CHAPTER TWELVE

The group walked under a blue sky crisscrossed with low-hanging electrical wires and between apartment buildings that seemed to lean over the narrow streets. Yoenis came to a stop in front of a bright yellow building with a large brown door. He knocked loudly. “¡Mamá!” he called.

A French window opened above them, and a small woman with short hair burst out onto a small balcony. She had brown, wrinkled skin, muscular arms, and light gray eyes. “¡Mi’jito!” she shouted, and fled the balcony. A moment later, the front door was thrown open and the little woman burst through it and wrapped her arms around Yoenis’s neck. She hung on to him for a long time. Yoenis laughed and tried to stand up, but she wouldn’t let go so he lifted her with him. Then they were both laughing. She let go and dropped to her feet, then turned to the children.

“Bienvenidos a La Habana. Me llamo Rosa. Come in, please.”

They followed Rosa through the door and into her home. Except, they weren’t actually inside. They were standing in a small courtyard, lush with plants and a little fountain in the center. The walls surrounding the courtyard were painted the same yellow as the exterior of Rosa’s house. Windows looked down into the verdant space.

“Whoa . . . ,” Uchenna breathed. “This is beautiful.”

Big fronded plants reflected the sun that shone down into the courtyard. There was a little waterfall that tumbled from a rock sculpture into the fountain. A small tree with gray bark stood behind the fountain.

Jersey, in the backpack on Uchenna’s back, started to wriggle. Rosa pointed and said, “Déjalo. Let him out.” So Uchenna put the backpack on her stomach and unzipped it. Jersey poked his head out and started sniffing the air. Rosa laughed. Yoenis laughed seeing his mother laugh. Then Jersey bounded out of the bag and into the garden, where he started to frolic under the plants.

“Jersey, come back!” Elliot called.

But Rosa said, “Shh. Let him play.” She turned to Professor Fauna. “Erasmo, thank you for coming. Please, put down your trash bag.”

Fauna put down his bag of papers on a chair, and Rosa grasped both of his hands in hers and looked him in the eyes. He smiled. He introduced Elliot and Uchenna. Then he nodded at Jersey, who was running and leaping and then rolling on his back at their feet.

“He is very happy here,” said the professor.

“He knows that it is a special place.” Rosa turned to Elliot and Uchenna. “Children,” she said. “It is nice to meet you. Now come, I have something to show you.”

So they followed Rosa to the tree with the smooth gray bark.

“This is a ceiba tree. Have you ever seen one before?”

Uchenna and Elliot shook their heads.

“For thousands of years, ceiba trees have been important to the people of Cuba.” Rosa rubbed her wrinkled hand up and down the trunk. “Go ahead,” she said.

The children rubbed the tree. It felt almost . . . soft.

Rosa said, “The ceiba is sacred to the Taíno, the Native People of this island. Then, the first thing the Spanish did when they invaded Cuba in 1519 was gather under a great ceiba tree and pray, to give thanks for arriving safely in this land. And, not much later, when Europeans began enslaving people in Africa and bringing them across the Atlantic, those people sought out their holy tree, the baobab tree—but those West African trees don’t grow here. The ceiba tree looks a little like the baobab, though, and so the ceiba became the holy tree of Afro-Cubans as well.”

Rosa looked from Uchenna to Elliot to Professor Fauna, to make sure they were all listening carefully. They were. “This tree is like Cuba. We are many peoples. Some have always lived here. But over time, we have grown together. Our belief systems have merged, separated, overlapped—just like our music, our dance, our food. Like many roots feeding one tree, drawing water from distant sources. The ceiba tree is Cuba’s people and Cuba itself.”

The members of the Unicorn Rescue Society nodded solemnly.

“I told you my mother and I see the history of Cuba differently,” Yoenis told them.

“Ah,” Rosa said, shaking her head, “did you lecture them on politics already? Mi pobre gente, Yoenis can go on and on.”

“¡Mamá!” Yoenis exclaimed, half laughing, half exasperated. “You just lectured them for ten minutes! And your silly ‘we are one Cuba’ story is a nice dream, but the more important story is how power has been stolen from the people!”

“The people will only regain their power,” Rosa said, “by relying on the many histories and cultures of Cuba.”

“Mamá, that makes no—”

“I am sorry to interrupt,” Professor Fauna interjected, putting an arm around the old woman, “but I get the sense that you two have had this argument before?”

“It’s been going on for the last twenty years or so,” Rosa admitted.

“Then I don’t think you will solve it now. Whereas the problem of the Madre de aguas . . .”

“Yes!” Rosa agreed. “¡La pobrecita! My sweet, little lost friend!”

Elliot said, “Um, I don’t mean to be rude, but based on some recent field observations I’ve made, the Madre de aguas is not lost. Or little. Or sweet.”

“Field observations?” Rosa was confused. “Pero, when?”

“Just now in the bay,” Uchenna replied.

“When she tried to eat us,” said Elliot.