The Light

Bolting through winding paths lined by Ceiba trees in the blistering heat of the Puerto Rico sun, my great grandfather was escaping his home at the age of nine. As he was fleeing, he recalled his memories of his time in the house and with his parents. His stomach churned and lurched as he stared at the food that he could not see in the dark basement that his parents had locked him in. His fingers pulled at the knot of the rope that constrained his hands behind his back. He sat there with his shoulders hunched and the corners of his lips turned down as they trembled. The tears rolled down the cheeks that begged to be dried by the touch and caress of another body.

The night he escaped from his prison, he sat in the shade beneath the cloak of the scarlet leaves of a Ceiba tree. The skin that grew hotter, darker, from the blazing sun cooled, and the pounding of the heart encapsulated in the chest slowed. Coming to the realization of his stagnant place in a body that he could not call his, the body by which he ran away from the house that he could not call a home, he sat silent, still. He had escaped, yet he was not free; not free from the feeling of solitude that grew as a black cloudy vampiric entity draining him from the emotion that he could not feel.

“Hey, boy! What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

My great grandfather realized that this was not his place, not his home. The tree was someone else’s — living on land that someone else owned.

“I was just stopping to rest. I’ll leave now.”

“Well now that you're here, I could use some help. You looking for a way to make some money?”

In the years that followed, my great grandfather worked that land that was not his. As he grew older, he grew stronger and he plowed until each crop was planted to perfection. He fertilized the collective soil of the island with the tears that shed from his glossy eyes. As he worked over the course of 38 years, the streams of his tears froze over and shielded his heart: an ice-cold glass case forever longing for something warm.

He strolled through the streets of the Pueblo each morning at 7:00 a.m. to shop for quenepas. Quenepas are round and small orange fuzzy seeds encased in a green velvety cover. One has to work to get to the flesh of the fruit around the seed: tugging and pulling at every soury-sweet bite. This morning he followed his same routine to accomplish his prized quenepas, but he saw someone new: a woman. Short and wide-hipped, she was browsing through the selection of quenepas. She turned each one over in her callused hands as her eyes stared with a gentle glow. Across her face grew, not the full formation of a smile, but an expression of peace as the corners of her mouth perked up ever so slightly. My great grandfather felt a physical tug on his center of gravity from hers. He grinned and his eyes twinkled in response to observing her serene countenance and the caressing movement of her hands.

“I come here every morning, and I’ve never seen you at the stand. Are you new to the city?” my great grandfather asked.

“Oh, yes this is my first time here. I’m from Caguas. I’m visiting my Titi and Tio but I saw the quenepas and they looked incredible, so I had to pick some up. I’m Alicia,” she leaned in and hugged him with a kiss on the cheek. As her soft hands wrapped around his back, he felt his body lean into hers in security.

“I’m Eloy,” were all the words he could muster.

* **

Over the years they collapsed into unison, each one pulling on the other’s center. He fell in love, not with her, but with his new reality of belonging, of being accepted, of being loved.

“How are you, beautiful?” he asked after a hot and long day of work.

“I’m tired, but I’m okay.”

“Come here, let me rub your back.”

He focused intently upon the pressure he applied from the nerves in his hands to the soft supple skin that trapped her muscles: making sure each knot was taken out and working until a grin painted her face and an exhale escaped from her chest. She folded into his arms and relaxed each and every nerve until her limbs melted to putty. He supported the weight of her body — he was her stronghold, her mold. Eventually, they decided to have a baby, and my grandmother electrified the earth.

***

Santa came into the world and did not cry. She lounged in her mother’s arms in the humid attic of their house. Santa laid headstrong — only seconds old — denying to wail, denying the need to rely on breath. Not until Santa’s aunt tapped her bum did she let the tears stream and the screams tear through the particles of the air. When Eloy cradled Santa in his arms she became silent again, stifling her breath into small hiccups. Eloy stood in the room as a figure of marble. As he stared at his daughter unblinkingly, a gleaming film formed over his eyes and his eyebrows raised in awe.

