After the Hurricane(95)

Nothing is open, she notes, walking around the perimeter of the square. Instead, handwritten signs explain that these buildings are closed because of the hurricane. The plaza is completely empty. It feels like she has arrived in a ghost town, something from the Old West. At any moment, she expects that someone will come around a corner in chaps and spurs, guns pointed, looking for horse thieves.

This is where her family is from. She tells herself that, over and over again, hoping that it will spark some response. Instead, she feels nothing. She is numb. Her body is sweating, the sun high and the day already warm, and she can feel her face burning, the skin on her nose crisping.

What is it, exactly, that she hoped to find here? she wonders as she walks on, making a left, then a right, walking randomly around a town that is just a town like any other, a collection of houses and stores and cars and things. What was supposed to happen when she arrived? A group of sprightly villagers welcoming her with open arms and leading her to her ancestral home? A banquet of spirits waiting to cheer for her, to give her a seat at the table? Her father at the head of it, alive and well and whole, holding the deed to the house in his hands, all ready for her? She passes empty barbershops and empty lots. She sees a shop with a shopkeeper dozing in his chair, and on the other side of the street, a man chatting with a woman at a little café, chewing on a flaky pastry. A car drives by her, and then a motorcycle. Some signs of life. But no parade to greet her, their lost child. She is an idiot. She keeps walking, cursing herself, cursing her stupidity, to think that this is another kind of story, the kind where what is lost is found, instead of what it is, a story about wasting time, a story about wasting hope. She passes by a long white wall that abruptly becomes something else, a plaque, an iron gate, and inside the locked doors, a cemetery.

She stops. A cemetery. Spirits, ghosts, her family are here. Maybe not the way she wants them to be, appearing at her side like magic birds to guide her to her destination, but they are here, in the cemetery. She leans into the plaque, hoping to see opening hours, but instead she sees that this is a historic cemetery, that no one has been buried here for over a hundred years. Where, then, do the more recent bodies rest?

Within ten minutes she is back in the car, on the road, driving toward the only other cemetery in the area, according to her phone. She hates the hope rising in her breast, the sense that there will be something, someone, waiting for her there, and tries to focus on the road.

How does any of this help you find your father? her brain shouts at her, and she opens the windows of the car to drown out the sound of her own mind.



The other cemetery is not far away, and it has parking. More important, it is not closed, and Elena is grateful for this, thanking her own god, and even offering a nod to Jesus, though of course she does not believe in him as a deity, but he’s big on the island, so she figures it’s polite. Inside its gates the cemetery is vast, and sparked with color, bright plants and fake flowers, and she realizes it is massive. How will she find anything in here?

She enters the small cemetery office, and sees a woman, middle-aged and bleach blond, curvy and comfortable-looking, squinting at a computer. Elena smiles at her, nervously.

“Hello,” the woman says in Spanish, smiling up at her. Elena returns the greeting, and wonders how to begin asking for what she needs.

“Are you looking for someone?” the woman asks, and Elena blinks, suddenly close to both laughter and tears.

“I think I have a family member here. Maybe more than one,” Elena says, speaking slowly, trying to enunciate her Spanish, both so she doesn’t make any mistakes and to indicate to the woman in front of her that she needs the same treatment in return. The Spanish she hears in Puerto Rico is often fast, letters slurred together, softly pronounced. A Spanish teacher would call it sloppy, and it certainly neglects formalities. Elena has never heard anyone on the island use the formal usted to say “you.” Elena likes the way islanders speak, much as it presents a puzzle to her, but now she needs to be understood, to understand, and she returns to classroom Spanish, stilted and formal but clear.

“We have a map. Maybe I can help you. What is the family name?”

Elena thinks. This is a reasonable question, but she does not know how to answer it.

“My father’s family are Vegas,” she offers. She has no idea about her grandmother’s maiden name, does she? Inspiration strikes. It’s early, the bar isn’t open yet, he might not be busy. She opens up Instagram on her phone, and finds Hermando’s profile page. His last name is Marin, she notes, and she quickly messages him, Do you know what your mother’s maiden name was? He might not respond, but it is worth trying.

The woman smirks.

“Vega is fairly common.” Elena nods, she isn’t surprised by this. “We have a whole section, I can show you.” Elena nods again.

Her phone buzzes, a message from Hermando. Elena thanks whatever god might be listening for the advent of social media, which can get her information she needs so quickly. Would that each part of her father’s life revealed itself to her this easily. I think Caneja? Her first husband was a Marin, some names in the middle, and then we are Ortiz’s.

Thanks, she writes back, and gets a smiling face in return.

“Caneja,” Elena says. The woman looks at her, surprised, her well-drawn eyebrows arching up.

“Caneja. Okay. That’s a little rarer. Do you know, is it a family plot?” Elena doesn’t understand the vocabulary at first, but the woman is kind, and explains, using a little English. Elena shrugs.