“It would be my pleasure,” he said.
¡Ay bendito! The washcloth slipped from Valentina’s fingers. The scream caught in her throat. She covered herself with her hands as she looked for the drying cloth.
“You’re not Vicente!”
“Raúl Vega, a la orden.” He didn’t bother to disguise his delight.
“I’m Valentina.” She bit back hysterics. “Vicente’s wife.”
“Welcome to the family, Valentina,” he said.
“Will you please go?” The cloth. If only she had the cloth.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of a man’s admiration,” he said.
Though his eyes were so like Vicente’s, she recognized that this man was nothing like her husband. He tipped his hat and closed the door behind him.
Valentina grabbed the drying cloth and hurried to push the chair against the door; the rooms in the house didn’t have locks. The rooms in her parents’ house didn’t have locks, either, but if a door was closed, one was supposed to knock. She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. Raúl Vega, her husband’s father, her new father-in-law, had seen her naked! She sat down on the chair. Should she tell Vicente?
Her father-in-law congratulated Vicente on his bride and gave her a chaste kiss at dinner como nada, as if nothing had ever happened.
Gloria served the chicken and rice that Valentina had helped her make.
“¿Arroz con pollo, Gloria? It’s not Sunday,” Raúl Vega said.
“La doña ordered it specially.” Gloria looked at Angelina.
“It must be to celebrate the newlyweds.” Inés ate a forkful.
“Thank you, Mamá,” Vicente said. “Valentina, wasn’t that thoughtful of my mother?”
“Muy amable,” Valentina said to the arroz con pollo.
The meal was eaten in silence. Valentina kept her eyes on her plate, afraid to look up and see everyone staring at her. Afterward, Doña Angelina called Vicente to her side as soon as they entered the sala. Valentina sat next to Inés as she worked her mundillo lace, straining to hear Vicente and his mother over the tapping of the wood handles. Why was her mother-in-law whispering? Perhaps she knew that her husband had seen Valentina? Maybe Gloria had seen her father-in-law enter her room. When Valentina heard Vicente return from the finca, she’d hurried to remove the chair and put on her dress. She had greeted him como nada, but what if she had said, Vicente, this is nothing to get upset about. It could have happened to any woman—to Inés, even to Gloria. And perhaps Vicente might have laughed it off and told her these things happen in a family house. But what if Vicente said, What do you mean my father came into the room? Why were you taking a sponge bath? Why were you naked? Why did you leave the door open? No? You’re sure that you didn’t leave the door wide open? She could have tried to explain, He must have been looking for you, yes, I’m sure he was looking for you. But what if Vicente said, My father has never looked for me! I go to him! ¡Coño carajo! ¡Que falta de respeto! I will kill him! So, what good would it have done to tell Vicente? Or Doña Angelina? Or even Inés? It would have caused a big revolú within the family. No one would have thanked her. It was certain that Doña Angelina wouldn’t like her any better. Once something like that is revealed, something must be done about it. And what would that be? Vicente would fight with his father? His father would banish them from his house? Throw away Vicente’s chance at his own coffee farm?
So she didn’t tell him.
That evening, Vicente and his father smoked outside on el balcón. Bats flew over their heads and around them, whizzing by in the blink of an eye; the sweet smells of the night flowers like la dama de noche lingered in the air. The moon was crescent-shaped, and Vicente thought that he would ask Valentina to come out and see it with him.
“Explain yourself,” Raúl Vega said over the incessant chant of the coquís.
“Papá, there’s not really much to say. I met Valentina and I couldn’t stop thinking about her so I had to marry her.”
Raúl Vega took a drag on his cigarette, flicked ashes over the banister. “You had to marry her? ¿Ella está encinta?”
“Of course not!” How dare his father!
“¿Entonces . . . ?”
Vicente looked at his father. “Papá, if you could give me a bit of land, just a few cuerdas, I could build Valentina a house and start my own coffee farm.”
