by Naima Coster
Penelope was becoming quite beautiful, already more of a woman than a child. Her hips had widened since she started her period, and her breasts were nearly the size of Mirella’s. Her sad, small eyes hadn’t changed, and the round apples of her cheeks were still pure Ralph.
Mirella looked away so she wouldn’t have to watch Penelope sulk. She withdrew a Kleenex from her purse and blew her nose. Specks of red covered the tissue. She sighed. The dust was already filling her nostrils and the back of her throat.
“Fernando, cuánto nos falta?” she yelled, and then added, more gently, “I’m not sure how much more I can take.”
She didn’t want Fernando to think she blamed him for her carsickness and vertigo, the dust. Although they had never been friends, they had grown up together in Aguas Frescas. Fernando was thirty-five, like her, but he had been married and a father by the time she left DR at eighteen. Mirella had known Fernando’s father, a pious and alcoholic widower who worked in the valley as a farmer, moving from crop to crop and terreno to terreno, depending on who was hiring for the day. Fernando had never met her father, although he knew the legend of Eleazar and Ramona’s love, which was popular on the mountain long before Mirella was born. When she moved to Aguas Frescas as a girl, everyone seemed to know that her father had been fair-skinned and plump, descended from a long line of Spaniards, and that he had walked with a limp and smoked cigars. They all knew he was dead and had left Mirella nothing except her red hair.
Eleazar Jiménez had owned an American-style diner in Santiago, not far from La Plaza Valerio, where the rich of the city built their homes. They served hamburgers and French fries at a red-and-white tile counter; the jukebox played tangos and boleros, no Dominican music at all, and certainly not the American rock ’n’ roll that would have matched the décor. Ramona was thirteen when she first visited La Billonera and sat at the counter for a soda. She had come down from Aguas Frescas to help her father sell beans, still whole and green in their pods, packed in sacks that weighed as much as she did. Ramona and her father ate American hamburgers for the first time in their lives, the brownest customers in the restaurant, dirt under their nails and in their hair.
Mirella had heard her father boast that he loved Ramona as soon as he saw her, a stunning woman-child with eyes, lips, hair, and skin all the same caramel color. Eleazar gave them their Coca-Colas and burgers for free, and so they returned to La Billonera every time they were in Santiago selling beans. Eleazar plied Ramona with ice cream and soda and pickles until she was too full to go outside and help her father unload the truck. They stayed inside and talked. Ramona’s father had no sons, and she had been helping him her whole life, plucking beans and lugging them, bargaining in the market, counting pesos, making change. When Ramona turned fifteen, Eleazar asked her father if he could marry her. The poor bean farmer didn’t object.
Wealthy Santiagueros were horrified by the match, not because the brown-gold girl from the mountains was so young—it wasn’t so strange for a man of Eleazar’s wealth and position to marry a girl who could be mistaken for his daughter—but because she was so simple, so dark, such an absolute campesina. She was nothing like the high-society Santiago daughters who might have hoped to marry Eleazar. These girls spent their days sitting in the shade and scrubbing their elbows and knees with halved lemons. These girls played the piano and flipped their hair with a kind of precision that could make even the most righteous and long-married man sick with desire. There was nothing coy or pretty about Ramona, nothing gentle about her calloused hands and her skin the color of tamarindo. Still, they were married in La Catedral on La Calle del Sol, and Ramona moved down the mountain into Eleazar’s white house near La Plaza Valerio. She was pregnant within a few months, and Mirella was born with her father’s red hair and Ramona’s stringy body. Mirella had a room of her own, as well as a nurse, a maid, and a professional photographer who came from la capital from time to time to document every milestone of her early life.
Eleazar spoiled Ramona and Mirella both, buying them dolls and dresses that came from as far as New York and Canada. When she arrived in Aguas Frescas, the other children asked Mirella if it was true that Eleazar had held her on one knee, and Ramona on the other, and watched them play for hours. Mirella hated the rumors about her father; she remembered him as doting and generous, and, to her, there was nothing scandalous about the way she and her father had loved each other. She remembered La Billonera, too, the tall fountain glasses filled with chocolate syrup and soda, the click and whir of the jukebox as it switched records. Mirella had only one family portrait of the three of them, which she had taken with her to New York. The sepia photograph shows a fat white man in a suit, Mirella in a starchy pale dress, and Ramona, a dark teenager with matted hair and the muscular body of an Olympian.
