The Farming of Bones: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Doctor Javier, a Dominican physician within the community, arrives at Señora Valencia’s house and examines the newborns. Señora Valencia tells the doctor that she is grateful that Amabelle knows how to birth children. Amabelle notes that Doctor Javier wears a “wooden carving of cane leaves” on a pin in his shirt. The carving is similar to those worn by “cane cutters.” The doctor asks Amabelle to go boil water so that the children can be bathed.

Amabelle fetches the water, and sees Juana, another member of the household staff. Amabelle recalls that Juana and her husband, Luis, have worked for the family for decades. When Amabelle returns with the water, Don Ignacio is in the room with Doctor Javier and Señora Valencia. Don Ignacio asks when the children were born; Amabelle does not know precisely. Don Ignacio writes down the time and place of the births in elaborate script, noting that they occurred in the “seventh year of the Era of Generalissimo Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina.”

Doctor Javier comments on Rosalinda’s dark skin tone, only to be chastised by Don Ignacio, who is the señora’s father. Don Ignacio points out that the baby’s coloring must come from her father; he then extols his own family’s Spanish heritage, claiming that the daughter can “trace her family to the Conquistadores, the line of El Almirante, Cristobal Colón.”

Doctor Javier and Amabelle leave the new mother to rest, and the doctor gets something stuck in his hair. Amabelle reaches up to help remove it, but then remembers she “must always be on [her] guard” while she is “working for others.”

The doctor then strikes up a conversation about Señor Pico (Señora Valencia’s husband). He notes that the señor’s rank “changes” very frequently, and claims that the military men do not like him. He then tells Amabelle to look after the children and particularly urges her to keep an eye on Rosalinda, who is smaller. He insists the son, however, is healthy. Doctor Javier then tells Amabelle that she should go back to Haiti and become a midwife. Amabelle replies that she has not been back across the border since she was eight years old. The doctor tells her to consider the option, and leaves.

Juana, a housemaid, comes into the room, and Amabelle informs her that the señora has given birth. Juana crosses herself, and considers it a “miracle” to have “twin babies in the house.” She rushes off to the señora’s room to see the children.

As soon as Juana sees the children, she bursts into tears. Señora Valencia informs Juana that her daughter is named after her mother, causing Juana to “sob louder.” Juana claims that if the señora’s mother had lived to see the day, she would have been crying as well.