Conquistadora (18 page)

Siña Damita was a brisk, large woman with big hands and feet that seemed perfectly designed to hold up her wide-hipped broad-shouldered body. Like Flora, she was born in Africa, but from a Mandinka clan, and spoke Spanish with a strong accent in a low, masculine voice. Unlike the other Africans, who were trained not to look at whites directly, Damita had an unwavering gaze. Her first owner had freed her three years earlier, but not her husband and three sons. When Severo bought them, Damita came to live in a
bohío
on the boundary of the plantation so that she could be closer to her husband and sons.

“I deliver black babies, white babies, spotted babies if they come
that way,” the
partera
said. “Your
enana
thinks I don’t deliver
blancos
, but I do. In the
finca
where I work before, no doctor. All the women send for me.
Blancos, negros, pardos
, they send for me.” She poked herself in the chest for emphasis.

Ana was surprised to hear Flora referred to as her dwarf, but by now she was used to the prejudices of the slaves who constantly sought ways to distinguish themselves from one another. The lighter skinned were chosen as
esclavos domésticos
and lorded it over the
esclavos de tala
, darker and destined for the fields. Skilled workers like José, the carpenter, and Marta, the cook, cost more, and therefore had higher status. Ana once heard Flora and Marta discussing the price of each of six workers Severo led into the
batey
a day earlier. Slaves knew their financial worth and compared themselves to others based on what the owners were willing to pay for them.

Siña Damita wiped her hands on her sun-bleached, starched apron. “I deliver twins, like your husband and his brother,” she said. “Healthy born both, but one died at four. Drowned,” she added. “Not my fault. The other, he drive the carts. Strong kid.”

Her confidence reassured Ana, and four months later, just after midnight on September 29, 1845, it was Siña Damita’s strong hands that held up the wrinkled, red creature that had kept Ana in painful labor for thirty-six hours. “A boy,” Siña Damita announced with a grin. “A boy.”

When Ramón first held the infant and said,
“Dios te bendiga, Miguel, hijo mío,”
Inocente, who was standing on the other side of the bed, scowled. When his turn came to hold the child, Inocente examined every wrinkle and fold, every hair, every paper-thin nail, and his frown grew deeper. He returned Miguel to Ana’s arms and shuffled out, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed. Ramón followed him, and seconds later Ana heard them in the next room, speaking in low, urgent voices. In the morning, she asked Ramón if Inocente was all right.

“He’s fine,” Ramón said, too quickly.

A newly delivered woman had to observe the
cuarentena
, the forty days and forty nights during which she was to rest and get to know her baby. Sexual relations were forbidden during her quarantine.
The day Ana’s labor pains began, a second
hamaca
was strung next to Inocente’s, so now the brothers shared a room.

Ana heard them talking late into the night, their voices rising and falling in pleading, sometimes angry cadences. When she asked what they were discussing, however, they said it was business. They were about to buy a
finca
contiguous to Los Gemelos.

“It has a river along its northern boundary,” Ramón said.

“We rode the land. We can build irrigation canals,” Inocente explained, “from the river into the fields.”

“There’s also another
finca
with ten slaves for sale, east of us,” Ramón added. “The boundary abuts the new road to Guares, the closest town with a deep port. That will make it easier for us to get our product to market.”

Ana might be in quarantine, but she was not insensible.

“Spending money to buy land seems reckless when we’re twenty slaves short for the
cuerdas
already planted and need at least another five bullocks and carts.”

“We’re aware of that,” Ramón said, “but land is the only thing that doesn’t grow on this island.” He grinned, pleased with his cleverness, but Ana remembered the same phrase used by her neighbor Faustina de Morales.

She didn’t smile back. She turned to Inocente, hoping that he’d see her side of the argument. “Buying land will be costly. Don’t forget that we have to repair the boiling house and purgery—”

“If we don’t buy what’s available along the borders of Los Gemelos,” Inocente said, “it will cost more later. People hold on to their land, but these sellers absolutely need the money, and each property can be bought at an attractive price.”

