Side Chick Nation

by Aya De León

  It was early afternoon when she pulled up in front of the blue stucco bungalow. The house looked much smaller than she recalled, the plaster cracking now, and the concrete steps uneven.

  The house next door looked abandoned. Three bald tires lay half-piled on the driveway, each partially filled with old rainwater. Marisol turned back to her grandmother’s house, as a teenage girl stepped out onto the porch, a baby on her hip.

  “Nidia?” Marisol asked, recalling the square hips, brown skin, and tightly curled hair of her cousin. But how could her cousin look the same after decades?

  The girl shook her head. “Not Nidia,” she said in Spanish. “I’m Zara. Nidia’s my mom.”

  “Of course,” Marisol said, and introduced herself. “I’m your cousin from New York.”

  Zara brightened and they kissed on the cheek, then she turned and called her mother.

  When Nidia stepped out of the house, she gave a shriek of recognition and pulled Marisol in the house and then into a deep hug.

  “You came!” she sobbed. “Did Cristina tell you?”

  “I tried to call—”

  “The phone got turned off—”

  “Am I too late? Have they already cremated them?”

  Nidia blinked. “Cremated? Oh the graves. No, not yet. I had forgotten—not forgotten, it’s just—they’re foreclosing on the house.”

  “What?” Marisol asked. “I thought abuelito had it paid off.”

  “He did,” Nidia said. “But when my husband Quique got sick, we had to get a mortgage to pay the bills. And then my hours got cut back to part-time.”

  “This is Quique?” Marisol asked. She picked up a photo from the side table. Nidia’s wedding photo, looking so much like her daughter, with a tall, handsome groom.

  Nidia nodded. “A shame you never got to meet him. He died last year.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marisol said. She didn’t know what else to say. She had always felt awkward around this particular cousin. They were so close in age, and should have been closer, but the way things went down in the family, they never really had the chance.

  Now their lives were so different. Nidia was a widowed grandmother who lived in a small Puerto Rican town. Marisol was an unmarried, childless New Yorker. When their grandmother had died, Nidia was in her mid teens and already pregnant with Julio. Nidia also had a little sister, who lived in Florida now.

  Into the quiet of the moment, the baby started to fuss. “I think he’s wet,” Zara said, and disappeared with him into the rear of the house.

  Nidia wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and offered Marisol some coffee.

  Over watery cups of something instant, Nidia explained the whole situation:

  The cemetery had gone bankrupt. A real estate company had bought the land, and demanded an annual payment to keep the family plot. The family had scrambled to find extra cash, but things had gotten so bad that they couldn’t keep up the payments. The family thought the problem was solved when a tourist company bought up a bunch of nearby land, including the cemetery. The company also bought out a credit union that was going under, which held the mortgages on several local properties, including theirs. The company had bought most of the land to set up some sort of resort. They explained that they wanted to keep the cemetery, because it added “charm,” and signed new contracts with locals who had cemetery plots. But six months later, the company decided that the cemetery land would be the perfect place for a second motorcycle course.

  The way the contract was worded, the company was under no actual obligation to keep the cemetery. It also said they would compensate the families with a certain dollar amount, but they paid in stock options. And the contract was in English, full of legalese, and the family couldn’t really tell what it said; but their neighbor’s brother-in-law was a lawyer in Miami. He helped set up the deal and they thought they could trust him, but now he wasn’t returning their calls. And the company was insisting on having all the graves moved, and the family would need to pay again for a plot somewhere else, and pay for the expenses to move the graves. Or the company would just cremate all the bodies and they could pick up the remains.

  Nidia’s eyes filled again. “I know that’s not what abuelita and your mami wanted, but I don’t know what else to do. Do you think maybe you can keep the urns? If the foreclosure goes through, we won’t even have a place to put them. We’ll probably stay with my sister in Orlando. There are already five of them in a two-bedroom apartment. But where else can we go? My older son, Julio, is in New York trying to find work. He went to look for our uncle, but couldn’t find him. Julio’s been living in a homeless shelter.”

