Utuado
April 17, 1891
Querida Dalia,
I hope that this letter finds you and your family well in Paris. Paris! How exciting! I know you’re as happy as I am on our lovely mountain with your cousin and our new baby. Dalia, you said in your last letter that you sent a present for the baby. I haven’t thanked you for it, not because I’m ungrateful, but because I’ve yet to receive it! I’m heartbroken over it! Maybe it will turn up, if God grants a miracle. What was it? I can at least imagine it coming to us all the way from Paris, France.
Javiercito is always at my breast, demanding to be fed. It is exhausting! Sometimes I think that maybe I should have accepted your Tía Angelina’s offer of a wet nurse, but then he closes his little hand over my finger and gazes at me with the eyes of his father. I’m glad then.
Your house in Paris sounds un sueño. I used to dream of such a house as a silly schoolgirl. But I have happy news, also. We are moving into our own house. Vicente’s older brother Luisito came to help him build it. Luisito doesn’t look at all like my Vicente, who is tall and lanky while he is short and stocky, but he has those same hazel eyes that all the males of the family seem to inherit, including Javiercito and even Raulito. (I wrote you about him.)
Next time you get a letter from me, I will be una ama de casa and mother of soon-to-be two! (Sí, estoy encinta.) You can address your letters as before—Valentina Sánchez Vega—and send it to the general store. I’ll get it eventually.
Un abrazo fuerte para tí y otro para París,
Valentina
Utuado
June 4, 1891
Querida Elena,
I’m sending this letter to the address of the stationery store, as you instructed. Yes, I’m feeling much better, over my morning sickness. How are you and the family? Was the journey to San Juan a good one? Vicente said that traveling the road from Ponce to San Juan is like walking from la sala to la cocina! (How I long to make that walk!) Tell me about your new house. How is San Juan? Elena, you don’t know how I envy you! You get to live in the most cosmopolitan city on the entire island while I’m stuck here on this mountain! It doesn’t seem fair that you have all the luck! I’m sorry, hermana, I don’t mean that, not really. I’m glad for you. It’s just that the little house that Vicente is building for us is not quite what I thought it would be. He warned me that I wouldn’t have any luxuries, but I didn’t believe him. The house is made of wood with a corrugated-iron roof. (The roof panels come from England.) We’ll have four rooms, una sala, two bedrooms, the smaller one for the children, and the kitchen—Vicente said it’s much nicer than many people have. Most important, it’ll be our own little place. I remind myself of that, especially when I think of you and Dalia in your fancy houses.
How do our parents like San Juan? Write me everything.
All my love,
Valentina
San Juan
June 4, 1891
Dear Valentina,
How are you and the family? We are well here in San Juan! This city is so different from Ponce that sometimes I feel as if I moved to another country and only the vista of the same sea, so familiar from Ponce, keeps me moored to our island. The main streets of San Juan are all cobblestone (and hurt my feet), and narrow except for those by the governor’s palace, el Palacio de Santa Catalina, which are quite as wide as any in Ponce. The house of Ernesto’s family—I should say “our house,” is in a quite good location, within walking distance to the harbor. We get a nice breeze off the ocean. (Luckily, we aren’t close to the rows of shanties where the poor people live. Ernesto says that often three or more families live in one room! Imagine! I asked him to take me to see for myself but he refused, saying it was no place for a dama decente.) When Ernesto’s grandfather built this house that is now ours, he planned the shop downstairs and the family’s quarters upstairs. The kitchen and dining room are on the main floor, connected to the shop by a door that is never to be opened during shop hours. Ernesto was very unpleasant toward one of the clerks who made that mistake! We have two servants, one is a cook and the other a general housemaid like Mamá had when we lived at home, and, of course, we send out all the laundry and linens to a lavandera, of which there are plenty in San Juan. We also have a woman who comes in once a week to do the heavy cleaning, and another who comes to iron. Domestic help is so cheap! Isn’t that lucky? When I saw the lavandera the other day with her little children in tow, I thought of you. Do you recall how one day you wanted to buy shoes for the laundress’s children? And you couldn’t understand why our parents didn’t lend you the money? You were always the sweet one.
Must go now. I’m off to do the marketing with a list from the cook. Mamá is eager to go with me. You know how she loves to haggle with the vendors.
Much love,
Elena
P.S. I’m sending you some stationery and ink from the shop. And stamps! Write!
(letter continued)
Dearest Valentina,
The servant forgot to post this letter. I don’t know if she is just stupid or if it’s because she doesn’t read or write, the address on the envelope looks like scribbles and she can’t tell a letter from a scrap of paper to throw away! Mamá says that servants were so much more diligent in their duties in her day—something about being afraid that they would be sent out into the streets to beg. I must tell you about our trip to the market en la Plaza del Mercado. It was very exciting. Let’s just say that it’s not a place where a decent dama should go alone. I kept my arm linked through Mamá’s, and my basket firmly clutched in my other hand. Everything you can imagine was for sale. One man had set up a fogón and was cooking whole pigeons on it. It smelled divine and I was very tempted, but Mamá said that a person could get yellow fever from street food. Los jíbaros came in from the countryside to sell plantains and bananas and piles and piles of pajuiles and naranjas and anón cimarrón and eggplant and asparagus and every other kind of fruit and vegetable. We bought asparagus and stone fruit like pajuiles and citrus like cidras and naranjas. (I wanted to buy anón cimarrón but you know it is quite a large fruit and we couldn’t carry it.) The fisherman wrapped our freshly caught fish in our cheesecloth. Our basket grew quite heavy. Mamá said that next time, we should bring the cook or the maid so that I won’t have to carry our purchases.
We stopped to watch a seamstress sew on a tiny machine set atop its wooden box. Mamá asked if she could sew for us if we provided her with the fabric and thread. (An enthusiastic yes! She is coming tomorrow. We need new napkins and a tablecloth.) I pitied the poor woman, not much older than me, working under the hot sun, her barefoot children gathered around her, all rags and big eyes. I gave the oldest child a few coins. I’m saving the things my children outgrow (good-quality things) for your children, otherwise I’d be tempted to give them to these needy creatures. On our way home we passed ancient mendigas in front of the Farmacía Guillermety. Mamá said that it was sad that old women had to beg; she hadn’t noticed that so much in Ponce.
Ernesto and I went to see the regatas in the harbor. Everyone who was anyone in San Juan was there. The dresses, Valentina! You would have swooned. (My dress was adequate, but if the day ever comes that the shop does very well, I will order a dress from Paris! As I know you would!) I have to say that the procession of ships decorated with flags and colorful streamers as they glided down the water did much to relieve my homesickness for Ponce. Do you miss it as much as I do?