Ordinary Girls
Page 26
Gambier, 2017
I’m nearing the end of my writing fellowship, getting ready to move back to Miami, again, when I find out about Chanty. It’s China who calls to tell me.
“Oh my God, Jaqui. Have you looked at Facebook today?”
I was busy all day, teaching, writing, grading student work. “What happened?”
“Chanty died,” she says. She keeps talking, explaining what she read on Chanty’s page, people saying goodbye, how she had been struggling with drug addiction for so long.
I don’t say anything. I haven’t seen Chanty in almost twenty years, haven’t talked to her since I was sixteen and working at the pharmacy.
I take the phone over to the dining table and log in to Facebook on my laptop, check out Chanty’s page. “It’s true,” I say finally.
“I know, Jaqui. I just told you.”
I sit with China on the phone for a long time, quiet while she talks. “I can’t believe it,” she starts to say, and then I stop listening.
I scroll through all the messages posted on her page, all from people I don’t know. There’s not a single message, not one, from a person I know. I look for messages from her sisters, her mother. And then I realize that that’s what I’m looking for—her mother. I want to know if her mom is okay.
“I can’t believe it either,” I tell China.
Later, in the shower, I’ll think about reaching out to her mom. But I won’t, because I won’t know what to say, how to say it. What could I possibly say? That Chanty was one of the very first friends I had when we came to Miami. That she sat in front of me in fourth grade. That she was smart, and funny, and loud. That I had a gap between my two front teeth and she sometimes called me Gapita. That we sang together in sixth grade, in chorus, walking the hallways at Ida M. Fisher Elementary, Wilson Phillips and Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. That she was right to keep me away, that I know she was trying to protect Chanty. That Chanty was my friend. That I cared for her. That I’m sorry she’s gone.
Puerto Rico, 2017
After Hurricane María decimates Puerto Rico, I can’t find my uncle. I call everyone I know on the island. I reach out to volunteer organizations. I post pictures of him all over social media. I get in touch with a group of volunteer firefighters traveling all over the island doing rescues and wellness checks using satellite phones, a makeshift website for victims to check in, to ask for help, using a rescue map. I call. I call. I call. There are rescue teams on the ground, I’m told, but some roads are destroyed, some roads are flooded, some bridges have collapsed. There’s no way to make it to Comerío right now.
In San Juan, the navy’s hospital ship hasn’t arrived. In Humacao, my titi Jenesis, who is diabetic, needs to see a doctor, but can’t get to the hospital. In Caguas, a cousin loses his house. In Naguabo, no one has seen or heard from FEMA, no one has water or power.
On TV, Trump throws paper towels at hurricane survivors, shoots the rolls like he’s shooting hoops. He smiles for a selfie, then looks into the camera. “There’s a lot of love in this room,” he says. “A lot of love in this room.”
Later, during a press conference, he will claim that only sixteen people died in Puerto Rico. That we should be “very proud” that we didn’t have “a real catastrophe like Katrina.” A year later, Harvard researchers will find that more than four thousand Puerto Rican people died.
But right now, my uncle is missing and people have no water and no power and no help, and Trump is throwing paper towels at them and congratulating himself and telling us we should be proud.
I keep calling. I send money for gas, for food, for water. I send boxes of supplies. I call. I call. I don’t sleep. Every day, my uncle is missing. Every day he could be hurt, or dead, or dying of thirst. Vox reports that there is a suicide crisis on the island after the hurricane. Almost ten thousand people call the health department’s suicide hotline in three months. Every day my uncle is missing. Every day, I don’t sleep. Every day, I feel nothing, except rage. And then finally, one day the phone rings, and it’s him.
Miami Beach, 2017
I arrive in Miami the week of Thanksgiving. I’ve been gone for a year and a half, and during that time, my mother’s health has deteriorated. She’s been in the hospital at least four times this year.
