The Empty Hammock Read Online Free Page A

cassava and made the bammy from scratch.
    “How is it?” Clara asked worriedly. She was always trying to get it right.
    “It's good Ma,” Carey answered, taking one more from the basket that was in the center of the table. “Tell me how you do it again?”
    “Well I…” Clara was getting ready to expound on the finer points of making the bammy, when Ana piped up.
    “It has in a bit more salt than the natives would have made it.”
    “Well, well, Miss Bammy Maker,” declared Carey curiously. “How do you know this?”
    “The original people, the Tainos, used to grate the root on a board that they covered with small pebbles until it formed a paste. Then they would put it into a wicker tube, which they would hang on a branch, they would then attach a heavy stone or some other weight to it to force the poisonous liquid out through the wicker. They would leave the paste to dry and pound it with a stone mortar to make flour, add sea salt for flavor and pound, to form flat cakes; they would then bake it to perfection on a clay griddle.”
    Carey’s fork was half-way to his mouth, and Clara was just staring.
    Ana continued to eat as if she didn't say something out of the ordinary.
    “Ana, I thought you had no time for anything besides marketing. “How could you remember this and not my birthday last week?” Clara asked incredulously.
    Ana looked up, “I don’t know, it was just there in my head. Probably Dad told me,” she said staring from her brother to her mother. “Your birthday was last week?”
    They looked at each other and then continued eating. Ana was definitely not herself.

    CHAPTER THREE
     
    “Ma, I want to see that treasure chest you were so agog about,” Ana declared after breakfast.
    They were lounging around the back in hammocks. Ana was peeping at the sky through her leafy kingdom as the breeze gently swayed the hammock.
    Carey laughed. “I was so frustrated last night that I could not get the rusty lock off the thing, I gave up. The way mom described it, I thought it was a big, old treasure chest that you’d see in the movies. Instead it was more like a tall shoe box with a handle,” he said and looked at his mother who was in the process of getting out of the hammock.
    “Come, Ana. I am sure, between the two of us ladies, we can open the box.”
    Clara and Ana hauled the chest from where she had stashed it into the corner of the veranda and stood over it. The box was rusty with age and had algae growing at the sides and on the top. It was sealed closed by rust and a heavy looking lock that seemed as if all its properties had merged together over the years.
    “Wow, this is exciting,” Ana said, gushing. “There could be treasure in there. Dad should be here to see this.”
    “Well, I can’t agree more,” Carey mumbled. “Then he would be the one to have to tussle with this sealed shut baby here.”
    “Where exactly did you dig it up, Mom?” Ana asked curiously.
    “Under that tree,” Clara said, pointing to a palm tree. “I wanted to plant some flowers over there. It would have been good to look at while hanging in the hammocks, but now I'm not so sure, I want to find out if there is more treasure there.”
    “Well lets clean it up,” Ana said enthusiastically. “We have to open it today. I won’t sleep tonight if I can’t see what’s inside.”
    After putting on gloves, each of them took a side of the treasure chest to clean.
    “Remember the time when Dad found the human bone in the bottom of his lettuce garden?” Carey asked, “he was deliriously happy for weeks. He dug up the whole place looking for more but only found that one bone.”
    “It was a foot bone,” said Ana. “The National Heritage Trust gave it to the local Taino museum.”
    “That’s when your father started going crazy,” Clara muttered. “He kept going down to the palm trees. Said he had to warn them. When I asked who, he clammed up.”
    “He was watching too much sci-fi,” Carey said