Cave of Little Faces. Aída Besançon Spencer
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was slowly backing a load of stone into the quarried-out space that would no doubt be two new lanes. Out of nowhere, for there were no buildings in sight, cashew vendors, with the cash crop of this part of the country, were pushing bottles stuffed with cashews in through their windows. “A free gift,” they were offering in Spanish and then in English. “You like. Trust me.”
“Never buy anything on the street that doesn’t come in a skin you can peel,” father had lectured them over and over, so all of them said, “No gracias, no gracias,” and, to the most persistent, waved an index finger back and forth, the island’s universal symbol for “No means no!”
Twenty minutes of “no” to the world’s most patient and vigorous vendors, at least in Jo’s mind, finally ended with the bus in front revving up and nearly asphyxiating the four of them. But they were on their way again, and no one complained, even though the construction site had barely disappeared in their rearview when they were halted again, bumping slowly over the sleeping policemen of Escondido, literally “The Hidden”—an appropriate name, if there every was one, Jo thought, for a little town in the middle of nowhere.
“When we get to Bani, can we stop?” asked Daniela suddenly. “I need to get out and stretch.”
“At the Sirena, right?” asked Ben, smirking. Sirena, the Siren, is the large department store at the very edge of town.
“Of course,” said Daniela. “You can get sodas, and I’ll just take a quick look at the reasonable styles for right now in the Republic—the stuff I brought along is sooo old! I bought it last year!”
“How about it, Jo?” asked Ben, craning around from the front seat.
“It’s okay with me; we’re making good time.”
Ben checked down what he considered the pecking order, “How about it, Rube?”
“Whatever,” snapped Ruby.
Bani is a full-fledged mini-city, a little town that grew and grew. It is not exactly on the main road, but—¡no problema!—its town council one year simply put up a one-way only sign on the main highway and rerouted everybody through the center of town. The “welcome committee,” so as to say, was a fleet of motorcyclists asking all tourists if they needed a guide, and both Ruby and Jo had to convince them out their two respective windows that they were no strangers and knew their way around. All anyone needed to do was follow the flow of traffic, though, with countless motorcycles darting everywhere like flies on a picnic, this was easier imagined than accomplished.
Daniela was glued to the window, which she’d closed to discourage vendors, and her practiced eye sorted through the high-tech computer shops next to the paint stores, the open market, and the cafeterias and bars, searching for clothing shops that were a little higher class than the thrift store, the open-air clothing market, and even an assorted pile on a divider attended by two young men at a cross street who were holding up various articles of clothing for display according to who was driving each car stopped at the light.
“Oh, there’s a place,” cried Daniela, pointing to a little boutique with mannequins with big rears proudly displayed in the store windows.
Ruby glanced over. “You’re so skinny, three of you could fit in one of those pants! Besides, the deal was Sirena and power drinks.” Ruby drove on.
Finally, the big yellow warehouse-like structure that was Sirena came up on their right. Across the street, Jo noticed a little colmado, a tiny traditional market with cans of food, fresh fruits, and even a sign for aspirin and other pharmaceutical products. Sirena, of course, also had a complete supermarket, making up what appeared to be half of its megastore. But the colmado was still here. The old and the new surviving directly across the street from each other, she mused. It was such a symbol of the nation itself: the oldest one in the new world, with one foot in the future and one foot in the past.
They walked back to their van, Ruby downing her power drink, Jo with a small mango juice, Daniela sipping from a soda, and Ben with a beer—“Just one,” he assured Jo and Ruby. Jo looked for the mountains beyond the fence. Again, two worlds: The fence encased the buildings, but the hills stood sentinel beyond.
The day was growing late on the far mountains, which were misting over, and even the near foothills were gathering shadows. They had traveled a lot that day—from Richfield on an airport shuttle to Newark, from Newark a hopover to New York, from New York a great bound to Hispaniola, and now from the airport through the capital, the countryside, and nearly onto the threshold of the entrance to the province of Independencia, the legendary refuge of the great Taino nation and to the seat of Barahona, the end of their journey.
Just on the other side of the cement works on the outskirts of Bani, Ben spied some cabañas, the lovely but thoroughly disreputable little “hotel motels” rented by the hour. “If it gets late, we can always stay in one of these,” he offered.
“Never,” said all three women at once.
Ben chuckled. “I wasn’t serious.”
“They have to hose ’em down after every guest!” growled Ruby.
“I was only kidding!”
The land beyond the cement works was becoming very dry. The air was filling up with the whirring of insects and cactus had appeared among the bushes and sandy soil.
The little roadside settlements were now mainly made of scrap metal and concrete. Ruby was racing along, passing cement trucks, when a huge tractor trailer came up on the left directly in her way. Ruby gunned the motor and charged head-on. Daniela shrieked as the truck flicked its lights at them and then Ruby slid seamlessly in front of the latest lumbering cement mixer and barreled on. Ben laughed and Jo shook her head.
By the time they got to Cruce de Ocoa, the land had become more fertile. Now it was all looking familiar to Jo. Huge plantain orchards lined with coconut palms 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