me more.”
“Your mami was kind,” Juana continued. “She was always patient with me, with Luis too. She treated us not like servants but the same way she did her friends. She was a good-hearted lady, your mami, and she cherished you very much.”
Outside, the evening breeze blew out the kerosene lamp held by Doctor Javier. Luis cupped his hand around a long wooden match and lit the lamp again.
Señor Pico dropped Rafi’s layette in the hole, a bedsheet and three frocks, each of which I had sewn and which young Rafi had worn only once.
“I have had dreams of what my son’s face would look like,” Señora Valencia said, “first at one, then at five, then at ten, fifteen, and twenty years old.”
“I always had similar thoughts about you, Señora,” Juana said. “I am so pleased to have seen you at all those ages.”
“I feel sometimes,” said Señora Valencia, “that I will never be a whole woman, for the absence of Mami’s face.”
Señora Valencia was asleep by the time her husband came into the room. I did not want to leave that night, but I knew that Sebastien would not come to visit me if the dead child was in the house. I had to go to him. Besides, Juana had chosen to spend the night at the foot of the four-poster canopy bed, to keep company with Rafi.
Luis walked back to his and Juana’s house alone, though on this night more than any other he seemed to want his woman to himself. Papi remained in the parlor near the radio, listening for news of the war in Spain. Another Spanish city had fallen while young Rafi’s coffin was being made.
I walked out into the night, past the ravine into which Joel had been thrown. Lemongrass and bamboo shoots lined the road. A breeze raced down the incline, the rustle growing louder as the grass blades bent towards the gorge at the bottom of the ravine.
In Don Carlos’ compound, children roamed, circling a wooden food stand run by a Dominican woman named Mercedes and her two sons: Reinaldo and Pedro. Mercedes was said to be a distant relative of Don Carlos, a peasant woman with city ways.
A group of cane cutters stood in front of Mercedes’ stand, buying liquor and joking with her and her sons. The older son, Reinaldo, worked as a guard in the cane fields during the day while his brother Pedro operated the cane press inside. Mercedes—and consequently Don Carlos, at least by rumor—had some relations from the interior campos who lived in the compound and worked as cutters in the fields, but Mercedes never openly claimed these people. “They are peasants who fell blind into this life of the cane,” she said to anyone who asked. “They have no reason to live like pigs. This is their country.”
The compound children hopped around Mercedes’ stand near the chatting men who shoved them away from adult conversations with slaps on their bottoms and orders for them to go find their mothers, whether they had mothers or not. The children then ran off to play, dashing back and forth behind the flowered curtains that served as doors for some of the rooms. Women were cooking on blackened boulders and sticks behind the cabins, pouring cups of water over naked infants to wash them before the evening meal. They were singing work songs, but their voices were so tired, I could hardly make out the words or the melody. Some men were dozing off in their doorways. They startled themselves awake when anyone walked by. I squeezed myself between two young lovers seeking a comfortable dark corner, their usual sapodilla tree taken over by a small group of men arguing over a domino game. The game was stopped now and again so a player could defend a bad choice or a loss. Sebastien’s friend Yves, who was with Sebastien and Joel when Joel was killed, was one of the domino players. Yves shaved his head to keep cane ticks out of his scalp. His Adam’s apple was as large as a real apple, his legs too short for his lanky body.
I motioned to a boy who was playing with pebbles on the
“Your mami was kind,” Juana continued. “She was always patient with me, with Luis too. She treated us not like servants but the same way she did her friends. She was a good-hearted lady, your mami, and she cherished you very much.”
Outside, the evening breeze blew out the kerosene lamp held by Doctor Javier. Luis cupped his hand around a long wooden match and lit the lamp again.
Señor Pico dropped Rafi’s layette in the hole, a bedsheet and three frocks, each of which I had sewn and which young Rafi had worn only once.
“I have had dreams of what my son’s face would look like,” Señora Valencia said, “first at one, then at five, then at ten, fifteen, and twenty years old.”
“I always had similar thoughts about you, Señora,” Juana said. “I am so pleased to have seen you at all those ages.”
“I feel sometimes,” said Señora Valencia, “that I will never be a whole woman, for the absence of Mami’s face.”
Señora Valencia was asleep by the time her husband came into the room. I did not want to leave that night, but I knew that Sebastien would not come to visit me if the dead child was in the house. I had to go to him. Besides, Juana had chosen to spend the night at the foot of the four-poster canopy bed, to keep company with Rafi.
Luis walked back to his and Juana’s house alone, though on this night more than any other he seemed to want his woman to himself. Papi remained in the parlor near the radio, listening for news of the war in Spain. Another Spanish city had fallen while young Rafi’s coffin was being made.
I walked out into the night, past the ravine into which Joel had been thrown. Lemongrass and bamboo shoots lined the road. A breeze raced down the incline, the rustle growing louder as the grass blades bent towards the gorge at the bottom of the ravine.
In Don Carlos’ compound, children roamed, circling a wooden food stand run by a Dominican woman named Mercedes and her two sons: Reinaldo and Pedro. Mercedes was said to be a distant relative of Don Carlos, a peasant woman with city ways.
A group of cane cutters stood in front of Mercedes’ stand, buying liquor and joking with her and her sons. The older son, Reinaldo, worked as a guard in the cane fields during the day while his brother Pedro operated the cane press inside. Mercedes—and consequently Don Carlos, at least by rumor—had some relations from the interior campos who lived in the compound and worked as cutters in the fields, but Mercedes never openly claimed these people. “They are peasants who fell blind into this life of the cane,” she said to anyone who asked. “They have no reason to live like pigs. This is their country.”
The compound children hopped around Mercedes’ stand near the chatting men who shoved them away from adult conversations with slaps on their bottoms and orders for them to go find their mothers, whether they had mothers or not. The children then ran off to play, dashing back and forth behind the flowered curtains that served as doors for some of the rooms. Women were cooking on blackened boulders and sticks behind the cabins, pouring cups of water over naked infants to wash them before the evening meal. They were singing work songs, but their voices were so tired, I could hardly make out the words or the melody. Some men were dozing off in their doorways. They startled themselves awake when anyone walked by. I squeezed myself between two young lovers seeking a comfortable dark corner, their usual sapodilla tree taken over by a small group of men arguing over a domino game. The game was stopped now and again so a player could defend a bad choice or a loss. Sebastien’s friend Yves, who was with Sebastien and Joel when Joel was killed, was one of the domino players. Yves shaved his head to keep cane ticks out of his scalp. His Adam’s apple was as large as a real apple, his legs too short for his lanky body.
I motioned to a boy who was playing with pebbles on the