When Eleazar died—of sunstroke or a heart attack, no one was ever sure—the government took the house on La Plaza Valerio and La Billonera. Eleazar hadn’t left his estate in order, and his business partners argued they were the rightful inheritors to all he owned. Whether Ramona hadn’t cared to dispute their claims because she missed the mountain, or whether she had tried to stand against these Santiago sophisticates and failed, Mirella didn’t know. She was newly seven. She watched strange men pack up everything they owned; she said good-bye to the photographer, nurse, and maid, who returned to their pueblos or went to work in the neighboring houses. Ramona’s father came to Santiago to take them back to Aguas Frescas, and Mirella learned to live on the mountain.
At first, she cried for her own bed and a toilet that flushed, her porcelain muñequitas, her dresses, her nurse. Ramona went back to harvesting beans and diving in the river for crabs. She smoked tobacco in the evenings and visited her childhood friends, who had all become mothers as well, with boys from the village. When her father died, the house was Ramona’s, and she planted a lime tree in the yard. Mirella would sit under the tree and cry for the city and her father, who had given her the red hair that burned even brighter in the mountain sun.
“This trip never ends.” Mirella sighed and fanned herself with her straw hat. “I don’t know why I keep coming back if this trip is so long.”
“We’re almost there, can’t you see?” Fernando called back. “Or have you really been away so long?”
“I can’t see anything, I’m so dizzy.”
“Ya casi, hermanita. Ya casi.”
The earth flattened as the truck lumbered into Aguas Frescas. The women opened their windows and the children came out to the road when they heard the rattle of the truck. Penelope waved, and, for the most part, they recognized her. “Penélope, bienvenida,” a few called out, and Penelope beamed back at them, sitting up on her knees on the flatbed like a proud returning beauty queen.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mirella yanked the collar of Penelope’s T-shirt. “You’ll fall—sit back down.”
Penelope kept leaning over the side, pumping her hand back and forth, with no restraint at all, not a shred of dignity. For all anyone knew, she was Queen of the Campesinas under her Levi’s and Yankees cap, her green track-team T-shirt.
Some of the smaller kids trailed after the truck, calling Penelope’s name, and kicking up the dirt. They passed the chapel, the colmado, the schoolhouse, and turned the bend in the road.
Ramona’s house was the color of sea glass, a shack with a zinc roof and white shutters. Three plastic chairs were stationed on the strip of concrete that ran around the house; a dirt path cut from the road to the front door. Ramona’s old mutt, Lulú, was barking and circling the front of the house. The truck hadn’t come to a full stop when Penelope leaped over the side of the flatbed and landed running toward the house. The truck stuttered over the rocks and mud, and Penelope could run faster than Fernando could drive.
“Penélope!” Mirella whipped her sunglasses off and started to scream. “Maldita niña! Qué haces? Come back!”
Penelope sprinted up the road, and Lulú bounded to meet her.
Mirell
a cursed and slapped her own leg, hard. “Maldita niña,” she repeated.
Fernando laughed, and Mirella muttered to herself, “She’s crazy.” She watched as her daughter launched herself into Ramona’s arms.
Her mother stood in front of the house in a turquoise dress stained bluer by her sweat. Her dark hair, which was not yet gray, was piled on the top of her head in a moño. She was only a few years older than Ralph, but Mirella hardly remembered how close they were in age. Her mother’s skin was leathery from a life in the sun, her fingers and knees knobby from years of stooping and picking. And yet, she was still a striking woman, even from afar. Her gums and teeth and nails gleamed pink and white against the dark gold of her skin. Her alien, Amazonian loveliness hadn’t faded with age.
Ramona and Penelope were covering each other with kisses while Mirella started to unload the luggage. Fernando helped her. They listened to the old woman and the girl proclaim their love for one another.
