Seafaring the Eye of a Hurricane
Here's a story about the making of diaspora... If you've read No Collar, here's Kelvin's origin story, sort of.
The sky was clotted heaps of wet clouds. Gust after gust sagged with sticky heat, leashed to the bare feet of potbellied men. Sweat stained their linen guayaberas in blotches of chest hair, dew burbling in their belly holes, hirsute barometers forecasting an oncoming storm. The sky darkened, streaked with the graphite tip of a pencil against a white sheet of paper. When the rain finally came, it roiled the skies over Cañada Cimarrona in a predawn dark.
The village was a lush valley nestled between mountains and the sea. These verdant lands, once labored by Taínos and enslaved Africans under the lash, were haunted by the spirits of the damned who leapt from the decks of slave ships, knives clenched between their teeth, desperate to cut through the netting, or their own throats to be free. The thick sea still swashed, pregnant with their perennially wet bones.
Their anguished cries now echoed in the torrential onslaught, hammering the villagers’ corrugated zinc roofs, as if mischievous boys with slingshots were rattling earth from the heavens. Then, just as suddenly, the rain tapered to a drizzle, and two thunderclaps. There, amid the fading patter, stood seven-year-old Kelvin, dangling a frog over his open mouth, its tiny leg clasped between his fingers.
“Hey, Kelvin, did your mom only feed you frogs?” said a lanky boy, amid peals of laughter from a swarm of children and women. “Chomp, chomp,” the swarm sounded off. Some of the women held jars with rainwater; others carried baskets of fish on their heads or wore headscarves. They were faceless countrywomen to him, Limé dolls, like his mother Mildred in her pigtails, young and pretty in an undefined way. Their loud stares were fixed on him, competing with the thrum of dragonflies around his ear and flutters in his heart.
Earthy loam gummed his bare feet, as he shifted his weight from side to side in the muddy squelch of gutter runoff. The other boys scraped dirt from their bellies, digging rough and sharp nails into the newly raised landmarks of their earlier romp in the rain. They rubbed off the grime until the skin chafed, leaving blood stripes. They poured gutter water from chamber pots, heads to toes, in a filthy ablution.
Kelvin tried to gulp down a tickle crawling up his throat, but a lump of saliva didn’t materialize. His tongue grew dry, spittle lapping the corners of his mouth. To wet his parched throat, he would have to beat back the instinct to close his mouth and lick his lips. He slowed his breathing, desperate to calm his nerves and yet fearful his breath might startle the frog. The frog was heedless. It could become erratic. “What if he swallowed it by accident?” A voice said in the crowd as if reading his mind. Kelvin reddened. He was without a defined type. But if he ate the frog, everything would change. His life’s trajectory would assume a defined course, become inexorable and predestined, like water flowing through furrows carved by a farmer’s ax pick against the earth.
His mother had left the island for New York and entrusted him with the good sense to grow into a man of strong character. “Never fail me,” she said. Now a laughingstock. Even though he did not know it yet, he was sowing seeds that would bloom into a future self. The way he saw it, reflecting back later in his life on that day, he’d go through the frog experience the way he went about digging into a ripe fruit, peeling away at the outside skin and relishing the juicy zest inside. Just like tossing away the bitter rind of an orange, today would be cast off from everyone’s recollections. He was all possibility.
He squinted his eyes, narrowing them to slits, and meeting the unexamined depths of the frog’s languid eyes, gawking back at him stupidly. He heard a faint shuffle. A boy emerged from the crowd as if from a dream, zeroed in on him, lunged forward to grab his arm, but Kelvin moved just in time, dodging the charging bull. He quivered in rage. But he had to maintain a rare calmness, jaw slack, frog kicking, its outstretched legs shooting out of his mouth. The boy sputtered with rage at missing his intended target. Neither the torrential rain nor their splashing under the gutter drains had washed away the rubber streaks on his bare-chested belly. He looked like a warrior whose body had been inked as part of a ritual.
They had finished moments earlier racing bike tires, seeking in the rain relief from the stifling heat, thundering past dilapidated houses, borne off into the streets by the thrill of pursuing a renegade joy in the downpour. They still gripped their slick bicycle tires with one hand and jabbed the air with makeshift sticks. The boys’ cheeks glowed red from where they scrubbed off the tattooed mud streaks. Kelvin felt the mud cracking on his cheek the way a yawn pops the jaw. He suddenly grew impatient, insects whizzing towards him, a dark orb gathering around his head.
