Hurricanes can mean domino tournaments that last until the light returns. As the players slam the bones, they say “El Yunque nos defenderá,” like a Taíno god, praying that the hurricane curves north around the forest’s peaks. But they get quiet when you name the bad ones. The ones that curve south, like María.
Some wear shirts that read, “I survived Hurricane Hugo, 1989,” or “Huracán Georges, Puerto Rico Se Levanta, 1998.” Surviving is a medal of honor made of poor cotton that shrinks in rainwater. From the cans of wet food we ate from like a cat, to the unknown specks twirling in our water.
It’s been two years now and I still haven’t donned my “I survived Hurricane María” shirt. Hear Rafa tell it, I’m a vendepatria now. Guess I’m still dealing with that diaspora guilt. After a hurricane, people list off what they need, from cistern locks to portable gas stoves. What line they need to make before curfew for a generator or petrol. It is only later that they list off who and what they actually lost.
One Single Bar
I called her Vivi after my favorite Final Fantasy character. She thought it was because of the El Río Viví that ran through her hometown of Utuado. Out of nerd shame, I never told her the truth. We met when I was wrapping up my bachelor’s degree while she was changing her major to photography. The first time I saw her, she was snapping photos under the palm trees that towered over the humanities quad. She wore high-waisted jeans as dark as an ocean trench that made me want to measure the distance between her bellybutton and her belt buckle with my hands. “Why take a photo?” I said, jumping in front of her lens. “Nothing can decapitate these giants.”
She had a chill apartment in Río Piedras. Vivi didn’t enjoy going out, so after class, I headed to El Refugio, a bar near campus, and bought a caneca of chichaito and a Medalla, waiting for my classmates to pass by my table. By ten p.m., I’d be tipsy in Vivi’s bed watching a movie. Before the credits floated away, our sweat had mingled into sheets under the oscillating breeze of her fan. That was us, until Vivi moved back to Utuado, after the student strike.
As Hurricane Irma curved north, I was in San Juan sitting in the dark, writing my personal statement for Rutgers. María curved south the week before the last semester of my master’s in literary criticism. Vivi texted me the day before María around seven p.m. “Where you at?” I let her know I was with Rafa searching for a portable gas stove in Condado.
“Don’t get drunk,” she texted back. “Te quiero.”
The shops sold out of stoves. The freezers were dripping, but still packed. Rafa and I wandered Condado before mi Vieja called me back home. Rafa’s parents moved to Orlando two years prior. I imagined Rafa stayed because he had a campo bastard.
We sat at La Ventana al Mar park, watching people carrying their last-minute compras up to their apartments. We played out our ritual, sneaking swigs from paper bags, smoking detalládo cigarettes, watching girls up and down Avenida Ashford. The wind lifted the sand, but you couldn’t taste the salt in the air. It smacked our faces like a barrecampo knockout.
“I can’t wait for this bullshit to be over,” I said. “I just want to finish my applications and sleep with air-conditioning.”
“Your bed must smell like vinegar with how much you sweat,” Rafael said. “How’s Vivi holding up in Utuado?” Rafa didn’t appreciate our relationship once she moved. Any distance was long distance for Rafa.
“Her family is ready for the worst. They got a generator full of gas and cistern full of water,” I said, appreciating his attempt at a sentiment.
“After this mess, you can find a girl who shares your zip code,” Rafa said.
My pocket vibrated. La Vieja was calling me home. Rafa and I divided the beer. As we stood, a gust drove our cans off the bench. We cracked open two more over the ripping puddle.
“Let’s meet up tomorrow,” Rafa said as I got into his Corolla. “See if María shakes as many branches as Irma.”
“Dale.”
I went to sleep while mi Vieja and Aunt Graciela told their hurricane stories. I woke up at four in the morning to María's knocking. A hurricane teaches you that water always finds a way in. The water flowed over the floor like lava in a James Bond film. The house shrilled through the storm like a pea in a whistle. After María’s eye gave us a three-hour break, a window collapsed from the built-up air pressure. We didn't know you had to allow a bit of wind to roam around the house as if paying tribute to a spirit.
Thursday, the day after the storm, Aunt Graciela dropped me off at a park near my neighborhood to find a signal. It smelled of baked damp earth. The trees that stood looked like hands peeled to their bones. Near the collapsed neighborhood gate, I had a single service bar. A photo of mi Viejo covered my screen.
