Rosana – Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Bartolomeo Santos usually pushed through the warehouse door and hiked up the stairs to his office without even a glance around the vast space where the fruit of his fields was processed, loaded, and shipped away, but today he paused as he stepped inside.

Morning sun poured through the open loading dock door, and with the pallets of mango boxes all gone, there was nothing to distract the eye from the great pile of unprocessed wheat which dominated the lower level. In spite of himself, he smiled. A good harvest.

He wasn’t the only one who thought so. Angelo, with a clipboard of papers in one hand came from across the room to slap his boss on the back, a gesture he would never have ventured without the pleased-with-the-harvest look in Barto’s eye.

“A good wheat harvest, eh?” asked Angelo, indicating with his lips the shining pile of grain glowing in the morning light.

“A good harvest,” Barto agreed. Enough to pay for the chaff-blower he intended to buy. It would save them the cost of renting it from the Brazilian firm who always tried to overcharge him when the stiff ocean breeze wasn’t strong enough to blow the chaff by hand.

“Any fields left?” asked Angelo, consulting his clipboard with a thick, work-worn finger.

“We should finish up in the eastern mango orchards today. There was only a half-day’s work left yesterday.” Half a day. Then what would they do? I have got to find a husband for that girl, he berated himself, the good mood darting away. A week had gone by and he had done nothing. Of course, it had been busy finding buyers for all the wheat, but he was shirking his duty, and he knew it.

Angelo tapped the clipboard with finality. “Done, then! We’ll have the Party as soon as we get that pile winnowed, bagged, and shipped!”

Barto looked at him blankly.

Raising an eyebrow, Angelo took in the now clouded features of Bartolomeo Santos. Something was going on with this man. It used to be Barto was unflappable. Nothing broke through the calm, measured way he went about his business, but this whole harvest he had seemed – distracted. “You still planning on having the Harvest Party?” Angelo asked uncertainly.

Barto let out his breath. “Of course!” He summoned a hearty laugh. “Can we still count on your wife to put it together?”

Angelo almost thumped him on the shoulder again, thinking better of it at the last moment. “My wife and her cronies have been working on this Party since the day after the last one was over,” he crowed. “The only thing you gotta do is show up! And pay the bills, of course,” he added with a grin.

Barto laughed, but the joy didn’t reach his eyes. Bills. Who would pay their bills when the harvest was over? Where would Rosana work? I could stop charging rent, he pondered, but that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else paying to rent those houses.

“Angelo,” said Barto suddenly, interrupting something the older man was saying, “who do you know that’s not married?”

“Not married, Barto?” Concern and confusion flashed in Angelo’s eyes.

“Yeah. Men.”

“Men who are not married?” Angelo was wide-eyed.

“Yes,” Barto replied impatiently. “Young men. In their late-twenties. And they have to have good morals and a good job. And probably handsome, too.”

“Why are you asking me, Boss?” Angelo wondered aloud.

“There’s someone I have to marry,” replied Barto, smoothing his mustache. He looked up suddenly and caught the shock on Angelo’s face. “Someone – someone – who I have to help get married,” he stammered. “Ay, caramba, Angelo! There’s a girl who needs a husband, and I’m supposed to help her find one,” he burst out angrily.

“Ah,” said Angelo slowly, taking in Barto’s red face and the perspiration gathering on his forehead. “So you need to find a husband.”

Barto bit his lip. “For her,” he barked. “She needs a husband.”

“Well, you know I have four daughters,” the man replied, nodding carefully. “And I need all the husbands I can get, too.”

“For them,” clarified Barto.

“For them,” Angelo replied, scratching his head the way his wife hated. “But I will try to remember anyone I know who has sons who could be your husband. That is, the one you want for this girl.”

Barto peered closely at him, not sure if the older man was teasing him.

“Thank you, Angelo.” Barto said, finally. He turned to the stairs.

“Anytime, Boss. And don’t forget the Party. It’s at your house.” He paused to see if there would be a reaction. Barto whirled around to see Angelo grin. “Just kidding. It’s here in the warehouse on Saturday, as soon as we get that pile of wheat out of the way!” He tapped the clipboard again, still laughing. “You gonna be here tonight to help?”

“I’ll be there. And I’m bringing pizza and beer for anyone else who wants to help out,” he added, remembering he needed to send someone to pick up the food and beverage from the bakery. “Hopefully, the wind keeps up.” Barto reached into the pile of wheat and hefted a handful into the air. The ocean breeze acted like a wind tunnel through the open front cargo door of the warehouse and carried the light, golden chaff out through the back door. The hard, shiny wheat berries fell, scattering on the floor like edible grains of sand.

Angelo belted out his approval with shouting laughter. “By the time the sun goes down, the wind will pick up. Should go quickly!”

Barto nodded, his mind already on other things. He let out his breath heavily, and shouldering the responsibility, stalked upstairs to the office.

*

The last day of the harvest promised to be warm.

Rosana could smell the heat beginning to collect in the still air, waiting to show itself until the light of the morning sun arrived to stir it. She dressed quickly and made Norma comfortable.

“I am certain Barto will be there at noon with a meal, and you must do everything you can for him,” she insisted, straightening Rosana’s hat and tucking a stray strand of hair behind the younger woman’s ear.”

“I know. You’re right. I’ll see what I…”

“Sit next to him. Right by the foot of his chair, if you can.”

“Mama, I’ll do the best I can, but if he’s trying to find someone else to marry me, I’m not sure this is going to do any good.” Rosana took a deep breath, trying to banish the feeling that she was little more than a commodity, and that this was another evening with one of her mother’s clients.

“Loca, my love. Crazy. The man simply thinks you wouldn’t want to marry him. He’s past forty and has never been married. You just have to encourage him. Make him think he has a chance!”

It never occurred to Norma that the chance was not a certainty. Rosana kissed her mother-in-law, and shouldering her worn duffle bag, set off down the hill, past the Convent where the recently-returned Sisters were lighting candles for Lauds.

Rosana waited for Zoli, as was their custom, and together they walked down the brightening road and across the orchard, now full of fruit-less trees and stubble.

The harvesters’ talk centered on the planting which would start with the next season, the quality of the harvest, and the party.

“What party are they talking about?” Rosana asked Zoli as they began the morning work under the sharp gaze of the foreman. Zoli smiled.

“When the wheat is bagged and shipped, all the harvest work is over for the year, Senor Barto gives a big party to celebrate.”

“That doesn’t seem like his style,” grunted Rosana, scooting forward on her bottom, a position that kept her from having to stoop down all day as she gathered the wheat from the ground.

“You are right, I think,” replied Zoli thoughtfully. She shrugged. “But he does it every year. Probably because all of us love it so much.” She indicated the band of harvesters with her chin.

“You go every year?”

Zoli laughed. “Me and the whole town! It’s only supposed to be the people who have helped with the harvest, but everybody comes, and there’s always enough food for everybody. Then there’s dancing and bonuses. That’s the best part. Bonuses for all the workers.”

“Money?” asked Rosana, stopping to look up at her friend.

Zoli shrugged. “Money, clothes, food. One year, it was chickens!”

“Then what? What happens after that?”

“More dancing and eating. No drinking, though. Senor Barto doesn’t want anyone getting drunk and making a mess in his warehouse.” Zoli giggled.

Rosana conjured the scene in her mind – a warehouse full of music and dancing with lots of food. She wondered if gleaners were invited, and if she could bring Norma. Zoli read her mind.

“I’m sure he’ll want you to come,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“Free food? We might just show up anyway!” She was silent for awhile, moving steadily over the ground to keep up with the lead harvesters, concentrating on her work. “Zoli,” she asked suddenly, “what happens to all this wheat? How will they get it all out of the warehouse by the weekend?”

Zoli straightened her back and adjusted her bag before answering. “This wheat here goes into a big pile on the warehouse floor. You know how you clean your wheat by hand?” Rosana nodded. “Well, they open up the doors at sundown when the breeze off the ocean is strong and spend the whole night tossing the wheat into the air with shovels. The chaff blows out the door, and the wheat falls on the floor. Someone sweeps it into big bags and uses a machine to sew them closed. Then they pack it onto a truck and -” Here, she made a flying motion with her hand.

“That sounds like medieval Europe,” breathed Rosana. Zoli shrugged. “It works. They’ve done it like that forever. But sometimes Senor Barto gets a machine if there’s no wind or something.”

Rosana worked on the ground all morning, but even so the heat descended into the very soil until she sought refuge by gleaning in the small circles of shade the leafy mango trees provided around their bases.

It wasn’t quite noon when the harvest was finished. Rosana was the last to set down her duffle and stand carefully to her feet, arching her back and stepping back into the tree shade for a moment’s rest. There was no sign of a truck or the portable tent that usually greeted them at noon, but everyone seemed content to settle into the shade of a tree and wait.

Rosana dozed. In her mind’s eye, she pictured a massive pile of wheat and men with shovels throwing it into the air in the middle of the night.

The throbbing of a diesel engine brought her back to the present, and she struggled to her feet as the white truck came to a stop near the foreman.

Gathering her courage about her, Rosana picked up her bag and stepped forward to greet the driver as he opened the door.

It wasn’t Barto.

“Comida! Food!” said the foreman, pulling the tent from the back of the truck while the driver began collecting bags of wheat and good-naturedly ribbing the harvesters for such light loads.

The foreman served Rosana first. A gesture which reminded her of his Boss. A good Boss, if his employees knew he would want to serve the beggars first.

“Listen!” The foreman was saying, “Saturday is the party. Come at four o’clock and bring your families!”

The harvesters laughed and chattered at good times remembered and anticipated. Rosana stared at the food with the sinking realization that this was the last meal. “For awhile,” she chided herself. “Just for awhile. Something will work out.”

“Senora Delacruz,” said the truck driver, suddenly at her side. “Senor Barto says to tell the

American white lady that she is invited to the party, and should bring his Auntie.”

“Cousin,” Rosana corrected automatically.

The driver shrugged.

“Thank you,” she smiled. It was a broad smile that brought a sly grin to the face of the driver who looked around to make sure the other men had noticed the foreign beauty smile at him.

That afternoon, Norma ate the last meal with gusto. Rosana told her the story of the wheat pile and the party and lay down for an afternoon nap, wondering as she slept how she could convince a Dominican man to marry a barren foreign widow with a dependent.

Rosana – Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Rosana’s belly felt distended. It had been so long since she had eaten a second helping that she alternatively felt like laughing with delight and groaning with the pain of an overstretched stomach.

“Oh, Mama. My only consolation is knowing the food will go bad unless we eat it!” She lay on the bed, gasping with laughter.

Norma sat contentedly in the waning evening light. “And he didn’t even notice what he did to the clothes line!” She had relaxed in the joy of a full meal, and was inclined to feel forgiving toward Barto.

“I just hope he brings my shirt back,” Rosana giggled, “or I’ll have to ask him for it in front of all the harvesters, and then what would everyone think?” The thought brought on more paroxysms of laughter.

The sound of a diesel engine stilled their merriment.

“Is that him again, mija? I can’t see down the road in this light.”

Rosana groaned and heaved herself to her feet, patting the mess that she knew her hair must be, and shuffling to join her mother-in-law on the front porch. The truck that pulled into the front yard was black, and neon lights showed through the tinted windows.

“Oh, no. Mama, come inside, quick.” Rosana grabbed the handles of the chair and releasing the brake, tugged hard until the chair bumped backward over the lintel into the house. Rosana slammed the door hard, narrowly avoiding catching Norma’s foot in the door. As she turned the lock and stepped back into the darkness of the house, she tripped on the plastic water bucket, splashing the remaining half over the floor. Muttering, Rosana rubbed her toe and wished their lamp was not shining on the front porch where she had left it, a guilty finger pointing to their hurried retreat.

A wave of foreboding shivered over her neck and shoulders, and she urged Norma to be quiet, patting her gently on the shoulder for reassurance.

“Hey! Hey! Rosana! It’s your loving relation, Jaime! Remember me?”

“As if I could forget your piggish little eyes, you conniving letch!” she whispered. “Never mind, Mama,” she murmured to Norma’s fearful look.

“C’mon, pretty baby! C’mon out and talk with Uncle Jaime!” There was a grunt and the sound of mild cursing.

“I think he tripped on the steps,” she whispered. “He must be drunk if he fell with that lamp shining out there.” She reached out to unplug the cord which was attached to the outlet in the house, but paused. It would be better with the light on. She would be able to watch him through the bars of the darkened windows.

Jaime managed to climb the steps and lean into the front door, knocking with his head.

“Are you in there, sexy Mama? Eh? I know you are! You and that old lady. Old la-a-a-d-y? Are you in there?”

Norma took a breath to make a retort, but Rosana quelled it with a quick shoulder squeeze.

Jaime knocked again on the door, his head making a hollow banging noise that echoed through the casita. “You like this place, Rosana-na-na? Eh? You like this little house next to the religious zealots? I hear you have no water, no toilet, no bath. True? Do you stink, baby?”

Rosana’s fingernails were embedded in the plastic handles of the wheelchair, and she raised her eyes toward the Convent in thanks she had moved fast enough to put a door between them and this drunken idiot. A dangerous idiot, said the thought, wafting through her mind.

“You know, if you had come with me…” Rosana moved to the window and stood to the side, peering out at him on the front porch. He had turned and was resting his back against the wood. Soon, he slid to the cement porch and sat there, muttering.

“If you had come with me, you bruja, you witch, I would have given you a real house -one of my bodegas – to live in!” He staggered to his feet and stared around at the casita like a dragon looking for a weakness in the castle wall. “But instead our dear Barto has given you a place to live, and so you exist like this! He just wants you for himself, but you are mine. Mine!” He slammed his fist on the door, roaring the final word with a vehemence that terrified the women.

Rosana flattened her back against the wall by the side of the window, grateful for the metal bars that covered the glass-less opening. She leaned cautiously forward to look at the raving drunk on their porch and then screamed as his face suddenly loomed in the window. He cackled gleefully.

“I’ve found you! Yes! I have! You are inside, aren’t you, and it won’t be long before I am inside, too!” He rattled the bars with a strength that made Rosana pray the metal would hold.

“I’m asking you this time, you little tart. Ooh-hoo-hoo! I can see what you are! What you really are underneath this pious act! You strut behind the old lady, pretending you aren’t like any of the other little chocolates in my bodegas, but I know!” He howled with an unearthly sound that made Rosana wish they had agreed to a dog. She dashed from the window to Norma’s side, pulling the chair back into the kitchen as far from the front door as possible.

