Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [56]
Flora, too, was shocked that Ana would allow Damita to be her midwife. “Siña Damita delivers the jíbaras and black babies, señora,” she said as she powdered Ana’s back and underarms.
“My experience has been that we all look and function pretty much the same down there.”
“Ay, señora, how you speak such things!” Flora reddened and dropped Ana’s nightgown over her head.
“You’ll be with me, won’t you?” Ana pressed Flora’s shoulder.
“Of course, señora. Sí, if you want me, I will be there.”
Siña Damita was a brisk, large woman with big hands and feet that seemed perfectly designed to hold up her wide-hipped broad-shouldered body. Like Flora, she was born in Africa, but from a Mandinka clan, and spoke Spanish with a strong accent in a low, masculine voice. Unlike the other Africans, who were trained not to look at whites directly, Damita had an unwavering gaze. Her first owner had freed her three years earlier, but not her husband and three sons. When Severo bought them, Damita came to live in a bohío on the boundary of the plantation so that she could be closer to her husband and sons.
“I deliver black babies, white babies, spotted babies if they come that way,” the partera said. “Your enana thinks I don’t deliver blancos, but I do. In the finca where I work before, no doctor. All the women send for me. Blancos, negros, pardos, they send for me.” She poked herself in the chest for emphasis.
Ana was surprised to hear Flora referred to as her dwarf, but by now she was used to the prejudices of the slaves who constantly sought ways to distinguish themselves from one another. The lighter skinned were chosen as esclavos domésticos and lorded it over the esclavos de tala, darker and destined for the fields. Skilled workers like José, the carpenter, and Marta, the cook, cost more, and therefore had higher status. Ana once heard Flora and Marta discussing the price of each of six workers Severo led into the batey a day earlier. Slaves knew their financial worth and compared themselves to others based on what the owners were willing to pay for them.
Siña Damita wiped her hands on her sun-bleached, starched apron. “I deliver twins, like your husband and his brother,” she said. “Healthy born both, but one died at four. Drowned,” she added. “Not my fault. The other, he drive the carts. Strong kid.”
Her confidence reassured Ana, and four months later, just after midnight on September 29, 1845, it was Siña Damita’s strong hands that held up the wrinkled, red creature that had kept Ana in painful labor for thirty-six hours. “A boy,” Siña Damita announced with a grin. “A boy.”
When Ramón first held the infant and said, “Dios te bendiga, Miguel, hijo mío,” Inocente, who was standing on the other side of the bed, scowled. When his turn came to hold the child, Inocente examined every wrinkle and fold, every hair, every paper-thin nail, and his frown grew deeper. He returned Miguel to Ana’s arms and shuffled out, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed. Ramón followed him, and seconds later Ana heard them in the next room, speaking in low, urgent voices. In the morning, she asked Ramón if Inocente was all right.
“He’s fine,” Ramón said, too quickly.
A newly delivered woman had to observe the cuarentena, the forty days and forty nights during which she was to rest and get to know her baby. Sexual relations were forbidden during her quarantine. The day Ana’s labor pains began, a second hamaca was strung next to Inocente’s, so now the brothers shared a room.
Ana heard them talking late into the night, their voices rising and falling in pleading, sometimes angry cadences. When she asked what they were discussing, however, they said it was business. They were about to buy a finca contiguous to Los Gemelos.
“It has a river along its northern boundary,” Ramón said.
“We rode the land. We can build irrigation canals,” Inocente explained, “from the river into the fields.”
“There’s also another finca with ten slaves for