Anacaona Read online

  Matunherí’s difficult breathing made me feel terribly sad. It seemed certain that he would leave us soon. If he were to die, I wanted him to leave us with no worries about Xaraguá’s future, a future that depended partly on my decision. I had never felt so much like a cacica, more like a mature person, more like a woman, in my entire life. I had never felt more like my grandmother, who I was certain would have made the exact same decision had she been in my position. And though neither Xaraguá nor Matunherí was the sole reason I chose to link my fate to Chief Caonabó’s, they were both why I hastened to say those words so quickly, “Anacaona accepts.”

  Yes, I accept. It seems as if there could have been no other choice. Even Chief Caonabó must have known that this was the only thing I could say. And in spite of Bibi’s warnings for me to appear calm, I appeared more delighted than perhaps I should have in accepting Chief Caonabó. I raised my head and stood up straight and looked Chief Caonabó directly in the eye. I did not shuffle my feet or slump and I certainly did not whisper as though I was merely making a concession, a sacrifice for my people, as though I was simply giving in. For indeed I was not giving in. I was giving myself. And I was doing so freely and gladly. I was saying yes with my whole heart.

  Though it was obligatory and important, I felt that we would no longer need a marriage ceremony. In my mind a pact between myself and Chief Caonabó had already been sealed. I had bound myself to him and in the process had coupled Xaraguá and all our powers and riches with Maguana.

  HALF MOON, DAY 10

  Preparations have already begun for my marriage. Word has gone out all through the territories of Quisqueya that I am to be Caonabó’s wife. Caonabó has already returned to Maguana to arrange his bridal offering and to put into position a home for me there. Before his departure, Matunherí read the stars and decided that Caonabó and I should marry at the final appearance of the last quarter moon.

  I wish I’d had some time alone with Caonabó before he left, but Matunherí would not allow us to see each other outside the official meetings. We are to remain apart until we marry. This is how it has been with all of Behechio’s wives. They were all strangers to him. I do not want to marry a stranger. I would rather marry an ally, a friend, but the honor of Xaraguá is linked to my actions so I must do exactly as my uncle says.

  FULL MOON, DAY 11

  Our customs dictate that I am to remain in isolation in a special chamber of Matunherí’s temple until the day of my marriage. I will have no hand in the marriage preparations, I will do nothing at all, except reflect and pray to the heavens and plead my ancestors’ favors for the courage and grace to be a good wife. Every choice, from what to wear on my body to the dances that will be performed at the feast, will be made by Matunherí. At least Bibi, who knows my tastes and preferences, will be there to assist him. Food will be brought to me in the temple by servants who have orders not to speak to me. I will be very lonely. However, this period of contemplation and solitude will prepare me to slowly release my old life and accept my new one.

  FULL MOON, DAY 12

  My final moments out in the world, with the living. For the next few moons, I will be alone with my thoughts.

  Bibi and I went to the river for a bath with Matunherí’s and Behechio’s wives, who all had some counsel for me. “Be obedient.” “Do as Chief Caonabó says. He is the ruler of Maguana, not you.” “Be kind to everyone.” “Learn to love your new land.” “Don’t do like Yaruba.”

  Guamayto had the best advice of all: “Love him so much that if he should die, you would readily be buried with him, but if he should live, you would be even more joyful.” This gave us all pause, as we knew that Matunherí did not have much time left and it seemed as if Guamayto was telling us that she was ready to follow the custom and be buried with him at the time of his death.

  At the morning meal, Matunherí did not seem very well, sitting upright only with the help of a new, specially crafted chair that allowed for the weakness in his back. He had difficulty speaking, and I wondered if I would have to be called from the temple to attend his burial before my marriage. No one looked upon him with too much sadness, though, the way we might have at any other meal where he seemed so frail. Everyone was much too joyous at the prospect of my marriage, the happiness of one event balancing the sadness of the other.

  Behechio was more attentive to me, seeing to it that I had as much to eat as I wanted, passing the communal plate in my direction, moving it away from Matunherí, who did not have much of an appetite.

  Since Matunherí could barely speak, not many words were said at the morning gathering, and it was with this same silence, with the weight of both joy and pain upon us, that Bibi and Baba and Matunherí and Behechio escorted me to the temple chamber door and bid me a solemn farewell.

  Before they left, I asked to have a few final moments with Cuybio’s creation, upon which I have been recording these past seasons of my life. A servant will soon come to take these from me. It is to be given to Bibi for safekeeping, until I depart for my new life in Maguana, and begin to save my thoughts again.