Time stretched. The sticks, whittled from tree bark, had turned black from the whipping, transforming them into crude truncheons. But Kelvin's was different - a sturdy wooden pestle pilfered from his sweet grandma Altagracia's kitchen. Kelvin felt the weight of the pestle in his hand. The other children, no older than him, eyed it with envy, remembering sprinters from jagged wood cutting their hands. He knew what his stealthy tormentors wanted. They were crouching there, waiting to pounce. They were the ones ready to gobble him up if he didn’t throttle them first.
He had picked up the frog after a boy tossed him to the ground trying in vain to hold back the tears. As the others began to kick at his stomach, he spotted the frog and cradled it. The robber frog’s slimy toes brushed up against his palm, its weight faint like a feather, and its body big enough to cover the length of Kelvin’s palm. Its glistening oily clay skin turned emerald, its beady, gold-rimmed eyes opening wide, as Kelvin inspected them. That’s when unsure what to do, he flung his head back, and gestured as if to swallow it, bringing it closer to the deep warmth of his mouth. Now here he was oblivious to the actions that brought him to this moment, facing off against the whole village, with people cawing around him. His body was still, but his heart pounded against his shirt.
Then stepping forward into a circle that had formed around him, he whispered, “Stop!” The crowd moved. A woman with pigtails stepped forward, holding a burlap bag. Mami! He dropped the pestle. His mouth gaping wide, Kelvin lowered the frog into it. The villagers gasped, their eyes darting. But after their initial recoil, a hush fell over the crowd. The frog jerked its leg, taking off into the air in a panic. As Kelvin gazed into its wide and dull eyes, the frog, which had until that point appeared drained like a pricked balloon, inflated its vocal sac, amplifying an ultrasonic call.
A shiver of a breeze ripped through the crowd when suddenly a chorus of what appeared like croaks to the untrained ear surged in a distant tumult. He dug into his pocket for that amber gemstone. This was the evil-eye bracelet his mother had given him before she left. It was a cicada trapped in an amber resin but now shaped like a frog. He brought the gemstone to his ear. He heard through the gemstone the frogs chanting sacred rites, creating a bridge between the realms of the sea and earth. As creatures of both water and land, frogs straddled these worlds. The Taíno believed the cries of these emerald guardians were pleas for the return of a long lost love.
Kelvin rubbed the smooth exterior of the gemstone and felt a burning sensation. It had created a flame in his mind, casting a gleam of red light across the ancient walls of his communal memories. Stories forever preserved in the yellow lump played against his mind’s eye. The stone’s sorcery summoned the anguished voices of his parents Mildred, Pedro, and grandma Altagracia. He would conjure them by merely touching the it. It was the keystone unlocking their voices, a gateway to the forgotten.
He searched for the woman he saw earlier, gulping down a heavy feeling in his head that settled on his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut as if to clear them of doubt. When he opened them again, the woman resembling his mother appeared in front of him. But it was Julissa Cabrera, who had robbed him of his bike years earlier.
She went to him, touched Kelvin’s hand, gently moving them over his hair, caressing his earlobe. And yet he pulled away; something made him hesitate. “I’m sorry,” she said. He released the frog's leg, watching as it limped away and landed on a slab of cement of the new cinder block homes, disappearing from view, joining the invisible chorus of croaks. This earth-scum creature, with the extraordinary effort of its legs against the stronger hold of human fingers, was free.
Kelvin’s thoughts drifted back to Altagracia, then to Mildred and Pedro, and soon the memories came rushing, and then flooded his mind, unbidden like dreams.
***
Altagracia died in her sleep in a dark room two nights ago. The disease had ground her bones to dust. “Kelvin, come help me, my bones are water,” she’d tell him. She tried flexing her fingers to grip his hand, a small reassurance. “Listen to me,” she’d say. “The world’s perils… I need you to be—”
She would snap at him: “Ah, go away.” A sob in her throat. “I don’t want you to see me like—"
“It’s going to be okay, grandma,” he’d lie to her.
“Good, thank you.”
