Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [81]
“Come here, papito,” Flora called. “Come to Nana.” He ran into her arms. She held him tight and Miguel pressed his face into the curve between her neck and her shoulder. “We go sing mother forest,” she said into his ear. He nodded. “Call me if she need me,” Flora said to Inés.
“Can I go, too?” Indio was at their side, tugging on Miguel’s leg.
“Me, too,” said Pepita, another playmate. Carmencita came out of nowhere. “I want to go!”
The children clamored around them, trying to get Miguel to lift his head from Flora’s neck.
“What you say?” Flora asked Miguel.
His face still pressed against her. “Sí.”
“Todos con nosotros,” she said.
They walked down the path toward the river. Flora sang and the children repeated her words. They loved to sing with Flora, who called the forest mother, even though in Spanish the forest was male. “Gracias, madre bosque, por la sombra bajo las ramas. Gracias, madre bosque, for many avocados to eat. Gracias, madre bosque, for the mangos sweet. Gracias, madre bosque, for little bird with yellow beak. Gracias, madre bosque, por la araña que no pica.” She lifted Miguel’s face. “Do you see something to sing?”
Miguel looked around shyly. “Thank you, mother forest, for the rock so big,” he sniffled, and the other children chorused, “Gracias madre bosque por la piedra tan grande.”
For a place so seemingly far from a big town or city, news arrived in Hacienda los Gemelos from the outside world with surprising dispatch, due to Severo’s contacts with ships. Once Severo realized that Ana was a voracious reader, he brought books, pamphlets, and newspapers that somehow had evaded the censors in San Juan. Through them she learned that Carlist reactionary forces continued to besiege the tenuous government of Queen Isabel II. War raged between Mexico and the United States. Tens of thousands of Irish peasants were dying or abandoning their country for the Americas because of widespread blight on potatoes, their main food source. War, famine, and government instability were like tales from another history.
In her remote part of the world, Ana had more than enough tragedies and their aftermaths, and her own hardships were more absorbing than anything she could read. There were moments when she compared her present life to what could have been, examined her choices, and asked, What now, what’s next?
She’d turned her back on family, society, and country with the confidence and arrogance of a stubborn adolescent. She’d used every artifice to ensnare Ramón and Inocente into believing that they were as capable and entitled as conquistadores. She flattered and coaxed them even though she knew that they were irresponsible and immature, that for them life was about appearances, tricks, and games. Now she was almost twenty-two years old, had a child, had spent her fortune. Her marriage was over, and Hacienda los Gemelos might fall into Luis Morales Font’s hands. If I’d followed Elena’s plan, I’d have Elena for comfort and affection, but I was greedy, she thought.
She missed Spain in unexpected moments. She’d be in the garden and recall the fragrant meadows studded with wildflowers in her grandfather’s farm, and the honey-scented air as she raced Fonso and Beba across the fields. A sparkle in the pond brought memories of Sevilla’s yellow light and the serpentine Río Guadalquivir reflecting silver clouds. But as soon as she was aware of them, she pushed those thoughts away because she felt disloyal to herself. This is my life now, she reminded herself, the one I worked so hard to get. No one will ever know what it cost, only what I’ve created.
History was both personal and universal, and Ana was conscious that it swirled inexorably whether people paid attention to it or not. She was curious about other invisible lives in untraveled places, aware that her own days were unseen and unknown beyond the boundaries of Hacienda los Gemelos. She envisioned someone standing in the same spot a century after herself wondering who else had stepped upon that ground, seen that tree, the pond, the stone shaped