  LAST QUARTER MOON, DAY 20

  During the interminable sunrises and sunsets of my isolation period, I not only rested and slept but also prayed to the ancestors, especially to my grandmother, for the courage to leave Xaraguá. Finally, I woke up one morning to find Matunherí standing over me in the temple.

  “The time has arrived,” he announced.

  He seemed happier and stronger than he had appeared in some time and this gave me hope that everything was going to be well, not only for me but for him, too. He had a small cauldron in his hand filled with a warm drink; he asked me to drink all of it and I did. As soon as the warm, bitter liquid passed my lips, I felt my head growing lighter, my skin tingling, and I realized I was slowly falling into a trance, a mild one, where I was slightly numb but could vaguely follow what was going on around me.

  Matunherí then left and Bibi and all the wives came in soon after. Bibi appeared calm. She seemed very pleased and happy with me. With help from Matunherí’s wives, she raised me to my feet and carried me to the river to bathe me.

  The path we took to the river was a new one, covered with smooth and freshly polished stones. It had been made especially for me on the day of my marriage. After my bath, where I was scrubbed with all types of cleansing and fortune-bearing herbs, I was taken back to Bibi’s house and my body was painted. Bibi placed some gold ornaments on my legs and neck and tied a flower-scented band of cloth around my arm to symbolize the binding nature of marriage. Then Baba appeared and took me to a small house near the plaza, a place that had been built especially for my temptation ceremony.

  It was an open room and in the middle was a chair Baba had carved for me out of wood, stone, and manatee bone. He led me to it and I sat down. I knew this temptation ritual well, having hidden in the woods to watch it each time Matunherí performed a marriage ceremony.

  Fifteen of the strongest and most handsome men from Xaraguá came into the temptation house and spoke to me of their virtues. Some told me they were rich. Others asked me to look at how handsome they were, and consider how patient they were, how kind. Many asked if I was certain I wanted to marry Caonabó and not them. By then Baba had disappeared, leaving me alone with the men who had been carefully picked by Matunherí for this special purpose.

  I refused them all and, after the last one had departed, walked out of the house, which was separated from the plaza by a wall of palms, and shouted in my loudest voice “Maricato!” That meant I had not only proven myself strong enough to resist a final temptation but had chosen the really strong one, my Caonabó.

  My shout was heard in the plaza and a roaring cheer came back in response, as all assembled were made aware that I was going to honor my decision to marry Caonabó.

  I was feeling much more myself, even though still light-headed from Matunherí’s potion. The potion was meant to make me weak so I would make my choice of marrying Caonabó with both a
clear and a cloudy head.

  After the temptation ceremony, Bibi and Matunherí’s wives returned to the new house along with Behechio’s wives. The wives formed a line by their order of marriage — Guamayto led the procession and Behechio’s most recent wife, his tenth, ended it. Baba had crafted a special marriage stool for me. It was covered with gold and seashells, which glistened in the sun. The servants carefully raised me up on the stool and carried me out to the plaza on their heads.

  The plaza was teeming with people, even more than had been present for my hair ceremony. There were special places reserved for important visitors, chiefs and subchiefs from all over Quisqueya, all wearing their most beautiful belts and headdresses, all with their faces and bodies painted.

  For a brief moment as I was carried to the marriage altar where Caonabó and Matunherí were sitting in their own elaborately decorated chairs, I looked over at the rows and rows of special guests and saw Caonabó’s brother, Manicaotex, a subchief of the Maguá territory, whom I mistook for Caonabó. They looked so much alike that I thought Manicaotex was Caonabó and the man sitting at the altar next to Matunherí was someone else. However, the closer I got to Caonabó, the more like himself he looked.

  As my stool was lowered to the ground, Caonabó waited for Matunherí to stand up to welcome me, then he did, too. Caonabó was holding a golden scepter almost as tall as he was. His teeth were filed thin and painted black and decorated with lavish stones and shells. His body was covered with ornamental symbols from Maguana. There were drawings of birds and serpents, rivers and hills, all neatly sketched on different parts of him. His flesh told the story of and paid homage to his land, its beauties and abundance, which would later be sung by one of his musicians at the marriage feast.

  Caonabó got up and walked over to meet me. He presented an elaborate necklace of feather, bone, and coral, one of his many bridal offerings, to Baba and Bibi before they backed away from the altar. Matunherí then lit one of his pipes and blew the tobacco smoke to the four corners of the wind. There was the beating of the ceremonial drums, performed by Behechio, then Matunherí said the marriage blessing. Manicaotex offered the golden scepter Caonabó had held in his hand to Matunherí. And with that we were married.

