The Accidental Native Page 23

  Foley sat silently in the last row, his arm slung over the back of the adjacent seat. He was listening, at times leaning forward, his head bowed especially when his colleagues demonstrated hostility toward the college and those involved in the mess. Everyone in that room, except him, was concerned with the health hazards that we could all be experiencing as we went about our daily routine in what appeared to be an idyllic campus.

  Foley stood up and spoke in fluid Puerto Rican Spanish with barely a trace of accent. He moved toward the front of the room like a big-time lawyer handling a jury who was in the palm of his hand. This man commanded respect, used words eloquently, even knew when to pause for effect. And most importantly, he knew his audience. All those years in Puerto Rico had taught him that people on this island lived in constant fear. Fear was their mother’s milk. They thrived on fear. The Culture of Fear had its origins here way before any social critic labeled it and wrote about it.

  Foley outlined the possible fearful scenarios from how radical students would take hold of this issue in their usual irresponsible way and disrupt classes for God knows how long, to the money and time invested in what could be a possibly, and most likely, a false assumption. Money, he said, that in the present budgetary crisis will have to come from some department or program, and that meant jobs. And, he added, who wants to put up with the media circus that will interrupt our quiet community? We will have protests, outsiders coming in to make trouble for sure, people may get hurt. A long pause.

  “Who wants all that trouble?” he asked rhetorically. “Colleagues, the authorities are cleaning it up, isn’t that what we want? Let them do their work and let’s get back to doing ours.”

  I didn’t appreciate the subtle hint at people getting hurt. Did he know something? Or was it a threat?

  I had been on this campus long enough to know the rumors circulating about Foley. He cultivated and used that mystery to his advantage. That, and the instinctive fear or ingratiating respect Puerto Ricans had for Americans. After a century, a colonial mindset is not easily shaken. No one stood up to challenge anything he said. There was a silence, unnerving in all of its revelation.

  “Mari wants to get back to work, Jake,” I responded. My knees felt weak, but I stood up. Then I rattled off names of colleagues who were recuperating from cancer. “They all want to get back to work.”

  And then I named the twenty-two who had died. “They will not be coming back to work.”

  I let that sink in. And I looked at Foley square in the eyes. “And neither is Rita.”

  His faced reddened, his blue eyes ready to pounce. “Now, the high incidence of cancer on this campus may not have any correlation to the ordnance the Army buried so close to the water we drink, the air we breathe, and where we spend so much of our time. Ordnance that the Defense Department itself has deemed hazardous. We know they’re cleaning it up, finally.” I stopped and raised my voice. “What we want is definitive proof that it has not adversely affected our friends and colleagues, and our loved ones. And if it has, those responsible should be held accountable and make reparations.”

  I stared at him with equal anger and disgust. “We’re fighting for those colleagues and friends, and for loved ones, Jake. Who you fighting for?”

  He could have killed me right there, I know it. He marched out, making those in attendance turn back to watch him slam the door as he left. Strange how good that felt. To stand up to him like that. Some colleagues came up and patted me on the back, shook my hand. There was excitement in the room; we were full of that righteous indignation you hear and read about.

  I came home late that night. The faculty leadership decided to go out for a few beers to continue our discussion. When I got home I checked on Marisol, who was sound asleep.

  I found it funny how she snored but never admitted to it. I vowed one day I’d record her just to prove it to her. I bent down and brushed back a strand of hair covering her face, kissed her on the cheek. She snorted, which made me want to laugh.

  I couldn’t sleep and went into the living room, threw myself on the sofa, too tired to undress, turned on the television and clicked through the channels. Julia called to tell me she was driving down to visit tomorrow with goodies from my favorite bakery. We talked briefly about Mari, and she hung up.

  My cell rang again. It was Foley.

  “Great speech, kid.”

  “Well thank you, Jake. Coming from you that’s a real compliment.”

  A slight chuckle on his end, a rumbling, throaty one that hinted at drinking.

  “It’s out of my hands, now, Rennie.”

  “I’ll deal with it.”

  I could hear him breathing, about to click off, then stop and put the phone back to his mouth.

  “By the way, the comment about Rita? That was a low blow.”

  And he hung up. He was right, and I felt my face flush with shame.

  But any feelings of regret or guilt for playing the Rita card quickly dissolved, thinking about his chilling words. It’s out of my hands, he had said. I had made a decision to get involved. There was no turning back and no room for apologies.

  I was fighting giants, after all. I picked up my cell and dialed.

  “Mom … I need to talk to you.”

  Twenty-Six

  * * *

  She called me early the next day, a Saturday, and told me to drive to San Juan and meet her for breakfast at one of our favorite hangouts, a bakery which served delicious grilled sandwiches on homemade bread. I followed her instructions and dressed casually, with a pair of sneakers that had good traction. These days, I rarely questioned what my birth mother said. There was always rationale and common sense behind her orders or requests. I laughed to think I had become such an obedient son in my older age.

