Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [105]
Leonor was moved by how many people were waiting for them when they reached Los Gemelos just before dusk. The slaves, the foremen, the libertos and campesinos stood to form a path toward the open rancho, their heads bowed. Their labor had transformed the rancho in just over a day. Benches formed a center aisle leading to an altar featuring Ana’s antique crucifix. There were flowers everywhere, and vines crept around the legs of sawhorses for the coffin. Next to the rancho was a closed tent, and in front of it, Ana, Eugenio, and Elena waited with Padre Xavier. The women were dressed in simple black dresses that were obviously hastily made and didn’t quite fit. Elena and Ciriaca helped Leonor upstairs, to the room next to Ana’s, where, on the bed, a black dress like the ones Ana and Elena wore was waiting for her.
THE TRADE
In her room, the windows half shut, Ana cried until her eyes were swollen. She was twenty-three years old, a mother, and the wealth she’d brought into her marriage was invested in the hacienda. She’d sacrificed her fortune, youth, and looks to be a pioneer in a wilderness, had committed the sins of adultery and fornication without seeking penance. With Ramón’s death, it would all have been in vain. Hacienda los Gemelos belonged to don Eugenio, who, with both sons dead, was likely to sell it. She might be forced to return to San Juan or even to Spain—and worst of all, to be dependent on her in-laws or her parents, floating aimlessly through stifling rooms and indolent years of mourning as her son grew up.
When she saw the shrouded body, Ana couldn’t believe that Ramón was within the folds of the linen. Eugenio and Severo shouldered the poles holding the hammock and brought Ramón into the tent, followed by Padre Xavier. Ana was left under the sun, faced with the solemn hum of prayers. Flora took her elbow.
“Venga, mi señora,” she said. “They ready now. You will see him one more time.” Damita took her other elbow, and Ana was grateful to have them there because she was scared.
The ground was littered with wood chips and sawdust. José had built the mahogany coffin in just a few hours but couldn’t control his decorative impulses. Compared with his furniture, however, the vines and flowers around a crucifix on the top of the box were beautiful and subdued. The men had placed Ramón inside, still wrapped in linen. His clean face looked so much younger than twenty-nine that it erased her last image of him, bearded, aged, and tormented. Ana ran her fingertips across his smooth cheeks, his lips that once smiled so brightly, his eyelids. He was cold. Te perdono, she said silently, but the words sounded meaningless. Perdóname, she mouthed as she bent to kiss his forehead, and the smell of chocolate from the manteca de cacao was repugnant. She jerked back, and Flora and Siña Damita carried her away because she could no longer stand on her own.
Over the next days Ana moved as if within someone else’s life. She managed to get through the wake in the rancho, the prayers, and the condolences. The same mourners who’d come after Inocente’s death drove up in carriages or on horseback. These were the “charming people” Ramón liked so much, don so-and-so and doña fulana de tal wearing years-out-of-date European clothes and speaking in a babble of regional and national accents. They were subdued by the circumstances, but happy to break the isolation in their haciendas, even for a funeral. Men and women alike peered at her with unabashed interest. Ana felt less like a grieving widow and more like an exhibit in a museum. Faustina greeted every arrival with kisses on both cheeks for the women and squeezes of the hands for the men, then led them to the front of the rancho, where Ana sat with Eugenio, Leonor, and Elena before the coffin.
Padre Xavier lingered around the family. He tried to talk Ana into burying Ram