Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [46]
“It’s inappropriate,” Ramón said. “You’d have to be out with them, organizing them—”
“—training them, giving orders,” Inocente continued.
“I don’t see how that’s different from what I do now, except that there will be more of them.”
“Right now you deal with the household slaves like Flora, Teo, and Marta. They know what to do. The field workers aren’t used to orders from a lady.”
“Are you worried that I’ll be calling for smelling salts if they say or do something vulgar?”
The brothers now talked so fast that it was hard for Ana to distinguish which one said what.
“You’re already doing enough with the household and ledgers.”
“That’s the kind of thing women do well.”
“It’s not right for you to be out in the campo ordering slaves.”
“What will you do if you have to punish one of them?”
She hadn’t thought about that. Would she discipline the old, the crippled, the children she was taking on as her responsibility? She remembered Jesusa slapping her servants, then being shocked that they quit their jobs. “Spain should have never abolished slavery,” she complained, and Ana hated that about her mother, that longing to dominate others. Ana cheered when the servants left, and wished she could also run from her parents’ overweening sense of entitlement. But she now wondered if it was in her blood. Subjugating the native people was the first thing the conquistadores did, always by force, always by violence.
She was now in the position Jesusa had wished for: one of undisputed power over others. So far, none of her workers had challenged Ana, but of course, they could. They should, Ana thought. She would, if she were one of them. And that made all the difference.
“So long as they’re slaves,” Ana said to Ramón and Inocente, “they have to do what I say. I’ll train them, and if they refuse their work, yes, I’ll punish them. That’s what it means to be an hacendada, doesn’t it?”
A SONG FOR MOTHER FOREST
Flora thought there were too many patrones. The slaves who had lived for years at Hacienda los Gemelos believed don Severo was the patrón. He’d visited the hacienda a few times, but one morning he appeared and soon the previous mayordomo left on his sway-backed mule without so much as a backward glance. Don Severo lined up the slaves in the batey and introduced two libertos as foremen. He’d bought Flora, José the carpenter, his wife, Inés, and their two boys, led them to the plantation, and set them to work, so they, too, thought he was the boss. It was a surprise to everyone when one afternoon weeks later don Severo assembled the slaves in the batey again and told them that the owners were coming. He told Flora, Teo, and Marta to follow him to the casona. Marta was ordered to clean and prepare the downstairs kitchen, and Flora and Teo were sent upstairs to smoke wasp nests from the eaves, brush away spider webs, scrub the walls and floors, and, finally, paint the entire inside of the house green. José carved a bed and nailed together a few benches and tables. He also built shelves in the kitchen so that Marta could stack the dishes sent ahead of the lady and the two gentlemen.
Flora observed these changes because it was important to notice everything. A new master meant that she must pay close attention so that she could learn what kind of people they were. Would the masters bother the women? Would the lady spend only a few days a year at the hacienda and live the rest of the time in the city? Would they have much company, or would they prefer to visit others? Would the lady sit against cushions whining that she was bored while ordering maids and complaining that things were not clean or neat enough? Flora had lived among blancos for years, and she knew that they were an indolent but violent race. To survive among them, she watched them, and could read them as well as they read their books and letters.
Flora was a Mbuti, and her clan lived in dense forests, hunting, fishing, and gathering, moving from place to place along the Congo River, following the availability of fruits, vegetables, and game. Their low stature