Sinceramente,
Valentina
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
JIRALUE DEM PORO RICO JANA JANA!
The Puerto Ricans lived between the sirens of morning and night. That hideous shrill at eight each evening commanded them to sleep and shattered any illusions they might have had that they were in control of their lives. Where once they had woken to early lovemaking or the birds chirping and the rooster crowing or the soft patter of the morning rain on zinc roofs, now it was the blare of the siren reminding them that their bodies belonged to the plantation.
They were paid on Saturdays, when they worked a half day. Vicente collected his pay along with both Puerto Rican and Japanese workers. Men and women and also young boys and girls who worked the cane lined up outside the plantation manager’s office. When it was Vicente’s turn, a policeman checked his bango and only then was he allowed to enter the office and approach the desk where Mr. White, the plantation manager, sat with his clerk, an open ledger at his elbow, a pile of cardboard pieces in front of the clerk. The lunas and policemen stood guard behind him and his assistant.
Mr. White and the clerk compared Vicente’s bango number against the ledger. They had reassigned bango numbers that first week, four digits on a metal tag beginning with 9. Number 9 meant Puerto Ricans. The clerk wrote in Vicente’s notebook and on a piece of cardboard; he handed both to Vicente.
Vicente looked down at the notebook with his name incorrectly spelled and the piece of cardboard in his hand. The clerk had written an amount that was less than he’d expected, and it would be months before he would learn that he was taxed on his pay. Vicente was tempted to take a match to the cardboard. He and Valentina had calculated it one night. This first year he would earn fifteen dollars monthly for working ten hours daily for twenty-four days. They couldn’t believe that the total Vicente earned was sixty-two cents for a ten-hour day of cutting sugarcane. Sixty-two cents. In Puerto Rico, they’d thought, well, at least they would have a nice house and a good school for Lourdes and medical care when they needed it, but the housing was a shack and there wasn’t a school in sight and who knew about medical care? All this was on his mind, but how could he say this to people who didn’t understand him and were sure not to care even if they did?
Instead, Vicente pointed out to Mr. White the incorrect spelling on his notebook.
“My name is Vega, not Vegas,” Vicente said.
Neither the plantation manager nor the clerk spoke Spanish.
“I’m a man, not a number.” Vicente waved the cardboard under the clerk’s nose.
A policeman came up behind Vicente; one of the lunas stepped up to the table, hand on his gun. The clerk waved at Vicente to step aside and make way for Eugenio, husband of Dolores, who was next in line.
“Easy does it,” Mr. White said to the policeman. “We need these Porto Ricans.”
To Vicente, who didn’t speak English, it sounded like Mr. White told the policeman, You might have to shoot this porrican.
“I don’t know what kind of trampa you’re working here. The amount is incorrect, and where is my money?” Vicente rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for money.
The clerk said something to him and pointed to the plantation store, then to the cardboard in Vicente’s hand.
Vicente looked down at the piece of cardboard and then it came to him. “They’re paying us in scrip!”
“They’re paying us in scrip!” Eugenio looked over Vicente’s shoulder.
“¡Me siento como un pendejo bien cabrón!”
“Tranquilo, Vicente.” Eugenio put his hand on his compatriot’s arm.
•
Vicente considered the armed men. If he struck one of them, the other would surely shoot him, and then what would happen to Valentina and Lourdes and Sonia and Mirta? Anger warred with the injustice of finding himself at the mercy of the plantation, yet again at the mercy of Americans. ¡Coño carajo! His father would say I told you so.
“Mi nombre es Vega.” Vicente pointed to his chest. He said his name again to the plantation manager and the clerk, who didn’t understand and didn’t care, but at least he said it. Trabajo y tristeza, that’s what all the Puerto Ricans said life was in Hawaii. Work and tragedy.
That first Saturday afternoon in Hawaii, the Japanese walked through the Puerto Rican camp on their way to their communal baths. Everyone came out of their hovels to see the Japanese in various stages of undress, what they would refer to among themselves as “la desgracia.” Some puertorriqueños ran alongside them and shouted their objection to such immodesty.
