Your Heart, My Sky
Page 8
Who would leave an infant
so close to the voracious ocean?
The dog sings to her, and she answers,
whimpering, then howling with gratitude
for canine sympathy,
the first step
toward human
help.
Abandoned?
Amado and Liana
The baby seems as isolated as an explorer
of some remote galaxy where gravity
does not tie
human feet
or minds
to solid
earth.
How can a parent leave a child
alone?
Do Humans Always Assume the Worst?
The singing dog
The infant’s young mother emerges from the water,
her hands cradling the day’s catch of shellfish
and seaweed, her hair as tangled as a mermaid’s,
her eyes fierce as she reclaims her child,
clearly assuming that the odd-looking dog
might be dangerous
and the teenagers
are strangers
unworthy
of trust.
The dog licks the baby’s cheek,
then the mother’s hand,
in an effort to announce
that he means no harm,
and was only trying to guard the child
from loneliness
despair
pecking seagulls
hungry crabs.…
Possibilities as Vast as the Sea
Liana and Amado
We sing to soothe each other’s fears.
The lonely baby is safe now,
the dog howls with joy, but how
can we be sure that what we hear
will not be transformed
into sorrow?
We Need to Live As If Time Does Not Exist
Amado and Liana
For one terrifying instant, the mother
must have imagined that we would report her
to dangerous authorities.
She could have lost her baby, even though
leaving him on the beach was her only way
to gather food and stay alive so she could feed him.
This entire island has been plunged into a dilemma
beyond comprehension, each of us choosing how
to divide up any scraps of edible treasures we find:
gobble it all ourselves, or save some
for our loved ones?
Gardening helps.
It’s all we can do.
Share.
We need to live as if tomorrow
won’t starve us.
Music of the Future
The singing dog
The dog senses he’s in a time-shifting story
even before he hears a wistful melody
that leads him far away
from humans.
Someone heard his howl and answered.
He’s not the last of his kind after all.
She’s there, in that green refuge beyond dark caverns,
a mate, the one he’s rarely encountered,
another remnant of the immense past, reclaimed, another
survivor.
His matchmaking work is finished for now.
The two humans are together, and they will be
the ones who decide how to live from now on,
while he will once again create
his own family, bringing hope all the way back
from near extinction.
Hope Is the Only Cure for Hunger
Amado
As soon as the baby is reunited with her mother,
Paz races away to find the source of howling,
while we stay on our new beach, determined
to think of this night as the start of sunrise
tomorrow.
I will not climb onto a raft if it means
taking a chance on being separated by death.
Imagine how lonely it would feel to be the only
survivor.
Imagine how lonely Liana would be if I
sink, and she soars.
We’ll take our chances on hunger’s shore.
We won’t let the ocean
separate us.
Our Gardens Await
Liana
One kiss and fear recedes
like a tide, replaced by our love-driven
struggle
to learn
about
plants
soil
water
growth
nature.
In our hearts, there are two ways to be:
ser is forever,
estar fleeting.
When it comes to feeling free, we
need both.
Author’s Note
Liana and Amado are fictional characters, but all the hardships they face in this story were real during the 1990s, when Cubans suffered near starvation. That decade of extreme hunger is known as el período especial en tiempos de paz (the special period in times of peace). Those who survived remember it with horror, afraid that hunger could return at any moment, depending on the whims of governments.
During the summer of 1991, after an absence of three decades, I visited relatives in Cuba, knocking on their doors unannounced, because I knew that islanders had been ordered to avoid interacting with foreigners who attended the Pan Am Games. I continued to deliver suitcases filled with food and vitamins throughout the decade when most Cubans grew emaciated, many suffering from diseases related to malnutrition. Shortages of food resulted from a combination of the sudden loss of Soviet aid; inefficient collective farming; bizarre laws that prohibited individuals from growing, buying, and selling agricultural products; and a brutal US trade embargo.
Throughout the 1990s, desperate islanders had to decide whether to stay and starve, or flee as refugees. Tens of thousands se tiraron al mar (threw themselves into the sea) on makeshift rafts, hoping to gain asylum in Florida. Countless balseros drowned. The names of those who survived were read over the radio, on Miami stations that were prohibited in Cuba. During one of my visits, I shared the excruciating experience of secretly waiting to hear the names of cousins.
