The train whistle blew loud and insistent. Men hired by the Hawaiian sugar planters urged them on in English. Sailors carried the ill on stretchers. “Quickly! Quickly! Everyone on board the train! No, this isn’t Hawaii, yes, those are real Indians, no, I don’t know why they’re here.” Minvielle waved them toward the train. “Yes, you have to get on the train. No, it’s impossible to walk!”
Valentina looked out the window at the rain. Vicente sat next to her and Lourdes in front with her uncle. The train passed by farms and houses and towns too quickly. She would have liked to examine them, anything to keep her thoughts away from Javiercito. She had pleaded silently with God. She had made promesas she would have kept if Javiercito had recovered: she would attend Mass, baptize the children; she would never again envy other women for their clothes, and she wouldn’t complain about whatever was in store for them in Hawaii. But God hadn’t taken her up on her promesas. Valentina couldn’t rid herself of one question: What had she done to deserve the loss of two children? She tried not to cry because she didn’t want to upset Vicente. He’d taken it so hard. Javiercito, their precious boy, tan dulce. She reached for Vicente’s hand.
Her lower back ached from the hard wooden seat of the third-class car, and she doubted she was the only one who longed for steerage’s iron cots and thin pallets. The Puerto Ricans marveled at the vastness of the country, the towns they passed, the bales of hay coiled in rolls as if for giants, the horses seen at a distance running wild, the buffalo, the herds of cattle, the cowboys, the flatness of the land, the rise of the hills, and they talked about the family they’d left behind in Puerto Rico, the money they would make in Hawaii, and what they would eat once they could buy food.
Valentina held onto ropes that had been tied to each side of the car platforms to prevent the Puerto Ricans from falling or jumping off. They had to pass through many carriages to eat their meals and wait in long lines for water closets, where they were not even able to wash. They suspected that the Americans must not be very clean.
•
They ate cabbages and Irish potatoes with onions and parsley, salted meat and codfish, rice and runny whitish grits that Vicente compared to rice pudding made by a very poor cook. Those like Vicente and Valentina, who, once upon a time, had been among the more fortunate, longed for pollo fricasé and arroz con gandules y sancocho de guineo and café colao made from homegrown coffee beans.
Vicente worried that Valentina would have un ataque de nervios like the one she’d suffered when Evita died. His beautiful Valentina who’d had so much misfortune during their marriage, and now the loss of a second child. Yes, it had happened to him, too, but he would take on her pain if he could. Vicente brought her hand to his lips and he kissed it.
Valentina lied to her daughter. Everything will be fine, Lulu. It won’t be much longer. They promised us a little house, and you’ll go to school, too.
It’ll be just like before the Americans, before the hurricane, a woman told Valentina. Like when the Spanish were in Puerto Rico, except better. In Hawaii there’ll be food and no Spaniards. And we won’t have to live in bohíos.
It was the sixth of January, Three Kings’ Day. Vicente listened as his countrymen recalled the fiestas to celebrate the arrival of Los Tres Reyes Magos, who brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh for el Niñito Jesús. Lechón and arroz con gandules. Postres, like funche con leche and turrón, the almond and honey nougat made specially for Christmas. Nuts like avellanas, which were Valentina’s favorite. Rum. Maví. Jíbaro musicians played all night long; they’d danced all night long. Lourdes was squished between her parents on the hard bench. She said that last year, she and Javiercito had tucked boxes filled with grass under their beds, and in the morning they’d searched the grass for candy. Vicente told her that when he was young, Raúl Vega would give ron to the jíbaro musicians while Gloria fed them asopao de pollo. Someone said how sometimes el hacendado would throw coins into a barrel of water for the poor children to catch with their teeth. Several homesick souls cried. Somebody strummed a cuatro guitar. People started dancing in the narrow aisles. Raulito danced with Lourdes. Vicente felt a tickle in his throat. Last Christmas they’d danced until the early morning at a neighbor’s house and then they’d gone home, Raulito and the children to sleep. He and Valentina had made love and discussed plans for their future. Now, Valentina stared out the window, where there was nothing to see because it was night. He put his arm around her; she rested her head on his shoulder.
