Bird of Paradise

by Raquel Cepeda

  What was confusing to me as a child now makes perfect sense. It hits me like a ton of cobblestones: Rocío broke the fukú by putting me out with the day’s trash. If it weren’t for her setting me free, I may still be a caged bird today, holding my own daughter captive on a shit-laden perch. I am suddenly overcome with a feeling of gratitude toward Rocío.

  As I start walking, a young woman extends her hand from one of the more beautifully restored apartments across the street and hands me a card. Her young son, a caramelito with piercing hazel eyes, nods hello.

  “Oye, amiga,” she says. “I’m the real estate agent for some properties in the neighborhood.” The woman, married to an Italian man, is a recent transplant to the city from Cuba. She points to the building across the street. The apartment I lived in on the first floor was just put up for sale.

  “I saw you looking into the window from my window,” she says. “Maybe you would like to take a look inside?”

  “No, no gracias,” I respond. “It’s not really what I’m looking for.”

  “Take my card, and maybe when you’re ready, it’ll still be here for you.”

  * * *

  I find El Maestro sitting at the far end of an enormous air-conditioned office, reading email and finishing a paper he’ll present at Harvard later in the month. Frank Moya Pons’s enormous desk is overflowing with stacks of papers on one side and books on the other. He comes around from behind his desk to greet me. I try to imagine how he keeps his long-sleeve button-down shirt and slacks wrinkle-free. I find myself weirdly intimidated by his cool and collected swagger.

  “Hola, señora, finally, we meet here,” he says, leaning in to shake my hand. Subtext: Nice of you to prance in on time. The man, possibly in his early sixties, speaks deliberately, not wasting any words on frivolity. He clearly lives in his head, one that contains enormous quantity of information about Dominican and Caribbean history.

  “Maestro, what a fresh baller office.” Subtext: I’m so ashamed I missed you last time. Your awesomeness makes me feel like I showed up late to the Oval Office. Excuse me while I pick my face up from the floor.

  “Please sit down and let me know how I can be of service,” he says.

  “I wanted to know, how hard is it to uncover your roots here?”

  “The Dominican Republic has suffered one historical calamity after another in the form of fires,” Moya Pons says. I was afraid he was going to say that. He cites examples. For instance, in Santiago, records were burned in 1863 during the War of Restoration. When our neighbors to the west invaded in 1805, records disappeared. In January and February 1586, the English pirate and slaver Francis Drake burned Santo Domingo’s earliest colonial records. The genealogical tragedias go on and on, inserting themselves like a Greek chorus throughout the island’s history, with two consistent themes: invadere et destruere, invasion and destruction.

  “So now that we are confirming through science that we’re mixed-race,” I ask Moya Pons, “how can we find our Indigenous and African ancestors in this country?”

  “Only by ancestral DNA, not by records, because with the exception of the city of Santo Domingo, none, no other city in this country, has slave records,” he says. Moya Pons hands me a small soft-cover book, Libro de bautismos de esclavos: 1636–1670, a volume of slave records that include baptisms. “These are the only records that refer to the slave population that you can consult.”

  “It’s interesting how you can research your colonial and alleged colonial roots here with relative ease, despite how sticky the surname situation can be, but the African and Indigenous records are about numbers, not people,” I say, less surprised than bummed.

  “It’s very difficult for you to relate a twentieth- or twenty-first-century person with a sixteenth-century slave [because] the records were quantitative, and later on you can find those records in some haciendas from sugar mills, for example . . . which are not common, either,” says Moya Pons. “I would say it would be practically impossible, but maybe possible in the city of Santo Domingo, only by tremendous effort and great luck, to connect with one of those slaves baptized at the Cathedral of Santo Domingo in, say, 1650 with a Dominican family in the year 2000.”

  I trace the edges of the book with my index finger and say a little prayer to the patron saint of impossibilities, Santa Rita. In my case, discovering and connecting to my Indigenous and African roots is just one area in which ancestral DNA testing succeeds where genealogy cannot. Last names don’t mean much here because we inherit our names from our fathers (in theory), and because names were sometimes given to Indigenous and African slaves who were baptized by their captors, while others were not. Last names in that case won’t reveal ancestral origins, as I’ve seen with my own mitochondrial DNA results, Dad’s, and perhaps Casilda’s.

