No one could say that Angelina wasn’t a proper mother. As was the custom, upon the birth of each of her sons, she sent the baby off to live with a wet nurse, one of Raúl Vega’s peonas who had also recently given birth. Angelina preferred a nursing mother whose child had died and she lamented that she wasn’t so fortunate to find such a woman for baby Vicente. She insisted that the peona send her own baby away while she nursed Angelina’s son. She felt entitled in her demand because Raúl Vega provided rice and plátanos for the entire family. Angelina visited her child monthly to ensure his well-being, despite the steep climb up the mountain; the poorer the family, the higher up they lived. Other women of Angelina’s class had been known to leave a child in the care of a wet nurse without ever visiting for an entire year or even two, but she reclaimed her son upon the boy’s first birthday. It wasn’t uncommon for a woman to feel as if the child she was nursing were her own. When Angelina went for her firstborn Luisito, she and la peona were in a tug-of-war, with Angelina’s baby in the middle. Everybody screaming—Angelina, Luisito, la mujer who was nursing. The woman’s husband had come running, demanding that his mujer release the baby and begging la doña’s perdón. When it was time to retrieve Vicente, Angelina hadn’t forgotten the scene with Luisito, and Raúl Vega came along to extract the baby from the wet nurse’s arms.
Evenings for Angelina were the worst, especially when she sat at the table, the candle burning down to the saucer, the dirty dishes from dinner in front of her, Gloria hurrying to remove them, chiding Angelina like any mother for leaving food on her plate, for sitting in the dark as if she were awaiting a visitation from los espíritus. Why was she moping? She had no reason to mope when life was so much better for her than so many others como los hambrientos, wouldn’t she agree, Doña Angelina? So what if her husband was a mujeriego, always a different woman, that’s how Papá Dios made los hombres. They probably couldn’t help themselves, and anyway, lots of mujeres had problems like that; it wasn’t a curse, just la vida. Or so she thought, since she’d never been lucky or unlucky enough to have a husband herself, but from what she’d seen in her fifty years or so of living, she wasn’t sure how long, because her mother couldn’t remember quando nacieron los bebés, she had so many, and nobody bothered to write it down, claro, nadie podía escribir, what was she trying to say? That, from what she observed, it was better to keep your mouth shut and go about your cosas like la señora did, sí señora, calladita, not a word, la vida tranquila es más importante que los amores. (Gloria pointed to herself. She had a calm life.) So count your bendiciones, señora, starting with your health, and then this house, and your sons. Are you finished with that cigar?
Angelina handed her the stub; Gloria drew it to her lips and smoked it.
One morning, Angelina was drinking coffee when a peón came to the door to ask for Don Raúl.
“Don Raúl ordered me to go to la casita.” El peón pointed up la montaña. “Did el don have special instructions?”
“My husband has a house up the mountain?” Angelina’s gaze followed his finger.
The jíbaro looked at the straw hat in his hands. Que metida de pata he would tell his wife that night. The trouble he’d caused to Don Raúl and maybe to himself with his big mouth!
Angelina stared at the bohío. This was where Raúl had his assignations? No, no podía ser. After all the years of Raúl’s pocas vergüenzas, his many affairs that she had heard about from Gloria, who heard all about it from la lavandera or one of the peones or fulano or fulana, and thought it her duty to tell her. Angelina didn’t care, but she couldn’t help but be curious to see where Raúl conducted his assignations. Bejuco vines secured the palm frond roof to a frame of poles. Because it was day, the hut’s door had been removed and propped against a wall; at night, it would be set in place and fastened with vines or rope. El peón waited outside en el batey, while Angelina entered como la ama de casa, as if it were her own house, because, in a way, it was. She was careful where she stepped on the uneven wood plank floor, not the usual dirt floor of a bohío. Light came from the doorway; there was no window. A bird with a long beak flew inside and took a turn around the hut.
