“Pibín!” I called out to alert the others. “Come in here. Mamá has some good news. You’re going to have a little sister.”
“Or a little brother,” Pancho corrected me.
As I said, I already knew I was carrying a girl. “What shall we name her, Pibín?” I asked cheerfully in order to distract him.
He did not hesitate a moment, “Salomé.”
“We’ll see,” I said, so as not to disappoint him. But I did not want my daughter to carry my name. I wanted her to have her own name, to be borne up and away from the life that was closing down around me.
TIVISITA AVOIDED MY EYES for days after disclosing my secret to Pancho. I wondered why she had not told me directly, but I suppose she was afraid to confront her beloved teacher. She was devoted to me, for I had given her a set of wings in the form of the alphabet. Sometimes as she sat on my bed and we went over her lessons, I had a vision of my own daughter, at her age, sitting beside me, telling me all her little secrets. The fantasy was not so far-fetched. At sixteen, Tivisita was only five years older than my Fran.
Many days, we would talk like mother and daughter about one subject or another. One day we got into a discussion about our country. In a few months, we would be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of our independence.
“Perhaps we’re not ready to be a patria, after all,” I admitted. Lying in bed those long hours with too much time to think, I’d been forced to realize that the patria we had hoped for had yet to be born. For fifty years we had struggled to bring it to life, only to deliver stillbirths, one after another.
“Don’t say that, maestra,” Tivisita said, trying to cheer me up. She reminded me of how I used to address my dear friend Hostos, maestro. From Chile, he had written me: he was setting up schools under the auspice of a new, progressive government; the family was settled; but he missed his dear friends.
“Think of it, Tivisita, in these fifty years, we’ve had over thirty different governments. Again and again our dreams destroyed.”
Tivisita’s eyes filled with sadness at our tragic history. She squared her pretty shoulders and announced that from this day forward, she was going to dedicate herself to fighting for her patria.
I told myself not to laugh—it would just bring on a fit of coughing. I did not want to discourage this noble feeling. But the girl looked so much like Mon’s old porcelain doll from St. Thomas, sitting there in her high-collar shirtwaist with its puffy leg-of-mutton sleeves, that it was difficult to take her seriously as a revolutionary.
“What can we do?” Tivisita wanted to know as if suddenly realizing that she had no idea what kind of a patria to strive for.
We? I thought. No, my time was up. All I had left to give were the children I was sending into the future. “You will have to start over.” I told Tivisita. “In the name of Martí and Hostos and Bolívar and all those who have given everything.”
“Are you afraid, maestra?” Tivisita asked. She had seen my hand stroking my belly, for I was speaking to my daughter as much as to Tivisita. “I mean, many women fear their time,” she added as if to reassure me that even healthy women were fearful of giving birth.
“No, I’m not afraid of giving birth,” I said. I did not add that I was afraid of dying, of not living to see my children grown and happy.
PANCHO DECIDED WE MUST close the instituto before the month was out. The day we chose to announce it to the girls, he insisted on standing by with a bottle of Spiritus Vitae and a jar of smelling salts in case any of my girls swooned. I thought he was being excessive—Pancho and his enthusiasms!—but this time he was right. The Pou girl went into hysterics, and several girls had to be fanned back from dizzy spells because, they insisted, the best part of their lives was over.
“Señoritas, have I not taught you to reason better than that?” I scolded, blinking back my own tears.
“Couldn’t Señorita Ramona direct it?” Some girls looked hopefully toward Ramona.
“My sister is needed at home,” I explained. It was true. Tía Ana was now bedridden, and Mamá’s heart was in a constant flutter, though she claimed her heartsickness had nothing to do with her health but with her worries about mine. “There’s also funding. El Ayuntamiento is not paying us what it should for each student. We will have to give up the lease on this house the first of the year.” I was piling up the many reasons, so as not to tell them the real reason: I had to conserve all my strength to give birth to my daughter. And without my protection, the school would founder. Archbishop Meriño had recently issued another pastoral urging an end to schools without God, especially those that educated girls.