“You are coming to Orlando,” mi Viejo said. “You can’t send transcripts in the dark.”
I told him that we still had to clean the house. That the shit here was serious.
“That’s why you need to leave. If your mother worries you, she can stay with her cousins in Miami.”
“It’s not that,” I said.
“Your girl, right?” mi Viejo said. “I don’t want you in that criquete. Don’t lose your life over pussy. You don’t know where you two will study.” He didn’t want to tell me María disconnected Utuado from the rest of the island. I told him it was impossible to leave, that the airports were bus stops, full of people hitchhiking for a flight. My signal icon flatlined and the call dropped. I knew I was leaving. It didn’t have a date, but it was on the calendar.
A Sign
Don’t ask me why he’s calling. I sent him straight to voicemail. I mentioned him, he’s the jevo I had before moving to the States. Jorge knows we’re together. It’s been two years, and he’s on the west coast. He leaves messages asking what he could have done during the hurricane, while I’m trying to forget.
You want to listen to this? I can’t say what happened with Jorge without María. We worked when it was convenient for him. He never cared for me after I moved back to Utuado. He wanted to live out his bohemian wet dream in my Río Piedras apartment. I could never convince him to come to Utuado. He said he'd get lost even though it's a straight drive through the mountains from Arecibo. Only an idiot could lose their way. That was the first sign.
He centered every conversation on his applications and his graduate thesis on Nuyorican poetry. Another sign. He said we’d make it work with surprise trips and video calls. He turned me into his private camgirl, but no surprise visits. Once he got his license suspended for drinking and driving after a Noche de San Juan party, I stopped asking. The Tuesday before María hit, I helped the men in my family secure our roof with those twisted ropes that burn your palms. The first four hours of the storm, Papi, Mami, my brother Wico and I, blocked the water seeping into the kitchen under the reinforced doors with the towels and bedsheets.
“Listen!” Mami said. The torrent slowed to rain gutter taps. The entire neighborhood walked onto the glass-covered streets to question the sky. María’s clouds opened around the sun, like a Bible story.
“God has seen us,” our neighbor Giangi said, as she held Mami’s hands. “This is His sign.” I imagine Giangi still looking for a pigeon holding an olive branch. God’s gaze was distracted, we were under María’s eye. We had another six hours to go.
The Friday after the storm, I sat at the kitchen table, charging my phone. My texts ended with red exclamation points that read ‘failed to send.’ Papi and mis tíos refused to let me even roll a fallen palm tree out of our driveway. Earlier that morning, my eldest Tío Raul sent me to help Mami, who sent me to help Abuela Rosin, who wanted me to help her into bed after I moved her sofas to their proper place.
“Shouldn’t you be helping Mami clean her office?” Wico said as he and Raul dripped into the house. Wico took two tank tops from the laundry.
“I spent the morning of mopping Titi Frances' and Abuela Rosin's house,” I said, taking the mop to their sweat tracks.
“Frances and I appreciate the help,” Raul said.
“No hay de qué,” I said with the tinge of intended guilt. “Shouldn’t you be helping Luneska’s family?” I said to Wico. Wico’s girlfriend was around the house more than I was.
“Raul and I just dropped off gasoline at her house. She passed by yesterday while you were out back swinging your phone in the air,” Wico said, as he tossed a trickling water bottle to Raul. “If Jiya didn’t want to visit before, I doubt he will ever come now.” Jiya was the nickname my tíos gave to Jorge.
“He might visit more if tíos and you stopped jodiéndolo when he does,” I said.
Raul changed his shirt. “When I was younger,” he said, “I shook the hand of every man and kissed the cheek of every woman anywhere I picked up Frances. From a chinchorro in Arecibo to a nightclub in San Juan. Why can’t Jiya be like Luneska?”
“You live in the same neighborhood! Does no one in this jíbaro town understand that?” I said. I tied up three water bottles in a plastic bag, grabbed my camera, and tucked them in my book bag.
“I’m going to Abuela Rosin’s,” I said, marching into the street.
The neighbors’ fighting echoed into their driveways. “You won’t wake up to get gas if you keep drinking!” “What do you mean you don’t like the food? ¡Coño! You picked this shit out!” “I told you to keep the generator off while I’m out of the house!”