The train stopped the next day to pick up supplies in a small town without any sign of life. The Puerto Ricans joked that they would have run away, too, just as the townspeople must have. Then somebody said that Indians had killed the townspeople. Vicente said the people hadn’t run away, the Americans had killed the Indians just like the Spaniards had slaughtered the Tainos.
“Papi, look!” Lourdes tapped on the window.
Guards pointed their rifles at a young puertorriqueño named Juanito Ramírez. The Puerto Ricans yelled and pounded on the window glass. The guards forced Juanito Ramírez onto the train and into his seat.
“Calm yourselves, ladies and gentlemen.” Minvielle had come from another car to investigate the commotion. He sent the guards away and everyone talked at once.
“That poor boy reminds me of Raulito. Do something, Vicente,” Valentina whispered to Vicente.
Vicente stood up. “Why the armed men, Minvielle? Juanito isn’t a criminal.”
“The Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association hired the guards for your protection,” Minvielle said. “Just like they hired all of you, just like they hired me.”
“What were they protecting Juanito from?” Raulito leaned forward in his seat.
“You don’t understand,” Minvielle said. “There was trouble on the first journey to Hawaii.”
“What trouble? Tell us what happened.” Vicente crossed his arms.
Minvielle cleared his throat. “The planters don’t want trouble.”
“I don’t want trouble.” Juanito Ramírez stood up. “I only want to go back to Puerto Rico.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.” Minvielle took a handkerchief out of his pocket.
“I want to go back to my mother,” Juanito Ramírez said.
“It cost a lot of money to get you to Hawaii.” Minvielle wiped his brow with the handkerchief. “On the last trip, three families refused to get on the train in New Orleans. They sent them back to Puerto Rico but dropped them off on the opposite side of the island from where they came from.”
“Pobrecitos definitely won’t get back home, not with how bad the roads still are after the hurricane,” somebody said.
“But they’re back in Puerto Rico.” Vicente sat back down next to Valentina.
“The planters won’t do that again,” Minvielle said. “Cost too much.”
Minvielle patted Juanito Ramírez’s shoulder. “Take my advice. Go to Hawaii, save your money, and then go home to your mother.”
The Puerto Ricans had plenty to say when Minvielle left the compartment.
“From Cuba, you could swim to Puerto Rico,” Gómez said.
“And be eaten by sharks,” somebody said.
“The Americans are like the Spanish,” Vicente said. “We shouldn’t forget that it’s all about money for them.”
The Puerto Ricans sat on the hard wood benches and stared out the windows; they listened to the wheels of the train that churned, you’ll never go back you’ll never go back. Welcome to San Antonio flashed before Vicente’s eyes, but he was back on the mountain, one hand shading his face as he looked up at his coffee trees.
•
Juanito Ramírez jumped off the train as it was traveling thirty miles an hour through El Paso, Texas. The train halted in its tracks with a blast of the horn and a screech of the brakes that jostled the Puerto Ricans on their benches. The guards chased him. Vicente imagined Juanito Ramírez dodging the pedestrians as they hurried on their errands in the afternoon drizzle.
He heard the birds in the sky as they cawed, Run, Juanito, run. He saw Juanito run to the door of the grandest house he ever saw, grander than any on the island that now belonged to the rich American sugar planters, lovelier than the Spanish-style houses owned by the coffee-growing hacendados of Utuado. He imagined Juanito free.
The Puerto Ricans were disappointed when Juanito Ramírez was dragged back onto a different part of the train. He didn’t stand a chance against men with guns in a strange country where he didn’t even know the language. Pobre muchacho didn’t even have shoes.
The Puerto Ricans demanded that Minvielle explain why Juanito Ramírez, a boy who hadn’t committed a crime, had been so shamefully mistreated.
Minvielle held out his hands for order. “Damas y caballeros, it’s only for his own protection.”
“What’s going to happen to the boy?” Valentina stood so Minvielle could see her.
“It’s not up to me,” Minvielle said.
“Please send him back to his mother,” Valentina said.