  We sat for a quick breakfast, which was odd. On these outings we would talk for hours, sometimes over several cups of coffee, a few cigarettes for her, and the newspaper, which we shared as I listened to her take on the national political scene.

  Where at first I had disliked these sessions, and the “cultural field trips,” I began to appreciate them as I accepted my mother’s passion and deep-rooted convictions; and the overwhelming idealism I could never hope to emulate. Julia was growing on me. Those feelings were only disrupted by the haunting reason behind her abandonment of me as a baby. I tried to get beyond that, although it gnawed at me. But right now, I was more worried about how I would approach her about my involvement with the committee, how I would ask her to re-start the lawsuit.

  Our breakfast at the bakery was shorter than usual, and I didn’t ask questions when she ordered ham croquets and sandwiches to go.

  She had brought along her Mazda MX5 roadster. I anticipated an adventure. To see her driving that car was an adventure in itself. She worked the gears like a maniac, her booted foot pumping the clutch, her face serious, except on those occasions when a familiar song came on that she felt obligated to sing along with. A horrible voice, squeaky and off pitch, but she put so much feeling into the lyrics. On these trips I never asked where we were going. In the beginning I did and she would tell me, “Be quiet and soak it all in.”

  And I did. On this trip, I reclined on the leather seat and let the wind hit me as I looked at the untamed greenery, the whitening limestone karst clinging to the hills, enjoying the curious sights that popped up, and joined her in whatever songs we both wanted to mangle. Occasionally, she initiated a conversation in Spanish to make me practice.

  We hopped on the 2 going west toward Arecibo, and in less than half an hour we were heading south to the Camuy caves. The first thing she did after easing the car into the parking lot was take off her stiletto boots. I had to peel those off her, and then she slipped into a pair of raggedy sneakers. She looked way shorter without the boots.

  “Someone so fashion conscious and those are the kicks you wear?” I asked.

  “Because I am a fashionista is why I wear these.” She shook. “Your generation with this obsession over teni
s.”

  I didn’t want to tell her how the use of “tennis shoes” dated her, even her Spanglish version.

  “Anyway,” she said, “they have good traction and you need that in the caves.”

  If they made stiletto sneakers with traction, I thought, she’d wear them.

  Julia bought tickets and we had to wait for the guide to call our group by number. We sat and talked a bit, about nothing important, as she smoked a few more cigarettes. The tour guide called our group’s number and gathered us, about twenty in total, in front of the entrance. He made us wear green hard hats, which made us look ridiculous.

  The guide, Ramón, a chubby man with cherubic cheeks and the straggliest of mustaches, herded us into various cars of a neon orange trolley. As the tram maneuvered through thin roads up to the cave, Ramón gave us some geologic history and background. He was professional and knowledgeable, always trying to mix humor in with the educational bits he was offering. Julia seemed distant as he rambled on. Her ears and eyes perked up when we arrived at the entrance to Cueva Clara. She handed me a camera and told me that I would want a photo of this. She was right. Everyone ambled out of the tram and walked carefully on the slippery walkway, holding on to the handrail, to observe a display of light filtering through a hole above us. It looked like a dozen spotlights hitting the cave ground or the beams of a spaceship taking off to faraway galaxies. In between the oohs and aahs, I snapped a few pictures, amazed again at how such a small island contained so many natural wonders.

  Ramón pointed to the Río Camuy, the third largest underground river in the world, which rumbled below us undisturbed. In the darkness slept thousands of bats, only their squeaking and guano there to remind us of their presence, as we gawked at the river and surroundings. Back on the trolley, Ramón peppered his formal commentary on the various karst formations with the funny names the guides gave them. “We call that one 10, a skinny man with a fat lady,” he explained, smiling. Some of us laughed, but the heavy-set woman next to him stared at him sternly.

  One of the final stops was the sinkhole, or sumidero, surrounded by large stalactites. Outside again, we saw the cascade falls, which loomed above us and seeped down to a trickle closer to us. “The Fountain of Youth,” Ramón said and urged us to drink from its natural waters.

  “I’ll take my chances with cosmetic surgery, thank you,” Julia whispered to me, while others in the group scooped some of the water up and slurped it or dripped it over their heads.

  “I feel younger already,” an older American said.

  The tram made a final stop in front of the main building, which held the restaurant and souvenir shop.

  “Crappy food,” Julia whispered and took out the food from the coffee shop we had visited earlier. We sat at a picnic table under a shady jacaranda tree, near a large coquí sculpture that I photographed.

  “I love the caves, they’re so cool inside,” she said, fanning herself.

  “Yeah, they’re cool that way, too,” I said, playing with a croquet.

  “Did you know the Taínos believed human beings emerged from caves?”

  “That’s news to me,” I answered.

  “To them, we were once spirits dwelling in caves,” she said as she waved her sandwich across the air. “One of the myths tells they left their caves only to wander out to eat our native fruit, jobos, at night. One day they stayed too long eating jobos and daylight hit them.”