  There’s something else we need to consider: how people classify us in the United States. Looking at the race section on birth and death records is about as reliable as looking at the race section on census records and even, say, New York’s sex-offender database, where phenotypically Black and mixed-race child molesters who have Spanish surnames are often listed as Hispanic and white. In death, the race and other particulars of two of my grandparents were wrongly recorded. Let’s say Dad’s mother wasn’t adopted. By all accounts, the woman and man who raised her have been described as both Black and white and indio and Black. In death, her race was listed as white, entombing her true identity for evermore. Ercilia’s case is hardly anomalous, making the search for our ancestral origins all the more challenging.

  I’m reminded of what a fortune teller once told me years ago back home in New York. It’s enough to give our ancestors light, or acknowledgment, when we cannot pinpoint exactly who they were in life. The intention is what matters. And that light elucidates their path back, enabling them to walk with, behind, and for us when life makes us fall flat on our asses.

  Moya Pons and I decide to continue the conversation over lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant. A few minutes in, a well-known doctor walks in, wearing a polo shirt and cargo shorts. Because of his preppie clothes, I think he’s a Black-American tourist until he walks over and greets Moya Pons in Dominican Spanish.

  “You see that guy who just said hello to me?” he asks me after the man leaves.

  “Don’t tell me—he’s white here?”

  “In the U.S., you remember the one-drop rule—that one sixteenth of Black blood makes you Black?” he says. “Here, it’s completely the reverse—one sixteenth of white blood makes you white, or at least non-Black.”

  “And has money bought him whiteness?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Look at a place like Brazil, where there are almost two hundred and fifty racial classifications. Can we contend with those numbers?”

  “No, no, I don’t think so. Dominicans are less sensitive to those racial classifications, and in my perception, those classifications we use here are more descriptive than an instrument for imposing social stratification on certain people,” says Moya Pons. “I will not claim that this is a sort of racial democracy, but I will say that this is a very open society in racial terms.”

  I’d like to agree with Moya Pons, but I think about all the smiling corpses plastered on billboards around town. Then I think about Sammy Sosa and the Skin Lightening Creamgate of 2009. I saw it coming. I first met him over ten years before, at an after-party for a Hurricane George relief concert in La Romana. I was in town to interview Shakira for a music magazine. Later, in 2008 I saw a richer and more famous Sosa looking ridiculous with a conked hairdo, light blue contacts, and an ill-fitting suit. It was only a matter of time before he’d go all the way and bleach his skin. It would have been sadly hilarious had Sosa not planned to market and hawk the facial cosmetic to the Latino community worldwide.

  I ask Moya Pons about any colonial ties to the Arab world that may explain Dad’s paternal ancestry.

  “There were Arabs who came from countries like Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon in t
he late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” says Moya Pons.

  “But before that, don’t we have a connection to the Arab world?”

  “Yes, there is a connection, but there weren’t many Arabs coming during Columbus’s time, unless they already became Hispanicized and, willingly or not, Christian . . . For certain there were some.”

  The surname Marmolejo comes to mind. I discover that the name originated in southern Spain, in the province of Jaén, not far from Seville. The word Jaén is believed to have derived from the old Arab word describing a place of rest on a caravan route, and indeed the city was used as a place of respite for armies moving from one main city to another during the Moorish occupation of Spain. Had we used our rightful surname—whatever that means today—Dad’s direct paternal results would have surprised me less. This place, Jaén, is now on my list of places to visit, to connect to, to see what, if anything, awaits me. Something usually does.

  * * *

  Moya Pons is a fascinating person. Like Paloma, I’m trying to understand why such a difficult person to pinpoint would give me the time of day. I quietly thank the universe.

  “A woman with the last name Cepeda taught me how to read when I was three years old,” he says, on the car ride back.

  I’ll take that. I guess everything does end up working itself out.

