Don't Date Rosa Santos

by Nina Moreno

  The lights flickered on, and I blinked hard as the room around us came back into focus. We snapped back to the present. Phones buzzed and coffee mugs were returned. No one really knew what to say, but Mike, Ana, Alex, and Benny stopped by Mimi’s chair to offer a grateful good night. It wasn’t out of place for my friends to kiss my abuela’s cheek in greeting and farewell, but everyone was lingering. Ana’s phone rang—her mother making sure she hadn’t been electrocuted—but she was hesitating to leave, too. We’d found something thought lost tonight. A story and memory of Mimi’s love in the face of exile.

  I walked them outside but lingered on the front porch with Alex. The night was sticky as the streets and sidewalk steamed from the rain. Alex stopped at the first step.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about something. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to, but after today…” He reached into his back pocket and drew out a square piece of paper. I knew what it was before he unfolded it.

  My stomach twisted at the sight of his map. He handed it to me, wordlessly, and I carefully looked over it again. I expected to see the same lines and coordinates, but everything was different. I followed the path and my heart nearly stopped when I realized that this time his trip was taking him to Cuba. My gaze shot to his.

  “You talk about going, even when you’re not talking about it, and I know how disappointed you’ve been about study abroad, but I researched sailing to the island, and with my dad’s connections we could sail into the marina there, and stay somewhere on the island this summer. You can see everything you want.” He rattled off all the laws and regulations he’d researched. He’d done this the way I would. For me. Something close to panic made me take a quick step back, leaving Alex on the bottom step.

  “I can’t.”

  He stopped talking. “What?”

  “I can’t go.” This wasn’t panic. It was a hollow frustration edged with a desperate sort of anger. How could he show me this map like it was a possibility for us? It was a dream I couldn’t have, one he had no place offering me. “How can you ask me this?”

  He drew back, confused. I hated it. “Because you were going to go.”

  “That was different. That wasn’t me sailing into the middle of the ocean.” I climbed out of that broken boat and—I shook my head to clear it of Mimi’s voice. The night was so humid, and my skin felt too tight.

  “But we got onto a boat today,” he said, genuinely confused.

  “We didn’t even leave our harbor. And like you said, that’s not the ocean.”

  “And like you said, semantics.” He dragged a rough hand through his hair. “If you don’t want to go with me, fine. I would never…I just don’t understand if it’s because of my boat or me or—”

  “I have school and work, and then I have to get ready to move, and I can’t just leave on a sailing trip. I’m not going to Cuba anymore, okay?” I nearly shouted it. Had the wind heard me? I’d defied so much. Played pretend too long. And yet I couldn’t reason with this flash of bitter anger. I exhaled sharply and tried to think past it. “And I saw your first map. Your trip is so much bigger. I won’t take that from you because of my neuroses.”

  Alex’s dark brows were low. “Plans can change.”

  “No. She said when you start to change plans for each other that’s where it all goes wrong.” Ana’s words flashed through my mind.

  “What? Who said?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I gave him his map and clenched my hands as I stepped back. “A sailing trip? God, Alex. Look at me. I’ve spent two years preparing to leave, and at the last minute, my plans fell apart, and what have I done to fix it? Nothing. I’m procrastinating and forgetting, and I won’t stand at your empty dock and scream at the sea.”

  He gripped the railing and stared at his feet. He didn’t understand. I looked up at the moon and gritted my teeth against the tears burning my throat. I wiped my eyes and exhaled in a gust. I had two women in that house gutted by the loss of love, and I wouldn’t do it. To me or them. I was repeating something, and I had to stop this. I wouldn’t put another picture on my table.

  When I said nothing more, Alex carefully slipped the map back into his pocket. “I’m sorry.”

  His apology fractured me further. “I have to leave.” The words sounded low and harsh. I had finally lost my voice.

  “Okay.” He nodded slowly. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “No, Alex. We can’t do this anymore.”

  He watched me, and I knew that vulnerable, searching look. I’d seen it in so many mirrors. He was trying to understand how we got here, what signs he’d missed when someone he trusted didn’t give him the chance to prepare for a good-bye. “I’m sorry,” I whispered just before I jerked open the door and went inside. I stayed with my hand on the knob and prayed he didn’t knock. Because I would open it. I dropped my forehead to the door, and my body shuddered. I was such a mess.