Altagracia felt defeated and had become more reclusive, her gaze caught on the zinc above. Kelvin did all the cleaning. The floors got dirtier with each brush, as if the broom were excavating some hidden specimens, neatly pressed into the earth, waiting to be fetched from thick layers of dust and dry mud. She was supposed to be watching over Kelvin after the parents left the island for Puerto Rico, hoping to reach New York, where Pedro’s brother and Mildred’s two sisters had settled in Queens. At the end of their first year away, Altagracia became gravely ill. She became a widow in her fifties, and never remarried. Kelvin was her everything. But she couldn’t even tuck him in at night anymore, couldn’t make the sign of the cross over him, or fold his hands over his belly button, while she hummed prayers. That last night together, he touched his forehead, rehearsing the rites, and said “In the name of the Father,” then moved down to the center of his chest, saying, “and of the Son,” and then to his left and right shoulder, repeating, “and of the Holy Spirit, amen.”
Kelvin stood over her limp body and made the sign of the cross on her forehead with his thumb. His fingers glistened, still dabbed with an oily Ben-Gay cream. Altagracia marshaled what little strength she had in her limbs, shaping her lips into a pout, as if to kiss the boy’s blessing. The boy then went to sleep over in the Cabrera home. The family had taken him in after Altagracia became too sick. The next day the morning sun found Altagracia unawakenable; eyelashes weighted with dust. No one had smelled her death yet.
***
Julissa and Kelvin walked home. Eyes peered through wooden slats, voices boomed within earshot. “Too much love will ruin a boy,” someone said, their words drowned out by the swooshing sound of rain sweeping across the concrete slabs of cinderblock homes and down roof gutters. At the bottom, water splashed into buckets until it spilled over the brim, carving up thrashing rivulets against the gravelly dirt. He ran his free hand down his trousers, revealing a bruised welt on his forearm. Kelvin narrowed his eyes, chest tightening underneath his throwaway shirt, knees slightly bent, curving his spine to stay upright. He had a handsome face, dark birthmark behind the ear, wiry body except for plump cheeks, under a mushroom haircut. The sultry air plastered strands of hair across his forehead.
The villagers were still gossiping, wondering what if the stupid boy had poisoned himself fooling around with eating a frog. The idea enraged people. There was only one doctor in the village. The doctor had made enough visits to the Sanchez family’s home since the parents left two years ago. Before long, Altagracia’s bones were failing, ravaged by an invisible beetle, control over her limbs and bowels relinquished to an invading marauder. Her osteoporosis diagnosis had come too late for any effective treatment. The brace around the nape of her neck could no longer provide support to keep her head upright. She spent her days bedridden. In the early stages, neighbors volunteered to help her around the house, cooking meals, feeding her, helping her shower, and cleaning up the feces that clung to her. But as her condition worsened, they got busy with their own lives. Instead of causing trouble, they thought, her grandson Kelvin should be helping her. But the sicker she got, the gentler she became with the boy. She spoiled him, and they resented her for it. Before she lost the ability to move her jaw and speak, she’d still defend him when people came to her bedside and said that he got into an altercation with another boy or stole mangos from a food stand. Whatever fight Kelvin was in, she was his protector, even if all she could do to affirm her allegiance to him was crinkle her eyes shut gently as if to offer a smile her lips could no longer shape.
All these slights were on people’s minds. No one remembered Altagracia when she was healthy and going about town with her cane. Now all that remained was the sight of the child about to eat a frog. The only one with any sense was the farmer Wilber Cabrera, carrying a gourd strapped across his chest and a machete in a holster.
Wilber and his wife, Julissa, had been hoping for a son, but their first-born was a girl, Liliana. They wanted to look after Kelvin as if he were one of their own. The crowd ushered them to the front, and someone pointed to the slab of road where the boy stood. The farmer tried to get Kelvin’s attention. Wilber used his name, instead of calling him the Little Dummy. But after Altagracia fell ill, some of the villagers began speaking in hushed tones that Kelvin was a spirit demon. What people on the island called a bacá, a shape-shifting spirit from the old colonial times that can assume the shape of humans and animals. The people in the village rumored Pedro and Mildred had made a deal with the devil for safe passage to the United States in exchange for Altagracia’s soul. The bacá was a secret weapon against the enslavers on the island. A plantation owner died of poisoning. The culprit: El bacá. A harvest was spoiled. The culprit: El bacá. So when the grandmother fell ill, the villagers’ blamed the bacá’s sorcery for her disease. In their eyes, Kelvin was a trickster-spirit demon, in child form.
***
A ravine split the village in two. The two halves where bridged in 1986, but the chasm grew wider when the government built a barrio nuevo. Thatched homes torn, new homes went up where huts rose like chicken coops. Barrio nuevo bustled with new shiny construction, rebar jutting from concrete blocks like steel flower stems. These new homes went to loyalists of the ruling party. The walls of these homes topped with green shards of broken beer bottles glistened in the night, like lighthouses on land. When the stray dogs sauntered off to that side of the village, they returned with bloody paws from scuffing the asphalt roads in search of dirt.
