The Accidental Native (15 page)

The Falto house was a mansion to a kid accustomed to living in apartments at that time. It had more than one bathroom, comfortable furniture, fancy pictures on the walls and the best thing: a pool. That was the coolest. I told Papi I wanted to stay with his family, and everyone around the table sipping drinks looked at him as his already sun-burnt face turned redder. Abuela Isabela thought it was a good idea. Why should he have to travel all the way across the island and up mountains, she said. This is his vacation; he should have fun. My father looked at her. She tightened her lips, rolled her eyes and waved the issue away.

We had a big lunch, with roast suckling pig, lechón. I met all these relatives I didn't know I had. Some of them called me a yanqui and made fun of me because I couldn't understand Spanish. Abuelo Enrique kept shaking his head about that. Your mother is a Spanish teacher, he told me, “tell her to teach you Espanish.” He thought that was a big joke and waited for everyone around him to laugh. His breath smelled like whisky and cigars. When he laughed, his round face lit up, and he stroked his crescent mustache as he sipped another drink. On his wrist, he wore the biggest gold watch I had ever seen. He always wore guayaberas, but I didn't like them.

We went to the big mall, Plaza Las Américas, after that feast at lunch. Papi thought this was a huge deal, this mall. We walked around and it looked like the largest mall I had ever seen, bigger than the ones in Jersey, even. There were so many people there, all dressed up like they didn't need any more clothes. Papi wanted to buy mom something, but he stopped at a bookstore that looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. Unshelved books everywhere, stacks piled up against walls, a few books on the floor. “I prefer this bookstore to the chains,” he said. I was getting bored, and noticed a toy store across from us. Being a typical tween, I was more concerned about action figures than reading, so off I went in
search of Darth Vader. My mistake was not telling Papi, who after a few minutes noticed I was gone and freaked. He had the security guards searching for me, and I thought he was going to call the FBI. It was embarrassing. I felt like a dork, and he was angry at me, but also gave me a huge hug when I answered the page and went to the first security guard I spotted.

Mami found out and raised hell. “You go off to La La Land,” she yelled at my father, “when you go into a bookstore. Jesus, Juanma, learn to be a bit more responsible when it comes to your kid.”

That really pissed off Papi. He went off about how he was a good father. And they went on like that for a while.

A day later I found myself in a car with both parents, climbing up these freaking mountains, travelling to meet my great-grandmother, Doña Aurelia, better known to the Sanz clan as Mamá Relia. At first, Mami was going alone, to let Papi spend time with his family. But at the last minute, he decided to go with us. At one point, we had to stop for me to throw up because the ride was so curvy. When we finally met Mamá Relia, she looked ancient to me. She must have been close to ninety and looked like a mummy. With her gummy mouth and few teeth yellowed by chewing tobacco, and her loose, wrinkled skin, she scared me. Close to her, I smelled tobacco and rubbing alcohol.

“Kiss her,” Mami whispered at me. A difficult thing to do, and on hesitating, she secretly pinched me to do it.

Lares was boring, too quiet for me, and with little to do. I was ordered to go to the basketball court to play with the neighborhood kids, as my mom caught up on family gossip from her aunts and cousins who had dropped by with huge pots of food. These kids were not any nicer than my own cousins. They looked at me like some foreigner, which I guess I was. I couldn't speak Spanish, and they were jealous over my pricey clothes and sneakers, so after a while they ignored me. When I returned, my mother told me she had a treat for me. She took me into the town's plaza, like any other I had seen in PR during that summer. But in Lares' plaza, there was a little ice cream shop that sold the craziest types of flavors: rice, beans, guanábana, among other strange tastes. I asked for the weirdest combo, because I was beginning to dislike this
place and everything Mami thought was cool. Garlic and avocado, I think, and enjoyed it to my surprise.