“Hombre, I’m not a rich hacendado like my father was. Once, half this mountain belonged to Don Luis Manuel. He paid five dollars a cuerda. Maybe less.” Raúl Vega stubbed out his cigarette against the balcón’s railing.
“I don’t need a lot, just a few cuerdas, five or six—”
“And what will you do for money to build this little house of sueños? How will you buy the coffee bushes? Or even the coffee seeds?”
“But you helped my brother.” Vicente squashed the cigarette butt with his shoe.
“When Luisito married, las cosas no estaban tan malas como hoy,” his father said.
“When do you think things will get better?” He studied his father in the moonlight.
“¿Quién sabe?” His father shrugged.
Vicente hurried past the sala and didn’t stop when his mother called out to him. Valentina followed him to their room.
“What is it, Vicente?”
“Give me water,” he said.
Her hand shook as she poured water from the pitcher on the bureau. “Before you start thinking crazy, remember that there is an explanation for everything.”
“What are you talking about?” Vicente took the glass and drank a few swallows.
“What are you talking about?” Valentina drank the rest of the water.
“We’ll stay here,” Vicente said. “Maybe in a year or two we can build our house.”
“A year or two? Your father won’t help us?”
“I don’t know if he can,” Vicente said.
“Live in this house with your parents.” Valentina sank down on the bed.
She stared at the empty glass in her hand.
“I’m no better than a peón.” Vicente sat next to her. “You’ll probably regret marrying me.”
When Vicente couldn’t sleep, he got up from their bed as quietly as he could, so as not to disturb Valentina. As upset as he was, he couldn’t help smiling at the loud chant of the coquís; that first night Valentina had asked him to check under the bed, sure that there was a coquí family in residence. When he’d reminded her that there had been coquís in Ponce, she’d said not like this, not an invasion of coquís.
He let himself out of the house and stepped into the night fog. He couldn’t see the stars or even the moon but if he followed a certain trail up the mountain, he would come upon a familiar bohío.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BROTHER
Years ago, Angelina had known that her sons would hear talk around the mountain, so she told them herself: their father had another son from a young girl descended from la familia Cortés, the people who had once owned half the mountain. Vicente, still a boy, went up the mountain to find them.
A black girl only a few years older than Vicente stood in the opening where the door made of plant fiber had been removed. His mother would say that she was very pretty for a black girl. Vicente thought her beautiful, but he saw that she was missing all her front teeth; he didn’t know that due to poor nutrition, many jíbaros lost their teeth before they reached adulthood.
A small child pulled at his sleeve.
“I’m Raulito,” the boy said.
Little Raúl.
Vicente looked at his father’s namesake. He was black like Eusemia, not a mixture of black and white—pardo—as he had expected. But the boy had his father’s hazel eyes—his, Vicente’s, eyes. The boy laughed at Vicente, merry bubbles escaping from his open mouth. This child, this happy child, was his father’s child with this girl.
Vicente took off his hat. His father was such a bastard.
“A la orden,” he said, polite as any caballero. “Mi nombre es Vicente Vega.”
“I know who you are,” the girl said. “You look just like him.”
Vicente looked down at his hat.
“Soy Eusemia,” she said.
A hammock dangled from the ceiling. The door was against the wall. In the back room he saw a crude bed, the mattress stuffed with corn husks instead of feathers. There was a wood box that held clothes or whatever else they possessed. A few articles of clothing hung on hooks—a dress with a torn hem, a little boy’s shirt.
Vicente took a seat next to Raulito on the wood bench. The boy was eating beans and boiled green banana with a wooden spoon.
“I live here.” Raulito’s mouth was full of guineo. “Where do you live?”
“Down the mountain.” Vicente waved his hand.
Eusemia poured water from a gallon with Aceite de Italia embossed on the label into a cup made from a coconut shell.
The little boy pointed his spoon at his mother. “That’s my mamita. Do you have a mamita?”
“Yes.”
“A papá?”
“Yes.” Vicente wished that he could deny his father.
“Your papá lives with you?”
“Yes.”
“My papá comes and goes.”
