Firefly Summer (2 page)

“Ah!” he said, smiling, “the Feast of the Cross
est une belle ocasion
.”

Juana noticed the change and made the best of it, explaining how Teresa had missed it the year before.

“
Pobrecita
,” said Filimón. “She will not miss it again.”

“I, Filimón, will hire you this coach and I will drive it myself.”

“
Gracias
,” said Juana. “Come early tomorrow morning to 67 Luna Street.”

“
Oui, madame
, tomorrow.” He went back to his coach and gave it an extra rub.

“
Mon Dieux
,” he said aloud, “the Feast of the Cross…
Comme est belle
!”

For the first time since Teresa had been coming to the city school, Juana did not have to wake her. She was up and ready by six o'clock, delighted over the fact that Juana was going home with her. She wrote three letters: one for her aunt, which she left on her desk, one for her teacher and another for Mercedes. The last two she tied on the bolt of the gate, where she was sure Mercedes would find them that afternoon when she came calling.

Juana sent her to her friend Doña Josefa, across the street, to ask if she would take care of the canary and water the plants in the gallery while she was gone. When she returned from her errand, the coach was at the door, and Filimón was bringing her trunk down. Juana followed with her hands full of extra packages.

“Here I am, petite,” he said, laughing. “Filimón always keeps his word.”

“And I will pray for a special favor for you,” said Teresa, climbing to her seat in the rear of the coach.
From there she reminded Juana that Doña Josefa wanted the house key, otherwise how was she to get in the house? She took the extra packages, fixed them on the rest of the seat and waited for Juana to come back. “I hope she will sit in the front with Filimón,” she said to herself. Her wish was granted: Juana returned, took a look at the packages in the rear of the coach and decided on the front seat.

Filimón picked up the reins and started the coach. It rattled over the cobbled street. The clatter of the horse's hooves brought a group of sleepy-eyed children to their doors. On the corner of Cruz Street, the coach turned and rode down to Fortaleza. Teresa shot a quick glance at the Governor's Palace at the head of the street. Only a month ago, she had been taken to see the strange flowers that grew there. She had made a picture of a beautiful orchid and given it to Doña Clara. She had been so pleased with it that she had promised to take her again when she went calling. Doña Clara had been going to the Governor's castle for years to paint pictures of the garden, many of which now hung on the castle's walls.

They went past the Plaza Cristobal Colón, where the statute of the discoverer stood high on a pedestal overlooking the Municipal Theatre and the San Cristóbal Fort. They continued out towards Puerta de Tierra. Teresa hoped Mercedes had come with her instead of having to stay in the city. Mercedes
had no mother. She lived with Lucio, her father, and her old cousin Flora.

When they reached Santurce, the coach had to stop at an intersection to let the trolley car pass by on its way to the Condado, the rich suburb by the sea. The few passengers waved, and Teresa waved back. The traffic was beginning to crowd the street, and Filimón had to drive slower than he really wanted. When finally they were again on the road, he sent his horses flying. The packages tumbled out of the seat and Teresa had to pick them up while holding on to the sides of the coach for balance. They were soon in Río Piedras and passing in front of the University of Puerto Rico. There were students at the campus, and Teresa thought of her friend Sixta who was studying to be a teacher. Sixta lived across the road from the
finca
, and though she was nineteen-years old, she was one of Teresa's best friends. “Someday, I will be going there, too,” thought Teresa. “Someday there will be enough schools for all the children of the
fincas
. I would rather teach at a
finca
than anywhere else.” She had not told her plans to her family yet, only to Sixta, who also shared her dream. “Maybe I will get Juanita to do the same, and Angelina and even Fausto. Their fathers own
fincas
and can send them to the city school. But there are all those children of the workers,” she thought, “who could not afford to come, and the few schools available are miles away.”