The ride back was hell, worse than having to puke, because Mami and Papi kept fighting. They started arguing over history, the Grito de Lares, the rebellion in that town that started the war for independence and why it failed. My father at one point reminded Mami that he was, after all, the historian in the family. Then, somehow, they got into it over the Madonna incident, which happened the year before but was still a hot topic in the island. Madonna had grinded her crotch against a Puerto Rican flag in a concert she gave in San Juan. The locals were outraged. The Puerto Rican Senate passed a resolution condemning her “lasciviousness.” The leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party called it “an infamy without parallel in the history of our country.” Papi agreed, but Mami thought Puerto Ricans had more serious issues to worry about. If people don't respect your flag, the symbol of the patria, you have nothing, my father yelled, banging the dashboard. My mother looked at him like he was crazy.

“Juanma, please, like Ricans here really care about the
patria
,” she replied, placing a mocking emphasis on the last word.

“What do you know about being Puerto Rican,” he said, and that's when they really started yelling. Stuff I couldn't understand, or maybe I just tuned it out. I kept looking out the window at the houses lining the curving road, the green vegetation surrounding us, the limestone rock high above us, trying to spot other kids my age along the landscape.

I remember silence after that. In the parking lot, in the elevator and in the luxury hotel suite, there reigned a scary quiet that made me hide in my room until I heard something, like a small dog whining. I opened my door and looked across the suite's living room toward my parents' room and saw my father leaning his head against the door, sobbing and saying things that only my mother could hear. He slumped against the door like that for a few minutes, until my mother opened the door and let him in.

We passed the Jíbaro Monument, and I couldn't hold back from smiling. Marisol saw my big-ass grin and punched my arm. I was in such a giddy mood that I would have smiled even if Roque himself had presented me with my dismissal letter. Sitting next to me, Marisol listened to Yankee Daddy's “Gasolina,” which she took out of a portfolio full of CDs and popped into the car CD player. Her bronze legs propped up on the dashboard, she rocked her feet and toes to the beat as she sang the refrain. The song became our road anthem.

She had not hesitated when I called. “Give me an hour to pack and get to Baná,” she said, and then we were off.

We entered the autopista heading south, agreeing on the direction without any sense of destination. Soon, the highway broke through into the drier landscape of the leeward side of the Cordillera. Not desert like Death Valley, not even close, but for a tropical island where mostly everything was flush green, the sparse, yellowish flora appeared foreign. Marisol explained how despite its small area, Puerto Rico had two phosphorescent bays, a rainforest, karst topography, caves, wildlife refuges and biosphere reserves. I looked at her surprised, and she told me that in college she had entertained the idea of majoring in geology.

We rode past patches of uninhabited areas that added to the desert feel. Occasionally, we'd see a little house way up on an isolated, elevated alcove and wonder who the hell lived there.

We approached Guánica after noon, both hungry, so we exited the highway and decided to lunch somewhere along the little
town's malecón, or boardwalk. At an outside table, we ate a crab taco each, sharing a Medalla beer. The smell of the ocean wafted across the curving cement strip that constituted the boardwalk, and bright sunshine cascaded down on everything. Toward the water, fishing boats scurried off into the horizon, sailboats lingered on the turquoise expanse.

Noontime during a work day, and the place was empty. It had the peace and serenity that only remote vacation spots can have. I glanced at Marisol and saw in her sunglasses my own shaded reflection staring back. Then the tropical landscape was broken by a hideous sight: a big boulder surrounded by rusted, iron gates. I moved forward, looked over my sunglasses. Marisol saw me and turned around.

“It's just a landmark,” she said.

“Of what?”

“Where the Americans landed in 1898.”

I wanted to see it closer, so Marisol gulped the rest of the beer and we took a look. It was some sort of commemoration of the event, a Plymouth rock-type of idea. This was where the American soldiers set foot to invade the island of Puerto Rico. It was a large coral boulder with the date September 16, 1898, and the words “3rd Battalion, U.S. V Engineers” carved on it.

As we walked back to the car, I turned around and saw how ridiculous it looked, jutting up from the ground, surrounded by an old, grated railing meant to protect it, from what or whom I wasn't sure. Certainly, not from the seagulls and pigeons who had had their way with it. It looked like an ignored eyesore.

The boulder made me think about the invasion, made me revisit in my mind the status issue. I asked Marisol where she stood.

“Statehood,” she said.

I looked at her a bit stunned; many professors were pro-independence.