“¡Que falta de respeto!”
“Put your clothes on!”
“¡No es decente! There are women and children here!”
A few of the Japanese men shouted back. Neither group knew the other’s language, but their anger needed no words.
Lourdes pointed to a Japanese man with only a cloth wrapped around his waist.
“How many times have I told you it’s not polite to point?” Valentina tapped her daughter’s shoulder.
Valentina envied the Japanese women, babies strapped on their backs, wearing light wrappers.
“Walking around half-naked.” Sonia shook her head. “That would never happen in Puerto Rico.”
“But we’re not in Puerto Rico,” Valentina said. “I wouldn’t mind walking around like that.”
Vicente turned to look at her. “Would you, now?”
Valentina smiled at him. “You would mind me walking around half-naked?”
“What are you saying, mujer? That you would walk around like a japonesa if I let you?” Vicente tried to give her a stern look.
“It’s probably a Japanese custom, but we could make it a Puerto Rican one.” Valentina put her arms around him.
“Maybe I need to be more firm with you, like my mother always said.” Vicente chucked her under her chin.
Valentina touched his chest. “I feel hot and sticky. Wouldn’t it be nice to bathe like the Japanese? Naked.”
“Let’s go swimming!” Lourdes and Mirta jumped up and down.
“We’ll find a private little spot.” Valentina gave him a sidelong look that she knew from experience he found hard to resist.
“Que locura,” Vicente said, but it was a weak protest. It was the first time since Javiercito died that Valentina had teased him. He would agree to anything.
“There is a little pond not far from here that I passed one day on the way to the cane,” Vicente said. “I don’t think anyone knows about it.”
They shed their clothes at the pond, everyone except Vicente, who kept his trousers on, embarrassed to be naked in front of the little girls and Sonia, a woman who wasn’t his wife. It wasn’t proper and it would put him in a terrible lío with Sonia’s husband. Vicente kept a little apart from the females as they swam and cavorted in the warm water. No one would ever have cause to blame him. Valentina noticed that Sonia, thin as she was, thin as they all were, had a slight belly. She suspected that her new friend was pregnant, but she would wait until Sonia told her, only then would she tell Vicente. When the children tired, Valentina sent them home.
“Sonia, take the children back, won’t you? Vicente and I will be right along,” Valentina said.
“Valentina, must I?” Sonia looked over at Vicente the way a woman shouldn’t look at another woman’s husband.
“Sí, mujer, start cooking and I’ll finish up. Then we’ll go to the party.” Valentina treaded water.
With one last look at Vicente, Sonia left with the children.
Valentina swam over to her husband and tugged at his pants.
“You’re shameless.” He lifted her out of the water.
“It’s the only way I can forget,” she said.
Vicente needed it, too.
There was a party set up outside the shacks over by one of the Portuguese ovens. Everyone was talking about the revolú caused by the indecent Japanese and what could be done about it. Somebody said that he would be the
first one to punch a Japanese in the face next time he walked around naked in front of his wife and daughter. What kind of place was this Japan? Then somebody said, Let’s have some music! Where is that Hawaiian moonshine? What was it called? Okolehao. The women passed out food they’d brought while the jugs of okolehao made the rounds. Some of the women like Valentina took a swig. The musicians strummed guitars, others scraped güiros, and somebody shook el shekere, a calabash gourd covered in strings of beads. The children were sent to play while the adults danced. The okolehao made Valentina care only about music and dancing and her husband’s arms around her.
Somebody shouted, Look! Japanese!
A dozen Japanese men in kimonos walked up to the Portuguese oven. The musicians stopped playing, the singers stopped singing.
One of the Japanese men spoke, pointing to the musicians, and by his angry words and expression, the Puerto Ricans knew he was complaining about the music. They murmured among themselves, que nervio, wasn’t this the Puerto Rican camp, wasn’t it Saturday, the only night they could have a fiesta, wasn’t it bad enough to have lunas and blancos and police telling them what to do, now it was the Japanese.
