The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [48]
To make her go inside, out of the evening damp, I wanted to tell her what Kongo had told me, that her father was well, at least he had been that afternoon—but I didn’t want to reveal anything Papi might have wished to keep secret. Nor did I want to start talking and accidentally say more than I should about my own plans to leave her house, most likely for good. Where would such causene begin and where would it end? At this point it was a matter between our two countries, of two different peoples trying to share one tiny piece of land. Maybe this is why I’d never let the rumors engage me. If they were true, it was something I could neither change nor control.
I had decided that when it came time to leave, I would not say good-bye to the señora. But as soon as I was across the border, I would send word back to her with Doctor Javier.
While the señora was waiting for her father to return home, Beatriz came up the hill from her mother’s house. She sat herself down next to Señora Valencia, in one of the rocking chairs on the front gallery. Señora Valencia got up and leaned against the corner post overlooking the main road.
“Where is your brother?” she asked Beatriz. “Maybe my father is with him.”
“Javier is at the house preparing to leave for the border,” Beatriz said. “Your father is not with him.”
“I’d like to know what draws Javier to the border,” Señora Valencia said. “Perhaps it’s the same thing that keeps taking my husband there.”
“Pico and my brother are not the only people going to the border. Mimi is leaving us,” I heard Beatriz say. “Her brother took her away.”
I came out and asked if they wanted a cooling drink. It would be my last gesture of kindness to Señora Valencia. She asked for a glass of cool water.
“Amabelle, do you know Mimi is leaving us?” Beatriz asked me.
I feigned shock as best I could. “¡Que lástima!” A pity!
“My father has never disappeared for this long a time,” Señora Valencia said as I served her the water.
“You’re afraid for your father because you’re thinking of only bad possibilities,” Beatriz said in her usual nothing-is-ever-grave manner. “Perhaps he has a mistress.”
“Why would he hide it if he was friendly with a woman?” Señora Valencia slipped back into the rocker. “My mother has been dead for so long.”
“Maybe there is something scandalous about his mistress. She could be too young or already married.”
“This is not in Papi’s nature,” Señora Valencia said.
“Dies diem docet,” answered Beatriz, showing off her Latin.
“What do you say?” asked Señora Valencia. “What does this mean?”
“A man’s schooling is never complete,” interpreted Beatriz.
Señora Valencia asked for another cup of water. When I brought it, she drank again without stopping.
“Perhaps my father’s been arrested.” She scanned the property for unknown faces as she handed the cup back to me. “He may have said something to the wrong persons.”
“We will not think this now,” Beatriz said, her voice composed enough to soothe the señora. “Let us think of happier things while we wait for your father to return. Tell me, what will you paint to follow this portrait of El Jefe inside?”
It took the señora some time to switch from thoughts of her father to thoughts of painting.
“Do you have another subject in mind?” Beatriz persisted.
“My son. I would like to paint my son,” Señora Valencia said. “And you?” she asked, turning their chat to another course. “What of you? I’m told that these days you chase away young men like flies from your stew.”
“You took Pico from me,” Beatriz replied, laughing. “I have never found a man like him. Now I am waiting for the right one to arrive. Maybe he’ll speak to me first in Latin, and the things he says I will not completely understand. This is a dream I had, that the man intended for me first spoke to me in Latin.”
“Honestly, do you feel that