The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,72

my career has taught me anything, it’s to say yes to the opportunity and figure it out as I go along.

“I’m flattered, Mr. Hearst. I would love to.”

“I’m sure you’ll do a fine job,” he says. “We’ll make sure you have a chance to look over Karl’s piece so you can write hers in a similar style. And you’ll want to read over all of the pieces we’ve published on her so that you can maintain a similar style and tone. Miss Cisneros is a national treasure, and she should be treated as such.

“It will be a delicate matter,” Hearst continues. “Some of the men involved in getting Evangelina out of prison must remain anonymous. They’re still embroiled in schemes in Cuba, and it wouldn’t do for their identities to be revealed. Same for any diplomatic assistance she received. We’ll have to use code names for some of them to protect their identities.”

Despite my reservations, my fears that I am no biographer, it feels like an opportunity to distinguish myself in a crowded field, in the hopes that perhaps one day I can move beyond these stunt articles.

It feels like a chance to make my career.

“You can count on me,” I reply.

“I hope so. This is war.”

Twenty-Two

Evangelina

The next day at sea, I change out of the boys’ clothes and into a red dress. I finally feel rested enough that I venture up on deck, and the passengers gather around me, news of my ordeal clearly having spread throughout the ship. The women encircle me, hugging and kissing me, the men telling me I am brave to have survived all that I have.

When I was in Recogidas, I didn’t think of what it would be like to be out of the prison, didn’t realize how difficult it would be to reenter society after spending so much time in such harsh conditions. In prison, we were constantly watched and spied upon, people reporting on our movements, mine more than anyone else’s given the notoriety surrounding my case. It makes the attention everyone pays to me now even more uncomfortable.

While they mill around me, I sit on the deck listening to the glorious sound of the water rushing past the ship, admiring the expanse of sea before me and all the possibilities there. My body may be on the Seneca, but my mind is elsewhere. Even with the future before me, I can’t help but think of my friends back in Havana, of the men who risked their lives to help me.

Is Carlos safe in his home near the wharf, smoking one of those cigars that reminds me of him like the one he gave me that rests in my cabin below deck now with the folded-up boys’ clothes? And the other men? The woman Marina who passed me the notes? What of all of them?

Decker had planned to board a separate steamer to the United States, but I worry that he was caught, that he might be facing the ramifications of helping me escape from Recogidas.

As much as I wish to enjoy the boat ride, I can’t quiet my thoughts enough to concentrate on all of the conversations around me. Everyone wishes to know the details of what has happened to me, but the desire to be alone with my thoughts is greater than I imagined, the weight of all I have endured hitting me at unexpected times. How do you explain life in a prison like Recogidas?

I alternate between resting in my cabin and allowing myself these little entrées into society. My journey is largely uneventful, most of it spent in Walter’s esteemed company and that of the ship’s purser.

I try to imagine what my life will be like when I arrive in New York, but I can’t quite envision it when so much of what I love is back in Cuba. I’ve had no word of what has happened to my father, if he is alive or dead, nor of my sisters. I hope they will not be punished for my escape.

Will I ever see them again? Will I ever return home?

I suppose it is better to not worry about such things, to content myself in all I have accomplished, the miraculous fact that I have escaped from Recogidas, that the Spanish have no claim over me. After living my whole life under their authority, it is a glorious thing to be free.

As we near the end of our journey, I walk out on deck and take in my surroundings,