The Accidental Native (6 page)

After a breakfast of pan sobao, a soft sweet bread I loved buttered, strong island coffee, white cheese and fruit, I decided to collect my stuff and leave. The plan had been to hang out at the Grito ceremony, but I had had enough lectures, and yesterday hadn't been a high point of our bonding. But I recalled what I had said to her in the restaurant and felt terrible. She had made an effort to have me experience El Grito; the least I could do was see the activities.

So, I drove into town. I had to park a mile from the plaza; the area was packed with cars and buses. Along the route to the plaza, vendors had set up kiosks and tents to sell every imaginable artifact of nationalist pride. A cottage industry of patriotism: T-shirts, leather key chains, wooden machetes and other handicrafts done by island artisans, all engraved with some politically charged motto or saying, like “Viva Puerto Rico Libre.” I made my way up as close to the canopy-covered platform as I could, then heard marching music and saw the members of the Cadets of the Republic, dressed in their customary black, the standard bearer hoisting the nationalist flag, a white cross against a black background. They led the procession, other dignitaries followed, the other nationalist symbols including the Lares flag in tow, up to the platform, and the entire congregation, hundreds of independentistas, grew quiet as the band struck up “La Borinqueña,” the Puerto Rican national anthem—the real one, any nationalist will interject, with the militant lyrics.

In the middle of signs screaming all sorts of political messages, colorful T-shirts brandishing similar messages or the faces of Ché, Albizu, Ojeda, Lebrón, the five imprisoned nationalists, I spotted tired, smiling faces turned solemn by the end of the anthem. Tears flowed down some cheeks. Then cheers, applause, chanting: Lo-li-ta, Lo-li-ta. Lo-li-ta.

Today, Lolita Lebrón wore black pants, a white shirt and red tie. She paraded her outfit to the laughter of the congregation. Then, she spoke into the microphone: “A tribute to Luisa Capetillo.” Another historical figure absent from my cultural encyclopedia.
The better culturally informed understood and they laughed, cheered and applauded.

In a firm voice, Lebrón began her speech: “Friends and compañeros, today I celebrate and honor Luisa Capetillo because she was a fighter. An independentista to the death. She knew who she was and was proud of it. And was never afraid to fight for her beliefs.” Applause and cheers.

Lebrón ranted on against the United States, the crowd eating it up. At one point she quoted Albizu Campos. His comment about how a person not proud of his heritage will never amount to anything because he begins by rejecting himself.

After a few minutes, I turned around and headed back to my car, past Puerto Rican flags patched on butts and hordes of T-shirts claiming pure-bred, deep-rooted Puerto Ricaness.

I was playing with my Hess truck, kneeling on the hard, hospital floor, cool and smooth against my bare knees. My father sat slouched in a chair too small for him, holding my mother's hand as she slept in her cranked up hospital bed, tubes coming and going from her slender body. She looked different, without makeup, beautiful. Her long, wavy hair tied back carelessly with a cheap scrunchie. That moment was perfect, after the crazy week, coming to the hospital every day, hearing my father cry alone in his bedroom after coming home after the surgery. Every day was fine again, peaceful; the only sounds in the room were my parents' breathing, the sounds of the monitor attached to mom's recovering body, the relentless heartbeat filling the room with calm.

The clacking came first, then the strong perfume. I saw the high heels strapped around the slender ankles, looked up and saw her pale, oval face, the cherry red lips breaking into a crooked smile. She was an older woman, but I wouldn't have guessed she was my grandmother, or anybody else's abuela. To my young eyes, she came into that room like an aging movie star. Her green silk dress shone, the fat pearls, rings that swallowed her fingers, the fashionable short haircut, all of it did not spell grandma for me. Because my sense of abuela was my mom's mother, who everyone called Doña Lola and I called Güeli. She was huggingly plump, with heavy arms that held me tight and smelled like coconut flan and coffee. Her hair was always a mess, curly-kinky, a few strands escaping the rubber band that tried holding it all back.

