Enchanted Air Read online

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

  Four Years Before I Existed

  MAGICAL TRAVELS

  Flight

  Voice

  More Love at First Sight

  Learning Many Meanings

  No Place on the Map

  The Dancing Plants of Cuba

  More and More Meanings

  First Flames

  Learning to Listen

  Dangerous Air

  After the Flames

  More and More Homes

  My American Dad

  Turtle Came to See Me

  When I Was a Wild Horse

  Mi Mami Cubana

  Damaged Air

  Kinship

  The Geography of Libraries

  Other Journeys

  Different

  Horse Crazy

  Earthbound

  Mysteries

  Runaway Horses

  Homecoming

  News

  What Am I?

  More and More Secrets

  Spies

  Investigated

  After the FBI

  My Own Questions

  Hidden

  Refuge

  The Visitor

  No Wings

  Realidad/Reality

  WINGED SUMMER

  Evening News

  The Last-Chance Train

  Flowing

  Midair

  Fluttering

  Revolutionary

  Wonderstruck

  Feeling Almost at Home

  Los Barbudos/The Bearded Ones

  Tarantulas and Scorpions

  Secrets

  Two Minds

  My Great-Grandmother’s Garden

  My Great-Grandmother’s Hair

  Storytellers

  More and More Stories

  El BohÍo/The Hut

  Wings

  Singers and Dancers

  Fiestas/Parties

  Doubts

  La Guagua/The Bus

  Exploration

  Traveling to My Mother’s Hometown

  Quiet Times

  Tropical Windows

  La Siesta/The Nap

  Lost in Translation

  Escape

  Guajiros/Farmers

  Separation

  El Rodeo/The Roundup

  Waiting My Turn

  The Milking Hour

  Ritmo/Rhythm

  Never Ending

  My Grandmother’s Mare

  Breath

  Hasta Pronto/Until Soon

  STRANGE SKY

  The Faraway Gift

  Until Next Summer

  Out of Reach

  Some Things Should Never Change

  Why Do We Have to Move?

  Strays

  My Library Life

  April 1961

  Junior High

  Learning

  Learning the Hard Way

  Solitude

  October 1962

  Solitary

  More Dangerous Air

  Waiting to Die

  Waiting to Understand

  Waiting to Be Rescued

  Wondering

  Imagining

  Survival

  Three Sides to Every Story

  Life Goes On

  First

  Last

  Rebellion

  Invisible

  Small Journeys

  Close to Home

  Ghostly

  Communication

  Wilderness

  Revived

  TWO WINGS

  A Swirl of Changes

  Travel Plans

  Reality

  My Own View of History

  Soaring

  Nomadic

  Cave Paintings

  Imaginary Horses

  Secret Languages

  Village Life

  Unanswerable Questions

  Final Flames

  My Second Wing

  Hope

  Cold War Time Line

  Author’s Note

  About Margarita Engle

  For my parents, who took me traveling, and my sister, who shared the adventures, and for the estimated ten million people who are currently stateless as the result of conflicts all over the world

  ¡Qué fácil es volar, qué fácil es!

  Todo consiste en no dejar que el suelo

  se acerque a nuestros pies.

  Valiente hazaña, ¡el vuelo!, ¡el vuelo!, ¡el vuelo!

  How easy it is to fly, how easy!

  It’s all done by never allowing the ground

  to come close to our feet.

  Brave deed, flight, flight, flight!

  —Antonio Machado, Poema 53

  Love at First Sight

  VALENTINE’S DAY, 1947

  FOUR YEARS BEFORE I EXISTED

  When my parents met, it was love at first sight. They were standing on the terrace of an art school in an elegant palace now known as the Museo Romántico, the Romantic Museum. They were breathing the enchanted air of Trinidad de Cuba, my mother’s hometown. My American father was a visiting artist who had traveled to Trinidad after seeing National Geographic magazine photographs of the colonial plaza, where horsemen still galloped along cobblestone streets, beneath soaring church bell towers, against a backdrop of wild green mountains. My mother was a local art student, ready to fall in love.

  Since they could not speak the same language, my parents communicated by passing drawings back and forth, like children in the back of a classroom. Their meetings were chaperoned, their conversations mimed—sketches, signs, and gestures had to substitute for words.

  He asked her to marry him. Her hands said no. He asked again. Her eyes refused. He packed his suitcase. She rushed to explain, using fingers and facial expressions, that in her old-fashioned town, the rules of romance had been established centuries earlier, at a time when brides were not supposed to seem eager. A marriage proposal must be repeated three times. Saying yes after only two repetitions was my mother’s first act of courage.

