The Distant Marvels

by Chantel Acevedo

  I dreamt the same thing again and again, all night long. When I awoke, exhausted, my throat aching as if I had truly been breathing smoke, Agustín was sitting beside me. “Buenos días, niña,” he said, and ran his fingers along my jaw and up to my cheek. They came away wet, and so I knew I’d been crying. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, he’d shoved his hands into his shirt pocket, and pulled out a crumpled sheet. He opened it slowly, and there was one of the flowers I’d drawn.

  “I haven’t had the chance yet to thank you for these,” Agustín said. “They led me back to you and your mother,” he said, pointing at the inn address at the bottom of the sheet.

  I looked at him. Mutely, I nodded.

  “Is that all I get?” he asked, and leaned forward, presenting his cheek for me to kiss.

  Slowly, I pressed my lips against his stubbly face. He smelled like burnt things.

  “Bueno,” he said, satisfied. “We leave soon, little rebel. Have some breakfast.” Then, Agustín left, and my flower drawing stayed on the floor beside me. I would have touched it, folded it up again, reminded him to put it back in his pocket, but the drawing only reminded me of my nightmares.

  14.

  My Story in Other Mouths

  I remember those April days of 1895, though not as clearly as what came before and what followed. We rode trains to Oriente province, headed straight to Dos Rios, where the delegados of the movement for Cuban independence were gathering. The trains were overloaded with people fleeing the chaos in Havana. There had been more bombs throughout the city, and now, half of the buildings had great chunks missing from them, like the prison.

  What I recall is a press of hot bodies, my mother’s arms tight around me, my father’s occasional glare in our direction. I remember how the steam engine rattled so hard that my teeth knocked together and gave me a headache. I remember searching for young people like me, seeing none, and feeling as if I were the last girl on earth, fearing that the Spaniards had wiped us all out, like in the bible stories Lulu told me of Egyptian pharaohs who murdered children.

  This is all I remember of the train to Dos Rios.

  I’m thinking about trains because Ofelia has announced that the railroads are shut down, the tracks inundated. The roads, too, she says, and mentions something about supplies and relief efforts. “All of us are to stay put,” she says. “It won’t be long now,” she adds without looking up.

  “How long exactly?” Noraida asks.

  “Yes, how long?” Mireya echoes.

  Having sought me out in the morning, Susana sits beside me again. “The rain has stopped,” she says. “Let us go home.”

  Ofelia’s cheeks redden. She gazes levelly at us. “How many of you can swim?” she asks. “Because the water outside is as deep as the Cauto River right now.”

  She can’t be right. I’ve seen the Cauto, swum in the torpid bends, fell in love on its banks. The river is so deep in places I’ve wondered whether there are underwater caverns, portals to the underworld, tunnels to the United States deep in the gloom.

  Noraida has gone to the window, placing her hands against the glass like starfish in a tank. “I’ve swum the Cauto,” she says to her reflection. Her shoulders rise and fall with her deep breaths. Estrella stands beside her and puts one of her fat arms around Noraida’s waist. “Tranquila, mi hermana,” I hear her say. “The waters will be gone soon.”

  Thoughts of water remind me I’ve had to go to bathroom for the last hour.

  It’s down the hall and to the right. I’m grateful for the privacy of the tiny space with the black and white tiles on the floor. The tiles are a renovation from a recent era, and clash with the thick beams of old wood overhead. I relieve myself and suddenly the pain in my side blooms, spreading outward until I’m holding my breath and clutching the edge of the toilet.

  Gasping, I stand, clean myself, and pull the dangling string that flushes the toilet. I steal a glance at the bowl, knowing what I’ll see—streaks of blood in the water. The waters swirl slowly. My heartbeat slows, too. The pain eases.