  I found Mimi and my mother sitting together, their voices low. The lights were dimmed and the candles still lit. Life and love buzzed between them, complicated and vibrant, their connection a tangled, beautiful mess. Together they were a battle in concert; happy and sad, lost and found, here and somewhere else.

  When they looked up, concern marred both their expressions. “What happened?” Mom sat up at once.

  “He asked me on a sailing trip.” My hands fell uselessly at my sides. “And I told him no, because I don’t want him to die.”

  Intimate knowledge shadowed their faces. Their shoulders caved from the weight of carrying it. I sank between them. Mimi slipped her hand into my hair and brushed against my scalp gently while Mom rubbed her hand up and down my arm.

  “Nela told me not to leave Cuba with Alvaro,” Mimi confessed.

  I stilled. “Tía Nela?”

  Mimi gave me a look. “So impatient. Yes, Tía Nela.”

  “Is she the one who took you to Havana for your birthday?”

  “No, Nela was everyone’s tía. It’s difficult to explain, but she knew Cuba more than all the angry men who spilled so much blood. She knew the island’s spirit and understood it was in pain. She warned me our land was bleeding and the sea would demand a sacrifice. I left anyway.”

  “Because of me,” Mom said, sounding so achingly tired of being everyone’s bad omen.

  “Because of love.” Mimi’s hand went across me to hold Mom’s.

  All of my careful planning, but these winds had set us on this path long before tonight. These same winds had once fluttered through the dark strands of hair of the women before me as they looked to a horizon and set off into the unknown. Where did that leave me? Daughters carried legacies and curses as deftly as their inherited hearts. It was a delicate, demanding balance.

  “Tell me another, Mimi.” I leaned my head into her neck, comforted by the smell of lemon and rosemary. She brushed her empty hand through my hair and laid a long, soft kiss on the top of my head. “Uno más.”

  The three cursed Santos women huddled together as Mimi told us one more story.

  Curled in bed, unable to sleep for more than a few hours, I waited to watch the sun rise from my open window. The morning air was chilly as I watched the sky lighten into a soft robin’s egg blue and imagined the sea of Alex’s maps. The impossible latitudes and longitudes.

  I already missed him, but a new day waited for me. I just had to get out of this bed.

  The kitchen was empty and the coffee cooling. I warmed a mug and stopped at the threshold of the garden room. Mimi wasn’t here, but I settled in her chair to wait for her. Several sprigs of rosemary were drying, as well as sage and thyme. I opened my notebook, determined to create my outline for May. It was less than two weeks away and I would meet it with a decision.

  I uncapped my marker and remembered my first journal. Mimi had given it to me. It’s important to write things down, she’d told me as she handed me a composition book after my mother left the first time. Those blank pages had fel
t like hope. I’d hidden in her garden and filled them with all the wild, welcoming plants that kept me safe.

  As I traced a line along a ruler, separating my days from my goals, I thought about my grandfather. What had he wanted to teach? What were his favorite books? Authors? Did he dog-ear pages and talk with his hands when he got excited? Wind and steel sang out as the wind chime danced. Between two pages, I shaded the stem of a sprig of rosemary with swift, sure strokes. If my father had come back, would I have been brave enough to go with Alex? The chime’s song became louder. Outside, the sky was still bright blue; there wasn’t a single cloud. It was a perfect day.

  But my abuela’s wind chime was wild with panic.

  My skin prickled with sweat, and ice swam in my blood. Instincts, my mother’s voice whispered from somewhere in my memory. Listen to them.

  “Mimi?” I called, but there was no reply. The silence felt hollow. I slowly got to my feet and watched the wind chimes dance. I sprang out of her chair. “Mimi!” I swept into the house, sure she was in the kitchen stirring coffee. She was going to be mad about me shouting. But the kitchen was empty.

  “Mimi?”

