“Let’s try Mr. White’s office. We should have gone there first,” Valentina said, stopping at the orchid bush she’d passed earlier. She plucked the prettiest and largest of the pink flowers and tucked it in her hair. She took a second one and gave it to Paco, who tucked it behind his ear.
Several clerks sat at desks, leather-bound ledgers opened in front of them. They looked up in surprise when Valentina entered with Paco.
“I must speak with Meester White,” Valentina said.
“Purdy sen-you-ritas,” Paco said.
A clerk giggled.
“Hush, Paco.” She would have left the boy outside but she hadn’t wanted to walk into the manager’s office alone.
Valentina wanted to reach over a desk and take the clerk by the collar of his shirt.
“Is Meester White here? Meester White!”
The clerk looked at Valentina as if she were an accounting problem he wasn’t quite sure how to figure out.
“I think she’s asking for Mr. White,” the second clerk said.
“You know Mr. White isn’t available to these people,” the first clerk said.
“No Mr. White.” The second clerk opened the door for them.
“Purdy sen-you-ritas,” Paco said.
They hurried past the plantation manager’s hacienda, past the plantation store, past the doctor’s office, empty except when he came once a month, past the tidy wood houses of the lunas, and all the way down the long dirt road to the decrepit row of shanties. She found Sonia with Dolores and the girls.
“I didn’t think it would do any good,” Dolores said. “You’re not the wife of a coffee farmer anymore.”
Valentina glanced away from the smug look on her friend’s face. Better not to say anything, the woman had a generous nature and she would probably need more rice if Vicente didn’t return soon.
“Paco, repeat what you said to the Missus White,” Valentina said.
“Purdy sen-you-ritas.” Paco grinned.
“Sen-you-ritas,” Valentina said. “What do you think, Dolores? It sounds like señoritas to me.”
Dolores smacked Paco on the head. “Stupid boy. Is that all you know?”
Paco raised his hands to protect himself.
“Let him be! Dolores, you should have seen the looks on those women’s faces!” Valentina laughed and laughed, and not even the concern on the faces of her friends could stop her.
“Tranquila, Valentina.” Sonia hugged her. “Laughing too hard is asking for el mal de ojo.”
Valentina bowed her head. “Échame la bendición, Sonia. Maybe it will keep bad luck away.”
Sonia touched Valentina’s forehead, blessing her.
Again the next day, women came out of their hovels as Valentina was leaving. Where was she going? Why was she looking so lovely? Meester White? Again? They heard it hadn’t done any good the last time. They wished her luck even as they turned to one another to say that it wouldn’t do any good this time, either, Americans didn’t care a coffee bean about the Puerto Ricans. Poor, desperate woman, they were glad not to be in her shoes, even if she was muy guapa and had shoes, which some of them didn’t. One or two of them weren’t ashamed to admit that they had told their husbands to take the whip if it meant food in their children’s mouths.
Valentina hurried, eager to get away from her noisy compañeras and plead her case. She pinched her cheeks and chewed on a petal from yesterday’s orchid to color her lips. She knew that, despite her travails, she had rarely looked better. A woman like the plantation manager’s wife might look only at the quality of her clothing or sneer at her for being gloveless, but a man, a man who liked women, might be swayed by her face and other features, even if she didn’t speak English.
Valentina tried the plantation manager’s office but the door was locked, the lights off. She went next door to the plantation store.
Valentina saw the clerk she’d spoken to at the plantation manager’s office the day before.
“Meester White, por favor.”
The clerk took her arm. “If you’ll come with me, I’m sure I can be of service.”
His politeness reassured her, although she couldn’t understand Americans. Either they were rude, like the plantation manager’s wife and servant, or they were polite, like this clerk who showed all his teeth when he smiled.
One of the other clerks called out from across the room, “Maybe you shouldn’t, Kurt.”
“I plan to be very nice to the pretty sen-you-rita.” Kurt guided her to the back of the store.
Valentina was surprised when they entered a large storeroom crammed with barrels and shelves of foodstuffs. She stared at the cans stacked in pyramids that reached up to the ceiling, at the rice sacks, and the huge barrels of she-knew-not-what that crowded the room.
Kurt pulled her over to the rice sacks next to a pyramid of sardine cans and pinned her against a sack. He squeezed her breast hard; she cried out in pain. He tugged at her long skirt. Valentina struggled, and then held herself very still. Cool air on her thigh.
“That’s it, sweetheart, nice and quiet.” He reached between her legs.
When his hands went to his pants, Valentina shoved him with all of her might into the pyramid of cans. She heard the crash but she didn’t stop. She ran. She didn’t look back; no one ever died from being knocked over the head with a can, but if he died she wouldn’t be sorry. Outside the storeroom, she stopped to straighten her dress and to tell herself not to cry. She walked past the astonished clerks with as much haughtiness as if she were Missus White.
She lay on a bed of sardine cans, her skirt pulled up over her face. His fingers dug into her buttocks. She cared only that he not stop. There were fish, large and small, rainbow-colored, that she’d seen in the ocean, a pink-and-yellow one she’d admired in the water near Oahu, and then the dolphin that had entertained them all. Finally, came the shark. Her moan came out as a strangled cry. Sonia murmured in her sleep. Her neighbors on the other side of the wattle wall called out, Tranquila, Valentina, tranquila, try not to cry, try to sleep, everything is always better in the sunshine.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
INSIDE MEN
Vicente was sentenced to two months of hard labor and a fine of one dollar for insubordination to be deducted from his future earnings, but he didn’t know it, because he didn’t speak English. He thought he was entitled to a fair hearing and to know the charges against him, so he demanded a Spanish interpreter but, of course, he didn’t get one. Vicente wanted to report that the luna and his henchmen were quick with the whip, but these men, haoles, americanos blancos, in starched collars and dark coats, considered themselves superior to the foreigners, those Others, those not like them, never like them. Others spoke Japanese or Spanish or any language not English. Others were natives from islands that were all sun and play and populated with lazy men who were like children in need of a firm hand because they were brown or black or poor. Others must be taught how to work and to live and to submit to the higher knowledge of those not foreign, of those not Other. Vicente thought of these men as Inside Men: inside their houses, inside their stores, inside their family circles, inside their missionary heritage, inside their fire-and-brimstone churches, inside their offices where they decided how to make money and how to keep it. Vicente knew that these Inside Men meant to share as little as possible with men like him, the Others who earned their money for them.