No one knows for sure when the annual Thanksgiving Family Reunion started, although members from the older generations venture different years. Thanksgiving dinners, always an occasion for the Matos Canales clan—Julia’s family—to gather kept growing in number, to the point that the holiday dinner soon evolved into an “event,” and before you knew it, flyer invitations were sent out, then emails, to every conceivable relative along the various branches of the family tree announcing the important details for the reunion. At times, family from the States, or South America and Spain, attended. The number of attendees grew, but one tradition remained constant, and that was to rotate the locale every year. This year Hacienda Colibrí, in Lares, was the site, and I headed out to this family property for the second time within a year.
I received a direct, verbal invitation from Julia’s parents, my biological maternal grandparents, the first time I had met them. They had chided Julia for “hiding” me. Don Marco and Doña Cruz knew about me but kept silent as to the background of my birth, claiming, perhaps truthfully, that they themselves did not know the entire story. I had been on the island for months, and Julia finally got around to presenting me to them, and for this they were very upset. We drove up to their house in Guaynabo, and at the doorway Julia stood, head hung low, arms crossed, as they gawked at me for minutes and then hugged me. My grandmother held my face in her delicate hands and looked at me with her amber eyes full of tears.
“Dios mío,” she said, “he looks so much like your brother Miguel,” she said to my grandfather, who examined me with tilted head.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he responded. He came over and also embraced me, surprising me with the strength his slight body possessed.
Julia had inherited his eyes, my eyes, equally deep set and piercing.
“I’m not going to welcome you to the family,” he said. “Because you were always part of our family.”
I just nodded down toward the floor.
“Welcome, home,” he added.
When I informed Julia I was bringing Marisol along, this notice was met with some silence, then the question, “Why?”
I didn’t want to get into mother-son type conversations with Julia. It bothered me, especially when it came to issues dealing with women I dated. I told her Marisol was my date and that was that. I don’t think she was concerned about RSVPs and if there was going to be enough food. My grandparents had told me to bring anyone I liked.
“Don’t worry,” said my new grandmother, “where two can eat, three can eat,” citing a popular refrán, or saying.
In a moment of weakness, I had let it slip that Marisol and I were getting a bit more serious. Julia had met Marisol only once and afterwards suggested she was “mature” for me. “The Cradle Robber,” she would joke when referring to her.
More seriously, she asked, “Are you sure she isn’t desperate? You know, tick tock.”
Maybe there was a grain of truth to this, but those thoughts were dissipating, because I just liked being with her. And what difference did a few years make, anyway? And something I would never tell my biological mother: Marisol confirmed everything any young man had ever praised about a more experienced woman.
On turning to the inclining drive leading to Colibrí, we were met by parked cars lining the sides of the narrow road, a sure sign there would be no parking up hill. Marisol pointed to an empty available space, which I managed to squeeze into, and we walked up to the hacienda. She twisted her arm around mine and held me tightly, at times playfully pulling me down or squeezing my butt.
We reached the house, walked up to the first floor, which had several huge, shutter-type wooden doors, most of them closed. On entering the only opened set, wider than the others, we walked into the salon, where a trio of rattan rocking chairs faced each other. Above, an eighteenth-century iron cast chandelier, electrical sconces now substituting burning candles, swung with the afternoon breeze settling into the high elevation. Inside, there were touches of the hacienda’s past, photos of coffee harvesting, a large wooden pilón, a mahogany dining table for ten, an enormous, heavy dish display and other antique furniture. We peered through a locked glass door into a large refrigerated wine cellar, full of bottles stacked neatly on rows of wooden racks. The kitchen retained its original spaciousness, but it was obviously modernized and well-equipped to cook for many mouths.
Marisol went to the bathroom, and I roamed around the house, exploring in more detail sections I had scanned or missed entirely during my previous visit. In one of the parlors, I came across an entire wall of photos, dozens of them, some which had that unmistakable sepia color connoting history. On closer inspection, I realized they were family photos. My family. People I could not name or place if my life depended on it. I squinted and stared, looking for a sign of recognition, resemblance, anything bordering on a connection to these framed ghostly figures. A gallery of nondescript types in unflattering attire who did not appear willing or capable of smiling. Some, I finally noticed, had the striking Matos eyes, which even in a static picture, from decades ago could demand and hold your attention.
“That’s the boring branch of your family, Rennie.”
