The Surrender Tree
Page 4
than the flowers
of jungle trees.
At least I know the names of the flowers—
that much, my grandma taught me.
Rosa
I climb a palm tree
and watch the madness
from my hidden perch.
Soldiers herd peasants
into a camp, fenced and guarded,
surrounded by trenches and forts.
I see no houses or tents, no hospital….
All I can do is watch with silent tears
as wounded men, pregnant women,
and helpless children are herded
into the camp—
just another name
for prison.
Silvia
My mother is weak,
so I have to be strong.
Obediently, I shuffle into the Spanish Army’s
strange camp, this reconcentration camp
where I do not know what to expect.
I clutch my little brothers tightly
in my arms,
secretly wondering if the armed guards can tell
that I am thinking of Rosa’s miraculous flowers
in caves of crystal,
deep caverns
of hidden peace.
Rosa
When night falls,
I climb down from the palm tree
and slip away, back to the forest,
wishing I could take them all with me,
all the refugees flocking like birds
lost in a storm, flying to the mountains
to find trees that look like sturdy guardians
with leafy branches that whisper
soft lullabies of comfort.
A few refugees find us.
Some are the children
of women who helped me
nurse the wounded
long ago….
I teach the granddaughters
of women whose lives I saved
and men whose lives were lost.
José
We try to help the refugees
who find us.
Rosa entertains frightened children,
pretending to be a magical dentist,
as she reaches into the mouth of a man
whose throbbing tooth must come out
if he is going to survive.
She seems to be pulling the tooth
with her bare fingers.
I am the only one who knows
that she hides a tiny key
in her hand, a simple tool
to ease the man’s suffering.
When the tooth is out,
he whispers thanks,
and he tries to laugh a little bit,
making his pain seem to vanish,
a comfort to the startled,
giggling children.
I am the only one
who sees Rosa’s sorrow,
the only one who knows
how hard it is to start again,
another war of fever and wounds,
the exhaustion created
by endless hope…
Silvia
Hunger, fever,
my mother’s moans,
my brothers’shrieks,
the madness, cruelty, or kindness
from each new neighbor,
all these weeping strangers
huddled into makeshift houses
of leaf and twig, palm frond and mud.
Patience, impatience, hopelessness, hope…
I stare at the forts
with holes in the wood
that look like eyes—
holes for the guns
of soldiers
who watch us
day and night.
Rosa
The numbers are impossible.
I cannot heal so many.
Women come as volunteers.
I teach them simple cures.
Garlic for parasites, indigo for lice,
wild ginger to soothe a cough,
jasmine for calming jittery nerves,
guava to settle the stomach,
aloe for burns.
Is there at least one wild,
fragrant remedy
for healing sorrow
and curing fear?
Silvia
Beyond the fence there is a special tree
for hanging those who try
to escape.
Corridors of shacks built from mud and sticks,
babies too weak to eat or cry,
yellow fever, cholera, smallpox, tetanus,
malaria, dysentery, starvation,
my mother’s feverish, distant eyes…
this camp is the ash and soot
of human shame.
José
Rage, fury, no time for fear,
no room for sadness.
We like to joke
about Spanish soldiers owning
only the small, foot-shaped parts of Cuba
beneath their own feet.
We like to say that we have learned
how to appear to obey the Spanish Empire’s laws
without actually obeying.
Our lives are caves
filled with secrets.
Silvia
Today I am twelve.
My mother is in heaven.
I feel twelve thousand.
An oxcart took her.
The driver is dark, with a kind smile.
I ask him why he does this work,
and he explains that he is a volunteer
from the Brothers of Charity and Faith,
a church group of black men who tend the sick
and bury the dead, even executed criminals
abandoned by their own families.
I ask him if he knows
how I can find Rosa la Bayamesa,
the Cave Nurse of Cuba.
He looks surprised, but he answers quietly:
First you will have to cross the fence—
first you will have to escape.
Silvia
The oxcart comes every afternoon,
People call it the death-cart.
But I think of it as a chariot
driven by my friend, an angel,
a Brother of Charity and Faith.
The angel-man brings me
tiny bits of smuggled food,
but there is never enough,
and my brothers are turning
into shadows.
I feed them
imaginary meals
of air.
Rosa
The wind
is an evil wind.
I make rope from strips of hibiscus wood,
and splints of palm bark,
my only hope for mending bones.
My greatest fear is of being useless,
so I pierce and drain infected wounds
with the thorns of bitter orange trees,
and I treat the sores of smallpox
with the juice of boiled yams.
I use the perfumed leaves
of bay rum trees
to mask the scent
of death.
José
General Máximo Gómez, the Fox,
asks Rosa to choose twelve trustworthy men
who can help us build a bigger hospital,
so sturdy and so well-hidden
that it will never be found
or attacked.
My wife says two trustworthy men
will be enough.
She tells the Fox that she is strong.
She wants to help chop the wood
for building our new home.
Silvia
Concentrate. Reconcentrate.
Mass, cluster, bunch, and heap.
Weyler’s camp makes my arms and legs
so skinny that even my mind feels hungry.
Concentrate. Reconcentrate.
Plan, pay attention, focus, think.
I am alone now. My brother
s
are with my mother.
The oxcart comes and goes.
The Brother of Charity and Faith
sees my hopelessness.
He lets me ride with him,
hiding in the oxcart.
I am leaving.
Where will I go?
Silvia
The wagon creaks,
wheels sing…
the night is moonless,
my body feels ancient,
my mind feels new.
The driver turns and smiles.
He hands me his cigar, a blinking light.
He shows me how to pretend
that I am a firefly.
He points to a hole in the fence,
puts his finger to his lips,
then draws a map in the sky—
a picture of the way
to find Rosa.
