The Accidental Native

by J. L. Torres

  When we arrived, I slithered further down in the seat, immobile, arms crossed. Papi would not have it. After a few minutes, he came out to the car.

  “Gee, have some cheese with that whine,” he said. “Okay, move your butt out of the car and make yourself useful.”

  I dragged my body in slo-mo across the green lawn, just to emphasize the grief I was carrying. My entire childhood, at age ten, had been obliterated. I looked at the house and had to admit it was okay, so was the cul-de-sac that my parents kept talking about like it was the greatest thing on earth since sliced bread. I could already see myself riding my bike around the curve without my parents freaking out. Dragging my feet like the Mummy, I entered the house.

  Boxes everywhere. Mami had already started unpacking the ones my father had brought into the kitchen. He started on the bigger items, helped by his friend from the old block, Marco. Together they struggled with the sofa.

  “Rennie, please, move out of your father’s way,” Mami yelled.

  I shuffled, head down, to the other side of the living room and plopped myself on the carpeted floor.

  “Ay, por Dios,” Mami said. “Rennie, enough.” She came into the living room and ordered me to carry a few small boxes up to my room. “That’s all your stuff; you should take care of it.”

  The thought of unpacking my action figures, books and video games did not get me out of my funk. I carried the boxes upstairs with a frown. I dumped them in what had been decided would be my room, and I started to explore the house. It had more room than our apartment. There were two full bathrooms, a kitchen my mother “loved,” a backyard with a big tree to climb that I “should love,” and a family room, in which Papi was already installing the television, in between taking sips from his Corona, while Marco brought in the remaining boxes and lighter items from the truck.

  “Must take care of the essentials, right, Rennie?”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I answered.

  I went up to the attic, which had been paneled and was an extra room. I thought it would make a great hideout. It had a couple of windows which looked like ship portals. I ran downstairs to ask Mami if I could have that as my room, and she shot the idea down. “That’s going to be our office, your father’s and mine.”

  Back went the frown, the Mummy shuffle.

  “¡Ay, qué nene más dramático!” My mother laughed. “We gotta sign you up for acting classes.”

  I went outside, threw my little behind on the grass and started throwing gravel across the backyard I was supposed to love. After a few minutes, my mother came out from the kitchen and told me to stop moping because it was getting on her nerves.

  “There are boxes in the family room, go unpack those, okay?”

  I mumbled okay and dragged myself to the living room, my mother snapping a dish towel against my sorry ass.

  “Stop,” I whined.

  She came after me playfully and tickled me, forcing me to laugh against my will. She nuzzled my neck, and I kept laughing, and then smothered my face and head with kisses. She wrapped her arms around me hard.

  “Everything’s gonna be fine, baby, you’ll see.” She knelt and stared at me. “This is a great moment for us all, Rennie.”

  She seemed so happy, I didn’t want to argue with her.

  “Okay. Go work, and dust the ceramics with this.” She handed me a rag.

  The boxes were already opened, so I started taking out their contents, mostly photo albums and knickknacks my mother had collected. I placed them carefully on the shelves of the wall unit, which already had the television set up. Papi was struggling with the stereo wiring.

  I dropped one of the albums and dozens of pictures spilled onto the carpet. I had never glanced at these photos before. Curiosity, boredom and my funky mood led me to inspect them. Photos of Mami and Papi alone, when they were younger, grinning and playful at the beach, or at parties, dancing or posing with me, in one of the many stupid outfits my mother made me wear. Several of our dog, Sasha, who died a year earlier. Then, the others—so many unknown faces. Who were these people and why did my parents keep them around?

  One picture slipped from an inside flap. A pretty woman with captivating eyes. She was throwing her head back and laughing while staring at the camera, her long black hair tumbling down her back and one shoulder. I could not stop staring at her. Why was she laughing? Why was she tilting her head like that? And who was taking the picture that she was talking to with her eyes?

  Papi snapped the picture from my hands, breaking me out of my trance.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “It was in here,” I said, pointing to the album.

  He stared at the photo, and his sparkly eyes turned downcast, his entire body, which had become alive dancing with the music he had succeeded to pump through the stereo, now forlorn and heavy.

  “Who is she, Papi?”

  “Nobody, son. An old friend.”

  “She’s real pretty.”

  His lips buttoned up, and he nodded. “Yes, she was.”

  “Did she die, Papi?”

  And with tears in his eyes, he said, “Yes, a long time ago.”

  He took the picture and stuffed it into his back pocket, and I continued my work.

  Twenty-Three

  * * *

  The Riveras had trashed the place. Besides the endearing “goodbye” posted on the wall, Chu Rivera had urinated on the floor. I imagined him drunk and angry spraying the floor and part of the wall.

  “What animals,” I thought, outraged and hurt to think he was defiling my parents’ dream and my legacy.