Somebody said, Get the machetes!
“Vicente, do something!” Valentina tugged at her husband’s arm.
Vicente walked between the two groups of men. “Mi gente, tranquilos.”
Machetes . . . machetes . . . machetes . . .
He held out his hands. “Let’s try to settle it without bloodshed.”
Everyone watched as the two groups of men glared at each other. Finally, the Japanese men turned around and went home. The Puerto Ricans went back to their party. Play louder, they said to the musicians, and they danced until dawn.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
ON A DAY LIKE THIS
“Jiralue dem poro rico jana jana! Jiralue dem poro rico jana jana!” the luna shouted from the great height of his horse as he rode up and down the rows of sugarcane. He was a blur in the hard rain. Vicente reached for a cane stalk and chopped it with the machete; cutting cane was especially dangerous in this weather. Not only was it hard to see, but the machete could slip from a man’s hand and sever something important to him or his neighbor. The rain abated to a drizzle during the midday meal. Huddled together between the rows of chopped sugarcane, the men squatted and brought tins of food close to their mouths. In Puerto Rico, they could have brought their guitars and played after they ate, but here they only had their stories. One of the portorros told his.
“On a day like this in Puerto Rico, I went home early to my wife and she was in bed with another man.”
“¡Coño carajo!”
“Hombre, mala suerte.”
“¿Un fulano? Or somebody you knew?”
“My younger brother.”
“Your brother!”
“Your wife!”
“What did you do?”
“What any man would do. I broke off a switch from a tree. I gave them both una pela they never forgot! No one blamed me, not my brother, or my mother, not even my wife.”
“Your own brother!”
“A man can’t trust anyone with his woman, not his brother, not his father.”
“You didn’t suspect?”
“Why do you think I came home early?”
“A man knows if he wants to know,” somebody said.
Vicente found his lunch of beans difficult to swallow. He’d always had an uneasy feeling when his father was around Valentina. There had been something curious about the way they stood apart, something that had worried him. But why did he have to think about that now? What did it matter when he was squatting in Hawaiian sugarcane? ¡Coño carajo! If only he could confront his father right now!
The luna rode his horse down the row of sugarcane only a few feet away from where the men ate.
“Look at how they treat us.” Vicente wanted to hit someone or something.
“It’s like slave times,” someone said. “I’ve got the luna’s whip marks to prove it.”
“No man except my father ever raised a hand to me in Puerto Rico.”
“¡Ay bendito, las pelas papi gave me!” someone said.
“A father is one thing, but I’m not a slave,” Vicente said. “We’re men, not cattle.”
“Hana! Hana!”
The men went back to the cane.
Vicente had stopped to wipe his forehead with his blue kerchief when the luna rode over to him on his horse, flicking his whip over Vicente’s back. He cried out at the fire on his skin. Not since he’d become a man had he been treated with such disrespect. Vicente wrestled the whip from the luna’s hand, pulling him down. The horse began to trot away, dragging the luna through the rows of cane, his leg caught in the stirrup. Vicente chased after them; he grabbed the reins, yanked them, and pulled the horse to a halt. The plantation policemen rode up on their horses and Vicente put up his hands, guns understood in any language.
CHAPTER FIFTY
SEÑORA, SEÑORITA
Somebody would bring her Vicente’s machete.
Valentina peered out the door at the men who passed them on their way to their huts. Despite the slight offensive odor in the air, except when they slept, she always kept the door open for the natural light since the shack didn’t have windows. Whenever she chased out a bird, she looked up at the sky, imagining that it was the same sky as in Puerto Rico.
Vicente was the kind of man who always came straight home. Of course, it was always possible that Vicente had a mujer, but he wouldn’t be able to keep another woman secret, given the way the Puerto Ricans lived. And if he spent a penny of la miseria he made on another woman, Valentina thought she just might kill him.
