by Robin Lloyd
Townsend remembered the man, a small bookish Spaniard with an owl-like face, balding hair, and a pencil-thin moustache. He would occasionally visit their house in Havre de Grace. He always brought a gift, and he and his mother would go into a side room and speak only in Spanish. Townsend remembered how sad and silent she always was after he left.
“So tell me, what would you like to ask me? What would you like to know?”
Townsend didn’t know where to begin. “I know nothing about my mother’s past.”
“You know nothing about her family? Her own mother?”
Townsend shook his head. “To be honest, she never told my brother and me anything about her past. I think she grew up in Matanzas. That’s what I was told, but I don’t know where. I don’t know when or how she met my father.”
“I had no idea Esperanza was so secretive,” Don Pedro said as he puffed appreciably on his cigar. “It seems you share a similar trait.”
“Do I have relatives you know of? Do they live near here?”
The Spaniard looked upwards as he blew out a large cloud of smoke over his head, and then watched it slowly drift away. His face had a detached look. “Your mother grew up near here, just like those young ladies we saw on the Matanzas passenger ship. She was a princesa just like them. Wealthy and educated to be a cultured lady. Una de las joyas de Cuba, one of Cuba’s jewels, you might say.”
Just then, the postilion began reining in the horses, slowing their pace down. They were approaching the entrance to a large estate.
“Well, here we are,” said Don Pedro. “This is the entrance.”
The horses clattered through the open gates onto a long driveway lined on either side with tall royal palms. Townsend saw the ornate iron lettering of the plantation’s name.
“Mon Bijou,” the Spaniard said, one eyebrow slightly raised. “It’s a French name meaning, my jewel.”
Townsend whispered to himself, “Mon Bijou,” pronouncing it as Don Pedro had. “I don’t believe I have ever heard of it before.”
“I’m surprised,” said Don Pedro with a sharky grin. “You see, this estate, my friend, is where your mother grew up.”
Townsend stared at him.
“Maybe your mother never spoke of it?”
“It can’t be. This can’t be. She called it Mambi Joo? I thought maybe that was the name of a small town!”
“Here in Matanzas, Mon Bijou has a more African sound to it. I suppose it’s because the English overseers, engineers, and Africans couldn’t pronounce the French so the Mon Bijou plantation came to be called Mambi Joo. Growing up here, your mother learned to refer to it that way. She was born here, you know, so she grew up playing and conversing with the African slaves. She was a criolla, born and raised in Cuba.
Townsend remembered every detail of that ride up the avenue of tall, stately palm trees leading to the Mon Bijou estate. There must have been more than a hundred trees in a row, all lined up perfectly with short flowering trees planted alongside. In the distance off to one side he could see the tall chimney of the sugar house and long lines of slowly moving ox carts winding their way through a field of partially cut cane. The dust-laden air, the faint glow of the afternoon light, barefoot, naked black children waving and yelling as they ran alongside the clattering volanta, and then the elegant round circle outside the stone manor house—he concentrated on each and every detail. All he could think was that his mother had been here. She had grown up here. This was Mambi Joo.
He was in a daze as they stepped out of the volanta. Every muscle in his back hurt from all the jarring jolts. The one-story house was surrounded by a mixture of palm trees, poinciana, and red and yellow hibiscus. A soft breeze moved through the branches of a large tamarind tree that shaded the front of the house. There were a dozen black servants looking at them from the wide stone veranda surrounded by an iron railing: cooks, maids, three white-coated butlers, all there to greet them. Don Pedro yelled in Spanish for them to tell their mistress, la ama, that her guests had arrived.
“There is something else I need to tell you, Captain, something about Doña Cecilia de Vargas you should know before you see her.”
“And what might that be?” Townsend asked.
“She also knew your mother.”
Townsend gasped.
“Is she a relative?”
“I will leave that for her to explain. I think it’s fair to say you will find out soon enough.”
Townsend spotted the older woman he remembered from the Paseo striding out onto the veranda. Doña Cecilia was dressed more simply than when he had seen her last. She stood in front of the heavy wooden doors and solid wooden shutters like a medieval queen at the castle door, a long white ruffled cotton dress with a black lace mantilla draped over her shoulders. She waved at Don Pedro and beckoned him to come up onto the veranda even as she motioned for the servants to get back into the house and get to work.
Townsend watched as she kissed Don Pedro on both cheeks. Her dark hair with streaks of gray had a certain elegance with the black lace falling down her shoulders. He was surprised at the tenderness she showed. Her eyes lingered on Don Pedro for a moment, and he thought he saw him nod ever so slightly to her. She told Don Pedro which bedroom was being prepared for him, and he left to get washed up. She then turned to Townsend slowly with an odd expression that turned to a faint melancholy smile.
“I am so pleased you are here at Mon Bijou. Come, let me show you around. We have fifteen servants in the house—cooks, maids, laundresses, seamstresses, and butlers—so you will not lack for anything. But it is quite a lot to manage, as you can imagine.”