  It won’t be long now, I whisper, and send up a little prayer that someone, anyone, remembers me after I’m dead. I grab the beam overhead and steady myself. I can imagine so clearly the glow of kerosene lamps in the rooms of Casa Velazquez back in the days when this house was new. Like a vision, I can see my father as a boy, stomping up and down the stairs, his cheeks full and rosy. My memories mingle with the stories he and my mother told me, burrow their way into the present like a persistent, tiny mammal. I am grateful for them, for the stories, for a way of holding on to my parents. It is as if my father were still here, still a child, still putting that cat out in the middle of a storm, still leaving this place after his mother died from consumption, a boy of fourteen, alone in the world; I can see him meeting my mother in Santa Clara, see her bandaging a bite he’d received from the dog of a Spanish soldier, who’d turned the animal loose on my father.

  Tears press against my closed eyelids. My legs and arms feel like they’re manacled. The stories weigh so very much. Who will carry them when I’m gone? Beatríz? I hardly know my own daughter. She went off to Havana to become a stranger to her mother. And Mayito? I grip the beam harder.

  There’s a knock on the door. Someone calls out, “Apúrate,” and I hurry to rearrange my dress, which is still tucked up under my arm. The pain strikes again and I grunt against it.

  The person on the other side of the door calls out: “Are you well?”

  I am dying. The stories will die with me.

  I open the door and my head spins. My thoughts scatter like minnows in shallow water. Susana is there to catch me when I stumble.

  “I didn’t know it was you in there,” she says.

  “You have to help me,” I tell her. She runs her hands up and down my shoulders.

  “Anything,” she says. “There must be a doctor here somewhere.” Her forehead wrinkles in concern and a little divot appears above her nose.

  “Help me,” I say again. “Help me convince them.”

  15.

  A Reluctant Witness

  When we return to the room, the women are huddled by the window, their breath fogging up the glass. Their chatter sounds like a hive of bees.

  “¡Ay!” Mireya cries out suddenly, breaking through the buzz. “Miren,” she says, tapping her finger against the lower left corner of the window.

  Susana and I hurry towards the group and see a flash of red in the water below. It is Noraida, swimming in the debris-filled water, her brightly dyed hair like streamers in her wake. We watch as she pushes aside a plastic cup, a sheet of plywood, an umbrella floating upside down and bobbing along. Noraida is a fine swimmer, and every so often, she does something with her legs to lift her out of the water, up to her waist. She scans the horizon, then dips down again, stroke after stroke taking her away from Casa Velázquez. We watch as she swims into a sheet of plastic, invisible in the water like a jellyfish, watch as it wraps around her face and she fights it, ripping the plastic away at last and beating against the water with her long arms.

  “I can’t look anymore,” Estrella says, and sits on the bed.

  “Estúpida,” says Dulce, and a few of the women nod in agreement. We watch Noraida until she’s only a speck of red in the distance. She swims up a side street, sticking close to an apartment building. On the balconies, people wave at her. She rests for a moment on the roof of a huge truck, running her hands over her face and neck. “She’s stuck,” Dulce says.

  “She looks like an island out there,” Mireya whispers. But Noraida kicks out once more, slipping into the water. She waves back at the onlookers, and swims on, disappearing from our view.

  “Por Dios, I hope she doesn’t drown,” Mireya says solemnly.

  We are still by the window, watching the swamped world come to life bit by bit. Every once in a while, a person floats by on a raft. I wo
nder whether the owners were planning on taking to sea, leaving Cuba on their own terms, visas and government permissions be damned. Overhead, the fat, black clouds roil away quickly, headed to some other place in the Caribbean. The sun is peeking out of the east dimly. I’m reminded of something my mother used to say, that should I ever feel afraid for my mortality, I should look up and remember that the sun, vast as it is, is dying, too. “None of us are alone in death,” she’d said to me, even as her own light was extinguishing. Where she picked up that information I could not guess. My mother knew a great deal somehow, especially how to charm others into giving her what she wanted.

  What I want at the moment is an audience. There’s another story that’s come to mind about my mother and her gifts. I want to tell it so badly and preserve it in the memories of these women that my skin itches.