As I walked through the neighborhood, I took my photos. A woman bathing her children in a tub full of rainwater. Families heaving buckets of water from their houses like miners. An old man tugging out photos from an album and placing them in the sunlight.
María was a giantess that stomped along the roads. The valley was deep enough to allow her to show her legs. The electricity lines hung defeated as if she pulled them to propel herself over the mountains. Mauled dresses, peeled washers and dryers, and silver ceilings misshapen like balls of aluminum foil covered the fields.
“Have you seen a black dog with short legs?” a woman asked as I took a photo of the field of household appliances that peeked out like headstones. I shook my head. “Have you found a jewelry box with a cross over the top?”
I told her to check the banks of the Viví. That I had seen people fishing out their belongings. The woman cried her dog’s name as I walked along the edges of the river.
Utuado, La Ciudad del Viví. And in a single morning, María fattened the Viví from a stream into a flood. The river washed away the old concrete bridge and the new steel one, a warning to the past and the present. The river divides the city, those who live on the edges of the valley and those who live across the Río Viví. Without the bridges, María released the city back to its nature. My tíos assisted with the makeshift zipline to connect the people across the Viví. I snapped a photo of the bridges' remains, too heavy for the current to pull.
I sprinted to Abuela Rosin’s house before curfew. Six p.m. to six a.m., placed on María’s Wednesday. The government said they implemented it to avoid any indirect deaths, the only deaths they weren’t tallying. They scheduled the curfew to end on 23rd of September. It stayed until the 18th of October.
Everyone slept to the muffled hums of the generators that ran through the night. Their mumbles reminded me of Abuelo Rocky’s weak-jawed ramblings, pleading an untransmutable apology to a garbled name.
They sold out of generators before Irma passed, and people were demanding more. “They will relax when they hear about the thieves raiding houses for generators,” Raul said on the drive home from Abuela Rosin’s house. A generator running through night made your house a target brighter than a fire spreading down the mountainside.
Guilt-Tripping
I can’t tell you the way to Utuado. I went once with Vivi. Her Abuela’s birthday. I sat next to Vivi's father, Cano, thinking as a former outsider he’d give me an assist. His mustache only moved to eat and offer drinks until he was too drunk to stand. I ended up getting probed with stingers after dinner. “Who is this stranger?” “What are you going to do with a degree in literature?” “Why don't you visit Utuado more often?”
My family has a shitty car, and I have a guilt-tripping mom, but I didn’t get into all that. “I'm focusing on finishing my degree,” I said. The women left to the kitchen, and the men's sips grew into gulps.
“You can read in the car. You don’t like Utuado?” Vivi's uncle Carlos said, offering a drink and a grin. “I love the campesino towns,” I said. Who could not love a town stuck in the 1890s?
“Utuado isn’t campo,” Vivi’s oldest uncle, Raul said. “It’s been a city since the Spanish. Named a city by a queen. Could you tell me which?”
I dove into my glass and shook my head.
“I expected more of the graduate student from the capital,” Raul said. “Queen Maria Christina of Austria. Utuado was the richest city on the island. Do you know how?”
“Coffee,” I guessed. Tobacco, coffee, and sugarcane, the root word for rum. The trinity of Puerto Rican production and consumption.
“Black Gold in a golden era before the gringos came. This was the first city in Puerto Rico with an electric power plant.”
A lot of good that did them, I thought. It probably hadn’t been inspected since its installation.
The Friday after María, mi Vieja and I taped up garbage bags over the hole in the living room. Mi Vieja’s breasts hung to her bellybutton under her bata. She hadn’t changed out of her cleaning clothes since Irma. We bathed every other day after they cut the water during Irma, squatting in the tub, pouring cups of rainwater over our heads. Rafa called these rapid scrubbings baños polacos; culo, bolas, y sobaco. But Mr. Rebollo’s howling was a constant every single day. “I shit on God, the government, the Americanos, and all of you!” he screamed. Mr. Rebollo was the drunk engineer who lived in the old mansion at the end of the block. Every weekend before María, he invited the neighborhood drunks to a nightcap at his house, listening to Led Zeppelin and Silvio Rodríguez at full blast. No lights, no parties, but no silence.
