Читать книгу Cave of Little Faces - Aída Besançon Spencer - Страница 14

Jo was awakened by both her telephones blaring again. She had had a fitful night and had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, but the two phones rousted her out of bed. What now?

“Jo!” It was her sister Ruby’s commanding voice.

“Just a second, Ruby, someone’s also ringing my cell phone.”

“It’s okay, that’s me, too. I rang you on both phones, so I’d make sure I’d get you!”

“Ruby, it’s six thirty a.m. Where did you imagine I’d be?”

“I understand from Danny that Uncle Sol is dead, is that right?”

“Yes,” said Jo.

“That’s too bad. He was a good uncle. I also understand we have an inheritance to check out.” That was so Ruby—right to the chase.

“Well,” Jo hesitated, “there is an inheritance and a will. Dad asked me to go down for the funeral and the reading.”

“I haven’t heard from Dad.”

“He had to leave in a hurry last night.”

“No doubt he wants us all to come. When are we leaving?”

“Well, I was going to call for a reservation today,” Jo prevaricated.

“Good,” said Ruby. “Include one for each of us.”

“Did Dad say we had to fly coach or can we fly first class, since this is an emergency?” said a second voice.

“Is that you, Daniela?” asked Jo, astonished. “Are you on the phone too?”

“Yes, Ruby set it up.”

“What is this—a conference call? Ben’s not on too, is he?”

“Yup,” said her brother.

“What are you doing up at six thirty? You never get up this early, Ben.”

“Actually, I haven’t been to bed yet,” said her brother, “I just got in.”

Jo shook her head, though none of them could see it. “Look, I don’t know about this. Dad didn’t tell me to set up a group excursion.”

“It’s okay,” said Ruby. “He was our uncle too.”

“Right,” said Ben, “Good old Uncle Sol—and it’s our inheritance too.”

“Yes,” said Daniela, “You don’t want to be selfish, Jo, just because Dad was in a hurry and didn’t get a chance to call the rest of us.”

“Right!” Ben chimed in, “He probably figured you for the organized one of us, and knew you’d call the rest of us as soon as you could.”

“Don’t make the flight too early, Jo,” begged Daniela. “I don’t like getting up too early.”

“Take us through New York, so we get a direct flight,” ordered Ruby. “Don’t put us through Miami or San Juan and make us change planes—there’s always such a long delay in the airport, and one time when we were young—don’t you remember?—there was a storm and we missed the flight and had to stay someplace overnight.”

“You know, I’m glad you all called,” Jo finally began to rally. “This is such a bad time for me, because I’m so busy. I have to find substitutes for Sunday services and my ESL class and someone to moderate an elders’ meeting. I’d really appreciate it if one of you could help me by getting the plane tickets. The only real stipulation is that we have to be in Barahona in three days for the funeral. How we get there would be up to you. This would really help. Can you do it, Ruby?” she ended hopefully.

“I’d love to help you, Jo, but I’ve got to run. I’ve got an early practice for the girls’ soccer team, so I have to be at work by eight o’clock and I haven’t had breakfast yet. Whatever you decide will be fine with me. Bye for now.” And she was gone.

“Danny?”

“Ah, Jo, you know I’m no good at this stuff. As it is, I’ve got to find a substitute for my route. It’s not easy finding somebody who’s willing to drive a bus full of middle school kids to and then from school on time. It’s everything I can do to be on time myself. In fact, I have to start picking them up at seven thirty, which is just a few minutes away.”

“I didn’t mean this minute, Danny. You have all the rest of the day until two o’clock at your disposal!” Jo waited, but there was no reply. Daniela was also gone.

“Don’t ask me,” said Ben’s voice. “I got to get some sleep. Ruby caught me when I was just getting home, and I’m exhausted.”

“Ben,” gasped Jo, exasperated. “You don’t even have a job!”

“Well, that’s not true!” snapped Ben, affronted. “I was working all night.”

“At what? You sound like a night watchman!”

“I was working on my system.”

“Your system? What—in Atlantic City?”

“Of course, at several casinos. I was tabulating the numbers and working on averages.”

“Ben, that’s not a job—that’s a waste of your life.”

“Hey, you sound like Dad now. When I hit the big score, everyone will be sorry they doubted me. But, any rate, Jo, Danny’s right. You’ve got the touch! Whatever you decide will be fine with me too. I’m used to being up at all hours—and I can sleep on the plane. Just give me some lead time, okay? Love ya—bye.”

