The Distant Marvels (2 page)

“Put it down in the ship's log,” Agustín had demanded, “that my child was born free.”

There were no women onboard the
Thalia
, and so Agustín delivered me himself, on a straw mattress brought above deck because Lulu could not bear to go into the dark belly of the ship.

“¡Luz!” she'd yelled. “I need light!”

She'd kicked at Agustín, and scratched his face when he tried to drag her downstairs. He gave in at last. He peered between my mother's legs and yanked me out. He used the short knife he kept tucked in his waistband to cut the cord. That same knife had gutted a Spaniard during the first war, my father told me often, his eyes twinkling. The three of us cried out together into the thick, stormy air. Then, it was silent. The rain stopped. Later, the bloody mattress was thrown overboard, and Lulu says she watched it floating, following the ship for a while as if it were being towed.

Then the second strange, marvelous thing occurred: three gulls lighted on the mattress, picking at the afterbirth that clung to the fabric, clucking at each other as if in conversation about something important, then diving into the water. Only then, Lulu says, did the mattress sink. As for the gulls, Lulu watched and watched the sea, scanning a swath of water the length of the ship, but she never saw them emerge.

Lulu died believing that our blood and that of the three gulls mingled with the sea, becoming an offering that led to the third and strangest marvel.

My father had wanted to name me Inconsolada after his mother, who had died long ago. Lulu, having borne a long “I” name all her life, chafed at the idea. In addition, her mother-in-law had been a heartless woman. The name itself meant “inconsolable,” and it seemed like a curse.

“Give me a few days,” Lulu had said, as the
Thalia
sailed steadily alongside the eastern coast of the United States. Agustín did not press the matter. The ship's captain had threatened to have him arrested once we returned to Cuba, and so Agustín was busy bribing and flattering the man, getting him drunk on rum during his breaks, in the hopes that he would not remember whether Agustín had actually pulled a gun on him that frightening morning, or if he'd just imagined it.

Finally, one afternoon, the ship rounded the tip of Florida, and within a few hours, was in sight of Cuba. The island appeared like a low cloud on the horizon. Inspired, Lulu carried me unsteadily towards the ship's bow, to glimpse our homeland. The sea was calm and crystal clear. Dolphins played a few feet away, their polished backs breaking the surface again and again, like extraordinary fruit bobbing in the water. Lulu says that the dolphins dove deeply suddenly, and in their foamy wake, a ghostly white hand emerged, then another, then, finally, the dark, wet head of a lady rose from the water. Lulu could not describe the lady's face, or whether her skin was fair or dark, or if her ears peeked out from her long hair. She said the lady's features shifted as she spoke, so that her eyes would grow narrow, then large, her mouth would widen and reveal savage teeth, then the lips would soften, becoming plump and purple like a bruise.

The lady did not speak, though it felt to Lulu as if she had marked me, claiming me for herself. The lady had lifted her arms and beckoned with a small flick of her wrists. Lulu shook her head, and the lady seemed to frown with a mouth that changed its shape so often it appeared she was trembling. Lulu closed her eyes and when she looked again, the lady was gone, but my mother still did not relax her hold on me.

She had studied to be a teacher in Havana, could read and write better than most, and knew well the temptations of nymphs, and the dark dangers of sirenas, who sang to heroes and lured them from their ships. She thought, too, of la Virgen, who appeared to black slaves at sea near El Cobre, home to Cuba's nickel mines. Because she did not know what form of divinity she was dealing with, Lulu took no chances and named me María Sirena.

I
t is dawn, and Ada has returned to my house. I don't think she slept either. I can hear her knocking on my front door. Beyond that are sounds of her great-grandchildren bickering over a trunk full of fabric scraps. “Leave it behind!” one of them shouts, while the other curses at his brother in colorful slang.

“María Sirena!” Ada yells between knocks. “There's still time!” she is saying. The wind has strengthened overnight, but the racing clouds have slowed their pace. Perhaps the storm is turning.

I rise from bed, cross myself, and open the door for Ada. She hugs me hard.

“Vámonos,” she says firmly.

