In the Name of Salome (38 page)

T
IVISITA AVOIDED MY EYES
for days after disclosing my secret to Pancho. I wondered why she had not told me directly, but I suppose she was afraid to confront her beloved teacher. She was devoted to me, for I had given her a set of wings in the form of the alphabet. Sometimes as she sat on my bed and we went over her lessons, I had a vision of my own daughter, at her age, sitting beside me, telling me all her little secrets. The fantasy was
not so far-fetched. At sixteen, Tivisita was only five years older than my Fran.

Many days, we would talk like mother and daughter about one subject or another. One day we got into a discussion about our country. In a few months, we would be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of our independence.

“Perhaps we're not ready to be a patria, after all,” I admitted. Lying in bed those long hours with too much time to think, I'd been forced to realize that the patria we had hoped for had yet to be born. For fifty years we had struggled to bring it to life, only to deliver stillbirths, one after another.

“Don't say that, maestra,” Tivisita said, trying to cheer me up. She reminded me of how I used to address my dear friend Hostos, maestro. From Chile, he had written me: he was setting up schools under the auspice of a new, progressive government; the family was settled; but he missed his dear friends.

“Think of it, Tivisita, in these fifty years, we've had over thirty different governments. Again and again our dreams destroyed.”

Tivisita's eyes filled with sadness at our tragic history. She squared her pretty shoulders and announced that from this day forward, she was going to dedicate herself to fighting for her patria.

I told myself not to laugh—it would just bring on a fit of coughing. I did not want to discourage this noble feeling. But the girl looked so much like Mon's old porcelain doll from St. Thomas, sitting there in her high-collar shirtwaist with its puffy leg-of-mutton sleeves, that it was difficult to take her seriously as a revolutionary.

“What can we do?” Tivisita wanted to know as if suddenly realizing that she had no idea what kind of a patria to strive for.

We? I thought. No, my time was up. All I had left to give were the children I was sending into the future. “You will have to start over.” I told Tivisita. “In the name of Martí and Hostos and Bolívar and all those who have given everything.”

“Are you afraid, maestra?” Tivisita asked. She had seen my
hand stroking my belly, for I was speaking to my daughter as much as to Tivisita. “I mean, many women fear their time,” she added as if to reassure me that even healthy women were fearful of giving birth.

“No, I'm not afraid of giving birth,” I said. I did not add that I
was
afraid of dying, of not living to see my children grown and happy.

P
ANCHO DECIDED WE MUST
close the instituto before the month was out. The day we chose to announce it to the girls, he insisted on standing by with a bottle of Spiritus Vitae and a jar of smelling salts in case any of my girls swooned. I thought he was being excessive—Pancho and his enthusiasms!—but this time he was right. The Pou girl went into hysterics, and several girls had to be fanned back from dizzy spells because, they insisted, the best part of their lives was over.

“Señoritas, have I not taught you to reason better than that?” I scolded, blinking back my own tears.

“Couldn't Señorita Ramona direct it?” Some girls looked hopefully toward Ramona.

“My sister is needed at home,” I explained. It was true. Tía Ana was now bedridden, and Mamá's heart was in a constant flutter, though she claimed her heartsickness had nothing to do with her health but with her worries about mine. “There's also funding. El Ayuntamiento is not paying us what it should for each student. We will have to give up the lease on this house the first of the year.” I was piling up the many reasons, so as not to tell them the real reason: I had to conserve all my strength to give birth to my daughter. And without my protection, the school would founder. Archbishop Meriño had recently issued another pastoral urging an end to schools without God, especially those that educated girls.

Two of my first graduates who were now back as teachers
stepped forward. “Eva and I are going to petition the Ayuntamiento for more funds,” Luisa announced. “We will see about reopening the school in a few months. We won't give up our instituto. Long live our maestra!”

The girls took up the cry, “¡Viva Salomé!”

I looked at their bright, young faces and felt a surge of hope. These, too, were my children I was sending into the future to start over.

A
FTER CLOSING DOWN THE
school, Pancho and I made an even more difficult decision: to leave the country.

