Eyes Open
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About this ebook
Portugal, 1967. Sónia thinks she knows what her future holds. She’ll become a poet, and together she and her artist boyfriend, Zé Miguel, will rise above the government restrictions that shape their lives. The restrictions on what Sónia can do and where she can go without a man’s permission. The restrictions on what music she can enjoy, what books she can read, what questions she can ask.
But when Zé Miguel is arrested for anti-government activities and Sónia’s family’s restaurant is shut down, Sónia’s plans are upended. No longer part of the comfortable middle class, she’s forced to leave school and take a low-paying, grueling, dangerous job. She thought she understood the dark sides of her world, but now she sees suffering she never imagined.
Without the protection of her boyfriend or her family, can Sónia find a way to fight for justice? This poignant novel in verse follows a teen girl discovering how to resist tyranny and be true to herself.
Lyn Miller-Lachmann
Lyn Miller-Lachmann is an author, educator, and editor. Her novels include Torch, winner of the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature, Gringolandia, Rogue, Moonwalking, and Eyes Open. She earned a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Masters in Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, Lyn enjoys traveling to new places. She lives in New York City and lived part-time in Lisbon, Portugal, for many years.
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Eyes Open - Lyn Miller-Lachmann
Text copyright © 2024 by Lyn Miller-Lachmann
All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.
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Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std.
Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Miller-Lachmann, Lyn, 1956– author.
Title: Eyes open / Lyn Miller-Lachmann.
Description: Minneapolis, MN : Carolrhoda Lab, 2024. | Audience: Ages 14–18. | Audience: Grades 10–12. | Summary: Living under the Salazar dictatorship in 1960s Portugal, Sónia must find her voice as a poet and an activist after the government arrests her boyfriend and shuts down her family’s business.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023024226 (print) | LCCN 2023024227 (ebook) | ISBN 9798765610114 (hardcover) | ISBN 9798765611777 (epub)
Subjects: CYAC: Novels in verse. | Political activists—Fiction. | Political prisoners—Fiction. | Poets—Fiction. | Dictatorship—Fiction. | Portugal—History—1910–1974—Fiction. | BISAC: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Historical / Europe | LCGFT: Novels in verse. | Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.5.M58 Ey 2024 (print) | LCC PZ7.5.M58 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024226
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024227
Manufactured in the United States of America
1-1009435-51654-10/10/2023
In memory of Victoria Amelina (1986–2023): poet, children’s writer, and fighter for her country’s freedom
Inverno/Winter 1966–1967
Poetry Club
At the beginning of the school year
(with an asterisk for me
on probation)
I tell Sister Joana
I want to start a poetry club.
The head of our school wrinkles her
pink lips into a frown
and
with an icy gaze, says:
"Sónia Dias, don’t you think you
should bring your grades up first?
Quit cutting classes?
Quit sassing your teachers?"
(Okay, I was the one
who started last year’s rumor
that Sister Joana was so old she
knew Vasco da Gama
personally.
But she’s the adult here
right?)
I play nuns off against each other.
"Sister Lucia said I
could get extra credit this year
if I wrote poems. I need
lots and lots of poems . . .
or else."
She gives in, makes
Sister Lucia our advisor
though I was hoping
she’d let Nídia and me
and our other friends
meet on our own.
Sister Lucia’s idea
of a poetry club
is to read and write an essay
on a long, boring poem
by Luís de Camões
who pretended that he
knew Vasco da Gama
personally.
For instance, this:
Illustrious Gama, whom the waves obeyed,
And whose dread sword the fate of Empire swayed
Two lines are enough. I stow the text inside my
desk, take out my brand-new notebook, flip
to the first blank page.
Press pencil
to paper
like
it’s
my
flag.
This is me . . .
my story . . .
Free Verse
I don’t have time
to rhyme.
My cousin’s wife is
pregnant, pale and queasy.
No one wants their waitress
dropping her tray and dashing to
the toilet, hand over mouth.
Now I race from school, steal time
from homework and friends to
cover her shifts at the
fado restaurant my family has owned
for three generations—three
generations
of our most beloved singers
in photos on the wall
the aroma of fried fish
deep in wood and plaster
(my pai’s the chef, so that’s his part)
floors worn down by shoes of
neighbors, tourists, musicians—fadistas all.
The mournful strains of guitarra
and violão weave into my verses
notes floating in the stuffy air
of our classroom
into the sacred space
of my mind.
Sacred because God has given me
the power to think
to question
to dream.
The nuns tell us our path is straight
and narrow like an equal sign.
Obedience = eternal salvation
The Leader—a dried-up silver-haired man
who looks down at us from a photo next
to Christ on the cross—tells us we do not
debate The Certainties:
God and His virtue
the Fatherland and its history
authority and its prestige
the family and its morals
the glory of work and its duty
We do not think.
We do not question.
We do not dream.
