Читать книгу Cave of Little Faces - Aída Besançon Spencer - Страница 18

All night long, Jo was restless and her dreams were troubled. She woke up feeling cramped and queasy. She felt like she expended all her effort just to get out of bed. Her head felt sleep-drugged, her chest constricted, her arms and legs heavy. She managed to drag herself to the window and peered between the heavy curtains out across the water of the bay of Neiba, toward the stately white walls of Martin Garcia Point, where she saw the sunrise struggling with an equally difficult effort to free itself from a ponderously heavy cloud cover. She knew how it felt.

“Uhhh,” she groaned and told the dawn, “I feel terrible.”

The last several days had been so hectic. The stark interruption of sorrow and sudden travel piled itself on an already overwrought schedule of overcommitments. It added poundage to the already thick tonnage of launching her fledgling ministry to immigrants who needed so much to survive in the swift, urban, East Coast northern American society that demanded they hit the pavement at a run to keep up. All of this had begun factoring itself in with her new but now central spiritual dimension that had become the mediator for what she chose to do—determining to what she could say yes, as usual, and to what she now had to say no—all to baffled, uncomprehending stares. It had finally overwhelmed her. All this redefining of her role to people she had already served before, Jo wondered, maybe this was all a mistake?

She groaned again and leaned wearily on the window sill. How could she reinvent herself when the redefinition was only somewhat clear to her? Small wonder it was thoroughly murky or completely missed by most of those with whom she had already forged a relationship. She was their community organizer, returned to them, in their eyes, as a “nun” now—a kind of one-stop spiritual and social shopping that streamlined the meeting of their many needs of enculturation.

Jo groaned again. Two years of pending doubt came pouring down on her like a sullen rain, soaking her resolve, leaving her self-image totally bedraggled. I guess it’s because I’m here, she thought, back on safe ground in my childhood retreat. Here, where I’ve always felt safe, where I have to explain nothing about the way I look or the things we value or the weight of our heritage that always marked us off from the kids among whom we grew up in Richfield. Multicultural enough to avoid out-and-out prejudice, still the mix in her adopted hometown of Richfield had invited cliques and marginalization. “Where are you from?” some of them had asked when she was very young. “Where’s that?”

Then the tsunami of Dominican immigrants had swept across the state and the Republica had become familiar and even notorious in some spots. But even among the Dominicans, Jo and her siblings had been marked off as indios. Each of the siblings had sought to close the gap of heritage in her or his own way. Ruby had become a sports star—driven, excelling, hard, directed. Daniela had her beauty, and it got her into parties and into school plays—always in decorative, nonspeaking parts. She was not the football queen—her personality was not strong enough—but she was a member of the court—a “lady in waiting.” And that term had summed up her life so far. Danny as well summarized herself as a “looker,” and so she played that through high school like a trump card. But now that was over, and junior college had not worked out. She ended up driving a school bus to the disregard of a cruel new generation to whom she looked old and out of date. No wonder she dreaded aging, Jo thought—and not for the first time. What else does Danny have—and what have I ever done to help her find more in herself? And then Ben—his trump cards were devastatingly exacting.

Sick and helpless before pent-up feelings she could no longer hold at bay, Jo staggered off to the bathroom. The reckoning she had been holding off for two years followed inexorably and banged on the door of her heart like a summons server. This time she had no escape into her daily routine. “I’ve got to work this through,” she muttered to herself. “I’ve been putting this off too long. I’ve got to face the inevitable. What on earth am I doing? This whole job change, the way things are working out with the family, this is all a mess.” She felt like the summons had been shoved under the bathroom door and “Inadequate” was stamped on it as the charge. “It’s all worse because I’m sick,” she cried.

Three days in the Dominican Republic with its different water—all bottled now because you could not drink anything from the tap—its own current flus of the week that everyone was passing around and sharing communally, its specific subtropical mosquitos and microbes that formed a welcoming committee with the attention of a Bravado casino dealer sensing new amateur blood, usually meant the next three days were given over to té criolla and the mandatory proximity of a network of lavatories wherever one had to go. This time, however, she had not even made it through twenty-four hours. “I must have brought this with me,” she lamented, “or I must be getting old.” Thirty was looming like a watchful security guard outside a Barahona bank, looking her over intently. Reckoning was now like a financial counselor, shuffling through her personal accounts with a jaundiced eye and challenging, “Are you putting anything in reserve from this decade you just spent in overactivity? Have you got anything at all to show for it? Remember, energy is like income; it’s not inexhaustible. . . .”

“Uhhhhhhh,” Jo groaned and stumbled from the bathroom to the bed. “I’m not ready to do anything, but sleep.” And that’s what she did.

