Tropical Secrets

by Margarita Engle

  all are equal.

  PALOMA

  Together

  Daniel and I visit

  a Quaker meeting

  to see if it’s true

  that Protestants

  really are exotic.

  We join a circle of people

  sitting quietly, praying.

  Sometimes they sing

  without the music

  of an organ

  or even a piano

  or guitar.

  The human voice

  sounds so wistful

  all by itself.

  After the quiet,

  eerie service,

  we run down to the beach

  where the music of waves

  sounds so joyful

  and wild.

  DAVID

  When the young people ask me

  to tell the tale of my youth,

  I try to describe Russia

  with her vast forests and wheat fields.

  I speak of frozen lakes, ice skates,

  long winters, and wars.

  Soldiers galloped into my village

  with torches, setting fire to the houses,

  killing the women, and capturing

  the boys, forcing us to kill others,

  so I ran away to the seashore,

  where I found an old ship

  splintered and creaking.

  When I asked the captain

  if he was sailing to America,

  he said yes, and it was true—

  here I am, decades later.

  I did not arrive in New York

  as I had expected

  but in this other part

  of las Américas.

  All of that was long ago,

  and the past is the past.

  I must think of the future—

  next month, Cuba will celebrate

  the summer carnival,

  a delightful madness

  of dancing and music.

  JULY 1939

  PALOMA

  I gather feathers and beads

  for decorating masks, capes,

  wings, and horns. . . .

  I show Daniel how to dance

  on stilts.

  Together, we craft

  crowns, robes, turbans,

  and cardboard horses

  for make-believe knights.

  We practice spinning long poles

  topped with lanterns—

  our towering castles of candles,

  our explosions of light.

  Daniel helps me invent

  musical instruments,

  using things that wash up

  on the beach—

  cowbells, conch shells,

  brake drums, railroad spikes. . . .

  We remind ourselves

  how to be happy

  at least for a few hot

  midsummer days.

  DAVID

  Dancing on stilts has always been

  my favorite delight of carnival season.

  I feel like I am sitting on God’s shoulders,

  looking down at a beautiful world.

  Two years ago, carnival was cancelled

  when a Cuban official decided

  the dances were too African,

  too tribal . . .

  but outlawing dance in Cuba

  is like trying to hide the sun

  with one finger.

  Joy and truth both have a way

  of peeking through any dark curtain.

  PALOMA

  The names of the carnival teams

  are Pretty Bird, Hawk, Toad,

  Scorpion, and Serpent.

  My father used to dress up

  as the heroic magician

  who kills scorpions and snakes.

  Now, he won’t even watch

  the dancing

  or listen to music

  of any sort.

  The part of his soul

  that loved melodies and rhythms

  vanished when Mamá

  danced away.

  DANIEL

  I never stop dreaming

  of my parents.

  I see my grandfather

  on the Night of Crystal

  while I fasten pieces

  of a broken mirror

  onto the magician’s cape

  of silky blue cloth,

  creating a sky

  filled with stars.

  I hear my father’s voice

  over the clang of farm tools

  used by Cubans

  for making music—

  shovels, hoes, and rakes

  accompanied by drums

  and dreams. . . .

  My grandfather

  would have been horrified.

  He loved the soft music

  of flutes and violins.

  DANIEL

  I think of my family

  so often

  that my grandfather seems

  to be alive

  and my parents’ voices

  sound real,

  as if shadows

  and memories

  could play

  their own

  sad music.

  DANIEL

  Paloma and I have decided

  to sell flowers and fruit from her garden

  to raise money for new refugees

  who arrive every day.

  Each time a ship lands,

  many people need food, clothing,

  and a place to sleep.

  Knowing that our labor has a purpose,

  it is almost easy for me to smile

  while I work

  decorating a fruit cart

  with cheerful green palm fronds

  and startling red tassels

  to ward off the evil eye,

  even though I don’t believe

  in superstitions.

  Sometimes I’m not sure

  if I can ever believe again

  in all the miracles

  from my grandfather’s

  stories about angels

  and rescues.

  DANIEL

  Music helps me forget

  my loneliness.

  Melodies feel like paths

  I can follow

  to find my way past

  all the terror.

  I learn how to play

  a big conga drum

  and a set of two small

  bongo drums

  and the square rumba drums

  made from codfish boxes—

  hollow drums played

  by the dockworkers

  who unload cargo

  from the ships

  while they sing.

  DANIEL

  When I realize that Summer Carnival

  is a religious festival,

  I almost change my mind

  about dancing.

  My parents would not approve

  of celebrating a Catholic saint’s birthday,

  but David explains that Carnival

  also marks the end of a year’s

  long, exhausting sugar harvest,

  and seasons, he assures me,

  are a miracle even city people

  can understand

  all over the world.

  DANIEL

  Once I decide to dance,

  I put my heart into the movements

  and the sounds. . . .

  I study the rhythms

  of polished sticks called claves

  and rattles of all sorts

  and the güiro,

  a gourd carved with grooves

  that are scraped

  with a stiff wire,

  and I study la quijada,

  the sun-bleached jawbone

  of a long-dead mule

  with loose teeth that chatter

  each time I shake

  the musical skull.

  I feel like a troubled ghost

  from one of my grandfather’s

  funny stories.


  PALOMA

  The rumba

  is a wild dance,

  the conga

  is a festive dance,

  and the son

  has a more wistful style

  the sort of music I think of

  as a danceable sorrow.

