The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [46]
Help me, Señora, I wanted to say, but what could she do? How much did she know? Would she be brave enough to stand between me and her husband if she had to?
“I’m uneasy about Papi strolling for this long,” she said before showing the doctor to the room where Rosalinda was sleeping.
I tried to think of a plan. Be calm, I told myself. I had to act calmly.
Just in case the doctor was right, I went to my room, sewed one of my skirts at the waist, made it into a sack, and threw a few things into it: Kongo’s mask of Joël’s face, Sebastien’s unfinished shirt from the day the señora’s children were born, and one change of clothing. If the doctor was wrong, I could always return. There was no harm in being prepared.
I walked down the hill and hid the bundle in a narrow gap between the banana trees in the lush grove behind Juana and Luis’ house and then went back to the main house.
Señora Valencia was in the parlor with the doctor.
“Papi still hasn’t returned?” she asked.
“No, Señora.”
“Please tell Luis to go look for him.”
First he would go the chapel, Luis said, where Papi sometimes prayed. Then he would go to the cemetery, where Papi might be visiting his wife, his son, and grandson’s graves. There was no need to be anxious about Papi’s wandering, but if the señora wanted him to go and search, this is what he would do.
I followed Luis out as if to help look for Papi, but I went to find Sebastien instead. He had just returned from the fields. His entire body was soaked with perspiration, as though he were sweating through a fever.-He leaned back against the wall to feel some of the cool air from outside. Papi’s cedar panels were still in the room.
I sat with Sebastien for a while without saying a word. I could tell that he was too tired to listen, and I did not want to speak until he was ready. Besides, I already didn’t want to say to him what I had to say.
“I have found three places for you, Mimi, and me in a truck crossing the border tonight,” I said finally.
“I’ve heard about the doctor’s Mass,” he said, “Santa Teresa, the little flower.”
“The doctor offered me work in a clinic doing what my parents used to do,” I said. “I think it’s best we go with him. If he is wrong, we can come back.”
“You never believed those people could injure you,” he said with a scowl that seemed truly hateful, as though he were talking to someone other than me. “Even after they killed Joel, you thought they could never harm you.” His hands were balled in fists the way they always were when he tried to hold in his anger. I reached for the fists and opened them to see the palms where the lifelines had been rubbed away by the cane cutting. Perhaps I had trusted too much. I had been living inside dreams that would not go away, the memories of an orphaned child. When the present itself was truly frightful, I had perhaps purposely chosen not to see it.
“Forgive me, please, Sebastien,” I said, “for believing too much.”
He released the tightness of his fists to my grasp. My chest was cramping with a kind of fear I had known only once before, when my parents were drowning: an unstrung feeling as when a gust of wind pushed a door shut behind you, as if to trap you inside.
“Let’s talk to Kongo,” Sebastien said. “He had a visitor in the fields this afternoon, the elder of your house.”
“Papi?”
“He gave the field guards some money to let Kongo go away with him, and Kongo said yes.”
We went to Kongo’s room, where he was sitting with Yves. The two of them had a pile of almonds between them and were about to hammer them open. Kongo looked as rested as if he had not been to the fields at all that day. On his lap were wicker strands arranged in piles to make a basket.
Sebastien and I joined the circle around the wicker and almonds as though they were objects to be worshipped.
“Don Ignacio, Señora Valencia’s father, came to see you?” I asked Kongo. “Do you know where he is now?”
“He said he was going to stroll awhile before going back to his house.”
“What did he