  I found her in her bedroom and the relief made me stumble against the doorjamb. Mimi went to sit on the side of her bed. But she fell from the edge. I rushed forward to catch her, and her eyes met mine for a second, or maybe a lifetime, maybe both of our lifetimes, before I held her still, small body on the floor. In the next beat, my mother was there, pushing me aside. She kneeled beside Mimi and began CPR.

  I was frozen, but Mom didn’t slow. Her movements were strong and vigorous as she pushed down, over and over, on my grandmother’s chest.

  “Rosa! Nine-one-one! Now!”

  My mother’s gaze was flooded with unshed tears. But she didn’t stop. Caught in an angry, unforgiving storm, she fought Mimi’s heart.

  I ran out of the room and dialed 911. The operator spoke, and from underwater I begged them to come. Her heart, I said. Her heart was so strong, but something was wrong. I ran out of the house and bounded across the street. I slammed my fist against Dan and Malcolm’s door. Dan opened it, carrying his daughter, and his annoyance turned to concern. “Rosa, what’s wrong?”

  I couldn’t say it. I needed to, but I couldn’t. I choked out, “Mimi.”

  Dan’s face changed. My easygoing neighbor shifted into a determined paramedic. He handed me Penny, rushed back into his house, and a second later was running back out with what looked like a duffel bag. I ran after him. In Mimi’s room, he dropped down beside my mother and abuela’s still chest and took over. My mother fought him for a moment, but Dan didn’t relent or explain. There was no time. My mother curled into herself and wept. I couldn’t go to her. I couldn’t move. I needed to hold Penny. I needed to keep her from sinking.

  Red-and-blue flashing lights spilled into our windows, and the front door flew open. Firefighters and paramedics swept past me, filling my grandmother’s lace-and-lavender bedroom with too many people and all of their foreign equipment.

  Penny began to cry, and I tried whispering the song to her that Mimi used to sing to me, something about a frog in Spanish. I fumbled with the first verse as my grandmother was slipped onto a stretcher. Dan walked with her, still performing CPR.

  Mimi still hadn’t taken a breath on her own.

  I followed them through the fog. Neighbors stood out-side their houses, hands to their mouths in shock. Dan climbed into the back of the ambulance with my grandmother, and the other paramedic looked at me. I looked at my mother.

  “Go,” I told her. She didn’t hesitate. She rushed into the back of the ambulance and the doors slammed. A moment later the noise and chaos rushed away with them until it was just me and Penny on an empty sidewalk.

  I was alone.

  My neighbors rushed to one another, everyone trying to understand and comfort. Mrs. Peña jumped into her van as Ana ran past to Dan’s house. She broke into his car for Penny’s seat. Everyone was in such purposeful motion on this impossible day.

  Penny whimpered and dropped her head to my shoulder. I rubbed her back.

  Ana was at my side. She didn’t say anything. What use were words, anyway? You could never find the right ones when you needed them. Words were islands that sank into silence like forgotten songs. With a hand on my arm, Ana led me to her mother’s car. The doors slammed shut, and we raced to the hospital, where the last pieces of my family fought to survive.

  My sorrow was a steady companion that sat beside me in a hospital waiting room where my mother would have been had she not been pacing the hallway, breaking down, or being the adult representative of what currently stood for the Santos family. Cardiac arrest, they said. My abuela’s heart had failed. It didn’t make sense. That heart was my shelter in every storm. That heart was my home.

  I can never look back, Mimi’s voice whispered so long ago.

  He never came back, my mother cried when I was too young to understand.

  The woman across from me answered a phone call. I watched her try to keep it together as she told someone too far away that their chance to say good-bye was gone. I wanted nothing to do with good-bye. I wanted to find a way home with Mimi. That was the only way I could leave this room. I wished for Penny again, and the weight of her in my arms to ground me, but Dan had taken her home hours ago. He promised to return later with Malcolm. I would still be here, in this chair beside Ana and her mother. They held hands and I looked at my own empty palms as her mother began to pray.

  I was adrift, dry-eyed and empty of words but trying to hold still enough so maybe this terrible moment wouldn’t find me. If I stayed hidden, maybe that next terrible phone call couldn’t reach me. If she got up and breathed again, if she found me again, the rest of the world could have me back.

