Up to that point I had harbored hope that somehow I would glide down semi-gracefully, maybe not exactly like a Cirque du Soleil aerialist, but with some dignity intact. But at Santiago's panicked cry, I lost my footing on the outer edge of the balcony and simply fell, striking my chin, and the fabric pulling so viciously against my arms that I threatened to black out from the pain. The curtain blazed a trail across my palms as I let go faster than was wise and before I knew it, our lifeline ended and we tumbled the rest of the way. It wasn't far, but far enough to produce an inconvenient combination of stars and black spots in front of my eyes as my knees crunched into the sidewalk, and Santiago tumbled off my back.
"Are you alright?" My voice emanated in a screeching pitch I didn't recognize. I had to ask twice until I was able to see well enough to notice that the boy was nodding.
Above us, someone cried out in pain and my young charge pulled wildly at my arm. "My dad," he shouted, tears streaking his cheeks. "What about my dad?"
"We need to leave," I said, getting back onto my feet. "Your father…I'm sure he is alright."
"But…"
"I promised him to keep you safe. We need to get away from here."
Santiago trembled, but just as I had seen in Rafael and Tee before him, he set his jaw, brushing tears aside along with the emotions he knew didn't serve him well at this moment. He nodded, and although I noticed his flinching at another sound of injury up above, he began trotting in the direction of El Morro's promontory. My little boy of eight years had aged about ten with one leap off a balcony.
I stumbled after him, wishing the gunfire would abate. Leaving without knowing what was happening was almost impossible, harder still than pushing my bruised body forward. I had no idea where we were going. As we continued to put one foot in front of the other, I was oblivious to any of the people we passed on darkened streets. With my split lip, bleeding chin and burn mark on my arm, I probably looked like a battered woman on the run. Even more so with a small, disheveled boy scampering by my side.
I wished for more darkness, for streetlights to fade away to black so that we wouldn't be subjected to any stares. What if so much as one of Carbajal's men made it out into the street to follow us? Would people give them hints and point in the direction we took off in? My knees burned, and I could feel them swelling with every step I took.
I don't know when or from where we turned into Calle del Cristo, but my stride slowed considerably as the massive doors of San Juan Cathedral rose before us.
"Wait!" I reached for Santiago's shoulder and stopped him. "What are we doing here?" The structure beckoned me, but at the same time I felt all air being squeezed out of my lungs by a weight that seemed determined to crush my chest.
Santiago fixed his infinite eyes on me, his cheeks scratched and red. "It's our meeting point."
"This?" I stared at the medieval structure. "But…but it's closed. We can't stay here."
"We go in the back," Santiago stated, as though it was the most normal thing in the world. He picked up his pace again.
My heart beat more erratically the closer we came to the imposing building. Something told me I needed to be here, but at the same time everything inside of me fought against it. Just then I realized that Santi had disappeared into the obscurity along the side of the building. "Wait!" I bolted after him, both of us slipping out of the sights and sounds of the city.
The boy stopped and pulled up a nondescript cobblestone on the sideline, digging a key out of the dirt below. "If I lose my dad, this is where we meet," he said in a whisper.
Was it the jewelry maker who had managed to secretly fashion the entry tool for this place or the former policeman who on some case or another had gained entry and simply not returned the key? To me it seemed like an overwhelming place to pick as a meeting point among all of the possible sites available in San Juan.
Old church buildings seem to hold time captive, like portals that keep the past and present glued to each other to make sure they both head into the future together. Churches don't need to ask for respect, they simply earn it through their higher purpose and grand architecture. I had never been in one at night, and I could not completely avoid a shiver from dancing down my spine as we entered this one. Even though we were indoors, the feeling the quiet space evoked was not unlike that of a cemetery at midnight. Why did my heart beat as if something familiar was waiting for me? I had not been here before. I was sure I would have remembered it.
Santiago's hand was shaking as he slipped it into mine, and I could hardly continue to move as he squished up against my leg.
"What's wrong?" I whispered.
"Don Pío," he replied in an equally low voice. "He is buried here. Did you know his fingernails keep growing although he is…dead?"
I swallowed hard, trying not to smile. "That's just a myth, Santi, a story somebody made up to frighten people."
"Can we wait near the altar?"
"Sure."
"We're safe in the cathedral, and I think even more so near the altar," Santiago said.
I wrapped my arm around him. "Yes we are. And your father will be here soon." I wished to believe this with all of my unpredictably beating heart.
Branch-like arms reached up from the walls inbetween the cathedral's arches that lined both sides of the pews. Each arm held a cluster of lights, lit so dimly they barely illuminated the outer edges of the sanctuary. Faint moon or street light – I wasn't sure which – made the oval windows in the vestibule behind the altar glow, and Santi headed for it like a dying person heads for the light at the end of life's tunnel. Yet the closer he led me toward the front, the more I wanted to retreat. A good ten rows from the altar, I stopped. Santiago yawned, his hand still in mine, but no longer shaking. I looked down at him as he wrestled with another yawn.
