The Farming of Bones Read Free Page B

behind the ears, that one,” Doctor Javier boldly told Señora Valencia as he lifted her daughter from the water.
    “It must be from her father’s family,” Papi interjected, his fingertips caressing the skin of his sun-scorched white face. “My daughter was born in the capital of this country. Her mother was of pure Spanish blood. She can trace her family to the Conquistadores, the line of El Almirante, Cristobal Colon. And I, myself, was born near a seaport in Valencia, Spain.”
    We swaddled the babies in the white bands that I had hemmed during Señora Valencia’s pregnancy when she thought she would only have a girl. She took her daughter in her arms while Papi stared down at his grandson, rocking him back and forth across his chest.
    “You make a very impolite assertion,” Papi scolded Doctor Javier in a low voice when he thought his daughter wasn’t listening. “We don’t want to hear anything more of the kind.”
    “Amabelle, could I trouble you for un cafecito?” Doctor Javier thought it best to escape from Papi’s presence.
    “Give him anything he wants,” Papi said without looking up from his grandson’s face.
    Doctor Javier followed me to the pantry. As he passed through the doorway, a suspended bundle of dried parsley leaves brushed his scalp, leaving behind a few tiny stems in his hair. I reached up to flick them away but stopped myself in time. It would be too forward of me to touch him; he might misunderstand. Working for others, you must always be on your guard. Doctor Javier always addressed me kindly, but I could not presume that he would enjoy the feel of my hand wandering through his hair.
    “Amabelle, were you a midwife all this time and you never told us?” he asked.
    “I don’t think myself a midwife, Doctor.” Some of the coffee spilled as I poured it into a red orchid-patterned cup, set on its saucer, on a silver tray in front of him.
    “How did you know how to birth those children?”
    “My mother and father were herb healers in Haiti. When it was called for, they birthed a child,” I said, wanting to be modest on behalf of my parents, who had always been modest themselves.
    “Valencia tells me the little girl had a struggle,” he said.
    “She had a caul over her face and the umbilical cord was badly placed, yes.”
    “Badly placed, around her neck? It’s as if the other one tried to strangle her.”
    “If you will permit me, Doctor, I would rather not condemn these little children by speaking such things.”
    “Many of us start out as twins in the belly and do away with the other,” he persisted. “When I was a medical student, one time we found the two small legs of a baby separately lodged in the back of a grown male cadaver. No other manner to explain this, save that these legs had been lodged in the man since before he was born.”
    I thought perhaps he told me this to unnerve me. Many people who considered themselves clever found pleasure in frightening the household workers with marvelous tales of the outside world, a world they supposed we would never see for ourselves.
    “On the other hand,” he continued, “sometimes you have two children born at the same time; one is stillborn but the other one alive and healthy because the dead one gave the other a life transfusion in the womb and in essence sacrificed itself.”
    “I am thankful ours both survived,” I said.
    “Aside from medicine, my passions are language and lineage,” he said. “That little Rosalinda teaches me something when I look at her.”
    Was he showing off more of his knowledge for my sake?
    “Now that our old friend, the señora’s husband, is an officer, I never know what to call him,” he said. “His rank changes so often. If I remember, he was last a colonel. I have not seen him for some time.”
    “He returns from the barracks often enough,” I said, trying to make my way out of the conversation. “When he’s at home you’re always elsewhere. You should ask Señora