The Accidental Native (4 page)

I turned to Roque, who sat lips pursed.

“No, I'm a writer,” I explained.

“I tell all my professors, keep your nose clean, do not get into politics.” He gave me his big flipper-like hand, which I shook, and I left numb, almost not remembering Roque had accompanied me out the door. I looked at him, still stunned.

“Can he ask me that?”

“That's how things are here,” he said, bothered. I stood on the sidewalk, hands in pockets. Roque directed me toward the guest house.

“You're free now to spend the day as you wish. You should prepare for classes.” And he walked back to the building that shall remain nameless.

Classes had to wait.

The taxi took me to
my
house in less than two minutes, and in less time than that my heart sank. In my eyes, it was a shack. Other properties in the area appeared more upscale. But what a hodgepodge neighborhood it was. There were wooden cottages, smaller cement homes, huts with tin roofs and an occasional mansion sprouting like a flower among weeds, built by families with a long history in the area who didn't care about property values.

“This is it,” the driver said, breaking my thoughts.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Marcos Bortelli 98,” he said.

I turned to him and nodded, asked him how close we were to the university, and he laughed. “You can walk from here,” he said. I nodded, paid him, and he sped away.

Looking down toward the city center, I could see the top of the church steeple. Cars lined the sloping street that dove into the heart of town. Claustrophobic and third-world urban, I thought. Across from me, a mentally handicapped woman swung back and forth on a rocker, uttering guttural sounds approaching laughter—yah, yah, yah, yah. What was she trying to tell me? Probably, “run, run, run, you stupid fool.”

I felt sad that my parents were thinking of retiring to this crowded, fusion house. Fusion, because the house consisted of two parts: a cement portion and an elevated wooden part attached to it. The latter used to be a business—some sort of grocery store. I could not believe my parents were thinking of supplementing their income by running a neighborhood colmado—the thought depressed me. The image of my dad selling bananas actually made me laugh. No, they had good pensions, and I'm sure the proximity to the college had been intentional. Both would probably teach a class or two there to keep them mentally alert and to earn extra income. Most likely, my mother had seen potential in the house. Its quirkiness made her see uniqueness, a bunch of decorating and design challenges, to which, I'm sure, my dad envisioned a retirement full of “projects.”

Loud salsa blasted from inside the house. The front door slammed open and a large woman in curlers came out. I had assumed the house was empty. I crossed the narrow sidewalk and
stood next to the thick telephone pole in front of the house. I asked the woman if she lived there. Her eyebrows came together in hostile response and she called out for someone—it sounded like “Chu.” Chu waddled out, wearing a triple-X Lakers jersey and a menacing glare on his face.

“Excuse me,” I began.

“We rent here,” he broke in.

It didn't surprise me, because my parents were smart that way. Why lose money on a property if you're not living in it, right? Rent it. And, of course, I didn't know because as usual I never became involved in their affairs, never even became interested in any of their plans. I felt like a crappy son.

“Well, I'm the son of the people you rent from …” I said, feeling my voice fade.

“Look, we'll catch up on the rent, okay?” was the reply. “We're a little tight with money right now, okay?” He kept saying “okay” as if he were speaking to an idiot.

“You don't understand. You have to move out. I've decided to move in.”

They looked at me, shocked and then angry.

“You can't do that. We live here and pay rent.”

“But you just said you owe money.”

“Don't matter. We have rights.”

“I'm sorry,” and I truly was, but I needed a place to live. “You'll have to move. I can give you until the end of the month.”

“What? You're crazy, man,” this uttered in English. “Crazy.”

“That may be true, but you have to move.”

“You can't do this. We're poor, but we have rights,” said the woman in Spanish.

“Sorry, I need a place to live.”

“We don't have to speak with you,” said the man. “We do business with Don Juanma and Doña Magda.”

I looked toward the mountains rising in the south.

“Well, they won't be able to continue doing business with you. Because they passed away.”

