives me her long, slow, guillotine nod that cuts off any further questions.
    They go from room to room, looking in every nook and cranny. When they come through the hall door to the bedroom part of the house, Mami hesitates. “Just a routine search,
doña,
” the head guy says. Mami smiles wanly, trying to show she has nothing to hide.
    In my room, one guy lifts the baby-doll pajamas I left lying on the floor as if a secret weapon is hidden underneath. Another yanks the covers back from my bed. I hold on tight to Mami’s ice-cold hand and she tightens her hold on mine.
    The men go into Lucinda’s room without knocking, opening up the jalousies, lifting the bedskirt and matching skirt on her vanity, plunging their bayonets underneath. My older sister sits up in bed, startled, her pink-foam rollers askew from sleeping on them. A horrible red rash has broken out on her neck.
    When the men are done searching the room, Mami gives Lucinda and me her look that means business. “I want you both in here while I accompany our visitors,” she says with strained politeness.
    I run to her side. “Mami, no!” I start wailing. I don’t want her to go with these creepy policemen. What if they hurt her?
    The head guy turns to me. With his dark glasses on, I can’t see his eyes, only the reflection of a terrified girl clinging to her mother. “What are you crying about, eh?
¡Tranquila!
” he orders.
    It’s as if his steely command cuts off the breath in my lungs. I can’t even move when Mami gently undoes my hands from around her waist. She follows the men out, pulling the door closed behind her.
    Lucinda turns to me. She’s scratching the rash on her neck, even though Mami has told her not to. “What is going on?”
    “Chucha said they’re secret police,” I tell her. “They were asking for the Garcías, but Mami acted like she didn’t know.” My voice breaks when I think of Mami all alone with them right this moment.
    “The SIM know perfectly well where the Garcías are,” Lucinda says. “They just want an excuse to traipse through here. And of course, they’d love to get their hands on Papi.”
    “But why?”
    Lucinda looks at me as if I’m a lot dumber than she thought I was. “Don’t you know anything, Anita?” Her eyes stray up to my hair. “You’ve got to do something with those bangs,” she says, brushing them back with her hand. It’s the closest she can come to saying something nice when she sees how