But questions came to him in the middle of the night; questions that had hidden in his mind all these years. Perhaps it was because he didn’t have Valentina to help suppress them. Questions such as why had his father been the one to fetch him that terrible day when Evita died? Why had his father been visiting in the middle of the day, when his wife would be alone in the house with the children? Vicente wondered about it now, but all he could think of then was that Evita was dead, his little girl who loved mariposas. He’d cried right there in front of his father.
Vicente stared up at the bars of the cot above him, and it came to him that he’d never asked Valentina why his father had been there that afternoon. When people told Vicente that por lo menos it was his father who had found the little girl, he’d wanted to yell at them without knowing why. Vicente’s father had built the tiny coffin that they set upon the table he had built for Valentina. Everyone in the countryside came to hold vigil, even the campesinos and los peones, who stayed outside en el batey, as did Raulito because he didn’t want to see their father Raúl Vega or embarrass Vicente’s mother.
The night Evita died, Vicente had held his wife in his arms and they’d made love without speaking and without joy, only necessity. Only Valentina knew his pain, only Valentina knew what it was to watch their beautiful baby girl wobbling on her fat little legs chasing butterflies. They could hear the mourners in the other room with their baby girl’s coffin; the mourners sang the rosary, their Padre Nuestros y Ave Marías rising and falling above the chant of the coquís.
Vicente recalled other moments that hadn’t felt quite “right.” It was something in Valentina’s manner, the barest skittishness in his wife’s behavior when she was in the presence of his father that had given Vicente pause. Suspicions he had cast aside as unworthy of their love and their marriage. In the beginning, when his father had taken an immediate liking to Valentina, Vicente had been glad of it. Who better than his pretty young wife to soften the heart of his stern, tough father? Vicente recalled once or twice that he’d smiled when Valentina seemed a little awkward around Raúl Vega. She’d blushed at his father’s teasing. Vicente had been proud that lovely Valentina belonged to him.
A scream from another cell. He’d seen his mother and Inés exchange glances when his father addressed Valentina.
Vicente banged the cot. He shouted. Some of the men shouted back—shut up keep quiet go to sleep beat the hell out of you porrican—English words whose meanings couldn’t be mistaken.
How could he possibly suspect Valentina, his wife, of anything—vile? She, who had suffered the loss of two of their three children, of something with his father! Vicente rubbed his temples and tried to clear away such shameful thoughts. If it were true about Valentina and his father, nothing could be worse. Nothing. Except. He stared up at the iron bars of the cot above him. The worst. The very worst. He couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t contemplate it. Because if one, then two; if two, then three; if A, then B; if B, then C. His children. Not his father’s. His. Javiercito and Evita and Lourdes. His son. Evita. Six-year-old Lulu, the only child left. Could that be why he’d always been a little harsher with Javiercito than he should have been? Not because he was a boy but because he’d suspected—no!
Lourdes. His. Not. His.
Only after Valentina confessed everything, if there was something to confess, would he decide what to do. No one would blame him, whatever he did. Not even his wife.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
HOE HANA
Hoe hana. Hoe hoe hoe, weed weed weed for four hours in a straight line, no talking. Bent over at the waist, Valentina dug at the red clay earth to prepare it for the planting of sugarcane. Although women and children earned less than half of what men earned, hoe hana was the hardest work Valentina had done in her whole life.
Up with the 5 a.m. blare of the siren to pull on pants that had once belonged to Vicente’s father and that she had taken for Raulito. Valentina left the sleeping girls in Sonia’s care. The Japanese women wore white scarves that they pulled over the hats. Valentina took to tying a scarf around her straw hat like the Japanese women. Las japonesas sang songs of mourning while they worked, some of them crying. She brushed something from her cheek, surprised that her hand was wet.
Whenever Valentina stood up straight to ease the pain in her back, the luna charged up on his horse and shouted down at her. Hoe hana! Hoe hana! Only when it was necessary to sharpen the blade of the hoe on a stone with hands that trembled from effort and fatigue, only then could she stop hoe hana. Boys younger than Javiercito carried bundles of cane stalks on their backs like miniature mules. The youngest girl was eight years old, only a couple of years older than her own Lourdes. Hoe hana would crook the girl’s spine like a tree branch. Some of the Japanese women who worked alongside her had warped spines. She dragged herself home feeling like someone had beaten and kicked her all over.
Valentina was the only puertorriqueña. When the others sat on their hoes while they ate lunch, she did the same. The Japanese brought their food in delicate lacquered boxes. She’d once kept hairpins and ribbons in a lacquered box that was lost in the hurricane. One of the Japanese women returned Valentina’s stare. Valentina looked away, hoping she wasn’t offended.
The first time Valentina had to put food on credit at the plantation store, she told herself that it wasn’t her fault. Because she was a woman, she earned twenty-five cents a day to Vicente’s sixty-two cents. (Girls earned twelve cents a day.) She bought bacalao, beans, and powdered milk for las niñas and a piece of liver for Sonia because she was pregnant and needed iron. (Although Sonia still hadn’t confessed that she was encinta.) One day when Valentina didn’t bring lunch because it was hard to feed four people on hoe hana wages, a Japanese woman offered to share her meal. Although Valentina felt faint from working under the hot sun, she tried to refuse, shaking her head, saying, no, gracias, señora.
