The Accidental Native (8 page)

“Haven't you had enough?” I asked.

“Shut up and have a nightcap,” he said. I asked for a beer. What the hell, I couldn't sleep anyway.

We sipped quietly, the voices from the jukebox singing about deceit and betrayal.

“Is he always like that, Micco?”

“The Rock?”

I nodded.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Well, he's gone through a lot with his ex.”

An investment banker, she had been the love of his life, Montero said. And he recalled how Pedro would look into her eyes, as
he'd call her his sweet darling with so much genuine devotion, back when they danced at gatherings like the one today.

“He loved that woman, and she dumped him for a younger, handsome, upscale guy,” Montero said. The sweetheart type of love wears thin when one cannot negotiate middle age and realizes wealth buys you toys and a Stepford husband.

“Divorce is like an amputation—you survive, but there's less of you.”

I looked at him, bending over a cocktail glass holding melted ice, knowing he hadn't come up with that himself. He glanced my way, still wearing the mirrored sunglasses.

“Atwood,” he said, reading my mind.

The bartender alerted us that he was closing, so we dragged ourselves off the chairs and strolled back into the breezy night. In the gravel parking lot, a soft drizzle fell as we reached the convertible. Before getting in, Montero looked at me and said, “Be careful with Roque. He can make life miserable for you.”

All the way home, I kept thinking about Roque's angry face and Micco's warning, and felt more lonesome than ever.

On the first day of classes, I woke up early. Still hadn't been sleeping well, and with the thought of facing students for the first time, it seemed pointless to stay in bed. I kept thinking about entering the classroom and bumping into the desk or becoming apoplectic—something embarrassing and stupid happening. Short bursts of nervousness and insecurity overwhelmed me, my body flushed and tightened with anxiety. I jumped out of bed and did some pushups, kicked the hacky sack for a bit and took a shower—one of several I learned to take during a typical day in this climate.

Over coffee and staring at the landscape, I wanted to review important items to discuss with students, but I couldn't. My mind wandered, my heart pounded at the thought of entering the classroom. So I decided to take a walk before my first class at 10 am. I threw on a blue, short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants, with the customary Top-Siders.

Outside, it was muggy and you couldn't spot a patch of blue sky. The campus bustled with cars streaming in, professors and students marching to their destinations, carrying briefcases and knapsacks. College police wore their special “colors,” which included vibrant red berets sporting a small insignia of Cano the Coquí. They ushered cars to respective lots and assisted pedestrians with questions, their white-gloved hands waving, whistles blowing sharply.

As I walked closer to the main gate, I heard shouting and laughter that grew louder as I approached the entrance and the avenue—La Tirilla—that ran parallel to it. Older students—
“upperclassmen”—dozens of them, lined up on the sides of the gate, throwing flour, eggs, syrup, sometimes spraying dishwashing soap at the “prepas,” or first-year students. Every time one got hit with an egg or a smattering of flour, an outburst of gleeful, taunting “ooohs” would rise from the gathered crowd. The more brazen ones would walk right up and smash the egg on the prepa's head.

Shocked, I tried to stay clear of straying particles. The hazed students walked stoically to class, cake ingredients settled on their heads and faces, a few crying. I tip-toed across slippery layers of egg yolks, whites and shells, and blue and green soap streaking the sidewalk as I headed toward my destination: the post office.

The overcast sky threatened rain, and I began thinking a walk wasn't such a good idea. But I had to mail paperwork to my parents' lawyer in the states. The college bordered the center of town, walking distance from the plaza, which typical of Spanish town planning had a Catholic church on one side and La Alcaldía, City Hall, on the other. Narrow streets crisscrossed without any logic, and people tried to walk on slim sidewalks, pedestrians bumping into the decreasing number of shoppers coming out of the stores in town. Most townspeople today preferred to shop at the malls.

There was a long line in the post office; it extended past the rented mailboxes and almost out of the building. One clerk attended to everyone. It didn't help that customers felt a need to talk to the man behind the counter about family and current events. I looked to see if any machines were available as an alternative, but no. All I wanted were a few stamps, and I had to wait for around thirty minutes, shuffling along the cordoned velvet ropes as if waiting to enter an exclusive nightclub.