But I have Free Will
and I write verse that doesn’t rhyme
that turns Sister Lucia’s face red
as she throws the pages across
the room and they flutter
bent like seagulls’ wings
over desks and chairs.
Sónia Dias, this is not poetry!
And I say because I won’t
shut up:
"What about Fernando Pessoa?
He wrote free verse."
She glares down the slope of her nose
through tiny glasses on a chain.
I breathe in, puff out my chest like
a shield against her barbs.
"Fernando Pessoa was a great poet.
You are a foolish girl."
A Piece of the Poem
Sister Lucia Tore Up
Once upon a time
boys were strangers
a different species, yet I thought
our blossoming friendship
would be no different
from mine with Nídia
or my other school friends
or my sisters . . .
Genesis: Eve
I
To the nuns we’re all savages
untamed passions ripe for ruin.
They assign us verses from Genesis.
God made Eve from Adam’s rib
a wife to keep him company
in Paradise, spoiled by
a treacherous serpent
a demónio sent by Satan
who befriended Eve, urged her to
eat the apple from the Tree of
Knowledge
to share that apple with
Adam, the whole man made by God.
And because, according to the Leader
the priests
and the nuns
there’s
a straight line from
knowledge
to
temptation
to
disobedience
to
chaos
Eve bore the greater punishment:
subjugation beyond exile
pain beyond loss.
We are no longer trusted.
The hierarchy we must not debate
goes like this:
God
Leader
landowner
boss
father
husband
. . .
we, the foolish girls
A man has twenty-four ribs.
A woman is one twenty-fourth
of a man.
II
My father
like every other
father in Portugal
prayed for a boy.
Our family name
our wealth
our small bit of power
rested on the sons of Adam
not the daughters of Eve.
Here’s what Pai got from Mãe:
Mariana
Sónia (me, not lost in the crowd)
Carolina
Estefânia
Rita
Too young to hear his curses at
my birth, I listened to him weep
in the kitchen the day Carolina
was born, before Mariana
pulled me away, into our shared
bedroom, and quietly
closed the door.
Estefânia’s birth, three years on
(I was six then)
sent Pai staggering home,
a tart, stale cloud surrounding him.
Carolina asked, Why does Pai
keep falling down? Mariana took one of
her tiny hands. I took the other one.
We led her away
to her room
the one she’d share with her newborn
sister.
Then Rita came home weeks before
Mãe. Mariana and I held her
like a mother would
rocked her to sleep, fed her
from a bottle, burped her when she was done.
The word complications floated above
our dutiful heads. We could only
whisper words of reassurance
we didn’t believe, while Pai
stumbled
reeked
wept
cursed
smashed the plates and cups.
Here, everyone prays to Rita,
patron saint of hopeless causes.
But for my father there was
no
more
hope.
Zé Miguel
José Miguel Machado—Zé Miguel—
whose sister is my cousin’s new wife
(which now makes him family in a way)
sneaks onto the school’s loading dock
props open the door.
Waits.
He has to be at work
at the printshop
at three.
While classmates file downstairs for lunch
I veer left, past the Leader’s cruel face on the wall
and underneath, his slogan of the month.
Dodging hall-patrol nuns
I meet Zé Miguel
outdoors
in open air
embrace him.
His coal-black corkscrew curls caress my cheek.
His skin the color of sun-baked
Alentejo soil
swirling blood of Moors and Jews
warms my pale skin.
We are so much more alive
than that silver-haired fossil
in the black-and-white photo
in every schoolroom
every home
every business
except the workers’ bar
hidden
behind a tailor shop
where Zé Miguel leads me
clasping my thin fingers
in his thick callused hand.
We kiss, and with our lips
we nuzzle each other’s face, neck, and ears
(the most we can do in a smoky room
where grown men are always watching).
He shows me his artwork
woodcuts smeared with ink
crooked blobs, a lopsided
Rorschach test.
He hands me flyers with
elaborate scenes: farmers
tilling fields, smiling, waving flags.
Underneath, a caption
letters scratched out by hand:
The land belongs to the people!
Zé Miguel glances from the flyer
to his crude page and says:
"I have a lot to learn.
But I want to use my art to tell the stories
of all the people
like my pai
who never had the chance
to learn to read."
I read him my latest poems.
I tell him I
want us
to write books together
with his art and my words.
Show my pai what a girl can do.
Show Sister Lucia
that free verse can weave syllables
into magical stories
that make children
laugh
sing
imagine
a different
world.
I want Zé Miguel to bind our books
like today
he binds contraband
that he sneaks into the hands
of people who need it, people
who dare to think
to question
to dream.
Alcachofra
Zé Miguel comes from the other side
the side of those with nothing
too many mouths to feed
too many people in too little space.
But life picked them off
one
by
one
like artichokes in a field.
A sickness here.
A speeding truck there.
A brother sacrificed to the Leader’s war.
A father sacrificed to the Leader’s bridge.
Zé Miguel remains—the youngest
smallest
artichoke in the field