with the music of conch-shell trumpets,
bamboo flutes, rattles, drums,
and the Canary Islanders’
language of Silbo,
a mystery of whistles.
Animals and plants help me learn
how to understand all these ways of knowing
what people are trying to say.
The ears of a horse show anger, or fear.
The eyes of oxen tell of weariness.
Voices of birds chant borders around nests.
Yellow acacia flowers whisper secrets of love.
Green reeds play a wild, windy music.
Pink oleanders are a poisonous message
that warns:
¡Cuidado!Beware!
Fragrant blue rosemary speaks of memory.
White poppies mean sleep.
White yarrow foretells war.
José
The most famous of our mambí generals
are called the Fox and the Lion.
Máximo Gómez is the Fox, slender and pale,
a foreigner from the island of Hispaniola.
First he was a Spanish soldier,
then a rebel,
and now we think of him as Cuban.
The Lion is Antonio Maceo, our friend since birth,
a local man of mixed race.
Some call him the Bronze Titan,
because he is powerful, and calm.
The Fox loves to quote philosophers, poets,
and the Proverbs of King Solomon.
He tells Rosa that those who save lives are wise,
like trees that bear life-giving fruit.
The Lion adds that kindness to animals
and children
is a part of Rosa’s natural gift,
but healing the wounds of enemy soldiers
is a strange mercy that floats down
from heaven.
Rosa
The Lion and the Fox
visit our hospital huts and caves.
We have many now.
We travel from one to another,
carrying medicines, and hope.
I wear an ammunition belt,
and an old gun, a carbine,
to make José happy, because he insists
that I must learn to defend myself
against spies.
Lieutenant Death
I watch
from a treetop,
looking down
at the top
of her head.
So simple.
Her hair
in a kerchief.
Her gun,
rusty, useless…
She is not
what I expected
of someone so famous
for miracles.
I take aim,
then wait,
searching….
How did she do it…?
Is she a real witch…?
How does she make herself
vanish?
Rosa
A man is carried into the hospital, wounded—
he fell from a tree.
I know his face, and I can tell that he
recognizes me.
We were children, we were enemies…
Now he is my patient,
but why should I cure him,
wasting precious medicines
on a spy who must have been sent
to kill me?
Each choice leads to another.
I am a nurse.
I must heal the wounded.
How well the Lion knows me! Didn’t he say
that curing the enemies
is not my own skill, but a mercy from God?
Each choice leads to another.
I am a nurse.
I must heal.
Lieutenant Death
I sneak away,
my arm splinted,
my head bandaged.
Now I know
where Rosa la Bayamesa,
the cave nurse from Bayamo,
hides her patients—
in a hospital
of secrets,
surrounded by jungle,
walls of tree trunks,
fences of thorns—
now I know,
and I can sell
this information
for many smooth
round coins
of gold!
Rosa
The parakeet-bright Spanish soldiers
come marching
with torches, and Mausers, and trumpets.
We are forced to escape, move our patients, hide,
find a new home, new hope, a new cave…
although clearly, this one too is ancient—
every wall and spire of crystal
bears the marks of other fugitives,
people who hid here
long ago—
people who left
their handprints on stone.
Will I ever feel safe?
Can I continue?
When will I rest,
if my sleep
always turns
into whirlwinds,
this spiral
of nightmares?…
José
One more escape.
We are safe.
We whisper.
We hide.
We hope.
We explore
our new home,
this vast, glittering cavern
of crystals, darkness, silence….
Rosa
The caves, this stench, the bat dung, urine,
frogs, fish, lizards, majá snakes,
all so pale and ghostly, some eyeless, all blind…
and the crystals, these archways and statues,
these flowers of stone…
shadows, pottery, bones…
the skeletons of those who hid here
so long ago, when I was a child,
when I was a slave…
Rosa
We send messages to the Fox and the Lion.
No one else knows where we are.
We learn to live in darkness,
without so many lanterns and torches,
fireflies, and candles
made from the wax
of wild bees.
We drink wild honey
instead of sugarcane syrup.
We are far from any farms or towns.
We eat the blind lizards and ghost-fish.
We know how to live
with the stench of black vomit,
yellow fever in its final stage….
Rosa
The fevers and wounds of war are deadly,
yet somehow
many of our patients survive to go back out,
and fight again.
Our former owners have been healed here.
They treat us like brothers and sisters, not slaves.
The Fox and the Lion keep our location secret.
We are not found on their maps,
or in their diaries.
Everyone here knows the truth—
I am a nurse, not a sorceress.
I am just a woman of weary, wild hopes—
not a magician, not a witch.
José
Rosa remembers the names
of all who pass through her hands,
the patients who survive, and those who rise,
breath vanishing into the sky….
It’s all she can offer,
just forest medicines,
and her memory, reciting the names of people
along with the names of the flowers.
Rosa
Ten years of war are over.
A treaty. Peace.
So many lives were lost.
Was anything gained?
The Spanish Empire still owns
this suffering island,
and most of the planters
still own slaves.
Only a few of us were set free
by rebels who have been defeated.
Spanish law still calls me a slave.
Lieutenant Death has not lost
his power.
The Little War
1878–80
Rosa
Too soon,
the battles
begin again.
Mercifully,
this new war
is brief.
Tragically,
this new war
is futile.
Sometimes, war feels
like just one more
form of slavery.
José
We heal the wounded
just like before.