Jo sat staring at the phone. She was alone with her thoughts. And they weren’t charitable. It reminded her of their childhood. All her siblings had been so excited when their aunt suggested they adopt an orphan apiece—it had lasted about a week with Ben and Daniela. Ruby had persisted for several months, but when her orphan stopped writing, she stopped too. Only Jo had gone doggedly on year in and year out until recently when Jean-Jacques, her orphan and now her pen pal too, reached age eighteen and went on his own. He’d sent her a nice farewell and thank-you letter. She shook her head, but she was beyond being disappointed. She knew her siblings.

Her day lined up in front of her. Best thing to do first was to shower and get dressed, then have breakfast. Next, she had to call Pastors Ron and Toni and let them know about her emergency. Nilka could actually teach her and her Dad’s classes together, with a little guidance, and both Toni and Ron would be there to help her out. They could also handle the high school equivalency part and, as always, make sure the rooms were open and the volunteers all had someone to work with. But helping out with the Sunday services was another story. Not only did they have their own hands full on Sunday, but neither of them had enough Spanish to do a last-minute sermon or a comprehensible job on the rest of the parts. The two other Latino pastors in presbytery were overwhelmed, so no help there for Sunday morning. She could ask Mercedes Del Rio, who ran the Spanish mission in town.

Mercedes was just over on Second Street. Jo had worked with her establishing the very same English as a Second Language classes she was now herself teaching when Jo was still Richfield’s Hispanic community organizer. In fact, she and Mercedes had been overlapping classmates in seminary. Mercedes was younger than she was, but actually had gone to seminary before she did and had been in her final year during Jo’s first year at the school, so they knew each other from both contexts. Jo admired Mercedes’s effectiveness with her people and her example had been one of the reasons Jo herself followed the call to minister when it became undeniably clear that God was calling her. But Mercedes had so much going on herself it was hard to imagine she could cover for Jo as well, and, Jo was well aware, having attended one Sunday herself at the mission, Mercedes’s own Sunday services were probably still being held at the same time. In fact, being Pentecostal, for Mercedes and her people, church was pretty much an all-day affair. So, the best bet was to call CUME up in Boston and see if the school could send her one of its Spanish seminarians who did not have a regular commitment—that would work. Next, of course, was get on the net and see if she could locate flights for four now. Dad hadn’t said anything about that, but how could he object? Uncle Sol loved them all—and they loved him, each in her or his own way. Grief evokes different coping responses in different people. She had read about that in her pastoral counseling texts, but she had also seen it so often when she was a social worker. Her sisters and brother might be focusing in on the inheritance issue because the pain of the loss was too hard to deal with so soon. She was sure that was it.

But, before she tackled any of these tasks, Jo realized, she needed to pray—to throw herself on the mercy of God. She needed the everlasting arms of comfort, because she was in deep pain herself. She needed God’s clarity to help her make the right decisions for what was best for the people whose spiritual growth she was nurturing, and she needed to submit her plans to God so that they would come to fruition, as she had recently read again in Proverbs. And, finally, she dreaded all the delay, expense, and red tape it took to arrange four last minute flights to a surprisingly popular destination. She needed God’s help to get them all on a nonstop flight.

God’s grace, as always, was with her. Two days later they were winging their way between Newark Liberty Airport and JFK International, scattered all over the plane, perhaps, but everyone accounted for, and then off to the Dominican Republic.

The flight, though nonstop, was four and a half hours. Jo had seen the movie and so gave that a miss. Instead, she worked her way forward from her last row seat across from the bathrooms to see how they were each getting on, only to discover all three of her siblings were fast asleep in their different rows. It was a lot like when they were kids, she thought. Jo, as the oldest, and still the most responsible, ended up as their little auxiliary mother, interpreter, and advocate. Maybe, she reflected, that’s why she ended up a social worker. Ben, she figured, probably had the biggest sleep debt of all, no doubt followed by Danny, who was a party girl. Ruby, the athlete, kept early hours, but assistant coaching had a lot of physical demands and though Ruby, as all of them, was still in her twenties—Jo, of course, being about to exit—they all had a good reason to settle in on this red-eye flight. Jo, as mother hen, seeing all her chicks asleep, went back to her own seat and nestled in. All four of them had middle seats and, since most of the rest of the passengers were sacked out as well, it was a peaceful flight.