In May of 1986, before Mildred left the island, the ruling party, which had taken power after the fall of the dictatorship, the U.S. invasion and coup, visited Cañada Cimarrona to celebrate the building of barrio nuevo. After photos with villagers holding keys to their new homes, the new president and his entourage went to the village’s baseball field. The new president, hair white like yuca, looked like a gaunt Caribbean Santa Claus as he sat enthroned on a rickety stage, adorned with the fluttering red flags of his party. He called small children up to the stage, posing for a photo with them as they held their oversized gifts provided by the state. Mildred had pushed her way to the front of the crowd. The baseball field was overgrown with weeds, their tendrils lashing at her bare legs and crunching under her sandals as she jostled her way through the dense throng. She pulled Kelvin along with her, hoping to get into position for the biggest giveaway of the day: a red bicycle with matching handlebar streamers. No sooner had the president handed Kelvin the bicycle than Julissa snatched it from the boy’s hands and gave it to her daughter Liliana.
Kelvin stood beside his mother as she argued with Julissa, insisting that the bike rightfully belonged to him. Mr. Cabrera stayed quiet, chastened and chagrined. He stared down at Kelvin and offered him a lollipop. From that day on, Mr. Cabrera had grown fond of the child, partly because while the adults bickered, he remained quiet, an obedient boy.
***
Later that August, Kelvin crouched, pouring water into spider holes in the dirt near the ravine. The sun red hot against his neck, he turned towards approaching footsteps when two boys towering over him smacked him over the ear. Disoriented, he cupped his ear as the boys taunted him, “Stand up! Fight me.”
“We’ve been watching you, freak,” another boy sneered, pointing down to a red cut on his leg curved neatly like a lipstick smear. The injury was a result of Kelvin startling a pregnant iguana, which had scuttled away, leaving the boy wounded. They struck first and then tried to reason. But he couldn’t register anything they said. He froze and then bolted, rushing home, face in his hands, tears streaming down his cheeks. When Mildred saw him, she gripped his hands, leaving her print on his soft skin. "You can't cry," she scolded. "Boys have to be strong."
Kelvin tried to explain, but the words tumbled out of him in muffled sobs. “Stop crying!” she commanded. A scowl twisted Mildred's face, her brow furrowing as her eyes narrowed. Shame gripped her heart, coiled it with rebar. When she sat, she would hunch forward, shoulders bent as if to protect her heart in armor. At the sight of her son, feeble and hurt, she raised her hand and smacked him. The sound of the impact surprised even Mildred, and her hand throbbed, fingers tingling.
Mildred stormed off, only to return moments later with the two boys. The boy who struck Kelvin stood quaking in the middle of the patio, unsure of what to expect. Was he going to be punished? Where was his mother? Why did he not wiggle free from this strange woman’s grip and go home? Mildred opened her purse and pressed a few pesos into the boy’s palm.
Turning to Kelvin, she said: “You're going to have to grow up fast, my son. I wouldn’t hurt you unless I loved you.” She shoved him forward as if he were a prized fighter entering the ring. A bulb buzzed in its socket overhead, flicking on and off. The light hung from a frayed wire that had been taped over too many times to count. A blackout had shut off electricity for hours, returning only when they heard the crackling sound. But it was still daylight, the sun burning white in its intensity.
Kelvin felt groggy in the heat and lifted his hands defensively. The bullying boy, emboldened by the payout, then punched him in the nose. Blood gushed out, staining Kelvin's shirt. He inhaled sharply, trying to suck the blood back into his nostrils while desperately holding back his tears. This time, he succeeded in keeping the tears at bay, welling over the rim; the ruddy stain on his shirt dripped in large dollops onto his shoes.
“Hit him,” Mildred said, edging her tone with encouragement. “I’ll teach you how to fight!”
Once Kelvin regained his composure, his eyes darted from his mother to the boy, who by now had appeared to lose his nerve, puffed up chest deflated, hands hanging at his side. She made a motion for Kelvin to lift his hands. Putting her hands up, she mimicked squeezing her fingers into tight fists. Kelvin felt his nails dig into his palms as he threw a clumsy punch and missed his mark. With another deep breath, he stepped forward and swung. This time, he connected. The boy stumbled back, landing on the floor, fingers outstretched beneath him, wrist strained. But for a fleeting moment, triumph washed over Kelvin’s face; numb to the pain. But when he turned, he saw the boy appeared injured, and the excitement faded into worry. Then, the other boy lunged at him, grabbing him by the waist, spinning him around to face his mother.
