The Distant Marvels (15 page)

After we eat, Rosalia sits beside me and asks me about José Martí. “We all learned his poems in school. Recitations and such. I was terrible at it. Muy bruta. What was his voice like, I wonder? Do you remember?”

“It was a high voice. High for a man, but not feminine. Razor sharp. Precise,” I say, surprised I remember it so well.

“Ah, I would have liked his voice to be the booming sort,” Rosalia says, disappointed in me, as if I fashioned José Martí myself.

Estrella goes to the cardboard box Ofelia brought in and asks, “Is there more food?”

“No,” Ofelia says, and picks up her own empty plate.

Susana asks, “No more for lunch, you mean?”

“Of course there is more,” Celia says. “Isn't there, Ofelia?”

Wordless, Ofelia goes around the room and gathers all of the empty plates. She does not look at Susana, and I take it to mean that there may not be any more food at all.

Dulce is still eating, grain of rice by grain of rice, when she says, “Don't wait for me to finish,” waving Ofelia off. “I eat like an infant these days. Go on with your story, María Sirena.” Ofelia leaves with the cardboard box and the dirty dishes.

“The congrís was hard,” Rosalia says.

“Food is food,” Estrella responds. “That may be the last congrís we see for a while.” We are all quiet, save for the sound of Dulce's fork against her plate.

“Go on,” Susana says to me.

“Might as well,” says Rosalia. “We have nothing else to do.”

I look at Mireya. She swallows thickly and shrugs. Outside, someone is shouting the name “Fernando!” again and again. It is a woman's voice, and at once I think of a small boy, lost in the storm, perhaps, or a husband gone missing or even, a large dog that has run off in fear of thunder. She is anguished in her calling, and the name Fernando gets shriller each time she says it. I pick up the pieces of the story where I left off, and her voice fades.

I
t's a safer place for you both,” Agustín explained, describing the workshop in the hills where we would live and work. “There are horses to tend, guns that need repair, machetes to sharpen, clothes to mend.”

“A tallér? You want me to work in a tallér?” Lulu asked, her voice going shrill. I knew she dreamed of battle still. And why not? We had seen them, the women fighters, the mambisas, wearing pants like men, with rifles slung low on their hips instead of babies. My mother eyed them hungrily when they made their way through the camp, and on those days, she would refuse to cook or wash, but rather would sit with Aldo Alarcón's pistol in hand, picking dirt out of the gun's crevices with a fingernail.

“I do,” Agustín said. “The talléres are run by women and children. They keep the Liberation Army in shape.”

Lulu was silent afterwards, and did little speaking in the three days in took us to get to the nearest tallér. Instead, Agustín and I chatted, he telling me stories of his childhood in Santiago de Cuba. It was on that walk that I first learned of his time in Casa Velázquez, of his mother's gold coin, and other stories that revealed the patterns and permutations of his life. It was a good three days, and Agustín did not lose his temper once. In fact, he seemed jolly, hoisting me on his shoulders so that I could pick mangoes off the high branches for our lunch, teaching me how to kill a snake with a machete and how to use the skin for carrying water.

Every so often, Lulu would cough lightly, and a few times, she asked that we stop so she might rest. A thin line of sweat ran over the top of her lips, and she refused the food we brought with us, but seemed to drink more water than our horse. “Is Mamá sick?” I asked Agustín, who did not even turn to look at her.

“She's fine,” he said, though later he forced her to ride the mare even when she wanted to walk.

By the time we reached the tallér, I was happy, and loath to part from my father. I knew would not see him again for a long time.

The tallér was hidden in a valley made shady by towering trees of all kinds. Tucked between the trunks were tents, which had been draped with palm fronds and other green detritus. Camouflaged this way, the tallér wasn't easy to spot. When Agustín tied up the mare, I thought we were only stopping to rest or eat, but my father led us down a steep, rocky path and right into the first tent in the tallér.

Hanging lamps lit the large tent inside. Women and children worked at tables, on the ground, or standing. In their hands were all kinds of weapons in different states of repair. The soft clink of tools filled the space, as did the murmurs of those working there. The place smelled of iron and chicken shit. A few moments later, a dusky hen scurried past me.