I turned around and Doña Cruz was standing at the door, all five feet of her. She was wearing capri pants and neon green sneakers. Her hair set in a chignon. “Hola, abuela,” I said, and her amber eyes lit up. On my visit to their home, she was not pleased that I did not call Julia Mom. When Julia had left the room, she looked at me sternly and told me so in crisp but heavily accented English, and then she whispered, “What you call your mother is your business, but if you know what’s good for you, you better call me abuela.”
She had been an elementary school teacher, a very strict one who never resorted to any physical punishment to gain her students’ respect. Julia tells of a time that her mother became incensed over a teacher’s paddling a student. After lecturing the colleague and realizing that she could not convince him to change his ways, she simply walked away. But the male instructor made the mistake of mocking her as she headed for the door. Doña Cruz turned on her heels, walked to the man and slapped him hard with the back of her hand, making his lip bleed. Asked about the hypocrisy in this act, she defended herself by saying that he was a man, not a child, and then added, “I was not going to let him ridicule me in front of colleagues.” A few days later, his paddle went missing. He accused her, but nothing could be proved. Years later, she became the superintendent of schools in the district and forced the man into retirement. The paddle came in the mail, with his first pension check.
“These are mainly Marco’s family. Sad group, don’t you agree?” I nodded.
“Now, my family, there you have the real characters.” She pointed to a photo of a stout man with laughing eyes. “That was my father, Jorge Canales, your great-grandfather. Fought for independence, first against the Spanish then the Americans. In his last years, founded orphanages throughout the western part of the island.”
She pointed to the woman next to him. “My stepmother. A good woman, but not very loving.”
She looked up, searching the wall. “My mother,” she said, her voice fading as she continued searching for a picture. “There,” she pointed to a portrait of a slender, young woman with a sad face. “Get it for me, Rennie.”
I retrieved the photo, set in a beautiful wooden frame. She dusted it off and held it lovingly in her hands.
“She died of tuberculosis when I was two,” she said, and forced a smile. “Your great-grandmother.” I nodded and mumbled, “Thanks,” not completely knowing why.
Through the photos, she introduced me to other members of her family. An Uncle Paco who ran off to sea and never came back, the camera capturing him looking away, distracted; a somber Manolín, months before he joined a circus; Aunt Matilde, demure in a frilly dress, who eventually turned to men’s clothing and chewing tobacco; a brother, David, manufacturer and distributor of “pitorro” or Puerto Rican moonshine, mugging it up for the camera. He went off to Korea and got killed. Before leaving, she showed me a photo of Miguel, my grandfather’s brother, and my resemblance to him was indeed uncanny, scary almost. Except he was much better looking.
“He was the youngest, un enamorao, a skirt chaser,” Abuela said, “until he found the love of his life, who destroyed him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He lost her and drank himself to death.”
I leaned forward to get a closer look at Miguel, trying to find insight into that type of self-consuming passion.
“That’s the past, Rennie,” she told me as she hooked her arm around mine. “Let’s go meet the living, okay?” She turned off the lights in the room and shut the door.
Downstairs, the music erupted. A trio had been hired; the older folks had decided on the music, much to the disappointment of the younger members of the clan. They set up quickly and began their repertoire of ballads and up-tempo oldies. During the breaks a DJ was promised to play hip hop for the youngsters. The music inaugurated and invigorated the activities. Where before folks wandered about, huddled in isolated bunches, now the music brought people closer to the center, where a large tent harbored long tables. The caterers stepped up their activity, shuttling heavy trays of food to the waiting Sterno burners. To the side, a pig roasted on a spit, to the amazement of the children. Nearby, one of the cooks attended to a big vat full of boiling oil, in which a turkey was being fried. Family dogs were brought along, the younger ones excitable with the commotion, while the older canines escaped to a shady corner.
Abuela led me to the balcony, from where we had a good view of the activity.
Round tables and folding chairs laid out on a wide clearing accommodated the approximately sixty people in attendance. Behind a sturdy bar, two young women moved like dervishes taking orders, mixing, lining up shots of Bacardi and Barrelito, uncorking wine, throwing ice in glasses, popping beer bottles. A photographer roamed around, cameras hanging from his neck, snapping pictures and joking with his subjects. He avoided bumping into the videographer, who didn’t enjoy competing for shots. Both gravitated to a skinny young man in cargo pants, presumably a cousin, holding a parrot on his forearm. Video Guy told Camera Guy to hurry up and take his stupid pictures so he could work. The latter, less serious and having more fun, said something humorous and dismissive and snapped away.
The bird, a twelve-inch beauty, flapped its green wings and preened itself, stretching its neck and head feathers. Its eyes, encircled in white and peering over the red band above its beak, looked on quizzically at everyone staring at him. It was an iguaca, or Puerto Rican parrot, a critically endangered species.
