Hurricane Dancers
Authors: Margarita Engle
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In memory of my Cuban Indian ancestors
Â
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Caliban
from
The Tempest
by William Shakespeare
Â
Bernardino de Talavera was deeply in debt, like so many Spaniards who worked their Indians to death, yet could not prosper. He assembled a group of seventy characters in rags for debts and other unpunished crimes, and together they stole a ship.â¦
Bartolomé de las Casas
Historia de las Indias
Spanish ships reached the western Caribbean Sea in 1492, searching for Asia and spices. Instead, the explorers found peaceful islanders, and enslaved them.
By 1510, the Bahamas, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica had been conquered. Only Cuba, the largest Caribbean isle, was still free.
It was a time of hurricanes on an island of hope.
Quebrado
(keh-BRAH-doe): A young ship's slave of TaÃno Indian and Spanish ancestry
Bernardino de Talavera
(ber-nar-DEE-no deh tah-lah-VEH-rah): The first pirate of the Caribbean Sea
Alonso de Ojeda
(ah-LON-so de oh-HEH-dah): The pirate's hostage, a brutal conquistador
Naridó
(nah-ree-DOE): A young Ciboney Indian fisherman
Caucubú
(kow-koo-BOO): The young daughter of a Ciboney chieftain
Caciques
(kah-SEE-kehs): Chieftains
Behiques
(beh-EE-kehs): Shamans
Ciboney and TaÃno Indian tribesmen, women, and children
Spanish sailors
Spirits
Ghosts
I listen
to the song
of creaking planks,
the roll and sway
of clouds in sky,
wild music
and thunder,
the groans
of wood,
a mourning moan
as this old ship
remembers
her true self,
her tree self,
rooted
and growing,
alive,
on shore.
One glance is enough to show me
the pirate's mood.
There are days when he treats me
like an invisible wisp of night,
and days when he crushes me
like a cockroach on his table.
I try to slip away
each time I see
his coiled fist,
even though
on a ship
there is no place
to hide.
The sailors call me
el quebrado,
“the broken one,” a child of two
shattered worlds, half islander
and half outsider.
My mother was a
natural,
a “native”
of the island called
cu ba,
“Big Friend,”
home of my first few wild
hurricane seasons.
My father was a man of the sea,
a Spanish army deserter.
When my mother's people
found him on horseback,
starving in the forest,
they fed him, and taught him
how to live like a
natural.
To become a peaceful TaÃno,
he traded his soldier-name
for Gua Iro, “Land Man.”
He and my mother
were happy together,
until a plague took the village,
and none were left
but my wandering father,
who roamed far away,
leaving me alone
with his copper-hued horse
in an unnatural village
of bat-winged spirits
and guava-eating ghosts.
Sailors call me a boy
of broken dreams,
but I think of myself
as a placeâa strange place
dreamed by the sea,
belonging nowhere,
half floating island
and half
wandering wind.
I survived alone in the ghostly village,
with only my father's abandoned horse
to console me, until a moonlit night
when I was seized by rough seafarers,
wild men who beat me
and taught me how to sail,
and how to lose hope.
I was traded from ship to ship as a slave,
until I ended up in the service
of Bernardino de Talavera,
the pirate captain of this stolen vessel.
The pirate finds me useful
because I know two tongues,
my mother's flutelike TaÃno,
and my father's drumlike Spanish.
Together, my two languages
sound like music.
How can a father abandon a son
in such a dangerous world?
Why did he leave me alone
in that village of ghosts
with only his red horse
for company?
What kind of horseman
abandons his steed?
A sorrowful man,
that is the answer.
I have spent all my years
accepting sad truths.
I once owned a vast land grant
with hundreds of
naturales
,
Indian slaves who perished
from toil, hunger, and plagues.
Crops withered, mines failed.
All my dreams of wealth vanished.
Soldiers soon gave chase,
trying to send me to debtors' prison,
so I captured this ship and seized
a valuable hostage, Alonso de Ojeda,
Governor of Venezuela,
an immense, jungled province
on the South American mainland,
where he is known
as the most ruthless
conqueror of tribes.
When I heard that Ojeda
had been wounded by a warrior's
frog-poisoned arrow,
I offered help, assuring the Governor
that my ship would gladly carry him
to any port with Spanish doctors.
I offered the illusion of mercy,
and Ojeda was desperate enough
to believe me.
The pirate demands a ransom,
but the hostage insists
he has nothing to give,
so while they argue,
I lean over the creaking ship's
splintered rail,
watching with wonder
as blue dolphins
leap and soar
like winged spirits.
My mother believed dolphins
can change their shape, turning
into men who come ashore
to sing and dance during storms.
If legless creatures
can be transformed,
maybe someday
I will change too.
I catch the broken boy,
and it takes only a few quick blows
to convince Ojeda
of my strength.
When the prisoner sees my power
over a slave boy, he understands
that I would show even less mercy
to a grown man.
Knights who have lost
their guns and swords
are remarkably easy
to frighten.
All my life, I have been triumphant.
On the isle of Hispaniola, I tricked
a chieftain by offering him a ride on my horse,
then trapping him in handcuffs.
I sent him away in the hold of a ship,
to be sold as a curiosity in Spain,
but a hurricane sank the vessel
while the chief was still shackled.
Expecting rebellion, I slaughtered
his queen and all her people,
to keep them from seeking revenge.
There were days when my sword
killed ten thousand.
Now, all those dead spirits haunt me,
and I am the one on a ship
in chains.
The life of a ship's slave
is hard labor and fists,
or deep water and sharks.
When I sleep, I belong to the land.
In dreams, I work in a field,
planting roots in rich soil.
In dreams, I feel like a spirit of the air,
riding my father's leaping horse.
In dreams, I feel free,
until the sun rises and my eyes open,
and once again I must struggle
beneath the weight
of flapping sails
and heavy ropes.
My mother loved the green parrots
and red macaws that made the sky
above our village look so cheerful.
She always had at least one raucous bird
perched on her shoulder.
As if by magic, the clever birds
learned to speak two languages.
My first words of TaÃno and Spanish
were mastered by listening to songs
recited by feathered creatures
of the air.
Now, each time I think of home,
I remember that the world
is big enough to offer more
than sorrow.
The sea is wild today.
The sails look like wings.
Sailors chant tales while they workâ
sweet songs about the Island of Mermaids,
and scary ones about the Isle of Giants,
with green jungles where huge women
turn into monsters, clasping sailors
in their talons.
The sea is wild tonight.
The roaring wind
sounds hungry.
Shackled to a rotting wall
in the ship's stinking hold,
I feel as helpless as a turtle
flipped on its back,
awaiting the cook's
probing knife.
I clench my fists
and struggle
to fight my way
out of the handcuffs,
while ghosts
gather around me,
watching
and waiting.â¦