“Jodio cabrón. I hope he’s this drunk when the Americans come to fix this criquete,” mi Vieja said as she corralled the leaves in the living room.
“I didn’t know the Americans had the technology to reverse hurricanes?” I said.
“Quiet. They will deport you for manifestante before you get accepted,” mi Vieja said. “God, I need a coffee. Did they tell you where you could find a stove in Condado?”
“I can go check in Hato Rey.”
“Not in my car. Estás tú loco. You can go walking. Have you reached Vivi?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“She is with her own, like you and me,” mi Vieja said as she hugged me. “But once the power comes back, we are leaving this damned island. I can’t survive another storm.”
“How about you go to Miami?” I said.
Mi Vieja released me. “Who the hell are we going to stay with in Miami?”
“You can stay with Titi Loritza. I can go to Orlando. Dad talked about getting tickets.”
“You’re abandoning me?” mi Vieja said as she grabbed a bucket on her way to the bathroom. “How long do you think he will let you stay with him? ¡Él no es tan pendeja como yo! I let you drink and fuck around getting that degree. You will abandon Vivianna? Igual que tu fucking padre.”
“You can't make it through another hurricane?” I said, pulling on the edges of the bucket. “Look at this house. Has María even passed?”
The rim of the bucket refused to twist, but not to crack. The shit colored water hit the floor. Mi Vieja sunk her teeth into her knuckles and screamed as if she ripped the joints from her fist. I stepped back, palms ready for her to rush me. She had only done this in front of my father. The knock on the door lowered mi Vieja’s volume and her hand. Rafa wore a Cangrejeros basketball jersey as if he was going to a game, but he stank like he just came off the court.
“Let’s grab a beer in Santurce before curfew,” Rafa said. I yelled to mi Vieja that I was going to hunt for a gas stove in Santurce and hopped into Rafa’s Corolla.
Along Juan Ponce de León Avenue, the windows of the commercial buildings dangled over the street like gallows of crystal and metal. After passing Bellas Artes, we found a crowd growing on the sidewalk and people giving out food. They were trying to live with what the curfew permitted. Rafa parked after we recognized several faces in the crowd.
“We were mopping rainwater in my cousin’s place for hours,” Josean said. “I thought everything was good because the house had electricity. The fool had the generator running through the entire shitstorm! I could have gotten my ass electrocuted. End up in a casket smelling of chicharrón.”
“At least you haven’t seen any corpses,” Myriam said. “I took my grandmother to the Pavia Clinic in Cupey. In the middle of the storm, she just froze holding the mop to her chest. My parents arrived at the clinic before sundown. As I smoked a cigarette, I saw the cops keeping families out of the clinic. The parking lot smelled like a gas station. I thought I saw an ambulance mechanic with a hose in his mouth. The cops gunned him down as he scrambled over the fence like an iguana. The cops said he had been sneaking in since Irma.”
Neftali was the next one up. “I watched someone disappear the day after the storm. While I cleaned the plaster out of my driveway, I saw a guy crossing over the debris from sidewalk to sidewalk. Like a pinball. I thought nothing of it until Mucaro’s mother came asking about her autistic son.” He opened a flyer written in Sharpie, a telephone number, a reward for any information, and a stapled photo of the boy. “I’m the last person who saw him.”
Behind the sweat and dirt, Neftali had guilt smeared over his forehead. As I hugged Neftali, I saw them coming. Twelve men, several skinny enough to be teenagers, with hammers and machetes. T-shirts masked their faces. I dragged my friends back to Rafa’s Corolla as the men raided the street party. While we turned right onto Ave. Muñoz Rivera, I watched the front teeth of the man serving the food spill onto the street like loose change as he took a hammer to the face.
Floating Rumors
On Sunday morning, the rumors of corpses in the Río Viví circulated the city. The stories even reached Abuela Rosin's laminated tablecloth.
“They have to be from el Cementerio Municipal,” Titi Frances said as Abuela Rosin placed a cup of black coffee in front of her. “The government has neglected it for decades.”
“¡Ah no!” Mami said, placing a jar of brown sugar on the table. “If it’s true, they are from el Cementerio Nueva Jerusalem. Giangi saw cows grazing on the graves. Gracias a Dios we didn’t bury Papi there.”
