The Distant Marvels (11 page)

I catch my reflection in the window and it startles me. I don't look much like myself. I test it, purse my lips and watch my reflection do the same, but still, I do not recognize the gesture. Perhaps I am looking at another me, a doppelganger come to prod me into telling them all of it, even the stories I've kept to myself.

A deep crack resounds throughout the house in that moment, as if a beam somewhere has given way. “Ay!” a few of the women shout. I sit very still, bracing for a collapse. But none comes.

Mireya eyes the ceiling fearfully, her purse clutched to her chest. “The roof is going to come crashing down on us, I know it,” she says.

“Don't be so negative,” I tell her.

“Aren't you afraid?” Mireya asks. It's the first honest question she has asked me. I see a glimpse of my old friend in her look.

“I'll tell you about fear,” I say, leaning forward. When no one stops me, I begin again.

 

W
e arrived in Dos Rios at the end of April in 1895. Agustín had rifled through my mother's trunk for something valuable to sell. But she had nothing but her clothes and mine, and the pistol she'd used on Aldo Alarcón, which Agustín did not want to part with.

“The galleon coin,” Lulu told him, indicating where in the trunk's lining to cut. With a small knife, Agustín made a precise incision in the green-striped lining, shoved his fingers into the hole, and drew out the old coin that his mother had brought from Spain. I watched as my father clutched the gold coin. He kissed it and said, “Our salvation,” disappearing with the coin into the village of Dos Rios, while Lulu and I waited for him.

When he returned, it was with a horse—a huge, speckled, pregnant mare.

“She'll be slow,” Agustín said, “but she can carry us all.”

We spent the day scavenging what we could from the trunk and our surroundings. There, on the outskirts of town, were plenty of fruit trees—mango and ciruella—though they were often choked in vines. We gathered what fruit we could. Lulu dressed me in many layers, and did the same for herself. Every once in a while I'd catch her wincing and clutching at her stomach. Sometimes, a tear slipped down her cheek. But she said nothing to Agustín about it. When he was a few feet away, I asked, “Mamá, what's wrong? Are you hurt?”

She clutched my face hard, her fingers digging into my cheeks. “Not a word to your father about Julio Reyes, entiendes? If he suspects that Julio and I—” she said, stopping short. “He'll kill me, María Sirena. He's capable of it,” she warned me.

Finally, when night fell, Agustín loaded us onto the horse. We rode through the dark. I sat sandwiched between my parents, and fell asleep with my forehead against my father's warm back. He smelled of copper and blood. In the morning, Agustín stopped at a small, thatch-roofed house, a bohío. The country people fed us some leftovers of arróz con leche, gave us a large hammock to use at night, and wished us well. “¡Viva Cuba libre!” they shouted as we rode away. My father lifted a fist in the air without turning around.

“The country people are with us,” he said, his voice choked with tears.

He stopped in several places, and in each small bohío, Agustín learned more about the insurgents in the area, and where to find them. At dawn, we came upon a place in the woods that had been recently scorched. The grass was blackened beneath our horse's hooves, and the trees were gnarled and ashy. Here were several hammocks dangling from the enormous ceiba trees that had survived the fire.

Men were seated in a circle on the ground with maps laid out in front of them.

“It's him,” Lulu said breathily at the moment that Agustín pulled hard on the reins. “José Martí,” she said to me, whispering in my ear. My breath came short at the name. I followed the trail of my mother's gaze, but could not pick the man out from the group.

“Patriots,” my father said, dismounting. The men rose, brandishing their rifles and machetes. My mother clutched me hard.

“Name yourself,” one of the men said.

“Agustín Alonso. An insurgent like yourselves,” my father said, stepping closer to the men with each word. “I was in Havana just recently. Rotting in a prison for flying our flag.”

“We heard the western rebellion was thwarted,” one of the insurgents said. “There were supposed to have been two—one in Havana and another here, in Oriente.”

“As far as I know, the chaos in Havana was a reaction to what you men accomplished here,” Agustín said. The one who'd asked the question threw his hands up in frustration.

“Do you have supplies?” another asked.

