The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,100
to Cuba.”
My heart pounds at the possibility there. Hearst’s foreign war correspondents are becoming legends. I would give anything to join their ranks.
“Is that story almost ready?” he asks.
“Almost.”
I bend over the typewriter and get to work.
* * *
—
The quietest moment in the newsroom is right before dawn, when the editors have put the early edition to bed. I’ve been assigned the long watch, a great way to get a little bit of extra money as I stay in the newsroom after my story has gone to print, waiting for any last-minute information to come in.
Suddenly, one of the other editors bursts into the room.
“We just received an Associated Press bulletin. The USS Maine has blown up in the Havana Harbor.”
My jaw drops. “Call Hearst.”
Thirty-Three
Marina
Bodies float in the water, the immense Maine nearly destroyed. Pieces of her remain above the sea—the mast and some of her forward parts—but the majority of her and the over two hundred and fifty souls on board rest at the bottom of the harbor. The American sailors have taken to hanging wreaths from the ship’s mainmast, which sticks out from the water, the American flag flying at half-mast on the Maine and other American ships.
People come by to pay their respects to the dead and to gawk at the scene before them. It’s as though the entire city holds its breath waiting to see what the Americans will do in response. Some think the Americans bombed their own warship as an excuse to insert themselves into our war with Spain, others blame the Spanish, and some don’t care what caused the explosion as they hope that this will soon be the solution we desperately need: the hope that the Americans will defeat Spain and free Cuba once and for all.
I don’t know what I believe in this strange world filled with never-ending tragedies.
The Spanish seem to realize how dangerous the situation has become. Spain has already stopped feeding and paying many of their soldiers, and the men now desert to the countryside by the hundreds, and then thousands, switching sides and joining the revolutionaries after likely realizing their country has abandoned them.
The Maine is all anyone talks about in the city, and as much as I struggle to glean any information about what will happen next, who is responsible for the explosion, and how it will affect the Cuban cause, I have dire concerns of my own to worry about.
Since I took her to my parents’ home, Isabella is much improved, but Luz has become ill now.
I return to the camp from dropping off some laundering to check on Luz. She’s sleeping in one of the beds they’ve made her, her skin pale.
“How is she?” I ask one of the nurses.
The American Red Cross has sent workers, led by their founder seventy-six-year-old Clara Barton, to care for the ill and infirm in the camps, and to distribute aid and relief throughout the island.
“She isn’t doing well,” the nurse says. “Her fever has gotten worse.”
“It’s yellow fever, isn’t it?”
I haven’t missed how her skin has yellowed over the past few days, and we’ve certainly seen enough of it in the camps to recognize the symptoms ourselves. There’s no point in worrying if I’ll catch it; it’s everywhere, unavoidable in these conditions.
She nods. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you—” The words stick in my throat.
For so long, Luz has been like a mother to me. I can’t imagine the world without her in it. How will I tell Isabella her grandmother is gone? Or tell Mateo he has lost his mother? How will I carry on without her? How much do we have to lose in this war?
“Do you think she’ll survive?” I ask.
“I don’t know. We’re doing everything we can right now to keep her comfortable, but her immune system was already compromised. She’s malnourished, and—”
Tears fill my eyes, a wave of guilt hitting me. I should have worked more, tried harder to get us food. I should have gotten us out of the camps, shouldn’t have brought us here to begin with. I should have tried to convince my family to take her in alongside Isabella, I should have—
The nurse lays her hand on my arm. “There is nothing you could have done. Yellow fever has ravaged these camps. If it wasn’t that, it would have been something else. In all my years of caring for others, I’ve never seen anything like this place. No one should live like this. No one should have to.”