The Book of Lost Saints

by Daniel José Older

  I did.

  Somehow, without meaning to, I let go. It was the boy. He was outside of it all: a brand-new thing. My blood. What had been a closed circle, never ending, never advancing, and always always repeating, was suddenly wide open. I hadn’t considered this new generation of us. Surely Nilda had invested some of her own trauma and guilt in him, her bullshit too. But this child looked so free. His movements weren’t constrained; he had flung himself with such ease out the door, into the snow. A Cuban child, born in a land of snow, outside of the debilitating fear and clenched stomachs, away from the gnawing certainty that someone somewhere was about to betray you, once again once again.

  This boy was what we had all fought so hard, in our own wretched, insidious sometimes glorious ways, to get to: freedom, beyond our sorrow. There he was lying in the snow, watching each breath become a ghost and then vanish.

  “Okay, Mami,” the boy said. My sister stared at him for a few more seconds and then, satisfied, went back inside. I counted five more phantom breaths rising into the air before Ramón threw his legs over his own head and tried to flip himself into a standing position. It didn’t work; he landed flat on his back with a thud that would’ve been painful if it hadn’t been cushioned by all that snow. He said, “Oof!” like the wind was knocked out of him and then laughed so loud and long that Nilda peered back out the door and yelled at him to hurry up, coño. He finally stood, still laughing, panting, coughing and laughing again as the snow came down in sheets around him, covered up all our sadness and sin.

  * * *

  I came back.

  I didn’t mean to do that either; wasn’t going to. But then one night Luis and I had gotten into it over absolutely nothing, some petty bullshit that’s code for we’re both heartbroken people, still having to find all the pieces of ourselves and put them back together each day after so many nightmares. We fought each other because we trusted each other and no one else, and knew as hard as we screamed and as horrible as the curses we could come up with would become, we’d always find our way back. And we fought each other to stave off that cool empty feeling of defeat, having fled, having left so much behind: the feeling of nowhere to turn. So we turned toward each other, sometimes with rage, mostly with love.

  It was the TV that time, some telenovela I wanted to watch and he was sick of. I was already working at the Laundromat on Sixth, Consuela’s; we’d both had long days, it was summer and the air clung to you, impossibly heavy and thick, even at midnight. I launched out into the sizzling streets, past catcalls and sirens, walked without knowing where until I found myself back in that same bush, now adorned with a perfect, still explosion of yellow teardrops, forsythia I think it’s called, and before me stood the dark house of my sister.

  I checked and yes, I had still forgiven her and forgiveness seeped like a balm down my tired body, slid beneath my skin and shushed these muscles, each a clenched fist; forgiveness made them gentle with themselves. And then I remembered: I was magic.

  It seems, maybe, like something you would never forget. Since leaving that place I’d concentrated all my energy into being away from it. The shadows would draw up around me, the cracks in the walls, the peeling plaster, and I’d fight fight fight and finally the crisp New Jersey air would be true again and I could breathe and the tower, the smell of rotting flesh, the fear would abate. I pushed it all out, including the magic, Padre Sebastián’s magic. But I had it in me somewhere, I must.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated with everything. I breathed, tried to remember what it was I had done that made me able to slide outside myself like that, but it wouldn’t come. When I opened my eyes, the night hung thick and sticky around me and a single light illuminated a window on the top floor. I froze. Had I let out a noise of some kind while I was in my trance? A face looked down from the window. The boy. Ramón. He looked right at me. For a few seconds, neither of us moved. Then I waved. He waved back.

  And inside myself, I made a tiny pact. I would not take this child’s mother away. Rage had seethed through me again since that first night I’d seen Nilda. It had receded, risen again. It would recede and rise, probably for the rest of my life. But I would not take this child’s mother away. I wouldn’t be party to continuing this endless cycle, so far away from where it started.

  I smiled at the boy, turned, and walked away.

  * * *

  That pact carried me, I remember now. It fortified me. Forgiveness came so easily, caught me off guard, and I thought: If I can effortlessly forgive one that did me so wrong, I can do anything. Surely, that simple thought carried through the darkest hours between me and Luis. It came to me when I wouldn’t let him touch me, lay sweat-soaked and shuttered on the floor fighting memories. I had forgiven, effortlessly forgiven. I still had some magic, even if I couldn’t escape my own body anymore.

