The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,36

journalist, when you gave me the impression you were up to the task, I believed in you. This is a dirty business. Arthur Brisbane was my editor, a man I trusted, and Hearst stole him right out from under me. There’s no loyalty in this business if that’s what’s giving you pause. You said you wanted to be taken seriously in this line of work. That means making difficult choices. I gave you a year to prove yourself, Miss Harrington, and so far you’ve shown me you aren’t the investigative reporter you professed to be. You’re certainly no Nellie Bly. Maybe you’re meant to write advice pieces and the like. Maybe you don’t belong at the World after all.”

There’s only one thing I have to offer. After all, Rafael said Clemencia Arango is already disputing the Journal’s account. It’s likely only a matter of time before the story breaks, and if I lead Pulitzer to it, the repercussions can’t be that bad.

That’s what I tell myself at least, as I take a deep breath, feeling like I’m sacrificing a piece of my integrity with each word that falls from my lips.

“The Journal’s story about Clemencia Arango is wrong.”

Nine

Evangelina

After Carmen is released from Recogidas, 1896 turning to 1897, it feels as though all hope is lost. But when hope fails me, anger sustains me through my days in prison. In the evenings, when the sounds of wails fill the night, I pray, although I fear no one answers me, because when the sun comes up, I am still here. They tell me I am to be shipped to a penal colony in Africa, and I wait for that unknown moment, the specter of it hanging over me and my endless days.

I think of my father constantly, not knowing whether he is even alive. I pray for my sisters. Emilio Betancourt similarly occupies my thoughts, and I wonder what has become of him, what punishment he has received for his part in helping me. Has he been released from prison and moved on from his life now, or is he withering away in the same conditions as me?

The past few nights, I’ve dreamed of him, of when we first met. It feels like a lifetime ago, like it happened to a different woman. In the beginning, Emilio used to walk back and forth in front of our house. I didn’t notice him right away, but when I did after a few weeks, I was initially struck by the fact that he was the handsomest man I’d ever seen. Now when I attempt to remember the way he made me feel, what he looked like, I am left with the sensation that those were a girl’s memories. So much has changed in such a short time. I am no longer the girl I used to be.

Life here is very different from what I knew on the Isle of Pines. There we were allowed to roam the island, were given adequate food so there was no gnawing hunger in our bellies. Now I am jailed in a vast common cell and am forced to scrub floors. My clothes are in tatters hanging from my body, my cheeks gaunt. We are kept in an immense courtyard, a gate with ironwork containing us. Visitors still come every day to leer at us through the bars, taunting us for our predicament. Many of my fellow prisoners beg for money, reaching their hands through the bars and pleading for someone on the other side to help them. There are spies in the prison who report back on our movements, and perhaps that is the hardest part of all. We live side by side, yet it is impossible to speak freely, to know who you can trust, even more so now that I am alone, my sister Carmen lost to me.

And still, even in this horrible place, there are those whom I love: Señoras Agramonte and Sotolongo, Miss Aguilar, the wives of generals Recio and Rodriguez. They’re all fine women imprisoned alongside me because they’re related to revolutionaries.

One day I stand in the cage, surrounded by my fellow prisoners. There are about a hundred of us here, from different backgrounds, fate dealing us all the unforgiving hand that brought us to this miserable place. Our jailer is holding court, two well-dressed men beside him. They speak of us as though we cannot hear them, as though we’ve lost our humanity in this horrid prison. Maybe we have. The more