Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [139]
“You’re fearless, my little one,” Ana often told her, and Conciencia smiled.
One morning, when Conciencia was six years old, Ana found her staring into the fire in the kitchen shack.
“What is it, niña? Did your food fall into the ashes?”
“The workers will get sick and die,” Conciencia said in a monotone, her eyes following the smoky spirals over the fogón. “They will burn.”
Ana looked at the fire as if it held a secret for her, but saw nothing but smoke. “You had a nightmare, niña, that’s all.” She cupped the girl’s cheek in her palm.
“I see it, señora,” Conciencia said. “They will get sick. A soldier will tell don Severo to burn them.”
“Where did you hear such a thing?”
“The fire, señora.”
Ana shuddered. Her foundling, who preferred collecting herbs to playing with other children, seemed to speak with secret knowledge. Ana knelt and took Conciencia in her arms. “You mustn’t say such things, niña, it’s heresy. Get on your knees and let’s say a Lord’s prayer.”
“But I see it, señora. They will get sick and soldiers—”
“Hush, Conciencia! Fire can’t speak. Now kneel and pray.”
Conciencia did as told, but Ana couldn’t help the dread that wrapped itself around her at the girl’s intense gaze and un-childlike certainty.
She was so preoccupied with Conciencia’s words that she didn’t see the laundress returning from the river with a bucket of water balanced on her head. As Ana stood to brush the dust from her skirt, Nena la Lavandera passed close enough that Ana bumped into her, making the young woman lose her balance. The bucket tipped and fell, splashing both of them with the water intended for the barracks.
“Ay, señora, disculpe, por favor, lo siento,” the laundress begged, backing to a safe distance and bowing her head.
“It was an accident, Nena,” Ana said as Conciencia used her skirt to wipe Ana’s dress dry.
Flora came running from the other side of the house. “Stupid girl, look what you done,” she yelled at Nena, leading Ana away from the wet circle at her feet, patting dry her arms and the front of her blouse with a kitchen rag.
“It was an accident,” Nena repeated Ana’s words.
“Pick up your bucket and go about your work,” Flora ordered, her higher status as Ana’s personal maid giving her some of the authority of her patrona.
La Lavandera grabbed the upended bucket and ran to refill it at the pond while Flora and Conciencia tended to Ana, who crossed herself and stared fearfully at the dark red stain blooming on the hard tamped clay of the batey.
———
Nena la Lavandera had spent her life near, on, in, and around water. Her earliest memory was of being strapped on her mother’s back as Mamá washed clothes in a river. She was born near the sea, on another sugar plantation where the bosses spoke a different language.
One night, when Nena was about ten, her mother woke and then shushed her as she led her through the loosened boards on the back wall of the barracks. They crept through the woods toward the rocky cove where boys went fishing for octopus.
Mamá and Nena joined other men and women scrambling over sharp rocks toward a raft that bumped this way and that while two men tried to hold it steady against the tide. After everyone had crawled onto the log-and-bamboo surface, the men swam alongside, pushing the raft away from the rocks until the wind caught the lone sail in the center. The others helped them on board, and they watched in awe as the black mound that was land and home faded into the horizon. Once on the open sea, Mamá hugged Nena closer and she fell asleep in her mother’s embrace.
She woke to Mamá’s arms crushing her against her bosom, and to the sound of “no, no, no,” as if one word could have an impact on what was happening. The sun was unfiltered by clouds in a sky so pale and bright that it hurt to look up, but around them the sea lifted the raft over high, rolling waves, then dropped it into deep troughs. The sail had vanished. Over Mamá’s shoulder Nena saw a woman clutching the air, frantic to stay aboard. In her need, she grabbed the closest body, that