Don Pito (2014)

Ramonita traveled with her parents who worked on the farms of South Jersey. As she got older, her affinity for the area grew especially toward the Napoli farm. There, the soft, porous soil reminded her of the narrow flat lands between the mountains and the beaches of Puerto Rico where she watched her parents cut cane and load the little train with cane that went from Salinas to the Bacardi factory in Ponce in the fifties.

Before her fifteenth birthday, she married Don Lilo, a good man full of promises who was a dozen or so years older than she was and whose blood had already been thickened by the harsh New York winters. Don Lilo promised Ramonita’s father, mother, and aunts and uncles a better life for her and promised Ramonita’s family the mountainside that faced Naranjito from the south where they could grow food and build cement houses.

Don Lilo had a good reputation. He was gentle and courteous and read magazines. He was tall and thin and light skinned with thinning red curly hair and some suspected that his real father had been a gringo overseer for a large coffee estate. He had only fostered one child out of wedlock, but he didn’t have much contact with the child’s mother. His family had been prosperous in the past but no one except the old storytellers could remember exactly when or why but they knew he liked horses. Knowledge of horses was the last vestige of Don Lilo's family's prosperity that had been passed on to him. Don Lilo de Naranjito had taught Ramonita to ride but it was Don Pito de South New Jersey who had bought Ramonita her first pony.

When they first married, Ramonita and Lilo followed in her parents’ ways by following the harvest with the eastern stream of migrant workers from Florida to Georgia, to New Jersey. Don Lilo promised Ramonita a quinceañera, but she never would have one. When she was twenty-one, after her third child and after Don Lilo fell asleep on a Manhattan street after a night of drinking and froze to death, Ramonita found herself alone in a one-room tenement house with three children. She sent Don Lilo’s body back to Naranjito but couldn’t afford to go herself with her three children. Someone wrote to Ramonita to tell her that they had placed a wooden cross on Don Lilo’s grave and that he was buried about thirty meters below the large flamboyant tree on cemetery hill.

She took the bus to Philadelphia and walked with her children in the dead of winter across the Commodore Barry Bridge to Old Man Napoli’s tomato farm. Napoli's wife, Yolanda, was surprised and overwhelmed to see her. The Napoli’s had known Ramonita ever since she was a little girl. They took her on as a cook and housekeeper. Don Pito turned on the heat in the little cabaña off the main property down the old cart road. The cabaña had one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room. Ramonita turned it into a palace.

She was proud that Don Pito attended to her and had taken her from the fields and that the other Puerto Rican women were jealous.

The following spring, Don Pito and Ramonita painted the cabaña yellow and peach with the leftover paint that Don Pito had used in his bathroom. That summer, they replaced the roof and gave Ramonita a key to the big house where she could use the washing machine and dryer.

The farmworkers called Old Man Napoli, Don Pito, because he never stopped whistling. Don Pito was a first-generation Italian immigrant who settled in South Jersey. He was a brawny, big chested man with dark, leathery skin who never lost his accent. His strength and vigor betrayed his sixty-something age.

Don Pito had known Ramonita ever since she was a little girl. To Don Pito, Little Ramona was like a prodigal daughter whom he waited for to return every season. Don Pito and Yolanda could have only one child, a boy, Vincent. It was God's will, they would say. Vincent left the farm for Penn, became a lawyer, quit, got his PhD in Hebrew studies at Dropsie, moved to Bleeker Street, and got a job as a librarian in New York City. He was a disappointment. Don Pito never spoke much about him but Yolanda was still proud and bragged to everybody about how many languages Vinnie could speak and always sent his lover, Nick, anisette laced pizzelles on holidays.

One Saturday, Don Pito’s migrant workers were coming in from the fields. The young men were talking about their Saturday night American girls in curlers. Girls who had grown fat and wide in their hips after their husbands or boyfriends had left them for the Cowtown Rodeo or the shipyards of Chester. Ramonita was taking homemade zucchini bread, tangerines, and water in plastic milk cartons to the workers in the tomato fields.

It was a ritual toward the end of the day for Don Pito to sit down with his workers and talk. He had pride in their labor and was not offended by the calloused hand. It reminded him of his peasant upbringing in Italy.