About eleven a.m.—nearing the witching hour of the Polarians, on tap twice daily whenever they needed it, and which, at this point, Jo, providentially, knew nothing about—Doña Lucia decided it was more than time to go up and see how her new guest was faring.

She peered in and said, softly, “Josefina, are you up?”

“Uhhhhh,” groaned Jo.

Doña Lucia opened the curtains wide, letting in the light, and took in the situation at a glance. “Do you want some té criolla this morning, Jo?”

“No,” murmured Jo, “but I think I need it.”

“I’ll be back,” said Doña Lucia. “You rest.”

Down in the kitchen, Lucia Romero took a dozen cherries out of the freezer, broke off two, and put the rest back in. Next to them, in another plastic bag, she retrieved a chunk of passion fruit, the seeds still in it, and then a medium-sized onion from which she cut a quarter on the cutting board on the counter. From the cabinet came a stick of cinnamon, and then she went out the back door to a tree over by the compound wall, picked off a green lemon, brought it back inside, and sliced it twice so that the four quarters were half separated, but still joined. All these she washed down with bottled water, then added enough to cover them in a small pot, placed a lid on it, and put them on to boil. When the mixture was bubbling away, she turned the range down and let it boil at close to simmer for about six minutes, then turned off the gas and let the concoction stand for ten more minutes. At the end of the time, she strained the liquid out through a metal colander, discarded the pulp, put in a tablespoon of brown sugar, and filled a mug with the pungent juice. This she presented to Jo, who sat up, drained it with a grimace, thanked her in muffled tones, and went back to sleep. Doña Lucia kissed her on the head and tiptoed out.

About midafternoon, Jo finally marshaled herself together and stumbled downstairs. She slogged her way to the back porch and eased into a rocking chair. “Uhhhh,” groaned Jo.

Don Ramón, alerted that Josefina was finally among those present by a text message from Doña Lucia—since they both considered it undignified to shout from the main house across to the bungalow—found Jo slumped in her chair and sat down beside her. “Can you handle some breakfast, Querida?” he asked gently.

“I don’t think so, but thank you, Don Ramón.”

“My wife has already fixed you up with some té criolla, I assume?”

“She has indeed,” murmured Jo.

“It will work wonders for you.”

“I’m banking on it.”

“The old ways are always the best ways,” said Don Ramón Romero. “That’s why they are still with us, because, in so many cases, they are best.”

Jo had heard that adage times without number from this gentle couple who had practically reared her and her siblings each summer when their parents and Uncle Saul were gone, so she merely nodded. No reply was necessary.

“I’m sorry you are not well, Josefina. The lawyer was coming in from Villa Bahoruco to meet with you today.”

Jo turned bleary, bedraggled eyes toward her surrogate “uncle.” “Don’t let the cracks in this earthen vessel deter you,” she murmured, waving her weary hand down the length of queasiness that was today’s Jo in the flesh. “Rallying is what I do best. I need to know what happened to my parents for peace of mind. Without that, I can’t get better.”

“Yes, that is you, Jo. But you don’t want to overdo it.”

“It is a family failing.”

Don Ramón smiled, “It runs down the generations, but I really think you should rest today. Tomorrow is soon enough, and you will hear much. I promise it will be a lot for you to process. My wife is even now making you some chicken soup,” he added reassuringly.

“What would I do without you both?”

Don Ramón beamed.

“What would Uncle Sol have done without you both? You have been so wonderful to our family—I can’t imagine life here without you and Doña Lucia. In fact, I don’t want to. . . .” She sent her gratitude to him with what would have been a dazzling smile, if she could have mustered it.

“It is our mission in life,” said Don Ramón softly.

She thought he was joking.

“I’m sorry,” said Jo in what was going to have to pass for hasty on this morning. “I have to use the bathroom again.”

“Of course,” he said, rising. “After that, go back to bed and sleep a little longer. Lucia will have some nice chicken broth ready when you awaken.”

“Bless you,” said Jo and staggered off. This was the best advice she could have received, and Jo was a lifelong connoisseur of good advice.

The day passed with applications of chicken soup, sweetened gelatin, steady glasses of bottled water, and one more steaming mug of criolla tea, and then Jo slept all night long. Her sleep debt, she mused, as she drifted off, must rival that of Ben’s blackjack losses at Atlantic City—and then she was gone.

The next morning, Jo realized she was on the mend: not there yet completely, but definitely on the way.

Doña Lucia was delighted to see her up already when she peeked in. “Ah, the wonders of té criolla,” she smiled.

“Yes, and God’s grace and your good care.”

“Amén, amén.”

“Do you think you are up to meeting with the lawyer today, Querida, or would you want one more day to rest?” asked Don Ramón, when she came downstairs at a steadier gait.