She looked at him, her broad face contorted into an expression of disgust, unyielding any hint of forbearance. He studied faces the way cartographers mapped worlds. Kelvin was an instrument in her worldmaking, no different than a protractor, a compass, a piece of parchment. She expected a sacrifice. And it was the ultimate one a parent, God, could ask of a child—the sacrifice required the boy to become her, strong and resolute in the face of any adversity. How else was he to survive when she was gone? Isn’t the nature of the world to destroy? He had to steel himself to the possibility of annihilation. The weight of the expectation bore down on him. In the mirror of Mildred’s eyes, Kelvin pissed himself, the warmth of urine trailing down his legs, soaking his high socks, dripping at his ankles.
***
Mildred had him when she was seventeen. Her father and mother disapproved her dating Pedro. But they eloped, quitting school, and she came back to the village bellyful. They were now leaving the island, hoping for a better life thousands of miles away. That was her sacrifice. In September of 1986, Pedro erected an altar outside the house in tribute to San Miguel in preparation for seafaring the eye of a hurricane. Years earlier, Hurricane David had spun like a dreidel off the coast of Cape Verde in West Africa, devasting the island with 175 miles per hour winds that killed thousands. By building the shrine before September 29th, San Miguel's feast day, Pedro hoped to be shielded in his voyage by a powerful protector against any tempest at sea. On his homecoming, he vowed to repay San Miguel with a feast of stewed goat over rice and beans. He would hire a traveling percussion band from Pedernales known for their drumming and güira palo rhythms, with devotees stretching across the port city of Cap-Haïtien in the north to Azúa in the south.
The pink altar, built from cement, resembled a small mausoleum, its window crossed with iron bars. At its center was a framed photo of San Miguel, the archangel brandishing scales to weigh the souls of the damned and a sword over his head; a rebellious Satan pinned beneath his sandaled foot. Behind the glass, red and white roses were arranged along with a black cross and statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, a flame from a red candle flickering, playing shadows over the statues. The scent of dry rosemary filled the air. Women, heads bent, recited a rosary, thumbing through the beads in their hands.
A minister of the spirits blew cigar smoke and rung bells, performing cleansing rites to bless those gathered. He sprinkled rose petals over their heads as Kelvin, Liliana, and other children, expressing their parents’ gratitude, approached and knelt before the altar of San Miguel, bearing offerings of flowers, sweets, candles, and cognac. Known as horses in these parts of the island, the minister was now mounted by Anaïsa, protector of women, who spoke to those who were venturing out on the boats. Through the medium, Anaïsa treaded her fingernail on the wrinkled lines of their palms.
“After God and San Miguel, Anaïsa,” said Mildred reverently, a fistful of yellow roses in her hand.
“Anaïsa, merciful mother, grant me your blessing,” she pleaded, arms open and head tilted back as if to receive a sacrament. “Take care of me and shield me from the envy that surrounds me in this world. Protect me, Pedro, and our boy, and walk by our side.”
***
The farmer Wilber had a rough manner, and a face, lashed by the sun, etched in lines, which made him look older than his 30s. His years in the plantain fields taught him the old superstitions were nothing more than foolish talk. He pleaded with other villagers to leave, so he could speak with Kelvin. The spectacle had suspended time. He told them the child wasn’t a demon. He felt stupid uttering the words. With nothing more than a flashlight, he irrigated the fields after midnight when the municipality deigned to release some water for the villagers to grow their own food. He didn’t prevail. The judgement against Kelvin mounted and people were beyond persuasion.