Then, feeling along the wall she stumbled against the second bucket, the metal one, still mostly full of water. It clanged and set Jaime off into another tirade at the window. An idea began to grow in her mind, and she dug in her duffle bag for two items of pure luxury. Two items which had never seen use since she arrived in the Dominican Republic: A can of hairspray, and a lighter. She felt around in her painting duffle until she found the can of paint thinner La Madre had given her. She smiled in the dark and put the three items against the wall by the front door.

Rosana felt her way back to Norma and squeezed her hand comfortingly.

“I’m going to help him find his way back down the hill,” she whispered.

“No! No! ‘Sana! Don’t do it! He’ll kill you! He’ll do worse than kill you!”

“He’ll have to catch me first,” she hissed. “The drunk slob!”

Norma sobbed. Her chest rising and falling in great heaves. Rosana left her there, and feeling her way back to the door, picked up the bucket and waited in front of the window.

She didn’t wait long. When he caught a glimpse of her face at the window, Jaime lunged again, thrusting his pudgy hands between the bars to grab at her. She took one step back, heaved the bucket into the air, and slammed it against the bars, emptying the contents into his face. Before he could retract his arms, Rosana whirled the empty bucket into the air and brought it crashing down on his arms. There was loud cracking sound, and Jaime, gasping for air around the lungful of water he had swallowed, now bellowed in agony.

She slipped to the outlet and unplugged the lamp on the front step. Jaime was suddenly in darkness, except for the lights of his truck shining out over their vegetable garden toward the outhouse. Rosana listened until the bellows became howls, and in a moment came the crash she had been waiting for. He had fallen off the porch.

The three-foot drop had done nothing to quiet him, and he lay, she saw as she silently slid back the bolt and opened the door, on his back in the dirt, booted heels in the air against the side of the concrete porch.

She stood looking down on him. It was a unique angle, she decided, and should definitely be used to her advantage. She sprayed his feet cautiously and thoroughly with hairspray. He moaned and swore, trying to kick at her, but was unable to move from his awkward position.

But Rosana moved quickly. It would not be long before he figured out how to roll over and get to his feet, in spite of the pain in his wrists and elbows. Uncapping the bottle of paint thinner, she poured it in a sparing line from the writhing Jaime to the hood of the truck. This she doused more liberally.

She opened the door and poured the remainder in the cab and tossed in the can for good measure. Mother Maria-Ileana would probably not approve, she decided.

Yelps of pain told her Jaime was not still. She ran up the steps and stood over him as he struggled to roll. She picked up the can of hairspray and the lighter from where she had dropped them on the porch and spraying a burst into the air, lit it with the lighter.

The loud pop and burst of flame had the desired effect. The curse froze in Jaime’s throat, and for the first time a look of fear darted across his face.

“What are you doing you American witch?” he screamed.

“Listen to me, Jaime,” she whispered, “and listen closely. I am about to light your boots on fire. When they are lit, they will spread fire every place you step, especially in the paint thinner I just poured on the ground and on your truck. You will have to move very, very fast to keep your clothes from catching on fire. With any luck, the hairspray will have burned off before you light the truck on fire, but just in case you try to hang around, I am going to stand by with my lighter, and we’ll see what happens.” She didn’t wait to hear his garbled anger. Reaching down to his upraised boots, Rosana flicked the lighter.

Jaime cursed and rolled as the hairspray on his boots sprang to hot, searing life. Fumbling to his feet he hopped around like a crazed rabbit trying to avoid the trail of paint thinner on the ground.

Rosana waited until he had the door of the cab open and was trying to hoist himself in with his injured arms. His angry, pain-filled protests came louder as the flames on his boots consumed the last of their short-lived fuel, hissed into the blackened leather, and went out. Rosana stood in front of the hood, arm outstretched, lighter flame shimmering in the breeze.

Jaime leaped upward and landed on his broken arms across the seat. He screamed and kicked in excruciating pain. With enormous effort, he struggled upright barely in time to remove his scorched toes from the slicing arc of the door as Rosana slammed it shut.

She pointed down the hill with the same disdainful expression she used with disobedient dogs and door-to-door salesmen.

Using his chin and shoulder, Rosana watched Jaime tug the truck into gear and pull a tight, unsteady ‘180’ out of their yard and down the hill, a distant crunching crash followed by the roar of an engine telling her he had momentarily left the pavement as he turned onto the main road. Rosana nodded, satisfied.

Suddenly, she was exhausted, and mindful of the spilled paint thinner, she snuffed the lighter and picked her way back indoors.

Rosana – Chapter 22

Chapter 22

The next day, and the next, Rosana went to the fields to glean wheat. The harvesters were happy to see her, and she smiled and joked with them in French and Spanish. Some were too friendly, and the foreman used a sharp tone to remind them of their work. Each day, the duffle bag she used to carry the wheat seemed strangely full, and Rosana suspected it was augmented at lunch or when she would step away into an unoccupied portion of the orchard to go to the bathroom.

On the third morning, she woke up late. Although the sun was not yet above the eastern mountains, she was sweating.

“Norma?”

“I’m awake, mija – can you take me to the outhouse?”

“Sure,” she mumbled, rolling to her feet. The ground swayed unsteadily beneath her, and her eyes hurt.

“Oh, Mama. I don’t feel good. Let’s go. Then I’m going back to bed.”

Rosana managed to draw two pails of water after helping Norma through the morning routine. These she left on the front room next to the wheelchair. She didn’t have the strength to help Norma out onto the front porch to pick through yesterday’s wheat. Instead, she collapsed back on the mattress, groaning.

“Are you okay, mija?” Norma hovered anxiously, her wheelchair as far into the bedroom as it would fit.

“I just need…to rest.” Rosana closed her eyes, and not even the prospect of Norma’s hunger roused her.

In the early afternoon, a truck roared up the hill, raising clouds of dust behind it. Instead of turning to the Convent, it slowed and moved forward into the yard, stopping just past the clothes line near the front steps.

Norma watched from inside the front door, unable to go onto the porch to meet the driver.

Barto sat for a moment inside the truck’s cab, looking in wonder at the transformation the little house had undergone since the last time he had visited before the mango harvest.

A neat vegetable garden, outlined with a fence made of sticks and vines woven together. Painted signs of welcome. A little chicken coop. The clothes line, covered with washing hung out to dry in the breeze that wafted up the hill from the bay. A path to the well, worn with frequent use. Wheat chaff in piles around the front porch.

“Dulce?” He called, climbing out of the truck and walking toward the house. “Norma?”

“I’m here,” he heard the muffled voice reply from the dark interior. He hesitated on the top step, peering inside.

The wheelchair was wedged in the bedroom doorway, and Norma was sitting on the end of the bed.

“Are you alright?” he asked, taking off his hat and stepping over the threshold.

“Senor Barto? Is that you? Nevermind, I can see it is. Come in, but come quietly.” She waved a beckoning hand at him.

“Are you alright?” He repeated, this time in a whisper. “Rosana was not in the field today, and I thought maybe you weren’t well.” Light came in the bedroom through the window, and he could see Rosana, asleep, on the other side of her mother-in-law. He frowned with a sense of deja vu.

“She’s tired, Barto. Worn out. I’ve been trying to make her drink every time she wakes up, but she still feels feverish.”

Barto moved the chair and sidestepped between the mattress and the wall where fewer than six inches separated the two. He looked down at the sleeping figure. She was flushed and sweaty, her long, thin body splayed on the mattress as if she had collapsed there and never moved. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. It was warm, but not burning. He moved his hand to her forehead and then picked up her fingers. The steady breathing didn’t change.

“She’s warm, but not feverish,” he said, eyes not straying from the sleeping face. Just tired, like you say.” Barto turned to Norma. “Have you eaten today?”

Norma glanced away. Barto followed her look to the duffle bag of yesterday’s wheat. She had probably spent the time she wasn’t with Rosana cleaning the wheat. Surely, a handful or two of the grains were the only things which had passed her lips.

“You know, sometimes there’s extra food leftover from the Noon meal the harvesters eat. I wonder if you would help me by taking some of it. Otherwise, it’s going to go bad in the heat.

That’s what I thought, he said to himself, watching the sudden spark of interest which lit his cousin’s face. The food Rosana brings home in that bowl is about the only thing you eat.

“That is very good of you, Cousin Barto,” Norma smiled, eagerly. “Only, just a bowlful, and maybe a little more in case Rosana is hungry when she wakes up.”

Barto realized the girl probably had not eaten that day, either. And probably little more than the Noon meal yesterday. “I have enough for several bowls in the back of the truck,” he said, settling the wide stetson on his head and turning toward the truck, “I’ll bring it.”

“Just a little, please, Cousin,” she replied. “It’s not that we don’t want it, it’s just that…well…it won’t keep.” She flushed a little, and after a moment of trying to understand, Barto realized what she meant.

“Oh! Because you don’t have a refrigerator! Well, can’t the Sisters put it in theirs for you? They’re keeping your medication, right?”

“Oh, Cousin, the Sisters are so good. And so helpful! But they cannot help us right now.”

“They’re too busy to help their neighbors?” he asked darkly, wondering what La Madre was thinking, and what she would have to say when he stopped there on his way back to the warehouse.

“No, no! Not at all! No, it’s just that they are going to the Capital for a big meeting. Big. They will be gone for two weeks.”

“So what will you do with your medications?”

Norma smiled proudly. “Rosana found a way to hang them down the inside of the well, near the water. It’s cool there.”

Barto snorted, looking with admiration at the sleeping form. “She is the one who made the garden fence?

Norma smiled again. “She is a good girl, Barto. A very good girl, and she will make someone a very good wife.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said seriously. “And she should marry soon, if you both are going to -” He almost said, ‘survive,’ but stopped himself in time.

Norma hitched herself to the end of the mattress, and reaching both arms out for the arms of the wheelchair, transferred herself neatly into it. Then she backed out of the bedroom doorway and spun the chair to face him.

“Cousin Barto, she is killing herself! Everyday, she works and works, and you see how it is for her.” Norma threw her thumb in the direction of the bedroom. “She must marry. For both of our sakes, but especially for her. A good, generous, hardworking girl. She will make any man a good wife. Not just any man, of course, a man who will love her as my Marcelo did. Don’t you agree?” The older lady looked at him expectantly.

“Of course I agree,” he nodded firmly. “How old is she? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

“She is twenty-four,” Norma answered, wringing her hands, “but you know, age doesn’t really matter.”

“It would matter to her,” he insisted. “A young woman does not like the idea of marrying a middle-aged man. Who do I know who is in his mid-to-late twenties?” Mentally, he reviewed his business contacts. Maybe someone who would take her back to the US? No, Norma wouldn’t go, and if Norma wouldn’t, Rosana certainly wouldn’t. Maybe someone from the Capital – who did he know who had enough money to support them and enough sense to keep her out of trouble?

No one came to mind.

“I will think about it, Norma.”

“Oh, Barto!” The older woman broke into ecstatic grin, reaching for his hands. “That is just what I hoped you would say! Who would be better for her than -”

“And I’ll look through my contacts to see if anyone I know has a son of about her age.” He smoothed his mustache. “I don’t think there is anyone local, do you? In Palmar?”

“In fact, I do!” Norma declared hotly, dropping her hands.

“Well, let’s make a list, then,” he interrupted, oblivious to the emotion in her eyes. “Then I can start talking to them and see who is really suitable.” He strode from the house and returned a moment later with a disposable aluminum dish half full of rice, meat, and mango. He watched Norma swallow reflexively as he placed it on the tile-counter.

“Don’t you worry, Cousin,” he said, determinedly, reaching out to rest a hand on Norma’s shoulder. “I’ll find someone who can marry Rosana.”

He missed the significance of the way her upturned eyes searched his face, and was halfway down the steps before he processed her feeble thanks.

“No thanks needed, Norma. That’s what family is for.”

He touched the rim of his Stetson in a miniature salute as he climbed into the truck and backed through their clothes line, his antenna snagging a shirt which he did not discover until Angelo pointed it out in the Warehouse parking lot an hour later.

Rosana – Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Norma squeezed a handful of lotion from the bottle and lifting Rosana’s hand from the bucket in which her daughter-in-law had just soaped and washed her arms, hands, and face, she dried it on the towel in her lap and began working the lotion in to her hands and forearms with long strokes.

Rosana sat, eyes closed, hovering on the edge of sleep while her mother-in-law ministered to her aching arms and hands. Tomorrow was coming fast. Scarcely time to eat the fruit and handfuls of grain Norma had prepared while Rosana changed from her work clothes into the shorts and t-shirt that were her pajamas.

Norma had enjoyed the food she brought home in the bowl, carefully tucked into the corner of the horribly heavy box. Tomorrow, she would use a bag. Even if she had to bring one of the duffle bags.

“I need to go get some water, Mama. Then I’m going to bed.” She groaned, rolling her neck from side to side in a painful arc. “Do you know how to separate that wheat?” She opened her eyes to look at Norma, who was squeezing out another handful of lotion for Rosana’s other arm.

“Of course. You bring a lot home! I didn’t think Senor Barto would let his workers leave so much on the ground.” She clucked at the thought.

“Oh, please, Mama. They’re leaving clumps of it on the ground for me. The foreman had me go up to the front after lunch, and follow the lead harvesters. They kept ‘accidentally’ dropping it for me to find.”

“Senor Barto did this.”

Rosana nodded, her eyes still closed. She didn’t see her mother-in-law squinting at her with a raised eyebrow.

“You talk to him today?”

Rosana nodded again, leaning forward in the plastic chair as Norma flipped the limp red braid aside and began scrubbing the back of the younger woman’s neck with a washcloth. “Yup. He was there at lunchtime – he’s the one who sent you the bowl of food. And,” she turned, opening her eyes to look at Norma, “he lent me his bandana.”

Norma dipped the washcloth in the bucket and swished it around. Pulling it up, she wrung the water onto the front porch, the drops falling like rain on the concrete beneath them. Then, folding the cloth into fours, she set to work scrubbing again. Rosana’s body flopped without resistance beneath her efforts.

“What do you think of him?” Norma asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“He’s a nice man. I told him so. He has always helped us, since the first day we got here. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who seems to really care about other people like he does. And foreigners, too.”

“He is a nice man,” Norma echoed. “He was a nice boy, and he is a nice man. We thought he might be a priest, when he was young.”

“Is that why he never married?” Rosana yawned.

“No. If a man knows he’s not called to be a priest, usually he gets married. But not Barto. Maybe he was too busy running the business, helping his family. I don’t know. Now his parents are gone, I wish he would get married. He needs someone.”

“I don’t know, Mama. To me, it looks like he’s doing fine.”

Norma shook her head and wetting and wringing the washcloth again, she draped it over the back of the plastic chair. Filling her hand with lotion, she began to rub it into Rosana’s neck and shoulders.