I stamp my foot, like a child. Why can't she understand it? I made this decision long ago, not to fight death a single moment more. I have an ache in my stomach that will not go away. When I touch the place just inside my hip, I feel a tender, warm knot there. I can feel the danger of it in my heart, which pounds whenever I let my mind linger on the pain. Ya. Basta. I am not brave enough to drown myself. I have had enough of guns during the war, and this latest revolution, and have no desire to see a gun again, much less shoot myself with one. But I don't fear death. I am ready to welcome the storm. Let the sea lady from my birth claim me as she'd threatened long ago.

“You want to die,” Ada says at last, her eyes wide and horrified.

“I've lived too long,” I whisper.

“You like playing the martyr?” Ada asks, her hands on her hips. I say nothing, and stare at her sandals.

Perhaps Ada reads the shame in me, because she says, “If you die in this storm, I will stand on this shore and tell everyone hunting for your corpse that María Sirena Alonso de Torres was a good woman who raised a smart daughter. And just like that,” Ada says, snapping her fingers, “I will undo your martyrdom!”

Ada turns, walks out the door, and slams it closed behind her. A little puff of air strikes me, and it carries Ada's violet perfume with it. I will miss her. Most afternoons, Ada comes over with her crochet needle and yarn, and sits on the porch with me, her fingers turning purple with the tightness of her grip as she makes delicate rosettes for fabric corsages, which she wears on Sundays. I love listening to her stories, how her voice harmonizes so well with the soft murmur of the sea.

Lately, Ada has taken to talking about her childhood. It has been a nice turn from talking about the news, and the new revolution, and those bearded men, the Castristas, in charge of everything now. She and I had watched the executions of Batista's supporters on her television for only a few minutes when I begged her to turn it off. “Didn't we see enough of this during the war?” I said, meaning the War of Independence, to which Ada replied, “I don't remember a thing, Sirenita.” She was only eight when the American ship, the
Maine
, exploded in the harbor in Havana, but she liked telling me an old family story about her elder sister, how the boom had shaken her inkwell right off her desk, how the ink had splashed her white leather shoes, and how her mother had beaten her that night with a switch of palm for ruining them. Apparently, they told the story at Christmas every year in Ada's family, and she laughed in the telling, as if it had been a great joke. I still feel sorry for Ada's sister, though the woman is long dead.

My memory of that day is altogether different. Just turned seventeen years old, I spent that winter day in 1898 holding my son and nuzzling the soft fuzz of his hair. I can smell it still, that baby smell, and my throat clenches at the memory.

 

The sky has blackened again, and the clouds are round and heavy and so dark that it feels like night. But it is still early in the morning. The neighbors are busy taping up their windows, marking the glass with big Xs out of duct tape, in the hopes that shattered glass will not get too far. Some have managed to find sheets of plywood, and are busy covering up windows, bringing in potted plants, and standing at the bus stop with their things in suitcases and plastic bags, waiting for a ride to the shelters in Santiago.

I watch them from my spot on the porch. My house, which sits catty-corner at the end of the street, has a partial view of the sea, and a partial view of the rest of the neighborhood. The original owners, who I never knew, planted the house in such a way for unknown reasons. Now here, in Maisí, the easternmost corner of Cuba, I am the first to greet the dawn. Of everyone on the island, I feel the sun first, and my house is positioned in such a way that the light falls across my face when I wake, and it feels like a blessing. Perhaps that beam of morning light is the reason the house sits at such an odd angle. I like to imagine the old owners in bed together, their cheeks warming at daybreak, turning to one another and saying, “Buenos días.”

This morning it is too dark for the sunbeams to penetrate the gloom. The storm is coming our way, and my little house, on the very edge of the island, does not stand a chance.

 

I go about my day, ignoring the wind whistling through the pines now, making a mournful sound I have not heard before. After breakfast, I read from the
Song of Solomon
for a while. It is my favorite book in the Bible. There are no murders in it. No beheadings. No godly fury. There is only a boy and a girl, and it reminds me of the soap operas on the radio and of other, sweeter days in my life. I read until my eyes start to cross, and then I nap.