“Abuela!” Penelope bleated.
“Mi reina,” answered Ramona. “Look at you! You’re even more beautiful than your mami.”
“I love you, Abuela.”
“I’ve missed you, mi cielito. Once a year isn’t enough!”
Mirella rolled her eyes.
“Así son los niños y los abuelos,” Fernando said indulgently, as if every girl in the world would greet her grandmother with such fanfare and melodrama.
“Ella no es tan niña,” Mirella replied, dragging her suitcase onto the dust.
They unpacked the truck quietly, while Ramona and Penelope raved. When they were done, Fernando stared at her, probably waiting to be invited inside. If Ramona had seen, she would have called him in, but Mirella was tired from the journey and irritated at how amused he was by the reunion of her mother and her daughter, how swiftly they had left her out. So she thanked him for the ride, pressed a bundle of American dollars into his hand.
Dusk in Aguas Frescas was warm and breezy, the sky deep lavender. The mosquitoes were beginning to circle the women as they stood in the yard. Penelope chopped onions while Ramona fried plantains and eggplants in strips. Mirella made the rice, pouring water from an empty can of tomato paste into the dented aluminum pot. The scent of oregano and garlic dissolved in the night air. The wooden house was peaceful aside from the sound of sizzling and water sloshing and the unsteady chop of the knife. Even Lulú was quiet, dozing on her mat beneath the lime tree.
The stone kitchen was the part of the house Mirella hated most. It was hardly a room: just a stone sink, stove, and two gas tanks on a square of cement in the backyard. Mirella had spent years outside in this kitchen, following Ramona’s orders to stew crabs and wash rice, or beat the laundry dry, while she went to visit the neighbors. The wind would scatter the cilantro she had chopped and sweep her hair into her eyes, and Mirella would curse how high in the mountains they were, how far from La Plaza Valerio.
“You’re cutting the onions too small,” Mirella said, jabbing Penelope on the shoulder. “You’ll never finish chopping if you keep doing it that way.”
“How else am I supposed to do it?” Penelope said, holding the blade in one hand and using the other to brush sweat from her forehead. She looked even more disheveled than she had when they arrived. The heat from the stove had curled her hair; her hands and face were almost as dark as Ramona’s. She looked misplaced in the stone kitchen in her American sneakers and jeans, chopping the onions delicately while the oil began to smoke. Penelope knew nothing of how to cook and serve others. Penelope’s life in Brooklyn was too comfortable. They had spoiled her.
“If you didn’t spend all your time locked in your room and drawing, you’d be able to do simple things like chop an onion. When I was half your age I already knew how to cook for myself.”
“You never taught me,” Penelope said plainly, setting the knife down on the wooden board.
“Do you ever ask to learn? Do you ever say, ‘Mami, teach me’? No, you stay in your room and draw. You don’t cook for me.”
“You don’t cook for me anymore either.”
Before Mirella could yell, Ramona stepped between them, taking the knife from Penelope.
“Tranquila,” she said. “The both of you. I’ll show Penelope how to do it.”
She made three slits lengthwise on the top half of an onion, and then three crosswise into the side. When she sliced through the top, horizontally, the bulb broke apart in dozens of identical purple and white squares.
“If you do it this way, the pieces will already be small. You won’t have to keep cutting and cutting.”
Penelope cut another half an onion in this way, carefully, her eyes clouding as she sliced. When she was finished, Ramona brushed the hair back from her forehead and kissed her.
“Muy bien,” she said. “Muy bien, mi reina.”
They finished preparing the meal just before dark. Mirella planted the wooden spoon in the center of the pot of rice to be sure it was ready. When the spoon stood upright, she knew the proportions of water and grains were right; the moro would be moist but not too wet. They carried the food inside the house and sat at the round table in the living room. Ramona brought in three yellow bananas, unpeeled them, and set one whole on each of their plates. Ramona prayed for the food, and Penelope shut her eyes. Mirella watched the two of them cross themselves.
“Amen,” they intoned and began to eat.
