The Girl from Guantanamo by Donald Lloyd Roth

Author:Donald Lloyd Roth
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590794340
Publisher: SelectBooks, Inc.
Published: 2017-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

At 7:15 the next morning, Pilar kissed her mother goodbye and left to join the other commuters on the bus leaving for the naval base. She carried nothing with her but bus fare, lunch money, and her cousin’s birth certificate. The bus, passed through a checkpoint set up by the Cuban army. The tension was palpable, creating a climate of fear among people on the street.

Outside the gate of the base, just as her mother had told her, there was a bulletin board with listings of available positions. Pilar jostled for position with several others, mostly men, as she scanned the board. There were several openings for various types of laborers, all typed in Spanish on yellow slips of paper, which were snatched up by the men. The yellow slips denoted that these positions were for one day only, and men came every morning at eight when the new positions were posted daily. As she watched the slips disappear from the board, she spotted a pink one, also in Spanish, seeking a woman to work in the laundry. She reached up to grab it but was beaten by another faster hand of a woman her mother’s age.

She searched desperately and was beginning to lose hope when she saw a blue slip of paper very high up on the board, too high to read or even to reach without jumping, so she jumped, snatching it off the board. She was surprised to see that the writing on it was in English. It read: “File Clerk Wanted—Must Speak Fluent English.”

Her heart raced. She was certain that this was the job meant for her. She approached the guard at the gate as she gripped the blue slip of paper in her hand.

“I’m applying for this job,” she said confidently.

The Marine Corps guard eyed her up and down. “Identification, please.”

She handed over her cousin’s birth certificate, and the guard copied the name down onto a list on his clipboard.

He handed the birth certificate back to her. “You need to see Mr. Garcia in the administration building,” he said, pointing to a long, two story building about a quarter mile inside the base. Pilar felt an inner glow when she noticed a sign above the gate that read: “You Are Now Entering the United States of America.”

The guard smiled and said: “Good luck, miss.”

Pilar smiled back at the man, snapped to attention and executed a crisp salute as she walked through the gate. She was back in the United States!

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