Olga Dies Dreaming(47)

Dick laughed.

“Let’s not be dramatic, Cherry. Anyway, it’s a little time at the beach together. I can show you how to surf.” He tried to nuzzle her neck, but she was unresponsive. “We’d fly down Friday, maybe Thursday, if you think you can—”

“I can’t,” she replied without skipping a beat. “I have my cousin’s wedding that weekend.”

“Your cousin is getting married? Which one? Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t have to go to this thing with Nick, you know. He has these little gatherings all the time.”

“I didn’t tell you,” Olga said, some distance in her voice, “because it doesn’t concern you.”

“But it concerns you, so then I’m concerned. I want to go and meet your family.”

Olga paused for a moment. “No, Richard, you don’t. Not really.”

Dick considered this. The truth was, if her family was anything like her brother, he didn’t want to meet them, but he didn’t want her being embarrassed of them, either.

“Olga.” He cupped her two hands in his and looked her in the eyes. “I love you. There is nothing I could find out about your family that would send me running away.”

Olga looked at him and let out a cackle. Not her public laugh, but not her bedroom giggle, either. It was, he felt, a cruel laugh.

“That’s fantastic.” She shook her hands free of his grasp. “Of course you think I’m worried about your impression of them. Why would you ever consider that I’m worried about their impression of you? Who would ever not like you?”

It took him a second to register her sarcasm, which was more a result of the multiple mojitos he’d consumed, not because her voice wasn’t thick with it. Dick’s car pulled up in front of them, but neither moved to get in. He could not believe that after the day he’d had, that she had put him through, she was now insulting him to his face.

“Let’s change the subject,” he said sharply. “Why did you do that today?”

“Do what?”

“Why did you embarrass me?”

“Excuse me? I embarrassed you?”

“I brought you here as my guest and you were off acting like a maid, in front of all of my friends.”

“Like a maid?”

“Yes. There were some very prominent people here. People I know and do business with, and you were down on your knees helping that waiter off the ground, directing people with mops. It was embarrassing—”

“That embarrassed you? That embarrassed you. Okay. Well, you know who didn’t find it embarrassing? The hostess! There is no way that I don’t get hired for Laurel’s daughter’s wedding.”

“Well, that’s exactly my point! This was a party, not an audition. You acted like a maid and now you’ll be hired as one.”

“So, that’s how you see me?” Olga said to him.

This was the moment, Dick realized in the car ride home, when his answer should have been different. He should have said anything but what came out of his mouth next, but he didn’t.

“I only see what you present.”

“Richard,” she said, with remarkable calm, “and I mean this very sincerely. Please get in this car and go home and fuck yourself.”





OCTOBER 2006





October 5, 2006

Querida Olga,

When I was a girl, my father told me that I’d been named for Blanca Canales, the revolutionary, and that she was the one who gave me my fighting spirit. So, when I was pregnant with you, your father and I put together a list of names that would instill you with the spirit of your ancestors as well. It was your Papi who suggested we name you for Olga Garriga, who was born in Brooklyn like you, but dedicated her life to liberating la Matria. She had the wisdom to understand that as long as the people on the island were bound by colonial rule, no Puerto Rican anywhere in the States would be a truly equal citizen. I liked this choice because Olga Garriga could have had an easy life, blending in as a New Yorker, meeting a man, raising children to think that they, too, were American. But instead, she chose the hard path, because that was the right path.

Still, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think of another famous Boricua named Olga. One much less admirable. And this gave me pause.

When we were young, me and your Papi used to visit his old friends in Loisaida, where he’d grown up. That area was full of artists, writers, poets. All Boricuas. All into uplifting our people. One night, we heard this Brother perform this poem, and it broke my heart. In his verses I heard my family’s life. They were characters—Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel—but as far as I was concerned he could have named them Isabel, Richie, JoJo, and Lola, because he—Pedro Pietri—captured my family. All of them chasing an impossible dream: to be accepted by a nation that viewed them with contempt. So willing—eager, almost—to shed our rich culture for the cheap thrill of being seen as “American.” Thinking that if one day they accumulated enough stuff, if they learned to act the right way, they could wipe the “Spic” off of them and be seen as “the same.” And because of course white America will never see them as equal, they die owning lots of things, but having lost themselves.

So, although I admired Olga Garriga greatly, there was a part of me that worried this name might be inauspicious. That instead of imbuing in you the spirit of a fighter, it would render you like the other Olga. The one whose obituary had already been written: destined to spend her life chasing a love she’d never fully have.