“I don’t have any authority, señora,” Minvielle said. “I’m just doing my job as best I can.”
Poor Juanito Ramírez, the Puerto Ricans said, he was only a boy who wanted his mother. It didn’t seem like Minvielle was on the side of los puertorriqueños.
“Minvielle has to earn his daily bread just like us.” Vicente felt sorry for the plantation agent, who was a decent man.
“If only el pobre muchacho could be sent back to his mother,” Valentina said.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
YELLOW
The wheels of the train chanted Javiercito was dead . . . Evita was dead . . . Javiercito was dead . . . Evita was dead . . . Javiercito was dead . . . dead . . . dead . . . over and over, mile after mile, town after town. Valentina sought out a flash of yellow. A daffodil in a field of weeds or a yellow tablecloth hanging on a clothesline. Javiercito, she couldn’t think about. Not yet.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
THERE ONCE WAS A SEÑORITA
In San Francisco, the ship that would take them to Hawaii had yet to arrive, which meant another night on the train after four long days cross-country. By now the Puerto Ricans had learned that the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association would do anything to save money. The pain in their backs! The ache in their thighs! The next morning, they were herded off the train without breakfast. They shivered in the January chill and the Puerto Ricans, wrapped in the blankets the Native Americans had given them, sent los indios bendiciones. A dozen naked children huddled together on the platform, including a little girl with a kerchief. Valentina parted with one of Javier’s shirts, and it hung on her like a dress. The women wore mantillas intended for tropical nights. They walked past small wood houses that squatted close to the road. Painted ladies leaned out of windows and called out invitations. There was a girl selling roses. The cable cars clacked along the wharf. They dodged horses that pulled freight wagons and delivery carts, and tried to avoid the horse droppings that dirtied the streets and the hems of ladies’ dresses.
The bay’s murky water wasn’t the brilliant blue of the Caribbean Sea. It smells! Lourdes told her mother. It stank like fish. Valentina recognized only the Spanish, French, and American flags waving from dozens of ships.
Lourdes pointed to everything. Mami, look at the ships, look at the people, and look at the vendors selling so many strange things!
Javiercito would have been so excited about the ships.
The harbor was packed with San Franciscans whose favorite pastime was to greet the arrival of ships. Lourdes tugged at her mother’s skirts and pointed to a large group of men near the pier.
“They are chinos from China,” Valentina said. “China is in the Orient, remember we read about the Orient in the book Titi Elena sent?”
Fashionable people rode by in horse-drawn carriages or strolled down the pier. Well-dressed San Francisco gentlemen accompanied ladies in huge beribboned hats. Fathers bought their children nuts that peddlers roasted in steel drums and scooped into paper cones. A peddler sold vanilla ice cream from a cart. Lourdes was about to ask her mother to buy her a cone, ice cream already a dream in her mouth, helado that she had never tasted, but one look at her mother’s face and she swallowed her request.
There were tall ships and a fleet of small fishing boats with green triangular sails. The names of saints were painted on the hulls—Saint Thomas, Saint Joseph, Saint Geraldo, and a few female saints like Saint Magdalena and Saint Veronica.
A fisherman sang:
Di Provenza il mar, il suol
chi dal cor ti cancello?
Al nation fulgente sol
qual destino ti furò?
Valentina placed her hand on her chest, so overcome that for a moment she couldn’t speak. The music recognized her heartbreak, the loss of her children Evita and Javiercito, and of her parents and beloved sister and her home and everything that had ever meant something to her.
“Mami, are you thinking of Javiercito?” Lourdes took her mother’s hand.
Valentina nodded.
“The sailors are singing in Spanish,” Lourdes said.
“Italian,” Valentina said. “That kind of singing is called ópera.”
“Ópera,” Lourdes said.
“When I was your age, la ópera came to Ponce and my parents took your Titi Elena and me.” She remembered it as if it were something that had happened to someone else. She told Lourdes how she had worn a white dress with many flounces; Elena’s dress had two extra flounces because she was taller. Their mother’s gown was a delicate thing of the purest blue; a Spanish comb glittered in her dark hair.