We spend Thursday in the hospital, Mami hooked up to oxygen. She has pneumonia for the second time this year, has trouble breathing, speaking, and doesn’t want any more treatment. She will eat only Jell-O and broth and nothing else. I will drink black coffee for four hours straight and then lock myself in the bathroom with heart palpitations. I will not sleep for three days. I will leave her in a week. When I’m gone, Anthony will make arrangements for an assisted living facility that will not quite care for her, but where she’ll be able to live with her oxygen tank, where they’ll prepare meals for her, where they’ll make sure she’s not alone at night, that she doesn’t smoke with her oxygen tank, that she doesn’t go out into the streets alone.
I will make plans to come back to Miami Beach, again, and at night, I will close my eyes and see us exactly as we were two years ago:
As I walk along the boardwalk on the north shore, the roller skating rink–turned–bandshell just a block away, women jogging in pairs, kids riding their skateboards, weaving in and out and almost running over pedestrians, I make a right toward the sand, toward my favorite lifeguard stand, blue and orange and yellow. I kick off my chancletas, head to the water, then walk north along the shore, toward Surfside, the waves washing away my footprints. And then, I run into my mother walking along the same route, in the opposite direction, heading south, smoking a Camel, her sneakers in her hand, bare feet kicking up clouds of sand. When I see her, the sun on her face, the wind in her hair, the seagulls’ choking calls in the distance, I know that we will always feel the same pull, the ocean calling.
Even when she is gone, we will always find each other here.
Miami, 2018
China and I arrive half an hour late. It’s my fault. I took three hours getting ready, doing my hair, my makeup. I changed my dress three times. On the way to pick up China, I got lost, even though I’d been to her house over a dozen times.
When we finally arrive, it’s the groom who gets the door for us. He introduces himself, hugs me. China already knows him—she was there when they met—but it’s the first time I lay eyes on him.
“Thank you for coming,” he says, smiling. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Felicidades,” China says.
“Felicidades,” I say, too, not sure what else I’m supposed to say to this man who is marrying one of my best friends, someone she met just a month ago. They fell in love right away, she told me on the phone. She couldn’t believe it either.
He leads us upstairs, where everyone is waiting on us, and there she is, in a white dress she picked out herself. Boogie. She hugs China first. And then she wraps her arms around me, and I try not to cry when she says, “I love you.”
China will be la madrina, and I will stand back, take pictures with my iPhone, watch him place the ring on her finger. She will smile the whole time, and there will be tears in her eyes, and even though we haven’t talked much in the last year, selfishly, I will feel like I’m losing her, like I’ve already lost her.
Puerto Rico, 2018
Exactly one year after Hurricane María, I fly to Puerto Rico. My friend James comes along to keep me company. He rides shotgun as I drive the Jeep, listens as I rage at the traffic, at the news, at people’s performative allyship while the island is in crisis, at the cryptocurrency fuckers and their money, at the vendepatria governor, at Trump, who keeps denying the thousands of Puerto Ricans who died, everyone pretending things are going back to normal when black Puerto Ricans have always been in crisis. One year later, and I’m still in a constant state of rage.
We eat in San Juan, drive to Humacao, to El Caserío, and I park the Jeep in front of my old elementary school for a f
ew minutes. It starts to rain. James asks what exactly I’m looking for. The truth is, I don’t know.
We drive to El Malecón de Naguabo, where I spent so many weekends, so many summers listening to salsa and eating alcapurrias and ensalada de pulpo across from the ocean. We buy a couple beers, walk across el malecón, looking out at the waves, the cliff-side houses across the water. Half of the kioskos are closed down, damaged after María. A nearby oceanfront house is crumbling. This is where my abuela was born, I tell James. This is where my family was from. In those days, my abuela’s barrio had the largest black community in Naguabo.
We drive to Fajardo, to Santiago Iglesias Pantín, where my father’s liquor store was, Abuela’s house on top. As I approach the square, la plaza across the street, I know the way. I see it right away.
