Eyes Open

By Lyn Miller-Lachmann

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lerner Publishing
• Release date: May 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798765611784

Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Lyn Miller-Lachmann is an author, teacher, and librarian. Her books for teens and young readers include Gringolandia, Surviving Santiago. Rogue, and She Persisted: Temple Grandin. As an adult, she was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and delves into her diagnosis often in her writing. She and her husband divide their time between New York City and Lisbon, Portugal.

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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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An imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

241 First Avenue North

Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

Design elements: vldkont/Shutterstock; DrDuck/Shutterstock; Agnieszka Karpinska/Shutterstock; MPFphotography/Shutterstock; PrasongTakham/Shutterstock.

Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std.

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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