The Accidental Native

by J. L. Torres

  “You like running in the rain too, huh?”

  “Love it,” I answered, a little too excited.

  I kept running in place, the rain misting us both.

  “You don’t mind getting wet?”

  “I like wet,” I said.

  She laughed, and I felt like a bigger idiot.

  “Wet is good,” she said, smiling.

  “Should get going,” I blurted and waved stupidly as I took off.

  I made my laps and passed her a few times as she walked her last laps to cool down, when I noticed Marisol sitting on a cement bench under a large willow tree. She waved and I walked over to her.

  “You’re a good runner,” she said.

  “Oh, really, and how would you know?”

  “I ran track at the high. You have good technique.”

  I nodded, bending over, breathing hard. “Why you out here?”

  “I love sitting here and thinking.”

  I sat next to her a bit tired from my run, having pushed myself extra hard the last few laps. We talked longer than I had expected or wanted. I learned her parents were first wave Cubans, those who had the money and pull to emigrate and leave Castro’s Revolution behind.

  “They were young and had few family ties. They could escape. We ended up in New Jersey,” she said.

  Her father, a chemist, decided to take an opening in Wyrling’s Puerto Rico plant, when the island was becoming a haven for pharmaceuticals that took advantage of corporate tax breaks. Marisol wasn’t happy with the move. She had friends back in Jersey, a feeling I understood well.

  “I hated it, all of it. I loved Jersey, my school, our house.”

  She rebelled, but she was alone, because her mother fully supported her dad. Her siblings, a brother and a sister, were younger. Her brother was born in the island. They didn’t suffer the feeling of foreignness that Marisol, as an estranged English-speaking Cuban born in the States, encountered. The taunts from other kids, having to master Spanish, being marginalized.

  I wanted to ease her mind, so I told her about the issues between my parents’ families. My parents’ dreams of returning, not unlike her own parents.

  At this she shook her head and curly hair: “No, Rennie, it’s not the same. Your parents could return. They just had to jump on a plane.”

  “And you think it’s easy to do that?”

  “You don’t live with all that anger and frustration that Cubans have to deal with. It’s not the same.”

  I let it go, sensing her own anger and frustration.

  “Doesn’t matter, anyway,” I said, “they never made it back.”

  When she asked me why, like so many when I tell them, a light turned on and her jaw dropped.

  “Yes, that horrible, media event.”

  Her head dropped. “Life’s so fragile,” she said.

  For some reason I felt like a schmuck. Like I had used the information to one-up her in some slimy way. I felt ashamed but also strangely relieved. I got up to leave but our eyes met again.

  “Gotta go,” I said.

  “Can’t you stay a little longer.”

  “Sorry, a stack of papers is waiting for me.”

  She nodded, and I left. I turned around to take another look at her, and she was looking at me.

  “You should get out of the rain,” I yelled.

  But she stayed sitting on the cement bench, swallowed under the shadow of that gigantic moss tree, looking out toward the rain, falling harder now.

  Dr. Roque called me in to what now seemed a weekly event for both of us. So far, he had criticized my syllabi, informed me about students complaining about my grading, warned me about hanging out with students and anything else that he could pin on me.

  “Professor Falto, what are you wearing today?”

  I looked at him—had he gone blind over the weekend? I scanned myself, while sitting in his hard office chair.

  “Jeans, shirt, shoes,” I laughed.

  “This is not funny. We have a dress code at the college.”

  “Really,” now understanding his point and not liking it at all. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m informing you.”

  “Why now?”

  “Most professors have the good sense to know in a professional setting one dresses professionally. In your case, I’ll notch it up to youth and inexperience.”

  I scanned him. His professional attire consisted of typically disheveled, tacky polyester pants, a too tight, short-sleeved shirt and sandals. And as usual, on top of his head, that helmet of gelled hair. Today, he wore white socks with the sandals, and his aftershave reeked.

