It’s like when Graciela calls me at Teacher’s place and I walk to the phone as slow as I can, just wanting to draw out that feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen. Those moments between knowing I’m going to talk to her and actually hearing her voice are the best, when everything is about to happen and it’s all still in our heads and it’s all perfect. Sometimes I want to live my whole life in those moments, even though I know that’s not the way life’s supposed to be. It’s messed up how things have to keep changing all the time, but I guess life is kinda like school—right when you start to like the grade you’re in, you have to move up again.
César never comes back to school. There’s a bunch of rumors going around—one that he’s going to a school for blind kids, another that he’s getting homeschooled by his grandmother—but the truth is he’s just hanging around with his uncle Antonio playing card games and fixing cars all day. He got real good at both, especially poker, and now he says he wants to grow up to be a gambler. “I don’t need to go to school for that,” he tells me. “All I need is a lot of time.” Teacher says all he’s doing is wasting time, but I keep hoping he’ll get better so he can stop taking all those pills and just come back to school and be a normal kid again.
I stop by to see him after school some days, even though it’s not on my way home anymore. He’s either playing cards in the back room, betting with M&Ms instead of poker chips, or sitting on the sidewalk while his uncle works on a car, dipping engine parts into gasoline to clean them. One time I see Charley outside talking to Antonio so I wait by the bus stop where they can’t see me. They act like old friends, like how Charley was with Mami when we saw him at the soup kitchen. Charley jokes with him, punching him lightly in the arm every time César brings him a beer, and then tucking money into his front pocket as a tip, just like he used to do with me. I watch César sneak sips from the almost empty beer bottles and figure I should just keep on walking. The kid I’m looking for doesn’t really exist anymore, and whenever I see this new César, it just reminds me how much has changed and how it’s all going to keep on changing.
It’s not official, but I guess Graciela’s my girlfriend now. She saves me a seat at lunch and sometimes we walk home from school together. When she finds out my birthday’s coming up she tells me she knows the perfect gift, a brand-new hardcover book that’s never even been opened, but I tell her all I want from her is a thirty-second kiss. She says no way, but then she gives it to me when we’re walking home one day—just stops short under the highway and plants one on me—and after, she says she’s still going to get me that book. Girls always know how to get their way.
My birthday finally comes at the end of May but I don’t want to celebrate. It’s the first one without Mami and it seems wrong to celebrate anything now. But life doesn’t stop just because someone you love is gone. I learned that when she went away last year, but also when I was a kid and we left Papi behind in Puerto Rico. My life didn’t stop. It’s like putting down a book—it still exists, even when you’re not reading it.
I tell Teacher I don’t want a birthday party, but she says all kids have to have one, at least until they’re eighteen. Now that we’re living with her I guess I have to follow her rules. We have the party on a Saturday so Trini can come, and a few kids from school come too. Scottie brings Trini late of course, but she stays to eat cake and play hide-and-seek in the backyard. She keeps calling my name from her hiding place, asking me if she’s in a good spot. I finally tell her yes because I still can’t find her, and then she comes running out with a panicked look, saying, “I’m right here, I’m not lost,” over and over again until I pick her up and whisper into her ear, “I found you, I found you,” which finally makes her laugh. She doesn’t want to leave when Scottie comes to pick her up, but Luz and I tell her it’s okay and she’ll see us again real soon. I’m not sure I believe it myself, but I still keep on saying it.
After everyone leaves Teacher says I can open all the presents, but instead I tell her what I really want for my birthday is to learn how to make pasteles. It takes a while but I finally get her to agree. First we drive to the market to pick up the things she doesn’t have, and then, when we get back home, she teaches us how to peel the vegetables without cutting up our knuckles, how to brown the meat without drying it out, and how to fold the banana leaves without losing any of the filling. She shows us how to knot the string around each package so they’re tight now but easy to open later, and how to tell when they’re done by how they float in the boiling water. I eat a couple straight out of the pot, even though I know I’m going to burn my mouth. Teacher sips on a bottle of water and won’t even take a bite. I tell her it’s funny that she doesn’t eat a lot anymore and she says it’s easier that way. “With some things, I’d rather have none,” she says, putting the leftovers into the freezer. I don’t tell Teacher, but that’s exactly what Mami used to say about everything bad she was using, that it was easier to have nothing at all.
Snowman misses the party so he brings me a present when I see him at the pool a few days later. He gets me a mask with a snorkel attached and a set of flippers so I can swim laps as fast as he does. He says they’re supposed to help me build my leg muscles, but I like using them to walk along the bottom of the pool like a duck. Sometimes he gets mad when I goof off like that, but most times he’s cool with whatever, as long as I finish all my laps in under twenty minutes. He’s big on people not wasting his time.
