The Distant Marvels (26 page)

 

My son was born early by my count. I had carried him for eight full moons, not nine. But he was big enough and screamed his first sounds while I was still pushing him out. I could say more about the pain, I suppose, but I don't remember it. Rather, I can't name it or describe it. I recall shoving Andromeda's hand away from mine; I could bear no touch in that moment. I can describe for you the feeling of a needle piercing my arm at one point in the ordeal. It was like a bee sting. But the agony of birth is an artful thing—it slinks down deep into a woman's brain, so deep it is later impossible to retrieve. It is like trying to describe the flavor of an avocado. It's buttery texture one can name, but the taste? It escapes expression.

I will just say that Mayito was born at night, just as the sun dipped into the horizon line; that I held him through the hours of darkness, examining his hands, which were like pink starfish; that the quality of his skin reminded me of my girlhood, when I played with potted aloe plants, running my fingers along the smooth, green shoots; that when Mayito's eyes fluttered open, they were gray, and while I never liked the color, I found myself suddenly enamored with it, wishing I had closets full of gray dresses and gray shoes and hoping that my hair would turn just that shade of gray some day; that I kissed the top of his head so often through that night that my mouth hurt from puckering; that his hair was soft like cobwebs, and I imagined tiny spindles in my body, weaving the fine silk; that his breath was sweet, ay Diós, so sweet, like an unripe melon; that his mouth around my nipple was strong, and he would shake his head like a shark tearing at flesh as he drank, but I did not dare wince or make a sound, but only held him closer and clucked into his little cup of an ear, pouring into that tiny vessel the songs Lulu once sang to me, “
Duérmete mi niño, duérmete mi sol . . .
”; that his nose whistled in his sleep; that the skin around his wrists and ankles was flaking off, shedding a waterlogged layer; that I called him my coconut, my little god, my small saint, my sky, my heart, my love, all in succession; that, God forgive me, I imagined the next day with Mayito, and the days after, and the two of us growing old together.

I was young. Even after all I had seen, and all I had lost, that night I believed in a future with my son. I fell asleep holding him, his round bottom a perfect fit in the palm of my hand, his head, still elongated, egg-shaped, hard and warm in the crook of my elbow. The last thing I remember is the sweat collecting between the skin on his back and the skin on my arm.

When I woke up at dawn, Mayito was gone. Andromeda sat at the foot of my bed, writing something down in a notebook with rough, brown pages.

“Where is my son?” I asked carefully. Underneath the sheets, my hands were making fists, opening and closing like crab claws.

“The issue has been resolved,” she said, then struck the notebook with her pencil, making one furious dot at the end of a sentence.

I
remember rising from that bed the moment Andromeda turned away from me. I remember coming up behind her so quickly that she did not hear me. I can still remember the texture of her skin under my hands, the wrinkles in her fat neck, how I squeezed and screamed in her ear, and how she peeled my fingers away from her the way one peels a banana. She was calm, even then. She bent over and picked up her notebook, made a few notes there, her eyes darting to me often. She coughed, lightly, as if a piece of meat had gone “down an old road” in her throat, as we used to say. I sobbed and huffed in bed, asking, “Where is he? Where is he, please?” But now she sought to punish me, and so went mute, only writing in her damned notebook for a moment before leaving me.

I wanted to get up and find him. I listened hard for the sound of a baby's cries. I sniffed the air for him, like a dog, and could not detect his honeyed scent in the air. “Mi niño, mi niño,” I wailed until Blanca Lora stood by the curtain that divided my bed from the others in the field hospital.

Blanca Lora rushed to my side. “Oh, I know,” she said, pulling me close so that my ear lay flat against her breastbone.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“I'll show you. When you're stronger, I'll show you,” she whispered.

“Take me now,” I insisted, pushing Blanca Lora away and kicking at her.

“I hid him away for you. Somewhere these women can't find him. You should have heard them whispering after the baby was born. They saw the way you cooed at him, and they didn't believe for a minute the story I concocted for you. ‘She must have loved the father,' they said. Another said, ‘That girl is a rebel, I promise you that. She stinks of it.' They huddled together, heads down like hens picking at their own waste, thinking of the best way to be rid of the baby and you. ‘I'll take care of it,' I told them, and they handed the baby over to me. I have taken care of him, Carla, but you must trust me.”

