We had motored for two hours at full speed—Barbara leaning back on her cushions steering, me nervously watching the waters and seeing nothing save for a huge freighter far off in the distance—when I decided to approach Maribel. She hadn’t emerged from below since I’d ordered her there while Barbara and I disposed of Samuels’s body.
I found her lying on the bunk, her eyes closed, breathing deeply. For the first time since we escaped from the convent, I had a chance to really look at her. Apart from the birthmark on her neck, I saw little resemblance between her and her daughter—except, perhaps, in her high, smooth forehead and a widow’s peak in her hairline that Michelle might one day develop.
“Hello,” Maribel said, startling me. She opened her eyes. “I have had trouble sleeping lately, thinking about my daughter.” I took the bunk opposite hers. “How are you?”
“Because of you, I am good,” she said. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you. I know you risked your life coming to Cuba to help my daughter. That was very brave.”
I didn’t know if brave was the proper word. Insane, maybe. Foolhardy, probably. “What were you told about the reason for my trip?” I asked.
Maribel sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bunk. She had a quiet kind of beauty, an unadorned pristine quality that showed through her plain convent clothes and lack of makeup. She had large, wide-set brown eyes, short-cropped curly black hair, and an even complexion, save for the birthmark. She also had a presence, a serenity and maturity, beyond her years.
“Three days ago, in the evening, I heard Mother Superior talking on the telephone in her office,” Maribel said, shyly looking away. “I could hear everything. The phone connections in Cuba are so bad that everyone has to shout. I shouldn’t have listened, but I was sweeping the hall. That’s my job for the month.”
“What did you hear?”
“Mother Superior said: ‘That girl must not come here.’ I think she was speaking with Dr. Samuels.”
“Why do you say that?”
Maribel paused. “I heard her talking to him before, when he was due to deliver a baby in the convent. She always sounded impatient with him. I don’t think she liked him very much.
The engine hummed louder as Barbara gave it more power. The seas were so smooth I barely felt we were moving. “How did you know they were talking about you?”
“Oh, because they mentioned my mark.” She unconsciously reached up to cover her neck. “I had no idea why someone from Miami would come to talk to me, until I realized it must have been something about my baby.”
“You were right,” I said gently. “What happened then?”
“Mother Superior called me to her office. She said she didn’t think I was serious enough in my devotions, and told me I had to stay in my room and pray for guidance from the Holy Mother until she released me.” Maribel bit her lip. “I knew my piety had nothing to do with it. It was that telephone call.”
Maribel had a sharp mind. I could tell. The Morenos would be lucky if Michelle turned out like her. “Did you find out anything else?”
“My friend, Sister Maria Rosario, would tell me things when she brought my meals,” Maribel said. “About how you came ashore, and how she helped you when you fell out the window of that house.”
Maribel looked directly into my eyes for the first time. “Maria Rosario didn’t agree with Mother Superior,” she said. “She didn’t like having to deceive you. She’s a very good, honest person.”
I agreed. “Who was the girl they tried to pass off as you?”
“Her name is Mercedes; she’s the younger sister of one of the girls at the convent.” The cabin lurched as we hit a large swell in the ocean. “She’s wanted to leave Cuba for a long time, so when you appeared it seemed a perfect opportunity.”
“So she was a nun who wanted to leave?” I asked.
Maribel looked surprised. “No, of course not,” she said. “Mother Superior wants all of the girls who come there from Havana to become nuns, but some of them just stay for a while, working until they can find a way to leave.”
I was relieved. After all I had done, I didn’t want my eternal resume to say that I tied a nun to a tree with a lace brassiere. Every little bit counts when you’re Catholic and go to meet your maker.
Maribel pulled her knees up to her chest, worried. “Tell me, please. What’s the matter with my baby? Is she dying? I almost died when she was born, you know. It was a miracle I survived. Did that have anything to do with what’s wrong with her today?”
“No, nothing like that,” I answered.
“Thank the Virgin.” Maribel blessed herself. “The Virgin saved me then, so I know she’ll save my baby.”
“She’s a very sick little girl,” I said. “I came for you because you’re the only person who can save her. She needs bone marrow from you.”
“What’s that?” she asked, puzzled.
“It’s a soft material inside your bones,” I said. “I don’t even know that much about it, but it has to come from you. Now that you’re coming to Miami, we’ve saved her. I just feel it.”
“Tell me about her,” Maribel said, smiling. She suddenly showed her age, her features gleaming with pleasure and curiosity. “What is she like? What name did they give her?”
I looked through the few possessions that Pedro and Tomas had left on the boat. Among them was a small envelope containing a picture of Maribel’s daughter. “This is Michelle,” I said, handing it to her.
She grabbed it and studied it for a long time, first with a grave expression, then with reserved pleasure. “She’s beautiful,” Maribel whispered, handing me the picture.
“Just like her mother.”
Maribel blushed and looked away, rocking back and forth on the bunk like a little girl. “Tell me about the people who adopted her,” she said. “I want to know everything about her and her life. These people must love her very much to go to all this trouble. They must be very rich, very smart.”
I told Maribel all about the Morenos. Though she had been separated from her daughter virtually at birth, it was obvious the child had never left her thoughts. I wondered how she would handle leaving Michelle to her adoptive parents after the medical procedure was complete.
