Abogado, y Notario.”
The letter was signed in a tight, neat, hand.
Jo sat back in her chair in shock, holding the letter away from her as if it were itself the cause of this disaster. Her uncle dead, and she not even knowing so she could have run down to see him one last time? His property left entirely to her alone? What about her brother and sisters? They weren’t going to take this lightly. And, further, how could she just suddenly pick up and go running off in the middle of all her job responsibilities? Especially her Sunday services? The woman she was visiting in the hospital? The grant she was planning to write? Her weekly class in English, which was a key to her mission and recruitment strategy?
But all those concerns were swept aside as a wave of grief poured over her. This was terrible. She had become increasingly close to her uncle as the years went by. True, he was big and boisterous, and always extremely busy, and oftentimes even absent when she and her family duly visited each year. Usually, though, he had been there to greet them, and then he and her father and mother would leave on some business she did not understand and be gone most of the time. But Jo and her siblings didn’t mind. The house on the beach at Barahona was lovely and spacious. It had a pool and a garden and fifty yards away was the Caribbean Sea. The housekeepers were a married couple with several children about the ages of Jo and her brother and sisters, and they were like cousins to them in everything but blood, or so Jo supposed.
As Jo reached her teenage years, she had increasingly resented going, wanting to stay home in Richfield with her friends, but the visits were a family law that brooked no alteration. And that is when she began to notice that, as she was aging into maturity, her uncle, who had always managed to spend individual time with each of the children—going fishing with Ben, who was as wild as Uncle Sol was, taking Daniela shopping, which was Daniela’s passion from childhood on, and playing tennis with Ruby, who seemed to be good at everything athletic and approached all of life as a competition to win at all costs—had come to center particularly on Jo, paying her a special attention that her siblings began to resent just a little.
First, he taught Jo how to play chess. Then, he took her for walks through the hills, explaining to her many details about the plants, the livestock, the wild animals, even the insects. He showed her where water was gathered or diverted for irrigation on the mountains. And he told her much lore about the original inhabitants and, particularly, about her ancestors, the Tainos, the people who had come to take possession of the island around a.d. 900–1,000, subsuming all the preceding tribes into their rich culture. For some five hundred years they had lived in peace, visiting each other across the islands in their long, straight canoes that seated eighty rowers and could traverse the waves between Kiskeya, their name for her homeland, “The Mother of All Islands”; Borinken, “Great Land of the Valiant and Noble Lord,” but now called Puerto Rico; Xamayca, “the Land of Wood and Water”; Cu-va; and what is now Venezuela and the mainland; and on and on. And he told her a different story of the coming of Columbus and the conquistadores than the one she had learned in school: that the Tainos had welcomed the explorers as an answer to their prayers to YaYa for rescue from the invading Caribes, working their way up from South America, island by island, pillaging villages, stealing women, eating the hearts and livers of the men they captured to steal their strength and cunning. How disappointed they were that Columbus’s followers had turned out worse marauders than the Caribes, given their superior weaponry. In fact, Uncle Sol had told her the tale so many times that Jo could later repeat most of it back, word for word, to the delight of her laughing siblings.
On Jo’s twenty-first birthday, her father had insisted they celebrate this signature event in the Dominican Republic at her uncle’s beach house. By then, Jo no longer minded. So many people turned out for it that Jo was shocked. The evening had involved interesting traditional dances and areitos, the music of the Amerindians on handmade instruments and, as a crowning event, the bestowing of a beautiful ceremonial dress with long, flowing sleeves on the baffled young woman. Her siblings were all jealous.
Since then, Uncle Sol had always made certain he spent much time with Jo on their yearly visits. He followed her work as a community organizer with great interest, asking her many questions about methodologies and procedures whenever she came. He was deeply interested in her decision to switch over to ministry. He told her he approved (which was surprising to her, since he was her uncle, not her father), but encouraged her to do “YaYael’s work” in a way that did not eliminate the skills that she had developed in her social work.
“When YaYael was on earth as Yeshua, Jesus, he did much to share the good news of salvation in a healing manner that fed people and healed their diseases,” he counseled her. “You, Josefina, have been gifted by the Great Spirit of YaYa to heal people in body as well as in spirit, and you must do both to fulfill your full ministry. It is a blessed calling and prepares you for greater work to come.”
What that “greater work” could possibly be the young minister had no idea. But that was typical of Uncle Sol. In his loud and commanding manner, he always filled his speech with great, sweeping statements of large-sounding import. Everything was big about him. She imagined—and how could she not?—that such a presence would live on and on. For how could someone so—well—so larger than life be gone so completely, so utterly, gone? Certainly, everyone knew he had heart trouble. She knew that too. He was a big man and he was the elder brother to her father. But to be gone so swiftly! Jo began to cry as full grief finally overwhelmed her. For now she was struck with the realization of the extent of her loss as if her mind had meted it out in portions that she could handle, bit by bit. What she had lost in the sudden departure was a lifetime of her uncle’s great love and full attention and complete concern. She would never have all this again. Not here on earth. Ever. Jo never broke down—she was too strong—but now she was crying steadily. Even so, she was thinking that, as soon as she could, she would call her father, but before that she must compose herself to be able to talk to him. That was Jo. Always cerebral, but with a passion in her commitments that ran deep.
But her concern for how and when to connect was unnecessary, as suddenly, in startling synchronicity, both the phone on her desk and her cell phone simultaneously began to ring.
4
Sobbing, Jo snatched up her desk phone, at the same time fishing in her purse for her cell phone. It was not her father, but her sister Daniela, who started right in, “Jo! Oh, I’m so glad you’re home. Listen, I have a very important party Friday night. Could I borrow the dress? It’s a masquerade and it’s a little long but I could have it taken up temporarily, so it fits and . . .”
Jo groaned, which is not easy to do when one is sobbing, but she managed it. “Daniela, listen . . .”
“What are you—crying? What’s the matter, Jo? I won’t have them shorten the dress if you’re that upset about it. Really, you hardly use it. You don’t need to get so worked up about it! All you have to say is no. I can certainly rent some . . .”
“Danny,” broke in Jo, “It’s Uncle Sol. I’ve just gotten terrible news—from his lawyer. Danny, he died.”
“What?”
“It’s true. The lawyer didn’t call—he just wrote me a letter—some official thing—it’s awful.”
“Uncle Sol,” said Daniela and paused. “What’s going to happen to his beach house?”
“Oh, Danny!” cried Jo.
After they hung up, Jo checked her cell phone call. It had been from her father. Jo punched the number without waiting to access the message. Her father answered on the second ring.
“Jo, I’ve just gotten terrible
