Firefly Summer Page 7

  Ramón and Antonio picked themselves up from the dirt floor.

  “Try the noose again,” said Antonio.

  “It didn’t do much good before,” said Teresa.

  “Look out,” shouted Mercedes, “here she comes.”

  But the sow was apparently satisfied and walked calmly to the end of the pen. From there she turned to them with almost a triumphant look. Slowly she bent her head and tasted the sweet potatoes the girls had dumped. Her snout wriggled with the excitement of that first taste.

  The rest of the pigs that had stopped eating before now reassumed. Soon all tails were again twitching and hind legs were stamping in unison.

  “Pick up the pails, Antonio,” said Ramón.

  At the sound of his voice, the sow stopped eating and let out another of her squeals.

  “Cielos,” said Teresa, “let’s leave the queen to her castle before she runs us all out.”

  When they came out into the open air, the intensity of the heat had reached its height. They walked slowly uphill and went back to the kitchen, where Lucía had lunch ready for them.

  CHAPTER 7

  WORK CAN BE FUN

  As time went on and Mercedes became a part of the household, Teresa’s responsibilities about the house lessened, so that the two girls had more time to roam about the finca.

  Early mornings, they fed chickens, sorted beans and shelled peas. They saw that the ears of dry corn were strung on the rafters in the stockroom. On Saturday mornings they helped tend to the workers who came to do their shopping at the finca stockroom, which was a kind of store for them.

  The stockroom opened early. Teresa managed the window, taking their orders and entering their account on a ledger book. It was her duty to keep these accounts up to date, for it was from them that her father calculated the workers’ weekly salaries.

  Ramón and Mercedes wrapped up the groceries, and Antonio took them to the peasants who stood outside the window.

  One Saturday morning, after a trip to Cidra, Mercedes overslept. Although Teresa tapped at her wall on the way down to the stockroom, she did not wake. When she finally showed up, they were almost through with the line of peasants who had come to get their weekly groceries. Mercedes went to the table to help Ramón finish up the last orders.

  “You and Antonio deserted us,” said Ramón. “You should have seen us a few minutes ago. We even put Manolo to work. He was just as good as Antonio delivering the packages.”

  Mercedes shot a glance at Teresa, who was entering the account of the last worker in the ledger book. This was the first time she had missed helping her, and she promised herself that it would be the last. She brought the last package she had wrapped and gave it to the waiting worker herself.

  “I am sorry, Teresa,” she said.

  Teresa closed the ledger book and shut the window.

  “Let us know in advance when you intend to sleep all morning,” she said, laughing. “I didn’t know the air in Cidra would make a door mouse out of you. Grandmother wants to see us. Come along.”

  Grandmother was in the shed getting ready to start making bobbin-pin lace.

  “You are just in time to help wind the thread around the bobbin pins,” she said, giving each girl her share.

  It was easy work and they soon had it done.

  They watched Grandmother pin the pattern on the mundillo, a stuffed pillow held erect by a flatboard inside. The design on the cardboard pattern was carefully perforated. It had a fine scalloped border of marigolds on the edge. When she had it firmly pinned, she inserted a line of straight pins at the head of the pattern. On these she began to suspend the sixty-four bobbin pins the pattern called for. When she had them all adjusted evenly, she placed the mundillo on her lap, propped it against the beam holding the shed and began to work. She passed the bobbin pins over and under, weaving the thread along as she went, into the design represented on the pattern. Whenever she reached one of the perforations, she inserted a straight pin and wove in and out again, drawing the thread firmly about it. Little by little her fingers began to go faster until by the time she reached across the pattern, the sound of the bobbin pins resembled the clicking of castanets.

  “Oh, Grandmother,” said Mercedes, fascinated by the apparent ease with which she worked, “do you think I can learn how to make lace like that?”

  “Anyone with patience and perseverance can learn. There are enough bobbin pins and patterns in the house which you can have. Teresa might as well learn, too.”

