If I Bring You Roses by Marisel Vera

Author:Marisel Vera [VERA, MARISEL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780446585569
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2011-08-02T22:00:00+00:00

They had to stop twice on the mountain road to ask directions to her parents’ house. She could only recall that her family lived farther up the mountain and that the house had to be reached on foot. After all these years of dreaming about coming back home, all the nights of praying for it, she was apprehensive now that the time had finally arrived. Aníbal stopped one barefoot jíbaro carrying a tree branch on his shoulders like a pole with a huge bunch of green bananas suspended at either end. The man pointed them farther up the road. Two more miles and they found a boy skipping rocks in the dirt.

“Hey, that’s my house. I’m Hidalgo,” he said.

Felicidad looked into the boy’s blue eyes and screamed. “Raffy, you’re Raffy!”

Tío Hernán woke up. “Don’t tell me that you hit your wife already,” he said to Aníbal. “Chico, you could at least wait a few days.”

Raffy climbed onto the bed of the truck, saying how he couldn’t believe that this was his big sister Felicidad that he had heard about. He forgot why Felicidad had gone away. How was it living in the big town, had she come to live with them again? Did she know that he had little brothers? And a baby sister? Ay, Mami and Papi were going to be surprised, yes, they were. Tía Imelda la jamona was getting pretty old now. She could hardly hear. Yes, Leila was home, and Juanita, too. Vicente? He had gone to the war. China, maybe. Korea? Yes, that’s where. The twins? He wasn’t sure where they went. Working someplace or other. Ruben helped Papi on the farm. He helped, too, taking them the lunches and bringing water. There, there was the house. It was hard to see it from here. Better park here. Park here. Right here on the edge of the road. By those trees. Boy, wait until the others see the truck, wait until he told them he had gotten to ride in it, boy, would they be jealous. He jumped off and ran down a little dirt path.

Tío Hernán carried the box of foodstuffs and followed Raffy. Felicidad hesitated. No one knew that they were coming. Everything had happened too quickly for a letter and there weren’t yet telephones or telephone lines on the mountain. What if her mother and father didn’t want her here? How could she bear the pain of it, the shame of it? What would her new husband think of her? What would her mother-in-law say?

“What’s wrong?” Aníbal asked.

She faced Aníbal in the cab of the truck.

“What if they don’t want me?”

He took her hand. “I promise you that they will be happy. Your father is probably killing a pig right now.”

“You think?” She couldn’t help smiling, thinking what a homecoming that would be, if only Papi had a pig to slaughter.

“We’ll send the boy for our things later.” He kissed her palm and helped her out of the truck.

Felicidad led him down the path of her childhood.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.