Olga Dies Dreaming(78)
* * *
HER PHONE BUZZED. It was Reggie.
“?Pa’lante!”
And she knew her mother had stared Maria down.
ALWAYS KEEP GOING
The Friday after Maria passed, the New York gubernatorial delegation made their way to San Juan. As their plane began its descent, Prieto glanced out the window and gasped. The island, normally a slab of lush malachite floating in a clear aquamarine sea, was now a brown scab in a gray shadowy abyss. The trees were stripped raw, the foliage victim of Maria’s rage. He felt his heart rip a bit, imagining nature’s arduous journey to restore color to the island. It was only when he landed that he understood the practical implications of the island’s lost verdure. Without the shades of the palms and cool green of the hibiscus plants, the sun burned the earth and the people trying to salvage themselves under its rays.
* * *
THE FIRST TIME Prieto had gone to Puerto Rico was for the national convention of his fraternity back when he was an undergrad. It was the mid-’90s and an infusion of capital from mainland businesses had caused San Juan and the environs to boom. There was a banquet for the three hundred or so brothers who had gathered from cities up and down the East Coast. They were greeted by scions of local industry: pharmaceutical company heads talking about job creation by and for Puerto Ricans, hoteliers discussing the ability of tourism to unify the diaspora. The keynote was the newly installed governor, the same man whose son was governor now. He gave a sweeping speech about the next phase of Borinquen and how privatization of the island’s municipalities would pave the path to Puerto Rican statehood.
Prieto remembered lapping it up at the time—giving the guy a standing ovation and waiting, eagerly, to shake his hand and take a photo afterwards. He had no idea that in three short years President Clinton would end the tax incentives that had brought those companies there in the first place, and that along with the tax breaks would go the jobs. He didn’t yet understand that American companies weren’t motivated to create meaningful work for anyone anymore, least of all Puerto Ricans. Since then, each time Prieto returned to the island—and over his years as a New York public servant, his trips were many—he noticed that San Juan was a little less shiny, the sense of possibility less ebullient, than what he’d seen that first trip.
On that first trip, Prieto had wandered off from the convention group and made his way to an address in La Perla, right on the water in Viejo San Juan. His Spanish, clumsy back then, helped him make his way through the narrow streets. On arriving, he could hear a mom yelling at her kid about cleaning up after themselves. He knocked, unsure if his language skills were good enough to explain what had brought him here: that his father, Juan Acevedo, had once lived at this house before he left for Nueva York. He’d brought a photo of his pop—in his military uniform—just to see if that might spark a memory or recollection and if he might still have family around. It didn’t. But the woman, Magdalena, was so touched by this poor Nuyorican so interested in meeting his family that she wouldn’t let him go without feeding him and introducing him to her children and neighbors. After they ate, she took him to meet every Acevedo that she knew in the area, just in case his father’s name and story meant anything to them.
He thought of her now as he glimpsed La Perla through the window of his military escort vehicle.
“Can we stop here for a second?”
“Congressman, I’m sorry, but we can’t take you there. La Perla is a mess and we’ve got to get you back for the helicopter tour.”
“We’ll be fine,” he offered firmly.
They could not make it into the barrio by car, their path blocked by a downed phone line. While the National Guardsmen assessed the road, Prieto jumped out, winding his way down a sloping footpath covered with leaves and debris towards Magdalena’s, and his father’s, onetime home. Had she been home during the storm, she surely couldn’t be there now. The roof was torn off, the windows blown in, and half the second floor had collapsed onto itself. Down the street he saw an old man wearing the apron of a bodeguero coming out of his building with a broom. Given the state of the street—fallen branches, scattered leaves, shattered car windows, rubble from buildings—the broom seemed a laughable tool. Nevertheless, the man began to sweep. From the top of the steps, one of the National Guardsmen was beckoning Prieto back to the car, so he called out to the man in Spanish—
“Does Magdalena still live here?”
“Yes, but her sons took her to the mountains before the storm. To the Pa?uelos Negros.”
Prieto was unsure what that meant. The National Guardsmen were approaching now, calling his name.
“If she comes back, tell her that Prieto came to check on her.”
The man nodded and put a thumb in the air.
“Pa’lante,” Prieto called out.
“Siempre pa’lante,” the man called back.
Keep going. Always keep going.
* * *
TWO DAYS PRIOR, Prieto did not think that anything—not even a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane—would ever take his mind off his HIV test. From the moment he allowed his sister to schedule the appointment, it was his near singular obsession. He was haunted by the idea of leaving Lourdes without her father, inflicting a pain on her life that he knew all too well. He knew dwelling on death was irrational, but found himself unable to pull his mind back from wandering these dark alleys. The night before he’d been unable to sleep. He was high-strung when he arrived at the doctor’s office. He felt like the nurse gave him a screw face when he got up to follow Olga into the exam room. His heart had been racing, confident that this was a terrible idea.