“Where is my father?” Vicente gestured to Inés to pass him the bread and butter.
“He went to Ponce.” Inés passed Vicente the basket of pan de agua and the tin of Danish butter.
“Ponce!” Valentina chewed a forkful of bacalao. “Vicente, your father could have come to our wedding!”
“What is Papá’s business in Ponce?” Vicente buttered his bread.
“If you’ll forgive me, Valentina”—Angelina turned to her son—“your father meant to stop you from marrying.”
Valentina choked. Vicente patted her back and Inés went to the kitchen for water.
“Vicente, I don’t often admit that Raúl Vega has razón,” Angelina said, “but you shouldn’t have married without your father’s permission.”
“Angelina, not in front of Vicente’s bride.” Inés handed Valentina a glass of water.
“Mamá, soy hombre,” Vicente said. “I don’t need my father’s permission.”
“You do as long as you eat at your father’s table and sleep in his house.”
“I wouldn’t worry, Vicente. Your wife is sure to dazzle your father,” Inés said.
“Maybe he’ll hate me,” Valentina said.
“On the contrary,” Inés said.
“He’s going to love you, Valentina.” Vicente’s smile was that of the young man who’d come to her door.
“That is certain.” Inés refilled Valentina’s glass of guava juice. “I told Angelina that you must have met at Dalia’s wedding.”
Vicente winked at his wife. “I couldn’t resist the strawberries.”
“What’s that about strawberries?” Inés smiled.
“Only that I love strawberries,” Vicente said.
Angelina clicked her tongue.
When the bedroom door closed behind them, they had their first argument.
How could you, Vicente? You married me knowing that your family wouldn’t approve? Your father traveled to Ponce to stop it! Imagine the scandal if he had arrived on our wedding day! My reputation and that of my family would have been ruined! ¡La vergüenza! Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare touch me! And now that I’m here on some mountain in the middle of nowhere, no one wants me—I’m not finished, don’t “amor” me! Your mother, your father!
The next morning, Valentina sat with las damas in the shade of el balcón. She had promised her husband that she would try to make friends with his mother. Vicente had gone to a neighboring farm to work as a laborer. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t just work on the family farm. Angelina rocked in her chair while Inés sat with a mueble de mundillo on her lap, a wood box the size of a small drawer with wood panels six inches tall and an inch wide that anchored a cyclical pincushion on which she had pinned a pattern drawn on papel de estraza. Dressmaker pins outlined the images on the pattern. In each hand, Inés held a pair of bolillos, smooth wooden sticks, each a little shorter and thicker than a pencil. With sleight of hand, she wound fine thread around each bolillo from right to left and then twisted and crossed and exchanged pairs of bolillos from hand to hand, tapping and clacking them against each other.
“It’s beautiful, Inés. What are you making?” Valentina leaned forward in the wicker chair to examine it.
“A cloth for the table,” Inés said.
“Are these lemons and oranges?” Valentina traced the fruit with her fingernail.
“Yes, and the next series of designs will be berries like fresas and frambuesas. It’s a pattern of my own invention.” She paused to show Valentina. “As a child I used to draw patterns on leaves and break off the thorns from a bush to use as needles.”
“Were you also born in Utuado, Inés?” From the corner of her eye, Valentina could see her mother-in-law was listening.
“I come from the town of Moca. In Puerto Rico, mundillo lace began there, that’s why Moca is called the cradle of mundillo.” Inés smiled at her.
Valentina picked up a bolillo, admiring the glossy wood. “Didn’t the Spanish bring mundillo to Puerto Rico?”
“Yes, but my mother thought that it was invented in Flanders during the Middle Ages.” Inés waved a bolillo like a wand, looping the thread around several pins before adding pins to keep the thread in place.
“I read a story once about a girl who came from Flanders.” It wasn’t true but she wanted Inés to like her.
“She must have worn a mundillo collar to protect the neck of her dress.” Inés moved the pins to the next section of the pattern.
“I recall she wore a lace collar,” Valentina said. “And lace cuffs, also.”
“Angelina, did you hear that?”
Valentina’s mother-in-law stopped rocking in her chair. “I heard.”
“Here, Valentina, let me show you how to wind the thread.” Inés handed her a bolillo. “Like this.”
Angelina resumed rocking. Valentina imitated the flick of her wrist.
“Very good! Did you see that, Angelina?”
“I saw.”
How could Inés like such a grumpy woman?
“The Italians were the first in Europe to make mundillo lace and to sell it to Spain. All the Spanish ladies love lace.”
“Do you come from a Spanish family?”
“My mother never talked about her family, and I never knew my father.”
“You never knew your father!”
Angelina stopped rocking. “Inés, you don’t need to tell people about the past.”
“I stopped being ashamed years ago.” Inés took the bolillo from Valentina.
“It’s your business.”
“That’s right, Angelina,” Inés said. “When my mother died, I was sent to live with an aunt who wasn’t very nice to me. I’ve had to make my way as best as I could.”
Angelina resumed rocking. Valentina watched Inés work the mundillo lace, listening to the clacking bolillos and the creaking rocking chair. She flicked her fan even though it was at least ten degrees cooler than in Ponce. The fragrance of citrus wafted from the orange and lemon and grapefruit trees, giving her un antojo for that morning’s fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. How lovely the birdsong, it seemed like there were many more birds than in Ponce, each with its own particular melody. Flowers of every variety and color dangled from vines and trees and bushes that would surely inspire envy in the gardeners of the island’s great houses.
A small brownish lizard scurried up the wood railing. Valentina watched the lagartijo until it was out of sight. She was glad that she hadn’t screamed in front of her mother-in-law. The breeze through the trees whispered to Valentina: El lagartijo didn’t bite you. Inés said that you were pretty. Angelina doesn’t hate you. Only that you married her son. Vicente’s father is sure to like you, Inés said so.
Vicente’s mother removed a cigar from a box.
“May I try one?” Valentina held out her hand. “I read a book where a French girl smoked cigars.”
“Do you have my son’s permission?” Doña Angelina clipped the top of a cigar with a tiny knife before dropping it in the cigar box.