Thus it was a rested Archer family that woke up when the passengers applauded as the plane taxied down the runway at the international airport of Santo Domingo.

Over the years, Jo had seen a number of changes at this airport. As a very young child, she remembered it mainly as a large empty room where they would wait what seemed to her to be endlessly for their suitcases—not all of which would arrive—even though their little planeload would be the only one going through customs. Everything would be searched and her parents were asked many questions. Those days were long gone. Now the airport was shiny and new. A long corridor filled with wall-sized posters of beautiful palm- and water-filled promises of fun in the sun greeted them. The line for a tourist card for their stepmother, who was Puerto Rican, and now for Ruby, Danny, and Ben, who had all been born in Richfield, had grown longer and longer. Only Jo was Dominican-born and, therefore, holding dual citizenship, since her birth mother was Puerto Rican. Jo alone did not need to buy a tourist card. In addition, several carousels now handled the baggage and one had only to check which of these had theirs. The baggage of two planes each was now doubling up on the carousels, and porters came up and politely asked if their help was needed, having mainly ceased simply grabbing one’s suitcases right out of one’s hands, tossing them on a cart, and peremptorily hauling them off to customs. Aduana, as customs was called, had also been streamlined, and, although baggage claim checks were these days being carefully noted, most North American flight passengers were now waved automatically through.

So, pushing their carts with one suitcase each of no more than fifty pounds (a cruel hardship for Daniela) and two carry-ons, they exited the inner sanctum of passport control and walked the gauntlet of friends and relatives gathered on either side of a long exit ramp—their faces being eagerly searched by hopeful welcomers and then dismissed. Jo and her family made it to the door, but no one stepped up to them and said anything like, “Baiguanex has sent me for you.”

“What now?” asked Ben.

“Now, I guess, we rent a car,” decided Jo, though hesitating as she carefully surveyed the throng of mainly taxi drivers offering to take them anywhere they wanted to go. Neither her father nor her mother and certainly not an emissary had come for them. Jo was disturbed. Her father normally did what he said he would.

“I’ll drive,” said Ruby definitively.

In Puerto Rico, the land of their mother’s and stepmother’s births, a traffic jam is called el tapón, the bottleneck. The idea is that all the content of a big bottle is attempting to squeeze out a tiny opening all at once. That is a perfect description of what was happening when, with Ruby at the wheel, they raced from the airport to the capital in the first leg of their journey across the island to Barahona, their destination on the western coast.

Dominicans are a gracious and generous people, friendly and helpful, spending hours sitting together socializing—on their porches, in front of little shops, in gatherings of parked motorcycles at roadside bus stops, really anywhere they can gather. All of this camaraderie, however, evaporates completely when they are installed behind the wheel of any vehicle. The split second lights change—in fact, often several seconds before they do—horns begin to blare. For the countless motorcyclists, every two-lane road is a five-lane road, and four-lane roads are nine-lane roads. Yellow traffic lights for motorcyclists are barely suggestions. Stop signs are decorations. Stoplights will give most motorists pause, after four or five extra SUVs have gone through the red light, so that they now block the cross street, eliciting a cacophony of protest from the completely thwarted and seething oncoming traffic, whose dreams of progress have been maliciously dashed, but taxi drivers will not only turn right on a red light, but occasionally left as well. The sidewalks are, at times for some, access roads, even trucks bumping onto them and heading down them for half a block to take a right turn. And the normal state of any cross street in the capital is for all four entering streets to empty into the center of the crossroads, everyone crowding into each of them so that no one of them can progress until all the cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles are sliding along each other’s sides at glacial speed, no more than a half inch apart, nobody able to break free, and, thus, everyone’s horn blaring at once. It was frightening how Coach Ruby took to this state of affairs with complete aplomb.

The dividing line into the metropolis of Santo Domingo proper is a passage over what is called “the floating bridge,” an apparently permanent temporary structure only accessed by going the wrong way up a one-way street and then wrenching the wheel awkwardly in a harrowing last-minute U-turn to merge into the proper flow of traffic. Since this is the oldest city in the new world and many of its streets are, therefore, only paved cow paths, a lot of similar, dizzying anomalies present themselves. But Ruby was completely up for it, as she put it. Bouncing over the speed bump in front of the naval academy, Ruby dove into the city traffic with great relish, pumping on the horn like she was beating a conga drum. If every other driver had apoplexy when the front runners were not off the mark like Olympic racers two seconds before the end of a red light, so did Ruby. She matched every young Dominican woman with a cell phone and a large gas-guzzling SUV horn blast for horn blast. Assuming white lines were only indicators this indeed was a road, Ruby was all over the place, passing on the right—along with all the buses careening in every direction—as Ben cheered. Daniela and Jo huddled, strapped up in the back seat, cringing.