  And now:

  Soon it will snow. It’s so many years later; the urge to take a life rose inside me but the memory of forgiveness once again eclipsed it and here I am, sobbing softly in this forsythia bush, barely a shadow. Without thinking, I slide across the lawn and into the house. I expect to enter a shouting match—instead I find Ramón in the den, standing across from his mother, both of them frozen.

  “What do you mean, you don’t think she died in Cuba?” Nilda says very quietly.

  “I—”

  With some rasp now: “What do you mean, Ramón?”

  “Exactly what I said.” You can hear the strain in his voice, the shout that’s about to erupt.

  “Pero,” she whispers, her gaze far away. And then she slumps down into the plastic-covered couch, and for a moment I think she’s passed out and a mix of emotions swarms me, but mostly: sadness.

  “Mami,” Ramón says, rushing to sit beside her.

  “I don’t understand,” she moans, her forehead pressed into one palm, eyes closed.

  “I don’t either,” Ramón admits. “I’m just … I’m trying to figure it all out, Mami.”

  She looks impossibly tiny; she must’ve shrunk three inches in the time we were gone. She’s sobbing. Sitting on that perfect pink couch and sobbing like a baby and Ramón rubs her bony back and shakes his shaggy head and whispers, “Shh, Mami, shh. We’ll find her. Or we’ll find what happened to her, I promise. Okay?”

  Nilda nods. “I’m just … I’m so, so sorry. I don’t understand. She was here … she was in the States and she didn’t … she didn’t…”

  They have no idea how close.

  “I know,” Ramón coos. “Shh.”

  “Pero of course not, after what I’ve done. I didn’t … I didn’t have a choice. I know it seems simple from where you stand, but I didn’t have a choice, Ramón.”

  “It doesn’t seem simple.” Ramón is tearing up too now, but he pushes it back down. “Nothing seems simple, Mami. I know you’re not a bad person.”

  She looks up, and finally, after what seems like years of blinking and glancing everywhere else: She looks at her son, takes him in fully, and even manages a smile. A genuine one. “Ay, m’ijo. You don’t know what that means to me.”

  He nods. “And I’m … I’m sorry I hung up on you.”

  She laughs into the tissue she’s blowing her nose on. “Ay eso no importa, mi amor. I don’t care about that.”

  Ramón exhales. It might be true now but definitely wasn’t then. Either way, it’s not what matters.

  Nilda blows her nose again and continues: “I did what I did because I thought I was saving my parents’ lives. That’s all. I never thought, I mean, I should’ve known, but you know, I never thought she’d be gone gone like she was. I never thought I’d never see her again. Even though I should’ve known, I know I should’ve known.” Her feeble fist bangs her knee with each word, until Ramón wraps his big hand around her little one and stops it.

  “Shh, Mami, shh.”

  “You will find her, Ramón.”

  “I’ll do my best. I’ll find out what happened.”

  I watch her body heave up a
nd down and then the heaving slows and she horks into a tissue and then laughs a little bit. “What are you going to do?”

  “I have to talk to Luis,” Ramón says. “I think he knew her. You know Luis?”

  “Luis…”

  “Cavalcón. He runs the club I play at sometimes.”

  “Ah, sí. I think I know who he is. Troublemaker.” That’s the one. “He knew Marisol?”

  “I think so.”

  “How do you know, m’ijo? Where are you getting your information?”

  “It’s … it’s hard to explain, Mami. I can’t really get into all that right now.”

  Within Ramón now, I simmer and open myself to his turmoil. My own anger had taken over, become all I knew, and I’d missed his. He’s been thrashing through an ongoing state of wrath and forgiveness for a long time now. And his anger is already slipping away, barely there.

  I look at Nilda, my sister, through his eyes. See the woman who raised him, who shoved through her own traumas, ghosts, and demons to make this boy into the man he’s become.

