After the Hurricane(78)

He took Neil’s useless hand, and shook.



The flight he took from New York to San Francisco before his first year of college was the longest flight Santiago had ever been on. He had never imagined it could take five and a half hours, that there could be so much country between California and his home. It was a good thing, he thought. Every minute gave him more time to hate himself, for everything he had done, for everything he was leaving behind.

He had spent the spring and summer after his admission to Stanford in a daze. He kept thinking it was a mistake, it had to be a mistake, but several calls to the admissions office assured him that they would not, in fact, be rescinding his admission or his scholarship, and his leg went blue with pinch bruises before he had to give up. This was real. It was happening. He was going to college, he was the first person in the history of his family to go to college.

For the first time since his father had moved back to the island, Santiago declined his offer of visiting Puerto Rico. He claimed he needed to make money for school, but really, he just didn’t want to see his father. He worried he might try to talk him out of going, even as he knew that was insane. His father, hearing the news over the telephone, belittled him, what do you need money for now that they are giving you so much? But behind his insults was resignation. Years later, Santiago would think back to that moment and realize how much his father resented him, and was awed by him. How dare his son, his namesake, surpass him? And so fast? His father would never forgive him for his successes, never fail to mention them, brag about them, and diminish them in equal measures.

No member of his family had attended his high school graduation. He walked across the stage and accepted his diploma, graduating with honors, the applause apathetic from a sea of parents who had never seen his face before. The only person who had cheered for him with Mrs. Schultz, was, much to his surprise, Eileen Krause, his social worker. He had mentioned his graduation to her offhandedly, but there she was, her soft form rising to cheer him, her arms jiggling slightly as she clapped. Tears stung his eyes as he accepted the diploma, and later, when she hugged him. Afterward, Mrs. Schultz had taken him out to lunch at the most expensive restaurant he had ever been to, white tablecloths so pristine that he worried his hands might mark them, even though he had scrubbed them clean in the bathroom, twice. She had ordered a bottle of wine, a far cry from the beer he had tried with his grandfather and his uncles, or the sweet painful rum his father had made him sip the year he turned fifteen, and toasted him. The taste was rich and strange, and the food was like nothing he had had before. It was French, Mrs. Schultz said, they really know how to eat, and Santiago didn’t disagree.

“Is France further away than California?” he had asked her, despite the fact that he had looked at maps of the world many times.

“Almost the same distance. One over land, one over sea,” Mrs. Schultz had said, and smiled. “Like Paul Revere said.”

“One if by land, two if by sea,” Santiago corrected her, his mind a little light from the wine, remembering Longfellow’s poem from their poetry unit the year before.

“Of course,” Mrs. Schultz said, leaning back in her chair. “May I ask you something, Junior?”

“Yes, Mrs. Schultz,” Santiago said, puzzled. She had never asked permission to ask him anything before.

“You can call me Pearl, now, Junior, I’m not your teacher anymore.” He nodded, knowing privately that to think of her as anything other than Mrs. Schultz would be impossible. “Your family, how do they feel about what you are doing, going away to college?”

“I don’t think they care much,” Santiago said, frankly. “My mother doesn’t really understand that I am leaving. I keep explaining it to her. Sometimes she is very angry at me, and sometimes she is sad, and sometimes she doesn’t remember who I am.”

“Is she ever happy for you?” Mrs. Schultz asked, leaning forward.

“Why would she be happy for me?” Santiago asked, genuinely confused. “I’m leaving her.”

The last visit he had had with his mother had been the day before he left. She had looked at him with dead eyes, and he had thought that this was one of those days when she didn’t know who he was. He was sad, but relieved, in a way, because if she didn’t know him, she could not be upset with him. He sat with her for an hour, telling her things about the weather, the world news, reading to her from the newspaper. He was about to go when she had grabbed his hand, rubbing it on her cheek.

“Mi ni?o, mi cari?o, mi precioso,” she said. My son, my dear, my precious. Now recognition and gratitude, pathetic gratitude, shone out of her eyes, and he stared at her, horrified. She clutched him and kissed his hand, loving and kind, until the nurse came to separate them. See you soon, she said, before they wheeled her off. Soon. But he wouldn’t. He was only happy she didn’t realize that, then.

“Stanford will open doors for you, open up the world for you. You will know how far away France is because you will go to France.”

“I don’t want to go to France,” Santiago said. Mrs. Schultz’s words were hurting him, making him feel something about his mother that he didn’t want to feel, deep sadness, that she could never be happy for him, never know the future he might have, that she would only see it one way.

“Somewhere else, then. Spain. England. Morocco. Siam! You will go on and be astounding, Junior. I’m happy for you. And I’m very proud.” Mrs. Schultz took a sip of her wine. “I want to tell you something, something I can say because you are no longer my student, because you are very special to me, and because I hope, in some small way, I have helped you in your path toward your future.”