  “Please make an effort, Professor Falto,” he said in a sing-songy way that made me want to screech.

  “Do you expect me to wear suits in this weather?”

  “Of course not. But the jeans must definitely go. How about putting on some socks? You’re not ‘hanging out,’” he said making air quotes, “with the students. You’re their teacher and need to instruct them in more ways than the subject matter. Maintain a business tone in everything you do.”

  “Aha. Will I receive a salary increase to cover this new wardrobe I need?”

  He looked at me, exasperated.

  “Didn’t think so,” I said.

  All day I checked out my colleagues’ fashion sense. Stiegler with his wrinkled shirts, stained baggy pants and Brashers. His unkempt wild mustache invariably spotted with crumbs. If the weather dropped to near chilly, I bet he would break out his flannel shirts. Apparently, Roque considered this mountain man attire professional enough. Juan Cedeño with his Hawaiian shirts and too tight, pleated Dockers. Carmela López with her drabby grays, blacks and whites, looked like she belonged in a convent, not a college. Lately, Freddie Rivas dressed in all black. Professional? Maybe, but it seemed better suited for a mortuary. Micco varied. On most days, he could look sharp; but on others, he came in unshaven, frazzled, his clothes appearing to have been sprung from the hamper.

  And Marisol. Today, she looked exceptionally fine. A cream-colored summer dress, gossamer-like material, the kind that in the sunlight you could see through. The top of the dress crisscrossed her breasts, accentuating them, and the hem fell at the knees exposing muscular calves. She had lost weight and had been working out. A new haircut, short and wavy to the neck, completed the makeover.

  She saw me staring at her and smiled. I was standing next to the coffee machine, drinking a cup. She was talking to Rita Gómez—who always looked professional, but everyone commented she overdressed—and saw me checking her out from the corner of her eye. I smiled and did a turnaround back to my office. And as I knew she would, she excused herself from Rita and headed straight to my office.

  Before talking to her under the moss, I had been avoiding her since the Jíbaro Monument. She called me a few times at home searching for explanations, and I tried as best I could to convince her that our lovemaking that night had been a monumental mistake (a pun she did not find funny). We were colleagues and this created problems. We both let our guards down that night, and yes, it was pleasurable, but wrong. Now, here she was again. Standing in front of me, looking super sexy, seeking answers I could not give her.

  “Falto, why are you tormenting me?” She whispered this as she closed the door behind her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw you looking at me, practically undressing me.”

  My God, I thought, was it that obvious? I opened a textbook on my desk.

  “I was just admiring your dress.”

  Her lips puckered into a smirk. She came over to me, turned the chair around, and, with her hands on the armrests, corralled me in it. Her coffee brown eyes, the same ones that closed in passion that night, now stared at me defiantly.

  “Stop pretending you’re not into me.”

  I shifted back in my seat. It took tremendous effort not to swing it into position and repeat the performance from that memorable night. She smelled gre
at, had that glow of a desirable woman who knew what she wanted. But I held my hand up, as if to say, “No más.”

  “I’m not.” We were both whispering now.

  “That wasn’t just sex, Rennie.” She came closer, cleavage suspended in front of me. “Deep down, you know that.”

  I didn’t want to answer her. Her hold on the chair loosened; she stepped back.

  “Just go out with me again.”

  I could have continued having fun with her, because how many times do you have fantasy-satisfying, hot sex? But it wasn’t right. She seemed to want something deeper, much more committal, with the right person, but I wasn’t that guy. I did not love her, and to think of loving her made my heart ache. I should have been upfront with her, but she looked so vulnerable. So I did the immature thing and ignored her, kept reading the book in front of me.

  She came at me and grabbed the book.

  “You’re an asshole,” she said and backhanded the book across the office. She walked out, slamming the door.

  In the days that followed, Marisol rarely talked to me, hardly ever looked my way. When she did, to discuss something professional, she had this distant, frosty face that couldn’t conceal the anger.

