After the Hurricane(65)
Elena’s phone is buzzing with work calls and texts from her mother and Fernando and she is seriously considering taking a hammer to it because fuck all of this, who the fuck is Diego and why don’t I know him? Why does everyone want to hide her father from her? The very island, the world, is against her, and she doesn’t know why she hasn’t started screaming yet.
Because even if you did, no one you know would hear you, or care.
She is sitting outside his house, a drink in each of their hands, as he cooks up steaks on a grill. It is an idyllic sight, barbecue and booze and the ocean’s soothing crash, or it would be, if she knew this man, knew why her father had never mentioned him, knew where her father was, knew anything.
“He never mentioned me,” Diego says. It’s not a question. He knows. Everyone knows. A giant conspiracy.
“Neither of my parents did,” Elena says, and her tone could season cocktails, it is so bitter. Diego turns to her, his smile rueful and sad.
“I’m sorry. I think I might understand why but I can see how that must be very hard for you.”
“It’s nice that you can understand why because I sure as hell can’t,” Elena says, taking a deep sip of her drink. Diego looks at her, pensively, like he’s wondering what to tell her, and something in Elena snaps.
“Please do not excuse his, their, behavior. You knew both my parents. You’ve been in touch with my father. I’ve been asked to come down here and find him and I know nothing about him anymore, if I ever did, and everyone is lying to me and hiding things from me, so you know what, no reasons are ever going to be enough for me, okay? I don’t have to understand him. I don’t have to forgive him. I’m just trying to fucking make sure he’s alive. And if he’s not, I need to plan a funeral.”
Diego keeps looking at her, and she knows she has exploded on a total stranger who is not a stranger to anyone but her but she doesn’t care. Elena knows life isn’t fair, but at least her father, her family, could have tried to be fair themselves. Parents are supposed to be better than their children. Even when they are just people in the end? She hates the voices in her head that ask her to understand, to forgive, when all she wants to do is rage.
“Your father has always been a very secretive person. As long as I’ve known him. I used to think that was about trust. It took me a long time to realize it was about shame,” Diego says, his tone kind. Elena looks down. Her father was always the smartest person she knew. What did he have to be ashamed of, before his failures toward her? Where is his shame now, when Elena needs it most?
“Neither of us could believe there was another Puerto Rican in the program. It’s a small school, and, well, I don’t know how many Puerto Ricans had even been on Yale’s campus before, unless it was to clean something.” Diego smiles ruefully, “They even told me, when I got in, that there would be another Puerto Rican, so I was on the lookout for him. He hid it well, but I knew his background, it’s hard to not know where people come from when you know the signs. I knew what it was like to grow up with money, and I knew what it looked like when you hadn’t. He didn’t like people to know how poor he was, but I did know. I could tell. Money can sniff out no money like a bloodhound.”
“I know they didn’t have much but—”
“He had nothing. Wasn’t hard to see. The way he ate. The way he was about money. About his clothing, always so clean. Rich people don’t fear dirt like the poor do. It doesn’t give us away. We don’t fear being called dirty because we can always get clean,” Diego says. Elena nods, slowly.
“My parents, they taught me a lot of shit I unlearned as soon as possible. Sent me away from here to boarding school in the snow, god help my freezing ass, so I wouldn’t be tainted by the natives. Pure conquistador blood and proud of it, if you can believe that. Like being proud of being related to Stalin. When I met your dad, I used to joke he was my first ‘real Puerto Rican’ friend. We both joined Despierta Boricua, this Puerto Rican student group that was a few years old then, and there were maybe one hundred Puerto Ricans on the whole campus, mostly undergraduates. So I got to meet some more ‘real Puerto Ricans,’ although most of them were more like me, rich kids. We would buy them beer. That’s when your father started going by his real name, not just trying to make white people more comfortable by letting them call him whatever they wanted.”
“His real name?”
“He always went by Junior. Hated it, but it was easier than Santiago. Less foreign. I guess he could just pretend to be really tan before. No pretending with ‘Santiago.’” Diego smiles, ruefully.
“That must have been hard for him. All of it,” Elena says, reluctantly. Diego is giving her a window into something she isn’t sure she wants to see, no matter how much she’s been asking for it.
“He would never admit that. But of course it was.” Diego is looking at her again and she wants to hide her face. “You look so much like him. I’ve seen pictures of you, but it’s different in the flesh. You have his face.”
Elena has heard this so many times. When she was a child, her mother said it to her with happiness, and now, as an adult, Rosalind says it with something else. Pain? Probably. Elena wonders how many times she has apologized in one way or another to her mother for having her father’s face.