“Hush.” The boy’s mother set a plate of beans and green banana in front of Vicente.
The little boy tapped his spoon on the table. “A spoon for Vicente! A spoon for Vicente!”
Eusemia took the spoon from her son and handed it to Vicente.
Vicente was ashamed to take it. He would get her another spoon—two—from his mother’s kitchen when Gloria wasn’t looking.
“Gracias,” Vicente said.
“¡Gracias! ¡Gracias! ¡Gracias!” Raulito sang.
“Aren’t you going to eat, Eusemia?” Vicente ate some beans.
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
Only later would Vicente realize that Eusemia had given him her meal.
Neither his father nor his mother would have approved, but Vicente was drawn again and again to that little shack up the mountain where the soil was too rocky to plant coffee. He was careful that his visits did not coincide with his father’s.
Whenever Vicente visited, Raulito would rush his legs and knock him down. The brothers would laugh as they rolled together in the dirt. Sometimes he would bring small gifts. A favorite was a toy boat with a cloth sail that had once belonged to his older brother. Raulito set the boat on the water in the rain barrel.
“Raulito should learn to read and write. A maestro ambulante taught us to read and write when we were his age.” Vicente recalled the traveling teacher in his threadbare clothing, whom his father had hired for a few cents plus room and board.
“Hijo, I can’t read or write,” Eusemia said. “No one in my family ever learned.”
It annoyed him that she called him “son.” Shame came next. It had never occurred to him that Eusemia might not know how to read or write. On his next visit he brought paper and pen and began to teach both mother and son the alphabet.
Vicente realized that he’d been standing in the batey for some time. Tomorrow he would take Valentina to meet Raulito and Eusemia. He would work very hard to please his father so that soon he and Valentina would have a little house where they would live together happily ever after.
CHAPTER NINE
BROTHER, SISTER
Vicente sat with the damas at the table while Gloria served them their morning café con leche. When he informed them that he was waiting for Valentina to finish dressing so he could take her up the mountain to meet Eusemia and Raulito, he didn’t expect their response.
“¡Dios libre!” his mother said.
“Raulito’s mother? That’s not a good idea,” Inés said.
“Not good.” Gloria brought the pan in which she had mixed together black coffee, milk, and sugar.
“I promised Valentina I would take her.”
“Óyeme, it’s not that you can’t take your wife to meet Eusemia.” Angelina passed Gloria the porcelain cups.
“No?” Vicente reached for a piece of bread.
She served her son his coffee.
“I know that shack, it must be falling apart.” Inés passed him a jar of Gloria’s homemade lechosa preserves.
“And you’re going to shame Raulito’s mother by bringing your young bride there?” Angelina reached for Vicente’s bread and spread the jam on it for him.
Vicente munched on the bread, talking with his mouth full. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
“That’s because you’re a man and you don’t understand women.”
“Eusemia might be embarrassed and you wouldn’t want that,” Inés said.
“I don’t know about Eusemia pero yo me abochornaba.” Gloria brought a pitcher of fresh-squeezed jugo do toronja. “I thank God that I don’t live in a bohío.”
Vicente looked at the trio of women and they stared back at him, willing him to acknowledge that they knew better.
“Bueno, I’ll think of some other way for Valentina to meet Raulito.”
“I’m glad to learn that sometimes you follow your mother’s advice.” Angelina spread jam on another piece of bread for him.
Valentina couldn’t understand why Vicente had changed his mind about taking her up the mountain to meet Raulito and his mother. What did las damas have to do with it? Why was it their business? She had been so looking forward to the outing. But then he promised her a picnic by the river. He’d be back in a while, don’t go away, he’d said, as if there were anywhere else she could go.
As Raulito waited for his brother under a mamey tree, he reached up and plucked a white flower from among the dark green leaves. Already it had been a good day because Vicente had come up the mountain to get him and given him a ride on his horse. He’d left him under the mamey tree, promising to return with a wonderful surprise. Maybe Vicente was bringing pasteles. Last year during las Navidades, his brother had brought them pasteles—la masa made from a mixture of yuca, calabaza, and guineos and filled with a savory mixture of pork and olives and raisins—and his mother had cried when she’d eaten it. He rushed over, scared: she’d never cried before. Eusemia told him that the pasteles had tasted like something dropped from heaven, and that it had made her wish that her mother Ysabel were still alive.
