The Surrender Tree (7 page)

the strength.

 

 

        The Surrender Tree
        1898–99

Rosa

No one understands

why a U.S.battleship

has been anchored

in Havana Harbor.

We do not know

how the ship explodes,

killing hundreds of American sailors,

who must have felt so safe

aboard their sturdy warship.

Who can be blamed

for the bomb?

José

After the U.S.battleship
Maine

explodes in Havana Harbor,

Spain's soldiers in Cuba

are no longer paid or fed

by their own country's

troubled army.

Deserters flee into the mountains

by the hundreds, then by thousands,

coming to us for mercy,

begging to switch sides

and become
mambí
rebels

because we know how to find

roots and wildflowers

to keep ourselves alive.

How swiftly old enemies

turn into friends.

Silvia

Foreign newspaper reporters

flood our valleys and mountains,

journeying to Cuba

from distant places

with strange names.

Some come with cameras,

others with sketchbooks.

Rosa poses calmly.

I smile.

Cricket laughs,

because even though some of the artists

are amazing,

others are sneaky—

one reporter sketches the fat cook,

making him look thin and handsome,

to flatter him

before begging for extra food.

Only José refuses to be photographed

or sketched—he claims he once

knew a man

who posed, and was harmed by the camera,

and has never been the same.

I do not believe that José is afraid.

He just wants to keep our faces

and our hospitals

safely hidden.

Rosa

The countryside is a ghostland

of burned farms and the ashes of houses,

skeletal trees blackened by smoke.

Rumors blossom

and wither like orchids.

Some say the U.S.Cavalry

is here to help us.

Others insist that the Americans

must have bombed

their own warship

just to have an excuse

for fighting in Cuba

so close to the end

of our three wars

for independence.

Silvia

The U.S. Cavalrymen

call themselves Rough Riders

but José calls them Weary Walkers

because fever makes them so weak

that they have to dismount

and lead their horses

through Cuba's swamps.

Some of the northerners

who come to our hospitals with fever

are dark men who laugh

when they call themselves

the Immunes.

They say they were promised

that if they volunteered to fight in Cuba

they would remain healthy—

apparently, in northern lands,

dark people were thought to be safe

from tropical fevers

until Cuba started teaching

northern doctors

the truth.

Rosa

I smile as Silvia tries to learn English

from our new patients, some light, some dark,

all speaking the same odd, birdlike language.

I can't understand

why dark northern soldiers

and light ones

are separated

into different brigades.

The dead are all buried together

in hasty mass graves,

bones touching.

José

I serve as a guide for the Rough Riders,

some of them Cherokee and Chippewa,

others old bear hunters and gold miners,

cattlemen, gamblers, college students,

and doctors.

Rosa will not allow the foreign doctors

to leech blood from feverish men

who are already weak,

or to cover their wounds with a paste

of poisonous mercury and chlorine,

so most of the Rough Riders

are taken away

to their own hospital ships,

where they can be treated

without the help

of my stubborn wife,

even though

she is right….

Rosa

Gómez is truly a clever Fox.

He writes in his diary,

keeping track of every battle,

every movement, every Cuban guide

hired to help the Americans

find their way in our jungle,

as they chase bands of desperate

Spanish soldiers.

I am pleased to see the Fox

writing columns of numbers.

He records each debt, no matter how small.

He promises that every
Pacífico,

every Peaceful One,

every hardworking farmer will be paid

for each grain of corn, each pig, each hen.

I thank God that some peasants

did not move to the camps.

We survive with food raised

by those who stayed hidden

in remote valleys,

planting by the moon,

and harvesting in sunlight.

Silvia

I watch as foreign soldiers

write letters home

to their families.

Cricket is fascinated too—

he has never been to school.

He can barely write.

One of the Rough Riders tells us

that he is writing to his wife

about us,

and about Rosa,

the way she treats everyone the same,

without taking payment,

or choosing favorites.

Rosa

I travel down to the remnants of camps,

where skeletal people now come and go freely,

walking like ghosts, wandering, grieving.

American nurses hand out food

to those who line up early,

while there is enough.

The nurses wear white-winged hats, like angels.

I meet Clara Barton, with her angel-wing hat.

The famous Red Cross nurse

tells me she is sorry she could not help sooner,

when there was no food

in the camps, and no medicine.

Now she can help,

but for so many, help comes too late.

She gives me a hat

with white wings, a blood-red cross,

the colors of jasmine

and roses.

Silvia

Some of the U.S.Army nurses

are young Lakota Sioux nuns

who have come here to help us

even though their own tribe in the north

has suffered so much, for so long,

starving and dying

in their own distant wars.

One of the nuns

is called Josefina Two Bears.

She promises to take care

of all the orphans

from the camps.