“We don’t have endless resources,” Ana insisted. “We’ve spent most of the cash we brought with us, including my dowry.”

“Don’t worry,” Ramón said. “Inocente and I know what we’re doing. It will all turn out well at the end.” A week later, they bought both parcels, adding another hundred
cuerdas
to the hacienda as well as four women and six children.

“We need strong men,” Ana complained, “not more women and children.”

“The owner had already sold the four husbands away,” Ramón said.

Ramón took Miguel into his arms. “Hacienda los Gemelos is for you,” he said to the infant. “It is for you that your
mamá
and your uncle and I work so hard. It is for you,
hijo mío
.”

As she watched him kiss and caress the child, Ana asked herself why Ramón assumed Miguel was his son. She had no way of knowing when Miguel was conceived because the brothers were diligent about whose turn it was to sleep with her. Maybe it didn’t matter to them so long as there was an Argoso son to carry their name into the next generation. Ramón had registered the baby at the Guares church using both their names and the name of the saint on whose feast day he was born: Ramón Miguel Inocente Argoso Larragoity Mendoza Cubillas.

Doña Leonor wrote asking about every aspect of Miguel’s development. “We’d like to come for a visit. We’re anxious to hold him in our arms,” her first, excited letter read after the news.

“Absolutely not.” Inocente slapped the pages on the table.

“But he’s their first grandson,” Ramón argued. “Of course they’d want to see him.”

“They shouldn’t come here until—” Inocente paused, wrestling for a good reason. “Until we live more comfortably,” he finally said.

Ramón and Inocente looked at each other, communicating silently. Ramón seemed about to disagree. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, giving in.

As ever, Ana drafted their responses, but she found it harder each time to come up with another excuse the more doña Leonor insisted that nothing else mattered; all she cared about was seeing her grandson.

After Miguel was born, Ramón and Inocente talked as they always did—finishing each other’s sentences, drawing plans in the air with their fingers—but Ana could tell something was different. Before the baby was born, no matter whom they were addressing, Ramón and Inocente looked at each other when they talked, as if the other twin were the only person in the room who mattered. Now the tension between them was visible, yet they smiled and joked and talked like always. If she looked them too long in the eyes, however, they shifted their gazes, as if hiding something.

During Ana’s quarantine, Flora slept in a hammock next to her bed so that she could help with the baby. Miguel rooted at her breast, but Ana couldn’t make enough milk. He howled constantly from
hunger and frustration. Inés, the carpenter’s wife, was weaning their youngest son, so she was brought in to nurse Miguel. The house that Ana used to have to herself most of the day while the men were away was now a hive of comings and goings, with Flora, Inés, and Damita constantly around her and the infant. She was rarely alone with Ramón or Inocente, and Severo Fuentes never came around, as if her quarantine meant she was infectious.

A couple of weeks after the beginning of her
cuarentena
, Inocente moved from the
casona
. There was a good enough house for him at the recently purchased
finca
, he said. He took his clothes and toiletries, and there were days when Ana didn’t see him, although Ramón said that they were together all day long. In order to free a room for Miguel and the wet nurse, Ramón said he’d take the hacienda books and ledgers from the study to the
finca
.

“But it’s so far from the house,” she complained. “It’s easier for me to do the work here.”

“Inocente and I feel competent to do that now,” he said, “and Severo will help us.”

“Severo? Is it wise for the
mayordomo
to know the intimate details of our business?”

“He knows our situation better than we do,” he answered.

“Only his side of it, Ramón. Why should he know, for example, how much money we have or don’t have?”

“It’s his job as the manager, Ana. Let him do it. You have enough to do with the baby.”

“I have plenty of help.…”

“This is what Inocente and I decided,” he said, hardening his jaw. “This is a man’s job.…”

“Since when—” She bit her tongue, about to tell him that she’d done the work with no complaints or mistakes for months.

“We will manage it now,” he repeated.

His new assertiveness made her wonder whether she’d underestimated him. Maybe now that he was a father, he might focus on his responsibilities. But it worried her that he didn’t consult her about hacienda business.