She walked with him through the front door into a large parlor with open jalousie windows that were protected by iron bars. With the three-foot-thick walls and the high ceilings, the house was much cooler than it was outside. The rooms off the parlor were filled with the hustle and bustle of black servants who scurried around on their bare feet, making hardly a sound.
He kept looking around as if he would find some clue that would answer his many questions. The house had the feel of another era. The floors were a mix of old chipped terracotta tile and faded white marble. Most of the furniture was dark mahogany, large bureaus and cabinets with scrolled feet and planters’ chairs and sofas with cane seats. Townsend couldn’t stop thinking of his mother. He tried to imagine her here. This was her childhood home. This is what she had left behind.
Doña Cecilia looked him over with a lingering stare. There was something about her features that captivated Townsend. The thin face, the tightly compressed lips, the dark eyes. She reminded him of his mother. Townsend almost blurted out a question, but he restrained himself out of fear that he might embarrass himself. She lapsed into French, which he didn’t speak. “La maison est à vous,” and then realizing he didn’t understand, she repeated it in English and then in Spanish. “The house is yours. Esta es su casa.” She smiled.
“You do speak Spanish, don’t you?” she asked apologetically. “I thought Don Pedro told me you did.”
“Sí, hablo un poco,” he said. “Yes, a little.”
“¡Que bien! ¡Me alegro!. I am glad your mother didn’t totally forget her Cuban heritage,” she said with a touch of bitterness.
Townsend was struck by the edge in her voice. He heard resentment. But there was also a suggestion of intimacy. He was about to ask about his mother when she led him into a sitting room with stuccoed white walls. In a corner, she showed him a portrait of a young girl, dressed like a princess, in white ruffles, lace, and satin, her shiny dark brown hair in tresses decorated with ribbons. The girl was looking upwards, smiling hopefully. Her eyes had a quiet melancholy to them. A shiver of excitement passed through Townsend. He was looking at a painting of his mother.
“My Esperanza, she was such a beauty,” Doña Cecilia sighed. “Una belleza. This portrait was done when she was just thirteen yea
rs old.”
Townsend froze, and looked at her with shock and amazement.
“Are you . . . ?”
She laughed and gently touched his shoulder with her hand.
“I thought you would have guessed by now,” she said in a soft, disarming voice. “I know it must seem strange. It’s strange for me as well . . . but yes, I am your grandmother. You must call me Tata Cecilia. That sounds better than Abuela. Come, let me show you more of the house. May I call you Everett?”
Townsend nodded. This was the woman he had heard his mother curse time and again. She was real. She was alive. He wondered if this was a dream. His grandmother seemed so gracious and welcoming, so different than what he had expected. His mother’s version certainly did not match the person he now followed. She showed him the room where the family would play cards and his mother would entertain them with the piano.
“Esperanza was so talented with her music,” she said. “She was very proud when she learned to play the score for Bellini’s ‘Norma.’ ¿Sigue con el piano? Does she . . .” She corrected herself. “Did she continue with the piano?”
Townsend nodded. “Yes, she did. She often played in the evenings after supper.”
He looked over at his grandmother, who hadn’t taken her eyes off him. He knew that she was taking measure of him, and he couldn’t help but feel ill at ease. He didn’t tell her that playing the piano had often made his mother teary-eyed. Nor did he say that when she had one of her outbursts, she would angrily pound the keys, her eyes flashing with malice. His grandmother took him to his mother’s old room, which still had a few of her old dolls, all made out of coarse linen with smudgy painted faces. There was an old mahogany bed with a green damask cover, and a blue and white porcelain pitcher with his mother’s name inscribed on it, perched on top of a bureau. Townsend walked around the room slowly as he thought of his mother, imagining her in this room as a young girl and then a young woman. Time seemed to have stood still here. A chipped gilded mirror on the wall revealed a reflection of her dolls propped up in a cane lounge chair. His grandmother rearranged them.
“As you can see, I have the servants clean and dust here every day.”
Townsend picked up some carved miniature figurines of horses that were on a marble table next to a candlestick.
“Your mother loved her horses. As a young girl, Esperanza would ride all over the plantation. Your mother had everything she could have ever wanted in this house,” she said softly. “Three maids to attend to her every need. She went to school here. I had tutors come to the plantation. She was a happy girl.” She sighed audibly.
They walked to an open courtyard in the center of the house that was filled with flowering bougainvillea surrounding an old stone fountain with a large tiled basin. The sun had mostly gone down so they stood in the gray light of dusk listening to the water splash. Townsend could feel a quiet tension hover over them. A cloud of unspoken questions. This was all too strange to be real. When she stared at him, he kept looking away. He kept hearing his mother’s voice in the background. He watched her gaze out at the increasingly shadowy courtyard lost in her memories. Townsend could feel her loneliness, and her sense of loss after all these years. He began to feel sorry for this woman his mother had hated. What had caused such a great rift between them?
“Please hold onto my hand, Everett. I sometimes trip when it’s getting dark like this.”
Townsend took her hand and helped her down a couple of steps.
“As a girl, your mother would come here and spend many hours reading her books. This was her favorite place. She was always dreaming about adventure and travel. I used to tell her the world is not as glorious as she might imagine.”
