The Distant Marvels

by Chantel Acevedo

  “I can fight.” My mother spoke quietly, though all the men heard her.

  Remembering that she’d killed Aldo Alarcón, I shouted, “She can! I’ve seen her!”

  More laughter. My father turned and scowled at me. The look on his face frightened me, and I remembered the story from his childhood that he’d told me on the train to Dos Rios, about the time he’d left his shoes in the middle of the hallway in Casa Velázquez, and how his mother had taken all of his things—shoes, shirts, books, toys, what little he had—and flung them in the Cauto River. “I may be a servant in this house, but I am not your maid. Learn to take care of what’s yours and you’ll secure a better life for yourself,” his mother had said. Agustín had looked at me intently when he finished the story, saying, “My mother was a tremendous woman.” I read a warning in his look and in the memory. My mother had held my hand too tightly during the telling of the tale, and I read a warning in that, too.

  I felt my mother dismounting. She held onto me to steady herself. Her hands trembled.

  “Señores,” she began. “Compatriotas. You hope to found a free nation here, do you not?” She spoke animatedly, her delicate hands dancing before her, as if she were doing a floréo in a flamenco dance. The men watched, mesmerized. Even Agustín stopped scowling, the grimace falling from his face at once. “A nation is made up of men, sí, and women, too. As well as children.” She pointed at me, and my face felt warm. I looked away, unable to bear so many of the insurgents’ eyes fixed on me at once. “Then, let us fight. Let us learn to defend this new nation. We Cuban women can be midwives to this great birth, if only you’ll let us.”

  There was silence. I wanted to applaud, shout, “Bravo, Mamá!” I didn’t, of course. I sat in the saddle while the pregnant mare shuddered beneath me, huffing and snorting in that way of horses. The animal was the only thing making a sound. I ran my hands over her pelt to calm myself, and the horse settled down, too.

  That was when I noticed the poet for the first time. He parted the group of men and approached us, a heavy pack still on his back, as if he expected to have to leave the modest campsite at any moment. “It’s a pleasure to meet a family so brave,” he said, extending a hand to my father, and then kissing my mother on both cheeks, like a European.

  Lulu looked away demurely, whispered, “Gracias,” and returned to the horse.

  “Who is that?” I whispered to Lulu.

  “That is the man who called the war,” she said breathlessly. Later, I’d learn all about José Julián Martí, the poet and patriot, who had inspired Cubans on the island and abroad to rise up over Spain. But in that moment, all I saw was a slender man, with a large forehead and a thin mustache that curled up at the ends. His eyes were small and brown. There was something of the rodent about his features, though I liked him at once. Lulu and Agustín were struck dumb by his presence. They had seen him give a speech once, in New York, but familiarity had done nothing to diminish Martí’s aura in their eyes.

  “You may camp with us tonight, and ride with us tomorrow if you’d like,” Martí said. My mother had charmed him, I knew. While my father had gripped his balls to show his strength, my mother had said a few words to the right man. I took note of the difference.

  Another one of the insurgents, a bald man with a gleaming machete dangling from a rope around his waist, spoke up, “Oye, you have no military experience, poet. Perhaps it’s best if you—”

  “Cállate,” said another insurgent to the bald man. “This is Martí you’re talking to.” Then, facing my father, Martí’s defender said, “Make yourselves at home.”

  There was no more arguing against our presence that night.

  Later, after we’d eaten a meal of roasted rabbit, my mother introduced me to Martí. “Señor,” my mother said, holding me tight against her thighs, “mi hija, María Sirena.” She presented me to the poet by caressing my cheek with her hand. I leaned into her touch, hungry for it still, though I was fourteen years old.

  The poet cocked his head to the side. “I can tell already that you are your mother’s muse,” he said.

  When Martí left us, my mother said, “Take a good look, María Sirena. There goes a man without equal.”

  “Papá?” I asked her, and she laughed.

  “No, mi cielo, Martí. There would be no rebellion if not for the poet.” Her gaze lingered long after the man, even after he’d lain down in his hammock, the only part of him visible a bony knee.