Ramona chewed with her mouth open, picking apart the oily strips of eggplant with her fingers. She licked the salt and grease from her palms, and Penelope did the same.
“Did Fernando tell you he had another son?” Ramona filled the silence with her sharp, sweet voice.
“He doesn’t know when to stop, eh? How many is that now? Four? Five?”
“Six. He and Angelina are happy. They want a big family.”
“For what? So they can starve together?”
“No hables así Mirella. Someone will hear you. For all you know, Fernando’s at our door right now.”
“I only said the truth. I’m sure he already knows he can’t afford to feed another child.”
“It’s wise to have a lot of children,” Ramona went on. “What better gift can you give your child than a brother or a sister? Someone to be with them when you’re gone?”
Mirella laughed. “Is that why I have so many brothers and sisters, Mami?”
“Ay, Mirella, don’t start with me. I couldn’t give you a brother or a sister, not with my husband dead and in the ground—God rest his soul.”
Mirella looked away as her mother crossed herself anew. Ramona was as theatrically emotional as everyone else in this village. When someone died in Aguas Frescas, relatives hurled themselves to the ground during the funeral, clawing at their chests while their neighbors held them up and stuffed sedatives into their mouths. When a wife discovered her husband had been unfaithful, she locked him out of the house, and he spent the night, drunk, trying to climb in the windows, maybe even crooning a song, a contrite bachata, to convince her to forgive him. It was the stuff of novelas, melodrama no one even endeavored to keep private in a town of three hundred.
Mirella knew Ramona had loved the mountain more than she had loved Eleazar. Back in Aguas Frescas, when she was finished picking beans, she was free to swim in the river in her housedress or smoke a pipe, pour herself a traguito on the porch of a neighbor. In the morning, she could watch the sun rise over the valley, listen to the radio, and drink her café con leche privately, stirring in milk from a can. Mirella was the one who had grieved for Eleazar and their old life; Ramona was happier as a widow, young and untethered, with a house of her own.
“How’s el morenito?” Ramona asked without looking up from her plate.
“Ralph’s fine. Making money at the store. He says hello.”
“Tell him I say hello, too.”
They went back to their rice and gossip about the neighbors.
Penelope drank from a bottle of mabi and listened to the women. She looked strange to Mirella
, with her elbows on the table, grease smeared across her lips, beads of sweat creeping out from the puffy halo of her hair. They had stopped eating meals together in New York, and Mirella wondered how they would learn to be together here, over the next two months in this house.
Penelope hadn’t grown any quieter in the past year, but she seemed to love her solitude now, rather than fight against it. She still asked for permission to go to school dances and art shows, but when Mirella forbade her, she hardly flinched, and returned, unperturbed, to her room to draw. She didn’t come into Mirella’s bedroom anymore to say good night, which must have been normal for a girl of thirteen, but she didn’t hug her anymore either, didn’t rise onto her tiptoes to kiss the air next to her cheek. Sometimes, when Mirella found Penelope on the floor of her bedroom, bent over a sketch pad, or staring out her window onto Halsey Street, she felt a swift sinking, the conviction, for just a moment, that she had ruined the child somehow.
It would be better for her here, Mirella thought, in Aguas Frescas. She would spend her days wandering through the hills and hiking to the waterfalls with the other children. She would swim in the river and eat sancocho at the neighbors’ houses, play soccer in the road, the only child wearing shoes when she kicked the ball of rolled-up socks. She was a different girl in the mountains, her legs covered in mud, her face burned pink and brown. She returned to Ramona’s house every evening, insatiable and ecstatic, armed with stories about the day. Mirella wondered how many years Penelope had left before she began to see Aguas Frescas for the small, dull campo that it was.
When Penelope finished her first bottle of mabi, she got up for another. She used the metal opener to uncap the bottle, and when she raised it to her lips, she didn’t look like a little girl at all, her lower lip swallowing the mouth of the bottle, the dark liquid dribbling down her chin.
“You’re going to get full on soda.”
“It’s not soda, Mami.”
“Just because it doesn’t say Coca-Cola on the bottle—”