Kelvin had started gagging moments before Julissa came to him, just as he released the frog. Holding the frog a few inches from his throat, he secreted bile and twisted his face into a grimace. The bitter bile burned against the roof of his mouth. But even if he couldn’t speak or chose to ignore the chatter, he could feel the doleful eyes fixed on him. He grew nervous. Not so long ago, the same people had invited him into their homes for rice pudding and other sugary confections. At the Cabreras’ house, cups hung on a rack over the stove, where a boiling kettle whistled. The kitchen had a dirt floor, and a vigilante cat stood watch, its unblinking yellow eyes glassy, like a candle sheathed in a bulb. Parents encouraged their children to play with him. After all, the village had emptied of fathers and mothers bound for the United States many times over. In the 1980s, it was an unspoken covenant: If they were to brave a trip to Puerto Rico, they’d want their children to be looked after with the same love and attention as they’d initially offered Kelvin. The community had arms wide enough to embrace a child, eagerly stepping into parental roles. There was a community of feeling that bound them together, rooted in the hope of reuniting with their uncles, brothers, children, wives, and cousins who had left. Some sent back letters. Others didn’t—either because they were illiterate or had abandoned their loved ones and remarried as the years flitted by. There were no telephones. But the yearning heart has its own exquisite telepathy; it develops a sense for a present absence to ward off death by heartache. Since Altagracia had fallen ill, Kelvin had gotten into fights with their children, and now they treated him like demon spirit. When it came down to choosing among village children, they watched out for their own.
That’s how Kelvin got the bruise on his forearm, when another parent struck him on the arm to break up a fight. The child’s mother beat Kelvin with a ladle that she pulled from a boiling stew. Fights were common in the village, especially among kids with nothing better to do and testing boundaries. Kelvin usually skittered off somewhere else to play when altercations happened. But when the whole village turned against him, there was nowhere to run off. The hamlet’s people lived on top of each other, in rows of colorful clapboard houses that lined the red mud-caked streets, their facades adorned with hibiscus bushes and whirring hummingbirds. This old-town shanty charm blurred the boundary between the mountainous forests to the east and the sandy beaches to the west. The homes were clustered together as if built along tectonic faults, bunching the homes into close proximity, want pressed against want. When Kelvin arrived, he was born in a neighbor’s home where there was clean water and electricity.
Everyone was poor, but Kelvin’s family was especially so, to the point that he often had to drink water with a spoonful of sugar to quiet down the hunger when the family went days without food, a common occurrence during droughts. Mildred had taught him from an early age to overcome any adversity, including the ones he was born into. She began teaching him to walk when he was just eight months old. She placed him in empty rice sacks to protect him from spiders as she gently implanted him on the ground, like a sapling in a watering bag. Born with a clubfoot, he wore a boot on his right leg and would stand for five hours a day until he began toddling, strengthening his feeble limbs.
Mildred, a washerwoman, toiled nearby, a jabón de cuava and Clorox powder mix in hand to scrub jeans in soapy water. When he turned five, his days were filled with tending to the goats, chickens, and pigs that roamed Altagracia’s backyard. Even at that age, he had responsibilities—carrying the plantain and yuca peels to the nearby ravine, ensuring the scraps wouldn’t be devoured by animals while the women of the household enjoyed their meals on the patio, creaking away the hours in wicker chairs. At the ravine, he unloaded the food scraps on his wheelbarrow onto mounds of rusted cans of condensed milk, burst balloons, and crushed glass from beer bottles. The villagers’ belongings were so modest, there was hardly ever anything bigger than the odd assortment of chamber pots, plastic sandals, and bottles. The putrid smell from the rotting food scraps and dried shit from stray dogs didn’t bother him. He was normally too distracted by the birds flying above, their shadows moving across the ravine, their migration patterns signaling the transformation of the shanty. The untamed hills from the colonial past, where escaped slaves lived far from the plantations of Haiti, had been bulldozed and cleared to make room for barrio nuevo.
***
One fateful day in November 1986, the men having long since departed sailing to Puerto Rico on skiffs, Mildred and other women also left to join them in the U.S., and Kelvin remained on the island with Altagracia, alone. He would climb the zinc roof of Altagracia’s house, gazing up at the night sky and tracing the twinkling constellations with his finger. The starry expanse, speckled with crystal dust as if someone had etched the stars against a chalkboard and then forgotten to erase it, transfixed him but offered no solace.
All he could think about was whether Mildred had joined Pedro in Río Piedras and later traveled to New York. Many people who hadn’t made it to the boats found themselves at the mercy of loan sharks who pocketed their money and left them high and dry. Those who did reach the boats faced not only the treacherous waters of the strait separating Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but also the threat of actual sharks skulking beneath the hull, and the inborn potential for violence in each other.