El fogón sat on top of the crude wood table. There was a bench instead of chairs. Two cups, a coffeepot, and a cracked blue pitcher stood empty. A tin gallon with Aceite de Italia embossed on the label was filled with water. Angelina lifted it by the wood handle nailed to the top and poured a cup. Kitchen and eating utensils hung from the ceiling on long strips of emajagua vines. Sacks of coffee beans leaned against the straw walls. Angelina carried her water to the second room, which held a cot and a small clothes trunk. More sacks of coffee beans. She shook her head. Ay, Raúl, still so practical, even in your love nest. She had her hand on the trunk when a young blonde entered, her arms full of flowers. The blooms splashed red and pink and yellow on the faded blue of her dress.
“You must be Doña Angelina,” the woman said.
“Mujer de Raúl Vega.” Angelina came into the front room. “And you are?”
“I’m Inés Quiñónes.” She set the flowers on the table. “It won’t take me long to finish here.”
Angelina heard the lisp in the woman’s Spanish like that of a Spaniard.
“Doña, con permiso, but Don Raúl’s orders?” the peón called out from the doorway.
“Don Raúl wanted you to help me with my trunk.” Inés arranged the flowers in the pitcher.
“¿Por qué te vas?” Angelina looked at the pretty woman over the rim of the cup.
“Your husband told me to leave.”
“Another woman?” Angelina drank water.
Inés shrugged.
“Have you family?” Angelina noted the woman’s worn dress.
“I’m that most tragic of women. Una viuda,” Inés said. “No children.”
“You’re a widow?” Angelina frowned. “And your mother, your father?”
“No mother, no father,” Inés said.
“Where will you go? A woman alone.” Angelina set the cup on the table.
“Maybe someone in town—”
El peón cleared his throat. “Doña Angelina, the day is passing and Don Raúl—”
The bird flew out.
Angelina beckoned. “Take the trunk to my house.”
“Your house!” El peón’s hat slipped from his fingers. “Don Raúl’s orders—”
“Your house!” Flowers slipped from Inés’s fingers onto the table. “Doña, perhaps you should think it over.”
“Don’t worry about Raúl,” Angelina said.
“Él se enojará. His temper—”
The women exchanged glances.
“You haven’t anywhere to stay,” Angelina said.
“Perhaps I should apologize about your husband and—” Inés fumbled with the flowers.
“No te preocupes,” Angelina said. “My heart isn’t broken.”
Sometime later, she would confess to Inés that on that day, she’d thanked God for her husband’s pocas vergüenzas.
CHAPTER FIVE
ONCE UPON A TIME
Only through the grace of God, and only because the groom was making a toast, had Valentina’s absence gone unnoticed by her father. Mamá, of course, scolded her again the next day. Valentina, are you paying attention, señorita? She should fall to her knees and thank Papá Dios that no one noticed that she went off with a man! A stranger! Some fulano de tal! For shame! Yes, the stranger was guapo, but what was a good-looking man without money? A woman soon tired of a man without money. She had heard that he was only a farmer and lived on a mountain. Somebody had said there was something funny about the father—or was it the mother? It didn’t matter. Who wanted to live on a little farm anyway, especially up on a mountain, when they could live in Ponce? ¡Ponce es Ponce! If the mother of Juan Moscoso—Valentina, how could you!
Never in his life did Valentina’s father imagine speaking to his daughter on a subject of such delicacy—especially in the girl’s bedroom.
“Papá, the bread man is here.” Valentina looked out the window.
Together, they watched Valentina’s mother select a loaf from the enormous straw basket balanced on the bread man’s head.
“I’ve never seen a single loaf fall in all my years,” Papá said.
“If the milkman comes soon, you’ll have café con leche with your bread,” Valentina said.
“There is nothing better for desayuno than pan con mantequilla y café con leche,” Papá said. “Don’t you think so, Valentina?”
Valentina smiled at her father and he wondered why he didn’t stop to appreciate her sweetness more often, maybe he should see if he could bring home some chocolates from the pharmacy, claro, his wife would complain about the expense—his wife!