  That night I just shook my head, too tired to investigate the rest of the house. The next morning, I went back and assessed the damage. It was vandalism, nothing major. Whatever Foley had told Rivera had checked his aggression a bit. The house was structurally sound, and everything seemed to be working. They had absconded with the light fixtures, though. Just as well, I thought, they were probably tacky. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that this presented itself as an opportunity to re-do the entire house. My parents had planned to upgrade this house, a fixer-upper, anyway.

  Julia introduced me to an architect friend who did small jobs on the side, and he designed a plan after driving from Guaynabo to visit the place and take measurements. His dedication was a way to please my mother, whom he obviously liked. The Riveras had depleted my patience, but luckily not the money left to me by my parents and from the selling of the Jersey house. Julia offered to pay everything, and I refused. But she insisted.

  “A birthday gift,” she said.

  So, I agreed to let her pay half.

  Work on the house had consumed much of my time since the dinner with Foley. I liked to think that taking care of the minor details in redesigning the house, staying on top of the contractor and time schedules, along with teaching four Basic English classes and all the other college stuff, was to blame for my lack of organizing efforts. If I allowed myself some slack, it was difficult, but the truth was Foley had made me reconsider what I was doing. I’m not proud to admit it, but it was what it was. I’m not saying that I had given up, but I just wasn’t as motivated as before. Two leaders from the Congreso, Samuel and Felipe, came to my office to talk to me about what was going on. I told them my situation with the house and they understood, having known, like everyone else on campus, about my problem with the squatters. But they gave me dubious glances, like they were checking out my eyes, my face, to see if I had either defected or was a punk who talked the talk but couldn’t walk the walk.

  These were seasoned labor people who took organizing and political activism seriously, and I felt like a jerk for wasting their time. They told me that without some commitment from faculty the committee would get nowhere, and I was the only one who even expressed awareness of what was going on.

  “Besides,” said Samuel, “most of those who have gotten sick are faculty, and it’s hard to get other people involved when fellow professors don’t wan
t to stand up for their own.”

  I suggested Stieglitz, and they both laughed. “Loco,” Samuel, said, rotating his finger close to his ear. No one would rally around him; he was a “yanqui.”

  “You’re an asimilao,” Felipe teased, “but at least you’re one of us.” I thanked him for the backhanded compliment and told them to give me time with the house and I would get back to the work at hand. But I wasn’t really convinced of my own words.

  I felt nauseous when they left. I thought about Rita and felt even worse. But I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to trouble Julia with my own problems when she was preparing to take on the U.S. Defense Department and the University of Puerto Rico. Her getting involved made me rationalize that she was taking care of it. She had a big firm and all its resources at her disposal. She would fight legally for those afflicted, victimized by the stupidity of the people in charge of the clean-up, of burying explosives near densely populated residential areas. I was being selfish, of course. It would make her case harder if most of us at the university showed indifference and stayed at home.

  We were entering Spring Break and the contractor had put the last touches on the house. I was ready to move into my new home, to leave the Guest House, and I had nothing else on my mind but the painting and other chores that awaited me. The place was roomier now, better designed, brighter lit and felt livable. Most of the work went into the former elevated wooden structure, which had been redone in cement, with a higher ceiling and a slanted, terracotta-tiled roof. Designed as a loft area, it had two short stairs at opposite ends leading to a wide space. The level below now contained the dining area, living room and foyer. There were two smaller rooms, an office and guest room. Everything looked new and fresh, including the utility kitchen and expanded bathroom, now holding a Jacuzzi tub.

  With a wry smile, Marisol called it a bachelor crib. She had visited to help me out with ideas for furnishing the place, and we enjoyed that time together; it felt like we were doing it as a couple. After our talk at Luquillo, we had taken it slowly, everything from our conversations to our outings were always cautious, like we were building our relationship from scratch. Cautious also was our intimacy. We lingered, kissing and touching like virginal adolescents, but had not made love. The longer we went without committing ourselves, the more awkward it became. We talked about it but thought it was best to let things flow, like we always had, when our passion would sweep us into explosive lovemaking, sometimes in the most unusual times and places.

  Julia still believed a younger woman suited me, but didn’t push it like before. I guess she had resigned herself to my choice. She even offered us the Luquillo condo whenever we wanted it, or her apartment in San Juan, telling us we needed time together, away from Baná.

  So, several things were distracting me from organizing that committee. When Foley came to the house during the break, the last thing on my mind was political activism.

  I was painting the dining room area, grooving and singing along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Snow.”

  The volume on the boom box on the floor dropped, and I turned around and saw Foley standing in my living room. He took off his sunglasses, folded them and hung them on the collar of his opened polo.

  “It’s looking really good, Rennie,” he said, scanning the place, hands in the pockets of his Chinos. “Wouldn’t have gone with that color myself, but hey, as the locals say, para gustos hay colores,” he said, in a genuine Puerto Rican accent.

  “Thanks,” I said, and kept painting, reaching the uppermost part of a wall with an extended paint roller.

  “Nice to finally move in, huh?” He grinned, arms crossed.

