Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [143]
That night, Ana and Severo awoke to the sounds of screaming, dogs barking, fists pounding on the barracks walls calling for help. Severo ran down with his whip and revolver while Ana stood on the porch in her nightgown, a shawl over her shoulders. She didn’t have time to be scared. The voices called for water, agua, por favor, and others insisted that there were three sick men in the building.
Severo ordered that Luis, thirty-eight, Fernando, thirty, and Tomás, twenty-six, be carried to the infirmary bohío while Ana and Flora dressed quickly and brought their remedies, followed by a sleepy Conciencia. The men complained of cramps, couldn’t control their bowels, and had high fevers. Ana dripped strong infusions of sacabuche into their mouths, which didn’t relieve the diarrhea or slake their thirst. None survived the night.
By midmorning, Dina, twenty-three, and Azucena, a two-year-old orphan, were writhing in their hammocks. While Flora held her head up, Ana forced the bitter sacabuche infusion into Dina, then saw it almost immediately discharge from her. Next to her, the little girl bawled until her throat was hoarse. Conciencia took the baby into her childish arms, rocked her, and pressed her close, unable to do anything except keep her clean. The baby’s cries affected every woman within hearing, their breasts tingling with the need to suckle and comfort the dying child. Even Ana couldn’t loosen the lump in her throat and was enraged by her inability to ease the girl’s torment or that of any of her people.
Fela and Pabla, who stoically washed, combed, and shrouded Nena, Luis, Fernando, Tomás, and Dina, couldn’t stop crying through the washing, combing, and shrouding of tiny Azucena.
José hurriedly hammered together five more coffins, but he still found time to whittle a hoe for Fernando’s box, because the man was a talero, who dug and formed the rows where the sugar ratoons would be planted. For Luis, who was a cutter, José formed a machete. For Tomás, who was a smith, José fashioned a horseshoe. On Dina’s lid José carved a mortar and pestle because she roasted and ground the coffee beans and maize, and crushed, mashed and formed cocoa beans into a paste for chocolate. For Azucena’s coffin, José whittled a lily because the child was as sweet as the flower she was named for. All five carvings were rushed and not at all as intricate as José would have liked.
By the end of the third day, there had been six deaths in thirty-two hours. They didn’t know what was causing their symptoms. From one moment to the next, sufferers developed a high fever, stomach cramps, and explosive diarrhea, then died within hours, begging for water, their bodies shriveled and their eyes sunk into their heads. The worst part for Ana was that in spite of their suffering, they all seemed to be aware that they were dying, soiled and in excruciating pain.
“Help me, señora,” they cried. “Agua, señora, por favor. Don’t let me die, patrona,” they begged. But when given water, they had worse cramps, and the liquid leaked from their bodies.
Ana tried other remedies: guaco, yerbabuena, anamú, but none had the effect she hoped for and nuestra gente kept dying. The cries, stench, and anguish kept her sleepless over the first three days of disease and death. Finally, Severo insisted that she get some rest.
“Let Fela and Pabla take care of them,” he said.
“How can I sleep? If I close my eyes I still see them, in torment.”
She had not seen anyone die of cholera, but she knew enough about the disease to suspect that it was causing the deaths at Hacienda los Gemelos. She’d read that it was caused by miasma, foul-smelling, poisoned air. She ordered that the walls and floors of the barracks and the bohíos be thoroughly scrubbed with lavender and yerbabuena.
“And burn sage and juniper twigs in every corner.”
She hoped that these measures would cleanse the stuffy air produced by sweaty bodies in crowded spaces, with the added indignity of open buckets for necessities.
These precautions, however, had no effect. By the morning