After the Hurricane(110)
Esperanza’s son, for her husband had been right, it was a boy, cried just enough to let the doctors know he was alive, and then quieted, tucked against his mother’s breast and suckling happily. She looked down at him, his transparent nails soft on his little fingers, his swirl of dark brown hair just like her own, and for the first time since she had moved to the mainland, she knew that she was truly, really, absolutely not alone. She had her child. When all else was horrible, she would have him. When the world was confusing and painful and too much, as it so often was, more and more now, she would have him. At that moment, she was sure that nothing could ever separate them. He was the prize for all the pain, he was the gift she had been praying for, the salvation, he would free her.
His father, when he met him, felt strange at the sight of his child. How pathetic children are, he thought, how vulnerable and defenseless. He wished humans were born with protection, a shell like a turtle, instead of being all pink and soft and nothing.
“I thought we could name him after my grandfather,” Esperanza said, softly, not wanting to wake the baby. “Or my father, maybe, or even yours.” Santiago snorted, uncaring about disturbing the child. Being a father meant being listened to, obeyed, and accommodated, not the other way around.
“We will name him after his father,” he said, firmly. Esperanza wanted to protest, but the baby squirmed in her arms, and she was overwhelmed with love for him all over again. “Santiago Vega Jr. Born right here in New York.”
“What do you think he will be when he grows up?” Esperanza said, impulsively, her love for her son making her bright and whimsical despite her exhaustion, the blood and fluids still leaking out of her.
“If he’s lucky, he’ll be just like me,” her husband said, putting out his finger. Santiago Jr. grabbed it, prompting a begrudging smile from his father. “He’ll be American. Not just a Puerto Rican. When people see him, that’s what they’ll know first, that he belongs here,” he said. “Aren’t you glad we came?” But he was already bored with this, his limp wife who couldn’t fetch him anything, his pink lump of a son who ate and ate while his father went hungry, and he wandered out into the hallway for a smoke before he could hear Esperanza’s whispers to the baby.
“You’ll be better than both of us, my son. You’ll be better than us all. Promise me that, that you’ll be so much better, and that you’ll never leave me, promise.” He pulled hard at her breast, drinking in her words with the milk, and Esperanza was sure he understood her, sure he would keep his word.
She fell asleep smiling, secure in the knowledge that she was loved.
Twenty-Two
It takes her two weeks to sort through everything. She focuses on a room a day. She is not looking for clues anymore, and that makes the work a little faster, but it is still sweaty, dusty, exhausting labor. She finds so many dead spiders and lizards that she considers putting their little heads on sticks at the perimeter, as a warning to the others. She goes through several bottles of floor cleaner and surface spray. She buys stain and sealant and brushes and treats each piece of wood in the house, becoming light-headed with the strength of the chemicals. She throws away more and more things, finds a place in San Juan to donate some of the books and gives bags of items to the junk shop, asking for no profit in return, relieved that the owner does not want her to pay him.
Her mother is indeed furious. And then sad. And then apologetic. Elena endures it all, through many phone calls, and once she finally gets Wi-Fi in the house, more than a few video chat sessions. She forgives her mother, she always knew she would, in exchange for stories. Information is her currency. She asks about college, about graduate school, and Rosalind gives her all she is willing to give, and Elena forces herself to accept this, because that’s what legacy is, what people are willing to give you. If some part of her can forgive her father, and it seems that some part of her can, and some part of her can remain on fire with rage at him, and it is very clear some part of her can, then she must afford her mother the same courtesies. Rosalind tells her she will be back in New York soon, and Elena says nothing. Whatever she does or does not do, it is hers to know. It is her turn to keep secrets.
She returns to the archives, searching out the historic information of the house, and finds that there are indeed records dating back to the 1700s, before which perhaps the city did not keep records; she doesn’t know and neither does the archivist, a very kind woman from Mexico named Maria Antonia who wears a fleece vest as protection against the merciless air-conditioning and guides her through the strange systems of the institution, the way she needs to request information one day and get it the next. Elena finds blueprints from 1876 and 1905, requests for alterations, remaking the fa?ade, moving a window. She sees the names of other owners, like Don Juan Ramon de Torres, whose handwriting is strange, with loops and dark lines in the words, like he wrote with a quill pen well into the nineteenth century. She sees how the archivist changed over the years, from Carlos Castro to Pedro Luis. She longs to dive deeper into these people’s lives, their stories. She wants to know more about them, she wants to know everything. Investigating her father has reawakened her appetite for the past. If she can’t have his, she wants everyone else’s, she wants the island’s.
She reads every entry in her cousin Jessenia’s blog. They fascinate her, and she thinks a lot about them. One sticks in her mind more than the others, because it tells her something about her own family.