“I am going to get Vicente back.” Valentina picked up a tiny annatto seed from the precious package she’d brought in her trunk and dipped it in a cup of water, then rubbed it on her lips. She dropped it back in the package.
Sonia passed her a rag. “How? You don’t know English.”
“I’ll manage.” Valentina rubbed the red dye off her fingertips. “Échame la bendición, Sonia.” Valentina lowered her head for her friend’s blessing.
Sonia made the sign of the cross on her forehead and blessed her. She and the little girls kissed Valentina for luck.
Valentina was careful to lift her skirts away from the red dirt. Women came to say that they’d heard about her husband. Was it true that he’d broken the luna’s neck? Not that the luna didn’t deserve it, but still, you could understand why Vicente was in jail. They didn’t want to frighten her, but what if something happened to him—tú sabes, something really, really bad? Like what? Oh, they didn’t like to say. Where was she going? No! She wasn’t going there! Mujer, have you taken leave of your senses? You’ll be eaten alive! One very pregnant woman pushed a twig of a boy toward her. Take Paco with you! He knows English. Take him! He’s not doing anything useful around here. Valentina took Paco with her, or, rather, he walked alongside her.
He was about Javiercito’s age, but she wouldn’t think of Javiercito now. Instead, she thought of two little girls who needed to eat, and Sonia, who most likely was pregnant. The gangly, barefoot boy wore a shirt she guessed might have been white when they’d left Puerto Rico. After all the trouble with her appearance, she’d have to get rid of him.
“Why don’t you run off now? Your mother isn’t here to see you.”
“She’s not my mother.”
“No?”
“Esa mujer is my stepmother.”
“Your stepmother, then,” Valentina said. “And it’s una falta de respeto to call her ‘esa mujer.’ ”
“Even if she’s only a stepmother?”
“Even if she’s only a stepmother.”
“Even if she’s mean?”
“Is she mean to you?” Valentina looked at Paco, who was only a boy like Javiercito had been.
“Not as mean as my father,” Paco said.
“That’s too bad,” Valentina said.
“Will they give us food?”
“Who?”
“Them. El patrono.”
“I don’t think so,” Valentina said. “Why should they?”
“Because we’ll be company.” Paco picked up a stick and used it as a cane. “In Puerto Rico, when my mother was alive, she gave food to company. When we had food. Hardly ever.”
“This isn’t Puerto Rico.” Valentina lifted her skirts to avoid a muddy stretch. “Besides, we won’t be company.”
“No food? Mala suerte.” Paco threw the branch against a tree.
“You didn’t eat this morning?”
“Beans yesterday.” His step was full of bounce, not the step of a boy half-starved.
“Poor thing,” Valentina said. “How old are you?”
“Ten.”
Like Javier.
“How many of you at home?”
“Three boys younger.” Paco picked up a rock and skipped it along the dirt road. “Sugarcane gives me the asthma.”
“How did you learn English?”
“From the American soldiers,” Paco said.
“When we get back, I’ll give you something to eat,” Valentina said.
The manager’s mansion with its spacious verandas and gardens was up on the hill and overlooked the plantation. From the top of the hill, Valentina and Paco looked down at the lovely cottages with well-kept gardens where the luna and the plantation clerks lived. Valentina glanced at a particularly beautiful orchid plant but she didn’t stop. They walked up to the front of the house, set on a stone path shaded by a canopy of trees. Someone had placed a white wrought-iron bench under a huge coconut palm. Stupid idea, Valentina thought, but she envied the big house with the large veranda. She was reminded of when she’d first met Vicente at the wedding of her girlhood friend Dalia, which had been held in a home much grander than this one. Her shoes clacked on the pink stones. Valentina looked down at Paco’s bare feet, red with dust.
A woman wearing a large apron, her arms and apron dusted with flour, blocked the entrance to the house. Her face had that hard look that often belonged to women who have had to earn their keep from a very young age.
“Buenos días, I’ve come to speak to the plantation manager.” Valentina spoke with the same authority with which she had once spoken to la lavandera.
“Speak English!”
Valentina nudged Paco.
“Purdy sen-you-ritas.”