Silvia
I dance through the hole in my fenced life,
moving the make-believe firefly with my hand,
not my mouth, because I am afraid I would not
be able to stop coughing.
The tiny light rises, dips, flits,
just a foul-scented cigar
pretending to fly,
but it carries a memory
of the oxcart driver’s hand,
showing me how to find the woman
who once saved my grandma’s life.
Rosa’s cave is the only place I long to be
now that my family is in heaven.
Silvia
Tree frogs, screech owls, the dancing leaves
of feathery ferns, the fragrant petals
of wild orchids.
Night wings, crickets,
imagining secrets,
wondering which flowers
might save a life,
and which could be dangerous,
if I don’t learn quickly, if I feed a patient
just a little too much…
Will Rosa teach me?
Is Rosa real, or just one more
of those comforting tales
the old folks tell
at bedtime?
Silvia
Moonless thunder, silent lightning, the tracks
of mountain ponies.
Mambí birdcalls, a stream, tall reeds, the song
of a waterfall, my own tumbling, exhausted,
singing wild hopes.
A trail, more hoofprints, a woman in blue
with long, loose black hair just like my own.
The whistle of a Canary Islander,
speaking the secret language of Silbo.
My bare, bony feet running, following,
racing toward Rosa….
José
All night I stand guard, singing silently
inside my mind, to keep myself awake.
In daylight I sleep, while others watch.
A whistle reaches into my dream…
the face of a pale, skeletal child,
two eyes, deep green pools
of fear….
Silvia
Does the old man in the forest
know that he sings in his sleep?
I stare, he stares,
then we both smile.
Rosa, I hear myself chant the name
over and over,
begging for a flower-woman
who will teach me how to save lives.
I tell the old man that I already know
the names of the blossoms, all I need is a chance
to learn their magic.
With a sigh, he says,
Yes of course, one more child
is always welcome,
follow me….
Rosa
The new girl is so thin and pale
that I cannot let her help me
until she has learned
how to heal herself.
I make her eat, sleep, rest.
She resists.
I see a story in her eyes.
She thinks she has no right to eat
while so many others starve.
Silvia
Rosa is a bully.
I thought she would be sweet and kind,
but she forces me to sip my soup,
and she stitches a cut on my forehead,
just a scratch from a thorn in the forest,
but she studies it the way I studied the forts
at the camp, with the holes for guns
that look like eyes.
The needle hurts, the thread itches.
Maybe I don’t want to be a nurse after all.
Speed, Rosa tells me, is the best painkiller,
so she stitches my skin quickly, calmly,
her expression as mysterious as a book
written in some foreign alphabet
from a faraway land.
She looks at my tongue,
puts her finger on my wrist,
explains that she is counting my pulse.
She tells me I do not have leprosy or plague,
measles, tetanus, scarlet fever,
jaundice, or diptheria.
By now, she adds, you must be immune
to yellow fever,
and malaria, well, that is an illness most Cubans
will carry around
all our lives.
I picture myself lugging a suitcase loaded
with heavy diseases….
I daydream a ship, an escape route, the ocean….
Rosa
The girl is well enough to learn.
I show her one cure at a time.
A poultice of okra for swelling.
Arrowroot to draw poison out of a wound.
Cactus fruit for soothing a cough.
Hibiscus juice for thirst.
Honey for healing.
I show her the workshop where saddles are made
with leather tanned by pomegranate juice,
and I show her the workshop
where hats are woven
from the dry, supple fiber of palm fronds,
and the place where candles
of beeswax are shaped
to light the rare books
from which cave children learn
how to read comforting Psalms,
and the Simple Verses of José Martí,
our poet of memory,
our memory of hope….
Rosa
Young people are like the wood of a balsa tree,
light and airy—they can float, like rafts,
like boats….
José and I are the rock-hard wood
of a guayacán tree,
the one shipbuilders call Tree of Life
because it is so dense
and heavy with resin
that it sinks,
making the best propeller shafts—
the wood will never rot,
but it cannot float….
Young people drift on airy daydreams.
Old folks help hold them in place.
Silvia
Rosa helps me see the caves
in her own way.
I gaze around at the forest,
where she has been free,
so alive in this wonder,
where trees grow like castle towers,
with windows opening
onto rooms of sunlight.
I can no longer imagine
living anywhere else,
without this garden of orchids
and bright macaws.
I think of all I know
about tales of castles.
There is always a dungeon,
and a chapel,
bells of hope….
Rosa
Silvia tells me that she used to visit
her grandparents in town.
They kept caged birds,
and in the evenings they walked,
carrying the cages up a hill
to watch the sunset.
Inside each cage, the captive bir
ds
sang and fluttered, wings dancing.
Silvia admits that she always wondered
whether the birds imagined they were flying,
or maybe they understood the limitations
of bamboo bars, the walls of each tiny cage.
Now I ask myself about my own limitations,
trying to serve as mother and grandmother
to a child who has lost
everyone she ever loved.
Rosa
The Fox has named me
the first woman Captain
of Military Health,
the first Cuban rebel army nurse
who will be remembered
by name.
I think of all the others
who went before me
in all three wars,
curing the wounded, healing the sick,
nameless women, forgotten now,
their voices and hands
just part of the forest,
whispering like pale yagruma leaves
in a breeze.
On hot days, even the shade
from a yagruma leaf
offers soothing medicine,
the magic of one quiet moment
of peace.
José
Warnings fly from every direction.
Lieutenant Death, the old slavehunter,
never gives up.
He is seen far too often, tracking, stalking,
hunting his prey.
The price for Rosa’s ear grows—
her ear, the proof of her death.
I climb a towering palm tree,
to watch the movements of shadows below.
I wait, studying the shapes to see
which might be wounded rebels,
coming to Rosa for help,
and which could be Death,
bringing his nickname,