Olga Dies Dreaming(40)

What Bonilla didn’t know, and of course Prieto did, was that Karen’s connection to his mother and radicalization predated all of these things. In an effort to tame her daughter’s rebellious streak, Abuelita had sent Blanca to an all-girls Catholic high school. “?Y instead?” Abuelita would lament. “What happened? She met La Karen.” Always the Karen, as though she was a force and not a person. Ironically, Karen had landed at the Catholic school for similar reasons as his mother. Her older brother was a Black Nationalist and her parents hoped the nuns might inoculate Karen from this same leftist path. Instead, she and Prieto’s mother found each other among, as his mother would say, “a sea of white girls with bleach blond hair” and bonded over their mutual awareness of systemic inequities. Karen would get books from her brother—The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Black Skin, White Masks—and share them with Blanca, who, in turn, would come home and proselytize to her siblings and mother. Karen joined the Panthers, while Prieto’s parents joined the Lords. But even as the movements faded, as his parents’ marriage fell apart, his mother’s bond with Karen never waned. When his mother left, to his grandmother’s chagrin, only La Karen knew exactly where she’d fled, and only La Karen had a direct channel of communication to her. If the worms came from Karen Price, it was only because she was serving as proxy for Prieto’s own mother. To let him know she saw him as a traitor.

“We don’t have any direct links to her and the Macheteros your mother was involved in,” Bonilla was now saying, “but that would definitely be something up her alley.”

“Interesting.”

“And you’ve got no idea why she would send something like this to you now?”

“No. None whatsoever.”

“Kooky old hippies,” Bonilla declared. “Who knows what sets them off. They don’t like the way you vote on some bill or another, and the next thing you know…”

Bonilla laughed and Prieto made sure to join him.

“We’ll keep an eye on it,” Bonilla added, and Prieto just sipped his drink.



* * *



WHEN HE GOT back to New York, Prieto decided to get to the bottom of things. His mother couldn’t just hide from him this way. He needed a chance to explain himself, to make things right. Aunt Karen did not keep a phone, so he decided to pay her a visit. He didn’t know how serious Bonilla was about keeping an eye on things, but he took no chances. He donned his Yankee cap, shorts, and a tee, parked his car in a garage downtown, and hopped on the subway, to make the long journey up to Harlem. Because Prieto rarely rode the New York City subway, he found it pleasant. In D.C. he couldn’t walk into a restaurant or store without being recognized from TV, so his ability to slip into anonymity despite his close proximity to others was relaxing. So relaxing, he missed his stop and ended up taking a meandering walk through North Harlem. He hadn’t walked these streets since he was a kid, when his parents would bring him along for a political meeting or for his mother to visit with Karen. He was shocked at how, just like his own borough, everything seemed so metallic and new. The streets were filled with parents—white parents. Pushing strollers in and out of luxury condos. Up and down steps of brownstones. When he got to Karen’s building, a place he hadn’t been in years, his hand instinctively went to her buzzer. Muscle memory. She asked who it was through the intercom. He announced himself and waited for her to buzz him inside, but the buzz never came. He was sure it was her; he had recognized her voice. He rang again, and again. He became frustrated, but also nervous. He thought of the box of worms. His aunt had known him since he was born; she couldn’t possibly ignore him. Perhaps she just couldn’t hear him through the intercom. It was the end of a warm, late summer day; her windows were open. He stood on her stoop and bellowed up.

“Auntie Karen, hey! Wasn’t sure if you could hear me through the intercom. It’s me—Johnny and Blanca’s son. Can you let me up? I just gotta ask you something real quick!”

A few moments passed before he heard the sound of a screen being raised. His aunt’s beautiful dark face emerged, older, but still familiar. She looked at him pointedly in the eye, but the softness he had always known there was gone.

“Prieto, no reason to let you up. In case the package wasn’t clear: she doesn’t have anything else she wants to say to you, nor does she have anything she wants to hear from you.”





APRIL 2002





April 25, 2002

Querida,

Lately I’ve found myself thinking about the role of women in the world and the important part we play in forcing hands of power to create change. No matter where I’ve traveled, women, when given space, have excelled at organizing and improving their communities. We’re born with barometers in our belly that make us more sensitive to the climate around us and, because we’re so often on the lowest rung of any ladder, we’re naturally inclined to look out for the least among us. Since we’re also burdened by domestic tasks, we’re forced to be more efficient. In a woman’s world, time is the most precious commodity, and we don’t have it to waste.

Of course, the problem is that we don’t live in a world just of women. Not only do men exist, but we are drawn to them and, for complex reasons, they do not treasure time in the same way that we do. It may have to do with an inability to face mortality, or needs of ego, or maybe it simply has to do with the fact that they don’t hear the ticking of a biological clock. What I can say with certainty is that a man has no problem wasting time, especially that of a woman. And they manage to do so in such insidious ways we often don’t notice that it’s happening until it’s too late.