Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [122]
“But Siña Ciriaca is so old!” Miguel argued.
“Not her.” Luis José laughed. “Señorita Elena!”
“She’s not my nana,” he protested, but before he could continue, don Simón walked in with the last straggler and rapped his knuckles on the desk.
“Buenos días, jóvenes.” Before him was a class of fifteen mostly well-behaved boys sent to him for their elementary education. He would have each for six years until they graduated to the Catholic boys’ academy or were sent to finish their education in Europe. “It’s good to have you back.” He nodded to the familiar faces. “Welcome,” he said to Miguel, the only new student. “Andrés,” he said to the bushy eyebrows, “please lead us in the Lord’s prayer.”
Everyone stood. Miguel watched don Simón. He was so thin that his clothes moved on their own. His hair was the color of a dry palm frond, and large, sad, light brown eyes bulged from under curved brows. The end of his long nose dipped over a thick mustache that curled up at the ends, separated from a golden, short beard that covered his chin. His voice was deep and silvery, and he didn’t have to raise it for it to carry to the back of the room.
Miguel wondered if don Simón was handsome, and if it was true that he was in love with Elena. The way they blushed and smiled convinced him that Andrés was probably right. Still, Miguel couldn’t understand why being poor should keep them from marrying. Many people were poor. Even the slaves, who didn’t have much, married one another.
He remembered when Coral married Poldo, Siña Damita’s son. Coral wore a blue turban and decorated it with flamboyán blossoms. Poldo wore a white shirt over his washed and pressed work pants. He walked to the women’s cuartel and sang to her while Coral stood on the threshold surrounded by the other women, smiling and poking each other with their elbows. Poldo and Coral walked hand in hand to the rancho, with the others behind them clapping, singing, and dancing. The celebration lasted until the bell rang for everyone to go to sleep. Surely, thought Miguel, if slaves could get married and have a party afterward, Elena and don Simón should be able to do the same.
Simón taught reading, writing, and arithmetic in what was once the parlor of his home, but rudimentary science took place in the courtyard, with its potted shrubs and flowering plants. Presiding over the science lessons was a bad-tempered parrot who terrorized the chirping birds (and the scholars) with human-sounding screeches. Along one wall, jars held the preserved remains of a piglet, a couple of frogs, three snakes, and a monkey, which were the source of curious dread for the boys. At least a couple of times a day, Kiki, his dog, escaped from the upper floor to visit his master and to be petted by the boys’ eager hands.
The Fernández Leales were a family of means when they first arrived in Puerto Rico, but their fortune was swiftly lost by the dissolute habits of its patriarch, murdered over a gaming table. Upon his father’s death, Simón abandoned his medical studies in Madrid and turned his home into a school to support himself and his ailing mother.
He was pleased to have Miguel as his student because it gave him an opportunity to see Elena every day, at least until the boy was allowed to walk to and from school by himself. Being near her was one of the few pleasures in his lonely and unhappy life. Besides his pupils and his mother, his society consisted of other young men of high minds who congregated in the back room of don Benito’s drugstore for hours of political discussions. Night after night they argued and wrote broadsheets calling for the emancipation of slaves and greater autonomy for Puerto Rico that they read to one another because it was illegal to post them for public viewing. The struggles for independence by Haiti from France, Santo Domingo from Spain, and, in 1844, Santo Domingo from Haiti to create the Dominican Republic had made Puerto Rican liberals determined to free Puerto Rico’s slaves without