Ramonita was late today because Don Pito’s wife, Yolanda, was having troubles. Yolanda’s doctor had changed her medicine for the pinched nerve in her neck and she was suffering. Ramonita did what she could for the old lady between gathering her bundles for the workers and cooking supper. Ramonita told the old lady she would be back right away. She turned down the stove burners to low and took the bundle outside and laid it across her pony tied to the rod iron porch gait.

Ramonita mounted the pony. It was a hot, cloudless day. Ramonita intercepted the workers returning to the compound. They made fun of her being late but didn’t seem to mind. Don Pito grabbed the leather tether and led the pony while Ramonita rode. Don Pito had never led the Pony before while Ramonita rode. She hoped he wasn’t angry with her for being late because he knew Yolanda was suffering and Ramonita did not want Don Pito to ignore Yolanda’s pain.

Ramonita let Don Pito lead the animal and thought it a bit silly for him to do so, especially because she still had work to do back at the big house where Don Pito’s wife was waiting for her. She thought of the greasy pan in the sink and her fried zucchini and pork in the oven. She knew Don Pito liked the skin of the pig a little burnt, but she didn’t want it to cook too long because the meat would lose its juice.

They lagged behind the group, picking up dropped or forgotten tools, aprons and random baskets that Ramonita stacked behind the pony's mane. They laughed and joked, and Ramonita feigned agitation with the old man as the stack of baskets got higher and higher hiding Ramonita behind them. He was not angry with her, and Ramonita felt that the old man was happy to see her. Ramonita pulled the stack of baskets closer to her body, pulling her dress up to a bundle below her hips into a mound in her crotch; the hard wooden binding of the basket's bottom rim pressing and pinching against the inside of her thighs made her adjust her seating to the gait of the unhobbled pony.

Back and forth, back and forth, up and back, the animal paced occasionally kicking a stone or moving its legs sideways to avoid a low spot in the cart road. Ramonita balanced herself and the baskets and held on to the pony with the strength of her legs pressing them to the pony’s sides. When they got to the woodshed before the main road to the house, Don Pito stopped whistling and lifted the baskets off the pony. His face was redder than it had been, and his eyes were watery and squinty. The workers went ahead. Ramonita swung her brown leg across the pony’s mane and slid off to help him. She followed him behind the woodshed that set between his tomato field and a windbreak row of thick arborvitae. They were alone.

As Don Pito stacked the empty baskets in the woodshed, Ramonita sat down on the grassy rise next to the arborvitae. "Be careful of the bees, Popi," Ramonita said. She had been stung by some yellow jackets that had built a nest under the old woodshed. She pulled her knees up to her chest but made no attempt to hide her white fluffy drawers and thighs. Don Pito came out of the woodshed, beads of sweat drifting down his face. "We should keep that door open for a breeze," he said. "Then the bees go away."

“OK, Popi, come sit an’ rest,” Ramonita said worried about the old man’s deep red face and the heat. She didn’t want him to have a stroke. She needed Don Pito to help Yolanda tonight. He stopped and looked at Ramonita. Ramonita had seen the look before some twenty years before when Don Lilo had first taken her between the two mountains one afternoon walking home from the river to her parents' home in Naranjito. She was only fifteen then and had not had her quinceañera because her mother could not afford a white dress. She did not move to hide herself because to do so would betray a confidence.

She had made a decision and told herself that she would live with it. It was God's will. That was enough to atone for her pleasure in being wanted. No one deserved her more than Don Pito. If there were a betrayal, it would remain unspoken.

Don Pito lifted her and pulled her toward him. The sweat on their arms slid together and she felt his rough skin mingle on her smooth olive skin. The pony had lathered. The inside of Ra-monita’s legs was wet from the white foamy lather. It was a sign she thought. Go slow Popi, Ramonita thought. Enjoy it for now because you will not sleep well tonight. Your sin will keep you awake. Yolanda suffers at home for you.

Ramonita could not speak. Don Pito undid the first button on her dress. She took his hand and removed it because she knew the knuckles of his old fingers pained him. Don Pito turned, and she grabbed his arm and gently pushed him back. She began to unbutton her dress. When she got to the last button just above her waist, she noticed one of Don Pito’s workers come around the arborvitae hedge. Don Pito did not notice. The worker did not look their way but veered left taking the long way back to workers’ houses.