Major thoroughfares in the capital are often named for significant dates, and the Twenty-Seventh of February is the main street into and out of the city. It was loaded with clones of Ruby at the wheel.

One might note that the Republic itself is a beautifully lush green nation, and this is not by chance. Rain is frequent, and this day was no exception. As they all shouldered their way together in one great mass of vehicles, no one of which was giving way in any shape or form to any other, the sky suddenly opened up and deluged them with water. Every corner of the Twenty-Seventh of February Boulevard is filled with street vendors, washers throwing sponges on one’s windshield and offering to wipe the splash off for a little tip, phone card representatives in colors coordinated with their particular company, fruit hawkers, mop sellers, water higglers, ice cream pushers, bonafide beggars—and, when it rains, suddenly some of these become windshield wiper vendors. Ruby managed not to hit any of them as she splashed through the instant flooding and soldiered on. Almost immediately the rain stopped, and they began working their way to the great circle that led to the country roads, when a red light halted them all momentarily and—splat!—a sponge hit their front windshield.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” snorted Ruby. “The rain just stopped!” Furious, she turned on the windshield wiper, gesticulating at a small dark boy, waving him away from the car. But Jo leaned out the back window and put a small bag of airline peanuts in the boy’s hand.

“Gracias, Señorita,” he said, delighted, “¡Dios te bendiga! God bless you,” he added in faltering English. Ripping the bag open on the spot, he stuffed it all in his mouth as Ruby scowled, floored the pedal, and they barreled off in Ruby’s great haste to break free of the mass of cars and fly down the main road out of town.

“Ruby,” said Jo, from the backseat. “You missed the turn. It’s the little side road, remember? That’s actually the main road, not the continuation of Veinte Siete de Febrero.”

“Oh, rats!” snorted Ruby, screeching to a halt and, with her head out the window and her left arm now gesturing wildly at drivers swerving around her, she backed all the way up to the turnoff and insinuated them all onto the right road while horns blared, Jo groaned, Daniela screamed, and Ben grinned and hung on tightly. This took them over a bridge and into a new world. The industries that lined the city limits soon gave way to numerous tiny fruit stands which gathered as plentifully as fruit flies on a pineapple, some no more than buckets filled to the brim, harbingers of the countryside and the great orchards to come.

As the first glimpse of high distant mountains began to appear, Jo felt a sharp emotive pain shoot through her heart. Her memory filled with her many long mountain walks with Uncle Sol. She could hear his voice, see him stop to point out a particular flower, a significant medicinal herb, a scurrying iguana.

“Oh, look, beautiful pots,” cried Daniela. “Can we stop and buy some?” Jo snapped back to see that the fruit stands had yielded to pottery stalls of all sizes and shapes, including eight-foot-high fountains made entirely of pottery, displayed with gushing water before large and impressive roadside shops and warehouses.

“No!” snapped Ruby, racing along on a now clear and fast road.

As in the city, where nearly no one receives a ticket without an actual accident, no matter how flagrant a violation the driving atrocity they are in the process of committing appears to be, here too the police simply lounged next to their motorcycles as drivers flew by like contenders at LeMans.

Jo noticed a culvert at the side of the road whizzing by, no doubt a runoff ditch for the frequent rains, but on the white cement at every crossover, someone had painted the words Ya Cristo Viene, “Christ comes soon.” With Ruby’s driving, Jo speculated, that might be sooner for all of them than any of them had expected. A road sign above them also announced the small town of Semana Santa or “Holy Week,” which was certainly appropriate, and, even at their accelerated speed, Jo found the air suddenly filling with a sweet scent not unlike the incense at a high church service.

“Smell the cane!” murmured Ben, inhaling theatrically. Large fields of sugarcane were stretching now on both sides of the road.