  Magical Travels

  1951–1959

  FLIGHT

  The first time my parents

  take me soaring through magical sky

  to meet my mother’s family in Cuba,

  I am so little that I can hardly speak

  to my island relatives—

  my abuelita, my old grandma,

  who still loves to dance,

  and her ancient mamá, my great-grandma,

  who still loves to garden, working

  just as hard as any strong

  young man.

  Already, this island is beginning to seem

  like a fairy-tale kingdom,

  where ordinary people

  do impossible

  things.

  VOICE

  Everywhere we go in Cuba,

  I hear caged songbirds

  and wild parrots.

  Somehow, the feathery voices

  help me make my decision to sing

  instead of speak, and even though

  I sing in a voice more froglike

  than winged,

  I do dare to sing,

  and that is what matters

  on this island

  of bravely dancing,

  hardworking

  old folks.

  MORE LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

  I fall in love with the farm

  where my abuelita

  and her ancient mother

  were born.

  My dazzled eyes absorb

  the lush beauty of a land so wild

  and green that the rippling river

  on my great-uncle’s farm

  shimmers like a hummingbird,

  all the
dangerous crocodiles

  and gentle manatees

  deeply hidden beneath

  quiet waters.

  Surely there must be mermaids here,

  and talking animals,

  the pale, humpbacked Zebu cows

  and graceful horses

  that roam

  peaceful hillsides,

  moving as mysteriously

  as floating clouds

  in the stormy

  tropical sky.

  LEARNING MANY MEANINGS

  The memories that I carry away

  from those first visits to the island

  are restful.

  Cool ceramic floor tiles on a hot day,

  and an open-air kitchen with roll-up walls

  that are only needed during hurricanes—

  when the weather is fine, moths and birds

  fly in and out of the house, drifting freely

  toward fruit trees in the patio, passing

  the old women in rocking chairs,

  who fan their faces, welcoming

  the sea breeze.

  Old women love fresh air, but they are also

  afraid of aires, a word that can be a whoosh

  of refreshing sky-breath, or it can mean

  dangerous

  spirits.

  NO PLACE ON THE MAP

  After those first soaring summers,

  each time we fly back to our everyday

  lives in California, one of my two selves

  is left behind: the girl I would be

  if we lived on Mami’s island

  instead of Dad’s continent.

  On maps, Cuba is crocodile-shaped,

  but when I look at a flat paper outline,

  I cannot see the beautiful farm

  on that crocodile’s belly.

  I can’t find the palm trees,

  or bright coral beaches

  where flying fish leap,

  gleaming

  like rainbows.

  Sometimes, I feel

  like a rolling wave of the sea,

  a wave that can only belong

  in between

  the two solid shores.

  Sometimes, I feel

  like a bridge,

  or a storm.

  THE DANCING PLANTS OF CUBA

  In California, all the trees and shrubs

  stand still, but on the island, coconut palms

  and angel’s trumpet flowers

  love to move around,

  dancing.

  Fronds and petals wave

  in wild wind.

  Climbing orchids dangle

  from high branches.

  The delicate leaflets

  of sensitive mimosa plants

  coil and curl, folding up

  like the pages

  of a wizard’s book,

  each time I touch

  their rooted magic.

  Maybe I will be a scientist someday,

  studying the dancing plants of Cuba.

  MORE AND MORE MEANINGS

  In one country, I hear the sweet words

  of another.

  Dulce de leche means sweet of milk.

  Guarapo is sugarcane juice.

  At home in California, when I speak

  boastful English, I can say that I fly,

  but when I make the same claim in Spanish,

  I have to say: voy por avión.

  I go by airplane.

  Two countries.

  Two families.

  Two sets of words.

  Am I free to need both,

  or will I always have to choose

  only one way

  of thinking?

  FIRST FLAMES

  At home in Los Angeles, when my big sister

  is struck by polio, I am not yet old enough

  to understand ominous words like iron lung,

  quarantine, or eternal light—the candle

  our abuelita back in Cuba

  promises to ignite

  in honor of La Virgen

  de la Caridad del Cobre

  on one condition:

  that the Virgin of the Charity of Copper

  will agree to spare the life

  of Magdalena

  Madalyn

  Mad.

  When Mad survives—and does not even

  need a wheelchair—the joyous news travels

  by telephone, all the way to the island,

  where a grateful flame

  begins to glow

  forever.