Tonight we’re the last ones in the pool, still doing laps while the lifeguard sprays down the floors with bleach. In the locker room after we shower he lets me shave his head, saying now that I’m twelve I’m old enough to learn about shaving. He covers his head with this green gel that turns into a fluffy white cream as soon as he starts to rub it on. Then I stand on the bench behind him and run over it with the razor just like he taught me. It looks cool, like shoveling snow off a driveway, and afterwards it feels as smooth as a cue ball. I can’t believe he trusts me enough to let me hold a blade to his head. “Either trust or stupidity,” he says, laughing, but sometimes I think it might also be love.
I get home late from the pool and find Teacher in the kitchen waiting up for me. She says something came in the mail she wants me to have. “A letter you need to read,” she says, handing me an already opened envelope, “from your father to your mother. He wrote it before she died, but sent it to the wrong address, so she never got it.” She says more but I don’t hear any of it, walking from the room with the letter shaking in my hands. When I was younger I always wanted him to write to us, but now that it’s happened, I’m afraid of what he might say.
His handwriting is neat and small, not like I pictured, and he wrote in pencil like I used to when I worried about making a lot of mistakes. Before I know it, I’m translating it in my head, the English somehow easier to hear.
San Juan, April 4
Dear Arcelia,
I must admit that your letter came as a surprise. I was not expecting it, and parts of it were very difficult to read. I knew that I would hear from you again, but there was nothing to tell me it was going to be on that day, in this year. But I guess there is no way to prepare for something like this.
No matter how much time has passed, you are still my wife. This is one thing I’m certain of. You are the mother of my children, and you are the first woman I ever loved. None of that will change. But many other things have changed. We have both done bad things, we have each hurt the other, and some of those wounds are still fresh. But I am happy to hear that you are doing better now, that you are sober and taking care of yourself. Perhaps when you get out, you can be the mother you always wanted to be, the mother you used to be. I remember those first years well, when Cristo was just beginning to walk and Luz hung on your hip like a saddlebag, and I’m still surprised by how much energy you had. You were such a strong woman. I don’t think I ever told you how strong I thought you were, another one of my many mistakes. You did everything for those kids, and they were
happy and healthy because of it. I don’t know when things changed or why, but I know that some of the blame is on me, perhaps most of it. I was not a very good father and I was probably a worse husband. I am sorry for that. I was still a boy when we got married, and I thought that having a wife and child to take care of, and having a home, would make me a man. I was wrong, of course. I still don’t know what turns a boy into a man, perhaps struggle and loss, disappointment, and simply the act of surviving, but I am a man today, and I have dealt with all those things. That is why I can write you this letter, why I can say these things to you after all these years apart. For many years I was afraid of my feelings: my love, my hate, my anger, and my joy. But I’m not afraid of those things anymore. There are so many other things, real things, to be afraid of in this world, so it is a waste of time to fear emotions.
I have a good life here now, a steady job at the market with good pay and a nice home in back of my mother’s place. I am not happy, but I am content. I have two black holes in my life, places where I lost something I once loved. One is for baseball and the other is for my children. One can never be fixed, but I want to do something about the other one. I want to see my children. When I have the money I would like to buy them plane tickets so they can visit me here and see their grandparents and the many cousins who also miss them. I know they are Americans now, but Puerto Rico will always be their home, and there will always be a place for them when they come to visit.
I don’t know what to say about us. I want nothing but good things for you, a good life, but I know that it doesn’t include me. We had our time, some good, some not so good, and I believe that there is no second chance when it comes to your first love. Something died when you got on that plane to New York and I buried it along with the rest of our life together. From the sound of your letter, you have buried it, too. That is a good thing, because our future doesn’t have anything to do with us, it only has to do with our children. We cannot fix what we broke. I do not know them anymore, and they don’t know me, but it doesn’t have to stay like that. I have not been a father to them, but I no longer want to be a ghost. I don’t know what I will be, but I think we have some time to figure that out. They are still young and hopefully they can forgive me for my absence. Please let them know that I think about them every day and that I will always love them. I don’t want to punish them for your mistakes, and I don’t think you should punish them for mine. They, not either one of us, are the only innocents.
In your letter you asked me to forgive you. When I began writing this letter, I didn’t know if I had done that, or if I ever could. But something has lifted out of me right now. An anger that was lodged in the pit of my stomach has broken free and flown away. I didn’t even know that it was living there. So there you go. I have done as you asked, I have forgiven you, but where do we go from here? Perhaps that is not for us to answer or even know. Perhaps it is in God’s hands, and in the hearts of our children. Let us ask them what they want, those who were never given a voice in any of this. Let them decide how they want to move on, how they want to live. I trust that you have raised them well, as well as you were able, and I know that if nothing else, they are capable of speaking their minds. One of the many traits they got from you. Even as little children, they could always ask for what they wanted, even if we were not able to give it to them. So ask them now if they want to visit Puerto Rico sometime, and if they want to see me. That choice is the least we can give them, after taking away so much.