“If your father were alive, he would have drowned in the river trying to save the neighbor’s dog,” Abuela Rosin said. Titi Frances and Mami brought their shoulders to their necks to seal their laughs. Abuelo Rocky was more of a drunk than a lifeguard. Abuela Rosin edited the family memories as if no one else was recording.
“Y tu novio, Vivianna?” Abuela Rosin said. “Has he come?”
“El jevo? The one who can’t navigate his way to Utuado?” Titi Frances said.
I stood from the table and told them that I was going out to take photos. To see if I could reach Jorge.
“Raul heard on the radio that María went south of San Juan,” Titi Frances said.
“¡Ah no!” Mami yelled tugging my wrist as I moved towards the door. That she told Giangi we would help clean the branches in her backyard.
“Let her go, mija,” Abuela Rosin said. “Someone has to capture our survival.”
Three blocks of cars lined up for gas as if they were handing out lottery tickets. Locals fanned themselves with pocket fans and the brims of their hats. In one photo there are four arms, above the line like palm trees. I thought they were mocking me for making light of the storm.
“¡Oye Vivianna!” It was Marta y Carola, two friends from high school. The last time I had seen Marta was graduation. Carola and I reconnected while studying in Río Piedras. They wore dirt-covered hot pants and crop tops, like they had walked from Playa Obispo in Arecibo.
“I heard San Juan is half underwater,” Marta said.
“But the storm went south of the city,” I said.
“The tides eroded the beaches. The sand filled the sewers and is blocking the flow of water,” Marta said.
“Rumors are floating around on the radio,” Carola said.
“That’s why we’re getting gas. To go to Arecibo, after that, San Juan,” said Marta. “We’ll see the island for ourselves.”
“You should come with us, Vivianna,” Carola said.
I imagined Jorge floating in a sewer, clawing sand out of his mouth, like a turtle choking on a plastic bag. I told them to come to my house the following day.
Mami was yelling about her portable propane stove and the cistern when I returned home. “¡Coño! Did you give the stove to Raul last night? ¿Ah?” she said.
I shook my head and plugged my phone into the outlet under the kitchen table.
“Maybe if you weren't looking at your phone, you would know,” she said.
Mami sat down at the kitchen table and screamed into the curves of her palms. After a morning of giving water to our neighbors, she noticed the broken lock on our cistern when we returned from Abuela Rosin’s. I hid the stove behind the crusted planters in the garage while Mami inspected the crime scene. I planned to give the stove to Jorge. The idiot was drunk searching for one on the eve of María. I asked Mami if she remembered Carola and Marta and told her the plan.
“Tired of helping?” Mami said as she stood.
“I’m tired of Raul telling me what I can’t do,” I said. “All I’m good for is cleaning houses.”
The kitchen door opened and Raul walked in sideways.
“Someone broke into the cistern and robbed the propane stove,” Mami said. “We lost half the water.”
“I’ll find a lock next time I’m in town,” Raul said as he turned to the door.
“Before you go, escucha a esta loca. She’s going to San Juan with two girls she hasn’t seen since elementary school.”
“Jorge and his mother are alone,” I said. “She wants to move to the States.”
“If your drunk of a boyfriend can’t live through this,” Mami said, “you shouldn’t waste your time with him.”
“Half of my tíos are drunks. Maybe I’m just a traditionalist,” I said.
“If Jiya left, it would be for the best,” said Raul. “He’s not family. The roads to San Juan are impassible. Don't become another thing we lose in this storm.”
The rumor that the roads were impassible wasn't stopping anyone. During sundown, the back-to-back traffic of those escaping before the curfew lit the mountainside like a golden necklace. Before María undressed the mountain, it was impossible to follow how the road curved out of the valley.
After the fight with Mami and Raul, I walked into the street to watch the neighborhood kids. They made a game of counting the zig-zagging car lights. I took a photo of their fingers tracing the rays like the beams of a telecommunications tower.
Rebollo Rock
“Isn’t that your mom?” Rafa said as we drove up my block after dropping off Neftali. Mi Vieja was trying to find out how far she had to stick her mop up Mr. Rebollo’s ass to clean his mouth. Mr. Rebollo barked at my mother through his gate. I grabbed the mop by the handle, and I pulled mi Vieja into the house while Rafa kept Mr. Rebollo on the banks of the sidewalk.
