María sat back down. The interlude with the child seemed to have put a new thought in her head. “You have gotten letters; there is an address on the envelopes, no?”
“I do not know,” Consuelo shrugged. “There are marks on the envelopes.”
“You must bring me the letters,” María concluded. “And if there is an address, then a letter must be written with the words of advice that will come to you by the river tomorrow.”
“Who shall write this letter?” Consuelo worried. She knew María could read letters, but Consuelo had never seen her write them. And once written, how would the letter be sent to the daughter?
“My hand is not good,” María confessed, “but there is Paquita.” Consuelo could see the same caution on María’s face that she herself was feeling. The letter writer in town, Paquita Montenegro, always broadcast your business as if you were paying her, not just to write your letter, but to tell everyone about it. Consuelo did not want the whole village to know that Ruth had paid a man to marry her and was now wanting to divorce him. There was already enough talk about how Consuelo’s good-looking daughter had come by the money to end up in Nueva York.
“I am thinking now,” María said, interrupting the old woman’s thoughts. “A woman has come to the big house. Don Mundín’s relation. She is from there. She will help you write this letter and then she will see to it that your daughter receives it.”
At these words, Consuelo could feel her old bones lock with fright. Before she would talk about her daughter’s problem to a stranger, she would rather pay Paquita the forty pesos to write the letter and blab its contents to everyone. Again she found it hard to get the words out. “Ay, but to bother the lady . . . what if . . . I could not . . .” Her voice died away.
But now María seemed more determined than ever. “What do you mean? They bother us enough when they want.” Consuelo could see the face of the boy surfacing in the mother’s face—before it was washed away by a look of terrible anger. “Sergio will take you tomorrow after the words come to you at the river.” The younger woman grabbed the old woman’s hand. “It will go well. You will see.”
Consuelo did not know if it was the fierceness in María’s eyes, but the look struck deep inside her, flushing out the words that she had spoken in the dream! Right then and there, she knew exactly what it was she must say in the letter this stranger would write to her daughter.
Just as Sergio had reported on their walk over to the big house, Don Mundín’s relation was so easy. She was standing at the door, waiting for them—as if they were important guests she had been expecting. She was not the usual run of rich ladies, calling your name until they wore it down to nothing but the sound of an order. All her life, Consuelo had worked for many such fine ladies who kept everything under lock and key as if their homes were warehouses in which to store valuable things.
But this lady addressed her as Doña Consuelo and asked to be called Yo. “It’s my baby name and it stuck,” she explained. And what a little lady she was—you could fit two or three of her inside Ruth and still have room for little Wendy. She was dressed in pants and a jersey shirt, all in white like someone about to make her first communion. She spoke easily and gaily, words just sputtering from her lips. “So, Doña Consuelo, Sergio says you need help with a letter?”
Consuelo prepared to say something.
“What a pretty little girl!” The lady crouched down, crooning until the child was beside herself with fear and excitement. Before Consuelo knew it, the child’s pockets were full of Don Mundín’s mints and the lady had promised that before they left, she would take the child out to see the swimming pool shaped like a kidney bean. No one seemed to have informed the lady that only last summer in that pool, María and Sergio had lost their boy, no bigger than this little girl.
“We do not want . . . ,” Consuelo began. “We ask pardon for the molestation.” Her heart was beating so loud she could not hear herself thinking.
“No bother at all. Come in and sit down. Not on that old bench.” And the skinny lady pulled Consuelo by the hand just as little Wendy did when she wanted the old woman to come attend to something. Consuelo felt her heart slowing to a calmer rhythm.
Soon, they were settled in the soft chairs of the living room, drinking Coca-Colas from fancy, fluted glasses. Every time Consuelo took a sip of the syrupy liquid, the ice tinkled against the glass in a way that made her feel distracted. She kept reminding the child to hold her glass with both hands as she herself was doing.
