After the Hurricane(97)
“Are you all right?” Elena realizes that she is crying. But why? Who are these people to her? Of course, it is not them she is crying for, and she knows that. She does not mourn the dead people she will never know, never have anything of. She mourns the living. Where is her father? Where are the things he promised her, the house he said was hers, the love he owes her? He is as lost to her as all these dead bodies, rotting in the rich soil of this fertile place. But not all of him, there are pieces that will always be yours no matter how much you are missing, aren’t there? She does not know which part of her to listen to, the pained bleeding half or the adult thinking about another adult who is her father, yes, but also so much more.
“Yes, sorry. It’s been a long day,” Elena answers in English, unconsciously, her defenses down. Naomi nods in sympathy.
“You want some water?” she asks, also in English, and Elena is struck by the change. In Spanish Naomi’s voice is fluid, sweet. In English it is marked by the way Puerto Ricans speak English, elongated vowels and twang around consonants. “I call my friend, I think you maybe should meet her. You can wait?”
Elena nods, and allows herself to be led back to the little office, a freezing box of air-conditioning. She sits, sipping water, as Naomi works away. She wonders what Naomi does all day in this job, how many people die around here, how many graves must be allotted and coordinated day by day. She wonders why Naomi chose this job, to deal in the logistics of death, if this is what she wanted to do when she grew up. It seems a strange and soothing task, in a way, not unlike Elena’s own work, former work, finding homes for people, it’s just that Naomi’s tenants are all dead, and probably complain less about maintenance.
The door to the office opens and a tiny woman, deeply tan and impossibly wrinkled, her face a mass of lines, her eyes two shiny black beads, stands in the doorway. She looks like a little doll. She is round and small and covered in a sack-like dress in a floral print and she looks at Elena, her eyes piercing her, her mouth opening into a little oh, sending her wrinkles scurrying around her face.
“Junior’s daughter!” she says in Spanish, and grabs Elena, tightly, holding her in her arms, cradling Elena’s larger form in her own as if Elena were a small child. Elena does not fight her, couldn’t if she tried. The smell of Florida Water and muscle rub envelops her in a calm, as strange as the rain now falling outside, although the sun is still bright, as this little ancient woman she has never met before strokes her hair and tells her, over and over again, that she is home.
“She knew the second she saw you that you were your father’s daughter,” Naomi says, and Elena tries to keep a smile on her face while her heart drops out of her body. It should not hurt a child to feel that they are like their parent. It should not hurt her that this is the comparison; she does look like her father, and it’s not as though anyone is telling her she inherited any of his other, less desirable traits. She got his dimple, and his curly hair, and his eyes. But still, she trembles at the idea of similarity to Santiago Vega Jr., even as she hopes that this woman, Tía Goli, as she has introduced herself, might be able to help her find him.
They are in Tía Goli’s little house, a few miles away from the cemetery. It is made of cement, as they all are, and painted a cheerful bright green with yellow trim. Chickens pick at worms and bugs on the tiny front lawn, and Elena sits on a wooden chair in Goli’s little living room, looking at a wall covered in images of the Virgin Mary and other virgins of the New World. Most of them look vaguely like Jennifer Lopez, and they are surrounded by babies that range from pale to darkly tanned. On another wall there is a wedding photo, beautiful and well aged, showing a woman who Elena can only assume is Goli herself, brimming with joy, looking up at a slim man only a few inches taller than her who looks straight into the camera, unsmiling. Goli’s dress spreads across the ground in all directions, and they look like they are floating in the sea of her ruffles.
“He was short, same height as her, but he wanted to be taller for the photo, so he’s standing on a little stool there, and her skirt is covering it,” Naomi explains, observing how Elena is looking at the photo. Naomi’s mouth quirks and Goli bustles in from the kitchen with a tray of drinks.
It turns out that Naomi knows the woman well, as Goli has come twice a month to lay flowers on the graves of the Canejas and the Vegas in the cemetery for the last forty-five years or more. Of course, she is under no obligation to lay flowers on the graves of the Canejas, Tía Goli says, with Naomi helping translate the words Elena doesn’t know, the country slang the older woman merrily speaks. Goli is herself a Vega, or she was before marriage; she is Elena’s grandfather’s older sister. But this is a small town, and once these two families were united in marriage Goli decided it was only right. And then of course when one after another of the bodies of the Canejas who made new lives in New York found their way back to the island, it seemed like there was no one else still in San Sebastián to clean their graves and give their spirits flowers, so Goli made both families her responsibility. When Naomi realized that Elena, too, was connected to these graves, she decided that Goli might want to meet the girl who claimed to be a Caneja, just in case she was a Vega, too.
Goli offers Elena something in a glass, and Elena looks down at it, unsure. It is clear, but there is a very small amount of it in the glass, far less than anyone would give someone if it were water. Elena takes a tentative sip and coughs, immediately, as the liquid burns her throat horribly. She looks up and finds Goli smiling at her cheerfully.