Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [64]
“Write as soon as you reach San Juan,” Ramón said.
Before his horse disappeared, Inocente turned around, removed his hat, and waved.
“Vayan con Dios,” Ana called and waved back, but he didn’t acknowledge her.
Ramón was having difficulty controlling his feelings. He took Miguel from Ana and held him as Inocente and his party vanished down the trail into the cane.
In the days after Inocente left, Ramón wouldn’t let go of nine-month-old Miguel, who was beginning to stand on his own. He talked to the boy in a high, unnatural voice, played with him, sang him coplas, made faces—all the things Ana didn’t do. He called him “mi hijo,” not Miguel, as if to make sure that everyone knew he was the father. The more affectionate he was with the child, the harder the looks he directed at Ana, but he didn’t criticize or reproach her out loud. She’d once thought of Ramón as the “talking twin,” but since Miguel’s birth, he’d been more guarded, as if it were an effort to avoid telling her things she shouldn’t know. What would his brother’s absence mean for him, for her, for them?
Another change in Ramón was that he’d lost interest in sex. She was bathed, Flora let him know that she was ready, but Ramón didn’t come. After a while, sleep overcame her. Sometimes she heard him leave the house, and later awoke to the groan of the hamaca ropes in the next room. If she called to him, Ramón didn’t answer.
One night she heard him scream and ran next door.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
“¡Déjame!” he said, turning away and hiding his face within the hammock’s folds. The single word ordering her to leave him was like a stab into her heart. She left. The next morning he rode out at dawn.
Ramón didn’t return until hours after the last bell. Ana heard him undress on the other side of the wall. A few minutes later he tiptoed into her room, a lit candle aloft.
“Are you awake?”
She lifted the mosquito netting for him to crawl inside. He pinched the flame off and, with the chirp of tree frogs singing in the dark, told her the truth.
“Inocente might not be back. He plans to settle on the farm near Caguas.”
“That’s not what he told me.”
He put his arm under her head and pulled her close. “He didn’t want to upset you.”
She resisted his embrace. “It’s worse to say he’ll return and then not do it.”
“Ana, you know that things can’t continue … the same way.”
He couldn’t say it. For a moment she considered asking what he was talking about. She said nothing.
He, too, was silent but agitated.
“Ramón, please talk to me.”
He turned to her again. “Inocente said that the day Miguel was born, when Damita called me in, he was jealous of me for the first time in his life. And he felt hatred.” His voice quavered. “When he heard me say ‘mi hijo,’ he realized that Miguel could just as easily be his son as mine.”
Beneath his emotion she heard the question he didn’t dare ask. Whose son is Miguel? It occurred to her that every child belongs only to the mother, even if she was sure of the father.
“We should have never done … what we did.” He couldn’t even say it. Ramón wept openly now. “Inocente said that he had to leave because he didn’t trust himself, what he might do with his jealousy. He’s never spoken to me like that, Ana, with such resentment. Dear God, what have we done? Why didn’t you stop us?”
“Me?” She lifted her head and tried to find his eyes, but all they could see of each other were dense silhouettes. “It was up to me?”
“We thought you wanted it that way.”
“You never asked, Ramón. You and Inocente took advantage of my … of my innocence.”
“You could always tell us apart.”
“You tricked me, Ramón, cruelly and deliberately. By the time I figured it out, it was too late.”
“But you never—”
“I thought that was the only way for us, for you and me and Inocente. You were grown men; I was just a girl. It never occurred to me that there would be this—this complication.”
“I’m sorry, mi amor,” he