After the Hurricane(82)
The first thing Hermando does is pour himself, and Elena, a shot.
“Have you ever had a chichaito?” he asks, in English now, and Elena is amused and surprised to hear that he speaks with a rather strong New York accent, but old New York, Newh Yoowrk, the way no one really speaks anymore. She shakes her head. The combination of rum and anise-flavored liquor was described to her, when she was on the island as a college student, as deadly, and she has never wanted to find out if this is true or not. Hermando nods and pulls out a bottle without a label on it, dipping its clear contents into two shot glasses.
“Salut.” He downs it easily, while Elena coughs and sputters around a single sip of the concoction, leaving most of it still in the glass, the vile mixture acidic and hard on her throat and stomach. “You sure we are related?” he asks, noting her response to the drink, but his eyes are warm, kind. Elena smiles at him.
“Sure as I can be.”
“Shit. Junior’s daughter. I heard you never came down here.”
“I don’t. But actually, I’m looking for my dad. And I didn’t even know we had family here anymore, other than my father’s sisters.”
“Oh yeah, my sister and me, we been down here a few years. Fifteen.” Elena coughs again, but this time it has nothing to do with the drink. Fifteen years. She could have met them half her lifetime ago, long before her father’s exile. How is it that he has the ability to hurt and surprise her, even now? Shouldn’t she be done with the disappointment by now? Perhaps the pain parents inflict is infinite.
“Actually, you know what?”
Hermando takes out his phone, and dials. He speaks quietly, but Elena overhears him, he is calling Irena, asking her to come, to meet her. He looks up, ending the call with a smile.
“Your tía, well, your great-tía, will be thrilled to meet you.”
“She’s coming?” Elena says, excited. Hermando nods. “That’s really nice, I’m happy to get to meet her. But, listen, as I said, I’m looking for my father. Have you, um, heard from him?” Hermando’s expression closes, and Elena’s heart drops to her stomach, which is still protesting the chichaito.
“Your father.”
“I thought maybe he was here,” Elena says. “He’s missing.” Hermando nods, once, as if that is all the information he needs, and Elena thinks, This is a man who has gone missing himself, isn’t he?
“I’m trying to find him.” Maybe he doesn’t understand her? She is trying to explain it but he doesn’t seem to be responding.
“Let me get us something a little easier to drink.”
Within minutes Elena is sitting down with a glass of water in her hand. Hermando bustles around, grabbing things, wine, a beer, giving orders to the kitchen despite the fact that Elena has made it clear she has just eaten. He checks his phone.
“She will be here in twenty. We can all talk then,” he tells Elena, and then continues setting the restaurant up for service as he tends to her. It might open at five, but it is clear that people do not really come at that time. They sit in silence for a moment, and Elena marvels at the way blood ties people who have nothing else between them. This man is so different from her, from anyone she knows. Different, too, from her father; he looks utterly unlike Santiago Vega Jr., who took after his own father. He has the same nervous energy, though, that her father has when he’s manic, he’s tapping his feet, scratching his arm, patting the table to the rhythm of the music.
“So.”
“Have you seen him?” Elena says at the same time. Hermando just looks at her again, and sighs.
“Can I see?” He is pointing at the albums in her hands, the two she brought with her that she took out when she wanted to show Hermando the photo, and hasn’t put away since. Elena nods and passes one over, the oldest one. He pages through it slowly, taking in the yellowed photographs, the solemn faces staring out at him. His family. Hers, too.
“I haven’t seen some of these. God, like a fucking time machine.”
“That’s Papi.” Elena points at him as an infant, the photo she first saw what feels like weeks ago now, but was just three days ago. “With his parents. It says ‘New York, 1951’ on the back,” she says. Hermando nods.
“That was before I was born,” he tells her. Then:
“Holy shit! Look at her, man, looking like a live wire.” He is grinning like a little boy.
“Who is that?” Elena asks. He’s pointing at a woman in a flouncy dress, mischief in her eyes. She looks all of twenty, her hair falling in soft perfect brushed-out late-1950s waves, and her eyeliner is bold. The photo is black-and-white, but it is clear she is wearing lipstick, too.
“Carmen,” says a female voice, that same New York accent that Hermando has, brushed with more Puerto Rican vowel tones, sounding bittersweet. “Our sister.”
Elena looks up and sees a woman, the woman from the Instagram image, the same face that she has seen in these photos, the chin strong, the brows, like Hermando’s, stern, and she realizes that these eyebrows, these eyes, must have come from Teofila, her great-grandmother, for everyone has them. They skipped her father, but they are on Elena’s own face. She has the family’s . . . what was Teofila’s last name, anyway?
“What was your mother’s last name? Her first one?” she asks, suddenly. Shouldn’t this be something she should know? Shoudn’t she know the names of her ancestors, the track of who has come before her?