***

As Santa grew older, she grappled with the significance of her name. “Saint.” When people gossiped about her friends, you could count on a seemingly calm argument from Santa. But as she would continue to talk, her deliberate guise of repose would fall and her lips would draw a horizontal line, revealing the vigor of her teeth. When someone caught her stealing candy, she lied and lied until the very end of the exchange. When someone hurt her or someone she loved, she gripped a grudge so tight that it could burst at its seams. She never considered herself a “Saint.” So, she adopted the name Santi in protest and when Santi was 10 years old, Eloy and Alicia decided to move to New York City.

“No, Papi. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave my friends, our home, and the island, it’s too much,” she argued with her arms crossed.

“Ay Santa, you’ll be so much happier in New York. Trust me, you’ll make new friends. In New York, there are amazing schools, and you’ll be able to learn so much more than you can here. Over there, Mami and I can do so much more for you and you’ll have such a better life, we all will,” longing for her acquiescence and approval, tugging at an emotional rope, he persuaded her in the hopes of her coming to love the opportunity.

But, she was never persuaded. She went with a resentment in her eyes and a twitching in her lips, but never yelling or crying. She stifled her tantrums intent upon sustaining the sparkle that danced in her father’s eyes and his beaming grin that lasted from the drive to the airport all the way until their arrival in Bushwick. He was the guiding warm light in her foggy journey.

***

In the years that followed, Eloy and Alicia found various jobs in factories. They worked manufacturing toothpaste, and ham for Boars Head. Their hands would move rapidly as their faces glanced over each stage of the production process without any recognizable feeling. After only a few years in Brooklyn, Eloy died of a heart attack while he was playing dominos on the stoop with his friends. Santi came running down the steps, in hopes of feeling the warmth of her father’s tight hugs. When she saw his body lying on the black gum-ridden street and her mother on her knees lunging over him and bawling, she felt a sharp pang shock her chest and as the nerves traveled, they ignited her stomach.

Santi dropped out of school when her father died so that she could help take care of the house while Alicia worked. As Santi grew into adulthood, she struggled through a tense relationship with her mother, constant arguments with her friends, and a venomous relationship with my grandfather, who repeatedly cheated on her. Through each encounter with an obstacle, the same icy glass that encapsulated Eloy’s heart, froze over hers. She didn’t trust anyone, nor did she rely on them for even little things like shopping for groceries. The only miraculous entity that could break through the icy glass were her children.

“Mami, I don’t want to go to school. Please don’t make me go,” my dad cried.

“Ay, Gabriel. It’s your first day; you should be excited! Why don’t you want to go to school, huh? What’s the matter?”

Gabriel rammed into his mother’s body as she sat at their small round table lined with yellow and green floral print cloth in the center of the kitchen.

“I don’t want to leave you. I want to stay here with you and play house together,” he exclaimed as he wrapped his small arms around the width of her body and dug his fingers into her flesh, making small, dimpled indents.

Gabriel’s heart fluttered in his chest as he imagined his day in a novel environment with 20 kids — that seemed like 100 to him — none of whom he has ever met. His lip quivered and his neck twitched at the thought of having to conquer the day all without Mami to hold his hand.

Santi unwravelled her son's embrace and kneeled on the ground to meet him at eye level. She held each of his hands and let her right thumb caressed his left hand as she spoke.

“I know it’s scary. But I’ll be there with you always in here,” she placed her left palm on the side of her head, “and in here,” and she moved her hand to his chest. “And when you come back home, you’ll be so happy and you’ll miss it so much that you’ll want to run back.”

Gabriel rushed into her sung arms, and began to cry. Santi rubbed his back for two counts — one, two — before lifting her hand and repeating the rhythmic motion. The warm-gold light of the lamp flickered above their heads.

“Hey! Do you want some quenepas before you go?”