The Empty Chair

By Claudia Yelin

THE EMPTY CHAIR—SYNOPSIS
Claudia Yelin

In the midst of a ruthless dictatorship in Argentina, during which thousands of people are brutally killed or disappeared, the Khun family emigrates to the United States. Uncle Hugo Khun, still so very young, is among the desaparecidos.
Years later, Doctor Pablo Khun—father, husband, and older brother of Hugo—receives a phone call at his office. There will be a trial in Argentina regarding his brother's kidnapping. In a haze, Pablo goes home and tries to rest on the couch, but he can't: he's been avoiding even the mention of his brother since the family fled.
That night, the Khun family (Pablo, his wife, Laura, and their three children: Camila, Dora, and Dani) are forced to confront why they left Argentina. Yet the family meeting does not go well: Pablo's mute. Laura stumbles over her explanation. Dani, age seven, storms out with Camila, sixteen, on his heels. And Dora the middle-schooler, who's already struggling to adjust to the United States, can't understand how her parents lied to her for years.
Told through each family member's unique voice, the family's crisis deepens as everyone comes to the horrible realization that Hugo wasn't just kidnapped, he was murdered. Dani gets sick at school. Dora reminisces about the word games she used to play with her uncle. And Camila has to reconcile Hugo's tragedy with her recent invitation to the prom by Zac Higgins, the guy of her dreams. How does a teenager negotiate such joy and sorrow at once?
Meanwhile, with Pablo practically absentee, Laura, the mother, is forced not only to bear the family's trauma but to handle an escalating crisis at Camila's high school: Laura, a school committee member, had recommended to a teacher, Mrs. Simpson, that the school find a new graduation speaker. Why should a basketball player give a commencement speech? Yet Laura soon learns that the speaker is black, and she's just stepped into a minefield. Now, both accusations of racism and racist taunts are being tossed—not just at Laura, but at her daughter too.
The Khun family flies to Argentina to assist in the trial. Yet Pablo's more sullen than ever. And the racist debacle at Camila's high school is only gaining strength: There's a riot in Mrs. Simpson's classroom, and students are brought to tears trying to defend the Khuns. So says Zac Higgins in the love letters he's sending to Camila.
The trial grows near, and tensions escalate. After lawyers learn that Pablo, a doctor, was present in an ambulance used for illicit military operations, Pablo's role in the trial turns from character- to eye-witness. He must remember his past, his brother, but he can't. And little precocious Dani, the youngest of the children, barely understanding the big words being flung—dictator, militia, kidnapping, Habeas Corpus—he's starting to feel invisible. Maybe it'd be better if he ran away …
THE EMPTY CHAIR is the story of a family torn apart by a dictatorship but reunited by the belief that large battles must be fought in our own backyards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667836324

Book preview

cover.jpg

THE EMPTY CHAIR

Copyright © 2021 by Claudia Yelin

All rights reserved. Claudia Yelin

FIRST EDITION

Cover Design by Maria Laura Reos

Cover art by Hence Molina

Editor: Mathew Perez

www.claudiayelin

[e-mail]

Print ISBN: 978-1-66783-631-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66783-632-4

for Hugo, for justice, with love

Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.

—Thurgood Marshall

Contents

Prologue

I

Shocking News

Nobody Asked Me

Musing

Not a Butterfly Anymore

A Ticket to Safety

What about Trust!

Joy and Misery Do Not Blend

Uncle Hugo Is Gone

Never a Perfect Moment

The Day after the Bomb Exploded

Bumble Bees Buzzing in my Head

Entrapped

Escaped

OMG! Is This for Real?

Thank You, Hermano

Why Do We Have to Be Different?

First Kiss

II

In the Air

To Keep the Memory Alive

A Rock Star Welcome

Terrifying, Petrifying, Dreadful Nightmares

Not Just an Empty Chair

A Witness

Police in the Kitchen

The Legal Process Unfolds

Emotions Run High

An Anchor to the Present

Awake at Night, Again

Attachment: Mom’s Letter

My Day in Court

The Perils of Forfeiting Democracy

Dani and the Empty Chair

Closure to an Incredible Journey

Leaving Again

III

A New Reality

My New Celebrity Status

I Did It!

Facing the Chair

Prologue

This story is based on true events. Many of the facts are real; the dates are not.