The woman stared at Paco, her words stuck in her throat.
“Purdy sen-you-ritas.”
Valentina stuck her foot in the door as the servant tried to close it.
“Meester White! Meester White!” Valentina shouted through the partially open door.
“Matilda, what is it?” A woman Valentina’s age, dressed in pristine white, came to the door.
“They talking the foreign, missus,” Matilda said.
The missus stared at Valentina, who was glad that she had taken special care with her appearance. She knew that, despite drudgery and deprivation, she was still a pretty woman. Of course la señora White, who looked at her as if she were some kind of exotic animal, would be hard pressed to believe it, but she, Valentina Sánchez, once upon a time, had also been una ama de casa.
Paco grinned. “Purdy sen-you-ritas.”
The women stared at Paco in his filthy, threadbare clothes.
“Purdy señoritas, purdy purdy señ—”
The lady of the house turned a shocked face toward Valentina.
“Callate.” Valentina touched his shoulder. “Please, I would like to speak to Meester White about my husband.” She enunciated the Spanish syllables the way the clerks at the plantation store had spoken English to her, but of course she didn’t yell the way they did, as if she were deaf.
“John? What business do you have with my husband?” Mrs. White looked down at Valentina’s bare hands. No lady would be without gloves, regardless of the weather. Valentina grew hot with shame, terrible, terrible shame that she had fallen so low as to not wear gloves.
“El señor White. Meester White. Please I must speak to him about my husband Vicente Vega.” She hid her hands behind her back; they hadn’t been the hands of a lady for years.
“I think we’ve heard enough,” the lady of the house said to the servant.
Valentina faced the closed door.
“I don’t think those damas spoke English,” Paco said.
“Let’s try Mr. White’s office. We should have gone there first,” Valentina said, stopping at the orchid bush she’d passed earlier. She plucked the prettiest and largest of the pink flowers and tucked it in her hair. She took a second one and gave it to Paco, who tucked it behind his ear.
Several clerks sat at desks, leather-bound ledgers opened in front of them. They looked up in surprise when Valentina entered with Paco.
“I must speak with Meester White,” Valentina said.
“Purdy sen-you-ritas,” Paco said.
A clerk giggled.
“Hush, Paco.” She would have left the boy outside but she hadn’t wanted to walk into the manager’s office alone.
Valentina wanted to reach over a desk and take the clerk by the collar of his shirt.
“Is Meester White here? Meester White!”
The clerk looked at Valentina as if she were an accounting problem he wasn’t quite sure how to figure out.
“I think she’s asking for Mr. White,” the second clerk said.
“You know Mr. White isn’t available to these people,” the first clerk said.
“No Mr. White.” The second clerk opened the door for them.
“Purdy sen-you-ritas,” Paco said.
They hurried past the plantation manager’s hacienda, past th
e plantation store, past the doctor’s office, empty except when he came once a month, past the tidy wood houses of the lunas, and all the way down the long dirt road to the decrepit row of shanties. She found Sonia with Dolores and the girls.
“I didn’t think it would do any good,” Dolores said. “You’re not the wife of a coffee farmer anymore.”
Valentina glanced away from the smug look on her friend’s face. Better not to say anything, the woman had a generous nature and she would probably need more rice if Vicente didn’t return soon.
“Paco, repeat what you said to the Missus White,” Valentina said.
“Purdy sen-you-ritas.” Paco grinned.
“Sen-you-ritas,” Valentina said. “What do you think, Dolores? It sounds like señoritas to me.”
Dolores smacked Paco on the head. “Stupid boy. Is that all you know?”
Paco raised his hands to protect himself.
“Let him be! Dolores, you should have seen the looks on those women’s faces!” Valentina laughed and laughed, and not even the concern on the faces of her friends could stop her.
“Tranquila, Valentina.” Sonia hugged her. “Laughing too hard is asking for el mal de ojo.”
Valentina bowed her head. “Échame la bendición, Sonia. Maybe it will keep bad luck away.”
Sonia touched Valentina’s forehead, blessing her.