The last time I saw my abuela’s house, a year before, it looked empty, abandoned. But now, it’s destroyed. Abuela’s house, which used to be yellow and white, is painted guava and blue, pieces of the cement and cinderblock crumbling, holes where the windows used to be. On the side of the house, someone has spraypainted XL Los Black Magic and BM in white. Downstairs, where Papi’s liquor store was, all the windows and doors are gone. There are broken boards on some windows, as if someone tried to board it up. There are rusted metal bars on the front entrance, broken, falling apart. Inside, there are bottles and cans, the remnants of squatters, a dirty blanket, so much trash.
I have dreamed about this place so many times, the balcony where Abuela kept her plants, the chickens she raised out back, Abuela’s kitchen, Abuelo’s portrait on the wall, Caviche Liquors, my father hauling in wood for the floors, nailing down boards, buffing, staining, finishing. How he built this from the ground up.
How do we keep living in the world when everything we built is gone? How do we even go on?
In the car, on the way back, I’ll keep it together. James will read Octavia Butler for a while, and then he’ll read me a Dionne Brand interview, and we’ll talk and laugh, but later, after he’s asleep, I will go into the bathroom and cry. I’ll grip the sink with both hands and steady myself, and I will feel this thing in my chest, something I have no words for, something so thick, so heavy, I can barely breathe.
Capitol Hill, 1954
After her incarceration, Lolita spoke of visions. In prison, she said, she’d heard the voice of God Himself. Visited by angels, Jesucristo, la Virgen María in her prison cell. God had given her a divine mission.
I imagine that long after being convicted and sentenced to fifty-six years in federal prison, the day of the shooting had become to her like something willed by God: The train ride from New York to Washington, DC, Lolita sitting by the window watching the countryside, surrendering herself to the idea of dying in the name of freedom. How she met Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irvin Flores, and Andres Figueroa Cordero, the three men who would follow her into the house of representatives, up to what they called “the Ladies’ Gallery.” How after a meal at Union Station, running late, the four of them got lost. How they wandered the streets, strangers in this foreign place, this city so far from home, until finally they asked for directions. How when it started raining, on the steps of the United States Capitol, Rafael pointed to the time on his watch, asked Lolita to wait. How she ignored the time, the rain, the three nervous men, everything testing her resolve. How she saw the hesitation, the fear in each of their faces, and thought, I am alone. How she had decided, back on that train, that she would sacrifice her life for her island. And then she said it, “Yo estoy sola,” leaving the three men behind to follow or turn back. She had come here to die.
Lolita standing in front of that government building, one woman among all those men. How she’d been living in a country that didn’t feel hers. How she remembered the European settlers that raped and enslaved and killed the Taíno who didn’t deliver tributes of gold and spun cotton, hands hacked off, bodies left by the riverbanks. The European slave traders who stole and enslaved and raped and murdered African people, carried them, chained, across continents. Puerto Rico, seized, exploited, first by Spanish colonizers, then by Americans who conferred citizenship to Puerto Ricans only so they could be drafted into military service during World War I, but didn’t allow us the same voting rights as other US citizens. The Puerto Rican women sterilized by the American government without their consent. Pueblos that turned to ghost towns, all the schools closing because there were no more children. Bürekün, Borikén, Borínquen, Puerto Rico. Our history, our culture, our blackness, our names, our people. Stolen. Erased. Had Lolita heard the stories? Had she read them in her father’s books before she became a freedom fighter? Did she carry them with her? Lolita climbing the stairs to the Ladies’ Gallery, cocking her Luger pistol, Bürekün, Borikén, Borínquen, Puerto Rico, viva Puerto Rico libre, all those people on the streets of Ponce singing along as the band played “La Borinqueña,” the priest’s sermon still fresh in their minds from that morning’s Catholic mass, the word of God, the palm fronds in their hands, their faces as that first shot rang out, Tommy Guns blasting, the earth opening up like a wound.
“Yo estoy sola,” she said, but what she really meant was I am a woman.