  “Must have been some mighty good jobos,” I said.

  “Sunlight transformed them into humans, and that began the process of humans leaving the caves.”

  “And you’re telling me this because?”

  She shrugged. “I like the idea of sunlight making us human.” Her eyes widened and she wiped her mouth on a soiled napkin, set her sandwich down. She hadn’t eaten much. Holding up a cigarette, she cupped my hand with her one free hand.

  “Okay, now tell me why you called me yesterday.” She blew smoke away from my face and smiled.

  I wanted to tell her but just couldn’t. At my silence, she leaned toward me, her eyes expectant, and grabbed both my hands with her delicate, firm hands, the burning cigarette between two fingers.

  “René, you know you can tell me anything. There’s nothing—nothing—in this world that you can tell me that will change how I feel about you.”

  I nodded slowly, looking down at my half-eaten sandwich, at her tiny hands gripping mine, her thin veins bulging.

  “I’ve been so tough on you,” I said, biting my lower lip, shaking my head. I looked away. “All you did was seek me out. All you’ve ever done is love me, and I’ve just been a selfish asshole.”

  She snuffed out the cigarette on the sole of her torn left “tennis shoe.” She looked at me, studying my face, confused. Her eyes flattened, as if my words had deflated the spirit out of them. At seeing my head down, the tears trickling down my cheeks, she rose and hugged me.

  She held my chin up. “You listen to me.” Her eyes embraced mine. “What happened to tear you apart from me was not your fault. Just know this: I’ll never let it happen again. You understand?”

  I nodded and she kissed me on the top of my head.

  “Okay,” she said, sliding back around to the bench. Spreading her manicured fingers on the picnic table, she leaned into me. “Let’s talk about the lawsuit.”

  I looked up at her.

  “It’s a small island, René.” She tossed back her hair, sprung another cigarette from her gold case and waited for me to light it.

  I briefed her on my activities with the committee, told her about Foley and his ominous comment, about Marisol’s worries.

  After I finished, she seemed lost in thought, agitated. She told me she was proud of me and made a few quick phone calls.

  “Now, it’s personal,” she said, snapping her phone shut.

  Being surveilled, you can’t help feeling trapped in an invisible jail, wondering why someone is watching your every step if you have not done anything illegal. Or, maybe that is the whole point: no reason, they’re there just to intimidate you. If the surveillance is professional and competent, you of course have the added mind fuck that you are perhaps imagining that they are watching you. Every possible lingering car becomes suspect, any person lurking too close to you becomes a spy working for someone. You walk down the street, enter or exit a building, and wonder if they’ve just snapped your picture. Even in freedom, you are not free; you are neither free physically, nor in your mind.

  My mother admitted that she assumed wire taps and that she never said anything important or possibly incriminating on the phone or in the house. She told me that she met with clients outside, where there was much noise, near a construction site, for example. All those scenes of wise guys walking and talking outdoors from the mobster flicks flashed in my mind, taking on a different perspective now. She joked about smiling for the cameras.

  “I always give them my best side,” she added.

  “I feel paranoid,” I told her.

  “That’s to be expected, René,” she said and quoted Bukowski: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

  We both laughed into a pause, and then she sighed.

  “Welcome to my world,” she said.

  “I’m sorry you have to live in that world,” I said. We were having lunch at Amadeus, one of our favorite places in San Juan.

  “Oh, I have something for you,” she said, pulling a wrapped gift from her large pocketbook and handing it to me.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

  “Something to help you get through this period.”

  It was a poem titled “The Lover of a Subversive Is Also a Subversive,” by Martín Espada, printed on heavy linen paper, framed in dark teak.

  The poem recounts the perspective of a painter whose revolutionary lover was imprisoned for a long time. Yet, she still is being surveilled by “the FBI man.”

  At the end of the poem, as she paints her lover’s portrai
t by the beach, at a distance the FBI man lurks behind her, waiting for her to sob. But she refuses to cry.

  Touched by the poem and my mother’s intention in giving it to me, I took it home and hung it by the doorway, to remind me every time I walked out the door to smile for the camera.

  Mari was touched by Julia’s gesture but not crazy about the idea of having to put up with people spying on us, or that loved ones had to suffer the political actions of their lovers.

  “It’s just romanticizing a bad situation,” she told me.

  I kept my renewed organizing efforts a secret from Mari as long as I could. I did not want her to become worried during her convalescence. Since she was pretty much a recluse, I was able to keep it a secret for most of the summer. But Baná is a small town. With her recovery, she started going out more and bumped into someone who told her.

  She was furious, first for keeping it from her, and then for threatening her job.

  “We talked about this, Rennie. You promised me.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I assured her.

  “Easy for you to say. You have a high-powered lawyer for a mother, who comes and wipes your ass every time you shit on something. You gonna guarantee my job, Che?”

  I exhaled, trying to sift the hurtful things from the valid points she was making.

  “We’ll fight for your job, if it comes to that.”