The Japanese woman bowed again.
“Valentina.” She pointed to her chest.
“Valentina.” La japonesa bowed. “Mikioki.” La japonesa pointed to her chest and bowed.
“Mikioki.” Valentina bowed.
“Ono! Ono!” Mikioki pointed to the rice ball.
She didn’t want to eat it but she was so hungry and she didn’t want to be impolite. Valentina ate the rice formed into a ball with a surprise in the center of raw fish and a red pickled plum.
“Hmmmm, delicioso.” Valentina smiled.
“Hmmmm, ono! Ono!” Mikioki smiled.
The women bowed to each other.
After that, Valentina always brought something to eat. The next payday, she put enough bacalao on credit to make extra for Mikioki. She sent the little girls to pick tí leaves, which she had seen the Japanese women use, and she wrapped the bacalao and rice in tí leaves instead of the banana leaves she would have used in Puerto Rico. Mikioki ate it and said, Ono! Valentina learned that ono meant tasty.
When Valentina stumbled home, exhausted after hoe hana, she knew that she looked as ragged as the other field workers. There was nothing left of the old prideful Valentina. Her shoes were dusty with red dirt. Her friends and neighbors teased her because she wore her father-in-law’s pants. She wasted no time thinking of Raúl Vega, but she thought about Vicente, worried about him. When would he return? Would he return? She hoped that los americanos hadn’t done something terrible to him. With Vicente gone, it was like she was having a one-person conversation: she asked and answered all the questions, told and listened to all the stories, described problems, proposing what to do or lamenting that nothing could be done. She missed talking to him. Most of all, she missed that he looked at her as if she were still the strawberry girl from Ponce.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
HOME
His body didn’t feel as if it belonged to him, his arms and legs seemed to move of their own volition, his hand rose to shade his face from the sun, something that he’d not been allowed to do on the chain gang. The police had brought him back to th
e plantation. For the first time in months, Vicente walked without a gun pointed at his back, and it gave him the sensation of freedom.
Vicente wished that he’d been allowed to wash. He had stone dust on his skin and under his fingernails. He was ashamed to have people see him filthy like any beggar. He hurried down the dirt road, eager to see the little girls and his wife. He thought of the great big kiss they’d share and how Valentina would linger in his embrace, not caring that he hadn’t showered in two months.
“¡Valentina!” He ran the last few yards to their hut, calling out her name.
“¡Papi!” The little girls ran to him.
Vicente lifted them up, one in each arm; their joyous giggles eased some of the pain of what he’d endured. But Valentina, where was Valentina?
“Papi, you stink.” Lourdes held her nose.
“You stink.” Mirta held her nose, too.
“Oh, I do, do I?” Vicente planted a loud kiss on each little girl’s forehead, making them squeal.
“Where is your mother?” Vicente said to his daughter.
“Hoe hana.” Lourdes pointed down the road.
“Hoe hana?” His Valentina hoe hana?
“Mami is here.” Mirta pointed in the other direction.
He set the girls down and took one last look down the road, but no Valentina. They went to find Sonia, who was stirring a pot of beans in the Portuguese oven.
“Ay bendito, Vicente, it’s wonderful to have you home.” She hugged him. “You stink! Hombre, you need a bath!”
The little girls watched for Valentina; when they saw her, they ran toward her calling out the news.
“¡Papi is home!” They hugged her waist, taking her lunch pail and hoe, arguing as to who would carry what, telling her that he was real dirty but it was really Papi.
Vicente was back! She took off her hat and scarf and her hands trembled as she tidied up her hair. Vicente was back! If only she’d had some warning, if only she’d had time to bathe. That he should see her like this, her shirt sweat-stained, her hands dirty, and her nails cracked from hoeing weeds, that he should see her in these pants filthy with red dirt. She spit on the back of her hand and wiped her face, leaving a streak of red on her cheek.
Valentina wanted to throw her arms around him and cover his face with kisses, but he looked at her as if he didn’t know her, as if she’d never been his strawberry girl. She thought it was because he was ashamed that she was dirty, that she worked in the cane. She didn’t kiss him.
He stared at her, a sunburnt Valentina, a pants-wearing woman with her hands on her hips. He longed to take her in his arms, to wipe the dirt from her cheek, to tell her how much he’d missed her.
“What the hell are you wearing?” He pointed to her legs.
“Pants, as you can see.” She waved a dirty hand down the length of her leg.
“Where did you get them?” Vicente crossed his arms.
“Not that it matters, but they were your father’s.”
“My father!”
“Las niñas asked about you every day,” Valentina said. “They really missed you.”
“What about you? Did you miss me?” Why were they standing in the road? This wasn’t what he wanted.
“You don’t know how much.” She looked into his eyes, surprised that he’d asked.
