The Surrender Tree Read Online Free PDF

be a nurse after all.
    Speed, Rosa tells me, is the best painkiller,
    so she stitches my skin quickly, calmly,
    her expression as mysterious as a book
    written in some foreign alphabet
    from a faraway land.

    She looks at my tongue,
    puts her finger on my wrist,
    explains that she is counting my pulse.
    She tells me I do not have leprosy or plague,
    measles, tetanus, scarlet fever,
    jaundice, or diptheria.
    By now, she adds, you must be immune
    to yellow fever,
    and malaria, well, that is an illness most Cubans
    will carry around
    all our lives.

    I picture myself lugging a suitcase loaded
    with heavy diseases….
    I daydream a ship, an escape route, the ocean….
    Rosa

    The girl is well enough to learn.
    I show her one cure at a time.
    A poultice of okra for swelling.
    Arrowroot to draw poison out of a wound.
    Cactus fruit for soothing a cough.
    Hibiscus juice for thirst.
    Honey for healing.

    I show her the workshop where saddles are made
    with leather tanned by pomegranate juice,
    and I show her the workshop
    where hats are woven
    from the dry, supple fiber of palm fronds,
    and the place where candles
    of beeswax are shaped
    to light the rare books
    from which cave children learn
    how to read comforting Psalms,
    and the
Simple Verses
of José Martí,
    our poet of memory,
    our memory of hope….
    Rosa

    Young people are like the wood of a balsa tree,
    light and airy—they can float, like rafts,
    like boats….

    José and I are the rock-hard wood
    of a
guayacán
tree,
    the one shipbuilders call Tree of Life
    because it is so dense
    and heavy with resin
    that it sinks,
    making the best propeller shafts—
    the wood will never rot,
    but it cannot float….

    Young people drift on airy daydreams.
    Old folks help hold them in place.
    Silvia

    Rosa helps me see the caves
    in her own way.
    I gaze around at the forest,
    where she has been free,
    so alive in this wonder,
    where trees grow like castle towers,
    with windows opening
    onto rooms of sunlight.

    I can no longer imagine
    living anywhere else,
    without this garden of orchids
    and bright macaws.

    I think of all I know
    about tales of castles.
    There is always a dungeon,
    and a chapel,
    bells of hope….
    Rosa

    Silvia tells me that she used to visit
    her grandparents in town.

    They kept caged birds,
    and in the evenings they walked,
    carrying the cages up a hill
    to watch the sunset.
    Inside each cage, the captive birds
    sang and fluttered, wings dancing.

    Silvia admits that she always wondered
    whether the birds imagined they were flying,
    or maybe they understood the limitations
    of bamboo bars, the walls of each tiny cage.

    Now I ask myself about my own limitations,
    trying to serve as mother and grandmother
    to a child who has lost
    everyone she ever loved.
    Rosa

    The Fox has named me
    the first woman Captain
    of Military Health,
    the first Cuban rebel army nurse
    who will be remembered
    by name.

    I think of all the others
    who went before me
    in all three wars,
    curing the wounded, healing the sick,
    nameless women, forgotten now,
    their voices and hands
    just part of the forest,
    whispering like pale
yagruma
leaves
    in a breeze.

    On hot days, even the shade
    from a
yagruma
leaf
    offers soothing medicine,
    the magic of one quiet moment
    of peace.
    José

    Warnings fly from every direction.
    Lieutenant Death, the old slavehunter,
    never gives up.
    He is seen far too often, tracking, stalking,
    hunting his prey.

    The price for Rosa’s ear grows—
    her ear, the proof of her death.

    I climb a towering palm tree,
    to watch the movements of shadows below.
    I wait, studying the shapes to see
    which might be wounded rebels,
    coming to Rosa for help,
    and which could be Death,
    bringing his nickname,
    even though Rosa healed his flesh
    so long ago.

    She did not know
    how to heal
    his soul.
    Lieutenant Death

    Strangler fig, candle tree, dragon’s blood.
    The names of forest plants lead me
    toward Rosa the Witch.

    I can