My Own Revolution Read Free Page B

pounds his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I refuse to play this game.”
    I take the letter from Mami and read it through again. It all sounds so logical, so matter of fact. I think of Mr. Babicak staring down at me, asking about my family. Could someone be forcing Tati to do this thing because I painted out a couple of letters on a wall? The smell of Mami’s beef stew with turnips, my favorite, suddenly makes me queasy.
    “Come eat,” says Mami to Tati, this time pulling out a chair at the table. Steam rises from the soup pot, billowing into the dining room, into the light from the swinging lamp.
    Bela sits down, and Mami ladles out a bowl of stew.
    But Tati doesn’t go to the table with the burgundy cloth, the cloth with the flowers faintly woven in. He plops down on the couch so hard that the cushions spring up. “I refuse to do it,” he says. “I won’t.”
    Mami crosses the room. She kneels beside the couch, taking one of Tati’s hands in both of hers. “If you don’t do this, what will become of you? Of us?”
    I don’t go to the table, either. Instead I open my history book and read:
Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the Peloponnesian War, was reduced to a state of near subjugation.
    Bela starts to cry, wiping her face with the edge of the burgundy tablecloth.
    Tati buries his face in his big free hand. The clock ticks. The cuckoo bird slides out, pecking up and down. At last he says, “Okay, okay. I won’t sign anything without at least seeing the man.”
    I flip the page and read:
Destroying whole cities, the Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the golden age of Greece.
The black words swim. I memorize the words about the fall of the Greeks. The way they couldn’t hold out. The way they just fell.

We travel with the windows of the baby-blue Fiat rolled down to let the springtime air in. Bela is sitting in the front on Mami’s lap, dancing her doll up and down. The wind fills our hair with the smells of pine trees and fresh-cut hay. Danika sits next to me here in the backseat. Ever since we were little, she’s always come with us to Dr. Machovik’s vacation house in the spiky green pines.
    This two-lane road winds through small towns, then through the collective farms, with their combines and tractors rolling through the fields. We pass a line of horse-drawn wagons. It feels good to get away from Trencin and Mr. Babicak and
The Communist Manifesto.
Away from whoever is bearing down on Tati.
    In the front seat, Mami and Tati say things like “Look at that quaint house” or “Look at that new factory out here in the middle of nowhere.”
    The factory is called Eastern Slovakian Steelworks. Under a hammer and sickle, two painted slogans scream at passersby:
Long Live Communism!
and
By working hard, we’ll have success in our future!
    Tati snorts. “No one wants to work hard. If you do, there’s no reward. If you slack off, there’s no punishment.”
    If we ever get to America, I’ll work hard pumping gas at my great-aunt’s gas station.
    “Look at that,” Tati says, braking and pointing to a policeman with a radio. “See him talking into that? He’s informing his buddy on the other end of the village that we’re coming through. If we arrive too soon, we’ll get a speeding ticket.”
    He pulls up to a small shop. First he takes his time wiping down the windshield, then he goes inside. After a while, he comes back out carrying a small box of chocolates, saying, “No speed trap is going to catch us! The government isn’t going to get extra money out of me!”
    Mami opens the box, gives a chocolate to Bela, then gives it to me. Danika and I each unwrap a chocolate, the gooey sweetness melting onto our fingers.
    Danika rests her arms on her violin case. She takes that violin everywhere. As we drive, she hums bits of the Vivaldi piece she’s working on.
    We arrive at my favorite part of the trip: passing through the Tatra Mountains with pines piercing the