  Grandmother had begun to do the first petal of a marigold. Her weaving resembled a fine spider’s web, she was so methodical and accurate, about the petal. When she finished it, she tied a wide band around the mundillo to keep the bobbin pins from tangling.

  “If you really want to learn, have Ramón help you stuff two mundillos. You can start after dinner.”

  “Let’s try to make our own patterns,” said Teresa, after Grandmother had left. “It will be more fun.”

  They found Ramón whittling behind the woodshed and asked him to help them stuff the mundillos. When they finished, he brought the mundillos to the shed for them.

  “Let me have the patterns and I’ll pin them up for you,” he said.

  “We don’t have them yet. We’re going to make our own,” Mercedes explained.

  “Make your own patterns?” Ramón did not think they could really do them.

  “You make designs for the things you carve, so why can’t we make patterns for our lace?”

  “Because it isn’t the same thing. I don’t have to figure out how many bobbin pins to a pattern, like you would have to.”

  “You are making it sound more difficult than it really is. We will show you when we have them ready,” said Teresa.

  First they made a design on a piece of paper. Teresa made one with a rose, and Mercedes one with a palm leaf. They looked at the pattern on Grandmother’s mundillo. Besides the marigold, the pattern showed lots of perforations, which meant nothing to the girls, but they counted them to be sure to make the same on their pattern.

  When they began to transfer their design to the cardboard, they realized the difficulty they were in. True, the rose and the palm leaf looked all right, but the rest of the perforations around them, which they had tried to copy from Grandmother’s pattern, did not seem right. They went over them counting carefully, but with little success.

  “Grandmother used sixty-four bobbin pins for her pattern,” said Mercedes. “Evidently each perforation represents a bobbin pin, yet her pattern has lots more than sixty-four perforations. I can’t figure it out. Can you, Teresa?”

  Teresa’s mouth was full of pins. She had been trying to solve the puzzle of her own pattern. Mercedes came to watch her work.

  “Why, Teresa, your pattern is crooked. Look at it from this side and you’ll see.”

  It was indeed crooked, so much so that the rose did not seem to belong to the rest of the intricate set of perforations with which she had surrounded it.

  Teresa took the pins out of her mouth. “I give up,” she said. “I have counted perforations and imaginary bobbin pins until I can’t tell which is which.”

  “Let’s show them to Grandmother,” suggested Mercedes. “She can tell us what is wrong. If we cannot use them, there are still the patterns she has. Ramón was right after all.”

  Teresa did not like the idea at all, especially when she had boasted to Ramón, but what else could she do? She gathered up her work and followed Mercedes back to the house.

  Ramón saw them leave the shed, dragging the mundillo along with them, and guessed the reason why.

  “Make their own patterns,” he said, giving the wood an extra cut. “I guess they found out.”

  When Grandmother saw them come in, she wondered what besides the mundillos the girls were bringing.

  “They are patterns,” Mercedes explained. “We tried to make our own.”

  One look at their work was sufficient to show Grandmother how hard both girls had struggle
d to put down their ideas. It took her time to convince them that no one could really attempt to do a pattern unless they knew how to make lace first. She brought out two of the simplest patterns and pinned them on their mundillos. When the girls wound the thread around the bobbin pins, she sat them near her and began to teach them the fundamental weaving, which was the base to all lace-making. Little by little their fingers began to feel less strained and more at ease, until they really began to enjoy the work. There were no frills to the pattern they worked from. Grandmother said that when they had made enough lace, they could use it on handkerchieves or petticoats.

  Mercedes soon forgot the ruined pattern, but not Teresa. “Someday,” she said, “I am going to make that pattern. Someday I shall know just how.”

  The girls worked till dinner time, and afterwards took their mundillos to their bedrooms where they continued to work long after the family had gone to bed.

  Next morning, soon after breakfast, Grandmother saw them go downhill, carrying their mundillos along.

  “Going to Sixta’s,” Teresa called back.