But the lady did not seem fazed by all the breakable things around her. She propped her glass on the arm of the couch, and went on speaking, waving her hand within inches of the vase beside her. Consuelo pulled the packet of letters from the sack and waited for a pause in which she could insert her request. But the lady spoke on, a whole stream of words whose sense Consuelo could not always follow. How beautiful the mountains were, how she had come for a month to see if she couldn’t get some writing done, how she had noticed that so many families in the village were headed by single mothers—”
“The child is my granddaughter,” Consuelo informed her. She did not want the lady to get the wrong idea that in her old age Consuelo had been going behind the palms with a man.
“Ay, I didn’t mean that!” The lady laughed, slapping the air with her hand. Her eye fell on the packet of letters in the old woman’s lap. “But let’s get to your letter. Sergio told me about your daughter. . . .” And off she was again, telling Consuelo all about Ruth going to Puerto Rico in a rowboat, about Ruth living in New York, working hard at two jobs. It did spare Consuelo the trouble of having to tell the story from the very start.
A silence followed the lady’s coming to the end of what she knew. Now it was Consuelo’s turn. She began haltingly. Each time she stopped, at a loss for words, the lady’s eager look reassured her. Consuelo told how Ruth had married a Puerto Rican man, how she had done so for her residency, how the man had fallen in love. As she spoke the lady kept nodding as if she knew exactly what it was that Consuelo’s Ruth had been going through.
“But now she has written for my advice.” Consuelo patted the packet of letters on her lap. “And in my dream it came what I should say to her.”
“How wonderful!” the lady exclaimed, so that Consuelo felt momentarily baffled as to what exactly the lady felt was so extraordinary. “I mean that your dreams tell you things,” the lady added. “I’ve tried, but I can never make sense of them. Like before I got divorced, I asked my dreams if I should leave my husband. So I dreamed a little dog bites my leg. Now what’s that supposed to mean?”
Consuelo could not say for sure. But she urged the lady to visit María who would know what to make of the little dog.
The lady waved the suggestion away. “I’ve got two therapist sisters who are full of theories about the little dog.” She laughed, and her eyes had a far-away look as if she could see all the way home to the two sisters giving the little dog a bone.
Consuelo eased the topmost letter from the packet in her lap and watched as the lady read through this last letter Ruth had written. She seemed to have no trouble with the writing—Ruth had a pretty hand—but as her eyes descended on the page, she began shaking her head. “Oh my God!” she finally said, and looked up at Consuelo. “I don’t believe this!”
“We must write to my daughter,” Consuelo agreed.
“We sure should!” the lady said, pulling over the coffee table so that it was right in front of her. On it lay a tablet of clean paper and a pretty silver pen that gleamed like a piece of jewelry. The lady looked over at Consuelo. “How do you want to start?”
Consuelo had never written a letter, so she could not say. She glanced back at the woman for help.
“My dear daughter Ruth,” the lady suggested, and at Consuelo’s nod, she wrote out the words quickly as if it took no effort at all. The child came forward on the couch to look at the lady’s hand dancing across the paper. The lady smiled and offered the child some sheets
as well as a colored pencil. “You want to draw?” she asked. The child nodded shyly. She knelt on the floor in front of the table and looked down at the clean sheet of paper the lady had placed before her. Finally, the child picked up her colored pencil, but she did not make a mark.
“Okay, so far we’ve got, My dear daughter Ruth,” the lady said. “What else?”
“My dear daughter Ruth,” Consuelo repeated. And the ring of those words was like a rhyme the child often said to herself skipping in a ray of sunshine. “I have received your letter and in my dream came these words which this good lady is helping me to write down here with all due respect to el Gran Poder de Dios and gratitude to la Virgencita without whose aid nothing can be done.” It was just as it had been in her dream: the words came tumbling from her tongue!