But Ruby simply jetted through the expanding, panoramic countryside, flying by the little knot of uniformed children who emerged from the cane fields and waited patiently for a bus, racing by a knot of uniformed highway workers cutting back the overgrowth from the side of the road with machetes, and zipping by a lone walker with a black T-shirt that sported the puzzling inscription, “I hunt the Jabber wok.” That seems appropriate to our present quest, thought Jo. And she remembered her Uncle had told her that Route 2, which their highway had now become, followed the very route the Taino Indians had taken to escape Spanish oppression as they fled to the sanctuary of the region where Jo and her family were now heading.

“Look at that!” cried Ben, and Jo’s attention was once more diverted, this time to a truck with an open flatbed in which was crammed an entire baseball team, bats propped up against the sides, gloves in each lap, all uniformed and ready to play. Passing them, on a motorcycle, whizzed an entire family: father driving with a child in his lap, two middle-sized children wedged between him and mother, who carried a baby on her back in a tight sling. What a different world this was from Richfield, Jo mused, where nearly everyone who shared the road with them, including Ruby, would be by now ticketed or jailed for driving to endanger. But, as another motorcycle with a father and son sped by, the father awkwardly cuddling his son, his left arm stretched around behind his boy’s body like a safety belt, she realized it was not so different at all. Maybe it was like the Wild West, at least on its roads, but it was a land full of love.

Finally, deep in the countryside, Ruby was forced to stop. A huge highway construction project had snarled traffic up as a great dump truck was slowly backing a load of stone into the quarried-out space that would no doubt be two new lanes. Out of nowhere, for there were no buildings in sight, cashew vendors, with the cash crop of this part of the country, were pushing bottles stuffed with cashews in through their windows. “A free gift,” they were offering in Spanish and then in English. “You like. Trust me.”

“Never buy anything on the street that doesn’t come in a skin you can peel,” father had lectured them over and over, so all of them said, “No gracias, no gracias,” and, to the most persistent, waved an index finger back and forth, the island’s universal symbol for “No means no!”

Twenty minutes of “no” to the world’s most patient and vigorous vendors, at least in Jo’s mind, finally ended with the bus in front revving up and nearly asphyxiating the four of them. But they were on their way again, and no one complained, even though the construction site had barely disappeared in their rearview when they were halted again, bumping slowly over the sleeping policemen of Escondido, literally “The Hidden”—an appropriate name, if there every was one, Jo thought, for a little town in the middle of nowhere.

“When we get to Bani, can we stop?” asked Daniela suddenly. “I need to get out and stretch.”

“At the Sirena, right?” asked Ben, smirking. Sirena, the Siren, is the large department store at the very edge of town.

“Of course,” said Daniela. “You can get sodas, and I’ll just take a quick look at the reasonable styles for right now in the Republic—the stuff I brought along is sooo old! I bought it last year!”

“How about it, Jo?” asked Ben, craning around from the front seat.

“It’s okay with me; we’re making good time.”

Ben checked down what he considered the pecking order, “How about it, Rube?”

“Whatever,” snapped Ruby.

Bani is a full-fledged mini-city, a little town that grew and grew. It is not exactly on the main road, but—¡no problema!—its town council one year simply put up a one-way only sign on the main highway and rerouted everybody through the center of town. The “welcome committee,” so as to say, was a fleet of motorcyclists asking all tourists if they needed a guide, and both Ruby and Jo had to convince them out their two respective windows that they were no strangers and knew their way around. All anyone needed to do was follow the flow of traffic, though, with countless motorcycles darting everywhere like flies on a picnic, this was easier imagined than accomplished.

Daniela was glued to the window, which she’d closed to discourage vendors, and her practiced eye sorted through the high-tech computer shops next to the paint stores, the open market, and the cafeterias and bars, searching for clothing shops that were a little higher class than the thrift store, the open-air clothing market, and even an assorted pile on a divider attended by two young men at a cross street who were holding up various articles of clothing for display according to who was driving each car stopped at the light.

“Oh, there’s a place,” cried Daniela, pointing to a little boutique with mannequins with big rears proudly displayed in the store windows.

Ruby glanced over. “You’re so skinny, three of you could fit in one of those pants! Besides, the deal was Sirena and power drinks.” Ruby drove on.

Finally, the big yellow warehouse-like structure that was Sirena came up on their right. Across the street, Jo noticed a little colmado, a tiny traditional market with cans of food, fresh fruits, and even a sign for aspirin and other pharmaceutical products. Sirena, of course, also had a complete supermarket, making up what appeared to be half of its megastore. But the colmado was still here. The old and the new surviving directly across the street from each other, she mused. It was such a symbol of the nation itself: the oldest one in the new world, with one foot in the future and one foot in the past.