“Hombre, nothing but a pair of strong arms and well-placed cojones,” Agustín said, gripping his crotch for a moment.

Some of the men laughed. Then, another spoke: “Sí, and you've also brought two women to slow us down.”

I felt myself beaming. I'd never been called a woman, though I knew it was dark, and that in the light of day he would have called me a girl.

“I can fight.” My mother spoke quietly, though all the men heard her.

Remembering that she'd killed Aldo Alarcón, I shouted, “She can! I've seen her!”

More laughter. My father turned and scowled at me. The look on his face frightened me, and I remembered the story from his childhood that he'd told me on the train to Dos Rios, about the time he'd left his shoes in the middle of the hallway in Casa Velázquez, and how his mother had taken all of his things—shoes, shirts, books, toys, what little he had—and flung them in the Cauto River. “I may be a servant in this house, but I am not your maid. Learn to take care of what's yours and you'll secure a better life for yourself,” his mother had said. Agustín had looked at me intently when he finished the story, saying, “My mother was a tremendous woman.” I read a warning in his look and in the memory. My mother had held my hand too tightly during the telling of the tale, and I read a warning in that, too.

I felt my mother dismounting. She held onto me to steady herself. Her hands trembled.

“Señores,” she began. “Compatriotas. You hope to found a free nation here, do you not?” She spoke animatedly, her delicate hands dancing before her, as if she were doing a floréo in a flamenco dance. The men watched, mesmerized. Even Agustín stopped scowling, the grimace falling from his face at once. “A nation is made up of men, sí, and women, too. As well as children.” She pointed at me, and my face felt warm. I looked away, unable to bear so many of the insurgents' eyes fixed on me at once. “Then, let us fight. Let us learn to defend this new nation. We Cuban women can be midwives to this great birth, if only you'll let us.”

There was silence. I wanted to applaud, shout, “Bravo, Mamá!” I didn't, of course. I sat in the saddle while the pregnant mare shuddered beneath me, huffing and snorting in that way of horses. The animal was the only thing making a sound. I ran my hands over her pelt to calm myself, and the horse settled down, too.

That was when I noticed the poet for the first time. He parted the group of men and approached us, a heavy pack still on his back, as if he expected to have to leave the modest campsite at any moment. “It's a pleasure to meet a family so brave,” he said, extending a hand to my father, and then kissing my mother on both cheeks, like a European.

Lulu looked away demurely, whispered, “Gracias,” and returned to the horse.

“Who is that?” I whispered to Lulu.

“That is the man who called the war,” she said breathlessly. Later, I'd learn all about José Julián Martí, the poet and patriot, who had inspired Cubans on the island and abroad to rise up over Spain. But in that moment, all I saw was a slender man, with a large forehead and a thin mustache that curled up at the ends. His eyes were small and brown. There was something of the rodent about his features, though I liked him at once. Lulu and Agustín were struck dumb by his presence. They had seen him give a speech once, in New York, but familiarity had done nothing to diminish Martí's aura in their eyes.

“You may camp with us tonight, and ride with us tomorrow if you'd like,” Martí said. My mother had charmed him, I knew. While my father had gripped his balls to show his strength, my mother had said a few words to the right man. I took note of the difference.

Another one of the insurgents, a bald man with a gleaming machete dangling from a rope around his waist, spoke up, “Oye, you have no military experience, poet. Perhaps it's best if you—”

“Cállate,” said another insurgent to the bald man. “This is Martí you're talking to.” Then, facing my father, Martí's defender said, “Make yourselves at home.”

There was no more arguing against our presence that night.

Later, after we'd eaten a meal of roasted rabbit, my mother introduced me to Martí. “Señor,” my mother said, holding me tight against her thighs, “mi hija, María Sirena.” She presented me to the poet by caressing my cheek with her hand. I leaned into her touch, hungry for it still, though I was fourteen years old.

The poet cocked his head to the side. “I can tell already that you are your mother's muse,” he said.

When Martí left us, my mother said, “Take a good look, María Sirena. There goes a man without equal.”

“Papá?” I asked her, and she laughed.

