Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [104]
None of what he did, Leonor knew, could save her son. Doctor Vieira could not reverse the wheezing of lungs that couldn’t take in enough air. Ramón gasped, released a long exhalation; his hand in hers relaxed and his features slackened. Somewhere outside a rooster crowed and dogs barked. Leonor wrapped her arms around her son, pressed her face to his chest, and sobbed. Her husband embraced her from behind, and his tears burned into her shoulder.
Dr. Vieira asked that Leonor leave while he prepared the body, but she wouldn’t move from Ramón’s side.
“There’s nothing more you can do for him, Dr. Vieira,” she said with more aplomb than she felt. “This is now women’s work.” Ciriaca and Bombón stood by her, and the doctor, faced with their determination, withdrew, and moments later he and his assistant rode out of the batey as the morning began to warm.
The three women rocked Ramón from one side of the bed to the other as they washed the blood, dirt, and grime that pain made impossible to wipe when he was alive. They washed his hair and trimmed it neatly around his face, shaved him again so that his cheeks were smooth, even if bruises and scratches marred his features. They clipped his nails and rubbed manteca de cacao over his body. They changed the soiled bedcovers and wrapped him in a linen shroud from a sheet that Faustina brought them. She thoughtfully removed the festive tatting along the borders but could do nothing about the embroidered initials under the Morales crest.
“Luis sent a messenger to Los Gemelos, to notify your daughter-in-law,” she said. “We sent for Padre Xavier last night, but he’s attending another family on the other side of town. He’ll be here later today.”
Leonor had no idea when Ramón last confessed or took the Eucharist, but imagined it was the day before they set sail from San Juan, over four years earlier. He’d be buried far from his brother, from his homeland, from the family plot in the churchyard of their hometown of Villamartín in northwestern Cádiz province. Eugenio’s and Leonor’s ancestors were buried there, a hundred yards from one another on the same side of a tree-lined path. Ramón and Inocente would be the first of their clans to be scattered across the sea. Bombón covered Ramón’s head with the shroud. And as Ciriaca held her, Leonor let the full weight of her grief moisten the maid’s solid bosom, and her strong arms support her as Ciriaca led her away from the room decorated with the hopes and dreams of the Moraleses’ little boy, even as her own boy, aged before his time and broken, lay still and cold on the narrow bed.
For the second time in just over a week, Leonor was on her way down the mountain from Finca San Bernabé to the flatlands spiked with cane. She was too small for both Faustina’s mare and her riding skirt. On horseback, the slopes to the unseen bottoms were even more frightening than they looked from the closed coach. The surefooted mare stepped over the pebbled paths, away from the slippery edges. Leonor tried not to, but she couldn’t help looking, imagining Ramón tumbling down an embankment like the ones they passed, his body bouncing against sharp rocks and boulders into the depths.
Two men from Hacienda los Gemelos carried Ramón inside a hammock down the hill. They could maneuver more easily and quickly than riders, so they waited at the bottom of the hill.
Eugenio had gone ahead to make sure everyone was ready to receive them at Los Gemelos, but Severo Fuentes rode nearby. Once he’d ascertained that Leonor was a good rider, he left space between them, often riding ahead to cut low-hanging branches with one swift whack of his machete. Faustina insisted that Ciriaca accompany Leonor to Los Gemelos. The maid rode a mule uneasily. Raised as a domestic servant, she wasn’t used to being in the uncontrollable environment of the campo. Were the