  Without meaning to, I forgive her once again. And then again. It feels like a miracle, and I’m suddenly wild with it, a strange, desperate kind of joy, a deep breath.

  Nilda cocks her head at Ramón and then smiles. “Okay, m’ijo.” She blows her nose again. “Do what you have to do.”

  Ramón stands.

  “Do what you have to do.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “Do you have a plan?” Adina asks when Ramón climbs into the back seat of her beat-up Ford.

  “Hi,” Ramón says, dispensing a cheek kiss to Adina and a mouth peck to Aliceana.

  “Hey, babe,” Aliceana says. “Do you want to role-play?”

  “I mean … yes. But right now?”

  “Shush, man! You know what I meant.”

  Adina zips off. I pretend that we’re not speeding toward the man who pulled me out of the ocean and reminded me I’m alive. I pretend that I don’t care. I hover in the farthest back corner of the car, amidst Adina’s forgotten paperwork and crushed iced-coffee cups.

  Gradients of gray on gray streak the sky; the whisper of oncoming snow. And then that thaw will come. I don’t know if I’ll be around to see it though, with or without a body. Somehow, this matters. It weighs on me. I want to see the season change from winter grays to spring green, feel that first splash of sunshine on bare skin after so much frost. I do, I want it. I haven’t always, but something’s broken in me, once again. Being in Cuba unlocked something. I lived again, after all that. It was hard, walking these streets with all those memories and ghosts, but I did. I released one or two every day, like sandbags off a hot-air balloon. And they came back and I hurled them over the side again.

  My God, I was a powerful woman.

  Ramón shrugs. “I’m just going to say what I told my mom just now, that I had some information about Marisol and that I know she lived here after she escaped Cuba.”

  “How’d that go?” Adina asks.

  “I mean … she cried a lot, but it was cool.”

  “I think this is gonna be different,” Aliceana says.

  “Why?”

  And he must be a very powerful man, this Luis whom I have known and loved and forgotten. He must be, to put up with me and all my ghosts and my long journey back to the surface of life. I don’t remember much. But this man remained by my side all the while, that I know. He caressed me when I needed it, was quiet when I needed peace. He challenged me, told me the difficult things I didn’t want to hear, cried when I hurt him and even more when he hurt me. He stayed away when we learned how to communicate without having to talk and I let him know I needed to disappear for a while.

  “I just think this is different,” Aliceana says. She exchanges a glance with Adina. “I mean, I don’t know any more than you, Ramón. Way less. But this dude, this is the dude that your aunt was with, after everything. And whatever happened, it was probably intense. And who knows how he’s gonna react? That’s all I’m saying.”

  Who indeed.

  Ramón retrieves the journal from his shoulder bag. “I brought this. Might help.”

  “The dreams?” Adina asks, raising her eyebrows in the rearview mirror.

  That book holds my entire life. Each guardian angel that helped me along the way, and a few demons too. Everything that matters. The sum of me. Interpreted through the broad strokes of a twenty-six-year-old security guard who never knew me; his dreams of my memories. So many lives and deaths. Padre Sebastián’s prison philosophies. The rumble of history, revolution, survival. Love. Seems like it should be heavier, but they’re only words.

  Adina shakes her head. “Well, I’m sure Luis will be happy to read that you’ve been dreaming about the love of his life.”

  We turn onto the highway, watch the Oaks fade as New Jersey becomes a nondescript industrial park and then the ’burbs again. Without warning, the city rises up around us. Commerce and decay compete for attention as Adina merges to the right and down a ramp that wraps beneath the overpass into the heart of the city.

  * * *

  I’m tiny.

  The buzzer buzzes, the trio marches upstairs. I linger outside. Luis lives in a newly renovated building surrounded by run-down row houses. A bodega, two hair salons, and a pizza place take up the rest of the block. A gigantic housing project looms nearby, beyond that you can see the highway disappear between skyscrapers. This isn’t where we lived together. He’s upgraded, if only slightly. I’m happy for him. I want everything to be wonderful for him, I almost even want him to have settled down with a nice woman, have kids. Almost. Sometimes the human heart is an asshole.

  No. I have to let him go.