An old woman started screaming about her son sending a package—did anyone have it? Anyone seen her son? Everyone in line looked away, making her invisible. I had lived in New York City long enough to know you don't make eye contact with weirdoes. But I felt sorry for her, saddened everyone else was icing her. In a metro area, with millions of people, neglecting homeless and crazy people was considered a survival tactic, but here, in a small town, it seemed cruel. I pitied her and she saw a chance, someone who obviously gave a shit, and I had a conversation on my hands.
She went on and on, I nodded, uttering encouraging filler words in my limited Spanish. She was off her gourd. The clerk kept saying, Doña Lili, leave the customers alone, go home. She turned to him and started insulting him for losing her son's package, then left in a huff, talking to herself.

I mailed my letter and glanced at my watch, alarmed my class was about to start in half an hour. I walked and breathed in the smell of wet dirt, felt the first, light raindrop. I sped up, walking like an Olympic marathon walker. The clouds cracked open and as I entered the college's main gates, I got drenched. Garbage streamed rapidly down the curb, dragging along eggshells and pasty flour balls in soapy water. Suddenly, a bright blue VW Bug stopped, and the driver's window rolled down.

“Need a ride?” A pair of green eyes looked over the slightly opened window.

I was stunned at the pretty, tanned face with the kick-ass smile and piercing eyes; a beauty mark at the base of her neck bordered her cleavage like a landmark. But I also felt stupid, standing there getting wet by the second, undecided. I said no, waving her along, more dismissively than I wanted. She yanked the stick shift into gear and smirked as to say, “comemierda,” and sped off.

Common sense dictates you take an offer like that rather than getting soaking wet and offending someone at the same time. But she was a student, and I was new at this teaching thing. I didn't think it proper to fraternize with students in any way. Innocent me.

“You look like an animal that came out of the rain.” Micco dropped David Mitchell's
Cloud Atlas
to review me up and down.

I went to the men's room and grabbed paper towels to dab myself, hoping to get dry before entering class. I took my shirt off and patted dry my underarms, chest, arms.

A knock at the door. I opened it to find Marisol holding a hair dryer. She stared at my naked torso.

“I'm sorry,” I said, covering myself with the shirt.

“I thought you might need this,” she said, smiling. I took the dryer and thanked her.

I dried what I could and ran out of the bathroom, wet areas dotting my clothes. I passed Roque, who had stepped out of his office to get a cup of coffee.

In my office, I went in circles trying to find materials for my Basic English class. When I had gathered everything I needed, I jogged to the classroom at the end of the second floor hallway in the Anonymous Building. Entering the classroom late, my heart pounded, my stomach tightened. I threw down the syllabi and other stuff on the desk, louder than intended.

We stared at each other, my students and I. They were prepas, some with flour streaked hair, runny egg yolk on their faces, green or blue dishwasher detergent staining the new clothes they'd bought for today, their first day of college classes. Their faces, at first a blur from momentary anxiety, became distinct, each one, as I dared to focus. The history of Puerto Rico in those faces. Light and dark complexions and everything in between: cocoa, tamarind, copper, butterscotch. Broad lips and noses; pointy, European beaks. Flaxen hair, lustrous Taíno hair, curvy and kinky waves.

“Prepa, too,” I said, pointing to myself. Smiles, a smattering of laughter, but most of them had that lost I-don't-want-to-be-here stare. A few were at the point of tears.

Thirty-five students squeezed into a tight room with no air conditioning. The weather gets cooler, everyone kept telling me, but now it was August, balmy even after the downpour. As I called names, I tried to strike up a conversation with students. I told jokes to break the ice. Most of them didn't have a clue what I was saying. The typical response was “¿Qué?” What? Or to a neighbor: “¿Qué dijo?” What did he say? And then they giggled.