She paused for a moment and then continued.
“Ay, de mí,” she sighed. “Esperanza and I had our differences, but I never imagined she wouldn’t return. She was so proud and so full of her ideals . . . but enough of that.” She took a deep breath and wiped the sadness off her face with a broad smile. Some of the slaves who had stood motionless around the perimeter of the patio now lit the oil lamps, fixed in pairs on each of the columns of the arcade surrounding the open courtyard.
Doña Cecilia caught the eye of one of the older black women with a red turban around her head.
“Mercedes, bring me the cocuyo lantern.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“She speaks English,” Townsend said.
“Ah yes, there are English Negroes in these parts. Mercedes was sold to me years ago. She’s from Jamaica, I believe. I don’t remember what her original English name was. She has no way back to her home, of course, so it’s best that she forget it.”
She smiled at him as she reached out and squeezed his hand.
“Now Everett, there’s so much for us to talk about. I want to hear about you and your life in Havana. Tell me about the excitement of running through the Union blockade.”
Just then Don Pedro walked into the courtyard followed by one of the male slaves, who carried three steaming, frothy cups.
“I’m delighted to see you both are acquainted and are getting along so well. I told you, Captain, that you would soon have all your questions answered. Now it’s time you embraced your Cuban heritage,” Don Pedro said, shaking his cigar in a slightly regal way.
“Un brindis. Let us toast the strength of family ties. This drink is called a guarapo. It’s my personal version, a mixture of rum, brandy, fresh hot sugarcane juice and an egg. Drink up and welcome to Mon Bijou.”
Don Pedro chatted with Doña Cecilia about the harvest, which was going to be better than expected, and then announced he would be leaving early the next morning and would be gone for the next several days. He had to visit some of his business associates in the area to try to keep them investing in his blockade-running ventures. He told Townsend to take the time with his grandmother. He would be back to take him to the coast before they returned to Havana.
“I’m going to bring you to an important event that will attract scores of the most wealthy planters. It’s something peculiar to Cuba, una cosa cubana.”
Townsend hardly paid any attention as the Spaniard walked away. His grandmother was holding an eerie lantern filled with swirling fireflies that the slave had brought her. Doña Cecilia explained to Townsend that in Cuba these fireflies are called cocuyos. Townsend looked more closely. The insects were about the size of cockroaches, and their black eyes suddenly lit up when they spread their wings.
“It’s a Cuban custom. The cocuyos light up as bright as candles,” she said with a beaming smile. “These creatures look like they want to fly away, but they are content. They get used to being inside the lantern and soon forget about trying to escape.”
Townsend thought the scene was oddly dream-like with the darkness of the maid’s skin contrasting with his grandmother’s pale white face, the silvery glow of the lantern gleaming with a ghostly light. He noticed that the maid was looking at him closely, but when he returned the stare she averted her eyes.
“That will be all, Mercedes,” Doña Cecilia said.
“Sí, l’ama. Yes, Mistress.”
22
Townsend looked with amazement at the breakfast table in the dining room that had been prepared for just the two of them. The small army of white-gloved servants who surrounded the table stood ready with large platters filled with fried plantain omelettes, fried fish in a coconut sauce, stewed tomatoes and lightly browned sugary pastries, pastelitos de queso y guayaba. His grandmother said these were his mother’s favorite. A black servant poured strong Cuban coffee into his cup and topped it off with frothy, heated milk. He then asked if el amo would take sugar. Townsend shook his head. All this attention made him uncomfortable, and he greatly disliked being called el amo.
He sipped the café con leche as his grandmother spoke about the plantation and her Esperanza.
“She loved t
he scent of orange blossoms and jasmine, the call of the mourning doves. During the season, she would go out and pick mangoes, her favorite fruit. She loved this land. She was truly a daughter of Cuba.”
The other servants stood by silently with their arms folded, ready to respond to any request. Townsend could sense his grandmother’s probing stare, and he avoided meeting her gaze—this “bruja” his mother hated so.
“You remind me so much of your mother. Something in your expression. I believe it’s the mouth, the strong chin or maybe it’s the eyes? I look at you and I see Esperanza.”
She laughed and reached out to touch his hand, and he wasn’t sure why, but he impulsively jerked it back.
“Everett, I won’t bite you, you know,” she said. “I can tell you are uncertain about me. I want to ease any concerns you might have.”
“No, it’s nothing,” Townsend replied, flustered and embarrassed. “I have no concerns. I was just wiping my chin.”
“I know your mother was terribly angry, and I imagine she may have said terrible things to you two boys about me. I was afraid of this. I was afraid you might think poorly of me. That’s why I didn’t say anything to you at the Paseo. I had considered it, but then my friend the Condesa joined me in the carriage unexpectedly. It was not the right moment, and Don Pedro said I should wait a little longer. Give you more time to adjust to Cuba.”
Townsend nodded even as he fidgeted in his chair. He could sense that she was carefully studying him.
“Enough of that,” she said abruptly as she finished her coffee. “We have so much to do. I want to give you a tour of the plantation.”
