Beyond Mud and Vines (ePub)

A violent storm dropped Sabina into her mother's bed, according to her sister Emilia, who knew everything just because she was the oldest child in the Montalvo family.  As the only child (among eight siblings) with light skin, blond hair, and green eyes born to dark parents, Sabina was constantly told that she was weird and different.

Her father insisted that the sun would darken her skin, if he kept her pulling weeds, planting crops, and helping him up on the roof.  The sun blistered the top of her head, her nose, and shoulders, and the hot tin-roof burnt the bottom of her feet.  Still, Sabina could not complain.  If she did, her father, who wore a hat, long sleeves, and shoes, would rap her on the head with his knuckles.  

Only when a letter came from the school at the top of the mountain did Sabina's father allow her and her sister to attend school.  He didn't want the school to send the authorities to investigate, and catch him making rum, which was illegal since the island had become a possession of the United States. Sabina, born with a great thirst for knowledge, excelled quickly. But the school closed for two years, and when it finally reopened, her parents didn't let her return for forth grade.

Sabina became a full-time worker on the farm, and endured cruelty from her father, mother, and oldest sister.  She trembled near a swollen creek, keeping the fire burning under her father's rum-making apparatus during a raging storm.  Through the thick cloud of rain, she saw a family of seven attempt to cross the creek, and one by one get flushed away by the muddy water.  She watched, and screamed, but even God couldn't hear her through the roaring thundering storm.  Sabina would be punished if she left the apparatus unattended to run home for safety, so she endured.  And the next day, she learned that her beloved godfather had also been flushed away by the same creek.

Sabina raised a starving baby-goat, which became her beloved pet, until her father had it butchered.  It devastated her to see it boiling in her mother's stew.  With pain in her heart she vowed to run away from home. But before she could plan her escape, her drunken father held a machete to her throat, forcing her to count fifty-two eggs for the seventh time.  She awakened on the slime of broken eggs, and heard her father beating the rest of his family.  She jumped out the window, and ran.  After hiding all night, she headed down to the river, which she hoped would lead her to a city on the west end of the island.  She would make something of herself, and one day come back to rescue her younger sister and brother, the only ones who had never been mean to her.