The Lightning Dreamer (11 page)

My punishment
is drastic.

 

The marriage
will be rushed.

 

Only ninety days
of freedom
remain.
Ninety days.
Nothing.
No one
can help me.
I am
lost.

I can't do it.
I won't pretend
to love
a stranger.

 

I will not marry
a bank account
instead of
a human.

My daughter is a clever girl,
but she is selfish and thinks only
of her own fantasies.

 

She has made such a show of flirting
with a boy who has nothing at all
to offer—no money, no property,
no fame.

 

As soon as Tula is profitably married,
her wild tantrums, these ridiculous pleas
for freedom,
will end.

 

All our lives will be peaceful
and prosperous.

I am alone
and my heart
is my own.

 

Loneliness.
Solitude.
The first is a curse,
the second a blessing.
I would rather be a hermit
than live with a stranger
who would make me feel
even more lonely
than when I am
truly
alone.

Monster!
Bookworm!
Unnatural!
Professor!
Genius!
Atheist!
The insults my mother screeches
have no limit.

 

Atheist? No. Love is God's
boldest creation.

 

Surely, angels on clouds
must gaze down and smile
each time a girl on earth
refuses a marriage
based on love's
absence.

The punishment for shunning
a forced marriage is being shunned.
Mamá sends me to live as a prisoner,
trapped in my grandfather's
fine marble mansion
on his lush green plantation,
surrounded by sugar
and slaves.

 

I am fifteen now, old enough
to know my own mind,
but my stern old
abuelito
still treats me like a child,
or a monster.

 

He scolds and screams
until I long to die,
and then, suddenly,
after three months
of hateful insults

 

and endless arguments,
his raging heart fails,
and I am left feeling
truly monstrous.

 

I loved him, in the angry way
of young girls who love their families,
no matter how oppressive, no matter
how maddening.

 

Now I really do feel like
la loca,
the crazy girl, a madwoman,
just as Mamá and
abuelito
accused.

 

At the funeral, I remain quiet
in my mother's infuriated presence.
She blames me for her father's death,
and even though I do feel shamefully
responsible for arguing, I also feel
absolutely certain
that my grandfather's angry heart
was his own.

At the reading of the will,
my mother learns that she has lost
her entire inheritance, and this time,
the loss really is my fault.

 

Houses, farms, gold—everything
will go to an uncle, simply because
I refused to be sold.
From beyond the grave,
my grandfather continues
to punish my mother
for defying him
so many years ago.

 

I try to feel sympathy for her,
but secretly, I'm so relieved
that I will never inherit sugar
and slaves.

Banished.
Outcast.
Rejected.
Forever.
Mamá won't allow me to come home.
She tells me to stay in the countryside
and rest. She thinks I'm hysterical.
She believes that I'm mad.
Why can't she see that I am
the sane one, and it's only
the bizarre rules of society
that are crazy?

 

My uncle, the new master
of this farm, is indifferent
to my presence, so I dwell
like a fairy-tale princess
in a palace, surrounded
by luxuries and caged
human lives.

The horror keeps me awake.
Even the house slaves fear me.
Cooks and maids never speak to me.
No one notices that I am not the one
who wields whips
and chains.

 

I cannot rest. I cannot write.
If my own unhappiness
could magically bring
my grandfather
back to life,
I would swiftly agree
to a future of married
misery.