Authors: Tom Connolly
The power plant that is El Yunque, the Puerto Rican rain forest, begins early at the first light. The yuccas awake, long fronded palms take in the morning moisture and the areca plants begin pumping out oxygen. The fresh, damp, aromatic air rises out of the rain forest.
Left to their devices the clouds would drift gently to the east. But it is from the east that the winds from Africa come. As the winds reach the green island, they split up—going north and south. On this day it is southern African winds that push the clouds of air from El Yunque to the south. And when the winds push the clouds over the dry mountains that divide Puerto Rico, they encounter the parched, hot air of the south.
Silvana awoke to the crack of thunder. She sat up with a start. Was that the door, was he there? Then she heard another crack of thunder. It was 6 a.m.; it was the third day. Would he come? No, he would not. She was deluding herself for even thinking something so foolish could occur. But what if he did come? What would she tell him?
“What would I tell him?” Silvana DeLuna asked herself out loud, disturbing the sleep of her young daughter, Mare. She had thought of nothing since she saw Tray at her hotel room door three days earlier. Yet, she had not brought herself to a conclusion. She could not let herself reach a conclusion. If the crazy, crazy dream of a life that Tray had proposed were not to happen, the loss would be too great. She would have deluded herself like a young school girl. If he came, he came. Then they would talk. If he didn’t come, he didn’t come. She would have to be crazy to think that this could happen.
She pushed the thought from her mind and rose to begin her day.
In Coamo you are known by your name and what you do or did. Santa Alba was the Beauty Queen of Coamo; Juan, the runner of San Diego; Silvana, the washer woman of San Blas; and Silvana’s aunt, Carmen, the seamstress of Coamo.
On the morning Santa Alba drove Silvana and Mare home from their brief vacation in San Juan, Silvana kept the laundry closed. Once they said their goodbyes, Silvana and Mare went to Tia Carmen’s home. It was Carmen who had half-raised Silvana when her mother died, and it was Carmen who finished raising Silvana when her father left for Brazil with her brother, Chunk; Carmen was sort of a mid-wife of life. She was the family member who provided the nurturing and care. When Silvana lost Juan and almost her will to live afterwards, it was Carmen who brought Silvana back helping her realize the beauty of the child she and Juan created. She helped her appreciate every day she was alive to help Mare develop.
And it was to Carmen that Silvana now turned for advice on the matter at hand.
“Have you lost what little sense I gave you,” Carmen screamed at Silvana upon hearing Tray’s proposal.
“But, Auntie,” Silvana began.
Before another word came out, Carmen was berating Silvana for acting, well, like a little school girl.
This discussion went on for most of the afternoon. Finally mentally drained, Carmen sent Silvana out. “Don’t let me hear any more of this crazy talk,” Carmen said as she kissed Silvana and Mare as they were leaving. “And if that sailor boy shows up on your doorstep, get rid of him. And if you don’t have the courage to do it, send him over to me, and I’ll take care of it.”
“Bye, Carmen,” Silvana said using the older woman’s first name, which she did when Carmen got over the top on advice.
At midnight as the eve of the third day would become early morning hours, Silvana sat in an old chair outside her house. Mare was long asleep. The air was heavy and damp, not after a rain but before it. The calm shut out all the noise of the island.
Silvana was in a mild panic. She would be a fright without any sleep. And what was I thinking, bringing him here, to see me in this element with my washing all about.
But with time to herself, she resigned her fate to God. She blessed herself. I am who I am, and I know who Tray is. He will come. We will have a life together. Mare will have a whole family.
Chapter 52
Later in the afternoon, resigned that Tray Johnson would not come, Silvana opened the doors of her home and business. The morning rain gave way to the dry heat of a mountain facing south towards the equator. Mare played with a favorite doll in the bedroom. Silvana hung a load of whites on the clothes lines in the small rear yard.
Silvana came back in and began pressing shirts that were hung on hangers but not yet ironed. She found that shirts with a label that said they were made in Egypt were the easiest to iron of all cotton. She wondered why. Why would cotton grown in one part of the world be so different from every other county; why would the iron smoothly glide through Egyptian cotton yet get snarled up in cotton from Jordan or Vietnam? Was this because of the soil and the way cotton was grown or was it more in the making of the shirt, the types of looms they used to process the cotton? Silvana remembered seeing in her school books the large factories in Massachusetts that produced textiles in the past. There were giant floors of machines and hundreds of women working at the machines. She remembered the story of one factory, with five floors and more than three hundred machines on each floor, that had collapsed killing more than one thousand women working there. The book said there was so much shaking from all those machines that it shook the building apart.
Silvana finished the ironing, put a thin wire around the group of six shirts, attached the right number to the bottom of the first shirt with a pin, and hung them beside other shirts waiting for pick up.
Next, she grabbed the broom, swept the floor that passed between the two doors, and emptied the dust pan into a waste basket by the front door where the afternoon sun continued blazing in.
Silvana started the next load of wash. Underwear! Of all the work she did, the one job she felt worse about was washing other people’s underwear. It wasn’t that the job was beneath her; it was the condition of the clothing when it was brought in. The stains, the yellow and brown stains sickened her. Some were from the owners soiling themselves; some were from wearing the same underwear multiple times. And stink! Awful. The worst part of this job would be the customers who wanted to argue that Silvana did not get their underwear clean enough. “Maybe if you didn’t pee all over yourself they wouldn’t be so yellow,” well, that was what she wanted to tell them. Or “Maybe if you didn’t wear the same panties six days in a row they wouldn’t smell like a dead skunk.” But she never did. She held her tongue, usually adding. “They might be getting older from washing so much,” or “the cotton from Brazil yellows more than others,” or when all else failed, “I’ll add more bleach next time and leave them in the sun longer.” Eventually, customers accepted her explanation. Eventually, Silvana came to realize that customers, no matter who they were, just liked feeling there was someone beneath them and whom they could berate. It wasn’t personal; it was just life.
