Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(35)

“No,” I said softly. Still, I wondered if that was possible. Was it possible that chocolate wasn’t dangerous, or even unhealthy? Was what I’d been taught in school propaganda, a history cobbled together out of opportunistic half-truths? And if that were the case, why hadn’t Daddy ever said that to me? Or Nana?

Theo cut a pod off a tree. “Look here, Anya, this one is ripe.” He set the pod on the ground, then split it in half with a blunt whack of his machete. Inside the pod were about forty white beans arranged in neat rows and stacks. He picked up half the pod and held it out to me in the palm of his hand. “Look inside,” he whispered. “It is only a bean, Anya, and like you and like me, it is of God. Could there be anything more natural? More perfect?” He expertly removed a single ivory bean with his pinkie. “Taste,” he said.

I took the bean into my mouth. It was nutty, like an almond, but underneath there was the faintest hint of the sweetness to come.

*   *   *

Early every morning, Theo and I and the other farmers would go out to the orchard to look for signs of mold and, also, any ripe cacao pods we could find. The unusual thing about cacao was that it didn’t mature all at once. Some of the pods were early bloomers and some were late. It took practice to recognize just the moment when a pod was ripe. The weight of the pod, the size, the color, and the appearance of thick veins—all these signs could vary. We were careful with our tools (machetes for the pods close to the ground, and a long-handled hook for the ones higher up) because otherwise they could damage the tree. Our tools were blunt, and the bark was delicate. Though it was shady, I still got a deep tan. My hair grew out. My hands became worried with blisters, then thick with calluses. I had borrowed Luna’s machete as she had no use for this part of the process.

The major harvest took place just before Thanksgiving, which no one at Granja Mañana celebrated anyway. Still, I could not help but think of Leo in Japan, and my sister and everyone back in New York. On the first day of the harvest, the neighbors arrived with baskets and for nearly a week, we collected the ripe cacao pods. After we had collected the pods and moved them to the dry side of the farm, the pod smashing began. We used mallets and hammers to open the pods. Theo could do almost five hundred pods an hour. My first day of pod-smashing, I think I managed ten in total.

“You’re good at this,” I told Theo.

He shrugged off my compliment. “I should be. It’s in my blood, and I’ve been doing it all my life.”

“And do you think you’ll do this forever? Cacao farming, I mean.”

Theo whacked another cacao pod. “A long time ago, I thought I’d like to be a chocolatier. I thought I’d like to study the craft abroad somewhere, maybe with one of the masters in Europe, but now that doesn’t seem likely.”

I asked him why, and he told me that his family needed him. His father was dead, and his siblings really had no interest in the family business. “My mother runs the factories, and I run the farms. I can’t leave them, Anya.” He smiled wickedly at me. “It must be nice to be able to go far away from home. To be free of obligations and responsibilities.”

I wanted to tell him that I understood. I wanted to tell him the truth about myself, but I couldn’t. “Everyone has obligations,” I insisted.

“What are your obligations? You come here without a suitcase or anything else. You contact no one and no one contacts you. You seem pretty free to me and the truth is, I envy you!”

*   *   *

After all the beans were removed from the pods, they were scooped into ventilated wooden boxes. Banana leaves were placed over the beans, and then the beans were left to ferment for about six days. On the seventh day, we moved the fermented beans to the wooden decks, where they were spread out and left in the sun to bake and dry.

At this point, the least difficult part to my mind, Luna took over, freeing up Theo to go to Oaxaca to check on the Marquezes’ factories. Occasionally, she and I had to rake the beans to make sure they were drying evenly. The entire drying process took a little longer than a week because every time it rained, we had to stop to cover the beans again.

“I think my brother likes you,” Luna said to me as we raked through the beans.

“Castillo?” I had seen very little of him since that day he caught me in his arms, though my impression of him had certainly been favorable.

“Castillo is going to be a priest, Anya! I mean Theo, of course.”

“As a sister maybe,” I said.

“I am his sister, and I don’t think so. He is always going on and on to Mama about what a good worker you are and how you are like him. How you have cacao in your blood! And Mama and Abuela and Bisabuela adore you. I do, too.”

I stopped raking to stare at Luna. “I honestly don’t think Theo likes me, Luna. The first day we met, he mentioned a girl he was in love with and he made a point of telling me how ugly he found me.”

“Oh, Theo. My brother is so adorably awkward.”

“Well, I sincerely hope he doesn’t like me, Luna. I have a boyfriend back home, and…” And I chose not to complete the thought.

For a while, Luna said nothing, and when she next spoke, there was no small amount of outrage in her voice. “Why do you never talk about this boyfriend? And why does he never contact you? He can’t be a very good boyfriend if he never contacts you.” (Readers, it was much commented upon at Granja Mañana that I didn’t have a slate.) Obviously, there was a good reason why Win never contacted me. I was a fugitive. But I couldn’t very well say that to Luna.