Conquistadora (15 page)

She was now in the position Jesusa had wished for: one of undisputed power over others. So far, none of her workers had challenged
Ana, but of course, they could. They should, Ana thought. She would, if she were one of them. And that made all the difference.

“So long as they’re slaves,” Ana said to Ramón and Inocente, “they have to do what I say. I’ll train them, and if they refuse their work, yes, I’ll punish them. That’s what it means to be an
hacendada
, doesn’t it?”

Flora thought there were too many
patrones
. The slaves who had lived for years at Hacienda los Gemelos believed don Severo was the
patrón
. He’d visited the hacienda a few times, but one morning he appeared and soon the previous
mayordomo
left on his sway-backed mule without so much as a backward glance. Don Severo lined up the slaves in the
batey
and introduced two
libertos
as foremen. He’d bought Flora, José the carpenter, his wife, Inés, and their two boys, led them to the plantation, and set them to work, so they, too, thought he was the boss. It was a surprise to everyone when one afternoon weeks later don Severo assembled the slaves in the
batey
again and told them that the owners were coming. He told Flora, Teo, and Marta to follow him to the
casona
. Marta was ordered to clean and prepare the downstairs kitchen, and Flora and Teo were sent upstairs to smoke wasp nests from the eaves, brush away spider webs, scrub the walls and floors, and, finally, paint the entire inside of the house green. José carved a bed and nailed together a few benches and tables. He also built shelves in the kitchen so that Marta could stack the dishes sent ahead of the lady and the two gentlemen.

Flora observed these changes because it was important to notice everything. A new master meant that she must pay close attention so that she could learn what kind of people they were. Would the masters bother the women? Would the lady spend only a few days a year at the hacienda and live the rest of the time in the city? Would they have much company, or would they prefer to visit others? Would the lady sit against cushions whining that she was bored while ordering maids and complaining that things were not clean or neat enough? Flora had lived among
blancos
for years, and she knew that
they were an indolent but violent race. To survive among them, she watched them, and could read them as well as they read their books and letters.

Flora was a Mbuti, and her clan lived in dense forests, hunting, fishing, and gathering, moving from place to place along the Congo River, following the availability of fruits, vegetables, and game. Their low stature and highly developed senses made them agile and stealthy. Children were taught to revere their environment because taking the forest for granted could be deadly. As they moved through the bush, the Mbuti sang to the gods in gratitude and exultation for the gifts of food and shelter.

Among her people she was named Balekimito. When she was blessed with the blood, her clanswomen and friends celebrated Balekimito’s first menstrual period in the
elima
ceremony. They built a house from supple branches and broad leaves, and the women and pubescent girls moved in. The elder women taught the girls how to keep embers alive so that they could revive the fire in their next camp. They taught them the adult women’s songs and sang about the responsibilities of womanhood and motherhood. Boys congregated around the yard of the
elima
house and sang to the girls, hoping that one would choose him to be allowed inside. The days in the
elima
house were the happiest time of Balekimito’s life.

Three moons later, Portuguese slavers captured her and her mother. They raped them, then made them walk to a village where they were thrown into a shack and roped to other captives for two nights. The group was made to trudge over many days through the forest to the sea. There they put the women in airless rooms separated from the men, who couldn’t protect them when the hairy white men assaulted them. When the rooms were filled with so many people that it was impossible to sit or lie down, the jailers took them from the cells and threw the people into the moaning, damp hold of a ship. It was there that Balekimito birthed her first child, born dead and flung over the side. When she sang to usher his soul back to the forest, the other chained men and women hummed softly, because none of them were Mbuti and couldn’t speak her language, but they all knew her grief. Balekimito’s mother, who began shivering the moment they were stuffed into the hold of the ship, stopped trembling after the baby died and she, too, was flung overboard, and again Balekimito sang and the others hummed and cried with her.

The slaver disembarked Balekimito and the others on a long, wide dock. Along the shore, a platform rose steps from the sand. The black men, women, and children who survived the crossing were auctioned off to a throng of white men wearing much fabric around their bodies so that very little of their pale skins showed. Balekimito, who grew up wearing only beads, grass, and body paint, was given a sack to wear. In spite of the hot sun overhead and the itchy fabric covering her body down to her ankles, Balekimito shivered as uncontrollably as her mother had, and was sure she, too, would die from terror.

A man pushed her up to the platform and lifted her chin so that the
blancos
on the ground could get a look at her. Far beyond the roofs along the shore, Balekimito saw the deep green of trees and plants. She thanked mother forest for bringing her to solid ground. The next moment, she was pushed off the platform and a tall, fat
blanco
grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along upon the rocky earth through paths lined with high buildings made from stone.

She lived in a room with solid walls and cried for the dwellings her people built from supple twigs and rippling leaves. She missed singing to the trees and vines, to the sky and clouds, to the rivers and lakes, to birds and snakes and monkeys, to leaves. In the house with the rigid walls, Balekimito was forced by Mistress to clean pots and dishes and tables and the staircase and Master’s boots and the rock-hard floors. A man wearing black robes wet her head and made strange signs around her forehead and lips and said her name was now Flora.

She was not allowed out of the house. The windows faced the street or other houses and paved courtyards, so Flora couldn’t touch bare earth. Everything she touched was hard, including Master. He climbed on top of her and pushed himself into her, pressing his heavy body until she felt that her backbone would crack against the tile floor. When Mistress realized that Flora was pregnant, she beat her with a broom, then pushed her down the stairs, and Flora lost her second child. For the first time since her mother’s death, she sang again, for her lost baby, but quietly, because Master and Mistress forbade singing, even in sorrow.