Write or call when you are able and we will move forward from there. You once told me that the only place you care about is the future. I don’t know if you still believe that, but in this case it is all we have. I sincerely hope it will be enough.
Your husband,
Javier
I read the letter a few times, and when I’m done I feel Teacher walk up beside me. She puts her hand on my shoulder but I don’t move or look up at her. I don’t want to see her eyes, or have her see mine, filled with tears. She hugs me and I bury my face in her shirt, crying hard suddenly, as if the weight of everything just hit me, as if I just in this second began to understand all that’s been lost.
Before, when she was just my teacher, she would have asked a lot of questions about how I was feeling and what I wanted to do, but now she has become something else, and we stand together for a very long time, both of us knowing that something else is what will keep us together, completely still, in the warmth of her living room, our living room, for as long as we need.
Later, she tells me we can talk in the morning if I want, but that I should go to bed now, since it’s been a long day. “It’s been a long year,” I tell her. “I should be like fourteen by now.” She smiles and tells me that day will come soon enough. She follows me into the hallway but I stop her at the bedroom door, telling her she doesn’t have to tuck me in anymore, even though she’s done it every other night since I moved in. She looks like she’s going to argue with me, but then she leans forward and kisses my eyelids closed, tells me to have sweet dreams.
In the dark of my bedroom, I hear Luz breathing in her sleep. I slip under the covers slowly, careful not to wake her up. Most nights, when I lie in bed before falling asleep, I think about my mother and how I don’t want to forget that her hair smelled like cigarettes and that her eyes closed when she laughed and how she hugged me so hard I could feel the bones in her chest. Tonight I think about my father too, things I thought I had forgotten, like the sound of his voice calling my name to wake me up, or the feel of his hands covering mine as he fixed my grip on a wooden bat. For years I didn’t let myself remember any of that. But after reading his letter and hearing how he still thinks of us, I can now see the way they used to dance together in our kitchen to slow songs on the radio, both of them still moving, still in sync when the batteries eventually went dead, and I can remember how they would pick me up and hold me between them, singing the rest of the words without the music, sometimes making up their own lyrics to end each song.
Everybody thinks they know the story of their own life, but all we have are the pieces we remember. And what we remember is only one part of the story. I wanted to tell the whole truth, but the real story is bigger than the part I can tell by myself. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe what matters is how we tell our stories, or just that we tell them at all.
Acknowledgments
For their love, support, friendship, and keen words of counsel over the many years I’ve worked on this book, I would like to thank the following people: Mike B., James Cañón, Jane Carroll, Tony Charuvastra, Shad Farrell, Graeme Fordyce, Alexandra Geis, Katherine Guyton, Daniel Alexander Jones, Maria Massie, Jim Radford, Brett Schneider, Ron Sharp, Ira Silverberg, Anjali Singh, Bobby Towns, Rebecca Walker, and Sam Zalutsky.
I would also like to thank my friends, students, and colleagues at Spalding University, who have given me a home for the last decade and who continue to inspire me daily. I wrote significant portions of this novel while in residency at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and wish to thank the administration, staff, and fellow residents for making each stay so enjoyable. I have found respite in many libraries I wish to acknowledge, including: Brown University’s Rockefeller Library, the Providence Public Library, the Providence Athenaeum, several branches of the Pasadena Public Library, USC’s Doheny Memorial Library, and Art Center College of Design’s Fogg Memorial Library.
My sincere gratitude goes out to the women at Prospect Park Books, Patty O’Sullivan and Colleen Dunn Bates, who have shown unwavering courage, loyalty, and grace during the process of preparing this novel for publication. They are true champions of the written word, and through their dedication and commitment to fulfilling our vision for this book, have shown themselves to be genuine and generous collaborators. A big shout out to Nicole Caputo for the gorgeous cover; she restored my faith in the power of an image to reflect something essential in even the most complex of stories.
Special appreciation goes to my family, for their listening
ears and loving hearts, and for giving me the space one needs to create and complete a novel, with heartfelt thanks to my daughters, Auden and Braxton, for asking all the right questions.
And a final, boundless thank-you to the one who worked tirelessly as friend, partner, editor, and midwife through the long and arduous process of birthing this novel, and who taught me that it is only after such labors that the real work of living can begin.
About the Author
Rachel M. Harper’s first novel, Brass Ankle Blues, was a Borders Original Voices Award finalist, and selected as a Target Breakout Book. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony and is on the faculty at Spalding University’s low-residency MFA in Writing Program. She lives in Los Angeles.
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