The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [44]
“How long will he be gone?” I asked.
He didn’t know.
A burning piece of metal breezed past my face as I walked up the hill. I jumped aside, ducking my head. Señora Valencia and her husband were standing under the flame tree, each holding a short-barreled rifle aimed at the calabash trees in front of my room.
The air was filled with a gust of peppery smoke, some of which came to rest in the back of my throat. I closed my eyes to fight the feverish sting in my pupils.
“Amabelle!” Señora Valencia cried out, her voice hoarse with terror. She was in a loose housedress, leaning against the flame tree for support. Señor Pico had on all of his uniform except his cap, which was resting on the far corner of the bench where his wife sat between shots.
I waved my hand to show that I was still alive and then ran into the pantry where Juana was peering out, annoyed.
“I thought you’d caught the last one in your neck.” She handed me a cup of water.
“Which saint must I thank for saving me?”
“All of them,” she said.
Señora Valencia looked a bit depleted from the shooting but she pulled herself together in time to fire again. Looking towards the house, she appeared worried that the rifle blasts might wake her daughter.
“He should not make her do this,” Juana said, “not so soon after she has given birth.”
“The señora’s strong. She’s a good markswoman,” I said, after the water had settled in my stomach.
I remembered how, for lack of a boy child, in spite of his saddening memories of the war, Papi used to take the señora hunting with real rifles when she was only a girl. With Papi the hunt was for birds. With her husband, what would the mark be?
Señor Pico guided his wife’s hands along her rifle’s trigger guard. “Remember, do not aim too high, or you will shoot over the head,” he said.
He lined up her hands to fire once more. She shook her body free, leaned forward, lowered her eyes to the top of the gun barrel, then pulled the trigger. A calabash cracked from the tree across the yard and fell, toppling a few smaller ones on its way to the ground.
Señora Valencia lowered her rifle to her side and said, “No más.
With a towel draped over her shoulder, Juana brought out a large bowl of water. The señora washed her hands and wiped them dry with the part of the towel that fell down to Juana’s stomach.
“You must know how to protect yourself,” Señor Pico said as they walked back to the house. He held his wife by the arm as though they were reliving their wedding march.
“Papi and Luis will be here to look after Rosalinda and me,” she said.
“They cannot be with you at every moment,” he said.
“We have never had these fears before,” she said.
“This is a different time,” he told her.
Luis came into the parlor to announce that a truck full of Guardia had arrived.
Juana rushed off and came back with Rosalinda cradled in the arms of one of Señora Valencia’s distant cousins, who had come from Higuey to visit the baby; her name was Lidia.
Lidia had a narrow face with slanted downcast eyes and shoulder-length black hair that swayed back and forth as she patted Rosalinda’s behind.
Lidia stepped forward and held Rosalinda out to be embraced by her father. Señor Pico avoided the child and instead brushed his lips against the side of Lidia’s face before springing out the door.
As he marched down the hill to one of the open-back trucks, the men of the Guardia saluted and cheered his approach. He waved to his wife one last time, then jumped into the passenger seat next to the driver.
“It almost seems like we are at war,” Señora Valencia said, watching her husband’s three-truck military caravan pull away. She chose to ignore his avoidance of their daughter and of herself, as she did all the other things he did that were not pleasing to her.
“With your man, everything is the great