Abuela noticed that Don Marco was sipping beer. “That man is going to kill himself with his bad habits. He shouldn’t be drinking.”
She went off after him, urging me to come down. I wondered if I could ever begin to connect to any of these people below—people whose genetic material I partially shared—in any meaningful way. So many of them, family yet strangers. Marisol interrupted my reverie as she slid her hand under my T-shirt and ran her fingernails halfway down my back. She joined me in a moment looking down at all the movement.
“It’s a circus down there,” she said. “Let’s get something to eat, I’m starving.”
Heading toward the food tent, Julia grabbed me. She had drunk a few glasses of wine. “Do you mind if I borrow my baby for a minute?” She directed this to Marisol, but didn’t wait for an answer.
“Get me some food,” I yelled back to her as Julia dragged me to meet her siblings.
This first encounter initiated a series of unfortunate introductions. “This is your nephew,” she said to Tere, the youngest, living in Barcelona with her husband, the banker; and Justin, an accountant like his father, who relished every bit the role of eldest son. They looked at me like a specimen, pulling back their craned heads while nodding in agreement or in a dumb affirmation of reality.
Later, Julia told me she had prepared most of the closest relatives. This would account for their lack of surprise, but what their faces expressed was a mystery. The siblings did not necessarily look pleased or dismayed; their expressions mostly resembled bored indifference.
“Buenas,” said Justin, and then added something like welcome to the family, while extending a hairy, pale hand.
I stared at his bespectacled pale, stubbled face and his little, crooked teeth as he smiled. “Gracias,” I answered and walked toward the food.
Julia grabbed me again. “Wait, I want to introduce you to other people.”
“Can’t that wait, I’m famished here.” She smirked and relented. “I’ll tell them to go say hi where you’re eating.”
Great, I thought, meeting the family hordes while trying to enjoy a meal. “At least he’s tall and good looking,” I heard Tere say as I walked away.
Marisol had set me up with a hearty plate of food. We were both hungry and started digging into the food. The drinks, and perhaps the sun, had us a bit buzzed, and we were enjoying each other’s company.
And then the steady procession of family members began. First, Don Marco came over and almost squeezed the food out of me. Slaps to the back pushed me forward, and if Marisol had not held on to me, I would have fallen. He had this deep, donkey-type laugh, that Marisol imitated all through our ride back and had me cracking up. Then came the uncles, aunts, some of whom just found out about this mysterious grandnephew. They welcomed me but, even with my young age, I knew that on the drive back home they would gossip—or in the local vernacular, pelar, peel poor Julia, who drank another glass of wine, talking to her parents. A conversation with few words. Both grandparents stood stiff, arms crossed. She looked so alone. Suddenly, I didn’t think this was some torture I had to endure. Poor Julia, I thought.
The older cousins, who came over with their spouses or significant others, threw languid stares at me, made empty promises about hanging out, traded cell phone numbers, all a shallow show of familial solidarity. For the teen cousins, I had become a novelty. I was the main attraction in an otherwise dreary, traditionally boring event that they were expected to attend ever year. They asked unabashedly stupid and ignorant questions like if I lived in a ghetto or if I had a girlfriend, with Marisol sitting next to me. Or comment something along the lines, “Wow, this must suck for you. I would die.” I wondered how politicians kept up with meeting so many people, kissing babies and such, grasping so many strange hands. I was exhausted, drained. I was so glad that Marisol came along. She grounded me, made me laugh, told me to take it all in stride—deja que te resbale, she quipped, “Let it all slide off you.”
After meeting Juanco, the cousin with the parrot, and his attractive girlfriend, Marisol took advantage of the interest that Iggy the bird had stirred and grasped my hand. We ran off into the wooded areas behind the house. Earlier she had spotted a small creek and wanted to show it to me. We ran like children down an incline toward the bubbling water.
Out of breath, we threw ourselves on the ground.
We stayed like that for a while, peeking through the branches to get a glimpse of sunlight, the heat on our faces feeling wonderful. The gurgling of the creek soothed us, made us drowsy.
Marisol sighed, and said, “This is fabulous.” Like two blind lovers, our solitary hands searched for each other and clasped.
“This is kinda cheesy,” I said, and we started laughing.
She let go my hand and swatted me. “It’s romantic,” she said, fake pouting, still laughing.