“You don’t show it.” His voice was low, a little hurt.
Friends and compatriots surrounded them. Women welcomed Vicente with kisses and murmurs of sympathy for all he must have suffered. Men returned from working a half day, it was Saturday, and stopped to shake his hand. People congratulated Valentina, how wonderful that the police had sent back her husband in one piece. ¡Que gozo they’ll have tonight! A little ron caña, a little Hawaiian moonshine, a little song, a little dance. We’ll celebrate that you survived jail, that we survived another week in the cane.
Vicente said that a man just home from jail needed to talk to his wife in private. Take your time, Vicente! Talk as much as you like. Valentina went to their hut to get some clean clothes for both of them. They left the little girls with Sonia. When they reached the pond, Vicente wanted to ask Valentina if she’d come alone to bathe while he was gone, but he didn’t. She took off her shirt and pants. Valentina dropped the dirty clothes on the ground next to the drying cloths and clean clothes. She picked up the bar of soap she’d wrapped in one of the cloths.
“Aren’t you coming in?”
He hurried to remove his clothes.
She took his hand, drawing him into the pond.
“Welcome home.” She kissed him.
He picked her up and carried her in the water to a depression in the sand where he could stand steady. He held her tight, she wrapped her legs around him. She murmured his name. He called her querida. The soap slipped from her hand.
“Vicente, the soap!”
“Forget it, querida.”
“You need it.”
“Y tú tambien.”
They laughed.
Sometime later, they searched for the bar of soap.
“That soap was a day of hoe hana,” Valentina said.
“We’ll find it.”
“I hope so.”
Vicente ducked his head in the stream and came back up victorious, the bar of soap clutched in his hand.
Much later, they walked to the riverbank.
“Was it horrible? Being without a man?” Vicente set the soap on the grass to dry.
“I missed you most at night.” Valentina looked at him in that way that he loved.
Vicente laughed. “You have no idea how I missed you.”
She handed him a drying cloth.
“You dry me, I’ll dry you.”
“Everyone is waiting for you. Don’t you care?”
“Not really.”
Laughing, Valentina moved out of reach.
She wrapped the towel around her waist and shook her hair, twisting it to squeeze out the water.
“Eugenio brought me your machete. It wasn’t right what the luna did to you. Then to send you to jail for two months.”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” Vicente didn’t want to tell her about prison. Not yet.
“Sugar dreams?” She put on her dress.
“More like worries.” He finished drying himself and pulled on his pants.
“I don’t make a lot hoe hana,” she said.
“I’m sorry you had to do that.”
“I had to charge food at the plantation store.” Valentina sat down on the grass.
“That’s all right.” Vicente buttoned his shirt, relishing the laundered cleanliness of the cloth on his skin. “Thank you for the clean clothes.”
“You deserve that and more after all you’ve been through.”
He sat next to her. “As do you.”
They sat without speaking for a moment, looking out at the pond, turning to smile at each other.
“You know those stories they tell in Puerto Rico about los muertos in the countryside? That’s me at the end of the day,” Valentina said. “Muerta.”
“Querida.” He took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“But las japonesas are very nice.” She smiled at him because he was sitting next to her and calling her querida the way he always did. How she’d missed that.
A bird flew down into the pond. They watched it rise out of the water with a fish in its beak.
“Vicente, why don’t you go on strike?”
“What?”
“Huelga. You and Eugenio and the others should go on strike.”
“They won’t care about a bunch of Puerto Ricans.”
“They will care. They need you to cut their stupid cane. And what about if you got the Japanese to strike, too? Puerto Ricans and Japanese together. Isn’t that a good idea?”
“The Japanese! We don’t know any Japanese, and even if we did, we don’t speak the same language!”
“I know this woman—Mikioki—she’s Japanese. I hoe hana with Mikioki. You ca
n talk to her husband.”
“I don’t know.” Vicente shook his head.
“What is it that you’re always saying—you’re not a cow?”
He laughed. “We’re men, not cattle.”
She giggled. “Yes, that’s it.”
Vicente lifted a long strand of hair; the back of her dress was wet.
“Your hair is still wet.”
“It’ll dry.”
He fiddled with her hair, wrapping a strand around his finger. “I kept thinking about my father.”
“Raúl?”
“He liked you.” Vicente saw her shoulders stiffen, just a little, but he saw it.
He brought the strand of hair to his nose, it smelled like fresh water.
“I had a lot of time to think,” Vicente said. “About us. You. Him.”
“You’re not making any sense.” Valentina flipped her hair in front of her face, her fingers searched for knots.
“I want to see your face.” He took her by the shoulders and brushed her hair from her face. He could have been gentler.
“Was there something between you?”
“Why would you ask me that? Jail must have made you crazy.”
“Was there?” Vicente looked into her eyes.
She turned her head. “I won’t talk to you when you’re like this—”
There had been something. Vicente’s hands became tangled in her hair. “Did he do this—”
“Let go of me!”
He let her go.
Valentina moved away. “You must be crazy!”
“Whenever I think of you and my father, I feel a little crazy.”
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