Conquistadora (34 page)

Before supper that evening, Eugenio related to Leonor an edited version of his conversation with Ana.

Leonor was adamant. “Let her rot here if that’s what she wants, but I’m not leaving without Miguel.”

“The truth is that what she’s offering is not unreasonable. We already have a substantial investment, and she’s willing to continue the work while we raise the child. Luis will buy Los Gemelos any time we wish to sell.”

“I don’t care what sort of arrangement you reach with her, Eugenio, I don’t want that woman in my house.”

“I’ve not heard you speak so unkindly of anyone in all our years together.”

“I despise her. She’s mad. Our sons are dead because of her, and I won’t let her destroy Miguel, too. Give her whatever she wants, but let’s leave here as soon as possible.”

“And do you wish me to make an offer on Ciriaca?”

“I can use her and her daughter, too.”

“I’ll have Fuentes handle it.”

“Let’s go as soon as possible, Eugenio, before Ana changes her mind. That woman is a viper.”

At the
finca
a few days later, Eugenio met with Severo Fuentes and asked him to keep an eye on Ana.

“She’ll be communicating directly with Mr. Worthy, my lawyer,” he said, “who will expect a strict accounting. I trust she’ll be scrupulous in facts and figures, but I need to know if anything else is amiss. Don Luis is interested in Los Gemelos, but at the moment, I’m not ready to sell. I’m counting on you to ensure the value of the property doesn’t decrease.”

“Are you concerned,
señor
, that doña Ana is not capable of managing the plantation as well as don Ramón and don Inocente, may they rest in peace?”

“I’m aware that a great part of their success was due to your able management.”

“You’re very kind,
señor
, but—”

“You underestimate me, Fuentes. I may be a foolish old soldier but I’m not stupid.”

“I’d never think you were either of those things,
señor
.”

“We understand each other, then. It’s in my interest that Los Gemelos succeed, and that Ana believe she’s responsible for the triumph of man over nature or whatever she thinks she’s doing here.”

“She’s uncomfortable traveling too far from the
batey
since don Inocente’s death,” Severo said. “She refuses to go to Guares even for the Holy Days, but with don Ramón, may he rest in peace, also gone, she might change her mind about living here.”

“Let me make myself clear, Fuentes. She’s never to forget what dangers lie beyond the boundaries of Los Gemelos, and she’s to have whatever she needs so that she doesn’t want to leave.”

“I see,” Severo said.

“You’ll write to me regularly and let me know how she’s doing.
Las mujeres son caprichosas
.”

“Sí, señor.”

“I want no surprises from her, do you understand?”

“I believe I do, don Eugenio.”

“I hope so,” the older man said. “But she might need some coaxing. I know you won’t disappoint me.…”

“No, Colonel, I’m your servant.”

“And you can be sure that you’ll be well rewarded.”

“I know you to be a generous man, Colonel,” Severo said with a bow that Eugenio later thought was too ceremonious and studied to have been sincere.

Elena had been unable to spend time alone with Ana since their arrival. It was partly her own fault: doña Leonor needed her. Since Ramón’s death, Leonor had expressed only two emotions, sorrow and anger at Ana. When doña Leonor was sad, Elena listened, consoled her, prayed with her. When she was angry, Elena placed herself between the two women, interpreting for or defending one to the other.

Earlier that morning, don Eugenio had told them they were leaving in two days, and Miguel would go with them.

“And Ana?”

“She stays.”

Elena couldn’t believe it. She’d assumed that they would all return to Spain, and she’d dared to imagine that she and Ana would now live together.

Later, when doña Leonor and Miguel went to feed the ducks in the pond, Elena found Ana in the garden, talking to Severo Fuentes.

“
Sí, señora
. I’ll accompany them as far as Guares and pick up the supplies.” He touched his hat brim when he passed.
“Buenos días, señorita.”

She barely acknowledged him. “Do you have a moment, Ana?”

“Walk with me.” Ana closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Have you ever smelled anything so sweet?”

“Lavender?”

