and mango trees made a beautiful setting for stalls of skillfully hand-carved mortar and pestle combinations, hundreds of them of every size: some as large as a person, some as tiny as a druggist’s tool. Daniela didn’t bother to ask if they could stop.
The hills were closing in now and the terrain itself was changing every few miles, as if it could not make up its mind what it wanted to be. Here were green plantations and then hillsides of cactus and scrub grass and bushes. Then a large green valley announced the borders of Hatillo, hemmed in by small mountains to the right and to the left. And, at last the Caribbean Sea became visible. Now everyone was aware that they were nearing their second home.
Goats came running in and out of the scrub bushes, and Ruby was doing her best to avoid hitting the little kids scurrying after their mothers, oblivious of the rocketing death on the road.
The picturesque orchards of La Famosa foods whizzed by like a video, as did little municipalities like Charcao, nestled in among the fruit-filled mango and plantain fields. Together, they were like an advertisement, announcing that this was indeed a land of plenty.
Now Ruby had to slow down, because trucks bearing fruits and vegetables began tearing or lumbering down the highway, depending on their size, bringing this wealth to the bigger cities. When Este Bonia presented itself, Jo was delighted to see that the flowers still lined the fields: orange, purple, and white. It was a prelude to the magnificent entrance to Azua, the historic home of the Tainos. The name was a mistake by the Spaniards. The Indians in their long canoes coordinated their rowing with the chant “A-zu-a!” and the conquistadores mistook this for the settlement’s name. The Tainos did not bother to correct them. These oppressors knew too much already. And, if thinking the rowing chant that could synchronize eighty or even a hundred and twenty rowers from the mainland of what would become Venezuela across the sea to Kiskeya was the name of their little settlement, so be it.
Love for this land of her birth, rich in personal and collective memories, filled Jo’s heart as Ruby drove them through the red, purple, yellow, and pink flowers that heralded their advent into Azua, the ancient seat of the nation. Here was the neglected burial site of the great Enrique, the Taino warrior who had rescued his people with a cunning mastery of battle strategy that ultimately forced the invaders from Spain to sue for peace. Retreating before the heavily armed soldiers sent to capture him, he led them up into the mountains where their horses stumbled and their armor roasted them from the merciless heat of the sun. Then, when they were panting for water and their swords and spears had grown to be great weights in their hands, Enrique’s warriors simply rained arrows down among their enemies. The hapless survivors threw down their arms, but instead of the slaughter routinely practiced by these enemy invaders, Enrique simply had his warriors round up the Spanish, relieve them of their weapons, and then he produced a Bible, requiring those who wanted to continue to live to swear upon it at peril of their souls before the one living God, the Great Spirit, and the Just Son of God, Jesucristo, who rules the earth and calls all to account, that they would never again kill or even strike a Taino. The oath included endless hellfire as the penalty promised to the Great Triune God, who had formed each of them and determined their fate. Useless to the governor for a goon squad now, the soldiers were soldiers no longer: the fear of God was in them. Finally, no one wanted to go and fight this deeply respected, ferocious but merciful liberator. The war was over, and the Taino nation survived.
Jo had stopped many times at the little church that Doña Mencia, Enrique’s grieving wife, had erected at his grave a year after the peace treaty was signed and Enrique himself died. It was a monument in ruins. No one cared for it. The Tainos knew Enrique was not there, just his bones, as the bones of all those killed by the cruelty of the invaders or the diseases they had brought filled the hills of the province. Still, Jo’s uncle brought her there to pray in thanksgiving to the great God who had given their people such leaders and they mourned the site together, the old man and the little girl who had now become his heir.
Much like Bani, the road to Azua was also deflected through the center of the city. But here a huge chemical factory polluted the air with an acrid, pungent odor that clung to the car long after the streets thickened with pleasant, small hotels with dining rooms, baby shops, hardware stores, and fast-food chicken and fruit stands that filled the rows of connected shops, as they had in Bani. So much history, thought Jo, but so little seen to the incoming eye. This was progress, she thought. And she mused, and not for the first time as she traveled this road, that progress is temporal, but all that remained, down through the ages, was the earth and its produce, the gift of the Creator, displayed so lavishly in the spacious valley that graced the passage into the peninsula.
After the turnoff to the town of Vicente Nobile, just before the peninsula commenced, the terrain began to transition back to semi-desert. The people filled the small and sandy front yards of their homes with flowers, little fruit trees, stalls of huge stalks of plaintain and mountains of ripe mangos in season to create a link, Jo always felt, between the spacious valley and the coming of the great orchards, ringed with coconut palms that heralded the peninsula itself. Towns and little villages came swiftly now, beginning with Jaquimeyes, one after another. By Palo Alto, in the well-watered entrance to the peninsula, vast fields of sugarcane rippled in the waves of trade winds blowing in off the Bay of Neiba, which the road would soon meet at Barahona, the point where it touched the Caribbean Sea.
Jo always felt a strange stirring within her when she crossed the little river, the Río Yaque del Sur, which marked to her mind the transition from the mainland proper to the land of the Tainos. The name of the river itself was a Taino word. The river began far away in the union of a number of tributaries that trickled down from the mountains of the interior. These little rivelets merged gently, almost unnoticed, as they wended their way to the valleys. Then, gathering strength in sheer numbers, they became together a commanding river that flowed for miles, irrigating and thereby enlivening all the land drinking thirstily from it, until it reached the peninsula, finally siphoned off all along its trajectory to become once more a steady stream that emptied at last into the sea. To Jo, it was so representative of her own people, the Tainos, a gentle tribe that gathered up the peoples who preceded them into a populous nation that filled the islands. Their strength was depleted, first by the Caribes, and then the conquistadores, until they became a small nation that emptied itself into all the nations of the sea of humanity, enriching everyone it touched with its knowledge of medicinal herbs, its preparation of foods, and its language that described each of its true treasures, the yuca, guayaba, guánabana—Taino names all—and with them all the rest of the banquet that created today’s cocina criolla. The Tainos also bequeathed their heroes to the island’s history, like the incomparable Enrique and his magnificent aunt Queen Anacoana, the stateswoman and Jo’s direct ancestor, and all the rest of the wealth that is Taino lore and art and history, embedded in the culture of the country.
As the family arrived at last at the impressive entrance to Barahona itself, Jo took the great welcome sign that spanned the road as a personal invitation. This time, however, the welcome would have to remain for her alone. If she walked in the hills, it would be alone. She was entering an empty house. Her house now. But what that meant she began to fear. Her father’s and then her stepmother’s cryptic words came back to her. What “responsibilities” did they mean exactly? Why did she have to bring the ceremonial dress? Why should she not sell the house? What more was involved? Suddenly, what lay before seemed larger to her than she had thought. And she was absolutely right—right beyond anything she ever could have imagined.
8
“You mean to tell me there’s a load of magnetic rock so big under this particular little hill that it can pull a huge truck or car backwards up a mountain?” demanded Basil.
“That is exactly what I am telling you, Señor.”
“That’s amazing!” said Star.
“It is unique,” said the desk clerk at the hotel with a casino that they had selected,