Our political troubles had started up again when Pancho and his brother Federico used their new paper,
Artes y Ciencias
, to evaluate la patria's progress on its fiftieth year. Pancho's patients disappeared, like a river drying up. One night, a group of Lilís's thugs surrounded the house, shouting insults. The next morning we found the monkey hanging by its rope in the backyard. The boys were in tears. I, too, felt grief-stricken seeing that childlike shape swinging from the guava tree.

“Don't worry, don't worry,” Pancho consoled us, tearful himself. “We'll get ourselves another one, I promise.”

I was furious at Pancho for endangering all our lives. But I admit, I was also proud of his stubborn courage. How could I fault him, when most of our noble men were dead or had fled the country, and those who remained were silent.

“You listen to me,” I said, stroking my belly. Sensing I might not have much time with my daughter, I'd begun to raise her before she was even born. “Wherever we end up, remember,
this
is your patria!”

We had decided to settle in El Cabo in next-door Haiti. It was fast becoming the gathering place of all our rebels. The Lauranzóns were already there, and according to the letters Don Rodolfo sent Tivisita, the city was a thriving port, with many opportunities
for business, and a cosmopolitan atmosphere that was very French. (This was indeed a persuasive feature for Pancho, whose accent had finally worn off but not his avowed preference for all things French.) In addition there was a large hospital on the outskirts, Hospice Justinien, where a Paris-educated physician could easily find work.

But there was only one way I could bear to leave my country: El Cabo would only be a temporary stop. We would be back as soon as we were rid of our tyrant.

Pancho would go ahead with Max, who was giving me the most trouble these days. Although he was eight years old, Max was still the baby, restless and demanding—especially now that my illness made me less accessible to him. The poor child would stand outside my door, calling for me, deaf to Tivisita's explanations that he had to let his Mamá rest so she could get better.

The rest of us—the two boys, Regina, Tivisita, and I—would go with Pancho as far as Puerto Plata on the north coast to our old friends Dubeau and Zenona. Another friend, Zafra, a doctor who now lived in Puerto Plata, would attend to me. (“Neither of you ever listened to me anyhow,” Alfonseca commented, when we explained our plans.) Two months before my confinement, Ramona would come to be with me. Meanwhile, Pancho would be in El Cabo, only a day away by steamboat should I need him. This was a relief for me, for the thought of another separation from Pancho was frightening.

“Puerto Plata will be good for us,” I told my daughter, stroking my belly where I had last felt an elbow pushing out. Maybe the air that had restored me once before would work its miracle again. “Faith!” I kept telling both of us.

“Who are you talking to, Mamá?” Pibín asked me, stepping into the room. Midday, when my fever usually went down, I would let the children come in and visit me.

“Your sister.”

“Did you talk to me, too, before I was born?”

“Yes, of course, I did.” I was stretching the truth a little, but with children, we have to do this so that they know our love always includes them.

“What did you say?”

I thought a moment, and then I decided to surprise him. “I will write it down for you to keep.” That night as I lay in bed unable to sleep, I began composing a poem in my head, “Mi Pedro.” It was, in fact, a poem about what I had discussed with Tivisita: my Pibín as my gift to the future of my country. But I could not seem to finish it. Even so, I recited the first four verses I had written a few days later to him.

“You spoke to me in rhymes! Oh, Mamá!” He rushed toward me for an embrace, but I held my hand up to stop him. Pancho had written to Dieulafoy in France, who had responded that he was almost sure that consumption could not be spread by simple contact. Even so, I had grown cautious with my little grackles. I wanted to take no chances.

“Don't get near me, dear one,” I said firmly.

“Why Mamá? The baby?”

I could not have him thinking that his sister was the cause of any distance between us. So I told him the truth, “It's my consumption. And I do not want to spread it.”

“Is that why you shut down the instituto?” he wanted to know.

I was ashamed to confess that this thought had not been uppermost in my mind at all. It took my Pibín with his fine moral sensibilities to remind me that others might be at risk, too.