But the lady was looking at her, perplexed. “It’s kind of hard . . . you haven’t really . . .” Now she was the one at a loss for words. “It’s not a sentence,” she said at last, and then she must have seen that Consuelo had no idea what she meant because she added, “Let’s say one thing at a time, okay?”
Consuelo nodded. “You’re the one who knows,” she said politely. It was a phrase she had been taught to say when asked by the rich for an opinion.
“No, no, it’s your letter.” The lady smiled sadly. She looked down at the paper as if it would tell her what to say next. “Never mind, it’s fine,” the lady said, and she marked a whole half page in her quicksilver hand and turned the paper over. “Okay, let ’em come!” She whooped as if she were urging lazy cows across the evening pasture.
“My daughter, you must think of your future and the future of your child for as you yourself know marriage is a holy vow—” Consuelo stopped briefly to catch her breath, and for a moment, she could not go on. She had begun to wonder if these indeed were the words she had spoken in her dream or had she confused them with what she herself had wanted to say to her daughter?
“And so my daughter, honor this man, and he will stop beating you if you do not provoke him for as the good priest has taught us we women are subject to the wisdom and judgment of our fathers and of our husbands if they are good enough to stay with us.”
The lady lay the pen on top of the paper and folded her arms. She looked over at Consuelo and shook her head. Her face had the stony gravity of María’s face. “I’m sorry. I can’t write that.”
Consuelo’s hand flew to her mouth. Maybe she had misspoken? Maybe this young woman, skinny as a nun at Lent, maybe she could tell that Consuelo was not speaking the correct words. For a second time, the words of her dream seemed to have fled her memory. “My daughter will make another foolish choice,” Consuelo pleaded. She indicated the child with her chin in order to present proof of Ruth’s errors without giving the child the evil eye by saying so. The little granddaughter, who had been studying her blank sheet for a while, bore down on her pencil and made a mark.
The lady bit her lips as if to keep back the words that were always so ready on her tongue. But a few slipped out, full of emotion. “How can you advise your daughter to stay with a man who beats her?”
“The man would not beat her if she did as she was told. She should think of her future. I have always advised her to think of her future.” Again, Consuelo felt the words she was speaking were not the wonderful words of the dream that had drawn agreement even from the stubborn Ruth. In a much smaller voice, she concluded, “She has always been too willful.”
“Good for her!” The lady gave a sharp nod. “She needs a strong will. Look at all she’s done. Risked her life at sea . . . supported herself on two jobs . . . sent money home every month.” She was counting out the reasons on her fingers like the shopkeeper counting out the money you owed him.
Consuelo found herself nodding. This woman had an eye that could see the finest points like the eyes of the child, who could thread a needle in the evening light.
“If I were you, I definitely would not advise her to stay with a man who abuses her,” the lady was saying, “but, I mean, you write what you want.”
But Consuelo did not know how to write. The brute of a man who had been her father had beat her good and hard whenever he found her wasting time like the child now bent over her sheet of paper. “You have reason,” she said to the lady. “Let us say so to my Ruth.”
She had meant for the lady’s words to be added to the ones that had already been written. But the lady crumbled the sheet in her hand and commenced a new letter. The child retrieved the crushed letter, unfolded it, and ironed it out with the flat of her small hand.
“My dear Ruth,” the lady began, “I have thought long and hard about what you have written to me. Does that sound all right?” The lady looked up.
“Sí, señora.” Consuelo sat back in the soft chair. This indeed was a better start.
“You have proven yourself a strong and resourceful woman and I am very proud of you.”
“I am very proud of her,” Consuelo agreed. Her eyes were filling with tears at the true sound of these words of praise for her daughter.
“You entered upon a clear agreement with this man, and now he refuses to honor it. How can you trust him if he so badly abuses your trust?”
“That is so,” Consuelo said, nodding deeply. She thought of Ruth’s father, stealing into the servants’ quarters in the middle of the night, reeking of rum, helping himself to what he wanted. The next morning, Consuelo was up at dawn preparing the silver tray so it would be ready when the mistress rang the bell in her bedroom.
