After the Hurricane(43)
“Ay, your mama!” Maria exclaims. She has gotten to the albums that are more familiar to Elena, but still full of things she barely knows. If this is her father’s life, most of it is a mystery. She has had so little of it, knows so little about it. She sips her soda, and eats the terrible food, and asks her young cousins questions, in Spanish and English. They speak in slang, which they explain to her, and ask her if she has seen several movies based on Nicholas Sparks novels, and does she listen to this or that Colombian or Korean singer, and can they visit her in New York? She nods, smiling. One of them, Mercedes—Elena has gotten better at telling them apart—looks at their mother, lost in the photos, and leans into Elena.
“You wanna get something with me in la cocina?” Elena agrees to go to the kitchen with Mercedes, as Innocenta stays behind, a distraction, Elena realizes. Does Mercedes want something, some contraband? These teenagers are probably much cooler already than Elena has ever been. When it comes to illicit substances, the most she’s ever tried is marijuana, which will soon be as legal as chocolate. She hopes she is not about to disappoint her cousin.
“Maybe you should go to Ponce,” Mercedes says. “I think your papa gonna go there, eventually.” Elena stumbles, hitting the marble island, hard. She will have a bruise on her side. She doesn’t feel it now, though.
“What, why do you think that?” Elena sputters. Mercedes must have overheard her talking to Maria, but how—
“Instagram,” Mercedes says, like it is the answer to all things. Well, she’s fourteen. Perhaps it is. She takes out her phone and starts tapping away, motioning at Elena with the other hand to come closer. “I follow Mando. He’s cool. He’s younger than a normal tío, nicer, too. He messages me about bands to follow, he listen to everything. He have a bar in Ponce with a performance space. We wanna go, maybe when we are older.” She is so sensible and knowledgeable, her young cousin. Elena thinks of her other cousin, Jessenia, and her blog, and all the things she could learn from that. She wishes she could be friends with Jessenia, wishes she was a part of Mercedes and Innocenta’s lives. She has so much family and she knows so little about them, and they don’t really know her. How can she have so much family and still be so alone in the world?
“Do you follow cousin Jessenia?” Elena asks, curious. Mercedes nods, smirking.
“Yeah. She’s good. She mostly lives in Florida but she comes here sometimes to visit. She brought me stuff from Madewell. We don’t have that here. Her posts have, like, too many words. But she’s cool.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen her for years,” Elena says, softly. Mercedes shrugs.
“You never come here. If you come more, you’ll see her. She comes more,” Mercedes says, matter-of-factly, piercing Elena’s heart. She hasn’t realized how much she’s missed this place until she returned to it. “Your posts also have too many words,” Mercedes informs her, with the casual cruelty of the young. Elena nods, promising to work on that.
“Sorry, you were saying something about Mando.”
“Look.” Mercedes points out a recent photo, dated three days earlier. The location tag says Mando’s Place. A man in his fifties, dressing like he’s far younger than he is and half pulling it off, sits with his arm around a woman in a flowy dress, her gray hair wild, charms and crystals slung around her neck.
“I don’t see—”
“Mando is your papa’s uncle,” Mercedes says, and Elena blinks, startled, at the authority in her voice. This child knows so much more than she does. “And that his aunt Irena.” Looking closer, Elena sees it, remembers younger faces from the albums and sees how time has lain on top of them.
“Your papa like to have a good time. He have two beers every time my papa have one. Maybe he go there? Mando always throwing parties.” How strange, Elena thinks, that people talk about shielding children from things, when they always, always, already know. Maybe he go there.
“Thank you,” Elena says, hugging Mercedes, who squeaks.
“I hope you find your papa,” Mercedes whispers. Elena wants to say me too, but in that moment she feels another spike of rage, pure fire in her body. Although she came here for information, for a way forward, she does not know if what she really wants at the end of this is to find her father or not. Part of her hopes he is already gone. It would be so much easier than this, chasing his undead ghost.
So she does not say anything at all.
Her aunt insists on driving her back, rather than letting her take the ferry. Elena protests, but Maria is adamant.
“I need get gas anyway, I forget after church. Besides, there is a place near Viejo San Juan which is a nickel cheaper a gallon.”
Today is Sunday, Elena realizes with a start, of course Maria went to church this morning. Time has quickly begun to lose meaning for Elena in Puerto Rico, where the days are lazy and hot and tourists pour in, treating Tuesdays like Fridays. That means tomorrow is Monday, and the Instituto de Cultura will be open, Elena can visit and find out more about the house, see if there is anything to indicate that her father kept his promise. But more than that, she is eager to learn about the structure. She is aching to know more, where the building comes from, who might have built it, how long it has been standing.
It is sunset as Maria drops her off, smacking both of her cheeks with kisses and asking her to keep her updated. Elena promises to do her best, and Maria seems relieved. The tension between them about Elena’s grandfather seems to have dissipated, but Elena cannot help but feel a little resentful that everyone who is supposed to love her, Maria included, is so eager to hide the past. Elena is sure her aunt knows more about her father’s mother than she is saying. More pieces of her history Elena will never get to see.