  It’s time to go. The driver loads my bag into the trunk, and we start toward the airport. A few minutes in, I say, “Lenny, can you please stop for a second so I can inhale the fresh air of the Malecón before getting on that plane.” He stops and looks at me like I’m crazy, but I don’t care. I get out of the car and say a prayer of thanks to the Taíno spirit mother of the waters, Atabey, and her West African sister, the ocean goddess Yemaya. I’m grateful to be going home armed with more understanding and carrying lighter bags.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Becoming Latina

  New York taught me everything. New York City is everything.

  —ADAM “AD-ROCK” HOROVITZ, BEASTIE BOYS

  I CAN SEE THE LIGHTS DOTTING THE EARTH BELOW AS WE START descending over New York City. I didn’t realize just how homesick I was until now. When the pilot says, “Clear for landing,” signaling that we’re minutes away from JFK, I start to experience a warm maudlin feeling. I imagine that one of those cars below contains Sacha and Djali, racing to pick me up from the airport. I’m already craving the freshly baked strawberry cake with vanilla frosting that Djali has baked to celebrate my return. I can almost smell it, cooling atop the kitchen counter, from up here. We’ll talk for hours, working our way through the entire cake, distributing gifts and catching up on everything I missed over the last month. It won’t be until tomorrow morning, when I hear the voice of my favorite anchor, Pat Kiernan, hip me to the local news, that I will feel totally home. When I look around the cabin at the other passengers fighting to catch a glimpse out the window, it’s apparent that I’m not the only one who thinks these are the longest five minutes ever.

  The mother-and-daughter pair sitting in my aisle have already unfastened their seat belts and fixed their hands in position to clap and holler the moment we land. The mom is dressed like a teenager, in a skintight red Rocawear sweatsuit with her chichones peeking out from her midsection and three-inch black boots. She takes a Bible out of the Ecko satchel tucked under the seat in front of her and clasps it to her chest, mumbling a prayer of some sort. Her daughter, dressed in a matching outfit, rolls her eyes. “Ay, mami, ni’ pa’ tanto,” she murmurs. “Look out the window, we’re almost here!”

  “Cállate, muchacha, before I slap you in the mouth,” her mother snaps back. “You never know—te olvidaste de Flight 587 already?”

  When we land, the applause and variations of “¡Ay, Dios mío, Gracias! Thank you, Jesús, Maria y la Virgen de la Altagracia!” are loud and melodramatic. As I always do, I join in the spirited clapping and fist pumping, but I’m clapping for different reasons: I didn’t have to sit surrounded by la familia Saran Wrap, screaming and kicking the back of my seat.

  I make my way down the filthy aisle of the plane, with one side of my headphones pushed back, and thank the flight attendants and captain, forcing smiles onto their visibly exhausted faces, before I exit. I’m starting to feel blissful as I make my way toward baggage claim and out the double doors to the pickup area.

  The Dominican Republic is my holy land, my Mecca. It’s equal parts archaeological site and ancestral shrine, a place where I can go to get centered when I start feeling off-kilter. While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me. My foundation may be por allá, but my self is firmly rooted here.

  I can see Sacha and Djali’s car in the pickup area. My daughter’s face is pressed against the window, looking in both directions for me. I imagine this is what Julie Andrews felt like when she frolicked through green Austrian pastures singing “The Sound of Music.”

  * * *

  There’s another email from Family Tree DNA with the results of Rocío’s father Don Manuel’s direct paternal ancestry. I expected to find a European ancestor on several paternal lines but assumed Spain would reign supreme. Alas, it hasn’t, not yet. “Well, kid, we found out that your grandfather’s direct paternal ancestry is either English or Irish. We can’t say exactly which one.”

  What would Arizona governor Jan Brewer, the Birthers, and a growing laundry list of conservative Republicans say if they learned that many Latinos (me included) are mixed with European blood because of the thing they fear more than, say, another four years with President Barack Obama: illegal immigration.