  I can do that. I’ve let go of everything else, even my own body. I can’t carry all my expectations and hopes up there with me, because I doubt I’d withstand them being crushed. Anyway, I am nothing. Barely a phantom.

  I enter.

  Glide up the three flights. Ignore the pulsing that won’t stop within me. I’ve already seen him in this new modern time. I know who this man is. I shouldn’t be nervous.

  “¿Café?” Luis calls from the kitchen as I enter.

  “Claro que sí,” Adina says. Ramón fidgets on the leather couch. Aliceana puts a hand on his knee. It’s a comfortable place; someone has put love into decorating it. The walls are painted a warm stucco orange, decorated with protest signs and posters of different rock bands and poets.

  Luis has so many books! I don’t remember him being this much of an intellectual. Or maybe they’re not his? I almost get lost sliding along the labyrinth of book spines: folktales, Orisha stories, post-colonial studies, basic business owner guides, the Nuyorican poets, some dime-store novels. Hours, days, years of literature.

  “It’s almost ready!” Luis says. There’s a click and some salsa group from the seventies blasts from the kitchen. “Have you guys seen this Napster thing?”

  “What Napster thing, Luis?” Ramón asks.

  “No, Napster. This thing that is Napster. Amazing!”

  Adina coughs back a laugh. “Yes, we have seen Napster, Luis. You just jumping on that bandwagon, viejo?”

  “Coño, Adina, listen, but they have everything! I mean, there are songs on here we used to listen to back in the day but way back in the day! I didn’t even know … I mean!”

  “You are hilarious, Tío.”

  “Adina.” Luis appears with a tray of coffees. “Don’t mock your elders.”

  I leave. I can’t be here. He looks the same as he did a few weeks ago, of course, but now he is someone new. Someone new to me. I move quickly past the bookshelves and a wide-screen TV, down a narrow hallway and around a corner and into a little side room the size of a large closet. And then I stop. Because I am staring at many, many smiling pictures of me.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  We had already taken over the streets when they killed Maceo. We’d taken them and lost them a few times, in fact. We knew the smell of tear gas and the thril
l of an open charge after holding the line for so long. We’d tasted our own blood, healed each other’s cracked ribs and blackened eyes.

  We had no national aspirations, no political savvy, no platform. We simply got fed up one day, of the trash not being collected, the elevators being broken, the ambulances never coming, the filth accumulating, the highway cutting straight through our homes, the police sneering as they murdered us, the schools crumbling, the shoot-outs, the boarded-up shops, and maybe more than anything else, the way it was all so different just a few miles over, in the Oaks.

  We didn’t know the nuts and bolts of why, but we knew enough to be enraged, and that a letter to the editor and a bake sale didn’t mean shit. We were Cubans, Puerto Ricans, black Americans, and a few scattered Angolans, Nigerians, Senegalese. An Ecuadorian, a Colombian, a family of Mexicans. We weren’t in denial.

  The Cubans, Luis and I and Serrano, Maceo, and a few others, knew enough to recognize brutality and repression when it leered at us; we’d seen it all before. That our wealthy compadres and comadres in the Oaks not only turned their back on it but openly supported it only made us fight harder. The irony, the sick, demented irony of escaping one kind of prison only to slip into the grasp of an entirely other one—it festered inside me, inside all of us, and then boiled over one hot day when they tried to bulldoze an abandoned lot we’d made into a community garden.

  One sit-in became a showdown and then another and another and then, one day, they shot Maceo.

  Maceo would do these street poetry marathons: He’d set up somewhere on Grayson Avenue at sunrise, in front of the abandoned candy store across from Corridor Park, just a stack of books and thermos of coffee, not even a microphone. He’d open a book, tiny in those big Sasquatch hands of his, and he’d look something near ridiculous standing there all burly and gigantic in a huge T-shirt and cargo pants, cap turned backward and wraparound sunglasses—but then he’d open his mouth and some glory would come out, some old country glory. He’d start with Martí, and then work his way through Lorca, Piñera, Arenas, Dulce María, and some time around noon he’d put the book down, pour himself another cafecito from the thermos, and then launch into his own poems.