The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [28]
“He had only his father.”
“No brothers or sisters?”
“Only the father and a woman who had promised herself to him.”
“And is the father here?”
“He works in Don Carlos’ fields.”
Papi sank heavily onto the dirt and pushed his face down between his knees.
“You are aware, Amabelle, that I have no son,” he said, without raising his head. “I would like you to bring me to visit the dead man’s father. Will you take me?”
“To be prudent, I should ask first to see if he would like to receive you.”
“I would like to speak with him.”
“I should first request his permission to bring you there.”
“It was a frightful accident,” he said. “Please don’t tell Valencia, she need not concern herself with such things now, at her time of greatest risk.”
“I will tell Kongo you want to visit him,” I said.
“Is this the father’s name? Kongo?”
“I know he has another name, but Kongo is what everyone calls him here. I think only his son knew his true name.”
Just then the cane harvest began: the first moment saw the fires set to clear the fields, singeing the leaves off the cane stalks before they could be chopped down. Clouds of thick white smoke blanketed the sky. The smell of burning soil and molasses invaded the air, dry grass and weeds crackling and shooting sparks, vultures circling low, looking for rats and lizards escaping the blaze.
Señor Pico rushed out to watch the fires. Juana was at the open markets buying provisions and there were no visiting relations in the house, so I went inside to see if the señora needed help moving the babies, to get away from the drifting smoke.
Señora Valencia was sitting in the middle of her bed with the children sleeping next to her, their tiny rumps raised in the air.
“It’s another harvest already. They’ve set the fires.” She sniffed the air to enjoy the scent of the burning cane fronds, which smelled like roasting corn.
“Amabelle,” she said, as if her thoughts were faraway, elsewhere. “He believes, my Pico, that during one of his long evening promenades, the Generalissimo will march into our house, admire my portrait of him, and make a gift of the whole nation to him and our children.”
Rosalinda woke from her sleep with a wail. Señora Valencia rubbed her fingertips against the crocheted bootie on her right heel to try to calm her. At the same time, she leaned over to have a closer look at her son’s sleeping face.
“His sister’s cries will wake him,” she said.
His sister’s cries did not wake Rafi. There was no movement in him, no signs of life.
Señora Valencia picked up her son and held his face against her breast. The little boy was still, his tiny arms hanging limply, not feeling his mother’s embrace.
I picked Rosalinda up so Señora Valencia would not crush her as the mother thrashed around the bed trying to revive her son. Rafi’s cheeks were drawn, his jaws had collapsed, his face bore an even more pallid shade in death.
“Mijo, my son, do not leave me!” Señora Valencia shouted into the child’s face. “It’s too soon for you to go. Mami is talking to you. It’s too soon for you to leave.”
“We should send for Javier,” Señor Pico said when he ran in, peeling the señora’s fingers off her son, who, if he were alive, would have been wailing from the way her fingernails were dug into his plump flesh, trying to bring him back to life with pain. Señor Pico planted his lips on his son’s tiny mouth and attempted to breathe life back into him, succeeding in expanding the tiny chest, only to have it flatten and cave in once again.
Juana took Rosalinda to her grandfather’s room. Soon the doctor arrived and offered some of his own breath to Rafi.
“We must send for Father Vargas,” the doctor finally said.
Señora Valencia sat in the middle of the bed where her son and daughter had been sleeping not long before, and wrapped her arms around her own shaking body. Her husband pressed his head against the side of her face, and though he could not stop her from shaking, his hair did catch and soak up some of her tears. Señor Pico also appeared to want to cry, but instead kept looking at