House on the Lagoon

by Rosario Ferré

  Quintín had been partial to statehood since he was a child—because of his closeness to his grandfather Arrigoitia. Arístides had taught him to admire the United States as one of the few true democracies in the world, and he believed the island had the right to become part of it. “We were invaded by the United States in 1898; and twenty years later we were given American citizenship without anyone asking our opinion about it. The United States made a commitment to us at that time, and now they must honor it.”

  When Quintín made his First Communion, his grandfather put Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in a little gold frame and gave it to him as a present to keep in his room. When Quintín graduated from high school, Arístides’s gift was Toqueville’s Democracy in America, and a volume of Thomas Jefferson’s memoirs. Quintín read the books attentively, and his admiration for the United States grew ever more.

  As a young man, Quintín loved to talk about these things at dinnertime, when the whole family gathered together. He maintained that the closeness of our island to the United States in the last fifty years had Americanized us even more than we realized. We should be able to vote for the President and pay federal taxes like the other American citizens—neither of which had been permitted us—and go on fighting for freedom as brave American soldiers had done in World War II. To do these things, he insisted, we had to become a state in the Union.

  The minute Quintín brought up these subjects at the table, tempers would flare and Petra would have to intervene, chiding Quintín for being disrespectful to his father. “Are you a brave warrior like your father, or are you a ninny?” she would ask him, holding her head up high. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of independence and would like your country always to remain a ward of the United States.” And as long as Quintín kept quiet, Petra would forgive him.

  The servants never used the front door of the house on the lagoon. Only the Mendizabals’ relatives and friends came in through the Gothic granite archway Buenaventura had had brought from Valdeverdeja. Periodically, the servants went to visit their families in the slum, and they left the house by the back way, journeying to Morass Lagoon in rowboats. The food they ate was brought directly from Las Minas; it was never bought at the market. There was a constant flow of boats laden with fresh fish—blue sea bass, red snapper, yellowtail—as well as native fruits and tubers—mangoes, oranges, mameys, taro root, manioc, yuca, all still covered with fresh earth and smelling of the mountains—part of the servants’ daily diet.

  It was in one of those rowboats from Las Minas, laden with fruits and vegetables, that Carmelina Avilés arrived one day at the house, when she was a year old. She was brought there by Alwilda, Petra’s granddaughter, who was lame in her right leg. Alwilda’s mother, whose name had also been Carmelina Avilés, never came to work at the house on the lagoon. Carmelina was Petra’s youngest child, and she had died in a bar in Las Minas when she was nineteen, knifed by her lover after Alwilda was born. Alwilda hardly remembered her. She had been brought up by her paternal grandmother, and when she was a baby she had had infantile paralysis. Their house, like most of the houses in Las Minas, was a wooden shack built on stilts, the stinking waters of Morass Lagoon flowing slowly beneath it.

  Alwilda’s grandmother raised carrier pigeons on her tin roof and chickens in a nearby coop. There were no telephones in Las Minas—people used the pigeons to send messages from house to house over the canals, and paid the old woman for the service. Alwilda sold the eggs in the city. This income, together with her grandmother’s social security, was enough for them to survive. One day when Alwilda went to town to pick up her grandmother’s social-security check at the general post office in Old San Juan, a sailor followed her and invited her for a drink at a bar near the waterfront. Alwilda was only fourteen, and she said no. The sailor followed her as she limped back to the slum, and after she hailed a boat at the dock he knocked the boatman down and pushed off into the swamp. He raped Alwilda under the mangrove bushes, rowed back to the dock, and disappeared. Alwilda never knew his name or where he was from; all she knew was that he was a brute and that he was black as night. His skin had been even darker than hers.

  Alwilda discovered she was pregnant and decided to have the baby. She took care of Carmelina until she began to walk and then realized she wouldn’t be able to keep her. Alwilda moved with difficulty and Carmelina never stayed still; there was no way she could follow the baby around the house. One day she had fished Carmelina out of the mud just in time, after she had fallen off the balcony. It was then that Alwilda thought of her grandmother, Petra Avilés. She decided to take Carmelina to her. Petra had given food and shelter to so many of her relatives in Buenaventura’s house nobody would notice if she took a tiny baby under her wing.