“No, mi cielo, Martí. There would be no rebellion if not for the poet.” Her gaze lingered long after the man, even after he'd lain down in his hammock, the only part of him visible a bony knee.

“The poet is handsome, too, isn't he?” she asked me, though she didn't expect an answer and I did not give her one.

I realized two things that night. The first was that Lulu admired my father in direct relation to his status as a rebel. She'd left Julio Reyes in Havana without much of a thought once Agustín returned, bloody and smelling of smoke. Now, at Dos Rios, another man threatened to trump my father's allegiance to the cause, and hence, take his place in my mother's estimation.

I
imagined myself riding with the insurgents forever. Perhaps they'd find me a white horse like Martí's, I thought. One of the insurgents, a man they called El Blanco because of his fair skin and freckles, had a heavy whip that I'd studied from afar. It was braided and glossy, and I longed to carry a weapon like that. Another was a redheaded man, and they called him, not very creatively, Rojo. There was a pair of very young insurgents my age, brothers, no more than fourteen—Antonio and Francisco—who lisped like Spaniards and kept to themselves, which I was glad for. People my own age made me nervous. They seemed to be nearly grown when I still felt so small. There was a man named Toledo, who had a knife in his hands at all times. It had an ivory handle and the tip of the blade was rusty. He'd balance it on his knuckles and make it seesaw, to my delight. When my mother saw me laughing with Toledo, she dragged me away at once. Later, I noticed that Agustín and Toledo liked talking to one another, their faces tight grimaces as they discussed the most humane way of killing a downed man, and the least humane way, too. In the light of the cooking fire, which fell to my mother and me to stoke and tend, my father and Toledo looked like devils. There were others, but either I cannot remember their names, or I never knew them.

What I do know is that by the end of that spring, most of the men in our group were dead or missing.

We rode the countryside during the day, sometimes getting into skirmishes with Spanish soldiers. I always knew there would be a fight on the days Agustín led Lulu and me to a stranger's bohío. The country people, who we called guajiros, would let us stay in their house and share their table. More often than not, we ate jutía and rice. The large rodent's meat was surprisingly juicy, though there was something of the swamp in it, as if I could taste the green muck of the jutía's home. I could taste something sour, too. Perhaps it was the fear that must have flavored the creature's body at the approach of a caimán, or in the end, a hunter. On those days, I knew the insurgents would find a narrow passage in the woods, where the trees were tightly grouped on either side of a trail, and hide, muddying their faces to blend with the forest, and wait in ambush for Spanish soldiers. They always seemed to know where the Spaniards would be, and I guessed the guajiros were relaying messages to the insurgents.

When Agustín returned for us, he'd be the worse for wear, his skin scraped, his clothes torn, the creases by his eyes caked with mud. But he was alive, and Lulu would embrace him silently, hold his face still as she studied it, and bury her head in his neck. All of this Agustín would endure as stiffly as if my mother had wrapped herself around a statue. He'd thank the guajiros who took care of us, settle us on the mare, and lead us to the next campsite without a word. Once, when Lulu caught me staring at my father on one of these rides through the woods, she told me, “It's a great burden to be a patriot.” My expression must have given away some of what I was thinking, that my father's coldness on such days frightened me. Underneath us, the horse would sometimes buck and pull away from Agustín. I sympathized with the creature.

The mare had given birth to a sandy-colored foal early that spring. I'd watched the birth in fascination and horror. The horse's flared nostrils, her white, blocky teeth bared, the grunts of her labor, and then the messy slippage of the baby as it slid from her—all of it was burned into my memory. The foal died that morning, and the men butchered it for food. Though there was a great swelling of emotion regarding the cause, for the most part the insurgents we rode with were unyielding men who ate the foal with relish, waving pieces of charred meat around our horse's face and laughing. My father joined in on the fun while I watched, refusing food, pulling stinkweeds out of the earth with both fists in frustration, for I had wanted to keep the foal for myself and I'd been the one to discover its stiff little body in the morning, which had been hard on me. The men had laughed at my tears, at my furrowed brow, and Agustín said nothing in my defense.