“Pobrecitos definitely won’t get back home, not with how bad the roads still are after the hurricane,” somebody said.
“But they’re back in Puerto Rico.” Vicente sat back down next to Valentina.
“The planters won’t do that again,” Minvielle said. “Cost too much.”
Minvielle patted Juanito Ramírez’s shoulder. “Take my advice. Go to Hawaii, save your money, and then go home to your mother.”
The Puerto Ricans had plenty to say when Minvielle left the compartment.
“From Cuba, you could swim to Puerto Rico,” Gómez said.
“And be eaten by sharks,” somebody said.
“The Americans are like the Spanish,” Vicente said. “We shouldn’t forget that it’s all about money for them.”
The Puerto Ricans sat on the hard wood benches and stared out the windows; they listened to the wheels of the train that churned, you’ll never go back you’ll never go back. Welcome to San Antonio flashed before Vicente’s eyes, but he was back on the mountain, one hand shading his face as he looked up at his coffee trees.
•
Juanito Ramírez jumped off the train as it was traveling thirty miles an hour through El Paso, Texas. The train halted in its tracks with a blast of the horn and a screech of the brakes that jostled the Puerto Ricans on their benches. The guards chased him. Vicente imagined Juanito Ramírez dodging the pedestrians as they hurried on their errands in the afternoon drizzle. He heard the birds in the sky as they cawed, Run, Juanito, run. He saw Juanito run to the door of the grandest house he ever saw, grander than any on the island that now belonged to the rich American sugar planters, lovelier than the Spanish-style houses owned by the coffee-growing hacendados of Utuado. He imagined Juanito free.
The Puerto Ricans were disappointed when Juanito Ramírez was dragged back onto a different part of the train. He didn’t stand a chance against men with guns in a strange country where he didn’t even know the language. Pobre muchacho didn’t even have shoes.
The Puerto Ricans demanded that Minvielle explain why Juanito Ramírez, a boy who hadn’t committed a crime, had been so shamefully mistreated.
Minvielle held out his hands for order. “Damas y caballeros, it’s only for his own protection.”
“What’s going to happen to the boy?” Valentina stood so Minvielle could see her.
“It’s not up to me,” Minvielle said.
“Please send him back to his mother,” Valentina said.
“I don’t have any authority, señora,” Minvielle said. “I’m just doing my job as best I can.”
Poor Juanito Ramírez, the Puerto Ricans said, he was only a boy who wanted his mother. It didn’t seem like Minvielle was on the side of los puertorriqueños.
“Minvielle has to earn his daily bread just like us.” Vicente felt sorry for the plantation agent, who was a decent man.
“If only el pobre muchacho could be sent back to his mother,” Valentina said.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
YELLOW
The wheels of the train chanted Javiercito was dead . . . Evita was dead . . . Javiercito was dead . . . Evita was dead . . . Javiercito was dead . . . dead . . . dead . . . over and over, mile after mile, town after town. Valentina sought out a flash of yellow. A daffodil in a field of weeds or a yellow tablecloth hanging on a clothesline. Javiercito, she couldn’t think about. Not yet.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
THERE ONCE WAS A SEÑORITA
In San Francisco, the ship that would take them to Hawaii had yet to arrive, which meant another night on the train after four long days cross-country. By now the Puerto Ricans had learned that the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association would do anything to save money. The pain in their backs! The ache in their thighs! The next morning, they were herded off the train without breakfast. They shivered in the January chill and the Puerto Ricans, wrapped in the blankets the Native Americans had given them, sent los indios bendiciones. A dozen naked children huddled together on the platform, including a little girl with a kerchief. Valentina parted with one of Javier’s shirts, and it hung on her like a dress. The women wore mantillas intended for tropical nights. They walked past small wood houses that squatted close to the road. Painted ladies leaned out of windows and called out invitations. There was a girl selling roses. The cable cars clacked along the wharf. They dodged horses that pulled freight wagons and delivery carts, and tried to avoid the horse droppings that dirtied the streets and the hems of ladies’ dresses.
The bay’s murky water wasn’t the brilliant blue of the Caribbean Sea. It smells! Lourdes told her mother. It stank like fish. Valentina recognized only the Spanish, French, and American flags waving from dozens of ships.
Lourdes pointed to everything. Mami, look at the ships, look at the people, and look at the vendors selling so many strange things!
Javiercito would have been so excited about the ships.
The harbor was packed with San Franciscans whose favorite pastime was to greet the arrival of ships. Lourdes tugged at her mother’s skirts and pointed to a large group of men near the pier.
“They are chinos from China,” Valentina said. “China is in the Orient, remember we read about the Orient in the book Titi Elena sent?”
Fashionable people rode by in horse-drawn carriages or strolled down the pier. Well-dressed San Francisco gentlemen accompanied ladies in huge beribboned hats. Fathers bought their children nuts that peddlers roasted in steel drums and scooped into paper cones. A peddler sold vanilla ice cream from a cart. Lourdes was about to ask her mother to buy her a cone, ice cream already a dream in her mouth, helado that she had never tasted, but one look at her mother’s face and she swallowed her request.
There were tall ships and a fleet of small fishing boats with green triangular sails. The names of saints were painted on the hulls—Saint Thomas, Saint Joseph, Saint Geraldo, and a few female saints like Saint Magdalena and Saint Veronica.
A fisherman sang:
Di Provenza il mar, il suol
chi dal cor ti cancello?
Al nation fulgente sol
qual destino ti furò?
Valentina placed her hand on her chest, so overcome that for a moment she couldn’t speak. The music recognized her heartbreak, the loss of her children Evita and Javiercito, and of her parents and beloved sister and her home and everything that had ever meant something to her.
“Mami, are you thinking of Javiercito?” Lourdes took her mother’s hand.
Valentina nodded.
“The sailors are singing in Spanish,” Lourdes said.
“Italian,” Valentina said. “That kind of singing is called ópera.”
“Ópera,” Lourdes said.
“When I was your age, la ópera came to Ponce and my parents took your Titi Elena and me.” She remembered it as if it were something that had happened to someone else. She told Lourdes how she had worn a white dress with many flounces; Elena’s dress had two extra flounces because she was taller. Their mother’s gown was a delicate thing of the purest blue; a Spanish comb glittered in her dark hair.
Ma se alfin ti trovo ancor,
se in me speme non fallì,