“Do I go there, or does he come here?” asked Jo, before answering.

“Wisely said,” chuckled Doña Lucia.

“He will come here,” Don Ramón assured her.

“Then, yes, I think I can talk for a bit—understanding my present limitations. . . .”

“At my age, that is always understood,” smiled Don Ramón.

The three of them sat rocking on the porch while they waited, talking over desultory family topics. Jo caught up on the progress of each of their children, and they both asked many questions about the development of her ministry, whether she continued using the things she had learned in community organizing (to which she had answered, “Of course, they are very much overlapping in many areas”), exactly what she did as a minister, and how her two callings meshed and differed. Suddenly, in the midst of this, Don Ramón received a cell phone call. He glanced at it and then sat up quickly and said, “Excuse me, Josefina, I must take this one—it is important to our meeting today.” He stepped off the porch and moved a brief distance away so as not to disturb Jo and his wife as they continued to chat, but they heard his voice take on a tone of reproach and a note of urgency before he closed his phone and walked back to them, frowning.

“Bad news?” asked Jo, immediately concerned.

“Somewhat,” he said. “Not terrible news, but somewhat disturbing.”

Doña Lucia simply gazed at him, waiting.

“Ricky finds he cannot come today.”

“He cannot come?” Lucia asked, astonished. “And why not?”

“He cannot work it into his schedule.”

“Cannot work it in?”

“That’s what he says.” They passed a look between themselves that made Jo pause and begin to rise. “If you both would like to talk. . . .”

They hesitated.

“I really need to make yet one more stop inside,” Jo assured them.

“I’ll make you more tea later, Josefina,” said Doña Lucia.

Jo grimaced, said thank you, and left. Té criolla is admittedly an acquired taste that few acquire, but it does—indeed—work wonders.

When she returned, they picked up the inquiry into her activities as if nothing had intervened. Their questions were intelligent, detailed, probing. Jo knew they loved her as one of their own children—she had known them, after all, since infancy—really since birth—but this was closer to an examination. But, what of that? she thought. Who cares this much about me to want to know about the details of my life besides my parents and these dear people, my extended “family”? So she answered everything they asked until a phone call from the lawyer heralded his impending advent and then a second announced he was now arriving.

“I think I can walk you down to the gate,” Jo offered. “I’m feeling better, really.”

Don Ramón smiled. Jo was hardly up to helping him push back the heavy gate in her present condition. “No need, Querida,” he assured her. “Our youngest son, Ernesto, has come to help us today. He will be staying on to assist me when the delegates arrive for the reunion.”

“Someday we will have to get that gate mechanized,” exclaimed Jo. “I don’t know why it wasn’t done years ago.”

Both Doña Lucia and Don Ramón simply smiled.

“Some of the new ways are good, too,” said Jo.

“Of course,” Don Ramón assured her. “We do have cell phones, you notice.”

Licenciado Angel Moreno Cueva de Piedra was a man Jo knew by sight, but had never really gotten to know. He came on business from time to time to talk with Uncle Sol and her father when she was here on vacation, but, since that never concerned her, they had never really spoken. He was a quiet man, gentle, and dignified, as were so many who visited Las Olas. He was somewhere in his middle age, sharing the same warm skin tone as she, her siblings, her parents, and the Romeros: lighter than Dominicans, but with a rich creamy olive complexion. Jo herself was tall and slim to normal with lovely long dark hair, a beautiful smile, and warm, encouraging eyes. She was not Daniela, of course, she had often told herself, with the features and figure of a model, or aquiline and all muscle and drive like Ruby with her short hair and flashing eyes and set chin, or sensual and promising a hint of future weight like Ben, but now altogether endearing with his expressive eyebrows, engaging, boyish smirk, pleasantly rounding face, and framed with the same smooth skin they all possessed. She was just Jo, the eldest, the one who stood in the back behind the sports star and the dashing gambler and the dazzling beauty and tried to take care of them all in her own humble way. Her siblings exhibited the best of their Taino heritage, her stepmom Lea had exclaimed over and over again, winning the young children’s hearts—both her own and Ben’s—with her praise, while Lea’s simple—and, in that, profound—loving kindness won Jo’s love.

The lawyer, on the other hand, was a small man—very small by their standards, some five foot or so—not over five foot two. He looked nondescript. He was very deferential, greeting Doña Lucia and Don Ramón with a cordial, almost old-world formality. He bowed to Jo, asking her not to rise or prepare to go anywhere because he could spread his papers on his briefcase and answer all of her questions as he was able to do so. He sat in a straight wooden chair that Don Ramón dragged over for him, scudded forward, and opened his briefcase to reveal a neat little portable desk top with an upright back in which was strapped pen, paper, and documents, all secured in with soft brown bands. Jo suspected this was the standard way he dealt with documents when he ranged about the countryside, visiting his clients. He even shifted a little around so that Jo would not be staring into a brown wall behind which he would be obscured.