They left Río Piedras, and now the entire countryside unfolded like a great panorama before their eyes. This was the country, with is long stretches of beautiful green fields, deep, deep valleys and mountains that rose like chains of emeralds topped with lavender, purple, and yellow. Now and then from different sections of the land they were crossing rose clusters of bamboo, which resembled sugar cane. Teresa looked out of the coach at a large tree which topped all others. It was a ceiba, like the ones on the road that led to her
finca
. They were sturdy trees from which furniture was made.

The coach was approaching fruit groves. There were trees laden heavily with large grapefruits and pineapples growing on the spaces between the trees. The sight brought to her mind the picture of the
finca
at her home, though it was not a fruit farm, like the one they were approaching, but a tobacco plantation. Yet on the outskirts of the
finca
, during the summer the workers planted vegetables, fruits and other crops for home consumption. The
finca
! How she missed it! Gone were the hours she spent watching the preparations for the planting of tobacco, but clear in her mind was the picture of the cool foothills, mountain slopes with carefully laid out plots. She envisioned the farm workers bending over the first tobacco shoots, so precious to her father, tending them until they were ready for transplanting. She remembered the first time she had seen the
first plots covered with cheesecloth to protect the shoots. At first she had not known what they were, looking to her like clouds dropped from the sky. “Come and see the clouds,” her father always said, whenever the workers were busy covering the patches.

They were close to the fruit farm now. The laborers had baskets filled with fruit strapped to their backs. One of the youngest of the workers came to the edge of the road to look at the coach. He had a band across his forehead to keep his hair out of his eyes and to sop up the perspiration. His resemblance to Ramón made her jump to the side of the coach, from where she could take a better look at him. He was strong, tall and brown-skinned, with high cheekbones and small eyes. He could easily pass for Ramón's twin brother. “Poor Ramón,” she said aloud.

“Did you say something?” asked Juana, turning back.

“Oh, no,” she answered quickly. Here she was thinking aloud again. Yet, that boy at that farm did look like Ramón. She must not forget to tell him when she reached home.

Juana and Filimón were engaged in conversation, and now and then parts of sentences came back to her above the noise of the wheels on the road. Filimón was telling Juana how he had come to own a line of coaches in San Juan. He had two
horses in a stable in Caguas, which he would exchange for the ones pulling the coach now. “Fresh ones for the remainder of the trip,” she heard him explain.

All along the road to Caguas the
flamboyán
trees were ready to bloom. Teresa wished she could have made the trip two weeks later. Then she would have seen them shining bright red as if ablaze. There was one
flamboyán
tree along the road to Cidra which she and Sixta saw one summer when it burst into flowers. She had never forgotten the sight of it. Later on in the year, they had stood under its branches to listen to the “Housewives tales,” as they called the murmuring sound of the dry long pods that come out after the blooms fell. Grandmother had told her many of the legends connected with the tree. She often thought of the girl who stood under it every year, waiting for the blooms to open and having her wish come true.

When they entered Caguas, Filimón rode to the outskirts of the town to exchange his team of horses. How fast the coach went now. Soon they were out in the middle of the road again and nearing a small store on the side of a hill. The sound of children's voices reached their ears.

“Where are they, Juana? Can you see them from your seat?” Teresa cried excitedly.

“There, under the trees, petite,” said Filimón, stopping the coach.

At the sight of the coach, the children scampered from under the trees, shouting, “Compre…compre flores—Buy, buy flowers.” Their hands were full of bunches of wild flowers wrapped in green leaves. Juana bought two bunches and gave them to Teresa, then went into the store. Teresa stayed with the children at the edge of the hill, from where they tried to point to their homes for her. One little girl gave Teresa a bunch of wild strawberries she had picked along the road.

“Come inside and see what you want, Teresa,” called Juana.

The store was one large room with a counter stretching the full length. On it were bottles of soft drinks, homemade candy and baskets of freshly made cheese. Bunches of ripe bananas hung from the rafters, and the floor was filled with sacks of brown sugar, rice, coffee and a variety of beans.