  LEARNING TO LISTEN

  Dad finds a job teaching art at a college

  near the Oregon border, where we will live

  in a storybook house, surrounded by

  a giant forest.

  Mami tells me and Mad

  that our new home will be

  paradise, but Dad says we’ll miss

  his parents—my other grandma

  and my grandpa, the ones who live

  in Los Angeles, and don’t speak any

  Spanish at all, just English and Russian

  and Yiddish, because they were born

  in the Ukraine, a place they fled long ago,

  to escape violence.

  It’s true that we miss them

  in the northern forest, where the air

  turns out to be far too cold for Mami’s

  tropical mind.

  She dreads the fog,

  hates the gloom, and fears the gray,

  missing blue.

  I love blue sky too, but I also love

  these enormous redwood trees,

  and the crashing ocean waves

  on a cold rocky coast.

  I love seeing green moss,

  orange butterflies, blue dragonflies.

  I love nature.

  I also love listening

  when my mother reads stories.

  Her reading voice glows

  with hot Cuban sun, even when

  the book is in English, a language

  with such strange spelling

  that for her, certain sounds will always

  be mysterious.

  When Mami reads out loud,

  all I crave is one more page,

  and then another,

  and the next . . .

  but I’m even more fascinated

  when Mami recites poetry out loud

  from memory—like the one by José Martí

  about growing la rosa blanca—the white rose—

  as a gift for enemies

  as well as friends.

  I don’t know what it means,

  so Mami explains

  that it’s a simple verse about

  forgiveness.

  DANGEROUS AIR

  One night,

  our storybook house

  in the towering forest

  suddenly bursts

  into flames.

  Dad’s paintings crumble to ash.

  Mami’s photos of her family in Cuba

  rise into the cold sky,

  stray

  wisps

  of

  dark

  smoke

  blending

  into gray fog.

  Later, we learn that the cause of the fire

  was wiring, so perfectly hidden

  inside visible walls.

  AFTER THE FLAMES

  We move south again,

  to a cabin in the foothills

  of the mountains near Los Angeles,

  where a sycamore tree pierces

  the cabin’s roof, and wild deer

  behave like tame pets, sipping

  from a leaky faucet.

  Each night, Mami rises—silently,

  secretly—to switch off all

  the electricity,

  so that fire

  can never

  find us

  again.

  Fear has suddenly entered our lives,

  left behind by airy wisps of smoke

>   from those scorched

  storybook walls.

  MORE AND MORE HOMES

  Sometimes on the weekends,

  we drive to Mexico, where Dad

  paints bullfights, while I stay

  with a woman who has a goat

  that carries me on its horns.

  Later, we move to a corner

  of northeast Los Angeles

  known as Skunk Hollow,

  because the rugged streets

  are not yet paved,

  so that small wild animals

  roam dusty backyards.

  Dad teaches art, and paints.

  Mami plants flowers,

  sews dresses, and listens

  to old Cuban love songs,

  while Mad and I roam outdoors,

  searching for adventure.

  MY AMERICAN DAD

  Dad paints a knight on a white horse,

  galloping toward a windmill.

  Don Quixote, he explains—

  not a real knight, just a man who dreams

  of battling imaginary giants

  like the windmill, with its spinning arms

  and towering height.

  When Dad gives me my own art supplies,

  I clip a big sheet of paper onto a board,

  and drape a smock over my clothes,

  to keep all the colors of the world

  from ruining the dress Mami made.

  What should I draw, with my new

  rainbow of crayons?

  Dad paints my beautiful mother,

  and he paints my pretty sister.

  Both of them have big, dark eyes,

  so why are mine blue-green-gray,

  like ocean waves

  in changeable

  weather?

  When Dad paints my portrait,

  my eyes look like Don Quixote’s,

  neither happy nor completely sad,

  just daydreamy,

  and wistful.

  TURTLE CAME TO SEE ME

  The first story I ever write

  is a bright crayon picture

  of a dancing tree, the branches

  tossed by island wind.

  I draw myself standing beside the tree,

  with a colorful parrot soaring above me,

  and a magical turtle clasped in my hand,

  and two yellow wings fluttering

  on the proud shoulders of my ruffled

  Cuban rumba dancer’s

  fancy dress.

  In my California kindergarten class,

  the teacher scolds me: REAL TREES

  DON’T LOOK LIKE THAT.

  It’s the moment

  when I first

  begin to learn

  that teachers

  can be wrong.