The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(61)

“First off, the name they have given me—I’m not a ‘girl.’ I’m twenty years old and I am a woman. I am not a child who needs to be cared for. I have been caring for my family for a long time now.

“I was born in Puerto Príncipe, which is the capital of the province of Camagüey. I was raised by my father. My mother died when I was a very young girl. I don’t remember her, really, but everyone says she was very beautiful. When she died, it was like a piece of my father died as well. He was restless, morose. But in her absence, he relied a great deal on me and my sisters, and we cared for him, cooking and keeping the house. And in turn, he never treated me like a child, as though I needed to be sheltered from the world. We used to stay up late in the evening and he would talk to me about all sorts of things: Cuba, politics, his time spent as a soldier in the first war for independence. He loves Cuba very much, and I always admired him for his willingness to sacrifice his life for his country. I can think of no greater love for a proud patriot.”

Tears swim in Grace’s eyes, the force of the emotion staring back at me catching me off guard.

“I lost my father when I was young,” she replies. “But he was proud of his country as well, and he was ready to sacrifice everything for her. He raised me to believe I had a duty to defend what I believed in.”

“You understand then. Sometimes the love you feel for your country and the love you feel for your family become one in the same, until your family becomes your country and your country your family, and the two are inextricably linked in your heart. I love Cuba as I love my own father, the memory of my mother. I would die for Cuba. When my father said he was going to go join the revolutionary movement, I was prepared to go with him.”

“What happened?”

“There were fifteen of us who were planning to join the revolutionaries. My sister Carmen and I met with them. We were constantly being watched by the Spanish, but we pretended we were loyal to them, all while we planned revolution. My father hid weapons and ammunition around the neighborhood in preparation. But the day before we were going to join the front, one of the men in our group betrayed us. Soldiers detained my father and when they searched him, they found incriminating papers on him. So they jailed him in our town.”

“You must have been terrified.”

I can still remember how helpless I felt comforting Carmen as she cried. “I was. I bribed the prison guard with a meal of eggs and meat that I made that morning to pass a message to my father letting him know I was worried about him. After the first time, we had an arrangement where I would give the guard food and he would pass some along to my father and eventually he let me see him.”

“I heard that after your father was transferred a few times, you pled his case before Weyler himself.”

“I did.”

It’s strange to think that I met with Weyler so long ago to beg for my father to be sent to the Isle of Pines, at the time not realizing what an important role he would play in my life, how much his specter would haunt me.

For hours, we talk as I tell her about my life, our exile on the Isle of Pines, that terrifying night with Berriz. I share some of my experiences in prison with her, and I’m beginning the tale of my escape from Recogidas when there’s a knock on the door to my hotel room.

I rise and excuse myself to answer it.

I open the door and immediately freeze.

Karl Decker stands across the threshold.

I haven’t seen him since that fateful walk to the Seneca, and now that I am here, the sight of his face takes me back to that night in the prison, to waiting behind bars, hope coursing through me.

A cry escapes my lips, and I move forward, throwing my arms around him in a fierce embrace as though we are old friends.





Twenty-Four





Grace


Now that Evangelina Cisneros has landed in New York, our stories about her have only increased, the hours I spend at the Journal growing longer each day. There was little opportunity to speak with her on the day she landed, and given their prior history, George Bryson certainly had the claim to her. It was obvious, though, how nervous she was by the whole thing, and where I told myself I would be objective about the story, it’s impossible to not feel sympathetic toward her plight.

Once she settled at the Waldorf-Astoria, there have been ample opportunities to interview her, and after spending hours speaking with her about her years in Cuba, she’s given me a glimpse of the turmoil she’s experiencing.

Tonight, though, I’ve slipped away from work to join my aunt Emma for our annual evening at the opera.

The Metropolitan Opera House is the new-money solution to a society problem. Located at Broadway and Thirty-Ninth Street, the opera house is more opulent and elegant than the Academy of Music favored by old Knickerbocker families like mine. When the new wealthy elites in the city couldn’t secure private boxes at the Academy, they built this opera house that could seat over three thousand opera lovers with seventy private boxes to see and be seen, simultaneously creating a place for themselves in New York society and upstaging the old Academy, thus rendering its exclusivity void.

I like the opera well enough, but I come more for Aunt Emma. These outings serve as an opportunity for her to get her fill before she says that she’s exhausted of the whole business and much prefers her brownstone apartments and friends who aren’t part of Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred.