The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(6)

“The Spanish have thrown my father in the jail again,” I snap, lowering my voice. “I don’t know if he is safe or if he’s even alive. I do not forget myself. I know exactly where I am and what I must do. You forget yourself.”

I lean in to Emilio so we merely look like the engaged couple we are, indulging in the sort of stolen embrace that would normally be frowned upon in polite society. In the distance, one of the Spanish soldiers makes a rude comment to another about my virtue—or lack thereof—but I ignore his cruel words. I might have been born a lady, but we are remade in times of war.

Last year, a small band of revolutionaries—Mambises—under the flag of the Cuban Revolutionary Party declared an insurrection against the Spanish at the town of Baire near Santiago. When we received news of the uprising, I hoped this time would be successful. It is our third attempt to free ourselves from Spanish tyranny in almost thirty years, the first war fought before I was even born.

I grew up dreaming of the independent Cuba my father is willing to risk his life for, listening to his stories as a soldier in the Ten Years’ War, and I gave my word that in this new battle for liberation I would fight alongside my father and countrymen. On the night we were to join the Cuban army last year, a spy told the Spanish of our plans and they imprisoned my father for being a revolutionary and sentenced him to death.

“I was the one who visited my father in prison, who cared for him, who begged for his life and saw his sentence commuted to life imprisonment,” I add. “I was the one who met with General Weyler and begged for my father to be exiled here to the Isle of Pines rather than sent to the Spanish’s penal colony off the coast in Africa. So don’t treat me like a child. I may be eighteen, but I’ve fought for my family and for Cuba.”

At least on the Isle of Pines, my sister Carmen and I have been able to accompany our father, to cook for him, do the cleaning, and care for him. Here we have a small store where I can buy food, there is a doctor in town, and many of the other prisoners are old family friends, revolutionaries like my father. We have a little house with a tiled roof and a big piazza. It is hardly paradise, but it could be worse, I suppose.

If not for the new Spanish colonel who controls our fortunes.

“What are you doing about Berriz?” I ask Emilio, glancing furtively around the room to ensure none of the soldiers have heard me. “Ever since the colonel has taken command over the Isle of Pines, he seeks me out. He’s thrown my father in the jail. If I am to be your wife, then I need to know you care about me and my family.” Disgust fills my voice. “Berriz has told me he loves me.”

Emilio pales.

“He toys with us by falsely imprisoning my father and then releasing him, only to jail him again later. I worry about my father’s health. I kneeled before Berriz and begged him to return my father to me. And now, after releasing my father, Berriz has arrested my father and thrown him in the jail again.”

“I’ve heard that Berriz’s wife will be joining him soon,” Emilio replies. “Perhaps her presence here will help things.”

“And until then? What am I to do?”

Emilio leans closer, running a hand through my long, dark hair. I jerk. Behind us, one of the soldiers says something about a lovers’ quarrel.

“Nothing will happen to you or your father, Evangelina,” Emilio urges, as though he sees the doubt in my eyes, my disappointment over his powerlessness, the anger filling me. When my father told me war was coming to our island, I was ready to fight, but this waiting around for someone to rescue me is torture.

Emilio offers his reassurances louder than he should, perhaps to convince me or to give himself the confidence he needs to act, and suddenly, before either one of us can move, before we remember that any sign of rebellion is met with force, the soldiers are on him, brandishing their weapons, hitting him with their large guns over and over again until Emilio falls silent, pain etched across his face. Tears rain down my cheeks, anger burning in my chest, but I do not speak a word.

Sometimes it is too easy to forget that we must always fear for our lives. The Isle of Pines might be a beautiful exile on the surface, but no matter how long a leash we are given, it is still a prison.

“Emilio—”

“I’ll be fine,” he mouths to me.

The soldiers haul Emilio away unceremoniously. His gaze is trained on me as they exit the house, the soldiers laughing and talking among themselves, leaving me standing alone.

Nausea fills me, the urge to retch overwhelming. The scent of the soldiers’ sweat lingers in the cramped house, the sight of Emilio’s spilled blood on the floor inescapable.

I walk outside, my legs quaking, heart pounding, lungs desperate for fresh air. I can’t get used to the violence, to all of the horrible things people do to one another. Nothing in my childhood or after prepared me for the way we live now, for the fear that is my near-constant companion. I didn’t appreciate how sheltered I was until the night my father was captured and everything changed.

I lean against the front of my house, my heart rate slowly returning to normal. My gaze sweeps across the landscape, and then a chill trickles down my spine.

Colonel Berriz is several yards away, the sun shining down on his dark hair. His men stand tall under his attention, their chests stuck out like strutting peacocks as they listen to his orders, their uniforms like feathers dragging behind them. The soldiers have become more insufferable with each passing day, their arrogance just one of the indignities we’ve been forced to suffer.