Eccentric Neighborhood

by Rosario Ferré

  On her next visit to Emajaguas the first thing Clarissa did was to march into the kitchen and tell Miña: “Education is the first step in women’s liberation! The right to vote belongs to those who have won it thanks to a university diploma. Educated women should be able to participate in the economic affairs of the country and have a say in its destiny.” Miña stared at her in annoyance. “The vote should belong to all women, to those who can write and those who can’t,” she retorted, swirling her mop over Clarissa’s patent-leather pumps and then wringing it out vehemently with her strong hands until the dirty water overflowed the bucket.

  “To all women!” Felicia screeched, craning her neck inside her cage.

  “Will you teach me how to read and write?” Miña asked.

  “We’ll start right now,” Clarissa answered. And she took Miña to her room, sat her at the desk, gave her a pencil and a lined notebook, and began to guide her hand over the letters of the alphabet. When Clarissa’s birthday came around a few weeks later, Miña gave her a present: a picture of herself, with “Miña Besosa” written at the bottom in her own hand. Clarissa had it framed and hung it on her bedroom wall.

  One day Clarissa told Miña about Aurelio Vernet, a nice young man she had met at La Concordia, where she went to spend a weekend with a student friend from the university, Janina Figueroa, who was studying liberal arts. Janina was her roommate at the Pensionado Católico. Aurelio was at La Concordia for the holidays; he was studying to be an engineer at Northeastern University in Boston. Aurelio’s father, Santiago Vernet, had a foundry and machine shop in La Concordia called Vernet Construction.

  Aurelio was a nice young man, Clarissa told Miña. He wasn’t cruel and selfish like Tío Alejandro. He had a slender build; he wasn’t brawny and overbearing like most of the young men she knew. He loved to play the piano, and every once in a while Clarissa went to the university’s theater, where there was an old Pleyel, to listen to him play. The only trouble was, she couldn’t stand Aurelio’s touching her.

  “It’s nothing serious, just an amitié en rose,” Clarissa assured Miña. “You know I’m never going to get married, so stop looking at me like that. I’ll never find another man like Father in the whole world.” Nonetheless, Aurelio came to visit Clarissa at Emajaguas that Christmas, and although she wouldn’t see him again until the summer because he had to go back to Boston, from then on the family considered him Clarissa’s official suitor. In 1925 she graduated from the University of Puerto Rico at the head of her class with a degree in agronomy. Then she went back to live with her parents at Emajaguas.

  During Christmas dinner that year, Abuelo Alvaro told the family the bad news about Okeechobee, which had begun to suck their fortune dry. Many years later Mother told me about that evening, which she believed was a turning point in their lives. The feast started out as usual; the food was prepared with love and the house decorated with the utmost care. Clarissa wore her favorite black velvet gown, cut low at the back. Tía Siglinda wore a red brocade evening dress; Tía Dido one of her Spanish petenera skirts; Tía Artemisa a blue silk robe that made her look like a priestess; Tía Lakhmé, who was only a child but already had exotic tastes, wore a necklace of tiny golden beads. The older sisters complimented one another as usual; it was like seeing themselves reflected in the mirror over and over. Finally, after exchanging gifts and bantering about who’d gotten last year’s rewrapped pasapalante, saved from year to year because it was useless, everybody sat down at the table.

  There was a lot of laughter and joking between my aunts and uncles as the wineglasses were filled again and again. At the time, only Tía Siglinda and Tío Venancio were married. My other aunts were still single. After a while, however, the tone of the family’s conversation grew surprisingly plaintive. Abuelo Alvaro and Abuela Valeria became strangely silent as Tío Alejandro’s voice rose in irritation above the rest.

  He was twenty-one and was studying business administration at the University of Virginia. But he kept close tabs on what was happening at Emajaguas. He was complaining about an investment Abuelo Alvaro had made recently in Florida: a large sugar mill he had purchased on the shores of Lake Okeechobee, near the Everglades. A double disaster had struck: a severe frost as well as a hurricane had wiped out three thousand acres of sugarcane and destroyed the entire harvest. Thousands of dollars had gone down the drain.