  “It sure is,” I said, dipping the roller into the pan, more energetically than usual.

  He crept over and grabbed the stick. “Well, let’s not forget who made it possible.” He said this in a low voice, fixing his eyes on mine.

  I put down the brush, and wiped my hands with a rag.

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s not all about wanting, Rennie.” He pointed to the beer I had in a little cooler. “May I?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, sure, please have one.”

  He popped the can open and took a hearty gulp, burped.

  “The activity pushing the committee is declining,” he said.

  I didn’t comment.

  “Don’t know what you’re doing or not doing, I’m not going to ask. But this is a good thing.”

  He stared at me in my silence, sipping the beer again.

  “You need to work on your mom,” he said, pointing to me with the beer can.

  “Oh yeah, and what am I supposed to tell her?”

  “I don’t care what you tell her, but make her reconsider the lawsuit.”

  I laughed.

  “You think this is funny?”

  “It’s funny that you think my mother is so easily persuaded.”

  “I think she’ll listen to you. She’d do anything for you. Isn’t that right?” He snapped open his sunglasses and put them on. “She’d think things over, I don’t know …” he continued, lips pursed. “ … if life got a little tougher for her beloved son and he had to return to the States.” He took a last sip of beer and put the can on a window ledge.

  Slapping the wall, he said “This is solid cement work—don’t see it much anymore. A nice little home, Rennie. Just hope you filed all the right papers with the municipality. Could be messy otherwise. By the way, do you know Baná named me an Honorary Son of the City? Helluva an honor.”

  He smiled that smug smile of his, and was walking out the door when he turned around, raising his finger in the air. “Oh yeah,” he said, “Mari is up for tenure in the fall. And, funny thing about language teachers in PR: they’re a dime a dozen. Just thought you should know.”

  Then he placed his hand over his heart, and, in that soft, calm, priest-like voice intoned:

  “May you always have walls for the winds,

  a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire,

  laughter to cheer you, those you love near you,

  and all your heart might desire.”

  He waved and walked away. I wanted to beat him over the head with the roller stick. I grabbed the beer can he had set down and carried it with two fingers as if it were toxic, and threw the remaining liquid down the sink drain, then crushed the can as if it were Foley’s head.

  “Fuck you, Foley!” I yelled, as I slammed the can into the garbage can.

  I paced the apartment, unable to pick up the paint roller again or even stare at the work I had done. I scrambled for my cell phone and thought about calling Julia, but just couldn’t. What would I tell her? Lately, things between us were beginning to gel. I had to think and couldn’t inside the house. Everything felt claustrophobic, so I locked up and walked down Marcos Bortelli, still wearing my tee and torn jeans stained with paint, my disheveled hair sprouting from under a Yankee cap splattered with flecks of paint. I didn’t know where I was going, but the avenue led into town, and after some turns found myself in the plaza. I sat down on the first bench I saw.

  For a few minutes, I felt my heart pounding, and I saw everything around me moving but didn’t really see anything. My knees fidgeted as I glanced over the plaza. I imagined myself returning to New York City, to what? No job, no apartment. How could I stay in Puerto Rico if I lost this teaching gig? I didn’t come down here to live off my newlyfound mother. What about Marisol? I couldn’t be the cause of her losing her job. How could we make it together if we both lost our jobs?

  I flipped the cell and punched Marisol’s number.

  “Come get me,” I told her.

  A slight pause. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ll tell you later, but please come pick me up. I’m at the town plaza.”

  She was there in a matter of minutes and found me at the same bench, my knees doing the wave. She bent down and put her hands on my knees, putting her weight on them to stop them.

  “You need to ca
lm down.”

  She knew not to ask me what was going on right away. We had learned when to talk, when to listen, when to keep the silence or simply let the silence speak. She drove us back to her place, one of the tiny former enlisted barracks turned into faculty apartments near the municipal stadium. Marisol got hold of one when we started seeing each other more frequently, so she didn’t have to drive from San Juan every day. Her place always calmed me. There was always a cool breeze, shade provided by the many trees around the house, and tranquility, unless there was a game or some religious event in the stadium.

  We sat in the backyard, listening to the wind rustle the leaves. She served me a glass of white wine, and I took it gratefully. She sat down with her own glass and stared at me with concerned and expectant eyes, waiting for me to speak. Her peaceful loveliness in the sunset, and the chardonnay, relaxed me. After exhaling, I began to tell her everything.

  “That guy’s always been creepy,” she told me, once I had finished. “No one really knows anything about him. He’s like this shadow that comes and goes.”

  “Micco once joked he was CIA or FBI.”

  She laughed, but also shrugged. “Who knows? Anything’s possible in Puerto Rico. Who knew they had dossiers on people here, right?”

  I nodded, remembering what Julia had told me about the one they had on her and how she had worked with the legal team that had consulted and assisted Congressman Serrano to release them. But why would it surprise anyone, when the FBI even had a dossier on Martin Luther King?