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By Root 1159 0

Even though there was no one to see her, she looked around before she removed the debris over the pointy rock marking the spot and unearthed her treasure. She didn’t want her secret stash in the open now that the guava and annatto trees that shaded the spot had blown away. She walked into the woods until she reached a majestic ausubo, its lower branches at least three times her height above the top of her head. Its wrinkled trunk was so wide that Siña Damita was sure it was already there when this land belonged to the borinqueños. The ground was covered with thick, oval leaves that had turned brown and orange, covering small caves around the trunk. She found a hole under a curving root on the other side, buried the can, covered it with earth, bark, and leaves until it looked undisturbed. She prayed to Allah to protect her money and, just in case, put a curse on anyone who dared to take it. Whether it was the prayer or the curse, no one found it.

When she came from the forest, the sun had cut through the clouds and was directly overhead. Ordinarily, after their chores, her husband, two sons, and their wives and children spent Sunday afternoons like this one with her. With no help, Siña Damita would have to rebuild her bohío, or accept Ana’s offer to stay with Flora and Conciencia under the casona until her husband and sons could help.

Damita was forty-six, thirty of those years lived as a slave. When her owner manumitted her a decade earlier, she swore that she’d never sleep in a slave dwelling again. She had her little piece of land, not owned, but given for her use by don Severo in return for her services in the hacienda. After Artemio’s death, he questioned her and her family until he was convinced that Artemio had acted alone. He then interceded with the authorities so that she wouldn’t be punished. Don Severo was pitiless if you broke his rules, but he was not spiteful like doña Ana, who held grudges. Damita believed that people who held grudges couldn’t be trusted.

Damita removed the fallen branches from the same spot where she, Lucho, Poldo, and Jorge had built her bohío over a week of Sundays. With her bare hands now, because she had no tools or machete, she pounded thick branches into the yielding ground with a stone and used bejuco vines to tie walls and a roof with brush and palm leaves. The shelter came out to be a few inches shorter than she was, so she scooted inside, but it would be home until her husband and sons could build something better.

By the time she finished, the sun was setting. She was exhausted and had numerous cuts on her hands from the afternoon’s work, especially a nasty one from the ragged lid of the tin can that held her money. She had no fire, no water to drink or wash with, no food. Siña Damita lined up her belongings along the sides and, on her knees, prayed for Artemio, whom she imagined a free man in a paradise very much like her village in Africa. As she did every night, she also appealed to Allah to protect her enslaved husband, her living sons, her daughters-in-law, and her grandchildren and to safeguard every child she’d delivered into slavery.

The branches that made up her shelter weren’t strong enough to hold her hammock, so she wrapped herself inside it and fell asleep almost immediately on the still-moist earth. Sometime in the night, she startled awake gasping for breath; the bone between her breasts felt heavy. She was in utter darkness. The pressure on her chest spread to her shoulders, down her arms.

“¡Me muero!” she cried, but there was no one to hear her.

She called to Allah, closed her eyes, and never opened them again.

Three days later, nine-year-old Efraín was sent to fetch Siña Damita; another woman was in labor. The first thing he noticed was the lopsided, leaf-covered shack. Then the smell of decay reached him as he approached. Then he saw the flies. Because he was a curious boy, he looked inside. No one who smelled like that could be alive, but Efraín knew that el patrón would want to know for sure, so, covering his nose and mouth, he resisted the urge to