“¡Lo voy a matar!” mi Vieja screamed.
I told her to relax through her bedroom door. The knob was a cheap salsa shaker in my hand vibrating to the beat of mi Vieja’s fist as I recalled Josean, Myriam, and Neftali's stories. We were sliding over death like an ice level in a video game, and San Juan didn't even get the worst. I knew he would bitch about it, but I had to ask Rafa for the favor.
“Vete pal carajo,” Rafa said in the doorway.
“You know I can’t drive,” I said.
“Who the hell will stop you? All the cops are directing traffic. After that shit in Santurce, I’m not taking my car anywhere.”
“I saved you from that shit.”
“Don’t start with your Vieja’s guilt-tripping. We go on Monday. In your mom's car,” Rafa said as he walked out.
“Why can’t we start today? I could stay with you and start early tomorrow,” I said.
“You can’t cash out two favors for one,” Rafa said as he got in his car. “I got to make the line for petrol tomorrow.”
That night, Mr. Rebollo’s voice filled our house like a gas.
“I shit on God, the government, the Americanos, and all of you!” he screamed.
I was being rocked to sleep by his grievances when a light filled the house. I felt the heat behind the acrylic slats. As I opened the window, I saw a shadow slamming Mr. Rebollo’s gate. The shadow was born from a wooden chair set aflame in the street. The wooden chair barked like the discharged light of a glitched electric billboard. Another shadow grew around the light only to destroy itself by dowsing the fire.
“Don’t touch it!” Mr. Rebollo screamed. “It’s my property!”
“What the hell is wrong with that man?” mi Vieja said Saturday morning, not believing the flames until she saw the blackened chair legs on the sidewalk.
“He bought a generator,” our neighbor Mrs. Ruiz said over her charred garden. “Wrote up a contract and got the vendor to sign. But the vendor sold it to someone else.” Mrs. Ruiz's son, Julio, had taken out the fire. Mrs. Ruiz watched Mr. Rebollo soak the chair in rum and the petrol he bought for the generator. He lit the contract and tossed it on the chair to ignite the flames.
Taínos With Red Biha
Mami and I picked up Abuela Rosin on Monday morning even though we knew she would sleep no matter where we sat her. Mami did not want to leave her sweating alone in her house. While I washed Abuela Rosin’s clothes, I kept my eyes on the street for Marta and Carola.
“Waiting for your ride to San Juan? ¿Ah?” Mami said, noticing me peeking at the driveway.
“Women can’t look at the street. How far back did María send us?” I said.
“You want to leave, then leave!”
“I’m tired of being fed rumors,” I said.
“Go see your drunk. Hopefully, he won’t piss in your bed.”
A hand hung on to my wrist like a thin brass bracelet as I picked up my book bag.
“Please don’t go. There is nothing there,” Abuela Rosin said. I hadn't realized we had woken her. A car pulled up the driveway. Raul stepped out of his truck with the new lock in his hand.
“If she prefers to be with her noviecito instead of her family, then I want her gone,” Mami said. “Let him take care of her.”
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I want to see if the rest of Puerto Rico exists. Our faith is in a radio frequency,” I said.
As Raul’s frame blocked the doorway, I saw Marta’s 4Runner pull up through the kitchen window. I whipped my wrist out of my Abuela Rosin’s grip and rushed to the garage doorway. Raul clutched on to my elbow and I lost my balance. We slammed into Mami's car. I felt the blood flow along my knee. The sharp plastic cover of the lock cut my leg as Raul pinned me to the car.
“He is not family. He wouldn’t come for you,” Raul said. Abuela screamed, Raul loosened his hold, and I slipped out. I grabbed the portable stove hidden behind the planters and sprinted to Marta’s car. Marta stiffened, as Mami charged out of the house. I slapped the back of Marta's headrest and she sped out of the neighborhood.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confessed.
“Neither do we,” Marta said.
In the traffic out of the Valley, I snapped a photo of the men pushing our car out of the mud. They pointed which way the drivers needed to turn their wheels and laid logs on pools too deep for the vehicles to pass. The clay over their chests made them look like Taínos decorated with red biha.
Near the exit to the Arecibo telescope, I took another photo. A herd of people with their phones in the air. The screens were halos above their heads, as they waded in the morning light. After an hour of traffic with no service, Marta said it was my turn to drive.