I wake to the sound of shattering glass, opening my eyes just in time to see the lace curtains in my bedroom flapping wildly, like a tethered bird, just a second before the curtain rod falls off the wall. The wind has sent a conch shell through the glass, and it has landed near my bed, its pink interior glistening with rainwater, its rough carapace snagged on the rug.

“Carajo,” I mutter, and bend to pick up the shell. How heavy it is. I turn it over and water pours out. Outside, the surf is roaring. I put the shell to my ear and hear the sound magnified a thousand times. Slowly, I shuffle around the room, taking picture frames off the dresser and tucking them inside the drawers. The doctor's prescriptions have already fluttered away, and they float in the air like dry leaves. The wind whips about my hair, which I still keep long and which I usually pin to the top of my head. I tie it all in a knot, and go on putting the photographs away, aware that the rain is coming into the room quickly and that my housedress is already soaked.

There is a daguerreotype of my parents, Lulu and Agustín, set in a crystal frame. In the picture, my father's hair is short, and his dark beard and mustache are also neatly trimmed. He wears a sack coat, and a dark waistcoat, and he stands behind my mother, who sits in an upholstered armchair. Her deeply set eyes and brows are dark, a shade darker than her auburn hair. Lulu's face is a touch blurry in the picture. She must have moved during the long development stage of the photo. Had the image been sharper, I could have seen the freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks. She once said it looked as if San Pedro himself had splattered her face with mud before she was born, but I disagreed. The freckles made my mother's countenance sweeter somehow, as if she never grew into her adult looks at all. I sorely regret having inherited my father's smooth, pale skin. Lulu wears a white, high-collared dress with mutton sleeves in the photograph. Her hair is parted down the middle, and soft curls gather at her temples. I tuck the daguerreotype in my underwear drawer, under three layers of girdles.

There are a few photographs of my husband, Gilberto, may he rest in peace, and my daughter, Beatríz. In one picture, Beatríz is a toddler, standing on Gilberto's open palm, held high over his head. It was a terrifying trick, one they knew I hated very much. Up so high, Beatríz would call out to me, “¡Mamá, Mamá!” Meanwhile, Gilberto's arm would tremble with the weight of our daughter, who was always large for her age. A formal portrait of the three of us is framed in an ornate brass frame. My hair was short then, in the style popular during the First World War, and Gilberto was in his military uniform. Beatríz was about a year old in that photo, and held a teddy bear against her chest, her small mouth a fierce scowl.

There is one more framed picture, of course, which does not go in the drawer. This one stays with me, come what may. I tuck the small frame into the pocket of my housedress. The picture was lost to me once. I won't let it happen again.

Rain blows in horizontally, splattering the walls and drenching my bedcovers. I leave the room and close the door behind me. In the living room, another window has blown out. A seagull, dazed by the wind, has taken cover on my sofa. It looks at me with one dark, marble eye, and then turns its head, as if to say that it can't concern itself with the well-being of an old lady. Curtains flap all over the house, and it reminds me of sails at sea, swollen and full of life. On the wall, paintings rock on their nails.

A
t first, I mistake the knocking on the front door for another shell, or some other debris, smashing into the house. But then I hear a voice calling, “¡Señora, señora!” I'm afraid it is one of Maisí's fishermen, caught outside and now stranded. I don't want one of those men in my house. Fishermen always smell like dead things, and they talk about the weather as if they are kin to the rain and the wind, and their certainty about everything bothers me. Maisí is crawling with fishermen.

But what can I do? Let the man be swept out to sea? I make my way to the front door, ducking the curtains that beat against the walls as if in panic. By contrast, I feel rather calm, as if I have swallowed the eye of the storm.

“¿Que quieres?” I ask, opening the door.

A soldier in olive green uniform scowls at me. Her dark hair hangs wetly in her eyes, which are heavily lined in black. Her lips are covered in a pale lipstick, the color of wheat. She wears enormous golden hoops in her ears. She is young, no more than twenty. A bright orange life vest dangles from her left hand. Without asking, she begins to wrestle me into it.