Busca la luz
, I had advised him in my poem.
Follow the light
. But I had not been following my own advice, sunk as I was in gloomy thoughts of departure. No wonder I had been unable to finish the poem.

This was not the first time I had been wiser on paper than in person.

T
HAT BOAT RIDE TO
Puerto Plata turned out to be like the progress of a queen through her grieving kingdom.

News had spread that Salomé was ill and on her way north for a rest cure. At each port, a delegation of young poets asked for permission to come aboard. I would receive them from my deck chair, with my hat on and a blanket over my legs and lap. Tivisita had placed it there—perhaps out of decorum to hide my growing belly or to keep me from the drafts she feared would stir up my coughing. The poets came forward, and one by one recited their poems to me.

I especially recall a young man, who came aboard at San Pedro de Macorís. He was dark-skinned, with those dark liquid eyes of someone who seems about to cry. I couldn't help but remember Papá's old dictum:
Tears are the ink of the poet
. His name was Gastón Deligne, and when he began to recite, a hush settled on the deck of that steamboat. “Your words have filled the sails of our souls. . . .” His young voice reminded me of Pancho's, back in those days when he used to recite my poems as if he had written them.

When Gastón was done, I was too overwhelmed to thank him. He stepped forward and showed me the packet in his hands. At first, I thought he was offering me a manuscript of his poems to read. I would gladly have read them as, judging from what he had recited, he was no doubt a gifted poet. But it turned out, they were my own poems he had collected, including the slim book Friends of the Country had published, and other, more recent occasional poems, clipped from the pages of newspapers. “I have them all,” he boasted like a boy showing off his collection of shiny pebbles.

Before he left, he reached for my hand and pressed it, not wanting to let go. Others had kept their distance, whether out of respect for la poetisa or fear of contagion, I could not tell. Later, I learned that Gastón's younger brother, Rafael, also a poet, was dying of leprosy. Perhaps I should have been the one to withdraw my hand. But his eyes held me.

“We will build the patria you wanted, poetisa. I promise.”

I sighed and said nothing. I had heard this before.

“We will do it in your name.” He was a bit too intense. Tivisita looked worriedly toward Pancho, who came forward. “There, there, young Dante,” he said in his effusive way. “Salomé has had enough excitement for one day.” But as we pulled away from the dock, I could hear his shout, “In your name, Salomé, in your name!” I felt as if I were dying, leaving behind the shore of the living, no longer prey to human promises or poverty of spirit.

T
HE SEA VOYAGE ITSELF
was a time lifted from time, blessed and sunny, no spies snooping around the house, no school to worry about, no students to examine, only the briny sea air to breathe and the rocking of the sea to lull me, so that I felt like the child inside me, adrift in its waters. On my lap lay the book I was reading,
Numa Pompilius
by Florian, an old favorite. I had packed a small trunk of books to help me fill the idle hours in Puerto Plata before my child was born, among them, books from my father's library that we had enjoyed together. Again, I read of Numa's friend, the wandering Camila with the fleet feet who could run through a field of grain and not bend a single stalk, walk across the ocean and not wet her feet.

Camila! I'd almost forgotten that as a girl I had promised myself that if I ever had a daughter, I would name her after this brave young woman. Camila it would be. So as not to disappoint my Pibín, I would also give her my own name. Suddenly, it seemed a good thing that our names always be together.

“Salomé Camila,” I told her when I lay down in my cabin to rest that evening.

I felt such happiness saying it.

T
HE PARTING WITH PANCHO
in Puerto Plata was more difficult than I thought it would be. Suppose
this
time he would not come back for four years! I clung to him with my eyes since I could no longer embrace anyone.

Before we left the capital, Pancho received a second letter from Dieulafoy in France. New studies indicated that the tubercle baccilli might indeed be spread by contact. It was best to take precautions, especially with children.

Of course, I worried about my unborn Camila. Dieulafoy had reassured Pancho that the baccilli could not be spread in utero. But once the child was born, I would have to avoid all contact. “Keep a lookout for a wet nurse,” Pancho advised Tivisita, who blushed later when I explained the meaning of the term to her.