Agustín spoke quietly to a thin woman wearing a calico kerchief. She watched us as he talked in her ear, and nodded every so often. When she came over, she extended a hand to Lulu, saying, “Me llamo Bernarda. Welcome to the workshop.”

Lulu did not shake the woman's hand. Instead, she wheeled on Agustín. “I am not staying here,” she said between her teeth. Her cheeks were brightly lit as if from a fire within.

Agustín tipped his hat, a broad-brimmed, floppy hat made of straw, saying, “I'll be back soon,” and just like that, without even a kiss to my cheek, my father was gone, and we were left in the tallér among strangers.

Lulu ran after him, and I followed. By the time the two of us reached the top of the hill, all we could see of Agustín was the back of his head, high atop the mare. “He took the horse,” Lulu said, disbelief in her voice. “He took the horse.”

Back down the hill we went, hand in hand, and into the tent. Lulu looked around, clicking her teeth together. Her hand crushed mine. Before I knew it, Lulu was sitting on the ground and weeping openly. Then, she beat her fist into the earth. Slowly, the tallér grew quiet as the women and children stopped to look at her. Even the chickens, which were allowed to wander the place, ceased their clucking. When Lulu began to scream, the women closed in like a human blanket, wrapping their arms around my mother, helping her to her feet and away from the tent. I heard her screams diminish as she went, then it was my turn to fall to the ground, afraid and alone.

The women were all gone from the tent. Only the children had been left behind. There were three girls, all a bit older than I was. Two were twins, and they wore their hair in long braids that touched their waists. Another was a very blond child, the kind of blond I'd seen infrequently, white as the sun. A smattering of boys, including a few in diapers that sagged, sopping wet, as they chased each other, occupied the space, too. They didn't seem to know what to do with me, and so they stared for a long time.

“My name is María Sirena,” I said at last. My scalp was itching, but I would not scatch it, not now, in front of all these people.

“Stupid name,” one of the boys said.

“Fausto!” one of the twins reprimanded him.

“I'm Marcela,” the other twin said. “She's Graciela,” she added, pointing to her sister. “That's Fausto, she's Veronica, but we call her Blondie, the little ones are Luís, Carlos, and Leopoldo, but we call him Polo.”

“I'll never remember all of that,” I said, and the children shrugged and shook their heads.

Then, another voice spoke out from the mouth of the tent. The figure was hard to see in the glaring sunlight, but I could tell he was a boy about my age. “You forgot to introduce me,” he said, stepping into the tent. “Me llamo Mario,” he said, and reached me in two quick strides. He held out his hand and lifted me to my feet.

It was the first time I had ever touched a black person that I could remember, though I didn't think of it until later that year, when the shade of Mario's skin became a threat to us both. “I was new here once, too,” Mario said, his head cocked to the side as he spoke to me. His hair was uncombed, and his shirt was missing the two top buttons. He gave the impression, at once, of a boy without a mother. But his eyes were quick and bright, and turned up at the corners just a notch. His ears poked out a little from his head. On his chin was a deep scar, which I at first mistook for a dimple. When Mario smiled, the scar flattened to nothing but a patch of shiny skin. When he frowned, it became a tiny well.

“Come with me,” he said, still holding my hand. I followed him out of the tent and around it. There, I saw that the valley was little more than a hollow, and that there were only three tents in total, plus a small enclosure for a couple of horses, both of which walked slowly enough to suggest that they were hurt animals. A pair of goats wandered among the horses; there were chickens everywhere.

“It isn't much,” Mario said. “There are other talléres much bigger than this. They've taken over sugar plantations that the Liberation Army have burned and razed. They're proper factories for weapons. But this place? This place feels like home.”

“You've seen those places? Those other talléres?” I asked.

“Sí. My father left me at one in Matanzas before coming here.”

“Matanzas? My mother says that's where the fighting is fiercest,” I said, leaving out the other things Lulu had said, how she'd begged Agustín to head west, to Matanzas, to the thick of the battle, and how it had frightened me so much.