“Oh, it’s so nice!” Maribel exclaimed. “They must have so many cars, and a house with dozens of rooms!”
“I … I’ve never been inside their house, but I’ve seen it from the outside. I’m sure it’s very comfortable.”
“And Michelle will have so many nice friends. She can go to American schools, and have parties on her birthdays.” She paused for a moment, with a bittersweet smile. “God has been good. She will have all the things I never had. And these kind people will give her things I never could have.”
Maribel’s simple proclamation brought a warm stinging to my eyes. I had to change the subject before I curled up and let the stress and pain get to me. “How did you ever get in contact with the nuns?” I asked.
She also seemed eager to think about something else. “I was born in Isabela de Sagua,” she said. The cabin lights shone on her dark curls. “It was always a fishing village, but when things turned bad in the country, people left in fishing boats for the Bahamas. That’s why the village looks so deserted—almost everyone has left.”
I remembered the dilapidated shells of small fishing craft, the torn nets, the small group of fishermen moving slowly along the dirt road.
“For the girls especially, there is nothing,” Maribel continued. Most of us leave for Havana, to try to get jobs. But there is not much there for a girl from the provinces, so we make a living the only way we can.”
She turned her head down at the memory, and I moved across the cabin and sat down next to her. She took my hand but still stared at the floor.
“You know, we go with the tourists,” she said plainly. “They pay the best, and they give presents. Isabela and the other villages are small, and I always knew where to go if I got in trouble. As long as we come to the convent late at night, with our heads covered, no one knows we are there until after the baby is born and we can come out again. Mother Superior said it was best that our babies go to Miami, where they can have a future.”
Tears began to fall from her cheeks, spotting her dark skirt. “There is nothing for the children in Cuba,” she whispered. “We give our babies away so they have a chance for a good life.”
“And some of you stay at the convent even after you have your babies?” I asked.
“We can leave if no one knows about the babies, if our families do not know our shame,” she said. “At the convent there is always plenty to eat, and we were never bothered by the government. Some girls, like me, stay and become novices, devoting our lives to God to atone for our sins.”
Betancourt and Samuels’s plan created a good situation for everyone, ironically enough. No wonder they didn’t want me nosing around and ruining their sweetheart deal. In my mind, the true villains were the lawyer and the doctor, who made the real profit. If I could ever decipher Alberto’s book, I knew, I could find out exactly how much money they made over the years.
I left Maribel below and found Barbara at the wheel, lying almost flat on her pillows. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Tired,” she whispered. Her eyes were glassy and her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat.
I had endured more than I could bear in the last two days, and nearly forgot about Barbara. I apologized to her, helping her and sending her below to Maribel. When she agreed without protest to bunk with a girl bearing a birthmark, I knew something was wrong. I begged her to call out for me if the baby started to come, but she ignored me and disappeared.
Standing at the wheel, I gave the engines a little more gas and steered through the last half hour across the Florida Straits. At one point I closed my eyes and listened to the wind, then opened them to the faint glow of red light that had appeared on the horizon.
When I saw the dull iron monument marking the southernmost point of the United States, I finally allowed myself to cry. I steered closer, until I could make out the faded American flag waving beside it, and then navigated through the tricky waters of the Truman Annex marina.
I cut the engines and motored back to our old slip—still empty, as though it knew all along we would make it back. I tied up the Mamita and sat on the deck, watching the sunrise alone.
Barbara and Maribel slept on. I didn’t disturb them; we would all need some rest for what lay ahead. But I couldn’t sleep, so I went below and found a fresh bottle of Alberto’s rum. I mixed some with orange juice left in the cooler and took it out to the pier. It was early, with no one around yet, and I knew exactly where I was headed. I wanted to stand as far out on the jetty as I could, to be as close to Cuba as possible while still on land.
I sat down on the edge, my legs dangling over the water, sipping my drink and staring at the sea. My time in Cuba now felt like a dream, something that happened to someone else. Only my bruises confirmed that it was all real, that it hadn’t been a dream or nightmare. I realized tears were running down my cheeks, that I was finally starting to let go of it all.
I was almost finished drinking my breakfast when I heard someone behind me. I didn’t have to look up to see who it was when he stood beside me. The golden hairs on his legs were a dead giveaway.
“Marta?” Henry asked. “Is your name really Marta?”
I stared out at the water. “No. My name is Guadalupe Solano. Lupe to my friends.”
“Somehow you didn’t seem like a Marta to me.” He sat down next to me, the sun shining on him, making him look like a blond Adonis. “Lupe sounds just right. So how did it go?”
“Fine. No problems. Routine.” I shrugged and looked away, finishing my drink with a gulp.
Henry took the glass from me and sniffed it. “Lupe, honey, you don’t seem like the type who needs alcohol to get going in the morning. You want to talk about anything? We don’t know each other, but I’m a good listener.”
I was tempted as hell to tell him everything. With another rum and orange juice in me, I would have told him the color of my underpants.
“There’s nothing to tell, Henry,” I said, smiling. “A little sailing. I wouldn’t want to bore you.”
Henry nodded and sat there for a while, watching the water with me, taking me at my word. He was a good man.