Oso Blanco
I made sure that Mr. Rebollo’s car was not sitting in his garage on Monday morning. Rafa arrived with a case of beer and smelling like he was banging a woman’s head into his headboard the entire weekend. “Why do you stink like calzoncillos cagao?” I said as he started the car.
“Since I got my generator connected, I’ve been roaming around my ex-girlfriends’ neighborhoods,” Rafa said driving out of the subdivision. “Tell her you own a generator, she’ll jump in your car to sleep with a breeze. Tell her you have clean water, she might let you put it in her just to wash the gunk out of her hair.”
“People are dying, while you are out ass grabbing. If you have water, why the hell do you still stink?”
“Un baño polaco al día, papá. I got clean water, not a lot of water.”
Rafa parked below the hill of the demolished Oso Blanco penitentiary. An area rumored to have strong secure signal. Vivi’s phone number wouldn’t give me a single tone. I sat in the car, watching the video of the river flooding the town center of Utuado. I scanned for Vivi among the pixelated faces that looked like convict confessionals, which froze and vanished as the footage leaped between segments. I was chasing a sign.
“Quit looking at that shit,” Rafa said, as he slapped the phone into my lap.
“Why don’t we just try to make it to Arecibo?” I said.
“We will waste a bunch of gas, end up sleeping in this fucking Volvo, and die in a mudslide on our way to Utuado!”
“If we go now,” I said, “we can make it to Arecibo and get actual news about Utua—”
“You want to see Vivi,” Rafa said. “I get that. But I’m not going algarete because you want your dick sucked before you leave.”
“What do you know about me leaving?” I said.
“This big show to make it to Utuado!” Rafa said. “Let me guess, Daddy’s coming to the rescue. Couple nights without air-conditioning got you planning your great escape.”
“I'm moving for grad school! Where's the big show?” I said.
“You are the show! The diaspora dreamboat. Got your cheap public degree from the island. Now you are flying off to impress the white girls who are too scared to date black dudes.”
“Vivi is the reason—”
“I fucking know that. That why this ‘let’s go to Utuado’ shit pisses me off,” Rafa said. “You can’t do a two-hour drive to see this chick? But let’s take a road trip when the entire island is beachfront property! You’re a fucking flake, like my parents.”
“Let’s applaud Rafa for sitting on his ass in a colony and making time to screw around! A cultural icon. You should have left with your parents.”
Rafa punched the steering wheel. “I don’t want to live in fucking Gringolandia!” he said. “Everybody is a shitty day from a one-way ticket. María just placed all the shitty days back to back.”
“I should stay here drinking rum and grabbing ass, like you.”
“I would prefer it,” Rafa said. “People have to weather this bullshit. Make this their daily. Make this their reason to stay, not an excuse to run. If you want to go, pues lárgate, cabrón!”
“All I want is to make sure Vivi is safe and tell her I’m leaving.”
“All you want is a chauffeur for your farewell tour,” Rafa said as he put the car in drive. I grabbed the wheel. I told Rafa to stop and shoved my phone in his face.
My call to Vivi dropped, but I saw those four black signal bars. Rafa got on Ave. Kiko Custodio and turned right at the security checkpoint of the Ciudad de la Ciencias. At the crossroad, he stopped the car.
“Near the highway is the clearing where Oso Blanco used to be,” Rafa said. “I will see if I get any bars near the main center. We can meet back here in half an hour.”
I walked into a miniature desert that contained the scraps of the penitentiary. The white bear of the Caribbean. Its walls held the hardest prisoners and loomed over the busy Expreso Las Américas. As if the developers wanted to mock the inmates’ isolation with the nation’s proximity and indifference.
I tripped on a chunk of penitentiary wall watching the service icon dance to a fickle frequency. The four black bars stayed strong and my phone rung. I answered without looking.
“Jorge! ¿Me escuchas?” mi Viejo said, cutting in and out. “I got the tickets! You are leaving on—.”
“When? Hello?” I said before hanging up. The signal strengthened as I walked toward the highway. A familiar howl hung over the secluded penitentiary gate. Mr. Rebollo yelled under the shade of the arch. He stuck a finger in his unoccupied ear as he hid behind the punctured penitentiary doors.