  And how about that old white lady from Azle, Texas, who placed a HISPANICS KEEP OUT sign on her property and justified her actions to a CNN reporter when asked if she found the sign offensive: “Well, you know, I don’t care. I’m upset about them coming over here illegally, too. We think this is our privilege as an American to protect our property.” Protecting “our property” from what? Really?

  My own genetic and spiritual revelations have made me think about what exactly makes a U.S. citizen American. What does that look like as opposed to the face of an “illegal”? I always thought the face of America looked like the original people who settled here. They came after crossing the Bering Land Bridge from Asia, and according to their own indigenous religious creation myths, they’ve been here since time immemorial. Whichever philosophy we subscribe to, it’s clear that Indigenous-Americans and Mexicans were here first.

  Latinos are prototypical New Americans, the products of European immigration, colonialism, and slavery. What this journey has driven home for me is that being Latino means being from everywhere, and that is exactly what America is supposed to be about.

  “So why is it either-or and not one or the other?” I ask Bennett.

  “Your cousin’s closest match in the system is to an Irishman, but he also has twenty-three out of twenty-five matches with an Englishman and one with a guy from Wales,” he says. “Therefore, the honest thing is to say that he’s from Northwestern Europe—not talking France. England, Scotland, or Ireland.”

  Great, there may be a shipwrecked pirate in la familia. Or maybe a British soldier who somehow survived and crossed the border into Neiba from nearby Haiti during the revolution. Or worse, there’s a possibility that this European man was a slaver. Whoever he was, his history will always be stitched with mine as a record of how the Americas were formed.

  * * *

  Against my better judgment, I exchange texts with Rocío a few more times during the year. They are as our communication has always been: super-sporadic and bordering on nonsensical. “Hi! Are you ok? I haven’t heard from you in a while . . .” she texts, to which I reply, “I’m sorry, but when have we ever stayed in touch, ever, in decades?”

  Every exchange is as grating as the last. In one, she reports that everything is okay with her boyfriend; in another, her granddaughter is slee
ping over; in another, her chocolate Labrador gave birth to a litter, and she wants to know if I’m interested in adopting one of the puppies. Her texts show me how little she’s changed. It doesn’t matter that I told her I didn’t care to hear about any more of her boyfriends. It doesn’t matter that I told her several times that I travel too much to take care of a dog. Nothing matters to Rocío but Rocío.

  I decide to text her that I have new ancestral DNA results.

  Rocío responds by telling me, yet again, that she’s always wanted to write a book about her life. She segues into tangents about how she’s been victimized by everyone around her. Nobody understands her. Nobody sympathizes except her latest beau. She never expresses interest in her father’s direct paternal ancestry.

  I’m ambivalent. I respect Rocío for admitting that she was a less than desirable parent, something Dad has never been able to do, much less Alice. I forgive Rocío. And yet I can’t force myself to feel something more for Rocío and her sob stories than fleeting compassion. I feel way more compassion for the casualties she’s left in the wake of her failed relationships with men: her other children.

  * * *

  I arrive a few minutes early to find Jorge Estevez in one of the classrooms at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan, where he’s coordinated educational workshops for almost two decades. I’m shocked. Jorge is not the constipated deadpan I expected. He’s wearing a short ponytail covered by a black Yankees cap with the bill to the back, blue jeans, and a black-and-white-striped button-down polo shirt covering his large biceps. Estevez—a self-professed Taíno, he insists I call him Jorge—isn’t overly zealous as much as he is passionate.

  Today he’s giving a run-through of a paper on a messianic figure from San Juan de la Maguana named Liborio Mateo Ledesma he’s presenting in Washington, D.C., to another employee. Jorge delivers his gospel with the confidence of a rapper, mixing anecdotes with history. He smiles when he knows he’s dropping science, revealing a set of shovel teeth and a Mongolian birthmark on his chestnut-colored face, two physical Indigenous characteristics. Whether he’s talking to a coworker or, as I’ll see later, presenting artifacts to dozens of visitors in the museum’s rotunda, the message is the same: Taínos are victims of genocide by paper. “Paper? Why paper?” someone will ask, to which Jorge will reply, “Because they are still here with us.” He is living proof.