Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [182]
Efraín was twenty and, like his father, José, his brother, Indio, his stepmother, Lola, and his wife, Pepita, Efraín would rather crawl on hands and knees over ankle-deep shit before giving don Severo cause to unfurl the terrible whip. It surprised Jacobo, then, that Efraín would speak so openly.
“We have a libertador right here on this island,” Jacobo said. “Dr. Betances, and he’s not across an ocean.”
“I heard you say a name you’re not supposed to mention,” called Meri, who was walking behind with her sister Gloria, both of them carrying baskets full of mangoes. Meri’s left arm, scarred from the burns, had healed bent at the elbow.
“You’re not supposed to be listening to adult conversations,” Efraín called back.
Jacobo and Efraín stopped under a tree to change the load from their right to their left shoulders.
“When I was brought to these islands,” Jacobo said, “I heard about the first libertador, Simón Bolívar, who fought the españoles and won independence for his people in countries to the south. He sailed here to invade Puerto Rico to free the slaves.”
“I’ve heard about him,” Efraín said.
“The españoles found out about it before he could start a rebellion,” Jacobo said.
“You’re not supposed to say those words, either,” Meri said.
“If we get in trouble,” Efraín warned her, “we know it was you who told.”
“She’s not saying anything,” Gloria said, “but you shouldn’t be talking like that. You never know who’s listening around here.”
Jacobo shifted his load again and fell silent; he didn’t have to tell the story. Everyone had heard it. After news reached them that Bolívar was trying to land on Vieques in 1816, east of Puerto Rico, many took to the sea. Slaves directed flimsy rafts that slammed against angry waves, or were eaten by sharks, or drowned, or were caught by pirates and sold in other lands.
Now, forty-seven years later, another libertador, from the north this time, Abraham Lincoln, had freed the slaves in his country, and the men and women locked in the barracks and bohíos of every hacienda and farm in Puerto Rico were fantasizing about imminent liberty. Jacobo wouldn’t race into the sea in a makeshift raft to be eaten by sharks, and in any case, he was too old to believe he could brave an ocean. But he would run into the mountains, even if chased with hounds at his heels, and would hide and live in bat-infested caves if he had to. He would fight on this land that had swallowed his name, had soaked his sweat and blood, had consumed his beloved wife, his adored children. He’d fight to the death if he had to, because there was nothing left for him but what he had when he started so many harvests ago. Freedom.
SEGUNDO
From her perch in El Destino, Ana had learned the landscape below as intimately as the curves and hollows of her own body. Over the seven years since they’d moved up the hill, the canebrakes, meadows, roads, paths, the treetops in the groves and forested slopes had become so familiar that she marked the growth of the plantation, the activity in the ingenio, the hamlets sprouting up along the boundaries, the expansion of the town around the harbor, and the passing of the seasons by the changes in the colors and shapes of the countryside.
Severo had moved the workshop, the pottery, the dovecotes, and ordered new barracks and bohíos for the old, crippled, and maimed who made up the labor force in Ana’s gardens and orchards at El Destino. The path was widened to make it easier to move up and down the hill to the fields of Hacienda los Gemelos and Ingenio Diana.
Ana now focused the lens of her telescope and saw Efraín and Jacobo climbing toward the workshop, their backs bent under lengths of lumber. They disappeared under the trees and emerged farther up, having transferred their loads to their opposite shoulders. Behind them came Gloria and Meri carrying baskets. Even from here, Ana could tell Meri was chattering. The girl was so talkative that the others called her La Lorita, Little Parrot. She was in constant pain from her scars and held a