Rosa

In the caves, our pillows were stones

and our beds were moss.

Water trickled from crystal ceilings

with a sound like quiet music.

It was easy to imagine

a peaceful future,

a peaceful past….

Now I sleep in a real bed, dreaming

that I am seated on a green, sunny roadside,

selling flowers—cup-of-gold vine, orange trumpet,

coral vine, flame tree, ghost orchid, roses….

I dream that I am able to sell all these flowers

because it is peacetime,

and blossoms are treasured

for beauty and fragrance,

not potions, not cures….

José

How will I deliver such strange news

to my wife, who has labored so hard

for so long, that even her sleep is not sleep,

but just dreams….

How can I tell her that suddenly

this third war has ended?

If only I could tell her

that we won.

Instead, I must whisper a truth

that seems impossible—

Spain has been defeated,

but Cuba is not victorious.

The Americans have seized power.

Once again, we are the subjects

of a foreign tyrant.

Rosa

We helped them win

their strange victory

against Spain.

We imagined they were here

to help us gain the freedom

we've craved for so long.

We were inspired by their wars

for freedom from England

and freedom for slaves.

We helped them win

this strange victory

over us.

José

They choose a majestic tree,

a
ceiba,
the kapok tree

revered by Cubans,

a sturdy tree with powerful roots.

They choose the shade of spreading branches.

We have to watch from far away.

Even General Gómez,

after thirty years of leading our rebels,

even he is not invited

to the ceremonial surrender.

Spain cedes power before our eyes.

We can only watch from far away

as the Spanish flag is lowered

and the American flag glides upward.

Our Cuban flag

is still forbidden.

Rosa

Silvia has decided

to help the Sioux nuns

build an orphanage

for children

from the camps.

José and I must continue

doing what we can

to heal the wounded

and cure the sick.

Peace will not be paradise,

but at least we can hope

that children like Silvia

and the other orphans

will have their chance

to dream

of new ways

to feel free….

Silvia

I feel like a child again.

I don't know how to behave.

The war is over—

should I dance,

am I free to sing out loud,

free to grow up,

fall in love?

I am free to smile

while the orphans sleep.

I admit that I feel impatient,

so eager to write in a journal,

like the Fox,

writing a record

of all that I have seen….

Peace is not the paradise

I imagined, but it is a chance

to dream….

 

 

Author's Note

My grandmother used to speak of a time when her parents had to leave their farm in central Cuba and “go to another place.” I had no idea what she meant, until I grew up and read historical accounts of Weyler's reconcentration camps.

My grandmother was born on a farm in central Cuba in 1902. She described Cuba's countryside as so barren from the destruction of war that once, when her whole family was hungry, her father rode off into the wilderness and came back with a river turtle. That one turtle was cause for celebration, enough meat to keep a family alive and hopeful.

One of my grandmother's uncles was a
Pacífico
(a Peaceful One), who kept farming in order to feed his little brother. Another uncle was a blond man of primarily Spanish descent who married the daughter of a Congolese slave. My mother remembers seeing this couple coming into town with wild mountain flowers to sell. She says they were two of the happiest people she had ever seen. I like to picture them in love with each
other, and with the beauty of their homeland, free of hatred, and free of war—free, in every sense of that short, powerful word. During a recent trip to Cuba, I met my mother's cousin Milagros, one of their descendants, whose name means “Miracles.”

I feel privileged to have known my grandmother, who pressed wet sage leaves against her forehead whenever she had a headache, and my great-grandmother, who was young during Cuba's wars for independence from Spain, and Milagros, whose children are young and hopeful now.

 

 

Historical Note

In this story, Silvia and the oxcart driver are the only completely fictional characters. Their experiences are based on composites of accounts by various survivors of Weyler's reconcentration camps.

All the other characters are historical figures, including Rosario Castellanos Castellanos, known in Cuba as Rosa
la Bayamesa,
and her husband, José Francisco Varona, who helped establish and protect Rosa's hospitals. Some of the hospitals were mobile units, moving with the rebel
mambí
army. Others were thatched huts, hidden in the forest. Some were caves.

So little is known about the daily routines of Rosa and José that I have taken great liberties in imagining their actions, feelings, and thoughts.

Like many traditional Latin American healers, Rosa regarded healing as a gift from God and never accepted payment for her work as a nurse. Her medicines were made from wild plants. Many of these herbal remedies are still used in Cuba, where they are called
la medicina verde
(the green medicine).

Various accounts show Rosa's birth year as either 1834 or 1840. When she died on September 25, 1907, she was buried with full military honors. Her funeral was attended by a colonel of the U.S. Infantry's 17th Regiment.

There really was a slavehunter known as Lieutenant Death, but there is no evidence that he was the key figure in Spanish military operations designed to pursue and kill Rosa.