Master sold her to another man, who took her to his farm, and the forest on the boundaries of that
finca
sang to Flora. There were many slaves in the
finca
, none of them Mbuti, but by now Flora
spoke a little of her previous master’s language. She hardly knew this master, but the others showed scars and missing ears and fingers and toes that he’d chopped off. An elder who spoke the same babble as Flora’s previous master told her that a group were planning to run away. With many gestures and the few words they had in common, the elder was able to explain to Flora that they would hide for a few days in the forest and then walk over the mountains toward the setting sun, to a place called Haiti where there were no masters. Flora had no idea where she was and hadn’t heard about Haiti, but she knew that if she went into the forest, it would protect her. She was afraid that she’d be raped again or a part of her body might be cut off, so she agreed to escape with the others.

One moonless night, the men went into the house and the women and children ran into the nearby woods. Flames hissed into the night. Flora heard the bell clanging, hounds barking, and shots. Dogs bit into her calves, her buttocks. She kept running. This forest was different from the one back home, but she sang silently as she ran. She climbed a tree to its highest branch. Mbuti believed that the forest would let her see into her secrets if she were patient, so Flora waited quietly until she could see. Men and dogs ran around below, caught the others, and dragged them to the yard.

Flora slept on the branch, and the next morning she climbed down and found fruit, then walked farther into the woods and scaled high up another tree. There were white men and dogs all over the forest, but she knew how to walk from branch to branch, and when she was on the ground, she walked in brooks and rivers so that she left no scent. She spent many days walking toward the sinking sun each time, eating whatever she could find. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew that she could live in the forest the rest of her life if she had to. She was lonely, but she was not afraid of the forest, only of men.

One day she was trying to catch a fish in a shallow river when two black men dressed like
blancos
leaped from the bushes and captured her again. They knotted her wrists together behind her back and pushed and dragged her to the same camp where they’d tied up the three men who’d planned the escape. They were returned to the charred remains of the farm. The three leaders were whipped, then hanged in front of the others, and Flora was lashed until her back
and legs bled. The same elder who told her about Haiti restored her to health. The master was dead and they’d all be sold to different masters.

Don Felipe bought Flora, and again Flora was on a boat, not as dirty and dank as the first one. She slept for two nights on top of crates filled with
bacalao
. When they landed, the forest sang again to Flora. She didn’t know where she was before or where she was now. This master spoke the same tongue as the second one. He locked her inside a storeroom and the next morning took Flora to his wife. Doña Benigna gave Flora a dress, an apron, a head wrapping and taught her how to bathe and dress her, how to brush her fine golden hair, to put on her stockings and fasten them with ribbons above her knees, to wash and press her frocks and bodices, to sew and mend. If Flora made mistakes, or couldn’t understand, or dropped something or broke it, doña Benigna slapped Flora or shoved her across the room.

So that she wouldn’t be beaten, Flora did what she was told, was careful not to drop or break anything, and learned Spanish. The longer she lived with don Felipe and doña Benigna, the fewer beatings she received.

At least, Flora thought, don Felipe didn’t trouble the female servants. He kept an office in town, but he and doña Benigna lived on a farm one league away. Flora was allowed to sing but couldn’t go into the woods alone or she’d be whipped.

She often accompanied doña Benigna to town, or to visit her friends on other farms. The other ladies were impressed by how well trained Flora was. They didn’t say it to her, of course.
Blancos
didn’t praise slaves. She heard them talking about her through open doors, or when the ladies gossiped among themselves as Flora served.

“Giving them compliments gives them airs, and you know where that leads to,” one of the ladies said to doña Benigna. “No, my dear, don’t tell her she’s doing well, quite the opposite! Slap her, beat her, make sure she knows you’re in command. As soon as a slave thinks he’s superior to others, he thinks he’s equal to
blancos
and expects the same rights. Look at what happened in Haiti.”

By then Flora had learned from others “what happened in Haiti” and that she had been days from reaching it by following the sun. Haiti was on the western end of the island she’d lived before, Hispaniola.
Rather than try to escape by sea, slaves in Haiti turned against their masters and won their freedom. After Flora was taken to Puerto Rico, the slaves on the other side of Hispaniola’s mountains were also freed, but not before
blancos
escaped with their chattel. Many of the slaves built bamboo rafts and drifted from Puerto Rico toward the setting sun and freedom. No one knew whether they reached land or not, whether they died, were captured, or returned.

Over the twenty years that Flora lived with don Felipe and doña Benigna, she saw people stream into Puerto Rico from Venezuela, from Santo Domingo, Colombia, Peru. These new immigrants were loyal to the Spanish Crown and felt safe in Puerto Rico. Every time word came of another war for independence or about uprisings on other islands or in other parts of Puerto Rico, soldiers marched in large numbers. They settled right in the center of town and practiced battles, their plumed hats waving, their sabers rattling, their horses high-stepping and neighing. They organized local militias: every free man was expected to appear weekly at the practice grounds, where they were trained to repel attacks from those who wanted to make Puerto Rico an independent nation, like the countries in Spanish America. The local militias and the soldiers also practiced how to suppress rebellions because independence and abolition were spoken in the same whispering breath.