“Hija, your mother wished me to say—” Teodoro looked around for a chair, but his daughter was sitting on the only chair. There was the bed—no, not the bed!
“There are certain—ah, certain—things—a señorita—her future husband expects—” His gaze caught sight of a lace pillow. Where had he seen that before? Until last evening, he hadn’t been in his daughter’s room in years. Lace. Pillow. Bed. A pillow tied with a blue ribbon. Ay, Brigitte from his French postcards. A smile came to his lips. Sweet Brigitte with a ribbon in her hair—a white bedspread—little Mademoiselle Brigitte grasped the pillow between her legs in such a way that a man wanted to . . . A father had no place in a daughter’s bedroom!
“I never realized how tall coconut palms grow.” Valentina brought an orchid to her lips.
“What?” He took a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his forehead.
“Coconut palms,” Valentina said. “They’re tall.”
“Sí, sí, coconut palms are tall.” He wiped his palms. “They grow up to a hundred feet high. Did you know that coconuts kill half a dozen people each year? They fall and knock people on the head. Never stand under a coconut tree, Valentina.”
Papá mused for a moment about a boy he’d known whose head had been bashed in by a coconut. He removed his eyeglasses and polished the lenses. His eyeglasses slipped from his fingers. He got on his knees, ah, there they were; he brought the eyeglasses up to his face. His gaze fell on the white bedspread. Damn his wife!
Then it was her sister’s turn.
“Look, Elena, the milkman.”
Elena joined her sister at the window.
They watched the servant bring out empty milk jugs. The milkman tied his cow to a post and then urged its calves to suckle its teats; once the milk began to flow, the milkman pushed the calves away and proceeded to fill the jugs. The bleating of the hungry calves summoned more customers.
“Poor little babies,” Valentina said. “They’re starving.”
Elena pointed to the flower in her sister’s hand. “The Brassavola nodosa. The Lady of the Night orchid.”
Valentina kissed the petals; she breathed stars and moonlight.
“Mamá sent me to lecture you because you vanished into the night with a strange man.”
“He was a stranger,” Valentina said. “Not strange.”
“You shouldn’t have taken such a risk.” Elena sat down on the bed. “All those high-class snooty bochincheras en la boda. Esa mujeres son las más chismosas. This very moment, the whole town of Ponce could be tearing the family apart while the bread man makes his deliveries.”
“Elena, I won’t be going to Spain with Rudolfo.” Valentina tucked the orchid inside a box of hair ribbons.
“Of course not, tontita,” Elena said. “Eso era una locura.”
Valentina sat on the bed beside her sister. “I don’t think it was a crazy idea.”
“No?”
“Quizás un poquito.” Valentina raised two fingers an inch apart.
The sisters laughed.
“What about the stranger?”
“No money.” Valentina picked up the white pillow; her fingers toyed with the blue ribbon.
“Life is terrible without money,” Elena said. “Trust me, you don’t want the problems that come when you don’t have enough money.”
“I know, all the beggars—”
“Ernesto and I can hardly pay our bills and he has a government job,” Elena said.
“I will just have to be a solterona like Tía Evangelina. It won’t be so bad. I’ll take care of our parents, and when they die, I’ll come live with you and Ernesto and your children.”
“Tontita.” Elena poked her sister in the ribs; Valentina slapped at her hand.
“Mamá said to convince you to marry Juan Moscoso.”
“It would be like marrying our grandfather.”
“Think of his advanced age as a good thing,” Elena said. “You’ll have nice things and won’t ever have to worry about how to pay your bills.”
“But he’s so ugly, Elena.”
“He is ugly. Mala suerte.”
“Bad luck for him or for me?”
“Both.”
Valentina tapped her sister on the head with the pillow.
Elena took the pillow away and sat on it.
“This farmer, did I say he was a farmer—don’t look at me like that, Elena—farmers are necessary for coffee and things like that—anyway, he told me that my eyes are like coffee beans.”
Elena giggled.
