“Patience.” Vicente put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“¿Paciencia? ¡Hombre, I live in a hovel! Don’t talk to me about patience!” Valentina shook off Vicente’s hand.
The Puerto Ricans moved away from her, the men shook their heads in disapproval. The women, ashamed for Vicente, whispered to each other, ¡Que vergüenza!
“Mr. Jackson, it’s very important—”
“Who do you belong?” Mr. Jackson asked.
“He’s my husband.” She pointed to Vicente.
“You mean, you are his wife.” Everyone laughed, even Vicente. The interpreter repeated his little joke to the plantation manager, who laughed along with the lunas and the henchmen.
“Coffee goes down the same way.” Valentina raised her voice. Men! They seemed to think the same in any language.
Vicente looked at Valentina. She knew he didn’t like it when she raised her voice. Too bad.
“Mr. Jackson, we need someone here all the time who speaks Spanish,” Valentina said in the manner of a mother to a child. “Even the doctor can’t understand us.”
“You learn English,” Mr. Jackson said.
“We want to learn English! We want to send our children to school to learn English! Where are the schools we were promised for our children?”
Mr. Jackson looked through some papers on the table. “There is a plantation school near Hilo.”
“Hilo! Isn’t that where we disembarked? Surely you would want your own children to have schooling,” Valentina said. “Or is it that you don’t care about our children?”
The Puerto Ricans said, They don’t care about our children . . .
Mr. Jackson’s voice was low when he spoke to Mr. White.
“Mr. Jackson, we came halfway around the world to make a better life.” Valentina pointed to the hovels. “Look where we live! And you don’t even care! And now you tell us that our children have to walk hours to school!”
“You work on the plantation?”
“I have.”
“Tú numero?”
“Why do you need my bango number?” Valentina crossed her arms.
“So I know who I’m talking to.” Mr. Jackson crossed his arms.
“Then ask me my name,” she said.
Vicente looked at his wife in admiration; the Puerto Ricans murmured, Que mujer, que mujer . . .
“¿Tú nombre?” Mr. Jackson tapped his fingers on the table.
“Valentina Sánchez.” She gave him a sweet smile.
“Valentina—”
“Señora,” Valentina said.
“Señora,” Mr. Jackson said.
“Maybe we should move to a plantation where there is a school,” Valentina said. “What’s to stop us?”
“On Mr. White’s plantation, you can leave, no need discharge papers,” Mr. Jackson said. “Not yet.”
“What plantation has a school and decent housing?”
“Don’t know.”
As far as Valentina was concerned, this Mr. Jackson knew very little.
Mr. Jackson conferred with Mr. White. “You leave, no bonus. You stay, get raise, get bonus.”
Some of the Puerto Ricans slapped each other on the back. They would get their raises and bonuses after all.
Valentina pointed to Mirta. “See this little girl? Her father was sent to another plantation. Her mother is dead.”
“Our business is sugarcane,” Mr. Jackson said, “not little girls.”
“The plantation lost him and the plantation should find him,” Valentina said.
“The plantation lost my brother,” Vicente said. “Can you find him? Raulito Villanueva.”
“Not our business,” Mr. Jackson said.
“Not your business! Then whose business is it?” Valentina placed her hands on her hips.
“Señora, these things happen when you import people,” Mr. Jackson said. “You can’t blame the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association.”
“Then who can we blame? How can we find them?” Valentina’s voice rose again. People might say she was yelling, but why was it yelling when she was speaking with passion?
Mr. Jackson and Mr. White got up and went inside the manager’s office. The police waved the Puerto Ricans away. Vicente put his hand on her elbow; she shook it off.
They walked down the dirt road to the hovel.
He tried to take her hand, she pulled away.
“Aren’t you glad that from now on, we’re going to be paid in cash money?”
“It’s so little money! You should have demanded that they find Sonia’s husband and Raulito. That they open up a school, right here on the plantation.” Valentina knew that she was being unreasonable, but she also knew that they had to leave the plantation. She wouldn’t be responsible for her actions if their girls didn’t go to school and she had to live in a hovel much longer.
“It seems that I can’t do anything to please you,” Vicente said.
“You want to please me, Vicente?” Valentina stopped in the middle of the road. “Let’s leave this plantation.”
“We will,” he said.
“Today,” she said.
“Today?” He took her hand and this time she didn’t brush him off.
“We will get the girls and all our things,” Valentina said, “and walk to someplace better where we can live like people and not animals.”
Vicente winced. “Raulito might be on his way here, and what about the bonus?”
“You’ll only see that bonus in your dreams.”
“We still owe at the plantation store from when I was in jail,” Vicente said. “That’ll be paid off in a month, and then we can save a few dollars.”
Dolores called out to them as she wheeled the red wheelbarrow piled with groceries up the road.
“Vicente, you’re a poet,” Dolores said. “You’ll soon be making up décimas.”
“A man must take charge,” Vicente said.
Dolores gave Valentina a look that said a strong, good-looking man in charge could yield a woman a lot of satisfaction, but Valentina was distracted by the piles of tins and cans and sacks of foodstuff stacked in the wheelbarrow.
“So much food! You already owe the plantation a lot of money!” Valentina wished that she could be more like Dolores and charge everything they needed, but the knowledge that it would keep them tied to the plantation restrained her.
“We have to eat!” Dolores picked up a can of sardines. “Have you tried this? With a little olive oil, it’s delicious.”
Valentina examined the tin and was disappointed when Dolores took it back.
“Go on ahead, I’ll wait for Eugenio,” Dolores said. “I’ll send my boy over later with the wheelbarrow.”
“And maybe a tin of sardines?” Valentina lent the wheelbarrow to the women, who always returned it with a little something extra, like a few carrots or a tin of powdered milk.
Vicente glanced back at Dolores several times. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Valentina, what about that thing?”
“What thing?”
“Tú sabes, that red thing.” He pointed to it.