The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (44 page)

WOMAN IN THE SAND: (
Beat
.) I read your blood. When blood spills a certain way, it leaves a story. (JESUSITA
moans
. MARIA
cries out as she did last night
.)

JESUSITA: I had a hard labor 'cause I was scared. (JESUSITA
writhes with labor pains.
JESUSITA
cries out in a final push for the birth of a baby.
WOMAN IN THE SAND
motions to stop the crying. It stops dead
.)

BLACKOUT

Evangeline Blanco

First Prize: Novel

When he began his 1890s excursions, heart-stopping blackness covered the mountains of the Central Cordillera on crescent moon nights. To carry out his master plan of helping his downtrodden compatriots, Dr. Rodríguez made an annual three-month trip throughout Puerto Rico giving free treatment to the poor. His travels also allowed him to keep track of the growing legion of his offspring and to look for children with particular attributes to lead an army of revolutionaries. At night his pupils dilated in his widened eyes to no avail. Blinded, he felt unanchored, as if he floated without direction in an inky limbo of threatening sounds and earthy scents. The cool, dark void disoriented his mind and confused his senses so that wind rushing through coconut palms sounded like drops of fanciful rain. He attached cowbells to mules loaded down with his medical supplies, rode slowly through narrow mountain passes, and held a lantern high in his black right hand. It shed light only a few feet in front of his donkey, and many times his uncanny instincts alone—inherited from some unknown ancestor—tingled with fear and danger, and made him halt to save himself and his animals from plummeting down dark ravines that bordered dirt roads. Giant ferns, bamboo trees, and other luxuriant foliage grew up the sides of steep inclines and gave bottomless drop-offs the treacherous illusion of gradual down slopes.

In the dark, buzzing flies sounded like mosquitoes, squawking parrots like dangerous birds ready to swoop and attack. In the croaking of tree frogs he imagined that bandits signaled each other, and in the gurgle of streams he heard footsteps. Calming his heartbeat with his own voice and fearful the Spanish militia might shoot him with their rifles for the revolutionary he was, the black doctor shouted his mission.

“Free treatment for the poor! Medicine for the sick!”

Gradually he relied on his lantern, the clang of the cowbells, and the clop, clop of his donkey to identify and protect him from attack by bandits,
grateful that the sting of iodine on an open cut might save their fingers or hands, but mainly to attract the peasants who awaited his care and who called to him.

“Over here, Dr. Rodríguez. Watch your left side. Rainfall has swollen the stream.”

His lip curled at the lisp of their Spanish accents as it did at his inability to segregate the various noises of the mountains. When he could discern the direction of the caller, Rodríguez drove his tired, stumbling animals toward the voice and asked, “What's the problem here?”

“My child has a fever,” some answered.

Children were his favorite patients. Redeeming an otherwise unproductive trip was the saving of a child's life, or the grateful smile that rewarded his soothing the hot itch of chicken pox with camphor. The comfort shining through their feverish eyes filled him with a joy that lifted his usual gloom.

One or two of his patients yelled, “My wife bleeds too much.” In some of those cases he looked around the small, shabby dwelling with its central dining table, which had held food for meager meals, fabric for sewing dresses, patterns cut from plain brown paper, as well as, on sad occasions, the overripe corpse of a beloved child, skin turned magenta in death. Parents, loathe to bury the lost child, often waited too long, until the tiny body burst forth its internal liquids. Then, fearing unsanitary surfaces, Rodríguez had little choice except to set up a makeshift clinic with tent poles and sheets outside in the open air, pray it would not rain, operate to remove tumors or cancerous intestines, and pray again that he have no further use for his now bloody and contaminated surgical instruments until his next trip. Sometimes he arrived too late after the woman, anxious for the well-being of her needy family, continued to work without complaining, and lost so much blood that she was beyond saving. On those occasions his tongue tasted the rotted fruit of defeat, which soured his entire rounds.

Often, some of his patients hung their heads in shame for troubling him with mundane matters and said, “My chickens are dying.” When this happened, he treated those too without protest or judgment because he knew it meant the difference between life and slow starvation.

This night he heard a squeaky, apologetic voice.

“My hand hurts.”

In the paltry arc of his lantern, Dr. Rodríguez stared at a short, stick-thin peasant wearing ragged pants shrunken to mid-shin, looked at the straw-covered roof of his single-room hut resting on stilts, and glanced around for one of the barefoot children of the household.

While he led his mules to the front of the home, dismounted, and climbed the steps to enter, the family lit candles so he could see to examine them. Inside the hut, he spoke only to the husband without glancing at his wife, a woman Rodríguez knew too well.

“Was this an accident or a knife fight?” he asked the peasant, Miguel, who unwrapped a ragged, blood-stained cloth from his left hand.

“Accident. Cutting coconuts with my machete.”

“Had you been drinking?”

Miguel hesitated as his eyes flew to those of his wife. “Just a little,” he replied.

“I'll teach
that
child,” he said, pointing to this household's mulatto.

Rubbing his eyes, this particular sleepy boy, with skin a deeply burnished copper and hair standing upright, approached haltingly.

“Here I am,” he said, standing barefoot.

“Pay attention,” the doctor commanded. “We have to help your father become well.”

“What needs to be done?” the wife asked, smiling. She walked toward him in her nightgown without an effort to cover herself and brushed her fingers on his arm.

Rodríguez stared stonily at her brazen behavior in front of her husband for a half-minute without replying until her mouth opened in mystification over his rudeness. Then he turned to her injured husband who had been watching the exchange so intently he sat as if forgetting his pain.

“Have your son bring me boiled water if he knows how.”

Year after year his tactics quieted the families, protected unfaithful wives, as their mates—confused by the formal manners of the black doctor—doubted the truth of nasty rumors and regretted any suspicions they harbored against their wives and against Rodríguez.