“I have all these documents on computer as well,” he assured them, nodding to the computer bag he had sitting by his chair. “We could look onto the screen, but I thought you might all want to have your own copies to examine, so I printed out copies of the will for everyone. He paused and looked around. “Señor Asenao is here already?”

“No,” said Don Ramón.

“He is on his way then?”

“No, I’m afraid he’s not coming.”

“Not coming? He is not coming?” The lawyer’s mouth dropped open. “How is it that he is not coming? Did he say?”

“Just that he was too busy.”

“Too busy?”

Jo looked from one to the other. She saw Doña Lucia shake her head. All of them appeared deeply disturbed.

“This is not right.”

“No, it’s not,” said Doña Lucia.

Jo just sat and waited. She was not Ruby, full of demands, wanting explanations on the spot—and those snappy, as well!

“Should we go on?” asked the lawyer.

“Yes,” said Doña Lucia, “we must.”

Don Ramón nodded in agreement.

The lawyer paused, said, “Well,” and then “well,” again, and became very serious. He hunched his shoulders and nodded to Jo, deeply deferentially, with the air of one who is dreading the answer he fears he will receive. “May I ask, please, did he meet you at the airport in Santo Domingo?” It was clear by his intonation the “he” was in reference to their missing guest.

“No one met us,” said Jo, “and we did wonder about that.” And then she added, as her first attempt to clear up some of the mystery of that whole fiasco, “No one did. And my father—you know my father, of course?”

The lawyer nodded an obvious, unspoken assent.

“Well, he gave me a message about picking us up himself or sending someone who would say, ‘Baiguanex has sent me for you.’ You must know that is my father’s Taino name. But, no one came saying that or anything else. So we rented a car—on my credit card, I might add—and we drove here. Are we speaking of the one who was supposed to meet us? He must be very busy, indeed, neither to come as promised nor meet with us today. Is his presence so imperative that he must be here for us to meet? And, who is he exactly? Do I know him?” Jo looked again from one to another, searching all their faces. But they were all impassive now as only the heirs of the First Nations can be impassive.

“Not imperative,” said Don Ramón, “but his presence would have been very helpful.”

“And,” added Doña Lucia, “well mannered.”

“Yes, both,” agreed Don Ramón.

“His assistance is going to be necessary for you to see your inheritance,” said the lawyer carefully. “It will be very difficult without his cooperation.”

“Not impossible,” said Doña Lucia.

“No, not impossible, of course,” agreed the lawyer, “but very inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient?” echoed Jo. “What is this ‘mountain’ you spoke of Don Ramón? Something on his property—is that it?”

“No, no, Josefina. He is simply a guardian.”

“A guardian?”

“Yes,” said Doña Lucia, “one of many, but very important. He should be cooperating with us. This is very disturbing.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jo, “but I’m not making head or tail of all this. I have an inheritance, but it is not here. It is elsewhere. I have lost an uncle, but I have heard nothing about his funeral. I have two parents who are missing, but they are somewhere, though not here. Honestly, I am a bit sick today and perhaps my patience is not where it should be, but I’m feeling a bit like my sister Ruby. I would like to know—with all due respect, and I mean that sincerely—what on earth is this all about?”

Whether they would have answered her or not Jo often wondered afterward. But none of them had a chance if they had been so disposed, because at the very moment she had ceased putting her questions to them, a young man hurried around the side of the house, dashed up to them deferentially, and paused, waiting to speak. Jo recognized Ernesto, the Romeros’ youngest child.

“What is it, son?” asked Don Ramón in surprise.

But, before the young man could reply, around the same corner strode a tall, and somewhat imposing man just over Jo’s age, dressed in a gray sports jacket and black designer slacks. He had wavy black hair and a broad smile. He surveyed the entire back yard with approval, spending a moment gazing at the sea and what he could see of the beach behind the back fence. “Very nice,” he murmured in Castilian Spanish. “Yes, very nice indeed.” He framed his hands as if he were setting up a camera shot, swept them across the vista, and then with a satisfied grin turned toward the porch, and nodded at the gathering there, who were staring back at him, baffled. Then he turned around and spoke to someone just out of sight, “I’d like to see the house now.”

To Jo’s shock, around the corner came her sister Daniela and her brother Ben, obviously, eagerly awaiting some sort of response and then directions from him.

“Right this way,” said Daniela and began mounting the steps at the far end of the porch.