Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [130]
As Flora bathed her that night, Ana heard Severo pacing impatiently in the next room, where earlier that day Teo had moved his things. For her wedding night, she’d stitched a new pale green nightgown trimmed with ivory lace on the neckline, cuffs, and hem. As Flora dropped it over her head, it emitted the faint scent of roses and geraniums.
He made love like a woman, slow and attentive to the nuances of her pleasure. His hands were weather-beaten, but he had a light touch, and his rough fingertips against her skin were particularly erotic. He pushed the bedcovers to one side and loosened the ribbons on her nightgown with one hand while with the other he stroked, patted, drummed his fingers all over, around, and into her. No one, including Elena, had made her feel so much.
Ramón and Inocente had always extinguished the lights before intercourse, but Severo kept the candles flaming. She saw his body naked, the curly golden hair, the skin normally covered by clothes the shade of buttermilk. The first time she saw his penis erect, she averted her eyes. It was so aggressive, and yet so vulnerable, defenseless.
“No le tengas miedo,” he said. “I’ll not hurt you.”
It was warm and heavy in her hand, softer than she expected. Once she lost her timidity, she loved her power over him with a touch, a secret look, a flicker of tongue across her lips.
He was a self-possessed lover, and even in his ecstasy there was control.
“Why?” she asked the first night he spilled his seed on her belly.
“I want you to myself before you have a baby.”
The act felt incomplete. Certainly neither Ramón nor Inocente had ever done such a thing; she hadn’t even seen what left their bodies. She only felt a warm liquid oozing between her legs while Ramón or Inocente fell away from her, more worn out than their exertions deserved.
Night after night Ana and Severo studied each other’s bodies with the concentration of explorers memorizing a map.
“And this?” He kissed a healed scar along her left knee.
“I fell from a stool when helping my mother hang a curtain. And this one?” She touched a spot high under his right arm.
“A scuffle with boys.”
He sucked the smooth skin on her belly, shoulders, buttocks, the inside of her thighs, forming red welts that didn’t hurt but turned blue by morning. She did the same to him, and they branded each other with blue-black islands on pale skin.
In private, Severo called her mi reina, mi tesoro. Among the workers and campesinos, he treated her as before their marriage, with formal deference. It was customary that married couples use the informal tú when addressing each other in private but the polite usted in public. Severo, even after Ana told him to call her tú, refused.
“Tú is for my inferiors,” he said, “not for you, mi cielo.”
Ana found it hard to get used to, since if he called her usted she had to do the same to him, and it felt awkward to do so in their most intimate moments. It was the only wall he’d placed between them, one extra syllable of distance.
She was in the garden with Conciencia one morning, gathering manzanilla flowers for tea, when Ana was overcome by a feeling of well-being.
“This is happiness,” she heard herself think, and so was surprised when Conciencia turned to her. “¿Disculpe, señora?”
Ana laughed, aware that she had never caught herself laughing giddily in the middle of the day as she was now doing.
During their first years at Los Gemelos, heavy rains and strong winds had compromised the buildings, but the damage had been reparable. Ana and Severo knew that it was a matter of time before a powerful hurricane would hit the island, destroying the weaker structures, flooding the fields, leveling crops, and killing the animals raised for food and trade. Their fears were realized on the early morning of September 5, 1852, when a hurricane raced through Puerto Rico from east to west. For two days Ana and Severo huddled with their household slaves, Siña Damita, the women, and children in a large natural cave previously cleaned and equipped