“A particularly fragrant variety. The honeybees love it. It’s not native to Puerto Rico.”

“But here it grows wild?”

“Some of these herbs can be found nowhere else on the island, but
Severo has brought me the most extraordinary seeds.” She walked further into the garden. “I’ve put in every plant here, and every one is useful. This is aloe, to treat burns and scratches.” Ana picked a needlelike leaf from a shrub. “Smell this. Delicious, isn’t it? Rosemary, a cooking herb, but I make a liniment to relieve aches and pains.”

“So all these plants are medicinal?”

“Medicinal and, well, they heal ailments in the body but also in the spirit.”

“Ana! That sounds like witchcraft.” Elena crossed herself.

“I used to think that, but I soon learned that Flora and Damita and the others could teach me many things. You’d be surprised how much
nuestra gente
know.”

Elena raised her eyebrows. Our people?

“Look at the rosemary,” Ana continued. “Its leaves look like fingers reaching for the sky.”

“One could describe it that way,” Elena said.

“Its fragrance lifts your spirits, invigorates the body and mind. It makes you happy and clears negative thoughts.”

“That’s a lot to ask of one plant,” Elena said.

“I suppose, but so far every remedy I’ve learned from our people has been effective. The slaves and the
campesinos
who live nearby come to me with questions that have nothing to do with aches, pain, or injuries. They ask for love potions—”

“Ana, we’re Catholic. The church forbids—”

“God gave us nature’s bounty to make our lives bearable.” She twirled a flower under Elena’s nose. “If I believe that a bath with rose and geranium petals will make a man love me, I’m not discounting the power of prayer. The truth is that such a bath will make me smell good, and others will notice. I will truly be more attractive.”

“That’s different from claiming that rosemary can make you happy.”

“How is it different? A scent is a sensual experience that awakens other senses.”

As they walked, Ana pointed to this or that herb or flower, delighting in the colors, the fragrances, the infinite shapes of leaves, the butterflies and moths skidding in erratic patterns around them.

“I can’t reconcile your upbringing in Spain,” Elena ventured, “with your life here.”

“Yes, sometimes I have the same trouble.” Ana smiled. “But remember that I spent much of my childhood on Abuelo Cubillas’s farm, even if his only involvement was to look out the window and wonder whether or not it would rain.” She laughed. “Other people did the work.”

“You have people, too,” Elena said.
“Nuestra gente.”

“
Sí
, they work hard. So does Severo Fuentes. We all do. Maybe it’s wrong that I’ve come to love a place so far from where I was born, but now it’s impossible for me to imagine myself anywhere else.”

“But Ana, you and I—”

“I’m not leaving Hacienda los Gemelos, Elena.”

“Let me stay with you, then.”

Ana took Elena’s hand and removed her right glove. “Look how soft your hand is, how clean and unblemished. Now look at mine.” It was tanned, wrinkled; the nails were sturdy and ragged. “You don’t belong here,
mi cielo
, and I don’t want to belong out there.” She replaced her glove, tugged the lace frills tight over Elena’s wrist, and fastened the tiny pearl button. “Take care of Miguel so that doña Leonor doesn’t turn him against me.”

“She won’t do that.”

“She’ll try. I haven’t been a very good mother. You’ve noticed, and so has she. I’m not a bad person, Elena, but doña Leonor hates me. Miguel needs to know that someone loves me.”

“Ana, you’re tearing my heart in two—”

“And mine.” She stepped back and looked at Elena as if she were about to sketch her. “This is how I will remember you,
mi amor
, in my garden, surrounded by flowers.”

“We will see each other again, Ana, please say we will.”

“We will, but until then, write often. Let me know how Miguel is doing. Someday Hacienda los Gemelos will be his. Don’t let him forget it, or me.”

The rickety coach was loaded in the Los Gemelos
batey
before dawn exactly one month from the day it arrived. Inés carried the half-asleep Miguel and nestled him among the pillows and blankets she’d arranged on the seat.

“Adiós, papito.”
She kissed his forehead. “God bless you.”