Again the next day, women came out of their hovels as Valentina was leaving. Where was she going? Why was she looking so lovely? Meester White? Again? They heard it hadn’t done any good the last time. They wished her luck even as they turned to one another to say that it wouldn’t do any good this time, either, Americans didn’t care a coffee bean about the Puerto Ricans. Poor, desperate woman, they were glad not to be in her shoes, even if she was muy guapa and had shoes, which some of them didn’t. One or two of them weren’t ashamed to admit that they had told their husbands to take the whip if it meant food in their children’s mouths.
Valentina hurried, eager to get away from her noisy compañeras and plead her case. She pinched her cheeks and chewed on a petal from yesterday’s orchid to color her lips. She knew that, despite her travails, she had rarely looked better. A woman like the plantation manager’s wife might look only at the quality of her clothing or sneer at her for being gloveless, but a man, a man who liked women, might be swayed by her face and other features, even if she didn’t speak English.
Valentina tried the plantation manager’s office but the door was locked, the lights off. She went next door to the plantation store.
Valentina saw the clerk she’d spoken to at the plantation manager’s office the day before.
“Meester White, por favor.”
The clerk took her arm. “If you’ll come with me, I’m sure I can be of service.”
His politeness reassured her, although she couldn’t understand Americans. Either they were rude, like the plantation manager’s wife and servant, or they were polite, like this clerk who showed all his teeth when he smiled.
One of the other clerks called out from across the room, “Maybe you shouldn’t, Kurt.”
“I plan to be very nice to the pretty sen-you-rita.” Kurt guided her to the back of the store.
Valentina was surprised when they entered a large storeroom crammed with barrels and shelves of foodstuffs. She stared at the cans stacked in pyramids that reached up to the ceiling, at the rice sacks, and the huge barrels of she-knew-not-what that crowded the room.
Kurt pulled her over to the rice sacks next to a pyramid of sardine cans and pinned her against a sack. He squeezed her breast hard; she cried out in pain. He tugged at her long skirt. Valentina struggled, and then held herself very still. Cool air on her thigh.
“That’s it, sweetheart, nice and quiet.” He reached between her legs.
When his hands went to his pants, Valentina shoved him with all of her might into the pyramid of cans. She heard the crash but she didn’t stop. She ran. She didn’t look back; no one ever died from being knocked over the head with a can, but if he died she wouldn’t be sorry. Outside the storeroom, she stopped to straighten her dress and to tell herself not to cry. She walked past the astonished clerks with as much haughtiness as if she were Missus White.
She lay on a bed of sardine cans, her skirt pulled up over her face. His fingers dug into her buttocks. She cared only that he not stop. There were fish, large and small, rainbow-colored, that she’d seen in the ocean, a pink-and-yellow one she’d admired in the water near Oahu, and then the dolphin that had entertained them all. Finally, came the shark. Her moan came out as a strangled cry. Sonia murmured in her sleep. Her neighbors on the other side of the wattle wall called out, Tranquila, Valentina, tranquila, try not to cry, try to sleep, everything is always better in the sunshine.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
INSIDE MEN
Vicente was sentenced to two months of hard labor and a fine of one dollar for insubordination to be deducted from his future earnings, but he didn’t know it, because he didn’t speak English. He thought he was entitled to a fair hearing and to know the charges against him, so he demanded a Spanish interpreter but, of course, he didn’t get one. Vicente wanted to report that the luna and his henchmen were quick with the whip, but these men, haoles, americanos blancos, in starched collars and dark coats, considered themselves superior to the foreigners, those Others, those not like them, never like them. Others spoke Japanese or Spanish or any language not English. Others were natives from islands that were all sun and play and populated with lazy men who were like children in need of a firm hand because they were brown or black or poor. Others must be taught how to work and to live and to submit to the higher knowledge of those not foreign, of those not Other. Vicente thought of these men as Inside Men: inside their houses, inside their stores, inside their family circles, inside their missionary heritage, inside their fire-and-brimstone churches, inside their offices where they decided how to make money and how to keep it. Vicente knew that these Inside Men meant to share as little as possible with men like him, the Others who earned their money for them.
