The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [33]
20
Señora Valencia’s face became as pale as a bleached moon after her husband left her and went to bury their son’s clothes. After much cajoling from Juana, she left her daughter in her cradle where she was sleeping and slipped into the bed where both her children had been conceived and born. Juana sat on the edge of this bed, stroking the señora’s hands to soothe her to sleep. I stood near the patio doors and watched through a tiny opening in the louvers as Señor Pico dug a hole under the flame tree to bury Rafi’s layette.
Doctor Javier held the kerosene lamp while the señor shoveled up another pile of dirt and threw it over his shoulders. A flow of muddy perspiration rolled from Señor Pico’s forehead down to his chest. Some of the area boys gathered around to watch and offer help, thinking perhaps there might be a vigil, if not an all-night wake. Señor Pico declined their offer. He wanted to carry out the task himself, not allowing even Luis to dig, as would have been expected. He stopped to take a breath, then, glancing up at the stars, which seemed to be blinking and falling a lot more frequently that night, he removed his shirt and undershirt, and laid them on one of the lowest branches of the flame tree before proceeding with the digging.
“I would like to go to my son’s burial,” the señora told Juana.
“Do not concern yourself with this now,” Juana said. “Put your mind on the girl child. The other one is already lost.”
“Juana, please talk to me of Mami,” Señora Valencia said.
Juana looked around the room, at the old Spanish clock that no longer chimed the hour but still showed the time correctly after so many years. She stared at the armoire with the orchids and the hummingbirds carved on the front, at the crucifix hung above the bed to protect the house from evil.
“There is too much to tell,” Juana said, stroking the señora’s hair.
“Tell me,” the señora pleaded.
“She was so shy when she became a wife, your mami. She was almost frightened of your father, who was some years older. But this changed very quickly after she became friends with the other young wives like Doña Eva and Doña Sabine. And of course when you were born, your mother and father were completely happy. Your father was so very unhappy when your mother died. It had been a joyful time with the hope of a new brother for you, but your mother’s labor was difficult. It was a breech birth and both your mami and the child lost their strength.”
“More of Mami,” she said. “Tell me more.”
“Your mami was kind,” Juana continued. “She was always patient with me, with Luis too. She treated us not like servants but the same way she did her friends. She was a good-hearted lady, your mami, and she cherished you very much.”
Outside, the evening breeze blew out the kerosene lamp held by Doctor Javier. Luis cupped his hand around a long wooden match and lit the lamp again.
Señor Pico dropped Rafi’s layette in the hole, a bedsheet and three frocks, each of which I had sewn and which young Rafi had worn only once.
“I have had dreams of what my son’s face would look like,” Señora Valencia said, “first at one, then at five, then at ten, fifteen, and twenty years old.”
“I always had similar thoughts about you, Señora,” Juana said. “I am so pleased to have seen you at all those ages.”
“I feel sometimes,” said Señora Valencia, “that I will never be a whole woman, for the absence of Mami’s face.”
Señora Valencia was asleep by the time her husband came into the room. I did not want to leave that night, but I knew that Sebastien would not come to visit me if the dead child was in the house. I had to go to him. Besides, Juana had chosen to spend the night at the foot of the four-poster canopy bed, to keep company with Rafi.
Luis walked back to his and Juana’s house alone, though on this night more than any other he seemed to want his woman to himself. Papi remained in the parlor near the radio, listening for news of the war in Spain. Another Spanish