Olga Dies Dreaming(66)
He paused.
“You mother reorganized all of the supporters of every other independence group—those both above and below ground. She quietly began recruiting people like me to her cause—strong people with influence who had not turned their attention to what was happening to our gente. She went after the students—the angry and the disaffected, the brilliant chemists, engineers, and computer programmers forced to leave the island because there was no work for them at home anymore. Quietly, over the past decade, your mother has assembled a decentralized organization all over the diaspora, hungry for revolution, just waiting for the right moment to rise and topple a hundred and nineteen years of American colonial rule and take back our land.”
Olga took a sip of her rum and then found herself giggling. The giggle became a laugh and the laugh overtook her until she was doubled over in her seat. Reggie did not join her.
“Reggie, wow.” She finally calmed herself enough to talk. “I know you aren’t making this up, but wow, has my mother got your number if she’s convinced you that somehow she has amassed an underground revolutionary army gearing up for independence. The rational businessman in you has got to know how fucking nuts this sounds! If there are so many people interested in a free Puerto Rico, why the fuck did these homies not vote for independence in this last election? When was the plebiscite? May? Where were these ‘revolutionaries’ at the polls?”
“Olga, revolution cannot happen on the terms of the oppressor. The very idea of the plebiscite is flawed.”
“So, then when is the time for revolution, Reggie? Tell me. Because the last I saw the whole island was in the dark.”
Reggie smiled at her. “Exactly, Olga. Our network of Pa?uelos Negros is broad, their commitment deep, but as with everything in our history, nothing happens without the jíbaro. The Yanqui is currently doing the work that we, the leaders of revolution, could never do quite as effectively. They are letting the jíbaro know that they are seen as a piece of trash, dispensable. Between PROMESA’s austerity and PREPA leaving everyone sitting in the dark, the island is finally recognizing what the Yanqui thinks of them. The Yanqui has counted on us being asleep for years, but their neglect and exploitation is slowly waking up all of Borikén, and when they rise from their nap, we will be there.”
They had pulled up outside of Olga’s building. The rain was coming down in sheets over the car. Olga looked at Reggie and a smirk took over her face.
“Why now? Since I was thirteen, I’ve gotten nothing but some fucking self-righteous letters. Literally, nothing but one-way conversations. She never sent me an address to write to her. Never felt, for all these years, that I needed to know all this. So, why does she send you now?”
“Olga, you need to understand, revolution—”
“Requires sacrifice? Oh Reggie, I know. What I don’t know is, why now?”
“Because your mother needs you.”
Olga felt a pull in her chest at his words. She should feel indignation at this. Rage, even. That this woman who was a stranger to her, who didn’t know the difference between missives and mothering, would have the audacity to approach her for the first time in decades with a need. To ask for something. To present herself to Olga in this way. She should feel this way, but she did not. Instead, she felt a long dormant affection bubble up clearly in her chest: the idea of having a value to her mother warming her insides.
“What does she need?” Olga asked.
“She’ll let you know,” Reggie said. “If she wanted me to know now, she would have told me.”
Olga shook her head. “I can’t keep this from my brother.”
Reggie hesitated. “If your mother wanted Prieto involved, she would have sent me to see him instead.”
This irked her. “Reggie, I know my mom is like your best friend in arms right now, but please don’t forget that when she bounced, it was my brother who helped take care of me. He deserves to know.”
“I wouldn’t suggest you break your mother’s confidence.”
A surge of anger pulsed through Olga’s body. She went to let herself out of the car, but the lock was on.
“Unlock the fucking door, I want to get out of here.”
“Olga, let Clyde walk you, it’s pouring out!” Reggie went to lower the divider to ask Clyde for help, but Olga was too quick and had unlocked the door and ran out into the rain, the curls of her hair released from the straight by the steady stream of water.
FINAL PAYMENTS
Since Abuelita died, Mother’s Day was one of nearly unbearable torment for Olga. Normally, days, weeks, and sometimes even months would pass where, barring receiving one of her letters, Olga could, more or less, lock her mother, and her absence, inside a deeply buried mental safe. One where the hurt and pain she caused could not contaminate the other aspects of Olga’s life. Mother’s Day, however, was an unavoidable reminder, and without Abuelita to shed affection upon, the “holiday” left her with idle, nervous thoughts run rampant, infecting her perceptions of all other matters of her life. Assuming Prieto felt the same way, they had, on a few early occasions, convened, but somehow being with her brother made her feel all the more motherless. Their orphan state emphasized by the other’s presence. Instead, she began, on that day each year, to isolate and drink until she could not possibly think cogent thoughts about this woman she barely knew, nor feel shame for having been left by her. This is what Olga did immediately after she left Reggie King and the next day that followed, feigning to Meegan that she was “working from home” while actually blackout drunk in front of her TV. It wasn’t until the Wednesday before Mabel’s wedding, when Tía Lola called, repeatedly, that Olga was forced to snap out of it.