The misunderstanding arose because Raulito was always the first to ask one particular girl to dance, the sister of one of the other sugarcane workers, a certain Estrella Vázquez. Raulito thought Estrella deserved her name because her dark brown eyes shone like stars. Estrella was a nice girl, and any man would want her for his mujer, any man except for him. Estrella was a good dancer and she liked to dance. Raulito was a good dancer and he liked to dance. He didn’t have to pretend, didn’t have to think, and was as close to happy as he had ever been. Soon, Raulito danced only with Estrella and she danced only with him, and now everyone wanted them to get married.
“You and Estrella are so sweet together.” Soraida served him rice and beans.
“She’s a good dancer.” Raulito tried to find his escape in the plate of food.
“That’s an indicator that she’ll be good in bed. Isn’t that so, Soraida?” Carlito cupped his wife’s behind.
“¡Hombre, for shame!” Soraida spooned beans onto her husband’s plate, but she didn’t shake his hand from her behind.
It used to make Raulito squirm to see them touch each other, because he didn’t know where to look, but now he didn’t even notice.
“Somos amigos,” Raulito said to the rice and beans.
“That’s not what Estrella thinks,” Soraida said.
Girls have to marry young, especially the pretty ones, that’s what everyone said. Raulito was relieved when, a few weeks later, Estrella married someone else. He ate lechón and rice and drank ron caña at the wedding party, which would keep Estrella’s new husband in debt for months to the plantation store.
Soraida handed him a plate of roasted pork and arroz con gandules. “Your face would break a mother’s heart.”
Raulito didn’t know why he was so sad, perhaps because he’d lost his dancing partner or because he didn’t have anyone to love. But that was the moment he decided the time had come to leave the plantation and find his brother Vicente. People would say he left because he was brokenhearted over Estrella. Let them say that. It would be a relief if they said that.
From then on, his decision to leave made him rash, and although it wasn’t allowed, he stood up straight in the cane field, looking up at the blue cloudless sky. In Puerto Rico, he would lie on the grass, gaze up at the sun, and dare it to make him blink.
The luna rode over on his horse. “Hey, 9562, hana, hana!”
The luna never called the Puerto Ricans by their given names, always their bango numbers or “porrican.” They called the luna “el Cochino Gordo” because he was fat and they were skin and bones, because he was Portuguese, because they envied his horse, because he was cruel.
“¡No más caña!” Raulito waved his machete. He watched the luna ride away, and for the first time in his year in the Hawaiian sugarcane, he wasn’t afraid.
“Stupid, you don’t tell el Cochino Gordo no more sugarcane!” Carlito ran over to him.
“I’m going to find my brother.” Raulito squatted between the rows, thinking no one would find him that way.
“Idiot, you need time to make a plan.” Carlito stood over him.
The luna and a plantation policeman galloped on their horses toward them, and Carlito went back to cutting cane.
“Hey, porrican!”
Raulito got up.
“You cane or you cárcere?” The luna raised his whip, ready to strike.
Carlito was right; he needed a plan.
“He a dumb one,” the luna said.
“I scare him a little.” The policeman pointed his rifle.
“Porrican one of best workers,” the luna said. “Hana, hana, porrican!”
The whip struck Raulito’s shoulder. He turned his back for the second blow, and then raised his machete to the cane.
Carlito advised him to wait until he heard from Vicente before running off to who knew where. Be smart, muchacho, be smart, but Raulito thought he’d been smart for a year and he was still alone.
The Puerto Ricans were on their way back after a day in the cane, when Carlito’s little boy ran up to them.
“Raulito, Raulito! Your brother is in a letter!”
“My brother’s in a letter?”
No longer bent over like a viejito, Raulito raced the boy back to his small hut.
“It’s from my sister.” Soraida waved the letter. “She lives on the Big Island of Hawaii.”
Raulito shut his eyes tight. A day in the cane fields worse than the day before, and now no letter from his brother.
“There’s something about your sister-in-law in it.”
When he opened his eyes, Soraida was the most beautiful woman in the world, even prettier than Valentina. She could read because she had come from a coffee-growing family that had once had a teacher living with them for months.
“Want me to read it for you?” Soraida often read and wrote letters for the Puerto Ricans who couldn’t.
“I can read,” Raulito said.
“You can?” Carlito asked. “I can’t.”
“Why didn’t you say that your sister-in-law was a madrona?”
“Valentina?”
Soraida handed him the letter, although he was sure that the Valentina he knew would never ever be a midwife.
There’s a madrona here called Valentina Sánchez, the wife of a certain Vicente Vega from Utuado, who delivered this last one of mine, but Dios mío, I pray no más bebés because it is hard enough to feed the four I have now. Valentina says that she can make me a special concoction of plants and herbs so that this one is my last. She has only the one child so she must have a secret potion.
“Is that Valentina your sister-in-law?” Soraida reached for the letter.
“It seems so.” Raulito’s hand trembled. “But I can’t see Valentina as a midwife.”
“Will you ask her to send me her recipe for no more babies?”
“¿A receta para no más bebés? No entiendo,” Raulito said.