Succumbing to hunger and thirst at sea was a constant worry, tugging at the group’s cohesion, and turning the most gregarious seafarers among them into conniving beasts. Crossing the Mona Strait by boat from the eastern shores of Miche was a few days to Aguadilla, but the fury of the Caribbean Sea could knock them off course. The meager provisions included canned sardines, cassava bread, and breast milk from lactating women aboard the rickety boat, 40 feet long by 10 feet. Hoarding the dwindling food and water supplies could touch off feuds, bursting into violent altercations that could capsize the boat. In the event the raft's motor gave out, it was only a matter of time before the desperation of being stranded at sea got the better of the strongest among them. People became delirious after drinking fistful of salt water from the churning ocean to slake their thirst. When it rained, they would cup their hands towards the sky to collect rainwater to drink. But rain also spelled trouble. They remained ever vigilant of each other but also of the high seas, careful to avoid permitting their emaciated bodies from falling into a lull as the rocking of the hull and rain splashing their faces could generate swells out of nowhere. When pushed by strong gales, the tranquil waves could gather the strength to grow into frightening mountains of vengeance.
***
“When are they coming back, mama?” he’d ask Altagracia, staring up at her face after resting his head on her lap. Every night for the first year he wondered where she could be. One night he dreamed of her living in New York City. He walked to the foot of a big statue, and there was Mildred, holding a torch and a book of stories to read to him by candlelight in a blackout. Looking up at her, he was proud; she had finally learned to read, and she was going to teach him now. He came from a long tradition of storytellers. Their words passed down like pearls of gossip from mouth to ear across generations.
The first family who left in the early 1980s came back dressed to the nines, white mesh shirts revealing gold chains and watches. He imagined his own parents’ homecoming. Mildred sits regally on the back seat of his dad’s motorcycle, her right leg crossed at the knee; pigtails undone, her sash of black hair unfurls and becomes webby in the wind. Up until his mother left, he still caressed his earlobe with a lock of her hair.
Nights when he rested his head on Altagracia’s lap, she would try to soothe him by twirling a lock of her hair around his earlobe until he sighed and fell asleep. But the moment she stopped, Kelvin would rise and fish out of his pocket the gemstone of amber and stare at it. Inside a cicada glowed warm and yellow, transfigured and preserved for eternity. The stone wasn’t a keepsake per se. It was an unbreakable promise that Mildred wouldn’t forget him, that he was as fixed in her mind as the cicada was in the gemstone resin. He’d put the question about his parents’ return to his grandmother a few more times. Altagracia would pat his head at first. But later, when the illness progressed, her lips thinned into a faint smile, a reassurance for the words she couldn’t utter. But his pleading voice echoed in her recurring dreams. Her body was shriveled and desiccated, but her mind retained its vitality.
***
One night, a year after Pedro and Mildred left, she had one dream after another. The flickering glow from an oil lamp cast a bulky shadow against the kitchen walls. Anyone walking by would have supposed her a giant. In the dull light, the faint outlines of Altagracia’s sharp nose and 5’4” stature materialized. But as the flame consumed the wick, the kitchen dimmed. The moon hung low and small, a gibbous yolk frying against the night sky.
She rose from bed, pushing aside the mesh of mosquito netting in the doorway, groping her way outside to the patio. The low-hanging moon revealed a path through the warren cane fields. The whiff of burnt candle clung to her nightgown, occasionally stirred and dispersed by the wind. In the distance, herds of grazing cows stomped the ground. Now seated in her wicker chair outside, she hummed snatches of ballads, feeling the pebbly texture of her nightgown as she gazed up at the endless sky and fell into another deep slumber.
She recalled Friday mornings from when Pedro was a wisp of a boy and she would take him fishing on a small skiff, venturing out into the open ocean with no floating vests or any other provisions. She had the steady gaze of seaside fishermen in her family. When she looked out into the distance, it was as if she was coming up to the shore and casting a net with her stare: She pulled the world in with her eyes. One day, their boat capsized, and Pedro nearly drowned. She had warned him: “We are water. Don’t fight the sea. Embrace it. You’re a hurricane, your body a swashing tempest of water.” On that harrowing day, Pedro became taciturn, nodding only to questions. She would normally bristle at the slightest hint of disrespect. Instead of snapping, she gave him space, wondering if she was too severe in her tests.
She could still picture him then—his tousled inky-black hair, made straggly by the salt water, the spangled luster of fish scales adhering to his skin as if he were a briny marlin plucked from the depths of the sea. The sun had not yet cracked the oily sheen of his boyish skin. Glancing down, she examined her crinkly hands. The sea water had creased them like raisins. But the skin of her hands would soften. Not so the rest of her body. The sun would weather her to a taut and leathery husk of yuca.