My groggy father arose from his slumber and snapped up to greet his mother, who no one dared called Doña but Isabela, like the queen. My father called her
madre
, not Mami.
Madre
. Mother. They touched each other's cheeks and with pursed lips gave air kisses. Mami always gave me sloppy, wet kisses that landed somewhere on my head, sometimes on my lips. Like Güeli. He called and told me to stand and say “bendición” to Abuela Isabela. I asked for the traditional blessing and she embraced me, the perfume intoxicating me. She rubbed my back with both hands, ran her chiseled, porcelain fingers and long red nails through my hair, and I could see she had tears in her eyes. She collected herself, caressed my father's cheek and asked how Mami was doing. My father nodded and said something in Spanish, which sounded positive.

That was the first time I remember meeting my paternal grandmother. In a hospital room, after my mother's operation. She had seen me before, as a baby, before Mami and she had the falling out. I didn't remember, of course. It comes to me second-hand, and pretty much from my parents' side of things. Not that I need to hear the other side. I believed them when they said Isabela never cut Mami any slack. Like this time in the hospital, she came to help with me, the grandson. Poor woman, Papi would say, she means well, really, she does. But she was set in her ways, old school. And Mami was a new woman, with a career, who grew up in the South Bronx and learned not to take any bullshit from anyone. So she tried to tell my mom what to do, what not to do, offered unwanted advice about how to raise children, how to run a household, what a good wife did for her husband. Pitying her for losing her Puerto Rican ways. Making fun of her Spanish, even though Mami spoke it fluently and taught it.

Mami told me those days were like living in a concentration camp in her own home. Once, she wanted to push the “Nazi witch” out the window. It's horrible to make light of the holocaust. Mami was always conscious of things like that, so imagine how bad my grandmother made her feel. That's when she knew that it wouldn't work. That they would never hit it off and become great friends. And she threw down wife law; and my father had to listen.
He accepted her terms, because he loved my mother. He loved his mother and family, but he loved us more. It was simple.

This time around wasn't any better. She had arguments with my father all the time. It's kind of blurry, but I do remember Isabela crying and saying how her own son had turned his back on his mother. I felt bad for her. I felt bad for Dad, too, standing in the kitchen as Isabela tried to cook some terrible dish I wouldn't eat. She kept pointing a spoon at him. He looked trapped, his back against the fridge, ruffling all my artwork that Mami had posted. I could hear them from the living room while I read. It got louder, their yelling, and I knew Mami would be able to hear it across the apartment, from the bedroom, where she was trying to recuperate. Then Isabela started saying stuff I couldn't understand about Mami being hollow, hueca—my father would explain later, although he never told me what it meant. I couldn't understand the rest; it was in Spanish. Sometimes my grandmother would talk in English, which was pretty good. A solid Catholic education, she used to say. Money buys anything in PR, my father would say behind her back.

But they kept it up in Spanish, heated, fast, furious words coming out of their tongues like fuego. They suddenly stopped. My mother stood facing them both in her terrycloth robe, her hand on her stomach. She turned to me and ordered me to my room. I grabbed my book and ran to my bedroom, where I could still see and hear them. Isabela yelled something about “the truth.” Mami shuffled closer and stared at my father. “I want her out of here, now!”

Isabela left the next day, on an evening flight to San Juan. I saw her only that one time on the family trip to PR, and not at the funeral, after she died from breast cancer. My father visited her at the hospital in her last days and attended the funeral alone.

The violent dreams continued. They all had the feel of a cheap, hand-held camera movie in an endless horror film festival. In all of them, I kept seeing blood everywhere and heard frantic, disembodied screaming. Every time, I woke up startled, disoriented, and after getting my bearings, would slip into a funk.

I had been living in the Guest House for weeks. I informed the college authorities of my housing situation. Stay as long as you need, they said. Of course, they were charging me, but it wasn't really expensive. But that's not the point. I had my “own” place, my so-called inheritance, and I felt stupid having to pay any kind of rent. Worse, how was I supposed to make the squatters move out? The Riveras owed my parents six months' rent. So on top of everything, I had to file legal proceedings against them. Julia knew nothing about this legal mess. I wasn't even sure she knew about the house. Sad to say, but we weren't at a point where I could confide in her, and I didn't want her involved in something concerning my parents. Miguel “Micco” Montero, a colleague, wished me luck, telling me squatters had ridiculous rights in Puerto Rico.