Here this magnificent beauty accepted life as it was given to her. Not complaining about what was not, but thankful for what was. For Mare. And, when he was here on earth, for Juan. And in moments like this, when what almost was, she would shed a tear. Not many but a few to help her in her sentiments.
Once the underwear was done and as she was hanging it out back, she wondered why, in those pictures of the textile plants, it was women who ran all those machines. And when the rumbling of five floors of machines got so strong they shook the building apart, it was women who lay dead and buried under the machines and bricks. Where were the men? What did they do?
Silvana went back inside; she was beginning to sweat. She wiped her brow and sat on a wooden chair by the kitchen table. From there she could see Mare playing in the bedroom. The child was happy and talking with her doll.
A shadow came over the front door, and as she looked up, the blazing sun outlined, like an eclipse, the figure of a man. The man was not moving, just standing there looking in at her. She could see his frame; it was black against a white surrounding light so bright she could not distinguish any features.
Silvana did not move. She sat paralyzed by hope.
And then the man spoke, “Well, do you have your bags packed?”
Chapter 53
“Tray, like you, I have responsibilities. I cannot just walk away from them. I have customers. My aunt, when my mother died, loaned me the money to buy this laundry to support myself. It is how Mare and I live. I cannot just walk out on this,” Silvana said.
Tray was downcast. He assumed she loved him as much. Silvana in her wisdom could see the hurt boy in the man.
“Tray, I know what you want. I want the same thing. But you are going in a week back to Afghanistan, and you’ll be gone almost a year. What am I to do? Who will I know? How will I get food? Where will I work?”
“I will take care of all those things,” he said.
“You cannot. You will not be there,” Silvana spoke more firmly, not angrily, but her voice rose, so that the child came in from the other room and looked at her mother. And Silvana continued, “I must do things for myself.”
“My father will help. You will have my money and money to live on. My car will be there for you.”
“But you won’t be. And Tray, this is how basic the argument is: do you even know I don’t drive? Don’t know how to and don’t have a car here. I know I can learn but I want you there teaching me new things. I am different than you are knowing me. I look like other girls you may have known, but I am not.”
Tray looked puzzled, “Yes, different. More beautiful, more loving, more honest.
“Tray, you have travelled the world. You are rich; your friends are all rich. You live in modern cities. Have you noticed what you are standing on? It is a dirt floor.”
“Silvana, that doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It matters to me. It matters that you know who I am and where I am from. And it does matter if you are not there. You need to know me, about me, how I live. I once loved a man, Mare’s father, Juan. He was from here. He knew how I lived and his life was different once, but he knew how I lived. And he improved my life in many ways because he knew these things about me.”
“I will learn,” Tray said, now embracing Silvana.
“Start learning now. Stay here, stay with us until you have to go to war.”
Tray called Winston. Winston was not happy, but he understood. Two days before his wedding his best man would not be able to come. He was staying in Puerto Rico with Silvana until he needed to return to duty.
Later, Winston called Sebastian and told him. “But what did Tray say?” Sebastian asked.
“He said he found the woman he was going to marry, and he needed every second with her before going back. Sebastian, he’s in love. I know the feeling, and I’m OK with it.”
“I’m not. I’m OK with the love part, but these are things the seven of us have talked about our whole lives, that if we were alive we would not miss being part of each other lives. I’ll call him.”
“No, leave him alone. He’s only home for two more weeks.”
When they hung up, Sebastian called Tray.
“Tray, you can’t miss Winny’s wedding.”
“Sebastian, don’t make this harder than it is,” Tray said from the front stoop of Silvana’s house. “I leave four days after the wedding. So I’ve got nine days all together. I need every moment right here.”
“You’re going to be best man,” Sebastian said.
“You’re going to be best man,” Tray shot back.
“But he wants you. It’s one of your life responsibilities. You know how your dad always says you only have two responsibilities in life: ‘visit the sick and bury the dead.’ Well add a third to the Admiral’s list: ‘attend your best friend’s wedding.’”
“Aahhhhh,” Tray screamed.
Silvana called, “What’s wrong,” as she finished ironing a pair of slacks.
“Nothing, Silvana,” he called back.
“What did you say?” Sebastian said.
“Silvana. I was talking to Silvana,” Tray said, now frustrated at this game of ping pong.
“Sebastian, I need you to square this with the guys. This is going to be the most important two weeks of my life.”
“Can you spare one of them for us?”
“I can’t possibly do all that and still have Silvana.”
“That’s not what I asked. Can you spare one day?”
“I could if I was there and only have to pull out for a day, but I can’t.”
“I’m sending my plane. It will pick you up that Saturday at 7 a.m., have you here at noon. Service is at 5 p.m., reception at seven, dancing till eleven, back on the plane at midnight, back in Puerto Rico by 4 a.m. One day. For us.”
Chapter 54
Thirty-four egrets, seven of them great egrets, foraged in the brackish inlet. Soon the U-shaped eddy would be flushed by the incoming tide, as the waters of Long Island Sound flowed under the two walking bridges, one at each end of the inlet.
On the other side of the peninsula of Tod’s Point was the beach. Directly east, the beach looks out on a universe divided: the darker waters of the sound, the lighter air of the sky. This view was framed on the left by the Shippan peninsula of Stamford, at its furthest point, Stamford Lighthouse. To the right the intersection of the sky and the sea are interrupted by Long Island.