Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [88]
Doña Ana spent most of the afternoon scratching marks on her papers, and don Ramón floated aimlessly, sometimes taking Miguel for a walk but just as often alone. Siña Damita had never seen a man so lost in his own life. He wore nothing but white now, adding to Nena la Lavandera’s work. The laundress was near due with his child, and Damita counted it to be the ninth baby born from don Inocente or don Ramón. She didn’t know what doña Ana thought about the mulatto infants born on the premises. Maybe she believed they were don Severo’s, but Damita knew he didn’t use the women on the hacienda. He had enough with the campesinas and Consuelo. Sometimes doña Ana stared at one of the children, like three-year-old Pepita, but Siña Damita was sure she wouldn’t ask anything about it. Blancas had a way of lying to themselves that Siña Damita found peculiar.
With the constant patrols on the roads and byways to and around Guares, Damita didn’t go to town except for an emergency. One night, she was about to blow out her candle before wrapping herself inside her hammock when there was tapping on her door.
“Who there?”
“It’s me, Mamá, Artemio.…”
Her heart jumped to her mouth. She’d heard the lights-out bell from the hacienda long ago, and her youngest son should be in the barracks. She let him in, bolted the door. Artemio threw himself on her as if chased by a ghost.
“¿Qué pasó? What you doing here?”
“Forgive me, Mamacita.…” He covered his face and sobbed like a child and Damita held him, caressing her youngest son as he told her the worst possible thing he could’ve said. Artemio and three others from San Bernabé were escaping.
He’d been to San Bernabé on errands for don Severo, and fell in love with a muchachita there. Belén was brown as cocoa, with big round eyes over high cheekbones on a narrow face. She was prone to high fevers and abscesses on her arms and legs because her blood was so hot that it boiled. Damita had treated her and her brother, who had the same condition.
“Don Luis bothers all the women there, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She convinced us to run away. But when we met in the woods, she’d changed her mind. She tried to talk us out of it. We were confused. I should’ve gone back, Mamá, but then she said she was going to tell.… If she did, she’d be free.… I was so scared,” he said. “I hit her. I hit her and she fell—”
“Did you—”
“I don’t think … she was moaning and … I didn’t mean to kill her,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. The others left me and I hid in the fields until after the bell rang and then I came here.”
Before she had a chance to tell Artemio which way to go, before she could find her money so he could bribe someone to help him, before she could kiss and hug him once more, hounds were growling at her door.
“¡Abre la puerta, Damita! Come out, now!”
Siña Damita and Artemio emerged holding on to each other. Don Severo was pointing a rifle at them. He whistled and reluctantly the dogs backed off.
“Disculpe, señor,” Artemio pleaded over and over again, his hands together in prayer. “Mamá had nothing to do with this. It was me, señor, please don’t punish my mamita, se lo ruego, mi buen señor. I beg you.”
Don Severo was about to respond, when four soldiers charged into the yard.
“¡Por la reina!” they called, invoking Isabel II. Upon those words, anyone within hearing must stop all movement and wait until soldiers release them.
“We’re still searching for the others,” the lieutenant said to Severo. “We’ll take these two.…”
“The boy is mine, and she works for me,” Severo said. “I’ll take care of them.”
“I’m sorry, don Severo,” the soldier said, “you’re within your rights for minor offenses, but not for this. Don Luis said they killed a girl. Who knows what they were planning. We have to interrogate them all. The