“But she will.” Soraida took back the letter. “Don’t forget, it’s important.”
They sat on the bench that also served as a bed for one of the younger children.
“They’ll never give you permission to work on another plantation.” Carlito went to get the bottle of anisette that Soraida had made from aniseed.
“Carlito, it’s not even the weekend,” Soraida said.
“It’s a special occasion, mujer,” Carlito set the bottle and two glasses on the table.
“You’re not drinking?” Soraida picked up a glass.
Carlito went to get another.
“My sister says that the workers there can leave their plantation when they want,” Soraida said.
“But that’s not this one.” Carlito poured the anisette into three glasses.
“I’m leaving anyway.” Raulito took a sip from the glass. He liked the sweet, smoky taste.
“How will you eat?” Soraida served her husband his dinner.
“I’ll manage somehow.”
“When you get caught—and you will—make up a different name for yourself and tell them that you come from your brother’s plantation.” Carlito drank the anisette. “Maybe they’ll send you there.”
“They’ll have to believe I’m a shark or something,” Raulito said. “This is Oahu. Doesn’t Vicente live on the island of Hawaii?”
“What other choice do you have?” Carlito picked up his spoon.
Because Soraida pitied him, she spooned extra rice and beans onto Raulito’s plate.
“Ay, mijo, think it over. Your life could get so much worse because that’s how life is. Trabajo y tristeza,” Soraida said.
“Don’t trust anybody you meet, especially Americans,” Carlito said.
“Never.” Raulito tossed back the anisette. “I hope I don’t ever have to speak to one.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Carlito poured more. “They won’t waste a civil word on a Puerto Rican.”
Soraida wrapped rice and beans in a shiny green tí leaf. She cried, being one of those wo
men who believed the worst would happen.
Raulito tucked the food in his knapsack, along with a tin can to fill with water from streams; the edges had been smoothed out to save his lips. He heard guitar music and the rasp of a fork against a güiro. The Saturday night party had started. Another night of music and dance and comida criolla to help his compatriots forget that they cried out in their dreams for their island and for their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and the coquís that had lulled them to sleep. Another night to remember only that they had come from Puerto Rico and that they were Puerto Ricans and would die Puerto Ricans, wherever they might be.
Carlito had a memory for routes and he’d drawn dots and dashes on a scrap of brown paper the plantation store used to wrap parcels.
“This here is the road we sometimes take to cut cane, and you follow the road to here.” His finger hovered above a big black dot. “From here, you’ll have to walk a long time. Could be a day, I’m not sure. I remember when we arrived, the wagon rode by a stream . . . follow it and you’ll get to the harbor. Then you’ll have to get on a boat . . .”
At the end of the dots and dashes was Vicente.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
PROMISES
When Lourdes screamed in her sleep, Valentina went to her, brushing the little girl’s hair from her face, making soothing sounds.
“Mami, am I going to die like Javiercito and Manuelito?”
Valentina looked down at her daughter’s frightened eyes, which she could see in the streaks of moonlight coming in through the cracks in the wattle wall.
“Shhh, Lulu, no.” Valentina kissed her daughter’s forehead.
“But they died. And Sonia died.”
“I know.”
“And Tío Raulito.”
Valentina shook her head. “No, not Tío Raulito. He is alive and well.”
She didn’t know if it was true, but how she hoped that it was.
“But Abuela Angelina and Tía Inés?”
“Yes.”
“Why did they die?”
Valentina took a deep breath.
“I don’t know.”
Lourdes whispered, “I miss Javiercito.”
“I know.”
“And Tío Raulito.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m afraid, Mami.”
“Nothing bad will happen to you, Lulu,” Valentina said. “I promise.”
Lourdes nodded; she closed her eyes to sleep.
•
A notice written in Spanish had been posted at the plantation store. This Saturday was a special day, as an interpreter was being brought in to hear the Puerto Ricans’ grievances. There was a rumor that the interpreter was a Spaniard. A few of them swore that they would refuse to speak to any Spaniard. The Spaniards had never treated the Puerto Ricans right, they all agreed. Look how, after Hurricane San Ciriaco, the Spanish hacienda owners had kept most of the money for themselves and had made the Puerto Ricans work for what? A piece of bread? A shirt? A pair of pants? Vicente said that the interpreter wouldn’t be a Spaniard because the Americans hated the Spanish. Didn’t they remember that the American army had encouraged the bands of tiznados, who had smeared charcoal on their faces to hide their identities when they robbed and beat up the Spaniards? The partidas had the run of Utuado and Adjuntas, too, remember?
The Puerto Ricans had a lot to complain about—that there wasn’t a school for their children as they were promised; that they lived in shacks instead of decent houses as promised; that they were at the bottom of the hill, breathing in foul garbage and human waste; that foodstuffs were double the prices of those in Puerto Rico. Somebody said that they should appoint a man to speak for them, someone who had once owned a farm and knew how to talk to businessmen, like Ramírez or Vega. How about it, Ramírez? Ramírez said that he didn’t have schooling like Vicente Vega, better Vega. How about it, Vicente?
“What do you think, Valentina?” Vicente looked at his wife.