  Marisol was shocked. “Our uncle? Julio was looking for our uncle in New York? Our uncle died more than twenty years ago. You didn’t know?”

  Nidia shook her head. “There was some bad blood between him and my mami when she was alive. They didn’t talk. She said to stay away from him, but now she’s dead and we’re desperate.”

  “I’m in New York,” Marisol said. “I mean, I’m visiting Cristina in Havana now, but I live in Manhattan. I can set you up there. Just let me know what you need.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Nidia said. “That would be incredible.” She let out a choked sob. Marisol put an arm around her, but her cousin waved her away.

  “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Just so grateful to have somewhere to go.”

  “But would you rather stay in Puerto Rico?”

  “Not without a house to live in,” Nidia said.

  “Can I see this contract you signed?” Marisol asked.

  Nidia went to her bedroom, and returned with some papers.

  Marisol read through them carefully. Her family had been paid in stock for the tourism company. It was no longer worth what it had been valued at the time of the contract signing. But a little research showed that the value had likely been inflated and had probably never been worth that amount.

  Marisol seethed as she uncovered the layers of manipulation and deceit. She got the name of the man behind it all, and looked him up on the internet: Davis Evanston, CEO of the tourist company Puerto Cyclo, that been buying up the land. She looked at his photo beside the image of his resort: a fiftyish white guy with a ruddy tan and a smug smile. He was posed beside a motorcycle.

  “Remember when you were a kid, and you didn’t ever want to leave the playground?” he asked in his YouTube video. “What if you never had to leave? What if the playground never closed? That’s exactly what it’s like to live in Puerto Rico. No taxes. No regulations. A tropical paradise that’s still on US soil. Build your own castle here and live like a king.”

  Even the images in the YouTube video were misleading. They showed a young white couple walking on the beach past several cozy cottages. Las Palmas had a rocky coastline, and a harbor, but no sand. The town of Las Palmas was up a steep hill from the harbor. There were no houses for the first quarter-mile, until the ground leveled out a bit.

  Evanston’s Puerto Cyclo resort was a few towns inland from Las Palmas. The resort had a wave pool, a seven-story hotel, a Tiki bar, and the big attraction was the motorcycle course. Really, it was just a couple of acres of former farmland that he allowed guests to tear up with two-wheel vehicles. He was also reselling smaller parcels of land and marketing them as “tax-free fiefdoms.” Apparently, it was successful enough that they wanted to dig up the cemetery to make a second motorcycle course. Marisol seethed as she went back to talk to her cousin.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Nidia asked.

  “I think you might have some legal options,” Marisol said.

  She looked into her cousin’s face. Nidia’s brow was furrowed, and she gripped her coffee mug so tightly that her tan knuckles showed pale.

  “And of course . . .” Marisol said, meeting Nidia’s eyes, trying to determine how much to say. “You probably have a lot of illegal options.” The moment she’d said it, she regretted it. She should have asked a bunch more questions before even b
ringing up anything like this.

  But Nidia leaned forward. “Options like what?” she asked.

  “This guy stole from you right?” Marisol tried to find the words. “Could you imagine.... I mean . . . Would you have any problem . . . ?”

  “Stealing it back from him?” Nidia asked. “Are you kidding me? I’ve thought about it a thousand times. Waiting outside of his hotel and carjacking him. Following him into San Juan and mugging him. But what would I end up with? Fifty dollars? A couple hundred? I’d probably get caught. Besides I cursed him out at a community meeting. He knows my face.”

  “You really have thought about it,” Marisol said.

  “Fuck yeah,” Nidia said. “I’ve also thought about hiring someone, but I don’t know anyone who could do it, and I don’t have any money to hire anybody anyway.”

  “I have a . . .” Marisol began. Even if Nidia was on board, she was an amateur. It was always a risk. “I have a . . . friend. Here in Puerto Rico. She . . . she has some skills in this area. She might be able to help you.”

  Nidia’s eyes narrowed. “You have to be careful,” she said. “People are desperate these days. She might offer to help but really be trying to cheat you.”

