Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [79]
“I haven’t asked for your forgiveness, nor do I need it,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” Ramón stared, trying to recognize a new Ana, and the shell began to crack. “I’ll never forgive you for raising your hand to me. Now leave.”
Ramón backed away. He stood at the threshold for a moment, his unblinking eyes lizardlike, empty. She turned her gaze from his, seeking the tiny bird she’d noticed earlier, but it was gone.
EL BANDO NEGRO
After the terrible night Ramón beat her, he never again slept with Ana. José had crafted a second bed, identical to the one in the marital bedroom, intended for Inocente, and Ramón set it up in the other room. When he stayed in the casona, however, he seldom slept through the night. Almost as soon as they retired, Ana heard him leave and didn’t see him until the next day. His shuffling gait worsened; he let his hair, beard, and nails grow and lost so much weight that he looked like an elongated figure in an El Greco painting. If she mentioned his appearance, or asked about his health, or suggested that he seemed tired, Ramón snapped that he was fine.
“You need not be concerned about me.”
She didn’t know what to do to help him, but she knew he was safe and where he went. Severo moved the laundress, Nena, to a bohío beyond the barracks. One morning, as Ana was riding by, she saw Ramón lying on the hammock inside the one-room cabin, Miguel curled on his chest, both of them fast asleep. They looked peaceful and completely in their element, like a jíbaro with his son, not like the patrón and heir of Hacienda los Gemelos. She didn’t feel anger or resentment toward either Ramón or his fourteen-year-old mistress for his betrayal of her as his wife. She was, rather, angry at his indolence, as if her refusal to leave Los Gemelos absolved him from responsibility.
It took her months to disentangle the paperwork jumbled by Ramón and Inocente. There was the notarized document deeding the land by the river to Severo, but Ana had to dig to the bottom of the second folio to find the original title. How the notary could have signed a deed without the title was beyond her. She spent most afternoons trying to understand their intricate finances. For example, Severo Fuentes was an employee, but he was also a vendor, since half the field workers were rented from him. He owned several hundred cuerdas along the southern shore of the hacienda, which meant that in order to get to ships, products from Los Gemelos must traverse his land or be transported to the docks in Guares. He probably carried out his contraband business along the shore, one reason, she imagined, that there were no docks or buildings. But she imagined how much faster and more cost-effective it would be to move hogsheads and puncheons from a wharf closer to the trapiche, perhaps even from the cove where she’d first landed. It was a tantalizing idea to have a dock and warehouses so close, but it would cost thousands of pesos and take years to build, and Ana didn’t think Severo had that kind of money. What she found most fascinating was how dependent his future was on that of Hacienda los Gemelos. She gleaned all this from the ledgers and folios. Severo managed his own business, as far as she could tell, and she imagined that, while he entered the figures that he, as the mayordomo must report in the ledgers, his own affairs were in better shape than those of Ramón and Inocente.
An unpleasant revelation in the paperwork came from a series of legal notes signed by Ramón and Inocente to Luis Morales Font. Ramón and Inocente had borrowed 2,148 pesos at the astounding rate of 15 percent interest. She was furious, especially when, after collecting the papers, she realized that not a penny had been paid and the notes were due within the quarter.
When she was angry, she went into the gardens. Her plan to put the elders and young children to plant, weed, and