Between the boy's running trips to gather wood, start a fire, and fill a pot with stream water, Rodríguez barked orders at him.

“Faster! You're too slow and sloppy. Bring me some moonshine. Here, bring it closer. Stop your laziness.”

Close to tears, the harried boy watched Rodríguez as he poured mountainmade white lightning on a red, open gash splitting his father's left palm.

“I have no iodine left. See what I'm doing?”

“Wasting good moonshine?”

“Wrong!” Both father and son startled at the doctor's forceful voice. “Sterilization is all it's good for. Drink it and you might as well poison yourself and throw yourself off a cliff. This rotgut blinds you and makes you stupid.” Rodríguez glanced at Miguel then back at the boy, “Understand?”

“Sí, señor.”

“Boy, go wash your filthy hands,” Rodríguez said. “Don't you know enough to keep yourself clean?”

Rodríguez knew such comments further confused the men of the house. They reasoned it made sense for the doctor to dote over a child that was his instead of treating the boy or girl like a trained insect. He ventured that those
thoughts filled many a humble stepfather with an urge to protect the child who was obviously not his. That, along with their fervent desire to believe in their wives' fidelity, led white men to accept the possibility that a mulatto child could really be theirs.

Supervising, he watched the boy wash his father's injury with soap and rinse thoroughly with boiled water. He took over with another application of moonshine before stitching the wound with a large needle and thick black thread. Miguel whimpered and shook. Then his son applied a salve and a bandage, as he was instructed.

“Now, open your palm and look at these two white powders. See the difference?”

The boy nodded. “One is thinner than the other.”

“Show me how much of each you can pinch with your thumb and index finger.” The boy did so. “Good. This one is for pain. With boiled water allowed to cool, give some to your father every five hours. This other is quinine for fever. No matter how hungry you feel, you must not eat any or you will become very sick. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you in school?”

“My son is a good boy,” Miguel said, with an edge creeping into his voice.

“I know he is. But good is not enough. We have to be smart and fast, very fast.”

“He is.”

Noting the child's obvious surprise at his father's support, Rodríguez smiled and ignored both as he repacked his tools and powders, closed his medical bag, and approached the doorway.

“I'll try to return,” he said over his shoulder, “in a couple of days to check on the healing. Let me give your son a few last instructions.”

Shaking, the boy followed him into the darkness outside.

Hiding behind his mules from the prying eyes of the child's parents, Rodríguez whispered, “How do your brothers and sisters treat you?”

The boy lowered his head and did not answer.

“I'll return to check if you're learning to read and write. The Spanish will never allow a mulatto like you to enjoy your life if you're ignorant. When Puerto Rico is free of them, you can do whatever you like, as I do, but only if you have an education. Will you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't tell your family because they're white and will not understand.” He paused, heartbroken that his parents did not know how to handle the boy's hair. “Have your mother cut your hair very close to your scalp instead of brushing it up like that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rodríguez allowed the boy to go back home, confident that it never occurred to the children's ignorant fathers, not familiar with the intricacies of manipulation, that he did not always scold the children, that in his own way he loved them because he had great plans for them.

Spending blinding, sunny days in the open burned his brown skin to almost charcoal. During chilly nights along the mountain roads he followed, biting winds stung his sensitized face and hands. Dr. Rodríguez ground his teeth in frustration, not finding the children he sought.

Men who labored in fields for twelve-hour days and worried about their livelihood the rest of the time, neglected the niceties women craved, and their wives, starved of nourishment for their emotions as well as their bodies, turned to a solicitous, educated man willing to listen, to pet them, and to feed their inner hunger.

He carefully allowed himself to be approached only by milk-white women for his “little mothers” as he called them. The doctor encountered them everywhere on the island, in the cities among the educated and in the hills among the illiterate, young and old, rich and poor. He thought them all flirtatious and greedy and took advantage of their willingness to claw for attention, affection, and sexual fulfillment to feed their vanity and petty carnal needs at the expense of their hard-working husbands. If not him, he felt sure, it would be some other man, perhaps one of the many Puerto Ricans forced to become migrants in their own country by constantly moving between sugarcane fields and coffee and tobacco plantations in their search for work or food. The women fit his agenda although he hated them because they reminded him of two Spanish sisters, his adoptive “aunts.”

In his memory it began with his beloved Tata, the chubby housemaid who took time from her kitchen chores to brush fleshy lips on his forehead and call him
negrito lindo
, an endearment the two “aunts” never used. That, or any other. Tata taught him to play a game called the wheel. He jumped up to grab the waist of her apron while she held it fast and twirled around and around, lifting him off his feet causing him to fly in a circle. Josefa, the eldest of his adoptive “aunts,” pursed her thin lips at the laughter in the kitchen, stood in the doorway, and watched, arms crossed, until her disapproval silenced them.

“Go to your aunt now,” Tata said, almost whispering. “I have scrubbing to do and will talk to you later.”

“No, you will not,” Josefa commanded. “And you stay, boy. One is never too young to learn so there will be no further mischief in the future.” Josefa placed him in front of herself by holding his shoulders and turning him around to face Tata. “We bought him and he belongs to us, not to you. We told you when he first arrived that you were to teach him to take over your duties if you wanted your freedom. Did you not Understand?”

“Doña Pepa, he is still too young to do so much work. The house is so big I can hardly do it all myself.”

“That's because you spend too much time playing with him. Do not think we will easily grant you permission to marry.”

“I'll help, Tata,” he said, worried about the fear demonstrated on his friend's face.

Josefa punched him. The force of the blow on his cheek swiveled his small face and neck so violently to the left he thought himself unable to move his head. Numbed with pain, his eyes watered, but he did not cry. In shock, he stared, open-mouthed.