  “The poet is handsome, too, isn’t he?” she asked me, though she didn’t expect an answer and I did not give her one.

  I realized two things that night. The first was that Lulu admired my father in direct relation to his status as a rebel. She’d left Julio Reyes in Havana without much of a thought once Agustín returned, bloody and smelling of smoke. Now, at Dos Rios, another man threatened to trump my father’s allegiance to the cause, and hence, take his place in my mother’s estimation.

  2.

  Little Storyteller, Little Rebel

  I imagined myself riding with the insurgents forever. Perhaps they’d find me a white horse like Martí’s, I thought. One of the insurgents, a man they called El Blanco because of his fair skin and freckles, had a heavy whip that I’d studied from afar. It was braided and glossy, and I longed to carry a weapon like that. Another was a redheaded man, and they called him, not very creatively, Rojo. There was a pair of very young insurgents my age, brothers, no more than fourteen—Antonio and Francisco—who lisped like Spaniards and kept to themselves, which I was glad for. People my own age made me nervous. They seemed to be nearly grown when I still felt so small. There was a man named Toledo, who had a knife in his hands at all times. It had an ivory handle and the tip of the blade was rusty. He’d balance it on his knuckles and make it seesaw, to my delight. When my mother saw me laughing with Toledo, she dragged me away at once. Later, I noticed that Agustín and Toledo liked talking to one another, their faces tight grimaces as they discussed the most humane way of killing a downed man, and the least humane way, too. In the light of the cooking fire, which fell to my mother and me to stoke and tend, my father and Toledo looked like devils. There were others, but either I cannot remember their names, or I never knew them.

  What I do know is that by the end of that spring, most of the men in our group were dead or missing.

  We rode the countryside during the day, sometimes getting into skirmishes with Spanish soldiers. I always knew there would be a fight on the days Agustín led Lulu and me to a stranger’s bohío. The country people, who we called guajiros, would let us stay in their house and share their table. More often than not, we ate jutía and rice. The large rodent’s meat was surprisingly juicy, though there was something of the swamp in it, as if I could taste the green muck of the jutía’s home. I could taste something sour, too. Perhaps it was the fear that must have flavored the creature’s body at the approach of a caimán, or in the end, a hunter. On those days, I knew the insurgents would find a narrow passage in the woods, where the trees were tightly grouped on either side of a trail, and hide, muddying their faces to blend with the forest, and wait in ambush for Spanish soldiers. They always seemed to know where the Spaniards would be, and I guessed the guajiros were relaying messages to the insurgents.

  When Agustín returned for us, he’d be the worse for wear, his skin scraped, his clothes torn, the creases by his eyes caked with mud. But he was alive, and Lulu would embrace him silently, hold his face still as she studied it, and bury her head in his neck. All of this Agustín would endure as stiffly as if my mother had wrapped herself around a statue. He’d thank the guajiros who took care of us, settle us on the mare, and lead us to the next campsite without a word. Once, when Lulu caught me staring at my father on one of these rides through the woods, she told me, “It’s a great burden to be a patriot.” My expression must have given away some of what I was thinking, that my father’s coldness on such days frightened me.
Underneath us, the horse would sometimes buck and pull away from Agustín. I sympathized with the creature.

  The mare had given birth to a sandy-colored foal early that spring. I’d watched the birth in fascination and horror. The horse’s flared nostrils, her white, blocky teeth bared, the grunts of her labor, and then the messy slippage of the baby as it slid from her—all of it was burned into my memory. The foal died that morning, and the men butchered it for food. Though there was a great swelling of emotion regarding the cause, for the most part the insurgents we rode with were unyielding men who ate the foal with relish, waving pieces of charred meat around our horse’s face and laughing. My father joined in on the fun while I watched, refusing food, pulling stinkweeds out of the earth with both fists in frustration, for I had wanted to keep the foal for myself and I’d been the one to discover its stiff little body in the morning, which had been hard on me. The men had laughed at my tears, at my furrowed brow, and Agustín said nothing in my defense.

