The Wild Book (5 page)

My brothers shout
and my father curses.
It is clear that the cattle
are tied up so that they
can be stolen.

Home is no longer
a place to feel safe.

The rustlers gallop away
before my brothers
can catch them.

They did not get our cows,
but they took my ability
to sleep.

I lie awake, listening
to the beastly shrieks
and roars
of hurricane wind.

How can nighttime
be filled with so many
terrifying daydreams?

I get up and wander
with a candle in my hand,
the light a bright flicker
of comfort.

On the kitchen table
I find a piece of paper
with squiggly letters.
I struggle to con—cen—trate,
peering and squinting,
telling myself that I am not
word-blind.

I can read, eagerly,
sss—low—lll—yyy,
carefully, even though
I feel like a fat manatee
swimming away
from sleek sharks.

The paper is ugly,
a hideous, horrible
ransom note.
Oh.
¡Ay!
Why?
No!
It is my worst fear,
signed by the two
infamous kidnappers,
Alvarez and Tolís.

I am furious, confused.
The eerie note haunts me.
The bold, sloppy writing
looks ghostly as it shrieks:
PAY
OR LOSE
YOUR CHILDREN.

I stare at the threat,
feeling certain that I've seen
this jagged, knife-blade shred
of ugly handwriting before
somewhere else, long ago
in a nightmare...

Papá is behind me now,
grumbling and muttering
something about having
so many children that he
could never hope to pay
a ransom for all...

What will become
of us?

I feel as lost as the girl
who turned into a flower,
only I am just one
detached
windblown
petal,
weightless
and rootless.

Even the presence
of my sturdy father
is not enough
to help me feel
like a natural plant
with a place
to belong.

José saddles his horse
to ride into town for help.
His shoulder aches, but he
refuses to stand around
feeling helpless.

I have no choice.
I am just a useless child,
who cannot even
make sense
of a ransom note's
ugliness.

I stare at the note,
but I feel just like I did
months ago, when words
still jumped and slithered
like restless green frogs
or slippery striped snakes.

Then I see it,
the nightmarish
connection—
this tilted, angry,
hideous handwriting
must be Fausto's.

In my album, the ugly poem
spoke of a rose in a garden.

Now I see it so clearly.
Here are the thorns.

So I fetch my album,
and I show the ugly verse
to my father.

I tell what I know.
I fly to the truth of words.

Outraged, Papá shudders,
then promises to remedy
all that is wrong.

Flying to the truth of words
instantly helps me
feel
as secure
as a flower
with deep roots.

Men in uniforms gallop
to the farm.

Fausto tries to escape,
but he ends up with his wrists
trapped in handcuffs—
he is the captive,
not me.

Our family is safe.
Papá calls me a heroine.
Mamá calls me an angel.
José tells me that I am
the slowest, most careful,
observant reader
he has ever known.

I have finally received
encouragement
from a teacher.

Once the crisis is over
and we have been rescued,
I tear up the ugly poem's
ragged words, destroying
this thorny feeling
of shame.

My album
is empty.

At first
the white pages
seem lonely,

but after a few minutes
the blankness looks sunlit,

like clear blue sky
after a storm.

I never expected a reward,
but Mamá is making a lacy
blue dress that I can wear
to Carmen's Saint's Day feast,
and Papá has given me
the gift of his trust.

José offers to take me
on an adventurous outing,
all the way to the tower.

He is seated proudly
on a coppery horse,
but he says that I
am too old to ride
like a boy.

I have to sit sideways
on a spotted mare,
wishing that horses
were not quite
so tall.

There is nothing
like a sidesaddle
to test a young girl's
courage.

I wonder how many
men could keep their balance
in such a precarious position.
Pre—car—i—ous.

Women have no choice.
We grow accustomed
to sitting sideways,
seeing only half
of the dangerous road
up ahead.

My brother stays
with the horses
while I climb
and climb
and climb.

Darkness—
a steep
stairway
of splintered
rotting wood.

On the fifth story
I feel dizzy.

By the sixth
I am exhausted.