I turned to her and kissed her. She bent at her waist and grabbed the back of my neck, returning the kiss. She pulled me on top of her, my face buried in her neck. I breathed in the mix of perspiration and floral soap. Just when she wrapped her legs around me as we continued kissing, a gaggle of children stomped toward us, screeching. We jumped, startled at the screaming and running but also embarrassed.
The grandchildren and some of the teen cousins led by Juanco were rambling down the hill toward the creek, and us, their heads up to the sky. Juanco, in particular, was frantic, trying to run forward with his gangly legs, looking back and yelling at his girlfriend, who was crying. He kept looking up, and I realized Iggy was not with them.
“The parrot ran away,” I told Marisol.
“Oh, no, your poor cousin,” she said.
“Poor Iggy,” I said.
We both started scouring the branches, and soon we joined the posse looking for Iggy. A few minutes later, a few of the older folk came down to search.
I spotted him on a low branch of a ceiba and pointed to Marisol. Iggy bobbed up and down on the branch, whistling and making strange sounds. I told Marisol to get the others and tell them to be quiet. “Don’t do something stupid,” she said with a worried look on her face.
“Don’t worry, I’m an expert tree climber.”
“Are you serious?”
“Just get the others.”
I had been climbing trees up to my teen years, and although rusty, it wasn’t a hard tree to climb. I loved sitting on a branch on a cool day. Mami would tease me and called me monkey boy. I took my shoes and socks off, secured a good footing and pulled myself up to the branch, which was no more than ten feet from the ground. A sturdy branch, one that could support both bird and man. I sat at the edge closest to the trunk.
Iggy kept bobbing, but less so now, his quizzical eyes staring at me. I didn’t move, trying not to scare him off. “Hey there, Iggy,” I said, in that sing-song way one talks to a baby. By then, a crowd had gathered below, their eyes gaping at me and Iggy. Juanco looked like he was crying, his hands wrung together in prayer-like fashion. His girlfriend, distraught, stood behind him, biting her fingernails, her eyes red and raw.
“I know,” I whispered to Iggy, “they’re assholes.” I tried to soothe him, patted the branch beside me, lay my hand on it. He approached me cautiously. When he was close enough I patted his neck feathers with two fingers, and he let me. I put out my wrist and he stepped up onto it, as he was obviously trained to do. I caressed his feathers, soothing him with my voice so as not to fly away again. I could have stayed up there with Iggy for a while. It was peaceful and isolated. The wind blew away all our worries.
I had no plan how to get down a tree while holding on to a bird. Luckily, one of the uncles had the intelligence to get an extension ladder from the house. I took off my shirt and managed to cradle Iggy in it, while they shot the ladder up to the branch. Juanco climbed up the ladder and took down the bird swathed in my shirt. The crowd cheered, surrounding Juanco and Iggy, and off they went back to the festivities.
I sat on the branch for a few minutes. Marisol climbed halfway up the ladder.
“Ingrates,” she said, “that little snot didn’t even thank you.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Why don’t you come up?”
She gave me a dirty look as she hugged the middle of the ladder. “Come down. Let’s go home.”
That was the best thing I had heard all day.
We walked back, arms around each other’s waists. My shoulders and legs ached a bit, and I had to admit my tree climbing days were over.
When we returned, I received my shirt back, which now had Iggy’s droppings. A little souvenir to say thank you, traitor, I guess. Julia came over with a tied dye T-shirt she had found somewhere and handed it to me. Iggy was now in his cage. Julia told me Juanco worked for the DRNA, the island’s natural resources agency, and thought it would be cool to bring one of the parrots to the family reunion.
“For the kids,” she said with a smirk, “but it was all to impress his girlfriend.” The girlfriend wanted to hold the bird and, once on her wrist, she panicked when the bird started pecking at her arm. When she screamed and shook her arms, Iggy took off.
“You saved Juanco his job,” Julia told me. “I’m very proud of you.”
“I did it for the bird,” I said.
She nodded and wrapped one arm around mine. Mari had gone to get some leftovers for the road.
“You don’t mind if I steal you away from your babysitter for a while, do you?”
“Come on, Julia.”
Laughing, she steered me into the shade under a Royal Poinciana, and then stared at me. “Okay, all jokes aside,” she continued. “Where’s this going with Marisol?”
“Why does it matter to you?”
She exhaled, looked up, returning that heavy gaze on me. “Seriously, René. How can you ask me that?”
“Ah, jeez. I didn’t mean you don’t have the right …”
She shook her head vigorously. “I’m asking because I’m concerned. Is that wrong?”