“Why are we here on earth?” the older woman asked, but continued on before Rosana could rouse herself enough to answer. “To love. Love other people and be loved in return. To know other human beings, to know God our Creator, and to be known. A man is part of a community.”

“Ungh,” grunted Rosana, the knots in her shoulders loosening under the fingers of her mother-in-law, which seemed to be growing stronger in the last few months.

“And so,” Norma continued, “he, too, must love and be loved. He must know and be known. No?”

“Um-hmm.”

“Then you see why Barto needs to be married.” She reached for the tangled braid and began to methodically untwist it, picking plant particles and dirt from it as she went. Then she gently poked Rosana’s shoulder until the younger woman heaved herself from the chair and picked up both buckets.

Mechanically, Rosana dumped the dirty water in their tiny garden and stumbled around the house to the well.

When both buckets were full, she paused and stared up into the nighttime sky, stars glowing brilliantly what could only be a few feet above her head.

“Beautiful,” she breathed, and hoisting a bucket in each hand, returned to the house.

“It’s beautiful here, Mama,” she whispered, setting the buckets down on the porch with a thunk.

The older woman smiled. “It is my home, so of course I love it. But I am glad you love it, too.”

Rosana dropped gracelessly into the chair and flipped her hair forward while her mother-in-law wetted, shampoo-ed, rinsed, and oiled her hair.

“I smell like coconut,” she chuckled as the older woman brushed the long tresses and re-braided them.

“The oil keeps your hair healthy.”

“I should just cut it off,” grunted Rosana. “It really gets in the way in the field.”

“No!” snapped Norma, her voice bringing Rosana wide awake. She softened her tone. “Don’t cut it, mi amor. It is beautiful, and you will need it if you are to marry again.”

Rosana straightened. “Marry again?” She paused, considering. “No, Mama. I think I’m done with that. My husband is dead.” Her eyes filled with tears as the grief came roaring up from her soul again. She stood and breathed in deeply, filling her lungs with the fragrant air, part sea-salt and part sun-baked earth.

“You are young, and beautiful.” She clapped her hands sharply. “Rosana. Think! Neither you nor I can continue to live this way for long.” She gestured around them. “The harvests are almost over, and then what will we eat?”

Rosana rested her head against the door frame, but did not answer.

“You have provided so well for us, but what if you are injured? What if my sickness gets worse? What will we do? Will the Sisters always have to give us food? Will you always have to work yourself to exhaustion on not enough to eat? Look at you, skin and bone!”

Rosana pondered, wishing she were already asleep on their mattress, lost in the blackness of exhaustion rather than facing this conversation. It was true, unfortunately. They had no backup plan. If anything happened to her, who would help Norma? With her eyes closed, she looked carefully at herself, inside.

Was she happy? Yes, ostensibly. Serving Norma, giving everything she had for another human being was very satisfying.

Was she hungry? Curse this body, yes, and thirsty. All the time. Her body was in such need of nutrients her gums would often bleed when she brushed her teeth with a sparing dot of toothpaste.

Norma had spoken of loving and knowing. Yes, I love others, Rosana thought, and I am loved by my mother-in-law, but who do I really know? And who knows me?

She stared at the inside of her eyelids, reaching back into the days of her marriage. I have been a widow longer than I was married, she realized. Was it possible? And had she known Marcelo? Not really, she answered honestly. I was too busy with myself. And did he know me? How could he? I never let him see who I was. She was guarded by thorn bushes of sarcasm and rock walls of arrogance. It had been an effective defense.

But there was another issue.

“Who would marry me, Mama?” She turned to face her mother-in-law, outlined by the light of the lamp’s single bulb, looking with concern at Rosana. “When they find out that I can’t have children, who will want me? In this culture? Where family is the most important thing to have? No one will marry me.”

“Barto would marry you.”

“What, out of pity?” The sarcasm came rolling out like an easy wave. It leaped to her lips as if it had never left. “Barto does another act of charity and takes on a barren widow and her mother-in-law. Really? Uh, no. I don’t think so. More likely I would fit Jaime’s idea of a wife. I know kids aren’t in his plans!” She laughed bitterly, imagining herself parading in high-heels and short skirts at Jaime’s side, riding in his plush and neon truck. Some things are the same in every culture, she thought ruefully.

Her tone left Norma speechless.

Rosana began moving everything on the porch into the house. “Come on, Mama,” she said, modulating her voice with difficulty. “It’s time for bed.”

She helped Norma through her bedtime routine, trying not to notice the shrinking quantities of medication in the bottles, observing how very difficult it was for her to use the outhouse and the work required to get her there and back. The bucket of water which would be needed for their scant breakfast, now only a few short hours away.

It was true, she knew. They couldn’t go on like this.

But am I willing to marry to change it?

She lay down on a sliver of the mattress after tucking Norma in, locking the front door, and turning out the light. The gibbous moon in a cobalt-blue sky shone through the window, casting shadows of the iron bars across her face. Suddenly, she remembered Barto’s eyes that afternoon. And the day he had lectured her about accepting help. There had been a look she had not recognized. A probing look. A measuring look. A look to determine what she was made of. Not the wolfish, lust-filled look she was used to attracting from men. And strangely, he had not seemed disappointed with what he found.

It would make a difference if he actually wanted me, she thought. A big difference. In fact, it would change everything.

Rosana – Chapter 20

Thanks, Kathy, for reminding me!

Chapter 20

Early in the morning, Rosana helped her mother-in-law to the outhouse, and back home to a small breakfast, after which she settled her in inside with the door open.

“You must close the door and lock it if you take a nap, Mama,” she chided. “Otherwise, you will wake up and find they’ve stolen your chair right out from under you!” They both laughed.

“Where will you go, mija?”

“First, down to the houses at the bottom of the hill. When the Zoli comes out, I will ask her to let me come and glean wherever she is picking today.”

“Isn’t she a harvester? She works for Barto. She is paid to pick and cannot take the produce home.”

“True, but if I hang back, and only pick from what they leave behind, I am not harvesting! Anyway, I don’t have any other ideas for our dinner.”

“Surely the Sisters will not let us starve!”

“True, Mama, but we can’t just sit here and wait for their charity to feed us, either.” Rosana hoisted an empty wooden box she had fitted with ropes. She slid her arms through the ropes and settled the box on her back like a wooden pack. “There. How do you like my basket?” She grinned and turned this way and that in the pre-dawn gloom to model it for Norma.

“You will be very tired when you come home, mi amor, carrying that!” Her eyes began to fill with tears, and before she could begin to cry, Rosana kissed her cheek and strode off into the darkness, sunhat and glasses in the box with a bottle of water and a knife lent to her from the Convent supply room by La Madre.

At the bottom of the hill, Rosana stationed herself in the shadow of a Yucca tree to wait for her escort. She didn’t wait long. Five minutes after she arrived, Zoli opened the door, allowing and the light from an electric bulb to pour out over the steps into the brightening day. The woman’s head was wrapped in a red scarf, and her legs, like Rosana’s, were bound up in strips of rags designed to protect them from the sharp foliage in the fields.

“Zoli!” called Rosana, stepping out from the shadow. The woman looked up sharply until she recognized Rosana, then called out in easy French.

“Rosana! Why are you not painting today? I would come up to see you at the Convent after picking this afternoon!”

“I won’t be painting for awhile.” She didn’t tell Zoli, a frequent visitor to the convent to see Rosana paint, why the painting had come to an end. “Can I come glean in the field where you’re working?”

Zoli shrugged. “We will ask Yeremy, the foreman.” She hoisted a two-foot long machete blade to her shoulder and set off at a quick pace down the dirt track. Rosana followed, trotting to keep up until her long legs found Zoli’s rhythm. The two women turned left onto the main road and joined the rag-tag line of harvesters already on their way to work.

In a mile, Zoli grunted to Rosana, and the two of them left the main road and stepped out into a mango orchard. They found the path which she skirted on its edge, and returned to the rolling pace. Rosana had to lope to keep up, her box banging against her back with each jogging step. After twenty minutes, the women slowed down and came to a halt next to a truck where fifteen-or-so other people were gathered. A few recognized Rosana and grinned.

Rosana dropped the box and sat down to catch her breath, streching aching knees while Zoli smiled at her. “You will need to get used to working, not sitting all day!” Rosana smiled at the ribbing, and adjusted the strips of cloth around her palms, determined that this time, her hands would not be shredded.

The mango trees in the orchard were empty, except for a few fruits still hanging in the highest branches, and the smell of rotted mango rolled up from the ground to meet her as the sun began to grow hot.

Shoving her weight against the slender trunk of a young tree several times, Rosana was rewarded with the soft thump of a mango hitting the ground near her. She used her knife to skin part of it. Too ripe, she thought, but bit into it anyway, the fibers sticking in her teeth as she sucked the sweet juice and bit deeply into the slightly slimy flesh. Anything tastes good when your hungry, she mused, and after this morning’s exercise, she was already hungry.

The sound of a truck door slamming startled her from her meal, and she flung it aside, standing to see what would happen. A man with a wide mustache and worn jeans stepped down from the driver’s seat and with a practiced move, leaped up into the bed of the truck. He began tossing canvas bags to each of the harvesters, calling their names as he threw.

Zoli waited until everyone else had received their bag and then stepped up to the man.

“Yeremy, you know la Americana?” She said in slow Spanish, jerking her head toward Rosana.

“Claro,” replied Yeremy, standing upright, the last bag dangling from his hand as he looked with confusion from Zoli to Rosana.

“Is it alright if I pick up what’s left when the harvesters are done?” Rosana asked in her best Spanish.

Yeremy, looked around as if a similar situation might be occurring in a field nearby from which he could draw inspiration. “Si…si, claro.” He nodded slowly. Gleaners were always allowed in Barto’s fields, as the foremen were often reminded by the owner himself. “Just stay in back of the harvesters. Let them go first.”

He looked away at Rosana’s smile of thanks.

Zoli was already hard at work. She shook open her bag and slid her head and one shoulder through a loop so the bag hung down her side. Then, stooping down, she gathered a large handful of the yellow, waist-high grass and chopped it with the machete. First, she shook the tops of the grass into the bag and then dropped the bunch onto the ground and repeated the process. When the bunches of grass at her feet equaled an armful, she took a fistful of grass, twisted it into a strand, and wrapped it around the armful, tying it with some sort of knot. She laid the bundle at the base of a mango tree and began the process again. In a few minutes, a man with a wheelbarrow came to collect the bundles from the ground and transfer them to the back of a new truck that had just arrived. Everyone moved like an assembly line over the bumpy ground.

“No wonder this has to be done by hand,” Rosana muttered. “Can you imagine trying to get a machine harvester in between these trees?”

Her back ached just watching. What was this crop, growing like grass between the already harvested mango trees? As the harvesters moved ahead, Rosana crept forward to the place where they had started and picked up some stray strands, examining them closely. It was wheat. She recognized the heads on the top of each stalk from a book about bread she had read as a child. She put her box on the ground and shook the head into it. A few small wheat berries fell in, and Rosana almost laughed aloud.

Using her knife to cut down small clumps, particularly around the tree trunks which had been overlooked by the harvesters, Rosana shook the heads, and then tried to remove the wheat berries by hand. It was tedious, and the sharp spines stabbed her fingers.

“Forget it,” she muttered, and using her knife, cut the whole head off the wheat stalk and threw it into her box. “Sorting out the wheat grains will give Norma something to do during the day.” Bent double, Rosana gathered the wheat stalks, cut the heads into her box, and threw the straw to the ground. In an hour, the bottom of the box was no longer visible. She stood, carefully stretching the muscles of her back, and removing her hat, took a swig from her water bottle.

The sea breeze didn’t reach this far inland, so, capping her bottle and replacing her hat, Rosana resolved to stay as much in the shade of the mango trees as possible.

Hour after hour, she cut, collected, shook, and decapitated wheat. At one sweaty point she realized it would be easier for her back if she worked on her knees, and she made good progress sliding her box over the recently harvested ground.

When the sun was high in the sky, and Rosana’s head swam with sunlight, sweat seeping into her eyes and stinging harshly, another truck rolled into sight. The harvesters stood upright in unison and hoisting their bags, walked toward it.

“God be with you,” a voice hailed the harvesters. They raised their hands to wave and call back, “God bless you!” like the Sisters call-and-response at prayer.

Rosana sat back on her haunches, watching, wheat in one hand, knife in the other, poised over her box.

Into the truck bed the harvesters dropped their bags. A bright orange container on the open truck gate could only be a water cooler, and Rosana watched greedily as they slaked their thirst with the help of paper cups from a dispenser attached to the side. Her eyes swam from a fresh onslaught of sweat, and she closed them tightly against the sting.

When she opened them again, the harvesters were mostly seated, back to tree trunks with what looked like bowls of food being served from the back of the truck. Rosana slunk into the shade of a tree and pretended not to see it. She took a few loose wheat berries from her box and rolled them between her fingers until their cases came off and blew away under her light breath. Popping the wheat into her mouth, Rosana savored the nutty, chewy texture.

“I will never think about wheat the same way again,” she vowed aloud. She took off her hat, and with a quick glance around, removed the t-shirt which had bunched up underneath it. In moments, she had re-braided and re-wrapped her hair, wiped the sweat from her face and forehead with the bandana, and settled in, eyes closed, head leaning back against the trunk of the tree, fanning herself with the wide brim of the hat. Heavenly, she thought.

“Rosana.”

Rosana leaped to her feet and stumbled backward, smacking into the tree and bringing down an aging mango in the process.

There was a roar of laughter from near the truck.

Zoli stood in front of her with a paper bowl and spoon in her hand. “This is for you,” she said, with a wink. Rosana looked around furtively, feeling the weight of the eyes of all the harvesters on her. They watched, waiting to see if she would take the bowl. Steam rose from it, and inside was a mixture of rice, chicken and some sort of bean. She reached for it gratefully, and began shoveling the food into her mouth.

“Merci,” she smiled around a hot mouthful.

“The boss wants to see you,” said Zoli, jerking her head toward the truck.

Her stomach sank. “Oh.” The last bites of food in the bowl were suddenly uninviting. Would the Boss tell her to get lost?

Rosana dropped her hat and sunglasses into her half-filled box and hoisted it into her arms, gingerly laying the nearly empty bowl of food on top of the bed of wheat. Then she followed Zoli toward the truck.

“He wants to know who was picking up the wheat, and we,” here she gestured to the loose circle of harvesters, including Yeremy the foreman, “told him it was la Americana.”

Zoli led her to the shady side of the truck where a man in a big Stetson hat sat in a faded folding chair, consuming a bowl of the same food the harvesters were eating. He turned to look at her and she gasped.

It was Senor Barto.

*
His skin was deeply tanned everywhere the hat did not shade, and it seemed to Rosana he was thinner than he had been three months ago when he had helped them home.