"Why don't you lie down," I asked, leading him into the pew by my side. He offered no resistance. I made him take off the short-sleeved shirt he wore over a long-sleeved one and rolled it up like a pillow. Sitting down next to him as he curled up on the wooden bench, I gently stroked his hair.
"You did really well today," I said. "Your father and I are very proud of you."
"Did you mean all those things you said?"
"I said what I had to say to make Valentín cooperate with us. It's a bit like acting, the way people do in the movies." I waited for another question or some sign that Santiago understood what I was trying to say, but he remained quiet, and it wasn't long before his breathing was deep and regular, his body relaxed. I brushed my fingers over the scratches on his face. Maybe I should offer a prayer that all of this would seem like a play to him, something he would be able to brush off in the innocence of youth without needing years of therapy to grapple with what really happened.
I closed my eyes, feeling the boy's chest rise and fall against my palm. In the quiet of the cathedral, I also became fully aware of all of my body's aches – my throbbing knees, the burning ridge along my calf, arm muscles that had been pulled violently, the blood-crusted knot in my chin and my swollen lip. I was tired and worried, wondering how Tee and Valentín had fared in the shootout. Yet with each breath I took, all of that seemed to sail farther into the back of my consciousness.
My own chest moved more and more rapidly, the coolness of the night air trapped in the hollowed hall growing warmer and warmer until it was no longer possible for me to keep my eyes closed. Why did it feel like a stifling hot and humid day around me? A day so bright that it was practically impossible for it to not be full of only good and lazily relaxing things. Yet I remembered…knew that it was anything but.
I moved down the pew, away from Santiago's sleeping body, and slipped out along the last arch before the altar. A burning in my eyes I was unable to fight turned the tiled floor into a black and white sea that changed to a much simpler look of plain wood. It had all been wood and thatched roof back then. I could now see it as clearly as if it had stood here just yesterday, before the hurricane of 1526 bashed it all to smithere
ens, and when the Bible that Rafael rescued barely offered comfort for the countless souls lost in that vicious storm.
Yet on that other day the humble house of worship had already been on its path to beautification.
My chest ached, struggling to give me breath. Only two more rows of benches stood between me and the open space in front of the altar. Bathed in the soft light coming through the vestibule's windows, I knew if I stepped forward, I would once again be engulfed in the searing heat of that airless day 24 years after the hurricane's fury tried to win the battle against the Lord's house on this very spot.
"I don't want to do this." The words raked like knives through my heart. This is where people came to find comfort, where Rafael had come to find comfort. Don't let it…I was incapable of forming the rest of the words even in the soundless chamber of my brain. My feet moved forward, past the last of the pews. I did not command them to do this. Never!
He's been so…comforting to me, I argued silently. Everything I feel for him…it can't be wrong. It just can't be!
Stepping into the open space, empty, only for me it wasn't empty. My legs brushed along the edge of the front pew until I had crossed the center aisle – staring where she had been set up. It had been so quiet, hot, humid, and not a sound...just like it was now, only during the daytime. Everyone had filed out of the rebuilt cathedral, a humbler version of the present one. It was just the three of us, just as it had been 20 years earlier when I begged Rafael not to marry Luz on the day of torrential rainfall.
My pained breathing briefly interrupted the profound silence while my feet made no sound as I moved to the side where Luz's open casket had been set up. I closed my eyes, wishing I could run now just as I wished back then that I could. The centuries-old echo of Rafael's voice swirled around me.
"I. Can't. Bear. To. Live. Without. You." His tears had fallen into the fabric of the same dress Luz had worn on what had been the happiest day of their lives. His hands so tenderly wrapped around her cold and lifeless one, I would have given anything to make it warm and soft again.
The sobbing I now heard was my own, but it echoed back at me in Rafael's voice that had torn the unbearable silence to shreds.
"You are not alone," I had told him over and over. "I will never leave you."
I reached across the invisible space, just as I had back then. And as I did, my very soul began to burn and tremble with the full understanding of all of my time at Rafael's side. It was a knowledge I realized had always been there, but that the desires of my heart refused to accept time and again until I had convinced myself that that which the present obligated me now to recognize and accept couldn't possibly be true.
I stepped around where the casket once stood, where I did what I always knew wasn't for me to do. I closed my eyes, my lashes unable to stop the flow of tears as I once again reached for Rafael's hands. Hands that could not feel mine as he was never mine to hold, only to watch over.
I sank to the floor, hiding my face as I could not stop my body from shaking and sobbing. When Santiago had asked me if I believed in angels – at that moment I already realized it, but still wasn't able to accept it. I didn't testify of the existence of angels because I had felt them near me in difficult moments of my life, but because I recalled with absolute clarity that before my turn in an earthly life – I had been one of them! Just like Santiago was able to feel that his mother was one after her death. A being that loves and protects someone so much that they stay at their side and protect them during the entire earthly existence of that person. Staying by that person's side the way I had always stayed with Rafael.
But his lifetime hadn't been mine to live. My role had always only been that of protecting him from harm. My fingers had passed through his without him ever knowing, yet unlike back on that unbearable day, this time the realization physically pained me, and I rocked back and forth, hugging myself tightly against the ache.