I listened to her and wanted to believe every word, for in her speech there was the promise that my baby was alive and waiting for me.

“Just take me to him, please, Blanca Lora. I've lost everything,” I cried and fell upon her breast once more.

“I will, soon. I have to go,” she said, and planted a kiss on my forehead. “There's been an explosion in Havana Harbor. An American ship. And here I am in Oriente province, missing it. Mark it down, Carla, President Roosevelt will swarm this island before long.” Blanca Lora was vibrating with excitement.

“My son,” I said, gripping her wrists and staring hard into her eyes.

“I haven't forgotten him. He's safe and not far, I promise you. Get strong. You'll see him soon,” she said, and kissed me again. Then she was gone, walking so fast her backside wiggled and her hair bounced. Blanca Lora cut a springy, cheerful form as she wove around the beds of the field hospital, disappearing from my view.

In the days that followed, the other nurses treated me no differently from any other patient. They did not, of course, meet my eyes, though I searched their faces for signs of betrayal. Which woman had slipped Mayito out of my arms? Which one had first uttered the plan to do away with him? It was a good lesson to learn—evil did not make a mark on a person's countenance. There was no wildness in the eye that spoke of mischief, there was no reddish tinge on guilty hands, there was no nervous laughter between them, nor did they chew their lips anxiously. There was only calm among the nurses of the field hospital, and when they said, “Viva Cuba española,” to one another in the passageways, there was a lilt in their voices, as if they were used to singing instead of speaking.

Andromeda no longer came to see me, and I wondered whether I had actually hurt her and whether she was now afraid. I hoped so. Every day without Mayito was like a day without a limb. I was crippled. I could barely feed myself. Sometimes, an air bubble or some other gastric movement would pinch me from within, and for a second, I would think it was Mayito, still in my womb, kicking, and my hand would fly to my belly to touch that ghost baby. It was only a second of confusion before I realized the truth, but each occasion reenergized my grief at having lost him, and I would weep in bed and pound the mattress with my fists, my cries joining the moans of the soldiers around me, the ones who lay injured just past the curtain.

 

I was the only female patient in the place, and so was kept in isolation. It was just as well. I detested the soldiers. All of them. I hoped that the man who had thrown the torch that set my father on fire was here, limbless, perhaps, oozing all sorts of stinky fluids, dying a slow, reeking, painful death. Twice, a soldier peeked through the curtain to get a look at me, and both times I threw a bedpan at the face. On the third try, the man spoke quickly, saying, “I heard them talk about you, the nurses. They suspect you're a spy for the Cuban Liberation Army. Is that right?”

He was young, and his skin was yellow, like an old piece of parchment. Yellow fever had run rampant among the Spanish, and the field hospital was full of the worst cases. When the skin took on that strange color, everyone knew the case was a bad one, that the black vomit would soon follow, and most likely, death would come.

“No, I am not,” I said to the soldier, who grew braver, and stepped out from behind the curtain. He was sick, but strong, and I thought that perhaps he was mending, and that the color would fade from his skin, soon.

“Who are you, then?” he asked. “We all heard your baby being born. We saw when that nurse took him away in the night.”

“We?”

“The other boys. All of us saw. We're sick with the yellow fever, but we have eyes and ears, still. We know what you did to that one nurse, saw the marks your fingers made around her throat.”

“I was crazed,” I said quickly. “Not myself. I want my son back, you must understand.”

“She deserved it, I'm sure,” he said, smiling, and taking another step forward. I pulled my blanket further up my body.

“You don't sound like a Spaniard,” I commented.

“I'm not. Cubano hasta la muerte. And fighting on the wrong side of things,” he said quietly.

He grinned at me, and I couldn't tell whether he was toying with me or not, trying to trap me, draw me out so that I would confess who I was. Perhaps Andromeda had set him up for this. “Why are you here?” I asked, keeping the subject on him.