Ramírez and the man next to him exchanged glances. What kind of man needed his wife’s permission?
“Ask about the school,” Valentina said. “And Raulito, and Sonia’s husband.”
People called out to Vicente: Ask why the doctor gives out blue pills for everything, and why he sends us back out to the fields when we’re sick. Tell how the plantation police drag us out of bed as if we were slaves from olden times. Tell about the shotguns in our backs. Tell about how the luna raises his whip to us as if we were slaves. And what is this about the docking of pay when we take a minute to piss in the fields, or when we cut less sugarcane because of bad weather? Demand that we be paid cash money! As we were promised! Demand the increase we were promised! We’ve been here a year already! We should have gotten a pay increase! But all we got was a balance due at the plantation store! Remind them that we are to get a bonus in the third year. And would the translator take letters to mothers, fathers, and the newspapers on the island? They weren’t sure that the letters they mailed had arrived since they never received responses. Would—could—tell—tell.
The Inside Men, the manager Mr. White and the interpreter, sat outside the plantation manager’s office; the guards with their shotguns stood on either side. The Puerto Ricans gathered in front of the table.
“¡Vicente Vega, a la orden!” Vicente was proud that Valentina stood beside him, watching him be the spokesperson. “I have been elected to speak for all of us Puerto Ricans.”
The interpreter said he was Mr. Donald Jackson and that he worked for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association. He’d learned his Spanish in the Philippines and Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Please excuse his mistakes, Mr. Jackson said, in that way that made it evident he thought he’d conquered the language.
“The Spanish-American War?”
“You know . . . la guerra . . . why you belong to the United States.”
“Ah, you mean the Americans’ war against Spain.”
“No speak fast,” Mr. Jackson said. “Don’t understand fast talking.”
Vicente exchanged a look with Valentina.
“Señor, we’re expected to work in the pouring rain like beasts. The police disrespect us. They kick open our doors and enter where our wives and children are sleeping.” Vicente paused after every few words.
Mr. Jackson consulted with the plantation manager.
“The five a.m. to wake,” Mr. Jackson said.
“Respectfully, Mr. Jackson, would you like someone to enter your home uninvited?” Vicente crossed his arms.
“Five a.m.,” Mr. Jackson said.
“My home may be a hut fit for animals, but no one has the right to come into it when my wife and children are sleeping.” Vicente’s voice was strong and firm. “Not you or the police or even the plantation manager.”
A few of the puertorriqueños looked at Valentina and imagined what she looked like in bed, while their wives took another look at Vicente, so brave.
“I no make the rules,” Mr. Jackson said.
“Who makes the rules, then?” Valentina said to Vicente.
“Who makes the rules, then?” Vicente said to Mr. Jackson.
“Five a.m. whistle you wake, that’s the rule.”
The Puerto Ricans murmured, Que falta de respeto.
Vicente shook his head. “When we are sick, the doctor tells us that we are not sick and sends us back to the cane, where we get sicker.”
“Doctor know best,” Mr. Jackson said.
“We are men, not cattle,” Vicente said.
“Well, now,” Mr. Jackson said.
“The luna and his henchmen raise their whips to us,” Vicente said. “Tell Mr. White to stop that immediately.”
The Puerto Ricans murmured, We are men, not cattle.
“What’s your bango number?” Mr. Jackson looked down at a paper.
“Mi nombre es Vega. Vicente Vega, not Vegas like in the account book,” Vicente said.
“I asked for your bango number.”
“I’
m not a bango number,” Vicente said. “I’m a man with a name.”
“Vicente Vega, what’s your bango number?”
Vicente nodded, satisfied. “9643.”
“9643,” Mr. Jackson said to the plantation manager, who wrote it down.
“We are men, not cattle.”
“What’s that about cattle?”
“The luna and his men raise the whip to us,” Vicente said. “We demand that they stop.”
The Puerto Ricans chanted, We are men, not cattle.
Mr. Jackson conferred with Mr. White.
“Mr. White talk to the luna,” Mr. Jackson said.
Was there anything else? ¡Claro! Vicente, go down the list!
“Sí, sí.” Vicente raised his hand to his compatriots. “We shouldn’t have to work in the hard rain. Have you ever worked in the rain, Mr. Jackson?”
“I not sugarcane worker,” Mr. Jackson said.
Los puertorriqueños murmured, He’s not a sugarcane worker; somebody cracked a joke that he would sell his soul to the devil if he arranged for los blancos grandes, gordos y colorados to work a single day in the cane. Some of the Puerto Ricans laughed.
“You work, you eat,” Mr. Jackson said.
“We want to eat, and we also don’t want to work in the hard rain.”
Mr. Jackson whispered something to Mr. White.
“The lunas decide when you work,” Mr. White said.
Vicente shook his head in disappointment; Valentina touched his arm.
The Puerto Ricans murmured, Coño carajo, only animals worked in the rain.
“Mr. Jackson, we want to live like human beings without garbage flowing outside our homes,” Vicente said. “Have you seen the hovels we live in? Waste from the house of Mr. White comes all the way down to where we live.”
The Taste of Sugar Page 29