The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(17)

The Spanish have created agricultural zones outside of the cities, controlled by Spanish soldiers and worked by those in the camps, which provide us with limited food options. It’s not nearly enough. The ground isn’t fertile, the work of growing food challenging, the harvest not stretching enough to feed so many of us. The revolutionaries raid the food in the cultivation zones, in part to rob the Spanish and to feed themselves since there’s little in the countryside to sustain them. At least in this instance when there is no food to be had, I can console myself with the hope that the food is being given to men like Mateo who are fighting for our independence.

I adjust the laundry in my arms, the heat beating down on my threadbare black dress that hangs on my gaunt frame. If anyone asks, I am in mourning for a fictitious family member; the truth is, like so many of my fellow revolutionary women, I have been wearing black since General Maceo was killed by the Spanish army.

While we mourned Maceo, church bells rang out in Havana in celebration as the city’s residents hoped his death would bring a swift end to the war and defeat the insurgency. Their reaction is hardly surprising considering the Spanish attempted to assassinate Maceo so many times in his life.

The man the Spanish referred to as the “Greater Lion” and who we lovingly knew as our “Bronze Titan,” seemed invincible, and it is nearly impossible to believe that he could be felled by a stray bullet, but sadly, the unthinkable has happened.

Maceo’s death is a great loss—his reputation as a military commander unparalleled, his leadership—a blow to us all. We’ve already lost too many great revolutionaries, and it feels like we’re left to our own devices with no one to guide us. Our fate hangs on a thread, Weyler’s boot on all of our necks.

I worry that we are so divided, that when this is all over, we will be unable to unite as one country. I worry our allegiances are too fractured between the new Cuban flag we hope to raise over Havana one day and the Spanish one that flies there now. I worry my husband has died fighting for this new, better Cuba and the news has not reached my ears yet, that Isabella will fall ill like so many children in the camps, that I will be thrown in Recogidas with the rest of the women who dared to defy the Spanish.

My heart is a sea of worries.

I cling to the hope that the rumors are true, that Spain is already stretched impossibly thin, their resources shared between the war they’re waging here in Cuba and the conflict in the Philippines. I cling to the hope that this time will be different.

I walk past my childhood home, my head held high. At the end of the street, I reach my final destination. Rather than approaching the grand entrance at the front of the house, I walk around the property to the rear. Anyone looking at me would merely see a woman in a widow’s gown who is down on her luck. In these times, we’ve become such a common casualty of the war effort that we’re everywhere you look.

We might as well be invisible.

After two quick knocks, the housekeeper answers the door.

I hand her the laundry, and she takes it wordlessly, handing me a small pouch wrapped in a handkerchief with her free hand.

There will be coin for the work I’ve done, and if I’m lucky, she’s included a sweet for me to give to Isabella later. It’s not nearly enough, of course, and the life my daughter lives sits heavily on my conscience when I lie in bed at night, unable to sleep, missing the weight of my husband beside me, the warmth of his embrace.

When General Maceo fell, I feared I would receive news that Mateo had as well, for they fought alongside each other, Mateo speaking fondly of the beloved general in his letters home.

But God has been good to us for now, and so we continue on.

When I pass by the old house again, I slip into the shadows of one of the walls surrounding the property. I glance around the street, but it is quiet this time of day, no soldiers to be found. Luz’s warnings are always with me, the threat of being intercepted by one of the Spanish soldiers patrolling the city and branded as a spy an ever-present danger.

I quickly pull the bundled handkerchief out of my pocket, unfolding the fabric. It’s of quality, its owner one of the great denizens of Cuban society. Like Luz, she fought in ’68, and when I began doing washing for the citizens of Havana, Luz sent me to her door with a letter of introduction and an invitation—to use me as a courier ferrying messages throughout the city for the network of people sympathetic to the revolutionary cause.

I unwrap the handkerchief gently, a smile tugging at my mouth at the sweet contained there. I can already see the joy in Isabella’s eyes.

Beneath the sweet is a folded piece of paper. My fingers tremble as I unravel it, my heart pounding at the words there, the note with my next set of instructions.

There are several women who are sympathetic to our cause imprisoned in Recogidas. Can you get messages to them?





Six





Grace


I’m going to die.

As I stare down at the New York City street far below me, the rickety ledge that I’m standing on barely wide enough for me to put one foot in front of the other, there’s no question about it.

I can hear my mother’s voice ringing clearly in my head, lamenting the fact that I couldn’t just marry some rich man like her friends’ daughters, and questioning why I had the temerity and utter foolishness to pursue a career in journalism. At the moment, I can’t disagree with her.