“My father is a Gallego. He also happens to be seventy years old. I was born in my parents' old age, like a character out of the bible. Bueno, the old man tried to enlist. I took his place, but like I said, I'm fighting on the wrong side of things.” He coughed every once in a while into a dingy handkerchief, and wiped his mouth carefully. He swayed a little when he finished speaking.

“Sit,” I told him, and he pulled a low wooden stool out from under my bed and sat, exhaling, his shoulders slumping. “What's your name?” I asked once he was settled.

“Gilberto Torres,” he said. “And you are Carla.”

“How do you know my name?”

“You're our sirena, didn't you know?” he said. Gilberto was bold. Sick as he was, he flirted without hesitation, his brown eyes fixed on my face as if he'd known me always.

“Sirena?” I repeated, stuck by the sound of my real name. It had been months since I'd heard it.

“Sí. We're like the lost sailors in stories, the boys out there and I, and you're la sirena that draws us in, keeps our hearts beating. The other nurses have faces like horses. But you, ay, sirena,” he said, and clapped a hand against his breast and pretended to swoon. It wasn't too far off the mark, as Gilberto already looked close to fainting anyway. There were dark circles under his eyes and that steady little cough. Suddenly, I thought he might not live.

“Go rest,” I urged him.

“Where is your husband?” he asked, leaning forward a little now.

“I don't know,” I said honestly. How I wanted Mario with me now, instead of this young man, however sweet Gilberto was turning out to be. That would be my next step—retrieve the baby, and take him to Mario and Lulu. We would be a family again, even if it meant being reconcentrados.

Gilberto began to cough violently. His chest heaved, and he fell off the stool. I clambered out of bed and went to his side. He gripped my forearm and squeezed, then vomited a thin trickle of black fluid. “Here, here,” I said, pulling a corner of my bedsheet and wiping his chin.

“Perdón,” he kept saying, and I told him it wasn't anything, that we've all been sick before.

“I plan on seeing the end of this conflict,” he told me. I didn't know if he meant the war or his illness, and I wondered whether I had triggered something brave and stubborn in him with my pity.

“Of course, Gilberto.”

“Call me Gil, and after this war, should you need a friend, find me in Placetas. My father owns a cigar factory there. Torres Reál Cigars. Don't forget, promise?” He extended a shaky hand and I took it and told him yes.

“Good. Good. I'll leave you to your adventures, sirenita.” Then, he rose and walked slowly back to his cot among the other sick soldiers.

 

Three more days went by quickly, while I stayed in that little space. I was not put to work, but I could not rest. My mind reeled with possibilities, and every question I asked about my son, about my future, went unanswered. Once, a pigeon flew into the hospital, and it roosted in the beams above my bed. I watched it for days as it hobbled to and fro on the thick wood, the violet feathers on its cheeks and neck picking up the light like glass. I grew to feel a kind of kinship with the bird, so that when I awoke one day to see it had gone, I lost my breath and felt as if I were going to choke to death, or swallow my own tongue.

It was in this distress that Andromeda found me. She gasped, dropped her scribbling pad, and shook me hard, so that I sucked a great gulp of air. We stared at each other for a long moment. Something shifted in her gaze, I thought, as if she were seeing me for the first time. “Get up,” she said softly, and handed me my nurse's clothes, the ones they'd assigned me when I first came to the field hospital. “Dress,” she ordered, more harshly this time. Then she left me to do so.

It is a wonder what clothes can do. In bed, I had felt achy from the birth of my son. My limbs were heavy like mallets, and my head felt as if someone had shoved cotton into my ears and nose and mouth. Everything was dull, and I could focus only on the pain in my body and the piercing sorrow regarding my son. But dressed and standing, the physical hurt seemed to diminish. As for the other injury, the one to my heart and soul, there was no remedy.

“Bedpans today,” Andromeda said. “After lunch, laundry.”

“Sí señora,” I mumbled, taking note of the bruise on her neck, faded but still there after two weeks, just beneath her ear. It looked like a pale green orchid, flowering out of the dampness of her skin.