The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [29]
Señora Valencia leaped up from the bed and ransacked one of her armoires for something proper to put on the little boy’s body. She found an old lace and satin gown and matching bonnet in which she had been baptized as a child. Señor Pico took charge of changing his son into it without saying a word. The lace was browned and the satin shriveled with age, the gown too large for young Rafi.
Papi went for Father Vargas, the Dominican priest who said Masses at the chapel near the school, at the end of the almond path, a macadam road lined with almond trees. Rosalinda was awake in her mother’s arms as the priest mumbled the final words to the little boy. “Rafael, from the sadness of death rises the joy of immortality. We release you into the arms of God. May you rest in eternity with your Maker.”
“Padre.” Señora Valencia put her trembling hands on the priest’s shoulder. “Please say a blessing for my daughter, something that will protect her life.”
Father Vargas traced a cross with his thumb on Rosalinda’s forehead. The girl stirred, opening her mouth in a spacious yawn to receive the priest’s blessing as Juana threaded her rosary through her fingers calling on Santa Agnes under her breath.
“Father, can you be at the family grave site at dawn tomorrow?” Señora Valencia asked. “My son will be buried next to my mother and my brother who died while he was being born.”
The priest rested his own hand lightly on the señora’s shoulder as if to calm her maternal distress with the power of Heaven flowing from the tips of his fingers.
“Please have him ready for tomorrow then,” he said.
With the cane fire smoke still floating in the sky above their heads, the men went out to the garden to make Rafi a casket from the cedar that Papi kept piled behind the house. Señora Valencia watched from the patio as the jagged teeth of a saw drilled in and out of the wood, shaping her son’s final bed.
Once the coffin was built, Señora Valencia was determined to do something herself for her lost child. She wanted to decorate the lid with red orchids before her son could be placed inside. The men carried the coffin to the old sewing room of Rafi’s grandmother, where the body lay in repose behind the dreamy gauze of the lowered mosquito net framing the four-poster canopy bed, his hands crossed over his heart and a crystal rosary laced between his tiny fingers, the glassy beads spilling over onto the bedsheet like frozen tears.
Señora Valencia took her pencils, her paints, and her brushes out of their case and said, “Amabelle and Javier, stay. Pico, please go and see about Rosalinda.”
Señor Pico did not want to go. He looked around the room, from the plain coffin to the ceiling, to the four-poster bed where Rafi was resting. He then used the back of his hands to wipe shadows of the coffin dust and a few bubbling tears from his eyes. Before the tears fell, however, he hurried out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
As soon as her husband was gone, Señora Valencia asked, “Why did my son die?” She looked up at Doctor Javier, her eyes reddened, somber. “You have examined the body, Javier. I want you to tell me why he died.”
“It seems he simply lost his breath.” Doctor Javier covered his face with his hands, aware as he must have been of the weak nature of his own explanation. “He stopped breathing. I thought Rosalinda was the one in danger, but he was the one whose strength failed.”
“And Rosalinda?” She closed her eyes for a moment and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I know you cannot tell me if she will live or die,” she said. “You could not do this with my son. But tell me, please, is she sad? Can they be sad so young?”
“If she is sad, it will not last for long,” he said.
“You told me the children could not see me the first week, Javier. You said they could see only light and dark. Then, he never saw my face? I know he saw my face. Many times, he looked up at me, even smiled. Is this too much to hope, that he beheld my