  As Alwilda’s boat reached the pier, the boatman cried for her to bend over, because the iron beams of the terrace were lower at the entrance to the cellar and one of them might hit her head. Alwilda did as she was told, and when she looked up and saw the servants’ common room, she let out a gasp of wonder. It was decorated with potted ferns and gay crepe-paper flowers in vases, several old wicker rockers and a dining table with chairs. At the end of the pier she saw a large black woman she supposed was her grandmother waiting for her on a dilapidated high-backed chair. Several green Cobras burned around her to keep the mosquitoes away. Petra was an impressive figure. She was fifty-eight years old, but her arms looked as strong as mahogany beams and her hair was charcoal-black. As Alwilda limped toward her with Carmelina in her arms, she wondered what she was supposed to do, whether she should kiss her on the cheek or get down on her knees to kiss her hand.

  Alwilda had dressed Carmelina in her best clothes: a pink organdy dress with ruffles at the neck and hem. But she hadn’t had time to bathe her; she had been afraid of missing the boat that came every afternoon to the Mendizabals’ house from the slum. She drew near and was about to put Carmelina on the ground so she could embrace her grandmother, when Petra made her stop right there.

  “Don’t sit her on the floor. She’s an Avilés and should be conscious of her rank,” Petra said in a deep voice.

  Alwilda murmured an excuse and put the child in Petra’s lap. “She’s the first of your great-grandchildren,” Alwilda said. “Her name is Carmelina, just like your daughter’s, but I’m afraid her skin is darker than Mother’s.” Petra looked at the child in wonder. Carmelina was a beautiful baby—as black as ebony, with large, amber-colored eyes and a dainty little nose which looked as if it had been chiseled in onyx.

  “She looks just like I did when I was a child,” said Petra, “when my color was still African black, and not watered down by age.” And as she held the child in her lap she began to sing in a strange language that Alwilda had never heard before, and the little girl closed her eyes.

  Alwilda explained her plight to Petra and asked if she would keep Carmelina and raise her at the house. The little girl had already fallen off the half-rotten balcony of her house once, she said; it was lucky she had been there to save her. The next time she might drown in the lagoon’s mud.

  Petra listened without saying a word. When Alwilda finished, she looked pensively at the child, asleep on her lap. “Carmelina was the most beautiful of my four daughters,” Petra said to Alwilda, “and also the most high-strung. She was born during a terrific thunderstorm. Next to our house in Guayama there was a royal palm tree, and right after Carmelina was born a bolt of lightning struck it. The fire ran down the tree trunk and jumped into our house through the window; it missed Carmelina’s crib by inches. But the spirit of the god of fire entered her body, anyway. Except, instead of in her heart, it lodged in the wrong place: her pussy. When she grew up, every time Carmelina crossed her legs, men were struck by lightning and fell in love with her. Many of them had been friends before they met her, but once they saw her they burned with desire and jealousy, and finally one of them killed her to eliminate the problem.” Petra paused, as if trying to make up her mind.

  “I’ll do my best
and see if I can smuggle the baby into the Mendizabals’ house, but I hope she didn’t inherit Carmelina’s curse.” Having said that, she went into her room with Carmelina still asleep in her arms, and closed the door. She put the baby on her bed and knelt on the mud-packed floor in front of Elegguá’s effigy. And as she rubbed the stem on its head with her hand, she prayed, “Olorún, ka kó koi bé re,” asking him to take pity on the little girl.

  Alwilda returned to Las Minas, and Petra took Carmelina to the servants’ bath at the spring. She undressed her and put her in the cement trough; she scrubbed her with a corn husk until she shone like a polished little coffee bean. Then she combed Carmelina’s hair in two tight pigtails which stood out like tamarind pods on the sides of her head, sprinkled her with lavender water, put her pink dress on again, and took her upstairs. She had little hope that Buenaventura and Rebecca would let the baby live at the house, but maybe she could persuade them to let her stay for a few days.