Where could he be? It could only mean trouble.
“It’s not like Vicente to be late,” Valentina said.
“Maybe he met someone and stopped to talk,” Sonia said.
When someone called her name, Valentina hurried out of the hut, Sonia and the girls right behind her. She hoped that Vicente hadn’t suffered an accident, like the man whose neighbor had chopped off his arm with the swing of his machete.
It was Eugenio, the husband of Dolores.
“Tranquila, Valentina.” He patted her arm. “They took Vicente.”
“Who took him? Where?” Valentina looked behind Eugenio as if she could see her husband.
“I don’t know,” Eugenio said. “Jail, maybe.”
The little girls began to cry.
“Niñas, a casa,” Sonia said to the girls, who ran back inside.
“He beat up the luna.” Eugenio held out the machete.
“That’s a lie!”
“I can’t say yes, I can’t say no, but that’s what they say,” Eugenio said. “I was too far away to see anything.”
“Who says he beat up the luna?” She took the machete from Eugenio, wary of the blade.
“The luna.”
“He’s a liar.”
“He did have a bloody nose.”
“Vicente?”
“The luna,” Eugenio said.
“That’s not like Vicente.”
Eugenio took out his blue kerchief and wiped his forehead. “The luna whipped Vicente.”
“ ‘The luna whipped Vicente.’ ” Valentina repeated the words as if she didn’t understand them.
“Tranquila, Valentina.” Sonia put her arm around her friend.
“Was he terribly hurt?” Her Vicente tan dulce. After everything he’d suffered, whipped.
“The luna? I think Vicente only punched him in the nose.”
“Not the luna! Vicente!” What was wrong with Eugenio? She wanted to drop the machete on the ground and take Eugenio by the collar and shake the details out of him.
“It didn’t seem so. The policemen marched him off the field,” Eugenio said.
Valentina looked out into the road. Somewhere down that road her husband was in jail.
“I’d better go,” Eugenio said. “Dolores will be wondering where I am.”
&n
bsp; “You’re a good friend, Eugenio.” Valentina tried to sound grateful but she wasn’t grateful, she wanted to scream until her husband came home. Instead, she carried the machete inside and hung it on its hook on the wall.
“What will we do, Valentina?” Sonia looked as frightened as the little girls.
“Don’t worry. I’ll go to the manager tomorrow,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll have Vicente back home soon.”
The women put Vicente’s dinner away and then they worked on a dress for Dolores, who’d promised to pay them with rice and flour. Sonia was also a good seamstress. The girls went to sleep. At the blare of the plantation siren, the women put their needles down. Sonia settled on her straw-filled sleeping bag, and Valentina on the bedding they’d carried all the way from home. But Valentina couldn’t sleep.
She’d wanted Eugenio to go back to Dolores and the others and say, Esa Valentina, que brava. Didn’t collapse into tears because her husband is in jail and who knows when he will get out. You won’t see that woman having un ataque de nervios. But Eugenio didn’t know that she would get Vicente out of that jail tomorrow! The rats scavenged in the waste under the hut and Valentina plugged her fingers in her ears. Eyes squeezed shut because she wouldn’t couldn’t mustn’t cry, she thought of their little house in Puerto Rico and the very first night when all four of them had slept in the big bed together. Javiercito, still a toddler, had slept facedown in a little ball. She’d woken up to nurse their daughter, and Vicente had woken up, too, looking at her in a way that made her feel a little shy—that someone could love her like that.
Valentina took more care with her appearance than she had for many months; she changed into her good shirtwaist and brushed her hair until it was glossy black. She pinned it up with every hairpin she had to keep it neat, in defiance of the wind.
“Anyone would think you were the patrono’s mujer.” Sonia inspected Valentina’s frilled shirtdress and the shoes she had dusted and polished for her with a tí leaf that grew aplenty around the huts.
The Taste of Sugar Page 24