The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(16)

And then I hear it—

“I love you, Marina. I’ve always loved you. Always.”

I lean forward, pressing myself against him, a sob escaping my lips, feeling the warmth of the sun on his skin, and finally, a deep shudder as though he has come to terms with something he’s been wrestling with for a very long time, and he strokes my hair, his lips closing down on mine, and I know without a doubt that I’d give up everything—the gowns, the jewels, the privilege of my life as a Perez—to call him mine.



* * *



—

Weeks have passed since we first entered the camp, January turning into February, little hope on the horizon. I stare at the house in front of me, the sight of it and the sensation of standing on the familiar street in Havana carrying me back in time. When I eloped with Mateo and my family disowned me, I assumed I would never return, understood that the home where I lived for seventeen years was no longer mine. But now, standing in front of the big iron gates, someone else’s washing bundled in my hands, I feel the full weight of how much I have changed even if Havana is seemingly untouched by the weight of war.

The Perez mansion gleams in the sunlight, a bastion of wealth and privilege. The pale pink color looks like the inside of a seashell, the estate dominating nearly the entire block, sweeping palm trees shading the structure. It was built by the earliest Perez ancestor in the mid-eighteenth century, his time at sea likely influencing his desire to settle his family so close to the ocean, seeking privacy for himself and his bride away from the busier—and nosier—parts of the city.

Do my parents still live here? My brother? Or have they all moved on for parts unknown?

My mother frequently boasted of her ability to trace her ancestry back to Spain; we traveled there a few times growing up to visit family. Between their wealth and their sugar interests, I imagine my parents have sided with the Spanish in all of this.

We are a divided island despite our attempts to unify under one Cuban identity, and as I stare out at the landscape, I feel as though I am in a dream—or a nightmare.

In Cuba right now, there are two realities. In Havana, the party continues on. The city’s inhabitants have lavish gatherings, attend concerts, and the theater, the women wearing elegant, brightly colored gowns. If not for the Spanish soldiers swaggering around in their uniforms, if not for the American tourists riding bicycles around as they leave the city environs to see where the latest battle has been fought in the countryside, if not for the execution notices in the newspaper, the sound of the firing squads, or the presence of those of us who have been sent to Weyler’s reconcentration camps, you wouldn’t realize there was a war going on or that the countryside has been destroyed.

In the western provinces, places where there are more Spaniards from the Peninsula than native-born Cubans, revolutionaries are outnumbered by our countrymen who fight under the Spanish flag. Revolution comes from the east and will, hopefully, spread throughout the country. Still—it is an uphill battle. Tens of thousands of Cubans fight for Spain, and Havana is decidedly controlled by Spanish interests, making the threat to revolutionaries that much more dangerous.

This war has shaped our identity, deciding what it means to be Cuban in this new nation we are building. There are those who cling to the past, but there are many of us who look to the future, to a Cuba where those who were enslaved and indentured for centuries and worked the very fields that formed the cornerstone of wealth for families like mine will be truly free and treated as equals.

There are those of us who dream of a better Cuba, one liberated from this colonial system Spain has thrust upon us where from the moment they first reached Cuba’s shores, Spain has subjugated, murdered, and enslaved. There are those of us who demand our ability to govern ourselves rather than be exploited to serve another’s interests. There are those of us who dream that one day women will have the same rights as men, that we will become the country so many have sacrificed their lives for, that we will all be equal and represented under one Cuban flag.

And there are others who would do anything to retain the power they wield, who would burn the whole island down rather than see it remade into something new, something powerful, something free. There are those who are afraid that the change we seek will leave them pushed to the fringes of a society they have mercilessly dominated for so long. They can’t envision a new country of independent Cubans.

It terrifies them.

Given my family’s sentiments, I can only imagine the shame they would feel if they saw me now and not just because of the political differences between us.

My hands are rough and calloused, blisters oozing and bleeding from the washing I’ve been doing for some of the women throughout Havana. I’ve little contact with the ladies of the house—former friends and companions of mine and their relatives—but instead am left begging to housekeepers. Truly, given life in the camp, it is a blessing to receive the money I do. Women and children are starving. Disease is rampant—cholera, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and dysentery all around us.

Countless have died, and according to reports, whispers spreading around the country, the situation is equally dire in all the reconcentration camps. Death carts come several times a day, emaciated corpses thrown into them unceremoniously like rubbish.

In an act of charity—and no doubt a bit of shame—the towns have organized to distribute to those of us living in the camps a meal of bones and beans per day. I stand in line with Isabella and Luz, miles away from the house where I grew up taking my meals at a lavish table where we wanted for nothing, and we accept their leavings with gratitude. I’d rather trade my portion for milk for Isabella, but milk is impossible to find.