  It was five in the afternoon and Rebecca was playing bridge with three of her friends on the golden terrace when Petra appeared with Carmelina in her arms. “Isn’t she beautiful? She looks just like a black Kewpie doll!” the ladies exclaimed. Petra put the baby in Rebecca’s arms, and she was passed from one woman’s lap to the next. They cooed and sang and made her laugh. “The backs of her hands are black as licorice,” they noted with wonder, “but her palms are soft and pink!” Rebecca called out to Patria and Libertad, who were playing Chinese checkers on the other side of the terrace.

  “Look what Petra brought you!” she said to them, smiling. “It’s a new doll, only she eats real food and goes peepee in her diaper, not like the rubber dolls you’re used to playing with!” The girls squealed with delight, and begged their mother to let them hold the child. Rebecca asked Petra to bring a blanket and a pillow, and soon Carmelina was lying on the floor, with the girls busily changing her diaper.

  Several days passed, and the girls were still enchanted with their new toy. The first thing they asked for when they woke up was Carmelina, who was already giggling when Petra brought her upstairs, all spick-and-span and smelling of lavender. Carmelina was a placid baby; she liked to sit on the floor and let the girls do whatever they wanted: she ate porridge when they fed it to her, let them wash her ears, and was still as they changed the outfits Eusebia, Rebecca’s seamstress, made for her.

  After a week, however, Patria and Libertad began to tire of Carmelina. One afternoon Eulodia, who usually stayed with them and the baby, went down to the cellar and lost track of time, talking to a relative who had come for a visit. Patria and Libertad found a can of paint the housepainters had left behind, and as Patria picked up a brush from the floor, she said to Libertad: “I’m tired of playing with a black doll. Let’s paint Carmelina white, to see how she looks.” They took off her little gingham dress, Patria held her up, and Libertad spread the white oil paint all over her body.

  At first Carmelina liked the new game, but then she began to feel uncomfortable and kicked Libertad, as if to make her drop the paintbrush. But Libertad was tall and gangly and she had long arms, so she stepped back and went on painting Carmelina. Once the job was done, the girls took Carmelina to the bathroom, so she could see how she looked. When Carmelina saw the little white ghost staring back at her in the mirror, she let out a terrified wail and Petra came running from the kitchen.

  A few minutes later Rebecca, Petra, and Carmelina were in Buenaventura’s silver Rolls-Royce with Brambon at the wheel, driving to Presbyterian Hospital, which was the nearest one to Alamares. Carmelina had lost consciousness; the lead in the oil paint was poisoning her. When they got to the hospital, she was taken to the emergency room, and the paint was removed with a special combination of mineral oils and soap and water. Another half an hour of being white, and Carmelina would have died.

  The episode had unexpected consequences. Rebecca felt so bad about the baby’s near-fatal accident that she let Petra keep her; and that was why Carmelina Avilés was brought up at the house on the lagoon.

  QUINTÍN

  THE NEXT TIME QUINTÍN went into the study, he found five new chapters in Isabel’s tan folder. He had begun to dread reading the manuscript, but after the first few sentences his forebodings began to dissipate. If in the previous chapters Isabel had tried to pull him into her web of lies and he had struggled to bring her back to reality, now they were in complete accord. She was his loving wife again; she remembered some of the happy moments they had shared—how they had met at the Escambrón boardwalk, and how he had retrieved the stolen medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe for her. Quintín remembered the incident clearly, and it was just as Isabel had described it. That was the day he had seen her for the first time. She looked like a goddess, with her jet-black eyes and beautiful figure. She was laughing with her cousin, holding on to the railing on the boardwalk, her red hair blowing in the wind.

  Quintín remembered Isabel’s graduation from Vassar, that rainy spring morning when he took her in his arms right after the ceremony. He recalled, too, how he had comforted her when Abby died and when she had to put Carmita in an asylum. How close they had been!

  Quintín felt reassured that Isabel still loved him. For a while he had been afraid the novel was a kind of leave-taking, her way of saying goodbye.