I tore a bunch of index cards from its plastic packaging, spread them out like I was doing a magic trick, one hand pointing to them. I scribbled a big rectangular box on the board to represent an index card and wrote what I wanted them to write on it. Micco had given me the idea with the cards, a way to get to learn student names. In his cards, he had written things like “la flaca”—the skinny one—or “tuerto” cross-eyed, “tetona,” big breasted, etc., to distinguish students. I never went that far, but it did the job. The
cards also helped keeping attendance, a mandatory chore requiring filling out one of many sporadic reports.

With completed cards in hand, I went around the room, calling names, asking questions in an English spoken for mentally challenged people or the deaf. Nitza, wh—a—t i—s Co-me-rí-o l—i—ke? I was surprised to get a couple of responses resembling English. I felt accomplished, even when they struggled, like I was getting something done. And I kept looking at their young, pimply, expectant faces, smiling unguarded, like they didn't have anything to worry about, not knowing the shit's coming down hard, not knowing they're clueless, not knowing anything. I had been like that only a few years ago. A student pointed to his watch, and I looked at mine—time over.

“Go,” I said, waving a hand toward the door, and they ran to their next class, or to lunch, or to wherever English was not spoken here.

When my parents dropped me off at college, they had been crying. I could tell from their red eyes, although both claimed allergies. My mother had planned what seemed like months for that day. Made sure I got a mini-refrigerator and any other allowable electronic convenience, the top-of-the-line laptop, many socks and underwear, in the weirdest colors so as not to get them mixed up with another person's laundry. My dad gave me a beat up Oxford Dictionary that he had used in college. They both were proud but sad. I was their only child, and they must have sensed a twinge of old age approaching, of mortality. Without any sibling left behind, theirs was an empty nest come too quickly.

We went to lunch at a Denny's after moving me into my dorm. And they shared college stories. Mami had come from the South Bronx to Wellesley, a scholarship girl. She laughed when she told how she had arrived at the dorm with only two suitcases, mostly clothes. She had worked all summer and saved to buy dresses, slacks and outfits for every day, at a time when young people wore the same pair of torn jeans for a year. But she didn't have sheets for the bed, nor pillowcases, not even an alarm clock to get up early in the morning. The first week she slept with clothes as a pillow and her coat as a blanket. She had to call her parents and tell
them to send a care package. Instead, and Mami always got teary-eyed when she told this part, they made another trip to Massachusetts, not an easy task because they didn't have a car and had to get someone to drive them. They brought her the needed items and more—Puerto Rican snacks, food and coffee, curtains for the windows.

My father smiled when Mami told that story, but never in a mocking way. He had it much easier. He came from a well-to-do family in the island. Business people, owners of the home decoration chain known as Decorama. “They sell fancy, over-priced junk,” he used to tell me. But all those floral arrangements, picture frames, beads, candles and knickknacks paid his way through college. The Faltos sent him to study business and help run the family bric-a-brac trade. Papi never liked business, didn't have the heart or stomach for it, so he chose history instead and infuriated the family. He had to endure endless discussions about the real value of a college education, that it was wasted in pursuing studies not producing monetary gain. They didn't change his mind and had to be satisfied with the time he put in at the San Juan store during summers and Christmas breaks.

“He can write the history of the company someday,” my grandfather would joke. Eventually, they would have forgiven and forgotten that entire episode, but then Papi met Mami at Columbia. As intelligent and accomplished as she was, the Falto clan saw my mother as a Nuyorican; in their eyes that meant a lower class, ghetto person. Shifty, not to be trusted, lazy and on welfare, always high on drugs. That's why every time my mother told that story, my father's eyes would sink, his entire face taking on the weight of years battling family disdain and disappointment.

I returned to my office and plopped down at my desk. Micco had his 11 o'clock, a British lit survey course with the few majors we had. Looking at his desk made me more depressed. He had postcards, a calendar of the impressionists,
New Yorker
cartoons, photos of the family “farm” in San Sebastián. A small crucifix taped to the back panel of the desk/bookshelf. An article on nuclear warfare—a constant fear with him along with threats of
viral epidemics. He had a poster up with various types of small aircraft, since he wanted to learn how to fly one day.