  “I told you Okeechobee was a bad investment from the start,” Tío Alejandro said to Abuelo Alvaro bitterly. “But you chose to listen to Venancio.” Lately Abuelo Alvaro had fallen more and more under Venancio’s influence because Venancio had so much power with the government. He had come to depend on his son-in-law for the government loans he needed to keep the central Plata going.

  “I bought the Okeechobee mill because I wanted to, and I’m not sorry I did,” Abuelo said defensively. “Seventy percent of our island’s valleys are in the hands of American sugar mill owners. It’s time we turned the trend around and showed the Americans we, too, can be absentee owners.”

  “Your decision was obviously a mistake,” Tío Alejandro retorted. “We’ve lost too much money already. We’re small fry compared to American businessmen—we don’t have the capital to wait it out until the weather gets better. Okeechobee will have to be sold.”

  Tío Venancio tried to calm Alejandro down. He was sure things would turn around the following year; a fabulous crop was expected and sugar was selling at an excellent price. He had suggested the purchase of Okeechobee not because of nationalist feelings but because he believed in statehood and was in favor of bringing Puerto Ricans economically nearer to the United States.

  Abuelo Alvaro didn’t answer. He had to admit that what Alejandro had said was true. Okeechobee was a terrible investment, and it was sold soon after that.

  SEVENTEEN

  Abuelo Alvaro Swims Away

  “YOUR GRANDFATHER WAS ONLY forty-five when he began to lose his mind,” Mother told me once. “He was in the flower of his manhood. At first it wasn’t very noticeable; he simply began to confuse the names of certain objects. He would be sitting at the table and ask Valeria to pass him the seltzer siphon instead of the wine carafe. Some days he would forget to shave one side of his face and go to the office with one cheek pink and smooth and the other one covered with a peppery scruff.

  “He talked less and less, and one day after dinner he sat at the table with your grandmother staring off into space. I thought he was just depressed over some incident at the mill and didn’t attach importance to it. But all of a sudden he took off his tie and began to unbutton his shirt. He took off his gold cuff links and then he removed his shirt. It was the middle of July and evenings were hot, so Valeria thought perhaps he was just trying to cool off. But when Father got up from his chair and took off his pants and shorts, your grandmother and I began to scream.

  “Fortunately we were the only ones there—Siglinda was already living in her own house in Guayamés, Lakhmé was sleeping, and my other sisters, as well as Alejandro, were away at the university—but we were terrified. Father paraded naked around the dining room and then walked toward the living room, where the windows were open and people could see him from the road. “I should never have been born! The Plata is near bankruptcy and I have to depend on my son-in-law’s wiles to keep it going!” he cried. When Urbano ran into the living room and threw a bathrobe over him, Father punched him in the jaw. Mother and I locked ourselves in the bedroom and sent Urbano to get the family doctor. The doctor came with two male nurses, and between them and Urbano they held your grandfather down while the doctor injected him with a sedative that put him to sleep. But when he woke up, Father got out of bed, took off his clothes, and did the same thing all over again.

  “The doctor came to the house once more and Father was again sedated. He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance for a thorough examination; the diagnosis was acute deterioration of the brain due to advanced arteriosclerosis. Valeria tried to keep him confined to his room, but when Father realiz
ed he couldn’t get out he turned violent. He took his .44-caliber gun out of the closet, shot at the lock, and kicked the door open. The male nurses were called again, and they tied him to the bed. They bathed and shaved him, but it was like trying to subdue a wild bull. Alvaro strained at his bindings and hurled insults at Valeria, accusing her of keeping him a prisoner when there was nothing wrong with him. The whole thing broke my heart.

  “I was the only person who could come into his room without his getting violent, so I brought him his meals on a tray every day. As soon as your grandfather saw me his eyes would light up and he’d smile, but he never spoke. Valeria hid his gun under her bed. Father was moved to a small room next to her bedroom that had iron bars on the windows. Mother was a strong woman; she refused to put him in an institution and tried to keep his condition a secret from her gossiping neighbors as well as she could. She had married Alvaro for better or for worse, she said, and would never be parted from him.