In 1976, there was a military coup in Argentina, and a junta (a small group ruling a country) took power until 1983 when democratic elections took place.

During the military dictatorship, daily life was upended. Government violence was rampant. The word to describe the many victims of this government violence was desaparecidos (disappeared). Of course, these desaparecidos had not been vanished from Earth; they had been forcefully arrested, incarcerated, tortured, and, oftentimes, killed.

At the time, relatives of the missing tried to find their loved ones. Yet even after it became clear that the disappeared had been murdered, many continued to use the word desaparecido because it allowed them to maintain their demands that their loved ones be returned alive. Mothers of the desaparecidos gathered in the capital in protest, and their demands for the return of their children eventually became a slogan: Aparición con vida y castigo a los culpables (Let them appear alive and punish the guilty).

In time, these mothers, with their iconic white headscarves, gained the support of people and human rights organizations around the world, and another movement, this one composed of grandmothers, was born. This group searched for the babies of kidnapped parents, as well as for those children born in captivity. More than four hundred babies were kidnapped, and most of them were illegally adopted by those in power. Since the inception of the grandmothers’ movement, 128 grandchildren have been reconnected to their biological families, some of them very recently.

Now that democracy has been reinstated in Argentina, many of the perpetrators of the coup have been brought to justice. Even today, the trials for the dictatorship’s crimes continue as new documents detailing government atrocities surface.

Although the dictatorship was deposed more than thirty-five years ago, this book’s story takes place in the present. I chose to tell this story as if the coup happened recently in order to bring this history to life for a younger audience, but I also made this decision because injustices like the ones depicted here are happening now, like the detention here in the United States of the children of those who have attempted to enter the country without legal permission.

All in all, over thirty thousand people were murdered by the Argentine government.

I

Shocking News

Pablo

I hung up the phone and sat at my desk, paralyzed. While the staff was on lunch break, I had hoped to rest for a few minutes after a busy morning at the health clinic. I often try to relax, but I never succeed, and that day was no exception—although the circumstances were far from normal.

My head was spinning as I tried to process the information I had just received. The familiar voice on the other end of the phone—and world, to be precise—had sounded weird, like it was announcing something over a megaphone. Or maybe I was just hearing the voice’s echo in my head. I honestly don’t know. The word trial was like a mallet pounding on my forehead.

Just then, a colleague entered my office. He found me sitting with my hands over my ears. Perhaps he thought I was hallucinating. He lightly put a hand on my back, and I jumped, startled, like I had awoken from a bad dream.

Are you okay? he asked, but instead of answering, I picked up my car keys and left.

There were a few patients sitting in the waiting room, and the nurse came running after me as I exited the building. From my car, I could hear her shouting, asking if I was coming back, but I couldn’t answer her because I didn’t know. I was sweating as I drove home.

My wife wasn’t there when I arrived, and I was thankful for that. I needed to collect my thoughts and pull myself together. I managed to move from the desk in my office to the sofa in the living room. That was progress, I thought, frightened by the emotions that were keeping me prisoner.

I tried to relax on the couch. I unclenched my hands and concentrated on my breath as my wife, a counselor, had suggested I do when I felt tense. It must have worked because when my wife, Laura, arrived, she found me dozing.

She didn’t even say hello.

What happened? she blurted. You look as white as a mummy!

I started to speak only after a long pause that must have irritated her, until she heard the reason for my muteness.

There’s going to be a trial regarding Hugo’s disappearance, I mumbled.

She said nothing. Instead, she quietly sat beside me and grabbed my hand. We sat in silence. For how long, I don’t know.

The telephone rang, and Laura jumped and took the call in the kitchen. It was my colleague calling to find out whether I had arrived home safe and was feeling okay. The sound of the phone animated Laura, but for me it had the awful effect of unleashing a torrent of unpleasant memories I had long kept repressed.

When Laura came back to the couch, she took my hand gently and led me to stand and move about. Why don’t you take a nap? she suggested, after seeing my state, and began fluffing the couch’s cushions. The kids will be back from school soon.

Trying to follow her advice, I lay back down and stretched my legs, but I was restless. I kept remembering him, my brother. I wished I could cry.

I had never allowed myself to cry after Hugo’s disappearance. The pain of his loss had long been churning inside me, but in my mind, I thought that you only cried after a loved one’s death, and I was not going to concede that my brother was dead.