“She's right,” Mario said. “My father is Ricardo Betancourt. He's the captain of a company. He's in Matanzas province now.” Mario bent down to pick up a hen that had hobbled up to him. “Brinquita, I call her,” he said, and held out the hen's left leg, which was mangled, like a dried bit of grapevine.

“How'd she get hurt?” I asked, petting the animal that had snuggled up against Mario's chest.

“Hawk,” he said. “She's my pet, now.” The chicken cooed in response. It would be like that always with Mario—animals seemed to respond to him. The horses were his to tend, as well. This he told me with pride, and said he wanted to lead a proper cavalry one day. “Negros like me are in charge of companies and battalions in the war, like my father is. Once we win independence, you'll see María Sirena, that there will be no more negro o blanco, just people.” Mario had a faraway look in his eyes, and so I said nothing, but I thought of how Lulu and Agustín had referred to los negros mambises, the black insurrectionists, with such pride to have them fighting on our side, and I thought that perhaps Mario was right.

“So your father is a captain,” I said, and whistled. “What about your mother? Is she a mambisa? My mother wants to be one, but Papá won't allow it.”

Mario was about to answer me when I heard Lulu scream from inside the other tent, the one I hadn't seen yet. I ran as hard as I could, drew open the flap, and watched in horror as my mother brandished a machete and swung it to and fro at the women of the tallér.

“Illuminada,” one of the women called my mother's name, her hands up in front of her. “Basta, basta. We won't force you to stay. But consider leaving the girl. A war is no place for an innocent.”

Lulu screamed again. She caught sight of me and beckoned me to come to her. I stood still, unable to move even a toe in her direction. “María Sirena,” she said, a warning in her voice, “we are leaving. Ven.”

Still, I did not move. What was she thinking? A garbled noise came from my mother's throat then, and she pointed the machete to her stomach. “Even my daughter abandons me,” she sobbed, closing her eyes. Her knuckles went white as her hands gripped the machete handle. I launched myself towards Lulu, but Mario held me back, and did not let go, even when I kicked at his shins with my heels.

Luckily, the women in the tent, watching this horror show, were quick. They subdued my mother, and before I knew it, had her bound to a cot with rags knotted together. They even muffled her mouth with a blue bit of cloth. She eyed them wildly, like a nutría in a trap. Her hair hung limp and wet around her head, long swaths of it wrapped around her neck like a noose.

Mario managed to drag me out of the tent, and dumped me in a slender stream that cut through the valley, for I was hysterical now, and it was said that cold water could sometimes help a person in shock. The coolness of the splash did the trick. I shut up at once, and looked at Mario standing above me, his brow tight in concern. “Are you well?” he asked.

“She's mad, Mario. My mother has gone mad,” I whispered, as if it were a secret, as if everyone in the tallér hadn't seen her lose her mind.

He lifted me out of the stream and led me to a patch of sunlit grass. “Sit,” he said. “Dry off.” In the distance, I could hear the women talking in the tent, deciding, I'm sure, what to do with Lulu.

“You asked about my mother,” Mario said. “I'll tell you, but you must promise to keep it a secret. ¿Me lo prometes?”

“Sí,” I said. Already the sun was doing its work, and I felt warm to the bone.

“It starts with me, the third Mario Betancourt to be born,” he said, and touched the scar on his chin.

 

Mario told me the story in pieces, some on the day that I thought Lulu had gone mad, more that night, my first night alone without my mother. Mario had sat by my hammock, holding my hand, whispering his sad story. He told me more of it when I learned that my mother was not mad at all, but had begun to show signs of a particular kind of meningitis, which we called “horse fever,” or la fiebre del caballo. The doctor was called, and he said she wouldn't survive the night. I cried at her side through it all, dipping my fingers in water and letting the liquid drip into her dry, foul-smelling mouth. Many weeks later, when she had recovered, and remembered nothing of her madness on our first day in the tallér, Mario finished the story.

I have wondered since if his story was too awful to tell all at once, or if, like Scheherazade and her thousand tales, he'd wanted to prolong the telling on purpose, to be near me. A romantic notion, perhaps, but one I cling to now, when I have nothing left.