Two of my first graduates who were now back as teachers stepped forward. “Eva and I are going to petition the Ayuntamiento for more funds,” Luisa announced. “We will see about reopening the school in a few months. We won’t give up our instituto. Long live our maestra!”
The girls took up the cry, “¡Viva Salomé!”
I looked at their bright, young faces and felt a surge of hope. These, too, were my children I was sending into the future to start over.
AFTER CLOSING DOWN THE school, Pancho and I made an even more difficult decision: to leave the country.
Our political troubles had started up again when Pancho and his brother Federico used their new paper, Artes y Ciencias, to evaluate la patria’s progress on its fiftieth year. Pancho’s patients disappeared, like a river drying up. One night, a group of Lilís’s thugs surrounded the house, shouting insults. The next morning we found the monkey hanging by its rope in the backyard. The boys were in tears. I, too, felt grief-stricken seeing that childlike shape swinging from the guava tree.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Pancho consoled us, tearful himself. “We’ll get ourselves another one, I promise.”
I was furious at Pancho for endangering all our lives. But I admit, I was also proud of his stubborn courage. How could I fault him, when most of our noble men were dead or had fled the country, and those who remained were silent.
“You listen to me,” I said, stroking my belly. Sensing I might not have much time with my daughter, I’d begun to raise her before she was even born. “Wherever we end up, remember, this is your patria!”
We had decided to settle in El Cabo in next-door Haiti. It was fast becoming the gathering place of all our rebels. The Lauranzóns were already there, and according to the letters Don Rodolfo sent Tivisita, the city was a thriving port, with many opportunities for business, and a cosmopolitan atmosphere that was very French. (This was indeed a persuasive feature for Pancho, whose accent had finally worn off but not his avowed preference for all things French.) In addition there was a large hospital on the outskirts, Hospice Justinien, where a Paris-educated physician could easily find work.
But there was only one way I could bear to leave my country: El Cabo would only be a temporary stop. We would be back as soon as we were rid of our tyrant.
Pancho would go ahead with Max, who was giving me the most trouble these days. Although he was eight years old, Max was still the baby, restless and demanding—especially now that my illness made me less accessible to him. The poor child would stand outside my door, calling for me, deaf to Tivisita’s explanations that he had to let his Mamá rest so she could get better.
The rest of us—the two boys, Regina, Tivisita, and I—would go with Pancho as far as Puerto Plata on the north coast to our old friends Dubeau and Zenona. Another friend, Zafra, a doctor who now lived in Puerto Plata, would attend to me. (“Neither of you ever listened to me anyhow,” Alfonseca commented, when we explained our plans.) Two months before my confinement, Ramona would come to be with me. Meanwhile, Pancho would be in El Cabo, only a day away by steamboat should I need him. This was a relief for me, for the thought of another separation from Pancho was frightening.
“Puerto Plata will be good for us,” I told my daughter, stroking my belly where I had last felt an elbow pushing out. Maybe the air that had restored me once before would work its miracle aga
in. “Faith!” I kept telling both of us.
“Who are you talking to, Mamá?” Pibín asked me, stepping into the room. Midday, when my fever usually went down, I would let the children come in and visit me.
“Your sister.”
“Did you talk to me, too, before I was born?”
“Yes, of course, I did.” I was stretching the truth a little, but with children, we have to do this so that they know our love always includes them.
“What did you say?”
I thought a moment, and then I decided to surprise him. “I will write it down for you to keep.” That night as I lay in bed unable to sleep, I began composing a poem in my head, “Mi Pedro.” It was, in fact, a poem about what I had discussed with Tivisita: my Pibín as my gift to the future of my country. But I could not seem to finish it. Even so, I recited the first four verses I had written a few days later to him.
“You spoke to me in rhymes! Oh, Mamá!” He rushed toward me for an embrace, but I held my hand up to stop him. Pancho had written to Dieulafoy in France, who had responded that he was almost sure that consumption could not be spread by simple contact. Even so, I had grown cautious with my little grackles. I wanted to take no chances.
“Don’t get near me, dear one,” I said firmly.