  Iglesias, a senior faculty member, once told me that academics fight ferociously over everything because all they can fight for are crumbs. And even before you can fight over those crumbs, you have to jump through hoops just to get at them. The second visit to Roque’s office in the week dealt with conference money. A professor, especially a junior one, should develop professionally, and therefore should make an effort to attend and give papers at conferences and other professional activities. I had a paper on ESL writing accepted at a conference. I was looking forward to traveling to Chicago and meeting with other writing professionals. Roque rejected my request for funding.

  “You haven’t finished writing it, have you?”

  “Well, no … but …”

  “Money is tight, Professor Falto. Next time you want funding, have a completed project.” He closed the manila folder with my proposal and request.

  We both knew that was bullshit. Very few people ever wrote an entire paper before submitting an abstract to a conference. Roque’s determination to make my life miserable was starting to worry me. Before I had thought he was one of those grumpy, demanding, but perhaps deep down lovable academic types. As he persisted, it became clear he just didn’t like me. Then Micco told me to watch my back. Evaluations were coming up.

  Fear is a great motivator. If Roque were after me, I had to make sure he had nothing on me. That my performance showed an assistant professor working hard at improving his teaching and scholarship. I returned to the conference paper, to finish it, but kicked up my hacky sack instead.

  Twelve

  * * *

  Marisol left me a present in my office: a candle that Micco said looked like a phallus. And when you looked at it carefully, he was right. It was an aromatic candle that was supposed to relax you, make you feel sexy and “lovey-dovey.” That’s what she wrote on the card. Besides an apology for getting angry at me earlier. Maybe it was really a votive candle.

  About the same time, I met with Ledesma at his office to sign the papers transferring the house to me. That was the proverbial good news, followed by the bad. Even though the house was now mine, I could not serve the Riveras with an eviction notice.

  “Why not?” I asked, confounded.

  “Because you don’t have a legal standing for eviction.”

  I practically jumped out of my seat. He held out one of his delicate hands as his face turned to the side in a sign of impatience.

  “They didn’t owe you money; they owed the past owners of the house.”

  “Who, by the way, were my parents.”

  “That does not come into play. The property has been transferred to you. You cannot end a tenancy of which you are not a part of, contractually speaking. Your parents also didn’t initiate an eviction process after several months of non-payment. That doesn’t help your case.”

  Great, I thought. Just like my parents to feel sorry for squatters. The infamous “ay bendito” plaguing Puerto Ricans. That phrase is uniquely Puerto Rican. Since being on the island, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard it used in varying situations, always expressing a sense of sorrow or feeling sorry for a person or thing. But it also expresses resignation that nothing can be done to alleviate the sorrow, the pain, the suffering. A Puerto Rican says “ay bendito” in solidarity with the sufferer’s inertia.

  I just sat there and sighed, with this profound sense of frustration and powerlessness, feeling with every minute more Puerto Rican.

  “So, what now, Ledesma?”

  “We’ll present your case with the tribunal and see what happens.”

  “You don’t sound too sure.”

  “The worst possibility is the court gives the squatters more time to move, if they have a valid reason. We need to check up on them a bit.”

  That meant I had to dish out more money. Whatever my parents had left to me in cash was going down this deep hole in my attempt to secure the one major item they had left me. I signaled “go ahead” with a nod.

  “Have faith,” Ledesma yelled as I walked out of his office.

  Yeah, right, I said to myself.

  A few weeks later, I found another gift from Marisol in my office. A copy of a Georgia O’Keefe flower painting, the one that looked like a vagina.

  “Many of them look like vaginas,” Micco reminded me. Then, he went on about O’Keefe in startling detail and with great knowledge of the painter’s biography.

  “How do you know so much about O’Keefe,” I asked.

  He hesitated, then said, tight-lipped, “My father.” O’Keefe was one of his father’s favorite painters. Then he said, “Not for the greatest reasons,” smiling.

