Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [55]
Flora powdered Ana under her arms, around her breasts, down her back, with a puff dipped in rose talcum.
“¿Señora?”
“Sí, Flora.” Ana lifted her arms for Flora to arrange her nightgown. When Flora didn’t answer, or dress her, Ana opened her eyes. “What is it?”
Flora shook her head and drew the nightgown over Ana’s head. “Nada, señora, is not my place.”
“What is not your place?”
Flora stared at Ana’s feet. “Please no hit Flora.”
“I will be angry if you don’t tell me.”
“Are you pregnant, señora?”
Ana undid the ribbons around her neckline and looked down at her body. Her breasts did look just a little bigger, and where her belly had been flat, almost concave, it was now round enough that she couldn’t see her pubic hair. “Pregnant?”
She was glad Ramón and Inocente weren’t there to see her expression, for she knew, from Flora’s reaction, that it betrayed distress.
“You not happy, señora?” Flora asked.
“Of course I’m happy,” Ana snapped. “What woman wouldn’t be?” She sounded unconvincing even to herself.
Flora’s eyes betrayed nothing. When she told Ramón and Inocente, their reaction was as Ana expected: joy followed by caution.
“You must return to San Juan,” said Ramón, “until the baby is born.”
No. The mere thought of another sea voyage made her ill, Ana said. “Besides, it’s not safe for me to travel in my condition.”
Once her belly began to show, a woman was expected to disappear into her chambers until six weeks after the child was born. It was indecent to parade an expanding girth in public, but the thought of months inside the Argoso home in a city enclosed by stone walls on a small island was asphyxiating to Ana.
In Spain, she endured conventions that chafed against her instincts for freedom and movement for the sake of her parents’ standing in society. Ana was thin as a girl, with negligible breasts and boyish hips, so Jesusa imposed corsets and numerous petticoats to enhance her bosom and add width to her frame. Ana felt trapped inside the garments, and within weeks of arriving in Los Gemelos, the corset and all but one petticoat were put away. The idea of wrapping herself in yards of fabric again was suffocating. She also dreaded Leonor’s intrusive attentions, her worries and premonitions, her constant harping about what Ramón and Inocente should or shouldn’t do.
Beyond these concerns, there was also a deeper unease, one that she barely understood but was the true reason she wouldn’t leave. Over the past four months, as she discarded the outer layers to reveal her true self to herself, she had also repudiated the world beyond the hacienda’s borders. Los Gemelos, nestled in a sea of sugarcane, held her.
“I’m sorry, señores y señora,” Severo said the next night after supper. “I’ll look into it, of course, but it’s unlikely that a doctor with his own practice—forgive me if I can be honest—”
“Yes, of course,” Ramón said. “We respect your opinion.”
“I don’t believe such a doctor would leave his practice for months to take care of, disculpe, señora, one woman in an out-of-the-way plantation.”
“Isn’t there a doctor in the closest town?” Ana asked.
“Dr. Vieira,” Severo said. “He was a ship’s doctor and recently established in Guares.”
“Hours away on horseback,” Inocente muttered.
“And he’s more experienced with fractures, that sort of thing.…”
“There must be a midwife to attend women around here ready to give birth,” Ana said.
“There is Siña Damita, Lucho’s wife,” Severo said. “She’s a partera and curandera. She hasn’t lost a baby yet,” he said with an air of pride and a long drag on his cigar, as if he’d trained the midwife himself.
Obviously, Ana thought, she was one of his. He bought only skilled slaves. “I wish to meet her.”
Ramón protested, “She delivers the slaves and campesinas. That’s hardly appropriate for—”
“I have no other choice,” Ana declared, and the men fell silent.