We hide in the jungle
just like before.
We are older.
Are we wiser?
Sometimes war feels
like a lonely child’s game,
one that explodes
out of control.
Rosa
Between wars,
José and I were just
a man and his wife.
We were free
to stay together.
José never had to leave me
to scout, or hunt,
or fight.
Between wars,
life was heavenly,
except when the slavehunters
were near,
with our names
on a list.
José
Mothers come to us
with tales of children
lost in the chaos.
They must imagine
that we know how to find
little ones who hide in barns,
and teenagers armed with anger.
If we knew how to find
the lost, we would know
how to rediscover
the parts of our minds
left behind
in battle.
Rosa
This is how you heal a wound:
Clean the flesh.
Sew the skin.
Pray for the soul.
Wait.
A wounded child tells me
he has never seen a grown man
who was proud to be a nurse.
Women’s work, he mocks,
but I smile—what could be
more manly than knowing
the strange names and magical uses
of sturdy medicinal trees
with powerful,
hidden roots?
Lieutenant Death
I feel old,
but I am young enough
and strong enough
to know that one battle
leads to another.
As this Little War ends,
I ask myself
how many years will pass
before I finally have my chance
to kill Rosa the Witch,
and her husband, José,
and the rebels they heal,
year after year,
like legends kept alive
with nothing more magical
than words?
Rosa
The Little War?
How can there be
a little war?
Are some deaths
smaller than others,
leaving mothers
who weep
a little less?
José is hopeful that soon
there will be another chance
to gain independence from Spain,
and freedom for slaves,
but all I see is death, always the same,
always enormous, never little,
no matter how many women come to help me,
asking to be trained in the art of learning
the names of forest flowers
and the names of brave people.
The War of Independence
1895–98
Rosa
This new war begins with rhymes,
the Simple Verses of Martí,
Cuba’s most beloved poet.
José Martí,
who leads with words
not just swords.
He is the one who inspires
the Fox and the Lion to fight again,
even though Martí was just a child-poet
during the other wars,
a teenager arrested
for writing about Cuba’s longing
for independence from Spain
and freedom from slavery.
Martí is the son of a Spaniard.
He writes of love for his Spanish father,
and he writes of the need for peace—
yet he fights.
He tells me the forest comforts him
more deeply than the musical waves
of the most beautiful beach.
Martí soon loses his life
in battle.
I cannot save the poet
from bullets.
José
Once again, the Fox and the Lion gallop
across our green mountains and farms,
burning the sugar fields and coffee groves,
the tobacco plantations, scented smoke rising
like a wild storm
of hope….
Once again, I guard Rosa’s hospitals
in secret places, thatched huts,
and glittering caves….
Once again, we travel invisibly,
slipping through lines of Spanish forts and troops
on moonless nights,
puffing cigars to make our movements
look like the blinking dance
of fireflies….
Lieutenant Death
Once again, light men and dark
fight side by side,
as if there had never been slavery….
I shake my head, still unable to believe
that slavery ended in 1886—
all the skills of my long life,
all the arts of slavehunting
will be lost….
At least I do not feel useless—
there are still indentured Canary Islanders,
white slaves, citizens of Spain.
When they run, I chase them, just like before—
just like the old days,
when there were Africans of every tribe,
and the indentured Chinese, and the Irish,
and Mayan Indians from Yucatán….
Nothing makes sense now.
I long to retire, on a farm with a view
of the sunset,
and a porch with a rocking chair…
just as soon as I kill
the old witch….
Captain-General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau,
Marquis of Tenerife, Empire of Spain
This new rebellion must end swiftly—
I have promised victory
within thirty days.
I will send out a proclamation
ordering all peasants to report immediately
to cities where they cannot grow crops
for feeding rebels,
their cousins,
their brothers….
I will give the peasants eight days
to reach them,
these campamentos de reconcentración,
a name of my own invention—
reconcentration camps,
a brilliant new concept,
the only strategy that can ensure
absolute control of all the land
while being portrayed
as a way of keeping peasants guarded
for their own safety.
When eight days have passed,
any man, woman, or child
found in the countryside
will be shot.
Rosa
Eight days?
Eight days.
Weyler is a madman.
How can he expect
so many to travel so far
so quickly?
Eight days.
Impossible.
Thousands of families
will not even hear
about the order
to reconcentrate
in camps
within eight days.
Silvia
I am eleven years old, and my life is this farm.
My father is dead,
and my mother is sick.
My life is planting, harvesting,
and caring for my twin brothers.
Only eight days…
impossible to believe.
I do not pack our things right away.
First I wait to see if this strange rumor
is true.
Then, brightly uniformed troops
burn our house,
swooping across our farm like hungry birds,
stealing the wagon and oxen, horses, mules,
even the chickens,
and the cow we need
for milk to feed the twins,
my baby brothers—
will they starve?
Nothing is left to pack, not even clothes,
so I walk away from the farm,
leading my mother,
and carrying the babies,
while my eyes watch the mountains,
and my thoughts turn
toward tales of healers
the legend of Rosa….
Silvia
Long ago, my grandma
was one of Rosa’s patients
in a hospital cave—
all my life, I’ve heard wonderful
tales of healing.
When this new war started,
my grandma told me
how to flee to the caves.
Finding Rosa now seems as likely
as convincing her that I am old enough
to help treat the wounded
by learning the art of mending bones,
using nothing more magical