Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [98]
The men mounted right after dawn, and Leonor, Ana, and Elena were left to themselves until the midday dinner. Ana was always busy, so Leonor and Elena accompanied her as she performed her duties. In her circuits with Ana, Leonor understood why the letters from Los Gemelos were always about the yield of plants and animals and the effects of weather. Ana was proud of her kitchen garden, vegetable patch, and orchards. She delighted in the pigsty and corrals, the barns, chicken coops, and dovecote, and in the animals she raised there.
She introduced each slave and free man or woman, black or white, as if they were equals. They, in turn, were humble but also with a familiarity that seemed improper, given her role as la patrona. Leonor guessed they thought she was a good mistress.
Ana walked them past two long, ramshackle buildings that faced each other, where the unmarried male and female slaves lived. Farther down the path squatted a few palm-thatched cottages for families, surrounded by small plots called conucos, where slaves grew their own tubers and plantains. Ana showed them the palm-roofed, open-walled rancho where Ramón read prayers every Sunday, and where a priest from the nearest town sometimes said Mass and baptized newborns.
They reached the river’s edge, where the laundress and two young girls washed the slaves’ and overseers’ work clothes. Nearby a boy tended a fogón that heated water in a cauldron for boiling the finer clothes and linens of the casona.
At the other plantations visited on their trek to Los Gemelos, the women spent most of their days indoors sewing, tatting, crocheting, painting pottery or china, reading religious tracts, or practicing music on pianofortes chipped and battered by their trip across the Atlantic. Not one of the women they met was as active in the everyday operations of her plantation as Ana. There was something inappropriate about it, Leonor thought, but she admitted there was also something admirable about Ana’s confidence and her surprising skills and knowledge.
Ana took little interest in Miguel, however. The boy practically lived with his nana Inés, her husband, José, and their two sons, Indio and Efraín, who were slightly older. The three boys played well together and liked to build elaborate towers with the scraps from the workshop where José made the furniture that was beginning to choke the casona’s small rooms.
“José is a gifted craftsman, as you can see. It all looks a bit too ornate in our simple house, but we plan to build a casa grande,” Ana explained as they walked back toward the casona. “This house isn’t really appropriate for us, but there’s so much work needed on the outbuildings, and we could use more brazos.…”
They sat in the shade of the breadfruit tree, where the maids set up chairs and a table. Ana didn’t just sit, however; by her chair was a basket full of clothes to be mended.
A swing dangled from the branch of another tree, where Elena and Inés took turns pushing a laughing Miguel back and forth.
“You’re certainly more involved in the day-to-day operations than I would’ve guessed,” Leonor said, unable to disguise the edge in her voice.
“I didn’t come this far to sit indoors embroidering,” Ana said tartly. “I’ve always had an active life, different from my mother’s and her friends’. You understand, doña Leonor. You traveled and had many adventures following don Eugenio—”
“But I did none of the fighting. That would’ve been … wrong.”
“I’m lucky that way. There’s no society here. No one to impress or be judged by.”
“Oh, but you can’t escape gossip. Even if you never leave, some of what happens here gets abroad.”
“Is that so? Have you heard something I should know?”
“No. No, I haven’t. But if I mention Los Gemelos, people change the subject.”
“You were overly sensitive, Tía Leonor,” Elena said, “because for so long you’ve wanted to see firsthand.