Anacaona by Edwidge Danticat

Author:Edwidge Danticat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2015-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

FIRST QUARTER MOON, DAY 1

Maguana is beautiful. Just as I remember from my childhood visits, it is full of green hills and fertile valleys joined by rivers whose beds glitter with gold. Its waters are filled with more fish, turtles, iguanas, and manatee, than I have ever seen in Xaraguá. As the ship approached her harbor, I could see an abundance of canyons, gullies, caves, and grottoes. It would take my entire lifetime to name them all.

Rain trickled down on us upon our arrival day even while the sun was shining. This resulted in the most beautiful rainbows. Maguana’s people believe that rainbows are large, colorful snakes that have risen up to the heavens to drink from the clouds and that if you point at them, they will reach down and bite your fingers. (I was tempted to point at a very thick and beautiful rainbow to see what would happen, but Caonabó sensed this and warned me not to.)

On the beach where we landed, close to Niti, Caonabó’s village, the sand is fine and white and there are some magnificent rocks that appear to have been molded by the most skilled carvers in all of Quisqueya, even though they were actually fashioned by the movements of the sea.

Caonabó’s house is a most extravagant settlement, with all the other houses in the village built in a circle around his. (I should say our house, as it is now my house, too.)

Our house faces the plaza, where feasts and ball games are held under every phase of the moon. And our doors and windows are constructed in such a way that we do not even have to leave our hammocks to view the plaza and the events taking place there.

During a ceremonial batey, a ball game that was organized to welcome me to Maguana, the leader of the game, the son of a subchief, was so ashamed to have lost that he pierced his chest with a poisoned arrow and died. I was horrified by this strange welcome and immediately asked Caonabó to command that no one kill himself for losing a ball game in our presence — after all, if we did such things in Xaraguá, Behechio would be long dead — but Caonabó told me that it was important that honor be taught as well as shown and the man who killed himself was showing honor. (Maybe this is where Yaruba learned this type of honor.)

Everything happens quickly in Maguana, and the poor man’s corpse was soon removed from the field. The celebration continued, but we left the ball game because Caonabó wanted to show me some of the wonders of his land before dark.

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