“No, no, it’s not.” Glaring into those eyes was like staring into a mirror. “It’s kinda nice, actually.”
“René, I know it’s hard to have a mother come out of nowhere. I get that. But it’s hard for me, too,” she said, tapping her chest, “to have to earn a son’s love, every day.” She stood staring at me with a confused, pleading face, her hand now on her hip.
“I’m good with Mari, okay?”
“Okay, but don’t think age doesn’t matter. It does.”
I didn’t want to hear it, partly because she was probing into an area I had visited several times. But Mari and I were in a good place. Why spoil it with these gnawing thoughts?
“Thanks for bringing me to the reunion,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“If I hadn’t, your grandparents would have skinned me alive,” she responded, laughing, pushing back a loose strand of hair. “But, I’m glad too,” she added, holding my hand, squinting into the setting sun.
“You know, meeting all this family, I thought it would change something.”
She sighed, her back sliding down against the tree trunk, until she sat. I sat down by her, and we both glanced back at the crowd of relatives milling about.
“They say you can’t choose your family,” she said.
“I don’t mean to complain or anything. I just thought finding them would, I don’t know, give me some insight into myself.”
“It doesn’t work like that, m’ijo.” She tossed her hair and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I was always the black sheep in this family.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. The rebel, the political activist, the feminist. The law student who got knocked up.” She ripped a handful of grass and tossed it. “My parents thought I was starving for attention, but I was just living out my restless life, my way.”
She put her hand over her eyes. The ranks among the relatives were thinning out. You could hear goodbyes, the slamming of car doors, the ignition of car engines.
“Roots can ground you,” Julia said, quickly turning to me. “But they can strangle you, too.”
“The photo gallery was cool, though,” I said.
“Sure. Family history fills the gaps,” she said, shaking her head. “But in the end, it’s just a bunch of dusty pictures of dead people, René.”
She gripped my hand tight.
I nodded.
The evening sun shot orange streamers across the sky. Led by Justin, my uncle, a few relatives picked up guitars and four-stringed cuatros and entertained the others. Before that, the classically trained Matos and Canales crew showed off their expensive music lessons with a Bach fugue here or Mozart sonata there. During one of the musical numbers, Cuco, a German Shepard, sat down to chew on something resembling a curving bone. His owner, a cousin third removed, took it from him with some struggle. The strangeness of the artifact intrigued those gathered, and speculation began as to whether it was human or not. Magi, a cousin twice removed, and a graduate student in archaeology, wondered if it was a piece of Taíno hip belt used in ceremonial ballgame which the Indians played.
“It’s clearly not a bone,” she said, although Wiso had another opinion.
“Who cares about the Taínos,” a drunken distant cousin yelled. “All they gave us was barbeque.” Laughter. Someone yells, “Not a bad idea right now. I’m hungry.”
Magi wrapped the artifact in a towel, stashed it in her bag. Wiso whined, and she rewarded him with a leftover piece of turkey.
Julia asked me to stay with the few family members who remained a bit longer, but I declined. We hadn’t packed for a longer stay, I said, glad that we hadn’t thought of bringing a change of clothing, something we usually did on our outings.
I ached to leave and started to kiss my grandparents goodbye, when the photographer declared time for the family photo. Of course, I felt obligated, so I promised Marisol we would leave right after that. It was a burdensome production. First, to cut down numbers, telling non family people to get out of the frame, then trying to squeeze everyone into the shot. Even with his panoramic lens, he had problems. Finally, he had to go on the balcony to take several shots.
We gave our goodbyes to everyone present. Just when we started the car, an older female cousin appeared on the balcony. Waving her hands, she yelled, “Aunt Luz did it again!”
Julia laughed and peeked into the car. “Every year Aunt Luz takes down the photo of her sister, Blanca, from the gallery and hides it somewhere on the property.” She shrugged. “It’s a long story,” she said, and with that joined the others in what had become the inadvertent traditional family scavenger hunt to find the purloined photo of Tía Blanca.
We waved, both of us happy to leave. But Marisol made me stop at the Lares Heladería, where she had the rice and bean ice cream combo, and I just had strawberry. We wanted to rush back because the work had piled up, now that the strike was over and classes had resumed. But as luck would have it, we hit a traffic jam on 129. An angry motorist had shot a cow after he had hit it. Both his car and the dead bovine blocked the roadway, and he refused to move his car if he was going to be charged for killing the animal.
“I was trying to put it out of its misery,” he kept yelling. But he was having a hard time convincing the officers, who thought his true intention was revenge for the damage it had done to his Mercedes.