Free The Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle

 
    Â 

    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â The Names of the Flowers
        1850–51
    Rosa

    Some people call me a child-witch,
    but I’m just a girl who likes to watch
    the hands of the women
    as they gather wild herbs and flowers
    to heal the sick.

    I am learning the names of the cures
    and how much to use,
    and which part of the plant,
    petal or stem, root, leaf, pollen, nectar.

    Sometimes I feel like a bee making honey—
    a bee, feared by all, even though the wild bees
    of these mountains in Cuba
    are stingless, harmless, the source
    of nothing but sweet, golden food.
    Rosa

    We call them wolves,
    but they’re just wild dogs,
    howling mournfully—
    lonely runaways,
    like
cimarrones,
    the runaway slaves who survive
    in deep forest, in caves of sparkling crystal
    hidden behind waterfalls,
    and in secret villages
    protected by magic

    protected by words—
    tales of guardian angels,
    mermaids, witches,
    giants, ghosts.
    Rosa

    When the slavehunter brings back
    runaways he captures,
    he receives seventeen silver
pesos
    per
cimarrón,
    unless the runaway is dead.
    Four
pesos
is the price of an ear,
    shown as proof that the runaway slave
    died fighting, resisting capture.

    The sick and injured
    are brought to us, to the women,
    for healing.

    When a runaway is well again,
    he will either choose to go back to work
    in the coffee groves and sugarcane fields,
    or run away again
    secretly, silently, alone.
    Lieutenant Death

    My father keeps a diary.
    It is required
    by the Holy Brotherhood of Planters,
    who hire him to catch runaway slaves.

    I watch my father write the numbers
    and nicknames of slaves he captures.
    He does not know their real names.

    When the girl-witch heals a wounded runaway,
    the
cimarrón
is punished, and sent back to work.
    Even then, many run away again,
    or kill themselves.
    But then my father chops each body
    into four pieces, and locks each piece in a cage,
    and hangs the four cages on four branches
    of the same tree.

    That way, my father tells me, the other slaves
    will be afraid to kill themselves.
    He says they believe
    a chopped, caged spirit cannot fly away
    to a better place.
    Rosa

    I love the sounds
    of the jungle at night.

    When the barracoon
    where we sleep
    has been locked,
    I hear the music
    of crickets, tree frogs, owls,
    and the whir of wings
    as night birds fly,
    and the song of
un sinsonte,
    a Cuban mockingbird,
    the magical creature
    who knows how to sing
    many songs all at once,
    sad and happy,
    captive and free…

    songs that help me sleep
    without nightmares,
    without dreams.
    Rosa

    The names of the villages where runaways hide
    are
Mira-Cielo,
Look-at-the-Sky
    and
Silencio,
Silence
    Soledad,
Loneliness
    La Bruja,
The Witch….

    I watch the slavehunter as he writes his numbers,
    while his son,
    the boy we secretly call Lieutenant Death,
    helps him make up big lies.

    The slavehunter and his boy agree to exaggerate,
    in order to make their work
    sound more challenging,
    so they will seem like heroes
    who fight against armies with guns,
    instead of just a few frightened, feverish, hungry,
    escaped slaves,
    armed only with wooden spears,
    and secret hopes.
    Lieutenant Death

    When I call the little witch
    a witch-girl, my father corrects me—
    Just little witch is enough, he says, don’t add girl,
    or she’ll think she’s human, like us.

    A pile of ears sits on the ground,
    waiting to be counted.

    This boy has a wound,
    my father tells the witch.
    Heal him.

    The little witch stares at my arm, torn by wolves,
    and I grin,
    not because I have to be healed by a slave-witch,
    but because it is comforting to know
    that wild dogs
    can be called wolves,
    to make them sound
    more dangerous,
    making me seem
    truly brave.
    Rosa

    The slavehunter and his son
    both stay away during the rains,
    which last six months, from May
    through October.

    In November he returns with his boy,
    whose scars have faded.

    This