Ma se alfin ti trovo ancor,
se in me speme non fallì,
Se la voce dell’onor
in te appien non ammutì,
Dio m’esaudì!
She told her how Egisto Petrilli’s opera company had come to Ponce. For months, her mother had spoken of nothing else. It had annoyed Papá so much that he’d had to resort to long evenings at the pharmacy.
Their attention was drawn to a woman in a fanciful hat with ostrich feathers. She said something to her companion and pointed a gloved hand toward Valentina for emphasis. She wore delicate leather shoes that peeked out from under the hem of a gown in Valentina’s favorite color. Valentina was sure that the woman was criticizing her worn dress and her unkempt hair.
She had a strong urge to call out, If you please, madame, once upon a time, I, too, had a lovely dress in that same shade of rose. I had loving parents and a beloved sister and my own home where my children could sleep in their beds. If I were to tell you how I came to be in rags, you would not believe me. Or, she might say, Madame, you must understand that when you have eaten and slept in your clothes day after day, night after night, first in the bowels of a ship and then on a train, for so many days you couldn’t wash like a human being, if you had experienced all this, then of course you would be filthy, your clothes would smell and you would stink!
Oh, why did she care? It was so stupid.
She looked down at her daughter, her third and now only child. Her anger left her; how silly she was to care what a stranger thought, a woman with whom she would never exchange a single word. Lourdes looked up at her with her sad brown eyes. Valentina didn’t know why the stars had determined that their lives would unfold like a tragedy, but she would try to be strong for her daughter.
Valentina wiped away a streak of dirt from her daughter’s cheek. “Ay Lulu, I wish you could have been a silly girl like me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CARE AND FEEDING OF THE PUERTO RICANS
The water of San Francisco Bay was choppy, but the Puerto Ricans, along with forty black men from the southern United States and two hundred Chinese, crowded the deck of the City of Peking for a last glimpse of San Francisco nestled in the blue hills. The foghorn blew with the finality of church bells during a funeral procession. The sun chased away the last of the haze and speckled the algae-strewn
water with flecks of gold. Minvielle pointed out the Golden Gate Bridge, which was so different from all the bridges the Puerto Ricans had known on their tiny island. A newfangled object swayed in the sky above them. A huge straw basket dangled from a hot-air balloon that swung to and fro from the ropes of the red, white, and blue balloon. People shouted down at them from inside the basket. The Puerto Ricans gasped at the whoosh of fire, sure that the balloon and all would come crashing down on the ship.
The children jumped up and down in delight.
“One day I will fly in a basket over the ocean,” Lourdes said. “I’ll wave to Javiercito.”
“I’ll come with you,” Valentina said.
Vicente leaned over the railing. “So will I.”
“Me, too,” Raulito said.
The voyage to Honolulu was so rough that Valentina would look back on the accommodations on the steamer Arkadia as luxurious. They were crammed hip-to-hip in the hold of the City of Peking for eight days. Somehow the black men from the southern states ended up in the passenger cabins after talking to the captain. Los puertorriqueños kept a close eye on their women and children. It was never quiet, day or night, but how could it be? Six days of huge oscillating waves that tossed them about, causing most of the steerage passengers to become seasick. The stewards were slow to empty the sick pails. People threw up because of the foulness of the water closets. In one of her lucid moments, Valentina begged God to have mercy and kill her already. Vicente, one of the few not to get seasick, pleaded with her not to tempt Him.
Three Puerto Ricans had their wishes granted (some said) and died, their bodies thrown overboard without even a prayer from the captain.
Allowed on deck, the Puerto Ricans cheered the sight of an island spotted in the distance. Oahu, Minvielle said. The gray mountain peaks were unlike the lush green mountains of Puerto Rico. Numb with exhaustion, they sat on their bundles and stared out onto the glistening water. A giant fish jumped up from the sea and sprinkled those nearest the rail with salt water. Startled into laughter, the Puerto Ricans quickly fell back into languor. As they sailed closer to land, the sea turned into a kaleidoscope of colors and Oahu rose like Atlantis from the coral reefs.
The Taste of Sugar Page 21