  I clear my throat. “Perdón,” I say, and they turn to look at me. “I have a proposition for you. A way of passing the time and helping a sick woman.” They steal glances at Susana, who looks hurt at once. Her hands fly up to her scarf, as if to make sure it is still in place.

  “No, no,” I say. “I mean myself. I am not well. Not long for this world. I want to tell you my story, the story of my life.”

  “We all want our stories told,” Mireya says with a nervous laugh. “Vamos, who else has a story to tell?”

  Rosalia starts looking through her purse, while Estrella picks at her nails.

  “Dulce, come, it’s your turn to tell us a story,” Mireya insists, and turns her back to me.

  Dulce sits slowly on the edge of the bed. She sighs loudly, lets out a quiet, “Ay,” and flexes her feet before speaking, as if her every word takes preparation of some sort. “I was a girl of seventeen on the day I accompanied my father, a sergeant of the military police in Havana, to El Malecón, where two fishermen had fished the corpse of a man in a laundry bag, using enormous hooks meant for sharks. I may not remember whether or not I’ve brushed my hair on any given day, but I do remember my father, que en paz descanse,” she said, crossing herself, “cutting open the laundry bag with a knife, rolling the body out of the bag the way one undoes a bolt of fabric, finding the man’s wallet in his pocket and exclaiming, ‘There you are, Capitán Alarcón. We’ve been looking for you,’” before stuffing the body back into the sack. “What was left of the corpse’s face was unrecognizable. His lone eye was bare in its socket, and that is all I remember of him.

  “You see, I don’t doubt the truth of your story,” she said, lifting a gnarled and spotted hand up to stop me from interrupting. “But that doesn’t mean I want to hear the rest of it.”

  It feels like a weight has slipped into my throat. I cannot speak.

  “But Señora Dulce,” Susana begins. “She’s dying.”

  “So am I,” Dulce says. She’s old, but her voice carries. “So are you,” she tells Susana, who crumples next to me. “We all have stories to tell. Who will remember mine?”

  “Go on, then,” I say.

  “¿Cómo?” Dulce asks.

  “Tell us your story. I’m eager to hear it.” If my own stories are an itch beneath my skin, driving me mad, then the need to hear other stories is like a thirst.

  But Dulce blushes and her eyes grow wide and startled. Put on the spot, she quavers, waves her hands in front of her face and says, “Deja, deja. Do what you like, María Sirena.” She busies herself with her purse, pulling a painted fan from inside. It makes a crackling sound as she opens it, and I can tell the fan is from Dulce’s youth. The fan depicts a war scene in faded colors—farmers carrying machetes crawl over a hill studded with palm trees. The sky is painted gray, or, perhaps, age has faded the blue. In the distance, tiny horses stand in line, with even tinier soldiers painted atop them. The fan, too, tells a story, and when Dulce moves the thing back and forth to cool herself, it seems as if the illustration is moving, coming alive in minuscule.

  The fan mesmerizes me for a moment only. Beyond this room, those taking shelter in upper stories of homes all over Santiago de Cuba are wondering when the waters will recede. The drowned are beginning to wash up against buildings, bumping lifelessly against coral walls. Beyond Santiago, out to sea, other islands are in the path of the storm, and people are nailing up thin sheets of plywood over windows and praying to God. Out past the Caribbean, our stories are short clips on the radio and television, reduced to a few seconds of information. Our lives are diminishing ripples in vast waters.

  I catch my reflection in the window and it startles me. I don’t look much like myself. I test it, purse my lips and watch my reflection do the same, but still, I do not recognize the gesture. Perhaps I am looking at another me, a doppelganger come to prod me into telling them all of it, even the stories I’ve kept to myself.

  A deep crack resounds throughout the house in that moment, as if a beam somewhere has given way. “Ay!” a few of the women shout. I sit very still, bracing for a collapse. But none comes.

  Mireya eyes the ceiling fearfully, her purse clutched to her chest. “The roof is going to come crashing down on us, I know it,” she says.