  Rebecca and Buenaventura had always feared that Isabel’s background was too different from Quintín’s. Some of Buenaventura’s salesmen who visited the interior of the island went so far as to call the Monforts little more than white trash. The Antonsantis were a well-known family in Ponce, but once Don Vicenzo died and Carlos, Carmita’s husband, took charge of her inheritance, they quickly lost their capital. Abby had had to struggle tooth and nail to educate Isabel. She was probably the only Vassar College student who paid for her education in custards and cakes. Then Carmita went mad and Carlos killed himself. Quintín’s parents cautioned him, pointing out these things and insisting that he should think carefully before making a decision. Psychological problems were often inherited, and Carmita’s madness was not to be taken lightly. His children might develop it; Isabel, too. But Quintín was in love with Isabel. He would walk barefoot across the mountains from San Juan to Ponce for her, he told them. He would swim around the island just to be with her.

  Steeped in his own thoughts, Quintín stopped reading. Something—birds, or maybe bats—rustling in the mangrove swamp brought him back to reality and he got up from the study’s couch to pour himself a brandy. He drank it in one swallow and sat down again. The next chapter was “Rebecca’s Book of Poems,” and the minute he began reading, apprehension welled up in him. He laughed when she described Buenaventura as a glutton, gorging himself on pigs’ feet and garbanzos. But he was shocked by her revelation that his father periodically took his black mistresses to Lucumí Beach and made love to them on the sand for a few dollars. He wondered how Isabel had found out; he’d certainly never mentioned it to her. But, unfortunately, he had to admit it was true.

  What he didn’t understand was why she insisted on baring his family’s secrets to the world. He thought they had patched up their quarrel, and here she was again, going after his family with an ax. Instead of pointing out Buenaventura’s good qualities—his loyalty to his family, his gentleness, his industriousness—she had made up yet another lie about him and now called him a wife beater. She could have been discreet about his foibles—his weakness for black women, for example—but she accused him of immoral behavior. Isabel was heartless. At least she could have been diplomatic about Buenaventura’s shortcomings. What was the imagination for, anyway? Good writers should try to protect the people they love, not make bloody sacrifices of their reputations. Besides, what right had she to criticize Buenaventura when her grandfather, Vicenzo Antonsanti, had done the same thing? She didn’t criticize him for it. Most men had mistresses at the time. Isabel didn’t know anything about these things. She was a woman, how could she?

  Granted, it was wrong of Buenaventura to have other women. It h
urt Rebecca and broke the sacred vow of matrimony. But independence was part of a man’s nature, the essence of his masculinity. A woman would say, “I love you and I’m yours forever.” A man would say, “I’ll love you forever,” but he’ll never say, “I’m yours.” It wouldn’t be in character. A man must always belong to himself if he wants to be a man. If the man she loves tells a woman, “I’m yours,” what does she hear? That she’ll have to take care of him. That he’ll hide under her skirts when danger threatens. Women want their men to be strong, they don’t want a wimp around the house. Rebecca knew about Buenaventura’s trysts at Lucumí Beach and never reproached him for them. She was wise, like the women of her generation; she looked the other way. If she didn’t acknowledge it, it wouldn’t hurt. “Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente”—Eyes that do not see, heart that does not feel—goes the old Spanish saying. For Rebecca, it was so. But Isabel was different. She was a modern woman and thought that one should be completely candid about one’s mistakes. But no one was perfect, and so divorce was on the rampage.

  The more Quintín read, the angrier he became at Isabel. Rebecca had now fallen out of favor and was ridiculed for not wanting to grow old, for being a self-centered egotist, for abandoning him to the servants while she doted on Ignacio. A pack of lies! The fact was that Isabel had been jealous of Quintín’s special affection for his mother, to whom he had been closer than either Ignacio or his sisters. Isabel had seen Rebecca as a rival from the start. Something, someone, was pressing Isabel to write these awful things about his family. A mysterious force seemed to be driving her. Could Petra be behind all this? Could Isabel have fallen under her spell, as Buenaventura had so long ago? Petra had the ability to creep into people’s hearts, and after she was entrenched in them, there was no way to get her out. She was a relentless gossip, endlessly spreading false rumors about his family in the house and even in the neighborhood of Alamares. Quintín began to suspect Petra was responsible for the web of lies Isabel was weaving around him. She wanted to show him that his family was a disaster, so he would lose his self-respect.