Don Pito put his hand behind her knees and back and lifted her. Ramonita felt for the side of her dress to pull it closed. The old man’s movements were not gentle like a young man’s. She heard the bones of knees crack as he bent. He set her on the ground. He stared down on her and opened her dress exposing her brown breasts. She nudged upward and forward with her shoulder blades so that he could more easily kiss her breasts. Never taking his eyes from her eyes, he lifted her thin cotton dress upward from her knees and pulled her loose underwear to the side. He took care not to put his aged weight too heavily on her legs. He pushed her leg to the side with his left leg kicking up dust with his boot. He undid his thick leathery belt and loose-fitting Dickies. She turned her head to the side not to see his eyes for she did not want to see his embarrassment if he could not find his strength. Ramonita gently lifted her hips to brace herself and search for footing with her heals in the sandy soil. A tear streamed down Ramonita’s face, and she said a silent prayer to ask God to give Don Pito the strength to finish and manliness to forgive himself. She wondered how she would forgive herself if Don Pito failed or if she could not atone for all he had done for her and her children. She quickly tried to wipe the tear away before he saw it. Don Pito stopped and tried to pull away from her.

“Stay,” Ramonita said and nodded to Don Pito, “Stay,” as her hand snapped down to grab him before he had left her completely.

“Stay, Popi,” she said and caressed his old leathery face.

She managed to slide her fluffy panties down without moving his bulky frame. She paced him to the gait of the unhobbled pony. Don Pito closed his eyes and for a moment was young and strong. She lifted up to kiss his graying chest and then looked beneath him, under his aging belly and dirty shirt, to make sure she had not distracted him. Don Pito buried his face in her neck and took a deep breath through his nose. She gently gave a little budge. He was with her now, with her in all of his fullness, and he felt the blazing sun on his back through his shirt. When Don Pito had finished, she pushed her hips into him. She did not want to lose him even though he was losing her.

“Bueno, Popi. Suave,” Ramonita said caressing the old man’s hair and kissing him fully on his dry lips.

Afterward, Don Pito brushed the sand off Ramonita’s back and told her he was sorry that he had made her pretty dress dirty. She gently touched his bristly face. It wasn’t as red as it was before. Ramonita was careful mounting the pony that had been waiting patiently for her. Sensing the moment, it had extended its phallus. Ramonita lifted up and reached back with both bare feet and clutched the pony’s phallus.

“No. No. Don’ do that,” Don Pito said smiling. “You make him angry.”

“He angry, Popi. Celloso. You almos’ as big as him.”

Don Pito handed Ramonita her sandals that she had left on the ground. Without taking them, with an act of strength and pride, she pulled the reins hard to the right, she kicked the little pony hard in its side with her bare heel and galloped passed Don Pito, the pony’s phallus swinging like a thick, knotted cord. She rode back to the big house to unload the untouched fruit and to message Vicks Vapor Rub on Yolanda’s back and neck.

Don Pito returned to the house, hosed off Ramonita's sandals and set them by the screen door next to his work boots by the rod iron railing. He thought he might rub the pony down because he was lathered but it was Ramonita’s pony. She had always cared for it.

The following year, just after the last frost, Don Pito, with a little persuasion from his wife, paid Ramonita’s airfare back to Puerto Rico. Ramonita embraced Don Pito's wife and was forgiven. Marisol was born two weeks later and never would know her father who died of a heart attack just before the harvest. And even though she would know not her father, Marisol would know many others who would try to be.

Ramonita called Don Pito twice after she returned to Puerto Rico. The first time, when she arrived to let him know she was OK. The second time, months later, she had left a message on his answering machine asking him if he wanted her to return. A dream had prompted her to make the call. She had had a dark premonition of five full moons crossing a cloudy night sky. It was just a dream but when she awoke, the light of the moon had invaded her bedroom. She did not like the moon. She felt that it drew away her strength and claimed it gave her a headache.

Two days later, her neighbor who had a telephone, came to her door to tell her she had a phone call. It was Don Pito’s wife. Don Pito’s wife spoke to Ramonita respectfully and with dignity. She delicately told her that she had heard her message and that she was not the cause of her sorrow. She spoke more like a mother. She told Ramonita that Don Pito had had a heart attack but that it was not Ramonita’s fault. Don Pito had got into an argument with one of his tenants.

He went quickly, she said. He did not suffer. She asked Ramonita not to come to the funeral because it would cause problems with the family but that later, she could come and to bring the baby to see her but not to wait too long because she was going to sell the farm and move to New York to live with her son Vincent. Yolanda warned her not to wait too long because she was going to die soon.