  “Don’t be so negative,” I tell her.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” Mireya asks. It’s the first honest question she has asked me. I see a glimpse of my old friend in her look.

  “I’ll tell you about fear,” I say, leaning forward. When no one stops me, I begin again.

  PART II

  1.

  Lulu and the Poet at Dos Rios

  We arrived in Dos Rios at the end of April in 1895. Agustín had rifled through my mother’s trunk for something valuable to sell. But she had nothing but her clothes and mine, and the pistol she’d used on Aldo Alarcón, which Agustín did not want to part with.

  “The galleon coin,” Lulu told him, indicating where in the trunk’s lining to cut. With a small knife, Agustín made a precise incision in the green-striped lining, shoved his fingers into the hole, and drew out the old coin that his mother had brought from Spain. I watched as my father clutched the gold coin. He kissed it and said, “Our salvation,” disappearing with the coin into the village of Dos Rios, while Lulu and I waited for him.

  When he returned, it was with a horse—a huge, speckled, pregnant mare.

  “She’ll be slow,” Agustín said, “but she can carry us all.”

  We spent the day scavenging what we could from the trunk and our surroundings. There, on the outskirts of town, were plenty of fruit trees—mango and ciruella—though they were often choked in vines. We gathered what fruit we could. Lulu dressed me in many layers, and did the same for herself. Every once in a while I’d catch her wincing and clutching at her stomach. Sometimes, a tear slipped down her cheek. But she said nothing to Agustín about it. When he was a few feet away, I asked, “Mamá, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

  She clutched my face hard, her fingers digging into my cheeks. “Not a word to your father about Julio Reyes, entiendes? If he suspects that Julio and I—” she said, stopping short. “He’ll kill me, María Sirena. He’s capable of it,” she warned me.

  Finally, when night fell, Agustín loaded us onto the horse. We rode through the dark. I sat sandwiched between my parents, and fell asleep with my forehead against my father’s warm back. He smelled of copper and blood. In the morning, Agustín stopped at a small, thatch-roofed house, a bohío. The country people fed us some leftovers of arróz con leche, gave us a large hammock to use at night, and wished us well. “¡Viva Cuba libre!” they shouted as we rode away. My father lifted a fist in the air without turning around.

  “The country people are with us,” he said, his voice choked with tears.

  He stopped in several places, and in each small bohío, Agustín learned more about the insurgents in the area, and where to find them. At dawn, we came upon a place in the woods that had been recently scorched. The grass was blackened beneath our horse’s hooves, and the trees were gnarled and ashy. H
ere were several hammocks dangling from the enormous ceiba trees that had survived the fire.

  Men were seated in a circle on the ground with maps laid out in front of them.

  “It’s him,” Lulu said breathily at the moment that Agustín pulled hard on the reins. “José Martí,” she said to me, whispering in my ear. My breath came short at the name. I followed the trail of my mother’s gaze, but could not pick the man out from the group.

  “Patriots,” my father said, dismounting. The men rose, brandishing their rifles and machetes. My mother clutched me hard.

  “Name yourself,” one of the men said.

  “Agustín Alonso. An insurgent like yourselves,” my father said, stepping closer to the men with each word. “I was in Havana just recently. Rotting in a prison for flying our flag.”

  “We heard the western rebellion was thwarted,” one of the insurgents said. “There were supposed to have been two—one in Havana and another here, in Oriente.”

  “As far as I know, the chaos in Havana was a reaction to what you men accomplished here,” Agustín said. The one who’d asked the question threw his hands up in frustration.

  “Do you have supplies?” another asked.

  “Hombre, nothing but a pair of strong arms and well-placed cojones,” Agustín said, gripping his crotch for a moment.

  Some of the men laughed. Then, another spoke: “Sí, and you’ve also brought two women to slow us down.”

  I felt myself beaming. I’d never been called a woman, though I knew it was dark, and that in the light of day he would have called me a girl.