  The door opened and I steeled myself, expecting my mother bearing the news that would break me, but it was Benny. Ana got to her feet and hugged her brother tightly. Their mother wrapped an arm around both of them.

  Maybe if I had a sibling. Another parent. Did pain feel lighter when there were more hands to carry it? All these hypotheticals swirled like dreams. The door didn’t close, because behind Benny, Alex rushed into the room.

  His hair was a mess. Flour dusted the apron he hadn’t taken off. Panic in his eyes, he found me almost immediately. My name escaped his lips like a prayer.

  The tears finally came; they spilled and choked me as I stood and slowly went to him. I buried myself in his arms. He smelled of the sea and brown sugar. I gripped his shirt, pulled myself above these waters, and inhaled a desperate lungful of air.

  Mimi was in the ICU unable to breathe on her own. She’d coded twice. I filed this information away because if I tried to look at it too long I would break. Ana and her family finally left in the early hours of the next morning after I reassured them I was okay. They had work and school, and I needed space. Alex stayed. His quiet presence was strong and steady enough to lean against, even in the awful waiting-room chairs. He brought food and coffee my mother and I barely touched, but after so many hours without improvement, Mom sent me home.

  “I want to stay,” I told her.

  “I need you to go. Check on the house, shower, and sleep. I’ll be here with her if anything changes.” My eyes burned with exhaustion and I badly wanted to disappear into a hot shower, but I couldn’t just leave. Mimi was here. Mom’s voice was quiet but strong when she said, “Please let me be your mother and her daughter right now.”

  After driving me home, Alex stood on the threshold with me. The house was achingly quiet. Candles weren’t lit, the radio was silent, and coffee wasn’t brewing. Everything was so still. I hated it.

  “Let me make you something to eat.”

  He flipped on lights and went to work in the kitchen. I watched him for a beat, but time was tangling with all my desperate hopes. I glanced at Mimi’s bedroom door and strained to hear the music of her; her beaded slippers shuffling against the tile floor, the jangle of her bracelets, her
whispered prayers to her saints. Could they hear her tonight?

  “Hey.” Alex’s voice broke into my thoughts. I focused on where he stood in the warm glow of the kitchen. The rich smell of caramelized onions and peppers tickled my consciousness. “I’m here.”

  “I know.” I was grateful, but my voice rattled with weary grit.

  I went to shower and peeled off my clothes. The sting of hot water was welcome, and I stood motionless beneath the spray. I was too hollowed out to cry anymore, but as tired as I felt, I craved the release and purpose. I wanted to be the one who sank to my knees and knew to perform CPR. I longed to capture the steady look Dan had given me. I pressed my hand against the tiled wall and tried to count my racing breaths. I’d sat on her bedroom floor and in that waiting-room chair and changed nothing. I fisted my hand and leaned against the tile as dry, useless sobs wracked my body.

  The water soon turned cold. My skin broke out in gooseflesh and my exhales felt hot. I wished the tile could give beneath my hands, because I was freezing and alone and the world was spinning too quickly away from me.

  A knock sounded. Startled, I inhaled sharply and coughed on the water. “Rosa,” Alex called. I could practically feel his concern pressing against the door, but from how long I’d already been in the shower, I knew he was fighting himself to give me my space.

  “I’ll be right out.” Whether it was a shout or a whisper, I didn’t know.

  I shakily shut off the water and dried myself. I dragged a hand across the mirror to find my reflection beneath the fog. There I am. My mother’s eyes, my grandmother’s mouth. There they still are. The other angles and edges were shaped by ghosts I never got to meet.

  I ate for Alex’s sake and because it was important to sit at the kitchen table and go on as usual. Meals were meant to be shared here. If I did this, that would be a good sign. A positive affirmation judged to be enough to save her.

  “Do you want me to stay?” he asked. I didn’t say, My abuela would kill me, even though it was my first thought. Being alone tonight felt like facing a void on my own, but I needed to lose myself in inherited rituals. I needed candlelight, oil, and a hissing flame. I needed to whisper prayers as smoke reached for those who looked after me and mine. Stricken with doubt, I hesitated, and he said, “I’ll come back. Later tonight or in the morning. Call or text me, and I’ll be here.”