“I’ve never seen a single loaf fall in all my years,” Papá said.
“If the milkman comes soon, you’ll have café con leche with your bread,” Valentina said.
“There is nothing better for desayuno than pan con mantequilla y café con leche,” Papá said. “Don’t you think so, Valentina?”
Valentina smiled at her father and he wondered why he didn’t stop to appreciate her sweetness more often, maybe he should see if he could bring home some chocolates from the pharmacy, claro, his wife would complain about the expense—his wife!
“Hija, your mother wished me to say—” Teodoro looked around for a chair, but his daughter was sitting on the only chair. There was the bed—no, not the bed!
“There are certain—ah, certain—things—a señorita—her future husband expects—” His gaze caught sight of a lace pillow. Where had he seen that before? Until last evening, he hadn’t been in his daughter’s room in years. Lace. Pillow. Bed. A pillow tied with a blue ribbon. Ay, Brigitte from his French postcards. A smile came to his lips. Sweet Brigitte with a ribbon in her hair—a white bedspread—little Mademoiselle Brigitte grasped the pillow between her legs in such a way that a man wanted to . . . A father had no place in a daughter’s bedroom!
“I never realized how tall coconut palms grow.” Valentina brought an orchid to her lips.
“What?” He took a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his forehead.
“Coconut palms,” Valentina said. “They’re tall.”
“Sí, sí, coconut palms are tall.” He wiped his palms. “They grow up to a hundred feet high. Did you know that coconuts kill half a dozen people each year? They fall and knock people on the head. Never stand under a coconut tree, Valentina.”
Papá mused for a moment about a boy he’d known whose head had been bashed in by a coconut. He removed his eyeglasses and polished the lenses. His eyeglasses slipped from his fingers. He got on his knees, ah, there they were; he brought the eyeglasses up to his face. His gaze fell on the white bedspread. Damn his wife!
Then it was her sister’s turn.
“Look, Elena, the milkman.”
Elena joined her sister at the window.
They watched the servant bring out empty milk jugs. The milkman tied his cow to a post and then urged its calves to suckle its teats; once the milk began to flow, the milkman pushed the calves away and proceeded to fill the jugs. The bleating of the hungry calves summoned more customers.
“Poor little babies,” Valentina said. “They’re starving.”
Elena pointed to the flower in her sister’s hand. “The Brassavola nodosa. The Lady of the Night orchid.”
Valentina kissed the petals; she breathed stars and moonlight.
“Mamá sent me to lecture you because you vanished into the night with a strange man.”
“He was a stranger,” Valentina said. “Not strange.”
“You shouldn’t have taken such a risk.” Elena sat down on the bed. “All those high-class snooty bochincheras en la boda. Esa mujeres son las más chismosas. This very moment, the whole town of Ponce could be tearing the family apart while the bread man makes his deliveries.”
“Elena, I won’t be going to Spain with Rudolfo.” Valentina tucked the orchid inside a box of hair ribbons.
“Of course not, tontita,” Elena said. “Eso era una locura.”
Valentina sat on the bed beside her sister. “I don’t think it was a crazy idea.”
“No?”
“Quizás un poquito.” Valentina raised two fingers an inch apart.
The sisters laughed.
“What about the stranger?”
“No money.” Valentina picked up the white pillow; her fingers toyed with the blue ribbon.
“Life is terrible without money,” Elena said. “Trust me, you don’t want the problems that come when you don’t have enough money.”
“I know, all the beggars—”
“Ernesto and I can hardly pay our bills and he has a government job,” Elena said.
“I will just have to be a solterona like Tía Evangelina. It won’t be so bad. I’ll take care of our parents, and when they die, I’ll come live with you and Ernesto and your children.”
“Tontita.” Elena poked her sister in the ribs; Valentina slapped at her hand.
“Mamá said to convince you to marry Juan Moscoso.”
“It would be like marrying our grandfather.”
“Think of his advanced age as a good thing,” Elena said. “You’ll have nice things and won’t ever have to worry about how to pay your bills.”
“But he’s so ugly, Elena.”
“He is ugly. Mala suerte.”
“Bad luck for him or for me?”
“Both.”
Valentina tapped her sister on the head with the pillow.
Elena took the pillow away and sat on it.
“This farmer, did I say he was a farmer—don’t look at me like that, Elena—farmers are necessary for coffee and things like that—anyway, he told me that my eyes are like coffee beans.”
Elena giggled.
“Why are you laughing! My eyes could be coffee beans.”
“Small and hard?”
Valentina laughed. “Tontita, it was something pretty!”
“Can you see yourself as the wife of a coffee farmer? Cut off from civilization up on some mountain with nothing to do except milk cows?”
“I know, but the stranger’s arms were so strong—I felt—when he held me—it felt—” Valentina reached for her sister’s hand.
Elena pulled her hand away. “He embraced you?”
“No te preocupes, we were deep into the garden by the coconut palms. Nobody saw us.”
“Too bad a coconut didn’t fall on your head and knock some sense into you.”
“Don’t be like that, Elena.”
“If somebody saw you—”
“Nobody saw us—”
“It’s not only your reputation but also that of nuestros padres and Ernesto’s and mine and our children’s—”
“Perdóname, Elena, por favor.” Valentina reached for her sister’s hand again.
Elena let her hold it. “Start at the beginning, don’t leave anything out.”
CHAPTER SIX
STRAWBERRY GIRL
Tell us all about the wedding, the women of the family demanded of Vicente when he returned home. They sat together on the veranda as Vicente wove banana leaves into an aparejo saddle to sell in town. Vicente told las damas about the coconut flan that trembled under a thick layer of caramel sauce (he ate two servings), about the bubbles that had almost choked him when he gulped down his first glass of champagne (the bridegroom had cases of champagne brought specially from France), and about the tiny cups of black coffee, coffee so strong that the taste lingered on the tongue like tobacco.
“And the bride, your cousin? I’m sure she was beautiful.” Inés looked up from the lace she was weaving.
“She is Vicente’s second cousin.” Angelina was smoking one of her little cigars. “Maybe third.”