Vicente rode up on his horse with a lady sitting behind him, her arms around his waist.
The lady waved.
He waved back.
“This is your surprise, Raulito.” Vicente dismounted and helped the lady down.
“The horse?”
Vicente and the lady laughed.
“Mi mujer,” his brother said.
Raulito looked down at his feet.
“Hay que lindo,” the lady said.
“This is Valentina, mi mujer, your new sister.”
His brother’s smiling wife embraced him. Raulito didn’t know what to do with his hands. No woman had ever embraced him, not even his mother.
“I always wanted a brother,” she said.
“Mi hermana.” Raulito never knew he wanted a sister until now.
Valentina’s laugh reminded Raulito of water cascading over the rocks in a certain part of the river.
“Bring the goodies,” his new sister told Vicente.
Raulito stared at the pretty dark-haired girl who ordered his big brother around. He followed Vicente and carried the canteen of grapefruit juice, and his brother carried the saddlebag filled with bread and nuts and apples and little candied fruit wrapped in brown paper that his sister told him she’d brought all the way from Ponce just for him. He’d helped her spread a cloth on the ground that she sat on, her legs in white stockings; he and Vicente sat on the grass. Raulito tucked his dirty, bare feet beneath him.
Utuado
January 13, 1890
Querida Elena,
Sister, how I miss you! If only we could talk in my bedroom as we used to do when we were girls. Elena, I have something to tell you that I cannot tell Vicente a
nd I cannot possibly write in a letter. If only you were here or I there! If only you could give me your wise counsel! Elena! Elena! If only—!
How did you pass las Navidades? I wish we’d stayed in Ponce for the holidays. I missed las parrandas and dancing en la Plaza Las Delicias so much! Vicente took me to a neighbor’s house and we danced till dawn, but only the one night.
Kisses to our parents and to you and your family,
Besos y abrazos,
Valentina
P.S. Don’t give Mamá even a hint of what I’ve written. There is no need for her to worry.
P.P.S. I met Vicente’s half brother. He’s a darling negrito of almost ten. Mi suegro es un mujeriego.
Ponce
February 7, 1890
Dear Valentina,
How can I tell Mamá anything? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about! I’m imagining so many wild things! It’s frustrating to have to wait weeks for your letters. Why couldn’t you have stayed in Ponce? Maybe Juan Moscoso wouldn’t have been so bad after all! (Although your Vicente must be very good with his hands, being a farmer and all!)
You’ll be pleased to know that we have found someone embarking on a journey to Utuado who has promised to deliver your things.
Our parents send their love.
Muchos besos,
Elena
P.S. I can’t say that I’m shocked about Vicente having a half brother, considering what men are, but that he is a negrito! I won’t tell our parents.
Utuado
June 4, 1890
Dear Dalia,
Thank you so much for the wedding present—such a lovely pair of silver candlesticks! I keep them on my dressing table to admire them every night. And they came all the way from Spain! Pity me and describe your typical day! I promise not to envy you. Or, at least, not very much, because I am quite happy on the mountain with your cousin! Why did you never tell me about him? I forgive you because if he’d never come for your wedding or if you’d never invited me, then we’d never have met! How funny life is!
This morning, Vicente brought my coffee to me in bed despite his mother’s disapproval. (I fear that tu tía doesn’t like me. But Vicente reassures me that she will, in time!) I’m always busy here. Gloria (¿tú las conoces?) is training me in the art of housewifery. By the time we move into our own love nest, I’m sure to be an excellent ama de casa. Inés (you know Inés?) is teaching me mundillo. Claro, her lace is quite fine and worthy of one of your Parisian gowns, but she says that I’m improving.
The Taste of Sugar Page 8