  “The following months were a nightmare. One afternoon it was pouring and I went down to the basement to make sure all the windows of your grandfather’s office were closed. I turned on the light and found stacks of unpaid bills on top of his desk, IOUs, receipts from dozens of people who owed him money. The Plata’s economic situation was disastrous. When Okeechobee had gone bust it had depleted the family’s resources. Now I understood why Father had become so distraught.

  “One night the door to your grandfather’s room was inadvertently left unlocked. He had been feeling better in the past few weeks; he seemed peaceful and was sleeping without any restraints. He got up at around three in the morning and went down the backstairs unseen. He walked down the road to the seashore, took off his clothes, and dropped them on the sand. Then he waded naked into the water and swam out to the bay.

  “His body was never found.

  “Your grandfather had made a will a few years earlier, when he was still in control of his mental faculties, and he had named Valeria executor of his estate. The will was read by Venancio to the family a few months after Alvaro was declared legally dead. Each of his children would eventually inherit a sugarcane farm of at least three hundred cuerdas, approximately three hundred acres. I would inherit Las Pomarrosas; Siglinda, La Templanza; Dido, La Altamira; Artemisa, El Carite; Lakhmé, La Constanza; and Alejandro, La Esmeralda, the most valuable farm of all because it was in the most fertile part of the valley. They were all choice properties and were free of liens. Each farm produced around twelve thousand tons of sugar a year—each cuerda produced forty tons—and the sugarcane was ground and processed at the Plata. Unfortunately, as long as Valeria lived, the farms would remain in her name and she could do with them as she wished. Alejandro would be the Plata’s president as soon as he returned home from the University of Virginia. Meanwhile, an administrator would have to be found to manage the mill. Valeria appointed your uncle Venancio to do the job.

  “The will also included a list of mementos belonging to your grandfather which my sisters, Alejandro, and I were to receive after he passed away. Valeria went around giving them to us the same day the will was read: Alejandro received Abuelo Alvaro’s gold onion-shaped pocket watch and chain with the Rivas de Santillana name inscribed inside the lid; Dido, his Parker pen with a gold nib; Artemisa, the gold key that hung from his watch chain, which he used to wind the grandfather clock every morning; Siglinda, his wedding band, which he loved to twirl on the polished dining room table after dinner; and I got the mother-of-pearl switchblade he had always promised me. I went out onto the terrace and pressed the hidden spring to make the blade jump out. I stared at the mysterious inscription, R 4–24 L 6–32 R 3–22, wondering what the numbers meant. I could still remember the first time Father had shown me the knife in his closet, when I was just a child. I was about to put the knife in my pocket when Siglinda came bustling out and raised such a ruckus, insisting she had to have the knife, that I exchanged it for your grandfather’s wedding band to calm her down.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Alejandro Sells the Plata

  “VALERIA NAMED VENANCIO TEMPORARY President of central Plata. The Partido Republicano Incondicional was still in power then, and Venancio was president of the party and mayor of Guayamés. He had very good relations with the navy. He knew the admiral in charge of the naval base at La Guajira and got him to pay a higher rent for the lands they were occupying near the coast of Rincón. Then he went to visit the owners of Caribbean Sugar, whose mill was adjacent to the Plata. Venancio promised he could get them a government subsidy for a new dam they needed in the upper reaches of the Emajaguas River that would make irrigation of their farms a lot more efficient during the dry months. The president of Caribbean Sugar returned Venancio’s favor by visiting the president of the New York National City Bank in San Juan and pressuring him to loan the Plata an additional hundred thousand dollars—which was nothing to them, after all—at very low interest. Soon your grandfather’s IOUs were all paid off and the Plata was free of liens.

  “I offered to help Venancio out in the Plata’s management. I visited the mill every morning, and in the afternoons I went down to the basement of Emajaguas, where your grandfather had had his office. I sat in Father’s brown leather chair, opened his drawer, stared sadly at his pencils and pens, his glasses, his notepad. I couldn’t reconcile myself to the fact that he was dead.