“Why Mamá? The baby?”
I could not have him thinking that his sister was the cause of any distance between us. So I told him the truth, “It’s my consumption. And I do not want to spread it.”
“Is that why you shut down the instituto?” he wanted to know.
I was ashamed to confess that this thought had not been uppermost in my mind at all. It took my Pibín with his fine moral sensibilities to remind me that others might be at risk, too.
Busca la luz, I had advised him in my poem. Follow the light. But I had not been following my own advice, sunk as I was in gloomy thoughts of departure. No wonder I had been unable to finish the poem.
This was not the first time I had been wiser on paper than in person.
THAT BOAT RIDE TO Puerto Plata turned out to be like the progress of a queen through her grieving kingdom.
News had spread that Salomé was ill and on her way north for a rest cure. At each port, a delegation of young poets asked for permission to come aboard. I would receive them from my deck chair, with my hat on and a blanket over my legs and lap. Tivisita had placed it there—perhaps out of decorum to hide my growing belly or to keep me from the drafts she feared would stir up my coughing. The poets came forward, and one by one recited their poems to me.
I especially recall a young man, who came aboard at San Pedro de Macorís. He was dark-skinned, with those dark liquid eyes of someone who seems about to cry. I couldn’t help but remember Papá’s old dictum: Tears are the ink of the poet. His name was Gastón Deligne, and when he began to recite, a hush settled on the deck of that steamboat. “Your words have filled the sails of our souls. . . .” His young voice reminded me of Pancho’s, back in those days when he used to recite my poems as if he had written them.
When Gastón was done, I was too overwhelmed to thank him. He stepped forward and showed me the packet in his hands. At first, I thought he was offering me a manuscript of his poems to read. I would gladly have read them as, judging from what he had recited, he was no doubt a gifted poet. But it turned out, they were my own poems he had collected, including the slim book Friends of the Country had published, and other, more recent occasional poems, clipped from the pages of newspapers. “I have them all,” he boasted like a boy showing off his collection of shiny pebbles.
Before he left, he reached for my hand and pressed it, not wanting to let go. Others had kept their distance, whether out of respect for la poetisa or fear of contagion, I could not tell. Later, I learned that Gastón’s younger brother, Rafael, also a poet, was dying of leprosy. Perhaps I should have been the one to withdraw my hand. But his eyes held me.
“We will build the patria you wanted, poetisa. I promise.”
I sighed and said nothing. I had heard this before.
“We will do it in your name.” He was a bit too intense. Tivisita looked worriedly toward Pancho, who came forward. “There, there, young Dante,” he said in his effusive way. “Salomé has had enough excitement for one day.” But as we pulled away from the dock, I could hear his shout, “In your name, Salomé, in your name!” I felt as if I were dying, leaving behind the shore of the living, no longer prey to human promises or poverty of spirit.
THE SEA VOYAGE ITSELF was a time lifted from time, blessed and sunny, no spies snooping around the house, no school to worry about, no students to examine, only the briny sea air to breathe and the rocking of the sea to lull me, so that I felt like the child inside me, adrift in its waters. On my lap lay the book I was reading, Numa Pompilius by Florian, an old favorite. I had packed a small trunk of books to help me fill the idle hours in Puerto Plata before my child was born, among them, books from my father’s library that we had enjoyed together. Again, I read of Numa’s friend, the wandering Camila with the fleet feet who could run through a field of grain and not bend a single stalk, walk across the ocean and not wet her feet.
Camila! I’d almost forgotten that as a girl I had promised myself that if I ever had a daughter, I would name her after this brave young woman. Camila it would be. So as not to disappoint my Pibín, I would also give her my own name. Suddenly, it seemed a good thing that our names always be together.
“Salomé Camila,” I told her when I lay down in my cabin to rest that evening.
I felt such happiness saying it.
THE PARTING WITH PANCHO in Puerto Plata was more difficult than I thought it would be. Suppose this time he would not come back for four years! I clung to him with my eyes since I could no longer embrace anyone.