“I want some cheese and crackers,” said Teresa. She picked up two boxes of crackers. “For the children,” she told Juana. “Why don't you buy them something, too?”

Juana gave her a handful of coconut candy. Teresa divided the crackers and candy among the children who were sitting on the side of the road. It was nice to sit there with them, eating and looking far down the hill at the thatched houses on stilts.

Filimón came out of the store drinking a bottle of tamarind juice and smacking his lips at its tartness.
He leaned against the door, gurgling and making faces with each swallow. When he finished, he took his seat on the coach again. That was his signal for them to follow. The children jumped out of the way.

“Goodbye!” they called as the coach rode away.

Refreshed now, Teresa settled in her seat comfortably. It felt good to have left the coach for a while. Filimón was driving faster now, and Teresa thought he deserved to be called the best driver in the land. He knew every turn and curve of the road.

As the coach turned, they came within view of a white house on a hill. It was the largest one she had seen since leaving Caguas. The sloping ground and the cluster of shrubs surrounding it reminded her of her own home. She wondered if that house had a long passageway connecting the front and rear of the house, like her home. She had begun to call the passageway a “neck” when she was a child, and since then no one in the house called it by any other name. She looked back at the house as the coach went by and noticed that the house was square on the back and had an open balcony with potted plants everywhere. She was glad it did not have a “neck.”

The brown and white house she lived in was an old house, where two generations of Rodrigos had lived and tilled the soil they owned. For Teresa, the nicest and most livable part of it was the “neck.” It
was there where her grandmother kept her rare plants, her mother her sewing basket, and her father his desk full of catalogs from which he and Ramón made their orders. It had two windows from which one could see the entire countryside. There were two rocking chairs, from where her grandmother's cat, Filo, and Ramón's old dog, Leal, were constantly being pushed off. The oldest possession in the neck was a rose-colored conch shell that stood on a table made of empty spools of thread, painted the colors of the rainbow. The conch shell was used as a horn to signal the time of day for the
finca
workers. At noon, it heralded the arrival of the wives and daughters with their frugal meal, and at six o'clock it told them the working day was over. Sometimes, when there were unusual events at the
finca
, the conch shell sent out a special blast over the hills. Every year Teresa had tried unsuccessfully to blow sound out of the shell, but had to be content instead to listen to the sound of the sea by putting it close to her ears. Her lungs were not strong enough to make the shell vibrate its mournful call.

Teresa wondered if any of the workers had left the
finca
while she was away at school. She was always meeting new additions upon her return home. Would José still be there? José, the dreamer, who thought nothing of spending all his pay when friends came to see him from Cayey. José, who
dreamed of the day when all the workers would own enough land to be their own masters.

Then there was Gregorio. He was a laborer with political ideas, always eager to know the latest news, although he did not know how to read. How many times during the summer months had she helped his three daughters read aloud to him, and how she had admired the way he interpreted the news to the other workers at the
finca
. He had even promised to marry his daughters to politicians. She wondered if he had found any suitors available for his Lola, Ernestina and Panchita? Teresa would have to ask her grandmother about that.

Whatever changes she might find at the
finca
, she was glad they would not include Felipe, the overseer, and his wife Pilar. Nor Lucía, who came daily to help her mother. Nor Antonio, Lucía's eightyear-old son who ran in and out of the house all day long. It was good to come home and know that Sixta's family was across the road down the hill. Teresa would again spend days sitting under the trees, watching Sixta do her drawn work for the stores in the town and listening to her tales about the university.

There was one neighbor whom she would rather not see: Don Gumersindo Vázquez. Teresa hoped he was gone. He was the miser of all the
fincas
in the district. No one liked how he used his three daughters in the fields. They did twice the
work of any laborer. No one ever saw them outside the fields. Teresa often wondered if they had ever gone back to Cayey since the burial of their mother. No, she did not like Don Gumersindo Vázquez.