He appraised her for a moment, probably thinking the same things I am, Rosana mused, and then stood to his feet and offered her the chair. She sat, placing the box on the ground by her feet and staring from him to the faces around them, to the tantalizing bowl in her box.

“Eat!” He commanded, resting his bowl on the back of the truck and continuing to consume its contents with a plastic spoon. She didn’t move.

“You are here alone?” he asked, still concentrating on his food.

“No.”

“Oh.” He looked up and glanced around the orchard. “Who did you come with?”

Rosana pointed to the circle of harvesters. “One of the women,” she answered.

“I see,” he said, not looking in her eyes. “And why are you back to the fields? I thought the Sisters had you employed painting their convent.” His tone carried a hint of annoyance.

Rosana picked up the bowl and after a silent moment, took a bite and chewed slowly. He would have to wait for his information if he was going to grill her in front of everyone like this.

“They did.” She took the next-to-last bite, rolling the flavor of the chicken around her mouth with pleasure. Then she stopped, mid-chew. Norma would need some food this evening, and the wheat and a mango or two would not be as nourishing as this meal. She quickly wrapped the bowl and utensils in her bandana and casually laid them in the box. Then, crossing one knee over the other, she faced him fully. “But they had to terminate my employment.”

He stopped, spoon mid-way to his mouth. “Why?”

She smiled. “I was causing too much trouble, as I’m sure you can imagine.” The harvesters, not following the conversation in English began to toss their empty bowls into the truck, drink more water, and prepare to return to work.

Rosana stood, twisting side-to-side until the bones of her spine rearranged themselves with loud popping sounds. Senor Barto winced and put down his spoon.

“This may be the best plan you’ve had yet, Rosana,” he said, wiping his mustache with a bandana he produced from the back pocket of his jeans. “Stay with Zoli. She lives near you, as you already know. She only works in my fields, and you have my permission to work near her.” He turned and whistled sharply. Everyone turned toward him.

He addressed them in perfect Haitian French. “Madame Delacruz will be working in my fields as a gleaner from now on. Make sure she gets a share of the food and water, and that” here he turned a sharp eye at the foreman, “no one harasses her.” He leaned closer to speak into Yeremy’s ear. “Tell the men collecting the sheaves to pull out some stalks and leave them behind for her to pick up. Let her glean up front where they are harvesting, not all the way in back.”

The foreman murmured his assent, throwing a quick sideways glance at Rosana, and then turning away to empty the canvas bags into a big hopper on the back of the wheat truck before handing them out for the second time.

“Thanks for lunch,” she smiled when he turned back to her. Her eyes look tired, he noted, feelings of guilt and concern warring in his heart. Guilt, concern, and something else. Some unasked for emotion. Regret? Hunger? The pain of beholding beauty and a love too intense for man to see and still live? His heart ached as he looked at this woman who had gleaned on her knees all morning out of love. And what had he done? Driven around in an air conditioned truck. Sat on his chair to eat while others sat on the ground. He felt unworthy to look at her.

If I were younger, he began, looking at the mountains for inspiration, but quickly dampened the thought. If he were younger, yes, perhaps he would be rash enough to suppose that her miraculous life-giving kind of love could have more than one subject, but Bartolomeo Santos was a grown man. Don’t be a fool, he chided himself. If she marries, she must choose a younger man who will not leave her a widow again. But the Delacruz boy had been young, and had left her a widow in spite of his youth, an inner voice chided him.

“Bring me the bowl,” he demanded, palm upward. She hesitated, and he beckoned impatiently. Taking the bowl from the box, she slowly unwrapped her bandana and handed it to him. He took it and filled it heaping full from the pan in the back of the truck. Then he re-wrapped it carefully and nestled it into the box of wheat. “For Dulcita.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Tomorrow, bring a bag, not a box. You’re not going to be able to carry that thing when it’s full.”

She nodded, looking up at him. “The mango harvest went well? You look like you lost a few pounds.”

“Like you, I forget to eat when I’m busy.” Except that you, Bartolomeo, his conscience jeered, have cupboards full of food to forget.

“Will there be a break in all the harvesting sometime soon?”

“Yes.” He smiled, gathering his courage to look into her eyes. “After the wheat, we are done for a few months before the next planting begins. We are looking forward to some time to relax.” His mind strayed to the harvest party, the joyful celebration of everyone who had helped in any way to bring the harvest in. But for the widows, he realized, the end of the harvest meant no more food, and the momentary joy shrank away.

“Norma and I will look forward to a visit from you once you’ve had a chance to rest.” She put on her hat and looked for her bandana to pull up over her face. It wasn’t there.

He realized where it was at the same moment she did, and shaking his bandana from his back pocket, he folded it into a triangle and handed it to her without a word.

It was a simple kindness, but it made Rosana feel like she had a personal ally in this foreign land. She took the bandana and tied it around her neck. Then, stepping to the side of the truck where his forgotten bowl was still balanced, Rosana laid her rag-wrapped hand on his forearm and looked up into his eyes. “Ever since we came to the Dominican Republic, you have been there to help us. I don’t know why you take your family duty so seriously when other people” – here she paused, thinking of Jaime – “are less helpful, but I am so grateful to you. Thank you.” She meant it, and she could see by his eyes that he understood. But there was disquiet in the eyes as well, and she tilted her head at him, unsure if she had done something to offend him. Rosana dropped her hand and turned to hoist her box, the harvesters already well ahead of her.

“Rosana.”

She turned back, and he reached for her hand, encasing the strips of rags around her palm in his own warm, work-hardened hand. “You deserve it. You deserve help. You deserve so much better than this. God reward you for everything you have done!” He gestured toward the ocean. “The whole coast is talking about you – how you gave up a rich life to come and serve your mother-in-law. How you live in poverty, and never complain. How you paint like a master and are content to blister your hands harvesting onions and wheat. No one has ever met a woman like that before. It’s inspiring to see love in action like this. It makes us want to be – better.”

Rosana snorted, shrugging off the compliment. “You clearly don’t know me very well.” She pulled her hand free, and tied his bandana around her face. “Maybe I’ll see you here tomorrow?”

He nodded. “’Bye, Rosana.”

She smiled, “’Bye, Senor Barto. And thanks for lunch!” Grasping her box to her chest, she strode off to find Zoli.

Rosana Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Days came and went. Rosana’s body healed, and with the help of a book of Catholic art, she
sketched an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which Mother Maria-Ileana approved.
Each morning, Rosana rose with the sun, a habit made easier since they didn’t use the single
small light bulb in the house. She and Norma went to bed with the sun and rose with the sun.
She prepared breakfast from last night’s dinner leftovers or from food purchased at the store
in Palmar.
Each morning, she set out Norma’s medications on the tiled counter and looked appraisingly
at the supply she had purchased before they left the United States. I’m going to have to get
to Bani at some point in the next six months and find a pharmacy, she reminded herself.
After drawing a bucket of water from the well, Rosana took a sponge bath, dressed, and took
in the laundry Norma had washed the day before and which had dried overnight on the line
she had rigged between the trees.
Setting out fresh clothes, Rosana woke Norma, helped her to the outhouse, aided in her
washing and dressing routine, fed her breakfast, and helped her down the steps into the
wheelchair in time to arrive at the Convent for morning prayer.
Rosana had been reluctant to join in.
“What? You come to paint his walls, but you won’t greet the Master of the house?” La Madre
had peered at her indignantly.
The next day, the widows knelt in the little chapel behind the rows of white habits. Rosana
and Norma didn’t know the prayers so they sat in silence as the voices of the sisters rose and
fell in an alternating chant.
When it was over, Rosana rolled Norma to the workroom where she sat and stitched hems on
baby garments, and repaired used shirts and pants which the Sisters distributed to the Haitian
refugees who often crossed the border with nothing in their possession. All day, Norma
worked in the quiet company of the Sisters, sometimes joining in their soft songs, sometimes
crying silent tears, allowing herself to be pushed to and fro between the Chapel and the
workroom as the ancient rhythm of daily prayer punctuated the work of the Convent.
Rosana spread the tarp – recently removed from its duty as shade provider on their front step
– over the cement floor in front of the wall. On a plastic dinner plate, she mixed her colors and
filled in the sketch she had already applied to the whitewashed cement block walls. Two
hours in the morning and two in the afternoon was the longest she could paint before her
stamina wore out, and she learned quickly to listen to her tiring muscles in order to prevent
having to paint over whole sections of work the next day.
Always, La Madre, in her travels throughout the Convent, would pause and watch her work.
Often, Rosana could hear her rosary beads clicking and wondered if the prayers were being
launched for her or for the success of the painting. La Madre never spoke during the hours of
work, but during lunch, after Rosana had enjoyed the luxury of a genuine flush-toilet and a
warm meal, she would grill the young artist on her former life in the United States, translating
occasional points for the benefit of her sisters.
That word had spread about Norma’s return with her daughter-in-law was obvious. Each day,
the number of visitors to the Convent increased until La Madre began enforcing visiting hours.
So many people crowded the entryway and visitors’ room that the Sisters could not be heard
above the talking, laughing, and noise of children at play.
“Rosana,” Madre Maria-Ileana called in a stentorian voice one afternoon in May as Rosana
washed her brushes in a jar of turpentine and water which La Madre had obtained from one of
her secret sources.
“Yes, Madre?” She froze, then turned halfway around to look at the Superior of the convent,
whose tone told her an important pronouncement was on the way.
“Come into my office, please.” The older woman turned and walked briskly down the hall,
clearly expecting Rosana to follow immediately. Removing the brushes from the jar, she
milked the turpentine from the bristles and laid them on the neatly folded tarp. This, she
rolled into a bundle and tucked it under her arm as she followed La Madre into the office.
Several brushes had disappeared today alone, and Rosana was not about to lose more,
although the last visitors had been sent home an hour ago.
“Sit,” Madre Maria-Ileana commanded from her seat, indicating a stiff-backed wooden chair.
Rosana sat, the rolled tarp in her lap.
“You have worked for three months and have painted three murals in our Convent, and they
are good. Yes?”
Rosana shrugged.
“They are good,” La Madre pronounced. “They are so good, in fact, that we have many more
visitors each day who wish to look at them. And at you.” The Superior paused for the weight
of the statement to sink in.
“You’re saying the visitors come to watch me paint?”
“Hah,” coughed La Madre. “They come to look at the American beauty who paints like a
classical artist – not that they would know that – and who gave up her rich life to take care of
her mother-in-law. That’s what they come to see.” She folded her hands and looked straight
into Rosana’s eyes.
Rosana shifted uncomfortably. “Um, I’m sorry?”
“This constant stream of visitors makes it very difficult for the Sisters to live their silence, and
although we are here to serve those who come to the door, these visitors are tourists who
have come to see a local phenomenon, not seek spiritual solace. You understand?”
“Sort of.”
La Madre threw her hands into the air and heaving herself from her chair came to stand in
front of Rosana.
“Rosana. You must not paint in the Convent until people stop coming here simply to stare at
you.”
“How will I stop them?”
“You cannot. That is the point. You must wait to paint more murals until the people are no
longer interested in you. Which may be next week or may be next year. However long, we
cannot function as a convent when you change it into a celebrity circus. Even though you
don’t mean to,” she added gently.
Rosana sat still, absorbing the news. No painting meant no food. No Sisters’ company for
Norma, no activity to keep her hands and mind busy. Most importantly, her practical brain
reminded her, they would have to find another source for food. Rosana felt her insides tighten
in a familiar fear. How would she take care of Norma? She looked up at La Madre.
“May we eat with you tonight?”
“Of course.” La Madre returned to her seat. “But these people bring up another issue, my
dear, and that is security. With so many visitors, your money and passports, jewelry, anything
of value is very likely to be stolen from your house. If you wish, you may store those things in
the convent safe, where we store our documents, and the chalice with the emeralds.”
It was an attempt to soften the blow, Rosana recognized. “Thank you, Madre. I will bring
those things up to you tonight.”
La Madre nodded, tight-lipped. “One thing more. I have spoken with the owners of the buses
that go from Palmar to Bani each day. They have agreed, as a favor to me, and probably also
to increase their own business,” she added, pursing her lips, “to allow you and Norma to
travel for free one day a week. In this way, you will be able to buy your groceries at a lower
cost in the big stores.”
Rosana smiled. “Thank you again, Madre. That will help.” But her smile, which did not reach
her eyes was met by a look of concern in the eyes of La Madre, who collected the rent for
Barto each month and knew the widows had very little left.
“Is there no one you can call for help, my dear?” whispered Madre Maria-Ileana. “Is there no
one in the United States who could send you some money? Just enough to keep you going a
little longer?”
The only name that came to mind was Olinda, whom Rosana had never called, although she
had promised she would when they arrived in the Dominican Republic. Rosana smiled again.
“We will think of something,” she assured her. God help me, she thought.
*
Rosana broke the news as gently as possible to Norma that night as they lay down to sleep,
the front door and windows securely locked, and their passports and the sum total of their
money, which amounted to fewer than one hundred dollars, installed in the convent safe.
Their chickens had been stolen, one by one, except for two who had been eaten by a local
animal that Rosana had tried to deter by throwing stones, but who always waited until she fell
asleep and then left the widows with only a few clumps of feathers. One of the buckets, too,
had been stolen, the night Rosana left it on the front porch to dry. Now, she upended it and
the cheap plastic replacement she purchased from Palmar in the kitchen sink after drawing
the last bucketful each evening.
“People take anything that’s not nailed down, she muttered, which wasn’t true, because a
“Welcome to Our Casa” sign she had painted on the panel of a cardboard box and nailed to
the door frame had been missing one afternoon after work.
“Maybe it would be better to find a little house in the town, Mama,” she offered as they stared
up into the dark.
“I don’t know, mija. The price is good here. The Sisters are nearby.”
“It’s true. But when I am gone to the fields for food, who will keep you safe from all the people
who come here? Maybe if we had a dog…”
“No!” twitched Norma. “We cannot afford to feed another mouth.”
“You’re right,” Rosana sighed, “you’re right. I think I should go back to the fields tomorrow and
pick up what I can.”
Norma was silent for a long moment. Then she rolled over to face the wall. “Go, mija.”

Rosana – Chapter 18

Thanks Anne, for reminding me!