Now, thirty years later, I choose to love the cousins who floated away from Cuba and became refugees, as well as those who stayed in their homeland, inventing solutions to daily problems.
Until the devastating 2020 global pandemic, hunger on the island had gradually decreased due to an increase in tourism, but most food was food still imported. Much of the protein is destined for tourists rather than locals, and staples such as rice and beans are still rationed. Small vegetable plots, street vendors, and farmers’ markets have been legalized, along with paladares (home restaurants) and casas particulares (home bed-and-breakfast inns). The US trade economic embargo persists. In place since 1962, it can only be ended by an act of Congress. For readers who wonder about the blend of fact and fantasy in historical fiction, here are a few details that show how they can merge in a writer’s mind:
—Cuba’s singing dogs were described by priests who accompanied Spanish conquistadors beginning in 1492. I choose to believe that some of these indigenous canines survive, and I enjoy wondering whether they can serve as guardians and matchmakers.
—Cortés really did seize all the Spanish men of my mother’s hometown as soldiers, and the enslaved indigenous men as porters for the conquest of Mexico. One mestizo named Uría refused to fight and was imprisoned. I descend from his Ciboney Taíno nation.
—I included a baby left alone on a beach because many years ago, I really did find one, wrapped in a thick blanket, beneath the blazing sun. I stayed with him until his young mother emerged from the sea with a meal fit for a mermaid. She told me she had no choice but to leave him while searching for food.
—El Valle del Ruiseñor (The Valley of the Nightingale) is reached by hiking through caves in western Cuba
. For the purpose of this story, I moved it to the north coast near Playas del Este, from which most rafters depart.
Acknowledgments
I thank God for love and gardens. I’m grateful to my family in the United States and Cuba; to my dedicated agent, Michelle Humphrey; my wonderful editor Reka Simonsen; and the entire Atheneum publishing team.
More from the Author
With a Star in My Hand
Soaring Earth
Jazz Owls
Enchanted Air
Forest World
Lion Island
About the Author
Margarita Engle is the Cuban American author of many verse novels, including With a Star in My Hand; The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor book; and The Lightning Dreamer, a PEN Literary Award for Young Adult Literature winner. She has also written two verse memoirs, Soaring Earth and Enchanted Air, the latter of which received the Pura Belpré Author Award; was a Walter Honor Book, Young Readers Category; and was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, among other accolades. Her picture book Drum Dream Girl received the Charlotte Zolotow Award. Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother’s homeland during childhood summers with relatives. She continues to visit Cuba as often as she can. Visit her at margaritaengle.com or follow her on Twitter @margaritapoet and on Instagram @engle.margarita.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Margarita-Engle
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New York
Also by Margarita Engle
* also available in Spanish
Enchanted Air:
Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir*
The Firefly Letters:
A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba
Forest World*
Hurricane Dancers:
The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck
Jazz Owls:
A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
The Lightning Dreamer:
Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist
Lion Island:
Cuba’s Warrior of Words*
The Poet Slave of Cuba:
A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano
Silver People:
Voices from the Panama Canal
Soaring Earth:
A Companion Memoir to Enchanted Air*
The Surrender Tree:
Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom*
Tropical Secrets:
Holocaust Refugees in Cuba
The Wild Book
With a Star in My Hand:
Rubén Darío, Poetry Hero *
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text © 2021 by Margarita Engle
Jacket illustration © 2021 by Gaby D’Alessandro
Book design by Rebecca Syracuse © 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Engle, Margarita, author.
Title: Your heart, my sky : love in the time of hunger / Margarita Engle. Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, [2021] | Audience: Ages 12 up. | Audience: Grades 7–9. | Summary: In Cuba’s “special period in times of peace” of 1991, Liana and Amado find love after their severe hunger gives both courage to risk government retribution by skipping a summer of labor to seek food. Told in their two voices plus that of the stray dog that brought them together.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020012225 | ISBN 9781534464964 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534464988 (eBook)
Subjects: CYAC: Starvation—Fiction. | Dogs—Fiction. | Love—Fiction. | Family life—Cuba—Fiction. | Cuba—History—20th century—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.5.E54 You 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012225