After the Hurricane(76)
It wasn’t just the classes. He was behind on everything. They had lives he had never had, they had families, sane mothers, all the things they needed. They had traveled, they had been to museums outside of a school trip, they played instruments, they knew about foods and what it was like in Rome and how to pronounce all the words Junior had only read, never heard spoken aloud. They had money, all of them. Some of them had a lot, some of them had less, but they all had it, money for clothing, money for the train into San Francisco, money for beer. They drank, they smoked cigarettes and marijuana, they had money for all that, too.
Some of them, the type who wore sweater vests and pearls, and had names like Alison and Clint and Grant, asked Santiago about his missing tooth and why didn’t he fix it and when he said the obvious, that he couldn’t afford it, they did not know where to direct their gazes, they turned red and found a way to exit the conversation. They were embarrassed for him, they pitied him. Some of them, the type that wore peasant skirts and plaid shirts and grew their hair out long, boys and girls, called themselves social activists, organizers, and asked him what he thought about Castro. He told them what he had been taught in school, that communism was dangerous to American values, and they looked at him, shocked, they pitied him, too, for how he thought so conventionally, how he didn’t feel more for his fellow Caribbean islanders. Some of them, the type who wore nothing of note and answered every question first in Santiago’s classes, didn’t ask him anything at all. He did not merit their notice, he was not competing at their level.
Getting into college had been the battle of his life. It was a dream he had not thought he could have, let alone achieve, and now he had, with money to support him, with all his needs met, and he had thought that once he got here, the rest of his life would unfold before him, a road of endless possibility. He saw himself happy, with all the time and space to learn that he wanted, with the chance to meet people who might like him, people he might grow close to. A woman he might love, a friend he might trust. He assumed he would thrive. Instead, he was drowning.
He finished his first semester with grades that just barely met his scholarship requirements, how, he had no idea. Perhaps the Santeria candle worked. He finished it with no friends, as well. He did not know how to relate to the people around him, he was terrified of them, sure they would reject him. Alone on an empty campus, he celebrated Thanksgiving with a cup of noodles, trying to wrap his mind around Locke and Hobbes, reading and rereading the same sentences over and over again. He spent the winter break on campus, too, trying to read all of the books he had taken out of the school library, the references his fellow students had made that he had noted down, all the people he hadn’t heard of, didn’t understand. He had no place to go, no money to get there, anyway. The idea of going back to New York called to him, and he longed to return, to smell the garbage of the city instead of this fresh clean air that made him feel like he was never clean enough. To see Mrs. Schultz, to tell her how hard this was. He called her once a month, sent her letters full of lies about fascinating conversations, academic triumphs, new friends. In person he could tell her the truth, confess his shame, that he was not enough. That this was wasted on him, that he would never be anything more than what he had been born.
He took long walks, living alone once again, as Neil was home in Virginia. He looked at his result sheet over and over, willing the grades to change before his eyes, but they didn’t, unless he took off his glasses, turning them to fuzz. He sat through meetings with his advisor, who told him the same thing, gently but insistently: he had to do better or he would lose his scholarship, lose his chance here. He nodded, smiled, promised, shattering on the inside. He did not know how to get better. He had always done everything on his own, understood everything with his own brain. His brain was failing him, now, and he had no way to change this reality.
As the year changed at midnight on December 31, 1968, becoming 1969, after a long walk around the entire campus, which had taken him hours, Santiago made a decision. He would quit. He would leave Stanford, leave this place where he knew nothing, mattered to no one. He would go back to New York before they threw him out, as he had suspected for so many weeks that they would. He would enroll in SUNY. He would stop pretending that he could escape his old life, his old self. He would return to his obligations, his mother, his family, and let them swallow him up. Anything would be better than staying here and knowing every day that he was beneath these people, beneath this place.
He let himself into his dorm room, relieved that he would not have to announce his presence, for Neil was not there, only to find his roommate suspended from the top bunk, Santiago’s bunk, trying to hang himself with a bedsheet.
“NEIL!” Santiago screamed so loud it tore his throat. He scrambled up to his bed, his hands moving quickly on the knot Neil had made. Neil was so small that his legs didn’t touch the ground, and his face was turning a deep purple, his eyes frantic. Santiago struggled with the knot, trying to loosen it, thinking about pulling on the sheet, but that would only quicken Neil’s death, wouldn’t it? It seemed like hours, trying to work the twisted cloth, but it was only a matter of seconds until he felt a loosening, and Neil’s body slithered to the ground. Santiago threw himself off the bed, not sure what to do next, untrained in CPR, but to his immense relief he heard a cough, and then another, and Neil was inhaling deeply, gasping, coughing, pulling at the sheet around his neck, alive.