Chapter 18

Two days later, Rosana stood in the entryway of the convent. The cool cement walls were
painted white, and created the feeling of light and air.
“I want to see samples, unos ejemplos,” insisted the fat Sister with the big silver cross on a
chain around her neck. “You have never before painted religious art, and I do not want a
mess on the walls of this convent. You will make me a sample. Entiende? You understand?”
Rosana bristled like one of her brushes, rubbed the wrong way. “Fine,” she smiled stiffly. “I
will sketch you a sample, and you will allow my mother-in-law to eat in your dining room.”
La Madre tilted her head, considering the bargain. “You will paint me a sample, and your
mother-in-law may eat in the refectory with the Sisters, one meal. If your painting is good,
she may eat with the Sisters one meal per day you work.”
“If my painting is good,” shot back Rosana, “she will eat twice a day with the Sisters, and you
will pay for the paint.”
“It’s a deal!” exclaimed La Madre, tossing her hands into the air, her face splitting into a wide
grin. “See?” She turned to the group of nodding Sisters behind her. “She learned fast how to
bargain!”
The Sisters erupted into cheers, and Rosana smiled, in spite of herself.
*
The sample she painted was made on one of the pieces of stiff, cardboard-like paper Rosana
withdrew from her backpack of painting supplies. She counted the pieces carefully. There
were seven. It was a strange sensation. Always, she had been careless with her supplies.
While other students in the class reused canvas and frames and behaved like misers with
their paper and paints, Rosana never emptied a tube. When it got low, she tossed it.
Sometimes she handed it to other students she knew needed the quarter-ounce of paint left in
the bottom.
Now, she was suddenly faced with the same situation. Only seven pieces of painting paper
left, and maybe no opportunity to buy more. Ever. Hmm. There must be something else I
can use, she thought idly. Rosana chose a pencil, and spreading a sweatshirt on the front
steps, sat down on it to sketch.
By mid-afternoon, she was ready to paint, and using the scraps of wood still left after staking
out the small chicken coop, she arranged an easel under a tree and started to paint.
Norma dozed in her chair, and aside from the peeping of the chicks, there was no sound on
the hill but the breeze, blowing in from the bay, full of the smells of sea and spring.
This is beautiful, she thought. No wonder the Sisters built their convent here. Behind them,
the mountains stretched into a mighty ridge, and Rosana imagined the Spanish settlers who
had come to the island centuries before, naming it ‘Hispaniola.’
“I would have stayed, too,” Rosana said aloud.
“What did you say?” asked Norma, starting up.
“I said, I would have stayed here, too, if I had been one of the Spanish settlers. This is
beautiful.”
“This is why the Sisters live here,” nodded Norma. “Beauty draws the mind to God.”
“And maybe the silence, too, Mama?”
But Norma had already settled back down to her nap, so Rosana painted in silence. After
awhile, she set down her brush and walked down the front steps. She rested there a few
moments, relaxing the muscles in her back which had begun to spasm from too much sitting.
The empty bucket drew her attention, so after a few minutes of rest, she picked it up and
walked around the house to the well. The other half-finished house stood empty and
incomplete, and Rosana made a mental note to ask Senor Barto when it would be completed,
if we ever see him again after the mango harvest. Would he get busy and forget them, the
two widows up on the hill? Rosana shrugged. We’ll manage, she thought, her heart twinging
with a little regret.
Lifting the lid from the well, Rosana tied the rope to the handle of the bucket and lowered it
until she heard a splash. She swayed the rope from side-to-side, as Sister Estelle had taught
her, until she felt the bucket fall on its side, and the growing weight as it filled with water.
Then she began the long pull.
Even after several days of rest, Rosana’s back and arms were still sore, but they were getting
used to this idea of hauling water from the ground, and it took much less time to pull the
bucket to the surface than it had the first time she had tried.
From the well, Rosana could see the wide agricultural valley stretching away before her. Far
off to the East, the orchards glinted with trucks. Mango harvest, she thought. That must be
where Senor Barto was working. Mangoes, she thought with pleasure. I wonder if I can pick
up the leftovers in that orchard when they’re done? Something to ask Sister Estelle.
*
The sample painting was a scene Rosana remembered from her catechism class as a child.
Her father sent her each Wednesday to class at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, and
she had soaked in the beauty of the building and the exquisite paintings that covered every
surface, especially in the Chapel of St. Francis.
From the depths, the memory of a scene in the life of Mary came to her mind. The time when
Mary, newly pregnant, travels to help her older cousin, Elizabeth, who is also pregnant. At the
sound of her greeting, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, sensing Jesus’ presence in
Mary. It was that tender moment of greeting which Rosana had tried to capture.
La Madre scrutinized the painting, holding it at arms length and then adjusting the spectacles
she removed from her ample bosom to see up close in greater detail.
“You have been to the Holy Land?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know the way it looks?”
“I don’t. The background is the view from our casita.”
La Madre nodded. “It is good.”
Rosana sat back in the chair and sighed, relieved. “Then I may paint murals in the Convent?”
La Madre, still looking at the painting, didn’t answer. Finally, she looked up at Rosana and
waved the painting gently “Why did you choose this?”
“The scene? I remember hearing the story when I was little, and it struck me that she would
go and help even though she probably had morning sickness and felt rotten.”
“You have children?”
“No.”
“Why not? You were married, yes? Married people should be parents! It is part of the
vocation!”
“It’s not that we didn’t want to. Marcelo especially – he really wanted to be a dad.”
“Marcelo – he is your husband?”
“Was.”
“He was a good man?”
“Very. Very patient. Very loyal. Very family-oriented.”
“What happened to him?”
Scenes from that day ran along Rosana’s mind, like flame licking the edge of a paper,
threatening to consume it.
“He – um – drowned. He and his brother.” Suddenly, Rosana burst out, “you know, every day,
I look out at the bay and I see how so many people’s livelihoods here depend on the ocean,
and I wonder how it is possible that the Delacruzes could live so close to the water and never
learn how to swim! How can that be?”
La Madre was silent, looking up at her. Rosana realized she had been standing and shouting.
She sat back down. “I’m sorry.”
“Some people,” began La Madre, picking up the painting, “live all their lives next to the sea
and never touch it. I think they are afraid. It is so big, so deep, so unpredictable. And yet,
they depend on it for their living, as you say. Like God.”
“What is like God?”
“The sea. Big. Deep. Unpredictable. We depend on him for our very lives, but most people
never even touch him. Why is that?”
Rosana shrugged. “We’re afraid, I guess.”
La Madre nodded and set down the painting. “This is very good. Much better than I
expected.” She held out her hand to stem Rosana’s retort. “When Senor Barto told me you
could paint, I thought your ability would be not much, as you don’t seem to have many skills in
the things of everyday life.” She paused to look piercingly at Rosana, then continued. “But it
appears that this talent God has given you, you have developed, which means you have
patience. True?”
Rosana shrugged. “How did Senor Barto know I paint?”
La Madre laughed. “At his house, he has a satellite connection to the Internet. He is a
shrewd business-man, and likes to know as much as he can about his tenants.”
“I thought his tenants were all Haitian refugees.”
“In Palmar, yes. But Senor Barto owns other properties in the Dominican Republic and
abroad.”
“That explains why he speaks such good English. And where did you learn English?”
La Madre laughed. “I am Dominican-born, but grew up in Miami. When I joined the Order,
the Superior General heard I was Dominican and sent me here.”
“And you like it here?”
“I have learned to love it, but I didn’t come because of the land. I came for love of the
people.” She stood and tucked the glasses down into their hiding place. “And here we both
are, for love of other people.” She held her arms open wide. “You are officially hired to paint
a mural on the wall across from the front door. It will be a picture of the Sacred Heart, and will
have ‘Sisters of the Sacred Heart’ written below it. You will show me your sketch before you
begin putting paint on my walls, yes?”
Rosana nodded.
“Good, now go and sit with your mother in the refectory for dinner.”
“She is already there? Did Sister Estelle bring her? I thought she couldn’t come unless I was
hired for the job! How did Sister Estelle know you’d hire me?”
La Madre chuckled. “You didn’t really think we’d let you starve, did you?”

Rosana Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Unfortunately for Barto, gossip is a small town’s lifeblood, and he had no sooner than climbed out of his truck at the warehouse when news of Rosana destroyed his resolution.

“Senor Barto!” It was Angelo, the foreman on the Northern Section. “What’s this I hear about an American model getting beaten up? Eh? And you’re related to her?”

“Where’d you hear that nonsense?” Barto snapped.

“Whoa. Easy, Boss!” The older man chuckled nervously. “My wife was on the phone with Jose’s wife last night, and she said that he said he saw an American model that had gotten beaten up last night in one of the Haitian picker’s houses up by the Convent. I told my wife that couldn’t be right because those houses weren’t finished yet. The gossip that runs around this town! Eh?”

Barto saw the hopeful gleam in his eye.

“My cousin came home from the States. She is a widow and lost both her sons last month. Her son’s widow came with her and had some trouble yesterday. But she’s fine.”

“But, how -”

“Basta!” he snarled. “Do you have an update? Is the Northern Section ready to pick? I’ve got a truckload of crates and packing materials arriving this afternoon, and I want you to pre-stage half of it in your district. Do you understand?” He turned and strode toward the office on the first floor of the warehouse.

“Sure. Same as last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. I got it, Boss. But -”

Barto paused, his hand on the door, willing himself to be patient through gritted teeth. “But what?”

“I never seen you angry before. Is everything okay, Barto?”

The Boss passed a hand across his face, stopping to stroke his mustache. “Yeah. Thanks, Angelo. I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind with the mango harvest starting. I’ll see you and Reynaldo out at the Ranch around noon.” He flung open the door and disappeared into the wide interior of the warehouse.

Angelo dredged his cellphone out of a the pocket of his jeans and dialed Reynaldo’s number.

“’Naldo, here.”

“It’s Angelo.”

“Did you hear about the American woman getting stuck in the river? Does Barto know her? I hear she’s a beauty! Eh?”

“She’s a widow, and lives with Barto’s cousin who just came back from the States. But don’t say anything about it to Barto. He’s crazy today.”

“Crazy? Crazy how?”

“I don’t know. Angry. He yelled at me.”

“Somethings going on! It’s that Americana -”

“Yeah, well, whatever it is, just don’t mention her when you see him this afternoon, eh?”

“Thanks, my friend. I’ll see you out at the Ranch and then afterward I will make a trip up to see the Sisters at the Convent. It’s been a long time since I paid my respects.”

*

Barto was right. Rosana got up from the new bed he had installed for Norma the very next day. But he was wrong about her destination.

“Come on, Mama.” She whispered, shaking her mother-in-law gently. “Let’s get dressed and go into the town for some groceries before it gets too hot.” She really meant, ‘before the Sisters come to babysit us.’

She moved gingerly, dressing herself and Norma, grateful for the leftovers and the bucket of water which prevented her having to learn how to draw it from the well before her hands and back healed.

Just as the rays of the sun began to crest the mountains to the East and slide down into the valleys full of ripe mangoes, Rosana helped her mother-in-law down the steps and into the wheelchair. Then, with money hidden in her bra, a long broom skirt, and her hair tucked up under her sun hat, Rosana began pushing the wheelchair down the dirt track toward the main road to Palmar.

“How far, Mama?”

“To Palmar? Maybe two miles. You will be able to push so far? I’m so sorry to be such a trouble to you, I’m so so sor -”

“Stop, Mama. You’d do the same for me. We have to have food, and I don’t want to be mooching off the Nuns all the time.”

“Mooching?”

“Begging. Always asking.”

“They give because God says to give.”

“Maybe so, but I’d rather figure out a way to earn it myself.”

Rosana pulled backward on the chair as they descended the hill, her shoulders and back aching and throbbing. She set her jaw and turned her thoughts to other things. Like money. She would spend no more than the equivalent of twenty dollars today. Then next week, hopefully, she would have a job and could pay for groceries out of her salary.

At the bottom of the hill, they turned right onto the main road and for a few minutes enjoyed the smooth ride on the asphalt before it ended and became dirt.

Now, people were taking to the roads on their way to work and shopping. A bus zoomed by in a cloud of diesel fumes, passengers peeking out from behind heavily curtained windows at the sight of a tall white woman pushing a Dominican in a wheelchair.

Harvesters were easy to pick out, with their arms, legs, and heads wrapped in strips of cloth for protection against the sun and the flora and fauna they would encounter in the fields. Most carried a machete at their side.

Half a mile from the village, they began to pass houses, and Norma rattled off the names of the inhabitants, or at least the people who had lived there ten years ago.

Children, chickens, and the occasional dog began to shout and run out to meet the wheelchair, the children with their hands outstretched.

“Hi,” said Rosana, smiling at the bright-eyed youngsters.

“Me! Me!” they clamored, reaching to pluck at Rosana’s skirt.

“If you think I have something to give you, you’re wrong,” laughed Rosana, thinking of her poverty, compared to these children who appeared well-nourished, if under-dressed.

Still, they shrieked and tugged until Norma said some words in a firm voice whose tone was universal. The children stopped asking, but tagged along.

“Har? Har?” A little boy in cut-off shorts and a “West-Side Story” t-shirt pointed to his head.

“What about it? You want to see the color of my hair?” She laughed, and stopped the wheelchair. Then, untying the strings, took off the sunhat and loosed her braid.

The children were silent for a moment, their mothers wandering nonchalantly to get a closer look. Two of the boldest reached out to touch the red curls, stroking it curiously between thumb and forefinger, then rubbing their own.

After a moment, she wrapped it into a quick bun at the nape of her neck and tucked it back under the hat. “We have to go to the store. Mama, how do you say ‘store?’”

“La tienda. Nos vamos a la tienda.”

“Tienda. Who can show me where the tienda is?”

And so it was that a crowd escorted the women to a small convenience store on the main street. Not the kind of store Rosana was used to with a shopping cart and aisles of food to choose from. This looked like a Popsicle stand with the front window propped open by a stick. Norma pointed to items they needed, and a clerk, who seemed to know them, scurried to put their order into a used plastic bag.

Bread. Fruit. Rice. Plantain. Sausage. Rosana switched her weight from one foot to the other, popping her knees, taking in the dizzying variety of candies and soda. The children kept tugging at her sleeve, pointing to one candy and another, holding out their hands.

“Mama, is there any candy we can get? A bag with lots of pieces?”

“Tell them no, Mija. They are used to American missionaries who come into the village and give out clothes and food and shampoo and everything. They think every American is wealthy. No, ninos. No.”

“Oh, come on, Mama.” Rosana stepped up to the counter and pointed to a bag of little red candies. The clerk held it up. “Si,” said Rosana, smiling, as the children cheered. Then something else occurred to her.

“Mama, where do you buy chickens?”

“Chickens? Oh, Mija, yes! We need a rooster and two hens and some chicks. And some chicken feed. You will build a pen for them?”

Rosana shrugged willingly and turned to distribute the candies to the waiting hands, not all of whom were children, she noticed, but mothers and grandmothers, and a man or two, loafing around the edge of the crowd.

