After the Hurricane(113)
Eventually she will have to go back, to figure out what comes next for the house, for herself. She will have to make plans, and plans for plans. But for now, she can just be, here on this beach, and breathe in the humid air, the fertile smell of the island mixed with the salt of the sea. She thinks of all the things she will never know about her father, and all the things she does. She thinks of the things that live inside her, the problems that may come, the gifts he has given her, good and bad. They press on her, but not the way they used to; they neither hold her down or let her float. They just are.
In the water, she leans back and lets herself float. She is wearing her clothing, but it does not matter, the sun will shine as it rises, the walk home is short. Home. Home is people and places at once. Home is ghosts and things and what people leave behind and what you wish they had. Home is a place that is hers, that she can own without reservation or qualifiers. The warmth of the water, the warmth of knowing that she can think of this place as home now, that it is not lost to her, that it is a part of her and she of it, floods her, lifting her up, making her body buoyant.
She thinks about her father. Maybe she will see him again. Maybe he will live in San Sebastián for the rest of his life. Maybe he will wake up one day and walk into the forest, letting the trees take his body, letting the vines strangle him, becoming a part of the earth. Maybe he will walk out into the ocean, like she has, but he will let the sea embrace him, as it embraces her, and maybe he will give up his need for oxygen and sink into the deep. Maybe he will be happy, then, his body becoming the island, sinking back into the place from which he came.
For a moment, Elena holds her own body below the waves, feeling the power of the water, the tug of the current, knowing how she could let herself go if she wanted to, let the ocean take her life, become a part of it, suffer and need and want no more.
Instead, she emerges, breathing deep, letting air fill her lungs, feeling her body float in the sea. Ten more minutes, she tells herself. Ten more minutes in the water, and then home.
But this is a lie. She already is home. She has been the whole time.
Acknowledgments
I’ve lived with this story for a long time, and I’ve tried to tell it as a movie and as a play, but now, finally, I believe it has found its best home in a novel.
This story, while fictional, comes from many real experiences in my life and in my family history. My agent, Julia Kardon, has been invaluable in helping me find the fiction in the non-fiction and craft a story out of life, which often resists well-structured narrative. I could not have asked for a better agent, and she is probably far better than what I deserve. My editor, Rachel Kahan, is certainly worlds beyond what I deserve, but the generosity of the universe is sometimes bountiful, and I am so much more than lucky to have her hand on this story and her voice speaking to my writing as a whole.
I also want to thank Ariana Sinclair and Hannah Popal, whose insights, organization, and positivity have buttressed the process of this novel. Every book that is published represents the labor of so many talented and insightful people, and for this one, some of those people include Amelia Wood, who marketed this novel, Stephanie Vallejo, my production editor, and the saintly Karen Richardson, my copy editor, who waded through my careful words and careless syntax and corrected my many mistakes.
On top of all this, Mya Alexice’s thoughts and comments were deeply helpful, and I am so grateful for their sensitivity read of this novel.
My family deserves my infinite gratitude for their support, love, care, and critique. My mother, Deborah Solo, can not and will never be thanked enough for all she does, but I can try, at least. If I felt anything went without saying, I wouldn’t be a novelist. Thank you, Mom. For everything.
And finally, but never last or least, thank you, Rohan. I am the writer I am, and the person I am, because of myself, but also very much because of you.
About the Author
LEAH FRANQUI is a graduate of Yale University and holds an MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has two previously
published novels, America for Beginners and Mother Land.
A Puerto Rican–Jewish Philadelphia native, Franqui is currently teaching and pursuing her PhD in creative writing at Georgia
State University. She lives with her Kolkata-born husband and Mumbai-born cat in Atlanta, Georgia.
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