“¡Escucha hijo! Remember Tito?” He had picked up his chainsaws from his storage unit. “Palm trees are still trapping people in their houses. With that money we could both buy generators. No, I’m not drinking!” Mr. Rebollo said with a caneca filled with rum pinched between fingers. “Aren’t you tired of holding the past over my head? ¡Emilio!”
With his lost connection, Mr. Rebollo made shards of his caneca.
“¡Lárgate, cabrón!” Mr. Rebollo said, noticing me. The signal bars were four black dominos building momentum, tipping me forward. Mr. Rebollo tossed a handful of shards covered in rum, sand, and blood.
“I’m not leaving,” I said. Mr. Rebollo dug into the dirt, making another palm-sized bloody amalgamation. His second pitch hit my ankle as I walked closer towards the shade of the penitentiary archway. I pushed Mr. Rebollo out of the way and squatted as I did for a baño polaco. Mr. Rebollo kicked dirt into my face, as I called Vivi.
“Leave!” Mr. Rebollo said. He wouldn’t let me hear the tones. I shoved the drunk into the archway’s shade. I could have broken him, but he too wasted to build the momentum to stand.
By the time Rafa arrived, Mr. Rebollo had rolled off his ass. I squatted between tones. That day I learned I was more stubborn than a veteran drunk. I brushed the dust off my pants and sat in the Volvo, knowing the same horror and reassurance–that we were all in the same shit.
Manati Exit
Our pockets pulsated near the town center of Arecibo. The four bars lit up our phone screens. Our phones shook to the long string of concerned texts pleading that we were not dead. I parked the car on the side of the highway, not knowing what would happen when I heard his voice. Jorge was near the highway with a friend, another drunk. In those hours of traffic, I grinned towards the Caribbean countryside mangled to a foreign fall. We met at a halfway point, a highway-exit in Manatí.
The dirt fluttered off his clothes as the cars passed. Jorge and I held each other on the edges of the curved highway ramp. We didn’t have time to tell our stories. The curfew was killing our day. He said he was staying with his father in Orlando for a month. I cried. He held me tighter over the misunderstanding. It was a cry of relief. The world still spun forward in the dark. He promised that he’d be back to return the stove. I haven’t seen either.
After Hunter College called me, I broke it off with Jorge. I knew where I was going, I didn’t want anyone to take me back, back to that worried role. Where it was only stage directions, dialogue, and rumors. Under the curfew’s curtain that allowed no time for judgement. I risked so much over a weak connection. Mami helped me find an apartment, but Raul, and Abuela Rosin refuse to visit.
That’s what happened between the three of us—Jorge, María, and me. Sounds like a terrible rom-com. We should go to sleep. I have to take the train to New Jersey tomorrow.
Vendepatria
Mi Vieja made eight pots of coffee on that stove. Two cups for each of us every day, until the morning Rafa drove us to the airport. Rafa agreed to hold on to the stove, but that loss is on me. Another addition to a list I can’t make a scratch on. Rafa calls me when he’s rolling more than his r’s. He won’t even let the phone ring when I call. He texts back a single word: vendepatria.
Diaspora guilt is contagious. Guilt for not being there. Guilt for not mopping up the stains. Now I’m guilty of not staying. When the wind and the water engulf you, you can’t meditate on your actions. You question what you are running on, but not what you are running from. You ask the watered-down coffee, the cans of wet food you ate from like a cat, the unknown specks twirling in your water.
The last time Vivi and I spoke, she told me she got into a photography program. She refused to say which. She emailed me her portfolio, Temporal. It was a collection of photos she took after the hurricane. I don’t know if it was the content or the way she developed them, but the photos looked like she shot them when Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony.
When the ceiling’s spinning won’t let me sleep, I call Vivi. In an inch-high voice, she answers that she can't understand my list. When she doesn't answer, I'm nodding between that one-two tone, as the room spins faster and faster, as if I was strapped into one of those Round-Up rides. The sweat pastes the phone to my cheek. My neck drips as if I was sitting in Mr. Rebollo’s chair lit with petrol and false agreements. As the voicemail gives her instructions, the room slows. I doze off, ready to jump out of bed, prepared for the world to rev its engine as if I was trapped in another eye.
Contributor Notes