  Marisol shook her head. “We go way back. I trust her. She’s . . . she’s back and forth to New York. I’d stake my life on the fact that she wouldn’t cheat us.”

  “What’s in it for her?” Nidia asked.

  “She’s got her own score to settle with this guy,” Marisol said. “He scammed her family, too.”

  * * *

  Marisol drove down to the end of the street and pulled out her cell phone. She called the office manager’s desk at the María de La Vega health clinic. It just rang and rang. So she called the office manager’s cell phone.

  “How’s Cuba?” Serena asked.

  “I’m in Puerto Rico, actually,” Marisol said.

  “How’s that going?” Serena asked.

  “It’s really beautiful here,” Marisol said. “I think you and Tyesha might be due for a weekend getaway. I could really use some help soaking up all this beautiful sun.”

  Serena laughed. “I am definitely willing to help, but Tyesha can’t leave the office. There’s a grant proposal due and a big strategic planning meeting. You remember how it was when you were executive director.”

  “I certainly do,” Marisol said. “But it’s a shame. I was really hoping both of you could come. I’ve got three beds in this hotel upgrade. I’d hate for any of them to go to waste.”

  “Yeah,” Serena said. “That would be a shame. But you know who might be free? I think Lily has some time off. And I know she’d be down to help you soak up some rays.”

  “Can you call her?” Marisol asked. “Better yet, meet with her in person and convince her to come.”

  “Consider it done,” Serena said.

  “Great,” Marisol said. “Text me when you can leave, and I’ll book tickets.”

  “Any chance I can bring my boyfriend?” Serena asked.

  “Sorry honey,” Marisol said. “This is just for the girls on the team.”

  * * *

  Marisol came back to Nidia’s house a couple of hours later, with a cell phone. She had also booked a pair of plane tickets for her team, and had made a hotel reservation for herself at Puerto Cyclo.

  By then it was evening and the mosquitoes were out. She walked to the abandoned house next door and tipped the rainwater out of the bald tires. She didn’t want to breed more mosquitoes to bite her baby cousin. Not that the water in three bald tires would really make that much of a difference in the overall amount of Zika virus on the whole island, but she couldn’t just let them sit.

  “Were you able to speak with her?” Nidia asked.

  “She’s got a plan,” Marisol said “But she needs our help to make it happen.”

  “Anything,” Nidia said. “Except threatening him with a gun, because I know I would lose my cool and shoot that asshole.”

  Marisol gave Nidia a new cell phone for the two of them to communicate.

  “So what does your friend need me to do?” Nidia asked.

  “She’ll call me tomorrow with the plan,” Marisol said. “And I’ll pass it on to you.”

  “Okay,” Nidia sighed, slipping the phone into the pocket of her shorts. “I’ll get Zara to make up Julio’s room for you.” With her chin, she indicated a door to the left of the kitchen. Marisol recalled staying there after her grandmother’s funeral. The grief reared up and stung like a scorpion. She shook her head.

  “Oh no mujer, don’t trouble yourself,” Marisol said. “Besides, my friend says I need to go check in at this guy’s tacky hotel to be her boots on the ground.” In that moment, Marisol wanted to tell her cousin, “there is no friend—it’s just me.” But she still didn’t know Nidia that well. They may be first cousins, but there was a treacherous streak in her family. For now she’d stick to the “friend” story.

  * * *

  Marisol took her cousins for dinner at a local cafeteria, and then went to the Puerto Cyclo Hotel. The two locations were a study in contrast. The roadside eatery was all locals and open air. The resort lobby was air conditioned with plastic palm trees. Marisol was the only Puerto Rican at the resort who wasn’t a service worker.

  The rooms were $250 per night, but she’d gotten a deal on the internet. The queen room had a large flat screen TV and muted, forgettable décor.

  Marisol spent the next twenty-four hours scoping out the place and talking to her cousin on the phone. Everywhere in the resort were posters saying, “YOU could live here.” In the photographs, middle-aged white people participated in a variety of leisure activities. The few Puerto Rican faces were masseuses, athletic instructors, and wait staff.