These Inside Men puffed on cigars and cigarettes and dismissed him as a troublesome vagrant. Back home, he’d learned what the Americans thought about Puerto Ricans from the newspapers. They believed that the Puerto Ricans had that indolent Spanish race in them, and some African, maybe even a strain of Indian, and that made them less-than.
Only much later would Vicente learn that the Inside Men had brought the Puerto Ricans to Hawaii because most of them were white enough to satisfy them. The Inside Men had enough problems with the “yellow” Chinamen and especially the Japanese, with their unreasonable demands for better work conditions and higher pay. He didn’t know that the Inside Men had wanted men like him to “whiten” the pool of cane workers.
The clang of steel butts against iron and the shouts of the guards roused them. They had stale bread for breakfast and what the prison cooks referred to as “coffee,” but Vicente knew that not a single coffee bean had been used in the murky sludge. Then, the prisoners marched in the rain through the muddy prison yard in the still-dark. Vicente’s group was assigned to carry heavy loads of crushed stones to areas where they would be raked and leveled to make roads. One day in the dirt of the prison yard, he found an orchid on the ground; he picked it up and tucked it into the waistband of his pants.
In the mess hall, Vicente met a Puerto Rican named Ignacio Nuñez who had left the island on the shipment after him. Vicente asked if the plantation Ignacio Nuñez had been assigned to had a school, and if the workers had real houses, and not la basura his family lived in. And did he get paid en efectivo—cash money—and not scrip?
“Sí, hombre, all of that.” Ignacio Nuñez ate his piece of bread; four of his front teeth were missing.
“¿Entonces, qué pasó? I would still be on that plantation if I were you,” Vicente said.
“I refused to work in the rain,” Ignacio said. “The morning of un tremendo aguacero, the plantation po
liceman chased me out of my house. After that, I said, ‘Olvídate, I’m leaving.’ ”
Vicente stared at him over his tin cup of sludge.
“It was a thunderstorm,” Ignacio said. “There was lightning.”
Vicente nodded. “Tiene razón, I knew a farmer who was struck by lightning.”
“You understand then,” Ignacio said.
Another time, in the jail cell before they were ordered to shut the fuck up and go to sleep, Ignacio shared a different story.
“On the plantation where I worked, all the single men live crowded in barracks. The plantation takes out money from our pay for a cook who prepares our meals—not comida criolla, but terrible food, some kind of hard potatoes and brown meat that was drowning in a sauce that was brown, too—the Americans don’t care if we don’t like the food. If we don’t eat it con ganas on our own, then they call the policeman, who stands over you until you clean your plate.”
“That was a bad situation,” Vicente said.
“Hombre, I couldn’t take it anymore,” Ignacio Nuñez said. “It was like being in prison except with dances on Saturday nights.”
Vicente nodded. “I lost my brother on the boat. Do you know a Raulito Villanueva?”
“You lost your brother? I left behind five brothers in Puerto Rico,” Ignacio Nuñez said, “but I don’t know yours.”
“That’s too bad.” Vicente closed his eyes to sleep.
His body hurt so much he couldn’t sleep, and Vicente wished he could reach for Valentina. He tried not to think of Javiercito or Evita or the coffee trees. It was better to pretend that they were part of some other man’s life, and most days, he was able to do that. He worried about his brother. If only he could find him. He hoped that he had been sent to a plantation where he was treated decently, where it didn’t matter that he was both Puerto Rican and a black man. Vicente thought of Lulu, and Mirta, too, but especially of Valentina. How would she survive? How would she and the little girls eat? And Sonia? Terrible thoughts came to him. What would his wife be willing to do to feed the little girls? Sell her body, her sacred body that no other man except him had possessed? No! Valentina was a good woman. Look how Valentina had insisted on taking in Sonia. Without his wife’s kindness, Sonia would have had no choice but to prostitute herself to any fulano de tal. Valentina would never do that, not his Valentina. Would she? Sell her body? Valentina was above that, his wife was. She would never make el amor for money. He was sure of it. She could be so wanton in her lovemaking. But for money? No. She wasn’t that kind of woman. What kind was that? One who would do anything rather than see her children starve?
The Taste of Sugar Page 25