Eugenio and Severo tugged on the ropes that tied the luggage to
the roof, while Leonor and Elena counted parcels and checked that their valises didn’t go under the tarp. When everything was ready, Leonor kissed the air near Ana’s cheeks and climbed into the coach as if she couldn’t wait to leave. Elena hugged Ana.

“I’ll write, but don’t worry about responding. I now see how busy you always are.”

Eugenio also embraced her, then stepped back and held her shoulders. “You let me know if there’s anything you need,” he said, “or anything we can do for you. Will you promise?”

“Yes, don Eugenio, thank you,” she said humbly. The retinue moved out of the
batey
, led by Severo.

Ana waved until the coach was out of sight before she climbed to the house. She blew out the candles on the wall sconces and opened the wooden shutters to the dawn. She could still faintly hear the creaking wheels, the horses and snorting mules that were taking the Argosos away.

As she opened the door to the back stairs, she stumbled on a parcel on the top step. In the soft light it appeared to be a small bundle of laundry inside a dirty cloth. She picked it up by the knot and almost dropped it when it moved.

“It can’t be,” Ana said aloud, but her hunch was confirmed when she untied the cloth and found a tightly swaddled baby inside. “Flora!” she called, and the maid ran from the kitchen. “Look! Someone left it on the steps.”

“Ugly baby.”

“Get some clean rags; these are filthy. Bring warm water.”

Ana knelt just inside the threshold and undid the swaddling. It was a girl with a pinched and narrow face. Her legs were bowed, too short for a torso that was twisted into an unnatural curve because of the already obvious hump over her right shoulder. Scratches around her upper back, neck, and cheeks showed that whoever delivered her struggled with an umbilical cord tightly wound around her short neck.

“Is miracle she’s alive,” Flora said when she looked closer. “She dead by the last bell,” she predicted, shaking her head. “Maybe better that way,
señora
.” Still, she rubbed the tiny hump for good luck.

“Who’s her mother?” Ana asked, ignoring Flora’s prognosis as she wiped the infant and changed her dirty rags for clean ones.

“No one I know. No,
señora
, no pregnant women here.”

“There are several pregnant women, Flora. Nena is pregnant; so is Damita’s daughter-in-law.”

“Nobody ready,” Flora said, “is what I mean.”

Other than the cry that let Ana know she was alive, the infant was quiet and strangely composed as she was changed.

“Poor little thing,” Ana said, stroking her head. “What pretty hair you have,” she cooed at the infant. “Oh, look, she’s vain.” She grinned at Flora, who watched her intently.

“Don Severo will be angry,
señora
,” Flora said.

Ana nestled the baby in her arms. “Go find Inés; she’s still nursing. This poor child probably has had nothing—”

“Is not my place, I know,
señora
, but maybe we wait for don Severo.”

“Flora, I asked you to get Inés.” Ana straightened to her full height, at least half a foot taller than her maid. “And burn those rags.”

Flora picked up the dirty scraps and went to fetch Inés, grumbling all the way.

The baby was not African and not Caucasian, but a creamy-skinned mixture of both races. Ana imagined she must belong to one of the families eking out a living on the periphery of the hacienda. In Spain, Ana had heard about women who, unable to take care of their children, left them on the steps of churches or on the thresholds of wealthy couples better able to raise them. Sor Magdalena, a nun at the Convento de las Buenas Madres, had been abandoned in the chapel as an infant and was taken in by the sisters to be raised among them. Almost always the abandoned children were girls.

Because of her size and handicaps, Ana thought this baby would probably survive only a few hours, as Flora predicted. She found her bottle of holy water and sprinkled some drops over the infant. As she made the sign of the cross over her forehead, she discarded the traditional names of saints and virgins.

“It is not a coincidence that you were left on my door the day I traded my son away. I have that, and much more besides, to answer for,
mamacita
. So long as you live, you’ll remind me, even when I try to forget, what I have done. For that reason, I name you Conciencia,” she whispered. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit.” She caressed the narrow, birdlike face with its too-close-together eyes. Conciencia’s face twisted into what Ana took to be a smile.