On the seventh
there are small
welcoming windows
bright with sun.

I lean out
and dare myself
to enjoy
the wide view
of green hills,
blue sea,
and a sky
so enormous
and peaceful
that I don't have to
actually see
all my thousands
of guardian angels
to believe that they
are watching me.

When I finally
climb back down
from the tower,
I sip a bit of water
from the well.

I don't really feel
any different, but it's easy
to imagine that today
I have grown
just a little bit
stronger
and wiser.

This is the last
blank page.

My wild book is full.
I am surprised to discover
that I can no longer bear
the thought of an entire day
without the natural flow
of twining
vinelike words...

So I pick up one
of the thick books
I used to hate, and I open
its gate-shaped cover,
and I let my strong eyes
travel,
slowly
exploring.

The Wild Book
is fiction inspired by stories my maternal grandmother told me about her child hood. I have added numerous imaginary aspects, and certain events have been altered or condensed in time. For instance, baby Rubén was not born until 1914.

Josefa de la Caridad Uría Peña was known to all who loved her as Fefa. Born in 1901, she grew up on a farm during the chaos following Cuba's wars for independence from Spain and the subsequent U.S. occupation of the island. It was a time of lawlessness, when bandits terrorized the countryside, kidnapping children unless their families agreed to deliver ransom money in advance. It was also a time when poetry was a treasured aspect of daily life. The kidnapperpoet who threatened the Uría family was their trusted farm manager. Well past the age of one hundred, my grandmother still remembered the verse he wrote "in her honor":

Al verla tan jovencita
y de tanta educación
le busco la proporción
que busco entre las demás
y en este jardin será
una rosa de Borbón.

Seeing her so young
and so accomplished,
I seek a measure
of her place among others,
and in this garden she will be
a rose of Borbón.

My grandmother always chuckled when she told the story of her father's reaction to the scoundrel's threat. My great-grandfather said he had too many children to pay a ransom for all, and since he believed in equality, he refused to choose favorites. Rather than pay for some, he paid for none. Fortunately, Fausto was caught and went to prison before any of the children were actually kidnapped.

Fefa (upper right) at a picnic with her family in 1914.

Word-blindness
was a medical term used in the early twentieth century for what we now call dyslexia, a range of conditions now known to be completely unrelated to any form of blindness. With patience, courage, and the help of reading specialists, dyslexic children learn to read and write beautifully. Many are exceptionally brilliant people who go on to accomplish great things. Throughout her remarkably long life, Fefa always wrote letters to her loved ones. She wrote slowly and carefully. She had the most elegant handwriting I have ever seen.

I thank God for blank pages.

I am profoundly grateful to my
abuelita
for telling me stories about her childhood, and to my daughter, Nicole, for asking me to give her greatgrandmother's life a home on blank pages. I am thankful to my mother for filling in factual details and then allowing me to change them.

For the encouragement of companionship, special thanks to Curtis, Victor, Kristan, Jake, Nicole, and Amish.

Gracias a los primos
for leading the way up the steep stairs of La Torre Manaca-Iznaga.

For help with my humbling effort to understand even a tiny fragment of the complexity of reading disorders, I am thankful to Jossie O'Neill, the International Dyslexia Association, the Dyslexia Foundation, and LD Online. Any errors in my portrayal of reading disorders are mine, not theirs.

For wonderful teamwork, I am deeply grateful to my brilliant editor, Reka Simonsen, and to everyone else at Harcourt, especially Betsy Groban, Jeannette Larson, Lisa DiSarro, Adah Nuchi, and Kerry Martin.

PHOTO © MARSHALL W JOHNSON

M
ARGARITA
E
NGLE
is a Cuban American poet and novelist whose work has been published in many countries. Her books include
The Surrender Tree,
a Newbery Honor book and winner of the Pura Belpré Award, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, the Américas Award, and the Claudia Lewis Poetry Award;
The Poet Slave of Cuba,
win- ner of the Pura Belpré Award and the Américas Award;
Tropical Secrets; The Firefly Letters;
and
Hurricane Dancers.
She lives with her husband in Northern California.