  Yet, the poet was of a different sort. On the days when we’d ridden our horses to exhaustion, and were forced to camp, the poet isolated himself with sheaves of creamy paper and filled them, line after line. Only once did I approach Martí. It was out of boredom, honestly. The others had no interest in me, and, more often than not, shooed me away. It was a point of contention among our group. Every few days, the insurgents would demand that Lulu and I be taken away for good. Always, Agustín’s eyes would flare with anger, Lulu would say something about patriotism and courage, and the poet would raise a slender hand and say, “I’d like them to stay.”

  Why my father wanted us around, even as he seemed to ignore us at every turn, was something I did not understand. As for Martí, his attachment to us was equally mysterious. On the day I spoke with Martí, the first and only time I exchanged words with him, I asked him directly why he came to our defense, time and again.

  The poet did not answer my question, and I wonder now if that’s the way with poets. Instead, he redirected me, made me think of other things, occupied my imagination so thoroughly that I forgot what I’d come asking for in the first place.

  Martí drew a sheet of onionskin paper from his pile. It crinkled prettily as he lifted it. So thin and glossy, the paper reminded me of moth wings. I longed to throw the sheets from a height to watch them flutter down to earth. However, Martí laid the paper over a book he was holding and handed me a carbon pencil.

  “Do you ever tell stories?” he asked softly, and watched as I made circles and sharp angles and a crescent on the page. When I was done, I’d drawn a giant moth. “It can speak,” I told the poet. “And it will answer any question you ask of it. The moth is so large it can carry small children across the island. It chases the moon from one side of Cuba to the other, with children on its back so that they can enjoy the nighttime without having to sleep.” My understanding of astronomy and geography was limited, of course. Cuba was my entire world, and though Lulu told me often of my birth, of how the coast of a place named Georgia could be seen on the starboard side when I was born, I could not yet imagine anywhere but my island.

  “Little storyteller,” Martí said, gave me another sheet, and sent me on my way. I climbed the nearest tree, folded the page in half, and dropped the paper, quenching my desire to see it fly like a moth. I did this again and again until the page tore on a branch. As for the moth, it was the first story I remember telling.

  Once, Lulu and I stayed a week at a bohío very close to the Cauto River. The river’s murmur helped me sleep, and I hoped Agustín would not return. But return he did, with a limp and his knee swollen as big as his head. We left the peaceful little hut only to return to a camp whose numbers were cut in half. Rojo had been killed, and El Blanco mourned him with great sobs that resounded through the woods. The brothers, Antonio and Francisco, were gone, too, though when I asked my father about them, he shook his head sadly, and said, “Don’t ask, don’t ask,” so that I knew that either one or both of them was dead.

  That night, the mood in the camp was solemn. Lulu and I stewed a jutía that one of the men had trapped in a snare. I watched my mother through the glassy waves of heat coming from the fire. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were locked on something beyond the edge of the camp. I turned to follow her gaze. There, in the moonlight, stood the poet, his hands locked behind his head, his eyes turned up to the stars.

  Lulu rose and handed me a wooden spoon dripping with hot stew. She whispered, “Keep stirring,” and picked her way around the resting men until she reached Martí. The two of them talked a long time. It was not the first time Lulu and the poet had talked in the moonlight. I had never been privy to what they’d said to one another, but the two had always chatted out in the open, though at a distance from the others, and always when Agustín was away from the campsite. That night, I noticed the way pine needles poked out of her hair and her dress hung crookedly on her frame. The effect was charming, as if my mother were a wood nymph, and could, at a moment’s notice, bolt into the forest never to be seen from again. Once or twice, the poet would point at the sky, and my mother would lift her chin and gaze at the stars. I could tell from the way her shoulder blades moved that she was taking big, deep breaths, and I, watching her, began to breathe in the same way. So it was that I didn’t notice Agustín until he was right behind me.

  “Where is your mother?” he demanded, an empty bowl in his outstretched hand.