They looked at me as if I were lying. But they saw the drop in my mouth and understood that I was not. Apparently, these were
the only two people in Puerto Rico who did not know. They said nothing for a while, exchanged glances, lowered their heads.

“I feel sorry for you,” said the man. “But we can't move right now, sorry.”

They backed themselves into the house, the music blasting away. I stood behind the gate, looking through the rejas, those iron bars that every house in the island installs to protect against the constant threat of crime. Behind the bars, I stretched my neck, trying to peek through the door opening into the place where my parents had chosen to live their golden years.

My parents, Puerto Rican in flesh and spirit, passed on to me their Boricua DNA, but it had failed to manifest itself in any genuine way. They attempted to teach me about the island, about its history and culture. I resisted, and at some level I still do. It is a burden I simply didn't want.

That burden became heavier with Julia's emergence out of thin air. Once on the island, she called me for several lunches and dinners. Fine, she wanted to bond with me. In due time, she kept telling me, she would explain everything about my father and her. I continued going to our get-to-know-each-other meals, but we usually discussed current events, the weather—small talk, really. At the last dinner, she told me how distressed she was that her only son was so ignorant of Puerto Rican history and culture, how distressingly alienated I was from my Puerto Ricaness. In her fashionable pin-striped pants suit, a rose brooch pinned to her lapel, thick dark hair with a few gray strands cut precisely to her neck, her penetrating brown eyes staring at me through Christian Dior frames, she told me how naïve I was about the U.S. involvement in Puerto Rico. I would have rather talked about how difficult it was to hear her call me son, but I listened respectfully as she outlined a plan to “re-integrate” me into Puerto Rican society.

“I have to purge you of the last drop of Yankeeness,” she joked, in Spanish.

I googled my biological mother—Julia Matos Canales—and learned she was a founding partner at a law firm in San Juan—Garrutia, Matos and Bustamante—known for taking cases involving
political activists and action lawsuits against the U.S. government. She had a reputation for being a firebrand, an
independentista
who ran for a San Juan senate seat as a Puerto Rican Independence Party candidate, a feminist, an outspoken woman. She was unmarried and, according to the information I gathered, childless. Often, she took on high-profile cases defending radical nationalists whom most Americans would brand as terrorists. She was born in 1960, which made her five years younger than
papi
—and in her twenties when she gave birth to me. Started law studies at the University of Puerto Rico but transferred a year later to the University of Pennsylvania's law school, where she graduated top of her class. In those details, I knew, was buried the story of how I came into the world and the aftermath. But Julia was not ready to share it.

Instead, she dedicated herself to lecturing me on Puerto Rican history, culture and society. She faxed me a bibliography of “must read books.” The Re-Education of René (she insisted on calling me by my real name) invigorated her, enlivened her discussions with me, definitely was shaping our reconnection. These efforts seemed a way to construct a bridge to narrow our distance, so awkward and painful between a mother and son. Besides all the reading, mini lectures, history lessons, she now suggested “cultural field trips” to get a “truer sense of the island and its people.” It was overbearing of her to suggest them, but I signed up anyway, with the hope of learning about my true past and family history.

So, when she called about the first field trip, to attend the commemoration of the Grito de Lares rebellion, I agreed. Julia had her secretary send me detailed directions and an address where I was to stay. She could have put me up in a parador, a small hotel in Quebradillas, a few miles away, but she wanted me to stay with her and her “compatriotas.”

Excellent directions led me to a former nineteenth-century coffee hacienda, which distant cousins now used as a summer home. The house overlooked the town of Lares, two kilometers away, and on a clear day the northwestern coast, known as Costa Brava, appeared in the distance. Coffee beans still grew but now ended up drying on the trees, lost amid the fierce foliage surrounding the
house. The owners kept the immediate grounds trimmed and beautiful. Baskets of geraniums, peonies and bougainvillea hung from the bottom of the second floor balcony. Orchids of all colors everywhere; vervain lined the grounds around the many trees.