Before we left the capital, Pancho received a second letter from Dieulafoy in France. New studies indicated that the tubercle baccilli might indeed be spread by contact. It was best to take precautions, especially with children.
Of course, I worried about my unborn Camila. Dieulafoy had reassured Pancho that the baccilli could not be spread in utero. But once the child was born, I would have to avoid all contact. “Keep a lookout for a wet nurse,” Pancho advised Tivisita, who blushed later when I explained the meaning of the term to her.
Pancho had sinks installed in every room of the palm-wood cottage Dubeau had rented for us. He coached Tivisita on washing the boys’ and her own hands after being in the room with me. A special set of utensils tied with bright red ribbons was kept in a small cupboard in my room, along with my own linens.
“Mamá has the red ribbons,” was how Max got to calling my illness. Only to Pibín, who even at his young age could be discreet, had I mentioned the word consumption.
The morning of his departure, Pancho reviewed the regimen for the household: the children could visit with me, but no kisses, no hugs, no sleeping with Mamá. Saying so, he eyed my Pibín, who looked away, biting his lip so as not to cry. Pancho could be so tactless.
He had insisted Tivisita be with us in the room as he gave me his last-minute instructions, so that later, I would not be trying to prescribe for myself. “I will write every week to keep up with your progress,” Pancho promised.
“And I will write you every single day, Mamá!” Max piped up. He was dressed in his sailor outfit, cocky with the experience of having been on board a boat once before.
I smiled fondly at my baby, knowing what a handful Pancho was taking with him. “I would like that very much,” I told him. It was almost a physical pain not to be able to hold him and say goodbye before he left.
“Perhaps he can improve his penmanship, so you will be able to read his letters,” Pancho noted pointedly. Max colored, shamed in the midst of his avowals.
“Check the cabinet, Tivisita. There should be enough quinine, but remember, only for high fevers. Salomé drinks it like water.” Pancho always accused me of being a difficult patient, of thinking I had gone to medical school right alo
ng with him. “I do want her on 25 centigrams a day of ioduro for the cough and then her creosote capsules with two fingers of cod liver oil. Every meal, you hear. Salomé is fond of forgetting breakfast is a meal, not just a time to get up and read her books.”
As Tivisita was checking all the supplies in the closet, Max showed me the top she had given him as a bon voyage gift. She was also sending along gifts for her three older sisters, whom she missed terribly, she admitted. I had tried to convince her to go along to El Cabo with Pancho and Max so she could see them. Regina could look after me until Ramona arrived, but Tivisita would not leave me. “Not till you are cured and the baby is born,” she promised.
It was when I turned from listening to Max boast about his new top, that I saw something in an eyeblink that I wished I had not seen. Tivisita’s back was turned, and Pancho was gazing at her with a look of longing mingled with renunciation. It was this renunciation that pained me the most, for it meant Tivisita had entered the realm of his imagination, where lust turns to love, and souls marry.
I felt that old scorpion, jealousy, stirring in my heart, but immediately, I chased it out. I had heard Mamá and the old people talk of how expecting mothers could poison their babies with dark thoughts. I did not want my Camila to be small-minded and petty, her world cut down to the size of what she did not fear.
And so again, I did what I had always done with pain. I swallowed my disappointment. One thing I was glad for. Tivisita was staying with me. To see her, Pancho would have to come home to me.
PANCHO KEPT HIS PROMISE and wrote regularly. Every week we had a letter or two from him; as for Max, there were several the first few weeks, then a trickle, one or two, and then none at all. My Max, just like his father, his enthusiasms bigger than his character!
Zafra usually brought over the packet of letters, since we seldom went out. Daily now, he stopped at the house to check on my condition. He was worried at my labored breathing. As the weeks went by, and my belly grew, the pressure on my diaphragm was making it even more difficult for me to catch my breath. The fevers continued, the bloody expectorations and relentless coughing sapping the last of my strength. It was not a hopeful prognosis. Finally, Zafra suggested I summon Pancho home. But I kept resisting. Patients were now coming to his small office at the hospice, and we desperately needed the nest Pancho had begun building.