  It was such a strange smile that it caused me to look at him perplexed. Usually, Micco drops the subject. If you don’t get what he’s saying, he won’t bother to explain it for you. But this time, he looked embarrassed, as if he needed to, or wanted to, explain.

  “My father’s a perv, what can I say.”

  Again, the puzzled look on my face, this time with a mix of shock and incredulity.

  “You heard right,” he said, and then proceeded to narrate his father’s sexual addiction, how he came to the realization one day that no one woman could satisfy him forever and within a week had moved out of the house, leaving his mother, sister and him stupefied. He was angry and confided in me that to this day he has issues with his father.

  “He left me at a vulnerable time in my life, and I still resent him for it.”

  He told me all of this within the few minutes between classes. And I was grateful that both of us had to attend to classes. Afterwards, I think we both realized the awkwardness of that conversation. For sure, I thought Micco wished he hadn’t given me that personal tidbit, until I found out others in the department knew. Julia even knew. In fact, within academic circles, many people in the insular bubble called Puerto Rico knew, because Dr. Montero, professor of philosophy, was a renowned and esteemed scholar, until his call for a Neo-Hedonism brought his career spiraling into ridicule. He told his family how sorry he was, but he had to follow his inner instincts. Sobbing, he hugged him and her sister, but Micco’s mother did not want to look at him. After the divorce, Dr. Montero used his life savings to move into a commune in New Mexico, where reports and complaints of wild orgies and bacchanalian parties in the desert surfaced often.

  Surprises. They come out of nowhere, like the wonderful news that I was going to be “visited” by Roque and the Gang of Three, the more informal name for the Performance Review Committee, that body of tenured, senior faculty in charge of determining whether you are worthy of teaching at the university level or are better suited for other employment. I understood that they needed to review my performance, but I wasn’t keen on the blitzkrieg nature of the visit. They would not tell you when it was goin
g down, so at any moment they could swoop down and do their damage. That’s how I saw it; that’s how I felt it. What, I asked, if you come on one of those crappy days we all have. They didn’t care to provide me with any type of decent answer. They had tradition on their side, years and years of doing it this way. And they were not going to change “the process” for some super young punk from the States who knew nothing about how things were done here in La Isla.

  I refused to let them visit me. I argued that they should allow professors the maximum opportunity to do their best; if it was a scheduled visit, the professor had no, or minimal, excuses for bad performance. But that fell on deaf ears. I would have turned to a union if we had one. The so-called Association of Professors had been trying to change this policy for decades. But said association had zero power. According to the Puerto Rican Superior Court, professors were considered part of management and therefore had no standing as workers to form a union. The association, therefore, collected dues, threw fabulous parties and managed to secure benefits for their members only when the Congreso de Obreros Universitarios, the union for non-faculty workers, went on strike and won a major benefit that had to be given to everyone.

  I informed the Committee I would not let them in my classroom. I would close the doors for the entire review period. But, then, that was madness, assisted suicide with Roque pulling the lever. I asked if they could at least tell us, not just me, but the others undergoing this cruel process, the weeks of the visit. “We always do that,” they answered, smugly. They were also gracious enough to provide the newbies like me with the form they used, as if it were a crib sheet. I looked at all those boxes, waiting for check marks, and felt like I was being squeezed into them. Did I have to teach to the form? I asked, trying to be ironic, but the remark did not elicit a smile.

  A few days later, I found another one of Marisol’s gifts on my desk. A German, Galileo thermometer, or a thermoscope. As soon as Micco saw it, he looked at me and we both laughed. For those who have never seen this contraption: it is long, about fourteen inches, over five inches in circumference, with a flat, round base and a tip that resembles the end of a condom. It’s a thermometer that works on the principles of weight and density. But the blatantly phallic quality of it made us laugh, but also made me wonder out loud to Micco if Marisol understood that or if it were some unconscious thing at work. This one came with the cryptic message: “Saw this and thought of you.”