  Puerto Cyclo was on multiple acres of land, and it had a complimentary activities magazine. Along with surfing in the wave pool and a wine tasting, there was a lecture series.

  Two days after she arrived, Davis Evanston was scheduled to give a lunch talk in the hotel’s dining room, entitled “Two Wheels Are Better than Four: Motorcycles, The Myth of Danger and the Truth about Personal Freedom.”

  Marisol scoped out the restaurant and would be ready for him. Her cousin had instructions to keep her phone on.

  Chapter 5

  Every time Dulce visited her aunt in Santo Domingo, the place seemed smaller. When she was there as a toddler, the three bedroom house seemed huge compared to her tiny two-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights. Not only did her aunt have a whole house, but a yard in front and back, with chickens. And a shed. Like another miniature house next to the regular one.

  When she was seven, they came back again for her great uncle’s funeral. He had died from cancer. Her aunt’s house seemed smaller on that second visit. In particular, the shed was no longer like a second house, and more like a play structure. Her brother, Santiago, was thirteen and always looking for the next edge. He climbed the tree as he had always done, but now the tree had grown, and with great care, he could edge out on a branch to the roof of the shed.

  “Dare me to jump?” he asked their sister Yunisa in English.

  “You’ll break your legs,” she replied in Spanish.

  “No I won’t,” he said. And without further preamble, he leaped off, falling and rolling onto his side in the yard.

  Dulce gasped, afraid for a moment he was badly injured.

  But then he sprang up, grinning and brushing the dirt off his shorts.

  “I wanna try,” Yunisa said.

  “Me too,” Dulce said.

  “No, you’re too little,” Yunisa said over her shoulder, climbing into the tree.

  Five minutes later, her sister was also laughing and brushing dirt from the hem of her skirt.

  “Santiago,” Dulce pleaded. “I want to do it too. Let me do it too.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re too much of a scaredy cat.”

  “I won’t be scared,” she insisted.

  “Okay, fine,” he said.
“First climb up the tree.”

  Dulce was a good climber. She was strong from playing on the monkey bars at school with her friends. She easily made it to the roof. She was good at jumping off the bars, too, but this was way further down. Like eight feet. And onto dirt, not those thick black rubber mats at their school. The mats had originally looked like puzzle pieces, but now the edges were crumbling and they had potholes worn in them. Still, she knew the thick spots and how to land safely.

  “Bend your knees, Luqui,” Santiago called her by his nickname for her. “That’s all you have to remember.”

  She looked over the edge of the roof. Her older siblings looked so small. So short. She was scared. She wanted to take it back. Tell them she changed her mind. But her sister’s scowling face made up her mind for her. Yunisa didn’t think she could do it, so now she had to do it. She needed to show them both she wasn’t a baby anymore.

  “Come on, Luqui,” Santiago encouraged. “Like the story you wrote about the princess who jumps off the cliff to get away from the dragon and learns she can fly. You’re just like her. You can do it. Just bend your knees when you land.”

  Dulce took one last glance at her sister, the dragon in her life, and jumped. She remembered to bend her knees.

  Like her siblings, she rolled on the ground after landing, but the leap had been more exhilarating than she had ever imagined. She could fly. She wanted to do it ten more times.

  But her tía was coming out of the house half shrieking. Wasn’t it bad enough she had lost her husband? Was she supposed to now have to suffer the loss of one of the precious babies of the family?

  “I told her it was dangerous,” Yunisa said.

  “I’m okay, titi,” Dulce said. “And I won’t do it again.”

  As her aunt brushed dirt off the knees of her shorts, Dulce looked down at the ground to hide her smile.

  That summer, they jumped off the shed roof every chance they got.

  * * *

  A couple evenings after arriving in Santo Domingo, Dulce sat watching TV at her aunt’s house. Really, it was her great aunt of course, who had also raised her mother. The aunt was in her late sixties, generous and sharp, and living frugally off her husband’s pension. But she was also a devout Christian, and lived a pretty quiet life.