By a faded wooden sign that read “Hacienda Colibrí” stood the stairs which led up to the second floor, the wrap-around balcony and my room. On a credenza and taped to an incongruous mobile phone, I saw a folded piece of paper with my name scrawled in large letters. A note from Julia, apologizing for not being here to meet me because she had business in town related to the festivities. She was part of the organizing committee and would return to dine with me and show me around. “Enjoy this beautiful house,” she wrote, “which is also part of your historical and family heritage.”

I circled the house, looking out from the four cardinal points. On the back of the house, a long wooden stairway zigzagged down to a pool. Invigorated by an idea of a swim, I found my room, threw the small carry-on on top of the bed and dug for my swimsuit. A few weeks in Puerto Rico and I had learned to pack a bathing suit, no matter my destination.

At poolside, sitting upright on a padded lounge chair, legs covered by a towel, sat an older woman, someone's abuela, I thought. Next to her sat a burly man, perhaps her son or grandson, dressed in black. He sat at the edge of the chair, alert, hands folded at the space between his knees. He stirred when he saw me, relaxed when he saw my towel and suntan lotion. I nodded a hello. Grandma dropped her copy of
El Día
, looked over her sunglasses and responded “Buenas tardes” in a firm tone. As I kicked my flipflops off and spread the sun block on, I caught a better glimpse of her. A stern face, with a mouth etched into a smile. She had a large mole under the left side of her lower lip. Beautiful eyebrows fanned out as they approached a fine nose with flaring nostrils. I sensed her watching me behind the sunglasses. What was up with her? This went beyond cougarism—this woman was in her eighties at least.

I dove in and did my usual laps. I had swum varsity in high school and did my standard warm up anytime I hit the water,
more out of habit than anything else. After treading water for a few minutes to cool off, I climbed into a floating doughnut, and paddled around a bit. When I reached her side of the pool, she leaned toward me.

“You Julia's son?” she said this in English, heavily accented, but clear.

I wasn't used to hearing myself linked to Julia like that, and I didn't know how this woman knew my mother and her life-long secret.

“You know Julia?” I asked.

She took off her sunglasses, slowly folding them at her waist. “So,” she said, smiling, “You are the reluctant prodigal son.” Her eyes lit up. An abundant, thick white mane surrounded her elegant face.

Another man dressed in black stood by the stairs, which led back to the house. I jumped off the doughnut, swam up to the side of the pool and pushed myself up and out. I don't know why, but when she said “prodigal son,” I saw it as “prodigal sun.”

We shook hands and she signaled me to sit by her. She pointed to a pitcher of orange juice filled with ice, her hand trembling a bit, but I declined. She stared at me for a minute longer than I felt comfortable being observed.

“You have Julia's eyes. They burn through you like a laser.” She shook a little jokingly. She must have known something, because my lack of response spawned an awkward silence. She patted my thigh.

“Everyone has a burden in life,” she said in Spanish, holding her pointer finger up in the air. “And God bears them all.”

She asked the nearest guy to her if he was getting hungry.

“Let's get some chicken at the Chinese,” she said.

He relayed the message to the other guy, who quickly left to run the errand. She took lipstick out of her purse, applied some and glanced out toward the mountains.

“Me, I have outlived my children,” she said. She stared at me, her lively eyes now deflated, and she said to me in a low voice, “Be thankful and happy you still have your mother.”

Evening approached; the pool lights came on and mosquitoes buzzed around us. The sky turned a burnt orange.

“You know, this is my hometown,” she said as she struggled to get up from the chair.

“Oh, is it?” I said, getting up to help her. The guy next to her was faster and held her arm as she stood up.

“I left many years ago, but the memories they don't leave.”

She waved her hand to no one in particular. She walked toward the stairs, holding on to the man's arm. At the base of the stairs, she turned her head.

“Welcome home.”

“I'm not from Lares.”

“No, welcome home to Puerto Rico.”

She ascended the long steps; almost at the top she started singing, “
La vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da la vida
.” She slipped into darkness and out of sight.