  Grandmother was correct. With an inch of lace already reproduced on each pattern, the girls were as pleased as if they had a yard. Sixta would be surprised to see what they had done. Now they too could sit with her while she worked on her lace orders without feeling that they were in the way.

  Sixta and her mother were pulling threads on an order of special-sized handkerchiefs for a house in Cayey. The girls stood their mundillos on chairs and untied the bands around the bobbin pins to show Sixta their work.

  “It’s the entre dos pattern, the one I like so much,” Sixta said. “The one I made for your mother. It’s a beautiful pattern. You’ll see the design much better when you have done a little bit more than what you have now.”

  “Did Grandmother lend you this pattern?” asked Mercedes.

  “Yes, and many others.” She left her work and returned with a pack of cardboard patterns. “They are all copies from Grandmother’s patterns. I made them by placing a plain piece of cardboard under the original pattern and punching the perforations with this large pin. So now I don’t have to be running up to ask for the loan of a pattern. I have my own.”

  “Have you ever made an original pattern?” asked Teresa.

  “Heavens, no. I would not know how.”

  “But someone must have made the very first pattern,” she insisted.

  “That is true, but I do not have the least idea who it was, and what’s more, I don’t even care, not when you can always borrow patterns and copy the ones you like best.”

  “Grandmother said that when one knew how to make lace, one could make patterns.”

  “We tried to make some yesterday,” said Mercedes, “even before we knew how to make lace. Wasn’t that foolish?”

  “I bet it was Teresa’s idea,” said Sixta.

  “And not a very good one,” said Teresa. “Yet, there must be some way to figure those patterns out. Someday I may even surprise you.”

  “In the meantime, be sure you make more than just that design. By the time you learn to do the others, you’ll be glad to have ready-made patterns to work from.”

  “Here is the sample for the lace you are making,” said Sixta’s mother, unrolling a piece of lace out of a large roll.

  “Oh, it is actually beautiful,” Teresa said. “Sixta, have you made all the rest of the lace on that roll, too?”

  “Those are my samples. I always leave a piece of everything I make. Sometimes I get special orders when I show them to the stores where I go applying for work.”

  She turned over one of the cardboard patterns. “I even keep the number of bobbin pins needed for each design marked on the back, so that I won’t have to guess or run up to ask Grandmother.”

  She opened the rest of the samples. Some were as narrow as the one the girls were doing, others as wide as some of the crochet borders in Grandmother’s sheets and pillow cases, and others were scalloped and filled with intricate designs.

  “Do you still feel like making your own patterns, Teresa?” asked Sixta as the girls helped her roll up the samples again.

  Teresa shook her head. “Not if I have to learn first how to do all of these patterns…but it was rather fun trying to yesterday. Today, I know better…”

  CHAPTER 8

  SHOPPING TRIP

  Teresa, Ramón and Mercedes were out in the shed when Grandmother came with the long shears to work in her garden. Ramón picked up the pail of water and Teresa the watering can, and all three followed her.

  The garden was on the south side of the house. It was a daily chore for Grandmother, taking hours of her time. Every summer Teresa had been her constant helper, but since Mercedes had come, Grandmother had been unable to enlist Teresa’s help, for the two girls spent much of their free time walking about the finca. It had been Doña Anita who had solved the problem, by suggesting a definite day of the week to devote to the garden. That had saved arguments and time, and had given Grandmother three helpers instead of one.

  “Look at those poor plants,” Grandmother said, “What with the caterpillars, lizards and ants, it’s a wonder there are any left. Start pulling those weeds, Teresa. Get Mercedes to help you. Ramón and I must start working on the other side.”

  As Grandmother approached a patch of flowering plants, she said, “Who would have thought that these geraniums would live, eh, Ramón? There are lots of new shoots up; I believe they are safe now.” She turned over the earth about the plants.

  Ramón tied the stalks of tuberoses which the wind had blown apart. The blooms were partly open, and the pungent scent filled the air. The carnation plants were full of buds. Some were beginning to open, showing their pink, white and deep red petals to the sun.