They walked back to their van, Ruby downing her power drink, Jo with a small mango juice, Daniela sipping from a soda, and Ben with a beer—“Just one,” he assured Jo and Ruby. Jo looked for the mountains beyond the fence. Again, two worlds: The fence encased the buildings, but the hills stood sentinel beyond.

The day was growing late on the far mountains, which were misting over, and even the near foothills were gathering shadows. They had traveled a lot that day—from Richfield on an airport shuttle to Newark, from Newark a hopover to New York, from New York a great bound to Hispaniola, and now from the airport through the capital, the countryside, and nearly onto the threshold of the entrance to the province of Independencia, the legendary refuge of the great Taino nation and to the seat of Barahona, the end of their journey.

Just on the other side of the cement works on the outskirts of Bani, Ben spied some cabañas, the lovely but thoroughly disreputable little “hotel motels” rented by the hour. “If it gets late, we can always stay in one of these,” he offered.

“Never,” said all three women at once.

Ben chuckled. “I wasn’t serious.”

“They have to hose ’em down after every guest!” growled Ruby.

“I was only kidding!”

The land beyond the cement works was becoming very dry. The air was filling up with the whirring of insects and cactus had appeared among the bushes and sandy soil.

The little roadside settlements were now mainly made of scrap metal and concrete. Ruby was racing along, passing cement trucks, when a huge tractor trailer came up on the left directly in her way. Ruby gunned the motor and charged head-on. Daniela shrieked as the truck flicked its lights at them and then Ruby slid seamlessly in front of the latest lumbering cement mixer and barreled on. Ben laughed and Jo shook her head.

By the time they got to Cruce de Ocoa, the land had become more fertile. Now it was all looking familiar to Jo. Huge plantain orchards lined with coconut palms and mango trees made a beautiful setting for stalls of skillfully hand-carved mortar and pestle combinations, hundreds of them of every size: some as large as a person, some as tiny as a druggist’s tool. Daniela didn’t bother to ask if they could stop.

The hills were closing in now and the terrain itself was changing every few miles, as if it could not make up its mind what it wanted to be. Here were green plantations and then hillsides of cactus and scrub grass and bushes. Then a large green valley announced the borders of Hatillo, hemmed in by small mountains to the right and to the left. And, at last the Caribbean Sea became visible. Now everyone was aware that they were nearing their second home.

Goats came running in and out of the scrub bushes, and Ruby was doing her best to avoid hitting the little kids scurrying after their mothers, oblivious of the rocketing death on the road.

The picturesque orchards of La Famosa foods whizzed by like a video, as did little municipalities like Charcao, nestled in among the fruit-filled mango and plantain fields. Together, they were like an advertisement, announcing that this was indeed a land of plenty.

Now Ruby had to slow down, because trucks bearing fruits and vegetables began tearing or lumbering down the highway, depending on their size, bringing this wealth to the bigger cities. When Este Bonia presented itself, Jo was delighted to see that the flowers still lined the fields: orange, purple, and white. It was a prelude to the magnificent entrance to Azua, the historic home of the Tainos. The name was a mistake by the Spaniards. The Indians in their long canoes coordinated their rowing with the chant “A-zu-a!” and the conquistadores mistook this for the settlement’s name. The Tainos did not bother to correct them. These oppressors knew too much already. And, if thinking the rowing chant that could synchronize eighty or even a hundred and twenty rowers from the mainland of what would become Venezuela across the sea to Kiskeya was the name of their little settlement, so be it.

Love for this land of her birth, rich in personal and collective memories, filled Jo’s heart as Ruby drove them through the red, purple, yellow, and pink flowers that heralded their advent into Azua, the ancient seat of the nation. Here was the neglected burial site of the great Enrique, the Taino warrior who had rescued his people with a cunning mastery of battle strategy that ultimately forced the invaders from Spain to sue for peace. Retreating before the heavily armed soldiers sent to capture him, he led them up into the mountains where their horses stumbled and their armor roasted them from the merciless heat of the sun. Then, when they were panting for water and their swords and spears had grown to be great weights in their hands, Enrique’s warriors simply rained arrows down among their enemies. The hapless survivors threw down their arms, but instead of the slaughter routinely practiced by these enemy invaders, Enrique simply had his warriors round up the Spanish, relieve them of their weapons, and then he produced a Bible, requiring those who wanted to continue to live to swear upon it at peril of their souls before the one living God, the Great Spirit, and the Just Son of God, Jesucristo, who rules the earth and calls all to account, that they would never again kill or even strike a Taino. The oath included endless hellfire as the penalty promised to the Great Triune God, who had formed each of them and determined their fate. Useless to the governor for a goon squad now, the soldiers were soldiers no longer: the fear of God was in them. Finally, no one wanted to go and fight this deeply respected, ferocious but merciful liberator. The war was over, and the Taino nation survived.