She read my face and smiled. “I know. I should be a pipiola, right?” she said, referring to the name for those in the independence party.

“Frankly, I have no opinion on the issue,” I said.

“You're probably the only Puerto Rican alive who doesn't.”

We both laughed.

As we drove into the lower elevation, the Caribbean sea appeared, warm and welcoming.

“How can you be so sure, Marisol?”

She threw her head back on the seat, looked out toward the foothills. “In my heart, I think it's the best thing.”

“To become part of the nation that invaded and colonized Puerto Rico?”

“The U.S. has been nothing but good to me and my family. Why should I hate it?”

After Guánica, we headed west to the famous Phosphorescent Bay at La Parguera. After arriving, we parked the car in the lot of the Vistamar Hotel. We looked at each other with a “what now?” type of look. All sorts of thoughts began running through my mind. As we faced each other, the moment crackled with sexual energy, but it felt awkward. Two co-workers with a lot of R&R time on their hands, headed for a hotel suite located in a romantic, tropical setting. And we had already discussed sharing a room, out of financial necessity.

The woman at the desk did not question our being together, or give us any type of snarky looks. As we entered our room, Marisol mentioned that lots of young couples used these rooms, especially during the weekend. “What does the hotel care? For them, money always trumps morals,” she said.

Now, I would be lying if I said thoughts of passionate love-making had not entered my mind as I checked out the full-size bed. But I wanted to remain faithful to the idea of non-committal friendship. Hours of chatting on the phone led us to a compromise. We could hang, but out of respect for my feelings—for Marisol, my commitment phobia—ours would remain a friendship without any sexual contact. That was the plan.

Vistamar Hotel must have been built in the sixties. The rooms were clean and comfortable, but held that worn-out, threadbare look. The walls could have used a new coat of paint, and the bathroom had small hexagonal tiles. The view was spectacular, though. From our balcony, we could see the pool below and the Caribbean Sea farther out. As soon as Marisol saw the pool, she
wanted to go down for a dip and dug through her carry-on for her swimsuit.

“Come on, move it,” she said, running into the bathroom to change.

I was putting my few clothing items away when she came out in a yellow bikini. I had to smile and shake my head. She looked at me with playful eyes and laughed.

“That's cruel,” I said, taking out my toiletries.

“Put yours on,” she said, pouting her lips and folding her arms. I nodded my head, opened a drawer and with two fingers waved my trunks.

“Just hurry up,” she said, throwing herself on the bed.

When I got out of the bathroom, I did not want to look at her eyes. From the corner of my eye, as I scrambled to put my carry-on away in the closet, to fumble around for the room card key, my wallet, I could see her checking me out. We had not seen this much skin on each other until now, not even that night in the car. I felt exposed and put on a tank tee. I turned to tell her, “Okay, let's go,” and our eyes met for that one instant. Hers were dreamy and locked in on mine. Mine probably showed evasion, anxiety, maybe even fear.

She stood up and straightened her bikini top. “Okay, let's go.” She kissed me on the cheek and patted me on the chest.

At poolside, I could not keep my eyes off her. She had a knockout figure, and the yellow bikini looked fantastic on her tanned skin. She loved the water and kept diving into the pool, coming out with that bikini wet, squeezing her hair dry like a towel. At one point I had to turn on my stomach to hide my erection.

“Take off that T-shirt, Rennie. It's too hot.” She practically tore it off me. “Let me put some sunscreen on you.”

Her hands on my body felt good as she spread the cool lotion over my back and shoulders. As I turned over and she started to spread some on my chest and stomach, I held her hand to stop. She smiled a crooked little smile that made me desire her more. I had to jump in the water, finally. But she jumped right in to splash water on me and minutes later put her arms around me.

The tropical sun took its toll, and after a few hours and beers by the pool, we returned to the room and crashed out, too tired to think about anything but a nap and doing nothing more serious than spooning. When we awoke, it was dinnertime and we had to make arrangements for a boat ride if we were to see the phosphorescent bay. As soon as you come into the area of the hotel, a bunch of boat owners hold signs to try and get you to sign up with them. Marisol told me to ignore them because she already knew the best tour guide.