  DANIEL

  Today, all the singing vendors

  seem to be saying,

  “Hurry! hurry! Taste this moment

  before the sunlight

  slips away.”

  “Hurry! hurry! Taste these wonders

  before I go on my way,

  far away.”

  So I taste the sweetness of a guava

  that smells like a forest,

  and a coconut

  with its scent of beach

  and the sugarcane juice

  called guarapo, a syrup pressed

  from towering green shoots

  deeply rooted

  in muddy

  red soil.

  DANIEL

  Acrobats leap

  twirling long machetes.

  I think of my mother

  chopping onions.

  Men dance in capes,

  pretending to fight cardboard bulls.

  I remember my father

  dressed up for his job as a pianist.

  Women dance with lanterns

  balanced on their heads.

  I see our flickering fireplace

  on a shivery winter night.

  Paloma dances on her stilts.

  I think of Black Forest trees

  swayed by wind.

  Each time I picture my parents

  dancing a waltz, or my grandfather

  hopping, clowning around,

  I feel like two people—

  the young man who makes music

  out of odds and ends

  of wood and bone

  and this other person,

  the boy lost somewhere

  between the torment of memory

  and a few fragile shards

  of hope.

  PALOMA

  The streets are decorated

  with strands of colored paper

  cut into the shapes

  of lightbulbs and flags.

  I dance on stilts,

  smiling down at my feet

  far below—

  like Alicita in Wonderland

  when she was tall.

  I feel like many people—

  the little girl who had a mother

  and the one who hides with doves

  and the one who obeys her father

  and this once-a-year

  young woman

  who knows how to dance

  in midair.

  PALOMA

  Carnival only lasts

  for a few days and nights,

  and then I will need

  to dream up new ways

  to make money for helping

  the sad people

  who still come

  on more and more ships,

  even though that one ship

  was sent away

  by my father,

  El Gordo, “the Fat Man.”

  Papá is actually not fat at all.

  He is a tall, lean man

  who keeps dreaming up ways

  to make his fat wallet

  even fatter.

  PALOMA

  Lottery vendors sing about tickets,

  so I buy them, based on my dreams—

  a Cuban custom.

  If I’ve dreamed about tigers,

  I buy number fourteen.

  Horse dreams are one,

  and death is either eight,

  if the person who died in the dream

  is a commoner,

  or sixty-four,

  if the dead man in the dream

  is a king.

  Dreams of a woman

  who is kind and gentle

  are number twelve,

  so I buy a few of those tickets

  even though I have not seen Mamá

  in my dreams

  for a long time,

  and now, when I do see her,

  we usually meet

  in a nightmare.

  DANIEL

  Today, Paloma and I

  traded secrets.

  She told me she longs

  to be a dancer like her mother.

  I admitted that I find it hard to believe

  I will ever have the chance

  to grow old, playing the piano

  like my father.

  His life as a musician

  made him happy.

  I always imagined that I

  would be happy too,

  but now, each night

  I dream that German soldiers find me.

  I hear the crash of windows falling

  and people screaming

  and the boots, so many pounding,

  drumming boots. . . .

  In the morning, I have to struggle

  to convince myself that the Nazis

  are not here.

  Will I ever feel

  truly safe?

  DANIEL

  I sit on the beach.

  I play drums

  for the sea.

  Waves are my audience.

  The shorebirds do not listen.

  They are too busy

  making a music

  all their own,

  a dance of wings

  and stiltlike legs,

  each feather

  an instrument played

  by wind.

  DANIEL

  Islands belong to the sea,

  not the earth.

  All around me

  the world is blue.

  Above, more blue,

  like a hot, melting star.

  Music is the only part

  of Cuba’s heated air

  that feels like something

  I can breathe.

  DANIEL

  I feel like a King Midas of living things

  instead of gold.

  Everything I touch

  turns into something that grows.

  This morning, I heard

  a trapped insect chirping

  inside the wood of a table—

  it must have hatched after

  the tree was chopped down.

  Last night, I tried to read Spanish stories

  in a book marked by worm-eaten pages

  and parallel grooves left by rats’ teeth.

  In the tropics

  everything is eaten

  by something else.

  Trees lift the sidewalk,

  vines swallow buildings,

  and fence posts sprout leaves,

  turning themselves into hedges.

  Like King Midas, I am left with nothing

  but this unreasonable hope

  that, somehow, my strange life

  and my lost family

  will return

  to normal.

  DANIEL

  Cubans eat pigs and shellfish.

  Paloma buys crab fritters

  and fried pork rinds

  from vendors who sing

  about the beauty

  of beaches and farms.

  She might as well offer me

  spiders and mice.

  She does not understand

  our customs.

  She expects us to dance

  on the Sabbath,

  on Friday night

  and all day Saturday.

  She keeps teaching me Spanish,

  but what use do I have

  for this island’s singsong language?

  I should be learning English.

  Even if my parents

  are no longer alive,

  I must plan on somehow

  reaching New York

  in honor

  of their memory,

  their dream.

  DAVID

  I was taught that there are four

&n
bsp; kinds of people in the world—

  wise, wicked, simple,

  and those who do not yet know

  how to ask questions.

  I was taught that questions

  are just as important as answers.

  I was a child when I learned these things.

  Now I am old, but I still know

  that life’s questions

  outnumber life’s answers.

  Carnival joy is one of my questions—

  where does it come from,

  this season of musical contentment,

  even though I have lived so long

  and lost so much?

  DECEMBER 1941

  DAVID

  Perhaps I have taught

  the art of wondering