The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,12
Berriz’s mistress, to accepting his advances.
“Well, I suppose there’s nothing to do but wait. I’m going to take a bath and change into clean clothes. Eat some breakfast.”
“And if the soldiers come?” Carmen asks.
“Then they come.”
* * *
—
My hair is barely dry when two soldiers knock at our door.
There’s no opportunity for us to say good-bye to our father, to gather our things, before Carmen and I are shipped out on the Nuevo Cubano steamer to the mainland of Cuba with a boat full of other prisoners.
Three
The prison the Spanish send us to, the Casa de Recogidas, makes our living conditions on the Isle of Pines seem like paradise. The prison is located in one of the rougher sections of Havana, surrounded by crooked alleys. The walls are high and thick, topped by stalwart parapets, the windows barred, a military barracks directly behind the structure.
The Catholic Church founded Recogidas over a hundred years ago as a shelter and place to reform women. I’m not one to question the Church, but whatever their original intentions, the reality is a nightmare.
Our journey was an arduous one. On the Isle of Pines we were treated with a measure of respect because we are ladies, but from the moment we boarded the steamer bound for the Cuban mainland, soldiers insulted us and jeered at us. My wrists are still sore from their manacles chafing my skin.
When they boarded us on the train to carry us to Havana, I fervently hoped that revolutionaries would attack the train and rescue us, but we weren’t so lucky. Instead, I gazed out the window as immense tobacco plantations, sugar fields, and towering palms passed us by, the countryside decorated by the occasional stone fort.
At night when I dream, it is of my childhood, of our house in Cienfuegos where we all lived as a family—my sisters, father, and I. In the courtyard of our home, there was a great fountain. The water leaped and sparkled in the sun as though it was alive. I used to dance in the courtyard and reach out, as if I could command the water, catching it in my hands, bidding it to stand still and talk to me.
I don’t know what has happened to my father, if he is still on the Isle of Pines, if Berriz has taken his anger toward me out on him. I do not know what has happened in the world in my absence, or exactly how much time has passed in this horrible prison. I’ve heard nothing about Emilio’s whereabouts or that of our friends who rescued me; I worry they’re imprisoned in an equally foul place.
It feels as though we are waiting to die here, growing mad minute by minute, our bones aging, the life leeching from us.
Carmen takes it the hardest, her tears ringing throughout the night, and I cannot help but feel guilty for the fact that if not for me, she wouldn’t be here, that she is being punished for my rejection of Berriz.
I relive the events with Berriz over and over again in my mind, trying to understand how we got to this place, how life could be so unfair to condemn us to this misery.
But then, life is nothing if not unfair.
It is impossible to not feel afraid in this horrible place.
During the day, Carmen and I huddle together like scared sheep, kept in a pen as though we are wild animals.
Our jailers have thrown us into a cave with hundreds of other women. There are bars in front of our cage, and men come in from the street and watch us through the open spaces, speaking of us as though we are unaware of their presence, as though we are not human beings worthy of respect. They blow smoke in our faces and comment on our clothes, our bodies, laughing as they watch us on our hands and knees scrubbing the floors.
It is impossible to not be angry in a place like this.
One day, the clank of metal against metal, the rattle and shake that accompanies the heavy fall of footsteps on dirty, dank stone floors fills the air, and hope springs in my chest at the possibility of a visitor and any news they might bring even as I know such an emotion is futile in this place.
Recogidas has a particular talent for eradicating hope in the women it imprisons.
“The warden would like to speak with you,” one of the guards announces, staring at me and Carmen.