Norma paid for the groceries and carried on a rapid conversation with the clerk which resulted in a lot of gesturing. Directions, Rosana interpreted.

“Vamos,” ordered Norma, handing both bags to Rosana, who hung them from the handles of the wheelchair.

“Where?” But there was no need to ask. The crowd moved off, pushing them along like flotsam on floodwater. Several streets later, the group paused in front of a blue house with a broken gate and two banana trees towering over an unkempt garden. The unmistakeable sound of clucking came from within.

One boy must have been related, because he bounded up the steps onto the porch and shouldered his way in the front door. A moment later, a wary-looking old man peeked out, and pulled by the boy, came shyly into the street to speak to Norma. He stopped at the sight of Rosana and took her hand, smiling a toothless grin and patting her arm. The boy translated his ancient garble to Spanish, and Norma repeated it in English.

“He say you are a good girl. He say you help me, and blessings come at children who help parents.”

“Thank you,” replied Rosana, laying her hand over his dark, wrinkled one.

Turning back to Norma, he began to laugh and cackle like one of the hens. She cried and spoke so rapidly Rosana could catch no more than that they were old friends. When she pushed the wheelchair homeward an hour later, their load had been magnified by the factor of a box of peeping chicks and a hen, a small bag of feed, and a promise to send a rooster later in the season.

Before the women reached the dirt track toward their casita, loud ranchero music and the rumbling of a diesel engine overtook them. Rosana, back and legs aching, stopped and turned her face away to let the fumes pass by before gearing up for the long climb in front of them. But instead of driving on, the truck swerved to the roadside and parked, forcing Rosana to guide the wheelchair into the center of the road as she started walking again.

“I don’t like this,” she muttered, even as Norma turned to glance up at her, the older woman’s eyes wide with concern. “Don’t worry, Mama, we’ll just keep on walking.”

As they came even with the bed of the truck, engine barely audible above the racous music, Jaime threw open the door and stepped down into their path.

“Hello, ladies. Shopping? Get in! I give you a ride. Eh? A ride?” He spread his arms wide in a magnanimous gesture that must have been meant to imply graciousness. In the velor-lined cabin, neon lights flashed in time to the music.

Rosana ignored him and waiting for a car to pass, crossed to the other side of the road. She could not move quickly on the rutted road, and instantly, Jaime was in front of the wheelchair.

“You scare my chickens with that racket, Jaime! Go! Go!” Norma flapped her hand dismissively.

“Ohhh, you don’t want a help from Brother Jaime? Brother Jaime wants to welcome his beloved sister-in-law home,” he flashed a suggestive grin at Rosana who jabbed the wheelchair forward onto his foot. His expression turned dark, but he stepped aside, brushing dust from what Rosana was sure were very expensive cowboy boots. With an effort, he smiled again turning to face them as they moved forward.

“You look like an fox on the hunt, you disgusting old man,” she muttered, stalking on while Norma vented at him in a continuous rant. Twenty yards down the road, the women watched a little white car fly down the road toward Jaime, still standing in the road. A screech of brakes and spray of gravel culminated in a mighty crash. Rosana turned around to see the the open door of Jaime’s truck wrapped around the front end of the little white car. The man was literally hopping as he and the driver exchanged rounds of screaming epithets. Rosana smirked and turned onto the dirt track that led up to Planchado.

But Rosana’s smug grin disappeared as she struggled to push the wheelchair up the hill. Even without the groceries and box of chickens, forcing the chair and its occupant up any incline would have been difficult. Add sore muscles, weary feet, and the weight of the mid-day sun, and it was easy to see why Rosana needed to stop every few feet, arms and legs shaking, braced against the backward momentum of the chair which longed to break free and follow gravity’s temptation. She gritted her teeth and wiped sweat from her forehead where it threatened to run down into her eyes. The salt stung the cuts on her hands and she swore softly.

Norma looked at her, eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sorry, mija” she began, but Rosana just shook her head and leaned into the weight, back screaming for respite. I’m not gonna make it, she thought.

Vibrations in the ground warned her of an approaching vehicle, and she steered right, trying to position the wheelchair on the grass as the car passed. Instead, the front wheel stuck in a rut, the forward momentum carrying the back wheels into the air as Norma fell screaming forward, the box of chickens beneath her. Rosana, stumbling and scrambling to check the chair’s trajectory, landed in a heap on top of the pile, her back shrieking its disapproval.

*

This time, when the truck pulled off the road in front of them, Rosana could only feel relief that someone -anyone- would help them. She felt strong arms lifting her up and, clamping her lips to keep the pain from escaping between them, she found herself carried to the roadside and laid gently down.

By the time she righted herself, took off the blinding hat and wiped the escaping hair from her eyes, she saw Senor Barto and another man lifting the chair and helping Norma. A third collected the frantic chicks, loose on the hillside.

She gained her feet carefully and hurried to Norma. “Mama? Mama? Are you okay?” The older woman nodded, tears spilling down her face. Rosana found a tissue in Norma’s purse, still hanging from the handle of the chair, and wiped her mother-in-law’s face.

Then she turned to face Barto and the men, standing awkwardly, one with the crushed box in his hands. With a glance, Rosana could see that two chicks lay still. She took it from the man with a smile of thanks and placed it on Norma’s lap. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

Norma looked at the two little bodies and then up at her daughter-in-law. “I am okay, and you are okay? Then we will be fine and live to raise more chickens. Cousin Barto, perhaps you will take an old lady home? My Rosana is tired, and her back is very sore. She cannot push me no further.” She peered at Rosana and smiled. Rosana kissed her cheek.

“I would be happy to take you home, Cousin. Reyaldo, help me carry her to the truck.” Together, they picked Norma up out of her chair and brought her to the truck, depositing her in the front seat where she and Rosana had sat not more than two days before.

Rosana gingerly bent to retrieve the groceries, but when she started to stand, a flash of pain slapped her, and she hung her head, steadying herself on the ground unwilling to move lest she trigger it again.

“Te ayudo.” It was the other man who came with Barto, holding out his arm to help her. Rosana flashed a grateful smile and used his arm to push herself upright. She took a careful step.

“Gracias, Senor,” she whispered.

“Angelo,” he grinned back, walking her carefully to the truck.

“Gracias, Angelo. I can’t get up there.” She looked in dismay at the high step into the cab.

Barto interjected curtly. “I’ll help you. Angelo, la silla.” The chair. He gestured toward the bed of the truck. The older man stepped back, still smiling at Rosana. “Put your arm around my neck,” Barto instructed.

Hesitantly, Rosana did so, one arm at the nape of his neck along the broad shoulders. Under the wavy hair. And suddenly, he lifted her into his arms and placed her gently in the seat next to her mother-in-law. The change of positions was jarring and painful, but she smiled a tight-lipped thanks.

The men settled themselves in the bed of the truck with the wheelchair and the groceries, and Barto, sliding into the driver’s seat, lurched the truck back onto the track and over the rise to the casita.

Rosana sighed with relief.

The men reversed the process to help them out of the truck, Barto lifting her down with care and placing her on the top step while Angelo and Reynaldo unloaded the wheelchair and the groceries and with the help of the key around Rosana’s neck, carried everything, including Norma into the house.

Barto stood looking down at her, and his eyes held an unreadable expression. Is he mad at me? she wondered. She took of her hat and loosened the bun at the nape of her neck, curls cascading to her waist. She shook them out, allowing the sun to dry the sweat. Barto said nothing.

Rosana broke the silence. “Well, thanks yet again. I’m always saying that to you. Thanks for this, thanks for that, I think you’re going to get of sick us! The poor relations always in trouble.” She forced a laugh, but still he said nothing. Finally, he turned away, took off his hat and smoothed down the gray-streaked waves before replacing it on his head. Then he turned back to her.

“I told you not to go alone, and -”

“I took Norma!” She interrupted. “And you can hardly call it alone when half the village tagged along to see the show!”

“-and you went alone to the fields,” he continued. “I told you to stay in bed and rest, and you walk four miles pushing your mother-in-law, who you almost crushed because you are not strong enough to push -”

Rosana bristled, but he forged on. “You are not strong enough to face this place alone! You don’t know how to live here, and three times in as many days, you have put your lives in danger. Now listen to me.” He squatted down and looked up into her eyes, placing his hands on her upper arms as if to hold her in. “This is not the United States. There is no police force to call. There is no fire company, no ambulance that will arrive within the time you will need it. You must stay here until you are strong enough – and smart enough -” here he shook her slightly, “to care for Norma and make a living at the same time. Do you understand?”

“Uh, yeah, but the problem is, like, if I don’t make some money, we will starve, and Norma won’t get any meds. Not that she’ll need meds if she starves to death.” The pain goaded her to fight. She slid forward and eased her feet to the ground, ignoring his outstretched hand.

“Maybe for once in your spoiled life, you’ll have to obey other people.” He stood slowly. “Other people who know better than you.”

“Yeah, and people are always so helpful!” she flashed, bitter sarcasm dripping.

“What are you doing here, Rosana?” His voice was hard, but there was an undercurrent of something else in it. Something Rosana couldn’t identify.

She turned away and looked out toward the bay. What am I doing here? She wondered. Why didn’t I just stay at home like Olinda? Why didn’t I go back to DC and find a job doing something-or-other where I don’t have to kill myself trying to keep a sick old lady from starving?

She turned back to him, realizing he was tall enough to look down on her. “I’m here for Norma. She has no one left.”

He nodded. “I thought so. At least, I hoped so.” He paused, searching for words. “I have never seen such love before.”

“Love?” Rosana scoffed, raising an eyebrow.

“Love isn’t a feeling, Rosana. It’s what you do. I have given you a house to rent and a bucket. You have given my cousin your life.”

And then he looked so deeply and intently into her eyes that Rosana felt sure he was searching for something. It was more than she could do to return his gaze, and she looked away.

“Rosana.” His voice recalled her eyes. “The mango harvest starts this week. Tomorrow, maybe the next day. I will be in various orchards overseeing the harvest, and I will not be able to look in on – my cousins. I have already spoken with Madre Maria-Ileana, and she is willing to assist. Will you please let the Sisters help you?

The energy drained from Rosana like someone had tripped on the cord. She leaned back against the steps and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her battered hands. When she dropped them, she looked up at him.

“Sure,” she said.