“A man who strikes a woman does not deserve to be with her,” the lady wrote.
“A man who lifts a hand,” Consuelo echoed. “Ay, my poor Ruth . . . you should not suffer so. . . .” Again Consuelo felt the words knotting in her throat, but this time, it was not from bashfulness, but from the strength of her emotion.
“And so, Ruth, you must find a way to get help. There are agencies in the city that you can call. Do not lose heart. Do not let yourself get trapped in a situation where you are not free to speak your own mind.”
And as the lady spoke and wrote these words, Consuelo could feel her dream rising to the surface of her memory. And it seemed to her that these were the very words she had spoken that Ruth had been so moved to hear. “Yes,” she kept urging the lady. “Yes, that is so.”
As the lady was addressing the envelope, the child held up the sheet she had filled with little crosses, copying the lady’s hand. Consuelo felt a flush of tender pride to see that the child was so apt. And the lady was pleased as well. “You wrote your mami, too!” she congratulated, and she folded the child’s letter in the envelope along with Consuelo’s letter.
Part II
The caretakers
revelation
Sergio was called down to the telephone trailer early in the morning. A call from Don Mundín: ready the house, a woman is coming up to spend some time in the mountains.
“Just the woman then,” Sergio repeated to clarify the order. A woman sent up alone. Maybe she was a mistress of Don Mundín, someone in trouble.
The house was fine, yes sir, Sergio affirmed, although already in his head he had begun the breakneck cleanup that must be completed before that afternoon when the car would pull up the long drive—which had to be cleared—the croton hedges trimmed back. The chickens had to be got out of the pantry. The loaned horse must be rounded up, and his sister sent for to tend house for the doña.
“Yes, yes, no problem, Don Mundín,” he repeated with each new reminder. And then, to the crumb of a personal question. “María is fine, yes,” Sergio replied, “and the children, yes.”
The remaining children, he was thinking, for the youngest boy drowned last summer in the new swimming pool. Don Mundín had warned Sergio to fence off the area, to keep an eye out, but how could Sergio care for the big house, tend his own conuco plot, and be building fences where they were not needed? Besides, the boys had been reared here at the headwaters of the River Yaque; they knew not to go near deep water.
But what was a swimming pool to a small child but a toy left out overnight by the patrín’s children for him to play with. Danger was the river roaring down the side of the mountain. The boy must have leapt in that morning, while Sergio was out cleaning the stable, thinking that, like the patrín’s children, he could splash and stay afloat. He was found hours later by his mother floating face down. She had come to collect water from the pool which she used as a large cistern for washing and cleaning—although this, too, Don Mundín asked them not to do.
“We are at your service always here,” Sergio was hoping to conclude. “Perhaps we will see you and Doña Gabriela and the children up here soon.” To the young patrín’s credit—though María did not want to hear it—he had not returned to the house since the drowning. The weekend visits were over, the pool had been drained, the sheets and towels stored away in a closet that smelled like the forest. Sergio had heard that Don Mundín was looking to sell the place. As for his own María, she had refused to set foot in the house since the accident. Now that this woman was coming, Sergio would have to get his sister to fill in as the housemaid. Another chore to get done. And still Don Mundín chatted on.
“She wants solitude, she wants inspiration,” he was explaining.
“Yes, of course,” Sergio agreed, though these words were like the silverware the rich lined up on a table when all that was needed was a spoon to scoop and a machete to cut. Inspiration? Maybe something was wrong with the woman’s lungs.
“We will take good care of her,” Sergio promised, and then, thankfully, so he could get started on the fullest day of the last year—for the south lawn also needed to be mown as well as two handfuls of errands to be done—Don Mundín hung up.
“She wants inspiration and solitude,” Sergio repeated for María. He had gone to fetch his sister and found his wife there, working on a preparation to remove the curse of bad luck that had befallen Elena and her family.