I was now a perpetual guest, an insomniac and unfocused. I wanted to play some b-ball, run maybe, go lie on the beach, but sometimes I sat on the patio, sipping a cup of strong, sweet, black coffee, and let my thoughts ride the fog drifting over the green central mountains. From where I sat, I could see the neighborhood where my parents' house was located amid houses perched on ground overlooking the college. That would always break the reverie, would upset me, so I had to get up and do something else.

Today, in front of me, the task was reviewing the master syllabi given to me by the department secretary, Nitza. I was supposed to write my own course syllabus for each class and hand them out to students. Uninspiring work, especially with the emphasis on phonetics and grammar—it seemed like the principal objective was to teach the verb “to be.”

So, one particular Saturday found me kicking the hacky sack, as I'm bound to do when procrastinating, avoiding a boring task like writing syllabi. I was lost in the rhythmic dance of keeping the sack in the air for minutes, when Micco came to pick me up for a welcome party I didn't even want. Marisol Santerrequi had decided it was the collegial thing to do. Stiegler, a recent hire, told me he never got one. Watch her, Micco had said, referring to Marisol. “She's got it bad for you.” I was not pleased by this. Nothing against Marisol. I had scanned her in those tight dresses—the cleavage impossible not to see. Not bad. But the last thing on my mind was having an affair with a colleague. The more I thought about it, the more unsettling it became, because she was persistent, and I didn't need anything else on my plate.

I opened the door and Micco, all five-feet-four and chunky, stood in front of me, dressed in white linen pants and a short sleeve, red silk shirt, his hairless chest held high as if he were displaying a series of medals. He dipped his sunglasses down his nose to look at me, and his from-the-bottle suntanned face turned to shock.

“You're not wearing that.” He threw a finger at my outfit, which consisted of army fatigue shorts with a Yankees T-shirt and flip-flops.

“Hell no, let me get ready.” I kicked him the hacky sack and he dropped it.

I showered, shaved and dressed, my newly donned clothes—a blue rolled-up sleeved, buttoned-down collared shirt, with khaki pants and boat shoes—did not receive any more of a compliment.

“What's that, Puerto Rican preppie?”

The drive to San Juan from Baná on the autopista is forty minutes, in good traffic, which is rare, but with Micco driving we made it there faster. He drove his little red convertible like a NASCAR wannabe, moving in and out of traffic at a wild speed,
turning the wheel in jerky motions, elbows upturned like it was appropriate etiquette. We still had time to chat. I found out he would be my office mate, and I suddenly sensed in him a responsibility to mentor me. All I could think of was that I was having to share such a tiny office with another human being too gabby for me. I liked my privacy, and when it was time to work, I didn't want anyone around me talking stupid crap. In that short drive to San Juan, Montero gave me rundowns on everyone.

“Most of these people,” he yelled, over the rushing air and speeding cars around us, “harmless, unless you get in the way of something they want. Like dogs, they'll snap if you try to take the bone they're chewing on.”

So much for camaraderie, I thought. Passing us, a pick-up truck carried a huge, plastic cow.

“Pedro, though,” he continued, swinging elbows as he steered through dense traffic. “Keep an eye on him. They don't call him The Rock for nothing.”

The warm night air slapped at us. We passed congested, residential areas turned commercial, cluttered with signs advertising all types of businesses, and a string of junk food franchises. Montero pointed to one of many residential areas lining the highway, La Sierra Estates. “Freddie Rivas lives there,” he said. “A gay man who has yet to accept he's too old to cruise.” The university had an unofficial “don't ask, don't tell policy” in place, even before the U.S. Army came up with theirs. No one gay I met there ever admitted it, certainly not in public. Friends knew, but there lingered a tacit hush about how they did their business. It was sad, really. I looked at him as I clenched the dashboard and saw my face reflected off his mirror sunglasses, his tight, black dyed mustache embracing his purplish lips.

“He's into that New Age stuff, with rocks and channeling,” he added.