But while she aged, Pedro remained a child in her eyes. “Try on this dress,” his voice echoed in her memories, “it makes you look younger.” His delicious smile, so wide it seemed too big for his small face, would return when she re-emerged wearing black, and he couldn’t help but exclaim, “Mami, it’s not a funeral!” Pedro went with her to village funerals, where people sat in folding chairs beneath blue tarpaulin roofs, because it invariably rained whenever someone died. Strangers from other nearby villages suddenly became intimate friends of the deceased, coming to funerals only to gossip, their hands cupped around small plastic cups of sizzling coffee laced with rum. The kids would play hide-and-seek or get into other shenanigans. Except for Pedro, who was reserved, standing by his mother’s side as she consoled the grieving family.
She laughed in her sleep, unable to root him out, even in slumber. The day he was born, rain streaked her face, filtering through the palm-thatched roof. One drop fell into the baby’s left eye, causing him to scream, an agonizing shriek that echoed throughout the shanty. Pedro was the hundredth baby born that year. As she cradled him on her shoulder, he wailed against her ear—the last cry of life she would hear until Kelvin’s birth. She remembered the slimy creature, the soft cartilage bones against her hardened fingers. His tiny fists flailed, already battling against the indifference of his mother’s eyes, while his milky eyes dawdled, blindly wide and searching, bewildered. “Death is cliché,” she’d say. “Life is everything.”
The contrast between her son Pedro and grandson Kelvin dissolved. They both claimed her heart. She promised to guide them through life. Through her dreams, she was attempting to guide Pedro back home.
In those dreams, she saw Pedro dashing into the fields, machete in hand, his jeans stained, and shirt shorn of its sleeves. That night, dream after dream brought her back to the fields in pursuit of the lights in the sky, forgetting her wooden cane. A highway came into view, cutting across cane fields and mountains in a diagonal strip of asphalt. It was lit by flares of burning tires, torching the highway to enforce a blockade. Despite her limp, she edged her feet one at time, right, then left, her sandals clucking behind her, rubber against moist feet. She was granted passage through highway and slogged through the cane fields until she disappeared into a hazy green night. Dogs growled behind the cane stalks. She could bait the dogs with a treat, but she didn’t know what to do about the horses galloping faintly beyond. With every rustling leaf, she imagined a new threat stalking her. She grew apprehensive yet continued to trudge through the clumps of cane, breaking them under her feet, when suddenly she thought she had at last found Pedro.
But it wasn’t him. Two young boys, playfully sparring with sticks, cast shadows as long as those of grown men. The mountains and the ocean enclosed the cane fields. From the sea, the mountains swelled out of a shroud of morning mist. She heard the roar of an engine. The truck’s headlights cast halos towards where she stood behind two thick cane stalks. She dropped down to her stomach, blinded by the garish headlights. She writhed around, pressing into the ground as if she were going to break through its topsoil by the force of longing. After her eyes readjusted to the darkness, she discovered a small tear in her nightgown and a smear of cow manure on the ruffled fabric.
After regaining her footing, she stared at the two men who had flashed the headlights. Both men got out of the truck. The taller one of the two heaved a tarp, tied with ropes, from the truck’s bed and tossed it on the ground. One smoked a cigarette. The other peered down at a gaping hole that lay on the ground. That is where they’ll bury him, she thought. Then the taller one said something that made the other laugh. Now the bound man’s legs began to jerk, shaking the tarp violently, making a crunching noise. As the bound man struggled to wriggle free, the tall man bludgeoned him to stillness.
His face was visible. Blood seeped through his scalp, leaving the left side of his face with a crimson stain. She saw in his features, an eerie familiarity, a likeness to her own son, Pedro. Before she could gasp, the henchmen put a burlap sack over the bound man’s head. Waves rushing towards the shoreline filled the air. In the riptide, two faceless bodies, a man with a mop of curly hair and a woman in pigtails, arms stretched out front as if reaching for the shore, sinking into sand. She awoke with a start, crying out Pedro’s name, then Mildred’s.
***
That night, in bed at the Cabreras’ home, Kelvin thought if he would ever again ride on the back of his dad’s red motorcycle, wind whipping through his hair, as they drove through winding roads. When he opened his eyes in the dark, he counted the stars in the night sky, holes in the zinc roof large and bright. Altagracia had warned him that star-counting gave her hand moles. The next morning Kelvin woke up and examined his own palms in the dappled sunlight filtering through holes in the zinc roof to see if counting the stars the previous night had left him with blemishes. Rubbing the spots, he would flick the light on his skin on and off, on and off. He swore he could retrieve them, here, gone, here, gone. Gone.
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