  “With the poet,” I said, dipped the spoon into the stew, and drew out a full serving to give my father. But he was gone before I knew it. I watched as he walked up to Martí, his brimmed hat in hand as if he were approaching a priest. My mother jumped at the sight of him, then she composed herself, straightening her dress and crossing her arms. I could not hear what they were saying, but the conversation was short. They took their leave of Martí. Agustín and Lulu strode past me quickly, he gripping her upper arm and she taking short steps, unable to keep up with him. I stole one glance at the poet, who had his back turned to us all, his hands back behind his head, stargazing once more.

  For a moment, I watched as my father led my mother deep into the woods. Then, I realized what was happening. They were leaving me alone with the insurgents! Fear gripped me quickly, and I abandoned my post at the fire and trailed after my parents. My feet caught on something on the ground at the edge of camp. I bent down to take a look. A machete in its sheath had been dropped there, and I picked it up and held it with two hands before me, sheath and all, as I followed my parents into the thick of the trees.

  They walked fast, and at first, I could only hear their murmurs. Then, they stopped. Dawn was fast approaching, and weak sunlight was seeping in through the canopy, dressing my parents with a ghostly luminosity, so that they appeared unreal versions of themselves. I crept as close as I could to them, longing to be safely near them, and also afraid of what was going to happen. Agustín’s face was a mask of anger. Lulu’s was one of terror.

  My father peered into the woods, looking past me. He seemed to be making sure he and Lulu were alone. Swiftly, he lifted his hand and brought it down hard against my mother’s cheek. She clutched her face and bent low. The only sound she uttered was a single, high-pitched, “Ay!”

  “You think the poet wants you? Like that stuttering innkeeper did?” Agustín asked her in a fierce whisper.

  Lulu was quiet. She did not move from the position she’d placed herself in—hands to her face, bent at the waist.

  “Did you hear me?” Agustín asked. When my mother did not answer, he forced her to stand and pushed her up against a palm, growing spindly and ugly in the dense, lightless woods.

  “Don’t take me for a fool, Illuminada. From now on, you stay where I can see you,” Agustín said through gritted teeth. He’d held her close to the tree with his knee and a single arm barred across her chest. He fumbled with his belt.

  Of course, I knew little of jealousy then, and of the ways between some
men and women. Agustín nearly had his heavy belt undone. All the while, my mother stood quite still, her eyes closed and her cheek pressed against the spiny bark of the palm tree. Imagining that Agustín was going to strike Lulu with his belt, I bolted from my hiding place, raised the machete in the air, and shouted, “¡Basta, Papá!”

  He froze, and my mother’s eyelids fluttered open.

  “Don’t you dare,” I said out loud, mimicking what I’d heard him say to me when he thought I was about to do something naughty. “Don’t you dare,” I repeated, waving the machete.

  Agustín released my mother. He approached me slowly, as if he were really afraid that I might strike him. When he was before me, he wrenched the machete from my hand.

  “Little rebel,” he said, unsheathing the knife and handing it back to me. “Do your worst.” He closed his eyes and waited. I waited, too, for a few seconds that felt much longer. “Mátame,” he commanded, his eyes closed.

  I dropped the machete.

  Agustín did not laugh at me, as I thought he would. Instead, he held me by the shoulders and said, “Save your killing for the Spaniards.” Without looking at Lulu, he said, “María Sirena, take your mother back to the camp. Don’t sheath that machete until you get there.” Then he left, buckling his belt again.

  As for Lulu, she’d slid down the length of the palm tree and drawn her knees up to her chin. She cried silently for a long time before I could coax her up and back to the fire and the stew.

  “How hard it is to hate a person you’ve once loved,” Lulu remarked to me later that night. She and I slept apart from the men, under a makeshift tent of muslin. I always slept cold while she ran hot, and so she placed my cool hand on her cheek to alleviate the sting of my father’s slap.

  “I cannot hate him, María Sirena,” she said, meaning Agustín. “In loving him, I’ve left pieces of myself behind.”