Jo had stopped many times at the little church that Doña Mencia, Enrique’s grieving wife, had erected at his grave a year after the peace treaty was signed and Enrique himself died. It was a monument in ruins. No one cared for it. The Tainos knew Enrique was not there, just his bones, as the bones of all those killed by the cruelty of the invaders or the diseases they had brought filled the hills of the province. Still, Jo’s uncle brought her there to pray in thanksgiving to the great God who had given their people such leaders and they mourned the site together, the old man and the little girl who had now become his heir.

Much like Bani, the road to Azua was also deflected through the center of the city. But here a huge chemical factory polluted the air with an acrid, pungent odor that clung to the car long after the streets thickened with pleasant, small hotels with dining rooms, baby shops, hardware stores, and fast-food chicken and fruit stands that filled the rows of connected shops, as they had in Bani. So much history, thought Jo, but so little seen to the incoming eye. This was progress, she thought. And she mused, and not for the first time as she traveled this road, that progress is temporal, but all that remained, down through the ages, was the earth and its produce, the gift of the Creator, displayed so lavishly in the spacious valley that graced the passage into the peninsula.

After the turnoff to the town of Vicente Nobile, just before the peninsula commenced, the terrain began to transition back to semi-desert. The people filled the small and sandy front yards of their homes with flowers, little fruit trees, stalls of huge stalks of plaintain and mountains of ripe mangos in season to create a link, Jo always felt, between the spacious valley and the coming of the great orchards, ringed with coconut palms that heralded the peninsula itself. Towns and little villages came swiftly now, beginning with Jaquimeyes, one after another. By Palo Alto, in the well-watered entrance to the peninsula, vast fields of sugarcane rippled in the waves of trade winds blowing in off the Bay of Neiba, which the road would soon meet at Barahona, the point where it touched the Caribbean Sea.

Jo always felt a strange stirring within her when she crossed the little river, the Río Yaque del Sur, which marked to her mind the transition from the mainland proper to the land of the Tainos. The name of the river itself was a Taino word. The river began far away in the union of a number of tributaries that trickled down from the mountains of the interior. These little rivelets merged gently, almost unnoticed, as they wended their way to the valleys. Then, gathering strength in sheer numbers, they became together a commanding river that flowed for miles, irrigating and thereby enlivening all the land drinking thirstily from it, until it reached the peninsula, finally siphoned off all along its trajectory to become once more a steady stream that emptied at last into the sea. To Jo, it was so representative of her own people, the Tainos, a gentle tribe that gathered up the peoples who preceded them into a populous nation that filled the islands. Their strength was depleted, first by the Caribes, and then the conquistadores, until they became a small nation that emptied itself into all the nations of the sea of humanity, enriching everyone it touched with its knowledge of medicinal herbs, its preparation of foods, and its language that described each of its true treasures, the yuca, guayaba, guánabana—Taino names all—and with them all the rest of the banquet that created today’s cocina criolla. The Tainos also bequeathed their heroes to the island’s history, like the incomparable Enrique and his magnificent aunt Queen Anacoana, the stateswoman and Jo’s direct ancestor, and all the rest of the wealth that is Taino lore and art and history, embedded in the culture of the country.

As the family arrived at last at the impressive entrance to Barahona itself, Jo took the great welcome sign that spanned the road as a personal invitation. This time, however, the welcome would have to remain for her alone. If she walked in the hills, it would be alone. She was entering an empty house. Her house now. But what that meant she began to fear. Her father’s and then her stepmother’s cryptic words came back to her. What “responsibilities” did they mean exactly? Why did she have to bring the ceremonial dress? Why should she not sell the house? What more was involved? Suddenly, what lay before seemed larger to her than she had thought. And she was absolutely right—right beyond anything she ever could have imagined.