After the Hurricane(81)
The Tainos, like many people, worshiped storms. Why worship the thing that can destroy you? Because it is the thing that will destroy you. Volcanos need virgins, rain in dry lands needs a dance, and when you live your life clinging onto a speck of rock and sand and lizard guano surrounded by a hungry sea, the time when it tries to swallow you whole is the time you ask it for mercy.
In the days when people still knew the true names of things, the zemi Atabey, goddess of storms, was, like all women, complex enough to be a goddess in her own right. Guabancex, Atabey on a bad hair day, controlled natural disasters, and her busy schedule meant she hired, delegated, managed, a team of two, Guataubá, who created hurricane winds, and Coatrisquie, who created floods. You need a diverse multi-skilled team to be successful in the hurricane business, everyone knows that.
Now we are in darkness, another thing we used to respect, to worship, and now we ignore. We have so many ways to banish darkness, but we forget how fragile our tools can be. We forget how powerful the elements are, how inescapable, how vengeful. How angry. We sit in angry darkness, and mourn all that we’ve lost, the people and things and the very idea that we were safe, that the storm could not touch us, that the old gods are dead.
The hurricane is a goddess. Despite the layers of new gods lacquering themselves onto the world, there are places where the old powers crack the veneer, coming when called, taking their believers home with them, back to the place where storms are another kind of magic.
Our mistake is always thinking we are the magical ones, that we can control the storm. There is no controlling this. There is only hope, in the darkness, that the waters will recede and that tomorrow we will find light.
Her phone buzzes, startling her. She was so absorbed in the post, she didn’t even notice the wetness in her eyes. Swiping at a tear, she sees a text from Rosalind, I’m sorry, which she ignores. She is about to put her phone back in her purse when it buzzes again, and she sees Fernando’s name.
Just tell me he didn’t end up killing and eating you. She smiles.
If he had, how could I tell you anything? she texts.
Still there? Need a ride? She looks at his response.
I’ve made my own way to Ponce, she types.
My offer was genuine, even if I didn’t make it the right way, he sends back. She looks at the text, frowning.
I’ll think about it, she responds. But will she, really? She cannot imagine selling the house. She doesn’t even know if she owns it. Thanks for making sure I’m alive. She puts her phone away.
She gets some lunch, looks at the historic buildings, which are much like Old San Juan’s, like the house Fernando wants to buy, like the house she was told would be hers. She calls the lawyer Diego had referred her father to, Victor Padua, but no one answers, and she leaves an answer in halting Spanish, and then again in English, her hopes slim. She remembers the way her mother talked during the renovation, how no one would ever call them back, give them information, show up at the construction site on time. Caribbean time is not a myth, it’s a curse. She will call this lawyer again, and again, but who knows if he is even here anymore, on the island? So many people are leaving now. All her excuses and ways to pass time run out at five in the evening, when her great-uncle’s place, she has a great uncle, officially opens, according to the internet, and she follows the map to Mando’s Bar, her heart heavy.
For a moment, after parking, Elena just sits and looks at the bar, snapping a photo. She keeps taking photos and she still doesn’t know why, but she has stopped questioning herself; if she wants to record this trip it is hers to record. The bar is a decent-enough-looking place, nothing fancy, like so many bars she has passed by here: drinks served in disposable cups, outdoor seating, large signs celebrating Gasolina, a premade mixed drink named after the Daddy Yankee song and guaranteed to make one throw up everything they’ve ever ingested, others imploring partiers to enjoy Bacardí, Medalla, and Palo Viejo, a horrific rum sold in any bar on the island in which people want to drink for cheap, that is, everywhere on the island. Elena remembers her college graduation trip, her last time here, when she tried a sip of Gasolina and had the taste in her mouth for the rest of the day, cloying and horrible.
When she opens the door of the bar, “La Cucaracha” plays. She had to listen to the song over and over again in a college Spanish class, all of the many verses and their interpretations, in a unit on Mexican revolutions, and she had almost lost her mind in annoyance over the tune. Elena can only think that this must be the most annoying thing possible for anyone who works here, but instead of wincing bartenders and waiters, all she sees is a man in his early fifties, or maybe late forties if he is a stranger to moisturizer, dancing to the song, celebrating the cockroach and her lost back legs.
“Come in, come in, we’ve just opened,” he says in Spanish, turning around. “What will you have?”
“Are you Hermando?” she says, her voice strangely breathless. He looks at her, his smile, the broad bright one of a proprietor, of a bartender, fading.
“I am.”
“I’m Elena. I think you know my father.” She hands him a photo, now creased from her hand and the humidity, one of him and her father and “Irena la Bruja,” according to the lightly written pencil marks on the back of the image, as the door opens behind her. And this time, as the song plays, signaling that there are more customers, Hermando does not dance. Instead, he looks at Elena as if he has seen a ghost, leaving the cockroach with no one dancing to her pain.