Yet in truth, I had felt for a long time like I was adrift in an alternate reality—hiding from facts, lying to my children, living as an impostor. I appeared to be a good man, but ultimately I had failed the test of manhood. I had not protected my brother from his terrible demise.

On the rare occasions that we spoke about it, Laura would ask: Why would you think that was your responsibility? I had no answer. I knew my guilt to be irrational, that Hugo’s fate was the same as thousands of others, but it didn’t matter.

Needing to save him, she would add, that’s the impulse of someone omnipotent. You don’t have superpowers.

I knew she was attempting to comfort me and dispel my distorted ideas—and she was right: I didn’t have superpowers. Still, my omnipotent and distorted thoughts were my jail, and I could not set myself free.

Nobody Asked Me

Dora

March 26, 2018

My name’s Dora. I’m thirteen now, but I was ten when my family moved to the United States. The move was miserable. Nobody considered my feelings or asked me about moving to a new country. Nobody thought I had my own life, not to mention best friends. And even now, I still miss my grandmother a lot. I was super close to her.

You see, my grandmother was also an immigrant, and she arrived in Argentina at age ten, the same age I was when my parents made the terrible decision to move us to the United States. My grandmother understands what it means to adjust to a new life in a new country, so I feel like I can talk to her. Lucky for me, now there’s Skype and WhatsApp, but when she was young, she didn’t have those things. No internet and no cell phones for when she was missing home. I can’t even imagine a time without Facebook and Instagram. Though to be honest, I didn’t know how much I needed the internet until I became an immigrant myself.

During the move, my parents (who tried to present moving as a great adventure) were stressed all the time, so with all the difficulties, us kids got used to our new life faster than they did. Getting used to our new home faster than our parents was weird, but nothing compares to how nervous I was moving here and not knowing English. Language was always so important to me. I, Dora, who loved the sounds of words and sentences and who had learned to speak even before walking. With my arrival in the United States, I had suddenly turned mute. I was a sixth grader without language. Ridiculous! I felt like a fool. On top of that, I was the youngest kid in the class, and to make things worse, I was tiny. I felt so awkward! I held on tight to my ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher, like a blind person to her guide. (I wanted to say dog, but that wouldn’t have been fair to Mrs. Donaway: she’s the nicest person, my safe place.)

Three years have gone by since our arrival in this country. I never imagined we would stay for this long. My mother was so upset about moving that I’d thought of us as a team rooting to go back to where we belonged, Argentina, with our family and my friends. Who could have known that I wouldn’t graduate from my old elementary school with my schoolmates and would miss my graduation trip? For a while, my parents had played with the idea of letting me join my friends back in Argentina for that trip, but there wasn’t enough money for it.

It’s painful for me to accept that my parents have to be so careful with money. Besides, didn’t we come here to have a better life? I’d never been stopped before from doing something because of money—especially if that thing was school related. Now my grandparents (who are not rich) send us money for things like winter coats or medicine. Can you believe that? So much sacrifice . . . For what?

But it’s become very clear that we’re not going back, no matter how much I cry or complain. And believe me, I do both. I know that I annoy my parents with my constant nagging, but I’m confused when I feel like I have the power to make them sad. In fact, I saw my mother cry after one of our fights.

Maybe now you’re beginning to understand how trapped I feel. It’s like two problems in one: I’m unhappy for having been moved like a stupid plant from one country to another, but I hate myself for making my parents feel miserable—especially my mother.

I don’t think she’s aware that I know the power I have to make her cry. But I also think that it’s not just me being bummed out that upsets her. She’s stressed because she’s had to give up her job, and now she’s back in school trying to become a counselor again. Honestly, I don’t know how she manages it because her English is still weak. Who would have thought that it’s easier for a young person to learn a new language than for a grown-up? I’m like . . . sort of sorry for her. But not too much. After all, it was her decision to leave Argentina. Besides, I know she misses her family very much.

You see, my mom and I are similar in that way: we both make strong attachments, and we both tend to be flooded by emotions. I’m kind of impulsive and often say things before thinking. My father is more of a matter-of-fact kind of guy, and my older sister . . . Well, I don’t know. She’s a mixture. She’s sensitive and a great friend to me most of the time, but she’s also very goal oriented and a high achiever. She has this incredible ability to bury her feelings in order to accomplish things. I envy her for that, though I