Over the next weeks, Ramón, Inocente, and Severo worked late into the night, and sometimes Ramón didn’t return to the
casona
until the next morning to change his clothes.

Ana looked forward to resuming sex, not so much because it was
satisfying for her, but because Ramón and Inocente had taken her
cuarentena
too seriously and spent entire days away from her.

On the forty-first night, Flora bathed her with warm water scented with crushed geranium petals. She seemed to be as excited about the coming night as Ana. She kept smiling, as if titillated by what Ana and Ramón were about to do.

When he came to bed, Ana noticed a difference in his lovemaking. She expected him to be as impatient as usual. He was, but he was even more distracted and determined to get things over with as quickly as possible. As usual, he rolled over and fell asleep, leaving her raging.

Ramón and Inocente no longer took turns with Ana. Inocente came for some meals and sat on the porch smoking and talking about hacienda business, sometimes with Severo, sometimes not. After the lights-out bell for the slaves, Flora bathed Ana. Ramón knew Ana was ready when Flora asked if there was anything else she could do for him. He had no other request. He joined Ana in bed and sometimes made love to her, sometimes not. But Inocente no longer walked through her bedroom door, and she thought he was avoiding her.

Miguel spent most of his day with Inés, hungrily sucking at her breasts. When he was brought to Ana, Inés and Flora stood nearby as if afraid she’d drop the infant. Siña Damita came to see him whenever she was with her family in Los Gemelos.

“Hold him like this,
señora
,” Damita instructed. “Cradle little head so not hang in the air.”

Ana held her son, enjoying the warmth of his body against hers, but she soon returned him to Damita, Inés, or Flora. He was tiny and helpless, and she didn’t know what to do with him.

“He likes if you sing,
señora
,” Flora suggested. She and Inés sang constantly to the child. They also cooed, smiled, made clicking noises with their tongues to make him laugh. Ana couldn’t bring herself to do that, and felt undignified twisting her features for Miguel’s benefit. His big eyes sought hers, but she was uncomfortable staring back, as if he knew something about her that she didn’t know about herself.

“I haven’t spent much time around babies,” she said as she returned Miguel to Flora’s arms. Ana was sure the maid thought she was a bad mother.

Her pregnancy hadn’t been particularly difficult, but she thought she was unlike other mothers, at least the ones around her. The women of the hacienda, even knowing that their children would be slaves, frequently caressed their growing bellies as if engirdling treasure. They carried their babies in cloth slings close to their chests or, as they were older, on their backs, as if unwilling to let them go into the world. Watching them, Ana expected that she, too, would love her child wholeheartedly, that his presence would nourish the hunger for affection she’d carried from childhood. But Miguel didn’t fill that emptiness. She told herself that her own unaffectionate parents impaired her, had cursed her with the inability to love, even toward flesh of her flesh. But it seemed too easy to blame her parents. Holding him in her arms, his little arms flailing toward her, she felt not pangs of love but qualms of doubt. Who—Ramón or Inocente—was his father?

Flora, Inés, and Siña Damita took over caring for Miguel, except for the few minutes she spent with him a couple of times a day. Sometimes Ana felt guilty for not paying more attention to him, but she could see that he was thriving. I was raised by maids and servants, she thought, and I turned out fine. It was true that she was lonely, but Miguel was lucky. There were several babies and toddlers on the hacienda, so he wouldn’t lack for companions. Ramón and Inocente talked about white families with children, including Luis and Faustina with their two boys, but Ana was too busy to go visiting or to have guests. She might have to do that now so that Miguel would meet other children like him. The idea of organizing her life around his needs rankled. She was resentful of his presence, as if Miguel had sprung into her life to make things harder.

With one year’s experience behind them, the 1846
zafra
was more successful than the first, although they were short of their financial projections. The new fields wouldn’t be ready for another season, but more land was being cleared for planting. The wind- and animal-powered
trapiche
was in need of a major overhaul. The
grinders were worn and often needed on-the-spot repair, interrupting the processing. Severo recommended steam-powered crushers, but the machinery was costly to purchase, transport, and install, in addition to the time required to train workers on the new equipment.