"Please help me," I begged. "Don't let it end this way." But as much as it pained me, I knew I was the only one who could do this. I had fallen in love with a man who was never meant to be mine, a man who was mourning the loss of the only woman he truly loved; the one he would be with eternally. I was the one who had to let go, not him.
I don't know how long I sat on the floor crying, but the searing heat slowly started to fade away. I dried my face, my hands sinking slowly into my lap as I felt the urge to turn around, but found myself unable to move. I barely dared to breathe. "Hello there," I whispered, knowing that Rafael was behind me. I had been in his presence so often, there was no mistaking it. But it was different this time. I didn't need to see him, and I knew I wouldn't be able to even if I could turn around. The tables had turned.
"I know," I said. "It's over. It should have never been this way, and I am so sorry." There were no tears left. I sat perfectly still, pews stretching endlessly before me while warmth and kind understanding enveloped me from behind. Little by little the sensation decreased until I no longer felt anything. Rafael was truly and completely gone from my life – and I from his.
I took a long, slow breath. Wiping my hands across my face, I felt the puffiness under my eyes. They were dry now and undoubtedly very unattractively red. The sound of approaching footsteps brought me to my feet. I peered down the aisle, recognizing Tee's lean body. His shirt was blood-stained and he walked with a limp. Glancing along the pews, he stopped when he saw Santiago resting on the far end of the tenth row.
"He is alright," I hurried to say. "Went to sleep shortly after we got here. He's been a trooper."
Tee hesitated for a moment, his eyes still fixed on his son.
"How…how did everything go?" I stood stiff as a post.
"It went alright." He resumed his limp toward the front, and I cringed when I saw his face up close. Alejo Carbajal's ring had sliced a purple gash from his right cheekbone to almost the corner of his mouth. Dried blood caked from his ear down to the collar of his shirt. His hair spiraled in all directions, no longer confined by a rubber band. I reached for the edge of his shirt, pulling it forward to see if it would reveal from where the large blood stain on it emanated. Tee's eyes followed mine to the stain.
"Valentín got shot," he said. "It's his blood."
I stared wide-eyed, and Tee's mouth bent into the familiar crooked smile.
"Don't worry, he'll be okay. Just missing a chunk of flesh from his mid-section, but nothing vital." Tee placed his hands on my shoulders, turning my face toward the windows. "What about you? What happened?"
I met his eyes, my heart drumming away in my throat. "I…it's nothing."
He shook his head, moving me farther into the light. "There's no nothing," he said.
I hesitated, looking down at the blood-stained shirt, the edge of which I was still holding in my hands, only tighter. "Do you remember my…friend I was going to meet in San Juan?"
"Rafael."
I nodded. "I won't be seeing him anymore. He's gone now." Letting go of Tee's shirt and regretting it instantly as I didn't know what to do with my hands.
He studied me for a moment, then lifted up my face, searching my eyes with his. His hand, which only a short time ago had handled a weapon with such firmness, now gently caressed the cheek where Domingo Vargas had beaten me.
"About time," Tee muttered, leaning in until his lips pressed against mine.
Just as I did in the forest when Valentín kissed me, I closed my eyes. Not looking for anything behind my lids this time, but surprised to find images of Tee there, and only of Tee. The color of his eyes, his smile, the way he moved, and how his hands held things. It was as if this was all I had ever known, and I did what I was never able to with Rafael – I reached my arms around him and savored the feel of his body against mine – thanking my guardian angel for having brought me to this, the beginning of my future.
* ~~~~~ *
"For He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."
(Psalms 91:11)
"They (t
he Taíno Indians) traded with us and gave us everything they had, with good will. They took great delight in pleasing us. They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal. …In all the world there can be no better people. They love their neighbours as themselves, and they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are gentle and always laughing."
Log Book, Christopher Columbus
Kirkpatrick Sale, "The Conquest of Paradise," p. 100
Taíno Dictionary
Anki
Bad person
Ao'n
Dog
Ca'n
Center
Da
I, me
Daca
I am
Daca taíno
I am good
Datiao
I am a friend
Gua'rico
Come here
Gua'rico gua'kia
Come to us
Gua'kia
We, ours
Guey
Sun
Han
Yes
Han-han
Yes, that's it
Hura
Wind
Ita'
I don't know
Jagua
Black ink, used to color cotton fabric or paint the body
Manicato
A strong person, valiant and of a good heart
Na neke
Why me?
Operi'to
Dead, spirit of a dead person
Taíno
Good
Wu'a
No! (with emphasis)
Lineage of Rafael Jagua Baluarte Fontana
(in bold is the lineage followed through the one child in each generation born with very distinct black eyes and given the middle name Jagua, regardless of whether or not this child is male or female)
Manuel Baluarte Fontana, born 18 Sep 1488, Spain, marries Guey, Taíno Indian from Borinquén (Puerto Rico), in 1509. Rafael Jagua Baluarte is born on 10 Jan 1510 in Puerto Rico (later known as San Juan), Puerto Rico. After escaping from the stockade in the fort of El Morro, Rafael Jagua changes his last name to his paternal grandmother's last name, Fontana, also dropping Rafael from official records henceforth.
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