Rosana – Chapter Sixteen

Chapter 16

The noise in the tiny casita was suddenly overwhelming. Unable to process the input,
Rosana’s brain assured her body that it was safe at home. She closed her eyes and rested
her head against Norma’s knee.
“Rosana! Rosana!” screamed Norma in a panic, “she’s dying! Help her! Rosanita, no te
mueras! Don’t die!”
A strong arm was around her shoulders, and a cup on her lips. Rosana drank by reflex the
few drops which found their way past her swollen tongue.
“…dehydrated. Sunburned, too, and exhausted. Sister, help me to lift her onto the bed.” The
masculine voice sounded familiar. That man, Rosana thought, the one who helped us.
“I’m fine,” she protested weakly, “and there is no bed. Please – just put me on the floor. I’ll be
fine.”
“You’d have been fine if you had not gone alone.” The voice wasn’t harsh, but the reprimand
stung, and even if she had had the strength, Rosana wouldn’t have wanted to open her eyes
and look at the speaker. “I told you not to be alone. Not here, and especially not in the fields.
Do you want your mother-in-law to lose the only one she has left?”
“Don’t be angry with her, Senor Barto.” It was the Sister, Rosana realized. “She was trying to
find food for her mother-in-law, and I’m the one who told her to go to the onion-field. It is one I
used to glean when I first came to this country.”
“It was bad advice. You have lived in this climate all your life, and you know to bring water
with you. How could this – this – child be expected to know what to do here? She has never
worked a day in her life, as you can see by her ha-”
Rosana felt her fingers being lifted from the floor, and heard Sister take in her breath sharply.
From Senor Barto there was no sound. Then –
“Jose – go to my truck and get the first-aid kit from under the front seat.”
After that, there was no talk, only the sensation of being lifted and then settled on something
firm, but comfortable.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Rosana heard Norma cry.
“She’s fine, Senora Delacruz. Her hands just need a little attention,” called Sister.
“Gracias, Jose. Sister, take one of the buckets and get some water.” Rosana heard, her eyes
still closed, torn between the comfort of the thing on which she lay and the painful sensations
which began to sound alarms from every part of her body.
“You remembered the buckets,” she smiled, in spite of the pain he caused her by trying to
push the tight sleeve up her arm.
“Yes,” he said, shortly, “and I wish I had delivered them first thing in the morning before this
craziness started. I am going to cut your sleeve. I can’t push it up.”
“No, don’t!” She cried, lifting her head and opening her eyes in time to see the flash of a knife
and hear the fabric tear. “It’s my sunshirt!”
“Part of it will still be fine,” he grunted, tugging at the fabric, “just this sleeve.” With a jerk, he
ripped open the sleeve and pulled the two pieces to the side, exposing her arm all the way up
to her shoulder. She winced at his touch.
“What’s wrong? Why did that hurt when I touched your shoulder?”
Rosana didn’t answer, but closed her eyes and tried to relax the muscles around the
throbbing bruise. Until that moment, she hadn’t felt any pain from the rocky clods.
“Here, Senor Barto.” There was a muted metallic bang, consistent with a metal bucket of
water hitting the floor.
“Thank you, Sister. Now help me. You see I’ve torn her sleeve to get better access to the
cuts on her hands and wrists, but that shoulder is injured. Can you help me turn her?”
In answer, Rosana felt herself turned on her left side and held there by kind hands. She
hissed involuntarily.
“Are you okay, mija?” called Norma from the front room, her voice high-pitched and panicky.
“She’ll be just fine, Cousin,” came Senor Barto’s voice, near Rosana’s ear. Then quietly, so
only Sister Estelle could hear, “but she has a hell-of-a-bruise on her shoulder, and I suspect -”
This time, Rosana only heard the sound of ripping fabric and a cool rush as the evening air
against her quivering skin.
This time, it was Sister Estelle who hissed, her hands tightening their hold on her.
“Querida,” she whispered.
“Whatever you’re hissing about,” Rosana spat in an irritated whisper, “don’t tell Norma. She’ll
think it’s her fault.”
“No,” replied Senor Barto, from further away where Rosana could only guess he had stepped
to get a wider view of her injuries. “No. This is definitely your fault, and your fault only. You
crazy, crazy idiota! If I tell you not to go out alone, I mean don’t go out alone. Not ever! Do
you understand, you red-haired, hard-headed – person?”
The house was strangely silent again, and Rosana could hear by several grunts of surprise
that the other men had come to see what had upset the normally unflappable Barto’s
equilibrium.
“Don’t let Norma see!” Rosana begged, still whispering. Sister Estelle smoothed back the red
curls and murmured soothingly.
“What happened to you?” Demanded Barto, his voice near her ear again. “You left this
morning, my cousin tells me, to glean in the onion field this – Sister – recommended. Then
what? Sister, come wash these bruises. Her whole back! I will support her.” The hands
changed, and Rosana was supported on her side by wide hands and a firm, almost painful
grip. Then, came the shocking, but cooling sensation of water across her neck, back and
arm.
“I walked through the brush to the river, crossed over, and found the onion field. Then I found
some onions and brought them back. At the river on the way home, I stopped to rest and fell
asleep. When I woke up, it was late, so I came back by the road.”
“That doesn’t explain why you appeared in the doorway looking like a ghost here to haunt us
or why your hands are shredded, and your back -” the grip became tighter, “looks like you’ve
been stoned. What. Else. Happened?”
“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Whoever-you-are! It’s none of your business anymore than it’s my
business why you took so long to get here with the buckets! We are trying to live our little
lives here, and we can get along fine without you coming in to yell at me for trying to take care
of my family! No one asked you -”
Rosana’s outburst started Norma’s wail afresh, and Rosana dropped her head, tears
gathering at the corners of her eyes as she gathered herself, with effort.
“It’s okay, Mama. I’m fine,” she called. “I’m so sorry to upset you today. Now help me by
starting the Rosary. You can pray for me – you and Sister Estelle, and Mr. Whats-his-name, if
he knows any words fit to address the Mother of God.” She opened her eyes to glare at him,
and then shut them again as Sister Estelle scrubbed none-too-gently at some embedded grit.
From the living room, Rosana heard the rattle of her mother-in-law’s Rosary beads, and she
relaxed a little. She smelled Senor Barto, and although she kept her eyes closed, she knew
he had knelt down beside her. He smelled like open air, and hard work, and aftershave.
“Rosana. I learned your name, today, Rosana Delacruz.” His voice was suddenly gentle, and
it broke her defenses like a wave overwhelming a sandcastle. “Is that your real name or just
what Norma calls you?”
“It’s mine.”
“Rosana. Maybe you remember my name is Bartolomeo, and I am Dulcita – Norma’s –
cousin. She has only one relative left who is closer than me, and that is Jaime – you
remember Jaime, I am sure.”
She nodded.
“My cousin tells me you have given up everything – home, family, country – to come with her
to her home. Is this true?”
Rosana started to shrug, but thought better of it. The sting of Sister Estelle’s ministrations
reminded her to keep still. “Yes,” she said simply.
“In this country, it is the job of the closest relative to help when there is no one else to help. I
am almost Norma’s closest relative, so even if you do not ask for my help, I am bound by duty
to family and to God to help. Do you understand?” He smoothed a tear from her cheek
where it hung at the end of a trail of white amid the dirt. His touch made her shiver. Again.
“You’re wrong, Mr. Whats-your-name,” she said after a moment, opening her eyes to be
startled by the proximity of his face to hers. Her green eyes flashed. “You’re not Norma’s
next of kin. I am. And it’s important you remember that fact. It may take me a little while to
learn how to get around in this country, but you’re not going to keep me from my duty to
family. You go do your – what ever it is you do, just like you’ve always done. I’m sure you
have some family closer than Norma who needs your attention, and who might not like to
hear that you are ripping the shirt off of the new American in town!”
Barto smoothed his mustache and sat back on his haunches, mouth twitching, but Sister
Estelle broke into peals of laughter. She laughed and laughed until she had to put down the
remains of Rosana’s shirt she had been using as a sponge.
“Oh, Rosana,” she giggled helplessly, “I have never heard anyone speak to Senor Barto like
that before. Oh my. Oh my. No, you two are Senor Barto’s only relatives. He has no wife,
nor is like to, now that you see the way he talks to an injured woman! Now, Senor Barto, you
come with your first aid kit and do what you can for these bruises. Then she must turn over
so we can clean the other hand. I will go get more water.” The Sister hooted her way to the
well, stopping to assure Norma that Rosana was going to be just fine.
“Rosana,” he whispered, “I’m sorry for calling you an idiota. It’s just that the extent of your
injuries surprised me, and not in a good way. I will not keep you from your duty, but it is very
important to -” he almost said, ‘me,’ but stopped himself in time “- the safety of our town, that
you tell me if anyone hurt you. If there is more damage than what we can see…?” His eyes
held appeal, and concern, and was it fear? Whatever it was, it softened Rosana’s heart, and
she smiled pertly.
“No, Senor Barto. A couple of idiotas, as you’d call them, decided they didn’t want any onion
competition and were trying to get me to leave.”
Barto grimaced knowingly.
“It was just some dirt clods, and they mostly got me on the back, but they stopped when I
beaned them with a couple of onions!” She grinned, and he laughed. A full laugh, and the
sound filled the little house and overflowed through the new windows and the door out to the
well, where Sister Estelle paused when she heard it.
“I never heard Senor Barto laugh, either. Hmm. I wonder what La Madre will say,” and she
grinned slyly to herself.
Barto was suddenly serious. “If there was no more trouble after that, you were lucky. Very
lucky.”
“I didn’t stay long. They had a big tarp to fill, and I only had the basket, so I was done soon. I
stopped at the river to drink -”
“You must never drink from that river. The water carries many diseases. Drink only from the
well.”
“Well, I didn’t drink. I was washing my hands when I noticed I was missing -” Rosana
clamped her jaw tight and squeezed her eyelids together. I will not say it, I will not think it.
“You lost something? In the field or in the river?”
“In the field,” she gasped, inhaling deeply to clamp the emotion which threatened to spill.
Barto knew not to ask. Instead he gently lifted her hand and stroked it, careful not to disturb
the cuts and bruises.
Which is when he noticed the stark white line of a missing ring on the fourth finger.
*
Until that moment, Barto thought burying his mother had been the hardest thing he had ever
done. But as he watched the priest bless her casket, he had known his mother was already
gone. This time, choosing to drive away from family – and duty, of course – when every
particle of his will wanted to stay, was far more difficult.
But the men who had come with him earlier that evening after the work of the day, had
families of their own, and had already waited an extra two hours after they finished installing
the electricity, the stove, two windows, and metal bars across them.
Barto drove in silence as usual, amid the chatter of the men discussing the American widow
who had suffered such injuries to feed her mother-in-law. He dropped each one at their
house and continued to his own. Pulling into his drive after the automatic gates clanged shut
behind him, he turned into the carport and killed the engine.
“Rosana! Rosana!” Had been all the hysterical Norma had been able to say. They had slept
on a pile of their clothes last night, he observed and had no food or water in the house except
the plate Sister Estelle told him she brought to them for dinner the night before. Apparently,
there was no money.
His first job had been to feed and medicate his cousin, then send for Sister to keep her
company and help her stay calm. There was little they could do but wait, as they could see
from the house that the onion field was empty. Barto had called a friend with a dog to go
looking for the girl on the road, worried someone like Jaime had found her first and forced her
into his sickening trade. No wonder he hadn’t found her, if she had been asleep on the river
bank.
Somehow this story didn’t all add up.
The bruises made sense. Gleaners had a reputation of being territorial and would often fight
to establish pecking rights. He smiled. She had thrown onions back! But she would be in
bed for several days.
He had spoken with La Madre and elicited permission for a Sister to stay with the two widows
until Rosana could function again. Her hands, bloody and scraped as he cleaned,
disinfected, and bandaged them, were a far cry from the soft, manicured digits of the day
before.
The day before? It had taken this country only a day to scar and batter her. But she was a
fighter. Barto stroked his mustache. Before he left, he made sure Sister Estelle had bathed
her as completely as she would allow. Scrapes and bruises everywhere, she said. And
Rosana hadn’t complained. Only insisted that Norma not know the extent of her injuries.
“I think La Madre might agree she has the strength to lose her beauty. Not that her beauty
faded. If anything – ” He said it aloud. The response was a whine and scratch from behind
the front door where Nena, his mutt-dog had been waiting since Marta went home.
Marta was a wonderful housekeeper and cook, but her relationship with Nena was strictly
business. Which meant Nena was hungry.
“I cannot feed this animal while children are starving, right down there!” She would point down
the hill to the Haitian side of Palmar de Ocoa, and she was right. But Nena was an important
part of Barto’s home, and he intended to keep it that way, housekeeper or no housekeeper.
He never told Marta about the food he often delivered to several of his pickers’ families, right
there in the Haitian side of Palmar.
Barto opened the door and climbed out of the truck, feeling drained. So many emotions. His
panicky cousin, his own surprise and anger at the yellow and black contusions on Rosana’s
pale skin. Shock, fear, maybe, and relief – I guess that’s what it was – that all her injuries had
been external. He took off his baseball cap and ran his hand through the wavy graying hair.
Had he ever seen devotion or dedication like that? Sacrificing to the point of bodily
exhaustion and injury to provide for another? It made him think of his mother. All mothers,
maybe, giving birth to people, enduring excruciating pain for the benefit of another.
“It’s just that you don’t see that kind of commitment in most women. Especially young
women.” Beautiful young women. American women, he added to himself. He fitted a key
into the lock of his front door and greeted Nena, who danced with joy at his arrival.
“You’re happy to see me because I’m going to feed you, Nena,” he reproved her, stroking the
ears and back of the dog’s white and brown coat. “But what is she getting? Not money. Not
fame. Certainly not a vacation in a tropical climate.”
So what motivates her? He considered the question as he poured Nena a bowl of dry dog
food and opened a can of wet food to pour on top. He paused, can-opener in hand and
considered the meal Nena was getting, and the food his cousin would eat tonight. The
Sisters had brought more of their leftovers – Rosana insisted on trading for the onions – but
after that, what would they eat?
“She’ll try to go out again tomorrow, Nena,” he told his frolicking dog, suddenly certain of her
plans. “She will say she’s well enough to get up and go back for more onions.” He slammed
the can down on the counter, set the dry food on the dog mat, and stomped upstairs. “Crazy,
crazy woman! She’ll kill herself for that silly Dulcita, and why? Why?”
As he washed the day’s grime from his face and hands, the answer poked at him. It was an
uncomfortable answer. An answer that made him question his own methods, his own
motives. It called into account his sterling reputation and the value of his own life. I do a lot
of good here, he thought, his pride teetering precariously. Good for the community, good for
my business, good for cousins who needs my charity.
But ultimately, his conscience insisted, you do it all because it benefits YOU. And Rosana
does it for love.
Snapping off the bathroom light he resolved not to think of her again.

Rosana – Chapter Fourteen

Chapter 14

Barto swung up into the driver’s seat and closed the door in one smooth motion. All the years of meticulously developing his self-control came to his aid as he managed to back out of the house’s front yard, still littered with construction debris, and drive away without looking back.

A few yards down the hill, he made a sharp right-hand turn and bumped up the dirt driveway of the Sacred Heart cloister. He threw the truck into ‘park’, turned off the pulsing diesel engine, and went to knock smartly on the front door.

A small woman in a white habit greeted him a moment later.

“Senor Barto! How good to see you! We are so happy about the new refrigerator! Thank you!”

“You’re welcome, Hermana Elena. Is La Madre available?”

“She’s in her office. Will you wait in the parlor?”

Barto nodded, took off his hat, brushed it clean against his jeans and stepped over the threshold into the cool, clean interior of the cloister. He accepted the glass of water Hermana Elena offered and sat on a hard, wooden chair stroking his mustache while she went to find the Abbess, La Madre Maria-Ileana.

“Senor Barto!” La Madre’s loud voice always surprised Barto, and he stood to his feet with a wide grin to receive the Superior of the Convent.

She was a round woman, with an easy grin and eyes of iron. She knew what her Sisters needed, and knew how to storm heaven -and earth- chuckled Barto, until she got it.

“You are here to check in on the new appliance, I am sure,” she boomed, coming to stand in front of him. “Sit down, sit down. No need to stand, I know you are busy the whole day, but here you must rest. It is lovely. Just beautiful. Stainless steel is so much easier to clean than the plastic, of course, and so far, we have just had to adjust the little legs to make it level. Poor Hermana Carmela put a pan of milk in it before we fixed it, and it poured into the fruit drawers!” Here, she threw her hands in the air and bellowed with laughter. Several other white-coiffed heads were gathered behind her wide skirts now, laughing with her. “But we love it, don’t we sisters? Of course, we do!”

“Madre,” interjected Barto, anxious to get her attention before she started on another subject, “I need to speak with you about your new neighbors.”

“But the new houses are not finished yet! Surely, the new tenants are not there already? I know there is quite a waiting-list for your little casitas but they must wait until the construction is finished! What is the family name?”

“Delacruz. They are – one of them is – a cousin of mine who has been -”

“Delacruz. Delacruz. The Delacruzes of Azua, you mean? They are mechanicos, no? I have met their mother. What are they doing over here?”

“No, no, Madre. Not the Delacruzes from Azua, although they are distantly related. No, these ladies are my father’s brother’s son’s wife. And daughter-in-law.”

“Father’s brother’s son’s? My head is spinning Senor Barto. Sit down.” She sank heavily in a chair across a small carpet from where he was already seated. “Tell me the whole story, and don’t leave out any important details.” She turned to the group of white-clad ladies grinning into the room. “Hermanas, please return to your work.” Obediently, they filed away. “Now,” She adjusted her skirt and folded her hands across her ample girth. “Tell me everything.”

“Last night, I came from a dinner at the Mayor’s house in Palm-”

“About the pier, I’m sure. That man had the nerve to come to me about his silly pier, asking if I would please ask our donors to help fund it, ‘for the good of the community!’” She coughed incredulously. “Go on.”

“And I saw an American woman pushing a Dominican lady in a wheelchair down the streets of Palmar.”

“Friday night, hmm. Were they part of that drunken revel?”

“No, as I later found out. I watched them go to the Inn as I walked home.”

“And so you took them in? Without knowing anything about them? Senor Barto -” It was his turn to interrupt.

“No, Madre. But before I reached my home, my cousin, Valencia, from Bani called with the news that my cousin Eduardo – the one who died in the United States a few years ago – his widow, had come home. She and Vicente drove them to Palmar from Bani last night.”

“You said there was an American woman. Who is she?”

“Eduardo had two sons. She is the wife of the oldest boy, Marcelo.”

“Where is Marcelo? And why did he let his mother and wife travel all this way alone?” La Madre pursed her lips sternly.

“He is dead. He and his brother were killed last month in some sort of boating accident.”

“Both dead at once?”

“Yes.”

“Was the other son married as well?”

“Yes, but his wife stayed with her family in the States.”

“And why didn’t this other one stay in her own country, too?”

He shrugged. “They are close, the mother- and daughter-in-law.”