“Why are you laughing! My eyes could be coffee beans.”
“Small and hard?”
Valentina laughed. “Tontita, it was something pretty!”
“Can you see yourself as the wife of a coffee farmer? Cut off from civilization up on some mountain with nothing to do except milk cows?”
“I know, but the stranger’s arms were so strong—I felt—when he held me—it felt—” Valentina reached for her sister’s hand.
Elena pulled her hand away. “He embraced you?”
“No te preocupes, we were deep into the garden by the coconut palms. Nobody saw us.”
“Too bad a coconut didn’t fall on your head and knock some sense into you.”
“Don’t be like that, Elena.”
“If somebody saw you—”
“Nobody saw us—”
“It’s not only your reputation but also that of nuestros padres and Ernesto’s and mine and our children’s—”
“Perdóname, Elena, por favor.” Valentina reached for her sister’s hand again.
Elena let her hold it. “Start at the beginning, don’t leave anything out.”
CHAPTER SIX
STRAWBERRY GIRL
Tell us all about the wedding, the women of the family demanded of Vicente when he returned home. They sat together on the veranda as Vicente wove banana leaves into an aparejo saddle to sell in town. Vicente told las damas about the coconut flan that trembled under a thick layer of caramel sauce (he ate two servings), about the bubbles that had almost choked him when he gulped down his first glass of champagne (the bridegroom had cases of champagne brought specially from France), and about the tiny cups of black coffee, coffee so strong that the taste lingered on the tongue like tobacco.
“And the bride, your cousin? I’m sure she was beautiful.” Inés looked up from the lace she was weaving.
“She is Vicente’s second cousin.” Angelina was smoking one of her little cigars. “Maybe third.”
“Second cousin, third cousin. Nobody cares, Angelina,” Inés said. “The dress, tell us about the dress.”
“My cousin? Yes, I think she was beautiful. Yes, I’m sure she must have been,” Vicente said. “I really don’t remember.”
Inés laughed. “You don’t remember the bride? Your own cousin?”
“His third cousin, twice removed, I think,” Angelina said.
“You’re right, Angelina, third cousin, twice removed,” Inés said. “Did you dance with lots of pretty girls? Maybe one particular pretty girl?”
Vicente continued to interlace the leaves into the aparejo that was the jíbaro’s saddle; he and his brother Luisito had learned the skill from their father. Now his fingers fumbled and he saw t
hat he would have to redo a section of the large leaves.
“I danced with lots of girls,” Vicente said. “Nobody special.”
“That’s good,” his mother said. “You’re much too young to fall in love.”
“You fall in love when you fall in love,” Inés said. “Nothing can stop it.”
Angelina smiled at Inés. “I think I meant that Vicente is too young to marry. He’d have to wait a few years.”
“Last year when your brother Luisito married, he was twenty-five.” Inés checked her handiwork. “That’s the custom, isn’t it, Angelina?”
“A son works for his father until he is at least twenty-five years old.” Angelina tapped her son’s arm. “That’s the only way the family farm can survive.”
“That’s four whole years,” Vicente said. “What girl would wait four years?”
“Are you thinking of someone, Vicente?” Angelina’s tobacco-stained fingers held her cigar halfway to her lips.
“Nadie, Mamá,” he said.
When he sat en el balcón with las damas, he noticed for the first time that his company was unnecessary; Angelina and Inés were content with or without him. Vicente even envied his parents the few daily words they spoke to each other at dinner. During the day, Vicente liked the solitude of picking coffee berries; he appreciated the repetitive movement that required only his body and did not task his mind. The sweet scent of the guava trees, the birds flying together in the sky, and especially the red coffee berry clustered in the bright green leaves of the coffee tree filled him with a wistfulness he didn’t understand. At night, when his father was out engaging in his nocturnal pursuits, and the house and its inhabitants—Angelina, Inés, Gloria the servant—settled into peaceful slumber, Vicente took to roaming Cerro Morales, restless as the spirits.
The Taste of Sugar Page 4