Miami, 2018
My friend Keith and I arrive in Miami together. We’re here for a benefit reading for PageSlayers, a nonprofit organization that provides public school kids with free creative writing summer camps taught by writers of color, a mission close to my heart. Keith and I volunteer to read at the fundraiser, and Dana, the founder—and my former student—picks us up at the airport.
Keith and I spend the day checking out my old haunts in Miami Beach and Wynwood. We walk on Ocean Drive for a while, I show him Ida M. Fisher Elementary, some of the buildings where I lived as a kid. We stop at a cart where a woman is selling jewelry, keychains, bracelets. Keith picks up a bracelet that says Best Friends.
“Aw,” he says, “we should get some of these.” He holds it up and asks the woman, “How much?”
I pick a blue one, my favorite color, put it on, and after we pay her, we’re walking down the street in our friendship bracelets, like two kids.
The night before the reading, Keith and I pick up China, head to Duffy’s in North Miami Beach for drinks and burgers. Dana meets us there, and then my friend Evy, and we sit outside, at a table by the pool, the DJ playing an old school hip-hop mix, Salt-N-Pepa and L.L. Cool J. and Biggie. We take shots of Patrón, pick sweet potato fries off Keith’s plate, take selfies with our eyes crossed, tongues sticking out. Keith and I take pictures holding up our wrists, showing off our friendship bracelets. Keith says, in a sing-song voice, “Best Friends.”
When Keith is talking to Dana, China leans over to me, asks, “Are you guys dating?”
“We’re friends,” I say. “I love him, but not like that.”
China gives me a look.
“Stop that shit,” I say.
“You look like you’re together,” she says, “the way you look at each other.”
“It’s the same way I look at you,” I say. “The same way I look at all the people I love, like family.”
She smiles, hugs me. “I love you, too, bitch.”
I catch Keith smiling at us.
Evy tells the story of how when we were in Nautilus, in seventh grade, China wanted to fight her. “Jaqui and I were so close, we were partners in crime. But China hated me! I don’t even know why.”
I take a sip of beer, throw my head back, laughing, loud. “Because she was in love with me and she was mad jealous!”
Everybody laughs.
China hides her face in her hands. When she pulls her hands away, she says, “Because I was a kid. I was immature. And also, because I loved my friends and I was overprotective.”
I turn to Keith. “She’s still like that.”
The waiter brings another round, and I raise my shot glass. Dana smiles at me from across the table, raises hers, too. China downs hers, fast.
“Bitch, I was gonna toast!” I say.
Keith isn’t drinking—he never drinks. So I take his shot and China takes Evy’s.
“Salud, dinero, y amor,” I say, “que belleza sobra.” And we drink.
Evy leans across the table. “So how did you guys meet?” she asks, meaning Keith and me.
“We met a few years ago, at a writers’ conference,” he says.
We keep talking, telling stories, joking, drinking, and it’s strange, but also cool, that my best friend and my writing friend and my childhood friends, all of them from completely different worlds, are sitting at the same table laughing at the same jokes.
Before the night is over, the music will get louder, and we’ll all get up, leave our drinks behind, and I will take Keith’s hand and we’ll all scatter across the makeshift dance floor by the pool and dance without thinking, the whole restaurant watching, the people at the next table laughing, then all of them getting up, too. Then the lights will go down and the dance floor will be full and I will be surrounded by people I love. I will think of my friends: Boogie and me, not even fifteen yet, the two of us in black dresses and heels, singing at a club on Ocean Drive. Shorty and me, walking up and down Bayside, flirting with all the boys, dancing salsa on the party boats. Evy and me, passing each other notes in Civics class, swimming with Beba in the Forte Towers pool. China and Flaca and me, the three of us posing for pictures outside Miami Beach High, me catching China by surprise, putting my hands on her shoulders, jumping onto her back, and China, screaming, laughing. And Keith, signing his chapbook for me, Generation Oz, how he writes, I love you!, and how I tell him I love him, too, the day after the 2016 election, and later, when the news gets especially grim, black person after black person after black person murdered by police, and months after that, when he asks for a simple favor. You know I love you, I say. I would slay dragons for you.