“Close.” La Madre ‘hmph-ed.’ “We will see. So you brought them out here to an unfinished house that is supposed to be the home of one of the Haitian families who have come to help you with the mango harvest, is that it?”

“Last night, I could not sleep, thinking over how this has all come to be, and why Dulcita would come back? Why not stay in the States?”

“Where she lost her husband, both sons, and a daughter-in-law? Of course she came home!”

“It occurred to me that she would try to live in her old house, so I planned to go speak to her about the earthquake damage, but early this morning, Jaime calls. You know Jaime?”

La Madre only frowned.

“He said his brother’s wife was back with a- well, a- an American woman.” He finished lamely.

La Madre held up her hand. “You don’t need to tell me what happened. Jaime found them and started causing trouble for la Americana. And you brought them here. It was good thinking.”

“Almost, Madre. The girl had already pushed the wheelchair all the way to Dulcita’s old house and was trying to figure out how to live in the two rooms upstairs which are not damaged.”

“Why would she do that? She’s American. She can probably buy any house in the village!”

“Maybe not. Anyway, I got there after Jaime, and you’re right, there was some trouble.”

“But you sent that louse packing, God forgive me.” Madre Maria-Ileana crossed herself.

“I confess I did remind him of some debts he owes me. But you know Jaime. And as he reminded me, he is the next of kin, being Dulcita’s brother-in-law. It will only be a matter of time. That’s why they can’t stay in the village. Dulcita – Norma – is sick, and the American woman doesn’t know anything about living here.”

“So you brought them to me, and we will look after them. It was smart. And well done, Senor Barto. Jaime doesn’t come within a mile of this place if he can help it! Our Lord reminds him of his duties if he gets too close!” She laughed until the cross necklace danced on her ample bosom. “But Senor Barto,” she continued, suddenly serious, “if they did not come with money, how are they going to live?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can she cook? Can she sew? Can she clean?”

Barto shrugged and ran a finger across his mustache. “Her hands are very soft. And the fingernails are painted. Not hard working hands, and yet, I see the way she cares for her mother-in-law. Like taking care of an old woman is the reason she is alive. How does devotion like that – love like that – happen? I don’t know.” He remembered her long fingers in his work-roughened hand. And the red hair hanging like a tapestry in front of her face. The fiercely protective but gentle embrace with which she cradled Dulcita.

La Madre was looking at him through squinting eyes, her head cocked to one side appraisingly. “Her hands were soft, were they? And how would you know that, Senor Barto? A man of forty-five?”

“I helped her into the truck.”

“Does she know the casitas have no running water? What will happen to those soft hands and pretty nails? Does she have the strength to lose her beauty in order to serve her mother-in-law?”

Barto smoothed his mustache.

“Well, Senor Barto,” said Madre Maria-Ileana, heaving herself to her feet and leading him to the door, “I will give them two days to settle in, and then my sisters and I will go visit. What is her name, la Americana?”

Barto looked at her like she spoke another language.

“What is the name of the younger widow, Senor Barto?” La Madre repeated, firmly.

“Her name? I don’t know! All she told me was ‘Mrs. Delacruz.’”

“There seem to be a lot of ‘I don’t knows’ in your life suddenly, Senor Barto,” Mother Maria-Ileana chuckled softly at the clouds of dust which clustered behind the receding truck.

*

Rosana squared her shoulders and resolved not to look at him as he drove away. He had solved their immediately housing need, and that was as much as family obligation required.

“C’mon, Mama, let’s look inside.”

They surveyed the tiny cottage with four cement steps leading up to the brown front door for a full minute before Rosana shrugged sheepishly, “Okay. I admit it. The accessibility rules for buildings in the US are a good idea. How are we going to get you in and out?”

“You leave me outside.”

“Not on your life. We’ll go up backward now, and build a ramp later. Let me put these bags inside, and then I’ll come help you up.” She shouldered their duffle bags and her backpack and stomped up the steps. On the top step, she fitted the key into the lock and mouthed a silent ‘thank you,’ to Senor Barto who had pressed it into her hand after putting her rent payment in a worn wallet.

She shoved the door with her toe and stepped inside. “Oh!” she gasped, dropping the bags with a thud.

“What is it, Mija?” called Norma from the front yard. “You are okay?”

“Fine, Mama. It’s just…” Rosana surveyed the stud walls, bare of any plaster or sheet rock, the single electrical outlet, the floor covered with sawdust and construction trash, and the rest of the house, all of which was visible from where she stood at the front door. “…beautiful,” she finished lamely.

“Help me see, mi amor!”

“Just a minute, Mama.” She rotated slowly, looking for something she could make into a broom. There was nothing inside. Turning to look outside, she met the eager gaze of her mother-in-law. “I wish I could clean it a little before you come in.”

“No te preocupes, querida, don’t worry. I will love it no matter how it looks!”

It’s true, Rosana thought, her spirits suddenly light. It was their home, and they would make it beautiful, even if it took a long, long time. She laughed, the happy sound mingling with the bright sunshine and echoing off the side of the Convent only half a football field away. Jumping down the steps, she turned the chair backward and pulled Norma, one step at a time up into their new house.

*

La Madre Maria-Ileana watched from the southern window of the workroom. The Sisters around her sewed industriously, making habits, altar cloths, clothing for newborn babies, and whatever else God brought them to do.

“La Americana is very thin.” Mother commented to no one in particular. “And they have no furniture. On what is the old lady going to sleep? And what will they eat?”

At noon, the Sisters left their work and went to the chapel to pray the Mid-day Office. Then they dined in the refectory on fruit, bread, and fried plantain.

“Hermana,” whispered La Madre to Hermana Estelle, a woman of middle age whose white habit contrasted brilliantly with her smooth, dark skin. “Put some food on a plate and bring it to the ladies in the new casita. And see what else they need.” The Sister grinned, bowed, and disappeared into the kitchen.

“At least they won’t go hungry tonight,” murmured La Madre.

*

Norma enjoyed the view from the top step of their little windowless home. If Rosana parked her wheelchair sideways so she looked out toward the sea, she was also able to take in all the activity along the road, and see some of the older casitas, built at the bottom of the hill, closer to Palmar.

“I wonder who will come to live here?” Norma pointed to the other house near the well, less complete than their own.

“I wonder why they aren’t finished. And why is no one working on them?” Rosana called from within the house. She carefully gathered all scraps of wood the workers had left inside and made a small pile to the left of the front steps. She did the same on the grounds around the house and well, and was soon rewarded with a good-sized pile of odds and ends, including many nails, scraps of metal roofing, and three 2X4s of various lengths.

“What are you doing, mija?” asked Norma.

“Watch and see, Mama.” Rosana found a stone and drove a nail into the exterior wall of the house above and to each side of the door. Then, she dug a hole at the base of the steps, one on either side, and set a 2X4 upright in each one. Inside her painting backpack was a carefully folded tarp made of thin, paint speckled canvas she used as a floor covering around her easel. This, she hung from the nails above the door and tied around the upright 2X4s until the entire front porch was shadowed under its shady spread. She spent several minutes adjusting the height so as not to obscure the view.

“There, Mama,” said Rosana, wiping her hands on her pants and surveying her work. “Shade.”

Norma sighed. “Oh, querida! That God would give me this joy in my life! I sit on my shaded front porch in my own country, near to him in the Church.” She pointed to the Convent. “I am content, my dear one. But a little hungry. Do we have anything to eat?”

Food. Rosana had forgotten. They had finished the bread and cheese at lunch. She sat down on the steps and looked out toward the village of Palmar and the bay of the sea beyond. Where would she go to get food?

“Where do people buy groceries here? Are there grocery stores?”

“Of course. Small stores in Palmar, big supermarkets in Bani and the Capital. Most people go once a week to the big stores in the city and grow or make whatever else they need. Where are you going?”

Rosana stood and went into the house. In three steps she had crossed the living room and was in the kitchen. The dark room had no stove, no refrigerator, no running water. Just two cupboards a counter, topped with tile, and a sink with a drain. Rosana went back to the porch.

“How do you cook here?”

“On a stove or a microwave, like in the States, silly. What do you think, we cook over a fire, still?” Norma chuckled and drank from her water bottle. Suddenly, her expression changed. “Oh, Rosana. There is no stove?”

Rosana shook her head.

“What do we do?” wailed Norma. “How will we cook over a fire? Why is God asking this of us?” She began to rock and cry.

“Stop, Mama. Stop right now.” Rosana’s voice was fierce as she squatted down by the wheelchair to look in her mother-in-law’s face. “We have come this far, and look, see? We have a house, we have shade and a beautiful view, and we have each other, right? Now, we will trust God to provide the rest.”

Norma stared at her. “You believe God will help us? You don’t even believe in God! How can you say such a thing?”

Rosana took her hands and spoke gently. “Remember? I said your country would be mine and your religion would be mine, so I will believe. Because I said I would. And truly, Mama, I do believe, a little. When my brother died, I put God away, but he keeps calling me. First through you, and now, look where we live!” She turned to gesture incredulously toward the Convent, and there, on the slope between them and the glinting windows was a figure in white, coming toward them.

*

Hermana Estelle put the plate and basket on the tiled counter in the dark kitchen and glanced around, smoothing her skirt. When she returned to the front porch, she sat down on the step at the foot of the wheelchair next to the young woman.

Rosana listened closely to her greeting. “Parlez vous Francais?” she asked their visitor.

“Mai oui!” Answered the sister, leaning sideways in surprise and continuing the conversation in a mixture of French, Spanish, and broken English.

“You are from Haiti?” asked Norma.

Hermana Estelle smiled a toothy grin and nodded. “I come over the mountains to the DR twenty years ago to pick mangoes with my family. La Madre found me, and brought me to the Convent. And I have been here since. But tell me who you are and why you have come?”

Rosana gazed out over the hill, Palmar, the sea. She watched the cars going to and fro on the main road while Norma explained their situation to the Sister. Presently, she went to the tiny sleeping room and took from her backpack their last bottle of water. She brought it to the front porch and offered it to Hermana Estelle when there was a lull in conversation.

“Thank you, Miss -”

“Mrs., actually. Mrs. Delacruz.”

“What will you do to support yourselves here, Mrs. Delacruz? Do you have a skill?”

Do twelve years of ballet count? Rosana wondered. Certainly, her overused joints had taken a beating today, between climbing up to the old Delacruz house and now the work at the house.

“I paint. I speak French and English. I could teach ballet. But I’ll do almost anything. What do you recommend? Do you know of any business that needs an employee?”

“You paint? What do you paint?”

“Landscapes, murals, portraits.” She thought about the unfinished portrait of Marcelo still wrapped inside her painting backpack.

“La Madre will be interested to know you paint. She would like to have pictures painted for the walls. Scenes from the Bible, saints. That kind of painting. You can do this?”

Rosana nodded.

“Good.” The Sister looked pleased. “But soon it will be harvest-time, and the best way to get fresh food is to go into the fields that have already been harvested and pick up what was left behind. This is called gleaning. There is a kind of understanding that the poor must be given their pick of what is left. Right now, it is onion harvest. Soon, in one week or two, it will be mango harvest. You must go to the orchard and wait until the harvesters clear the good fruit. Then, you go with a basket and pick up the best of what is left. This you may take home for free. I will show you the fields where you must go.”

She stood, wiping the dust from the back of her skirt and beckoned for Rosana to follow her around to the other side of the casita. On this side, the Sister pointed inland to cultivated fields and a wide, shallow river. “These here belong to Senor Barto. He is a good man and allows the poor who come.” Sister Estelle turned to face the hills behind the Convent. “Beyond the hills toward the town of Hatillo, the fields belong to Senor Jaime. Do not go there. He grows many kinds of beans and potatoes, but the men who work for him are not safe. You understand?” The Sister held her arm, looking piercingly into Rosana’s eyes until she assented. “Good. You start tomorrow in the onion field. That one there. You see?”

“I see it.”

“Tres bien. Onions are good to eat when roasted in a fire. Come, I will teach you to make a fire.”

The kind Sister did not know she had set out on a task that would take all afternoon. It was late by the time she had instructed Rosana in the art of proper placement of the fire so the prevailing winds would not blow smoke into the house. She explained where to find the kind of rocks needed for a good fire-ring, and made Rosana arrange and rearrange the stones until Sister Estelle grunted her satisfaction. Then came a walk through the bracken and small trees for fuel and warnings about which animals lived where in the brush. A further delay occurred while Sister Estelle walked back to the Convent to ask La Madre for a box of matches for the viudas, the widows in the casita.

Unbeknownst to Rosana and Norma, all of the Convent-dwellers were gathered at the workroom windows to witness Rosana’s first fire.

“Now, throw dirt on it,” Sister Estelle instructed when the blaze was finally roaring.

“I just got it going!” yelled Rosana, hungry, tired and dirty, the crown of her head and shoulders burned by the sun.

“You have no water. It is too dangerous. When you have a bucket of water nearby, then you keep your fire burning. Not now. Only now you know how to make your own fire.” She scooped two handfuls of dirt and dumped them on the fire. Rosana bit her tongue and bitterly did as she was told.

“Now, I go once more to the Convent and bring for you a blanket for la anciana, the old lady. She must not sleep on the bare floor.”

Sleep! Rosana glanced over her shoulder at the setting sun, conscious that they would be in the dark when the sun set. She grunted her thanks to the Sister and finished extinguishing the fire. Four joints in her back popped as she gingerly stood erect for the first time in what must have been hours. Norma was dozing in her chair on the front porch, and Rosana knew she would have to go to the tiny outhouse by the trees before going to bed. Exhaustion tugged at her mood and her muscles. There was no longer any clean place on her pants to wipe her hands, and Rosana wondered how Sister Estelle’s habit had managed to stay so white.

“Probably because I did all the dirty work,” she muttered, and then stopped short. The sun was beginning its final descent into the water, and bright rays of clean light shot across the bay, up the hill and into her eyes with soft, muted colors. Rosana froze at the sheer beauty of the moment.

“Mama! Mama!” Norma awoke with a jerk. “Look, Mama!” The older woman followed her finger to the sinking sun, and for a moment, they both felt the heart-wrenching tug of overwhelming beauty.

By the time Sister Estelle returned with a two thin cotton blankets, Rosana and Norma had been to the outhouse and were waiting on the step in the waning light.

“Tomorrow,” the Sister stated with finality, pointing at Rosana. “You go to the onion field and pick what is left. Bring it back. I will come and check on la anciana while you are gone. La Madre say so.”

There was nothing more to do than say ‘thanks’ and ‘goodnight,’ roll the wheelchair into the house, and lock the door behind them. Norma neatly arranged a pile of all her and Rosana’s clothes into a mattress, and with the cotton blanket to cover them and sweatshirts as pillows, the women fell fast asleep.