The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(14)

My anger is one of the only things sustaining me these days. The Spanish have already broken so many promises to us, the reforms that were dangled before us for most of my life abandoned, that the manner in which they’ve conducted this shouldn’t be surprising to me, and still it is. They’ve seemingly made no provisions for the care and feeding of the very people they have chosen to imprison. How do you deny people their liberty, their ability to sustain themselves, and then fail to provide for them?

“The soldiers will see us as weak and defeated because we are women and we have been brought low by their treatment of us,” Luz adds. “Now that we’re here, they think they have us managed, but the reality is there’s too many of us, the situation out of their control. There’s an opportunity to be had.”

“What do you suggest?”

“There are places women can go that men can’t. The soldiers might overlook a woman where they wouldn’t a man. You could be a courier,” Luz continues. “But you must be careful. It’s dangerous to be a spy in times like these. I passed messages when we fought in ’68. I didn’t tell anyone. Not Mateo or his father. They never would have agreed to it; men can have a way of underestimating what we’re capable of even when they love us. Sometimes when you hold something too close, you forget that it needs to fly.” She reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it gently. “You’re upset that he left.”

“I don’t know. It’s complicated. I wanted him to go. I believe in what he’s fighting for.” My gaze sweeps around the camp. Everywhere I look, I see desperation. A woman several yards away is hunched over on her side, in pain, writhing on the ground as her children attempt to comfort her. Her neighbors keep their distance, clearly afraid of catching whatever malady befalls her. “We can’t live like this. It’s hell. I wish I could have gone with him. That I could do my part. I’m tired of the way things are, too.”

“Then you’ll do something about it now. Years ago, I corresponded with a group of women who secretly supported the war for independence. Some of them lived in Havana. I imagine many of them are still alive and still fighting.

“The townspeople are starting to feel bad for us here. They can’t ignore what’s going on. I’ve heard talk in the camp that they’re going to start offering jobs in the city to do washing and work to earn a little bit more money, a little bit more food. There aren’t enough opportunities for everyone, but if you secure one of these positions, you’ll be able to move about the city. There’s a network in Havana that is sympathetic to the revolutionaries even if, at first glance, the city is overwhelmingly supportive of the Spanish. You can pass messages to them under the guise of being a laundress. I’ll connect you.”

Tears fill my eyes. When I married Mateo, I lost the family of my birth, but in Luz I have gained a mother. I couldn’t get through this without her love and support.

I want this opportunity so badly I can taste it on the tip of my tongue, the burning need to do something a fire within me. And still—

“And what about Isabella?”

“You will be here for her. And when you cannot be, I will be there in your stead. I am too old for such intrigues; my body doesn’t move as stealthily as it once did. You will fight for me. It’s a risk, but look around us. What is the alternative?”

Luz is right. I agreed to come to this camp to protect my daughter, but where the battlefield seemed too dangerous, here is a different danger: we are fading away day by day.

I made Mateo a promise that I would keep our daughter safe, but these are extraordinary times, and I can’t help but think that if he saw the conditions of the camp, saw all that they’ve taken from us, he’d want me to do my part to end this horrible suffering and eject Spain from our lands for good.





Five





Before


“My parents say this is the last summer I’ll spend at the farm.”

I try to keep the threatening tears from spilling down my cheeks, struggle to hold back the tremor in my voice.

We sit beside each other on a fallen tree branch, Mateo and I, staring out at the countryside where we would run and play as children, whooping with laughter. My brother was always older and much too serious to be a playmate for me, but from the first moment when Mateo and I met when I was just five years old, we’ve been inseparable.

But now I am seventeen, and those childish times are behind us.

We both knew, of course, that this was coming. Time has changed, and our bodies have changed, and now when my mother catches sight of me walking around the farm with Mateo or riding a horse beside him, her eyes alight with something other than displeasure that I am playing with a farmer’s son.

Fear.

It hasn’t escaped me that we’ve spent less and less time in the country the older I’ve grown, and now they are sending me to Havana permanently with the hopes that I will find a husband. My time with Mateo has been consigned to stolen hours when my parents are otherwise occupied, our encounters far from their gaze.

Beside me, Mateo shifts, his body grazing mine in a move that sends goose bumps over my forearm. There was a time when I was as comfortable with him as I was in my own skin, but now tension vibrates between us, my cheeks heating when I watch him help his father with the horses.