  Grandmother’s pride was a bed of pansies. It was a small one, but the plants yielded large saucyfaced pansies, soft and velvety to the touch. Butterflies as varied in hues as the pansies themselves hovered over the bed constantly.

  “The sun has dried almost completely the border of alhabaca,” said Teresa. “The stalks look like straw.”

  “Pick up the leaves then,” said Grandmother. “They are just right to be used in the bay rum bottle.”

  Grandmother’s bay rum bottle was a household possession. Into it went petals of roses and scented leaves from her garden.

  The bottle had many uses. Sometimes it helped relieve Grandmother’s aching back or stiff fingers or Doña Anita’s headaches. On extremely hot days, there was nothing more soothing than to mop one’s forehead with a handkerchief soaked in the fragrant bay rum. Even Don Rodrigo used it on his face, like an after-shaving lotion, and said he preferred it to the lotions he bought at the drug store.

  Close to some of the geranium plants, Ramón noticed a tiny sensitive plant. He touched it and watched the leaves fold up and close.

  “Shall I pull it out, Grandmother? What good is a sensitive plant here?”

  “No, let the moriviví be,” she answered. “It will only grow up again.”

  The girls collected the dried leaves of the geranium and added them to the alhabaca. When Ramón brought the roses he had cut, they stuffed everything into the empty water can and then sat down to rest. Their backs ached from the stooping position they had been in all morning.

  “I think we have done enough for one day,” said Grandmother. “The sun is too hot to do anything else.”

  Gladly the girls picked up the watering can and followed her back to the house.

  Doña Anita sat examining a fashion magazine and the girls joined her.

  “When are we going to buy material for the dresses Sixta is going to make for us?” asked Teresa.

  “With all the work lined up ahead of me, I can’t tell when I can take you.”

  “You really don’t have to take them shopping,” said Grandmother. “Ramón is going to town tomorrow. Why not let the girls go along with him?”

  Doña Anita hesitated for a minute, but finally agreed.

 
“Take Antonio along,” Grandmother suggested. “He will never forgive you if you leave him behind.”

  The next day, Ramón was the first up and went to give Antonio the news. He shook Antonio’s cot, but he did not awaken.

  “Antonio,” called his mother, giving the cot a shake that almost sent him to the bare floor. “Ramón is here and waiting for you.”

  “Ramón? Ramón?” he murmured half-asleep.

  “Hurry up, Antonio,” said Ramón. “We are going to Cayey and you are going with us.”

  Antonio sat up.

  A trip to Cayey with Ramón, Teresa and Mercedes did not happen every day.

  Teresa and Mercedes were waiting when the boys arrived.

  Ramón saddled two horses: one for Mercedes and Teresa; the other for Antonio and himself. He put saddlebags on his own, for he had two pairs of heavy boots to bring back from town, besides the things Teresa was to buy.

  “Ride along ahead, Ramón,” said Don Rodrigo, “and let Teresa follow you. Stay close to the side of the road and look out for coaches.”

  Though it was early, the road was alive with farmers going to market. Some carried their vegetables on their backs, while others rode horses or pushed along large wheelbarrows.

  “I can already see town,” said Mercedes when the roofs of the first houses came into view.

  “That is not the town,” called back Antonio. “It’s only the military headquarters.”

  “Wait, Ramón, let Mercedes see them,” said Teresa, riding close to the gate. The American flag was being hoisted and soldiers stood at attention.

  “No one ever goes in there,” whispered Antonio, “unless they have a special pass. This is where the soldiers live.”

  “We also have soldiers in San Juan,” said Mercedes. “They live in the Morro Castle and in the San Cristóbal Fort. No one goes there either, unless they have a pass.”

  “Come now,” said Ramón, “you can look again when we come back.”

  As they drew away, tall American mules were brought from the stables. They had warm blankets over their backs. The children rode past the base and then their horses picked up speed. Soon they were crossing the small bridge into town. Ramón stopped at Martín’s blacksmith shop at the entrance of town.