  “I was dressed in mourning: black jodhpurs, black riding boots, and a white blouse with a bow at the neck. Every day I rode Father’s horse, Bayoán, a beautiful black stallion, around the Plata’s farms. I ordered the cane fields set on fire during the zafra, even though the burning reduced the sugar content in the stalks. I wanted to make it easier for the peons to cut the twelve-foot thicket of prickly leaves that tore at their flesh. Cutting cane by hand under a broiling noonday sun was an infernal job and I asked Venancio if there was something we could do to make it more humane. I suggested that we have a van deliver water and food to the cutters so they wouldn’t have to depend on their children or wives walking all the way out to the cane fields to bring them their meals, usually rice, beans, and boiled codfish. Venancio agreed and the new system was put into effect.

  “Alejandro came back to Emajaguas from school in June 1928. It had taken him a great deal of effort to graduate. He had flunked his senior year and had had to buckle down and study in order to pass the second time around. Valeria was relieved when Alejandro finally returned home. Venancio was still president of the mill and I was helping administer it. I was to stay in that position until Alejandro learned the ropes.

  “Venancio was no longer mayor of Guayamés, but he had accumulated a small fortune. He had made a lot of money in a lawsuit he said he had won. He went around in a brand-new purple Packard with gray velvet cartouche seats and whitewall tires that was even more luxurious than your grandfather’s old black Packard. Siglinda was always beautifully dressed. Venancio ordered fashionable crushed-velvet dresses and hats directly from Paris for her, and she wore rings with precious stones on all her fingers. Dressed in a silk shantung suit and wearing one of his colorful Italian ties with a tiny diamond horseshoe tiepin for luck, Venancio would drive Siglinda to the Shooting Club every day for lunch.

  “No one at Emajaguas could understand how Venancio managed to live in such style. The Partido Republicano Incondicional was going through a crisis because of the economic slump, and it had lost the elections. Everybody connected with it was having a dreadful time. ‘You lose one, you win another!’ Venancio would say, flashing the diamond on his little finger as he caressed Siglinda’s neck. ‘The Partido Republicano has contributed greatly to the island’s progress!’

  “The following year, things didn’t get any better. The Partido Socialista was in power, and it had eliminated all government subsidies and concessions to the sugar industry. Sugar production began to dwindle. As a parallel disaster, the American army and navy began to pull out, and many bases that were vital to the economy during the war were dismantled. La Guajira naval base
was one of them, and the navy stopped paying rent for the Plata’s lands. Soon the Plata had to take out a loan to meet the payroll.

  “The day Alejandro came back to Emajaguas he went down to your grandfather’s office in the basement. ‘Time to move out!’ he told me, standing in front of my desk, solid as a powder keg on his short, thick legs. The accountant, the two secretaries, the messenger boy—all stopped what they were doing and looked at him in surprise. Alejandro pushed my leather blotter, silver letter opener, pencils, and pens to one side with his riding whip to make space for a large stuffed guaraguao. ‘Real management of the Plata is about to begin,’ he said. ‘I’d like to know whose idea it was to send free water vans and lunch baskets with hot food out to the workers in the fields. If the peons want welfare, let them work for the government. This is a private enterprise and its goal is to make money, not do charity work.’

  “‘It was my idea, and Venancio agreed to it,’ I answered defiantly. ‘He’s president of the mill.’

  “‘He’s not president now. From now on, I’m in charge of the Plata’s operations. Mother’s orders!’

  “I immediately went to see Valeria. No hurricanes had whipped the island that year, but there had been too much rain, and the sugar content of the cane was low. The Plata’s refinery had sold a third less sugar than the year before. The planting of the fields took place every three years and was due in two months. ‘We’re going through a crisis, Mother. This isn’t the right time to change the Plata’s management,’ I told Valeria. ‘You must let Venancio and me stay on.’ But Valeria refused.

  “I talked to each of my sisters and convinced them that it would be wiser if I went on administering the mill with Venancio’s help for a while, until the sugar crisis blew over. But when my sisters told Valeria of their decision, Mother was furious. She went around the house pulling her hair and looking distraught.