Tropical Secrets (3 page)

 

I cannot bring myself
to imagine the fate
of all those people,
all the children
who traveled alone
just as I did.

 

Each time I try to picture
my own future,
I feel just as helpless
as the children
on the ship.

 

Will those children
ever find
a home?

 

 

I stand in a crowd
on the docks,
watching the ship
as it grows smaller
and vanishes
over the horizon.

 

There is nothing to do now,
nothing but drumming
on the earth
with my feet
and pounding out a rhythm
in the air
with my fingers.

 

I feel so powerless.
All I can do
is talk to the sky
with my hands

 

and wonder how
any country
can turn a ship away,
knowing that it is filled
with human beings
searching for something
as simple
as hope.

 

 

What would my father do
if he knew that I am one
of many young Cuban volunteers
who help
los Cuáqueros,
the Quakers
from North America
who come here to Cuba
to care for the refugees,
offering food
and shelter?

 

Which would bother my father more—
knowing that I am helping Jews
or seeing me in the company
of Protestants?

 

 

The green-eyed girl
turns her face away
when she serves our meals
of yellow rice
and black beans.

 

I cannot tell
whether she is sad
or ashamed.

 

David explains that Paloma
is not her true name.
She is really María Dolores,
“Mary of Sorrows,”
but everyone calls her Paloma, “the Dove”
because she often hides
in a tower
in her garden,

 

a tower built
as a home
for wild birds.

 

No one seems to know
why she feels
the need
to hide.

 

 

I sneak out
of my room
at night.

 

I creep through
the garden, and up
into the dovecote.

 

I sleep
surrounded
by wings.

 

 

Paloma is not my daughter.
My child is María Dolores.

 

Paloma is just a fantasy name
the girl dreamed up
to help herself forget
her mother's treachery.

 

Until my wife ran away
with a foreigner, our daughter
was content to live in a house
instead of a dovecote.

 

 

I rest in the open patio,
a crazy place shared
with so many
other refugees.

 

I am getting used to sleeping
in a house filled with strangers
and trees.

 

I am not the only young person
unlucky enough to end up alone
in this crowd.

 

The nights are as hot as the days.
Glowing insects flash like flames,
and a pale green moth
the size of my hand
floats above my head
like a ghost.

 

Sometimes I feel
like a ghost
myself.

 

 

Tonight, I cannot sleep.
I listen to the chirping
of tree frogs

 

and the clacking beaks
of wild parrots

 

and music, always music,
the rhythms of rattling maracas
and goatskin drums

 

even here, in the city,
where one would expect
to hear only sirens, buses,
and the radios of neighbors
broadcasting news
about Germany.

 

Sometimes I wish
I was not learning Spanish
so easily—then I would not
understand all the lies
about Jews.

 

 

In the morning
I walk past the brightly
painted houses of Havana—
lime green, canary yellow,
and sapphire blue.

 

The houses
look like songbirds.
I picture them rising
up into the sky
and fluttering away.

 

With each step
I ask myself questions.
What would Papá be like
if my mother had not
sailed away
with a dancing man
from Paris?

 

Is she still there?
Did she marry the dancer?
Do they have children?
Are there brothers and sisters
who ask questions about me?

 

I do not ask myself anything
about the start of a war
in Europe—I do not want to know
if my mother
is dead.

 

 

I come from a family of secrets.
No one else knows about my mother.
They think she is dead.

 

Even her own aunts and cousins
were told that she was killed in a train crash
during a vacation in Paris.

 

I found out the truth
by sneaking glimpses
of my father's mail.

 

There was only one letter from Mamá,
a brief one, where she claimed
that she left Cuba because the island
is too small and too quiet
for her taste.

 

Now, whenever I think of her,
I picture her surrounded
by huge waves, like mountains
of angry noise.

 

 

Davíd assures me that my help is appreciated,
even by the boy who keeps to himself
and looks so unfriendly.

 

The ice-cream man says
that Daniel is just lonely
and frightened,

 

so I give Daniel one of the white
guayabera shirts
that my mother embroidered
so long ago,

 

and I give him one of my father's
many fine Panama hats,
an expensive jipijapa hat,
cool and comfortable
like a splendid circle of shade
from a portable tree.

 

Both the hat and the shirt are so big
that the boy's eyes and hands are hidden,
but his smile is out in the open
and his laughter
sounds like cool rain.

 

 

Many Cuban words still sound foreign to me,
but David is a name I can really understand—
David, the boy with the slingshot,
the one who killed a giant.

 

Now the old man called David tells me I will have
to fight three giants
if I want to get along here in Cuba.

 

The first giant is heat,
the second is language,
and the biggest is loneliness.

 

Accept friendship wherever it is offered,
David advises—you never know
when things will change,

 

and you might find yourself
trying to decide
how to help

 

the same strangers
who now work so hard
to help you.

 

 

At least my family was still together
for my Bar Mitzvah, when I turned thirteen.
Times were hard, but we were all
so overjoyed, following the long
solemn ceremony
with feasting, and laughter.

 

Paloma speaks of her First Communion
with pride—a white dress, white shoes,
and long prayers.

 

Catholic rituals seem so mysterious,
but Paloma insists that in Cuba
Protestants are considered
the most exotic people,
with churches as plain as houses
and no gold or silver decorations
and no chanted songs
in an ancient language like Latin
or Hebrew. . . .

 

So when Quakers come to the shelter,
we ask them if it is true
that they worship without a leader,
and they answer yes,
because they believe that no one
is closer to God than anyone else—
in their meetings
all are equal.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

Music helps me forget
my loneliness.

 

Melodies feel like paths
I can follow

 

to find my way past
all the terror.