  The celebration lasted the duration of the new moon, during which the history of both Maguana and Xaraguá were sung, accompanied by maracas, drums, and stringed instruments. Matunherí organized pilgrimages to the hills and mountains of Xaraguá, where offerings of foods and animals were made to our first ancestors and to Yúcahu, god of the yucca, and Attabeira, goddess of our rivers and waterways and of fertility. There were many dances to Yúcahu and Attabeira and even one to me, performed by a group of young girls from the villages. They called it the Areito Anacaona. A group of young men performed an Areito Caonabó as well.

  Through the whole celebration, Caonabó sat with my uncle and the other chiefs, smoking tobacco and drinking potions like the one Matunherí had given me the morning of my marriage. I sat with Matunherí’s and Behechio’s wives, who repeated the same advice they had given me at the time of my river bath. During the feast, the servants loaded Caonabó’s ship with my belongings. At sunrise, I said good-bye to Baba, Bibi, Behechio, and Matunherí, kissing their hands and feet respectfully. Most of the people of Xaraguá had gathered on the beach to say goodbye to me, their Anacaona, their almost-ruler, their near-cacica. Wearing my new marriage skirt, which Bibi had made for me, I boarded the ship with Caonabó and slowly the seas carried me away from my beloved Xaraguá toward Caonabó’s Maguana.

  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.

  FIRST QUARTER MOON, DAY 4

  As Caonabó and I are traveling, visiting many small villages in Maguana, I have been taking note of all the exceptional fruits that can be found here. We have many of them in Xaraguá, too, but they appear much larger here.

  During our walks through Maguana’s villages, I have seen peppers the color of blood, annattos that could be mistaken for hibiscus, cotton-fruit soursop with seeds as large as cocoa pods, and pineapples larger than my head. Wherever we stop to rest, we are offered many gifts: hammocks, canoes, and birds, which Caonabó adores. In one day, we have collected so much more than we could ever use. Thus whatever we are given in one village, we distribute in the next. All except the birds, of course, which Caonabó has ordered the servants to look after with all their vigilance.

  Caonabó says that these gifts are really mine. The people offer them to me to make me feel welcomed. But I don’t need gifts to feel welcomed. The warm manner in which people have treated us already shows that they are happy to see me. I do my best to show them that I, too, am happy to see them, that I’m overjoyed to be in their land, at the side of their ruler.

  As the people line up on the side of the road to greet me, they call my name together with Caonabó’s, shouting “Anacaonabó!”

  When I was a girl and dreaming of taking my place at the head of my people, I had always imagined that my name would be joined with that of my brother, Behechio, he who was meant to rule with me. But the stars intended for me to become Anacaonabó. And so it is.

  The people of Maguana even call out that Caonabó and I are their “warriors” because Caonabó has fought the Kalinas so many times. I am startled to hear myself called a warrior, for even though I have trained to defend my people, I have not yet had a chance to prove myself. But now, by the simple nature of our association, whatever Caonabó is, I am, too.

  FIRST QUARTER MOON, DAY 5

  A hunting day for Caonabó. We spent the night at the village of his good friend Bayahibe, a subchief he has known since childhood. Caonabó and Bayahibe left at dawn and returned at dusk with plenty of fish a
nd meat for supper. Bayahibe’s beautiful young wife, Simihena, took me to a magnificent waterfall, where we spent our day splashing in the mountain streams. We walked in and out of the surrounding caves, their walls covered with turquoise, amethyst, and jade stones. Simihena has a kind and gentle face and reminds me very much of Bibi as well as my dear friend Yeybona, who was killed in the hurricane.

  FIRST QUARTER MOON, DAY 6

  As we left today, Simihena gave me a beautiful lightning stone. The stone, which is as wide and flat as my palm, is completely smooth, except for the tiny hole in the middle where the lightning struck it. I am stunned that the lightning did not break the stone altogether when it hit it. Holding this stone in my hand reminds me that perhaps this almost transparent rock acquired its beauty during the same hurricane that took the lives of my friends. But nature, as Simihena tells me, is as marvelous a carver as she is a destroyer.

  Simihena comes from a family of carvers. Her mother, like my father, used to make ceremonial masks and amulets for her village. After her mother’s death, the task fell to Simihena. I invited her to come and see me anytime she liked. Aside from Caonabó, Simihena is my first friend in Maguana.

  HALF MOON, DAY 7

  Caonabó and I have returned to our house. I am tired, but very happy. To welcome us back, the servants planted bright golden flowers — in other words, anacaonas — in the garden. A flock of Caonabó’s beautiful birds were also released. But fear not, they have been trained to return. Besides, we have so many now that soon Caonabó’s birds will outnumber the villagers.