Looking back, the routine comforted me. From Monday to Friday, every week, for seven weeks, I drove Marisol to the Hospital Oncológico in Río Piedras for radiation therapy. Fighting a disease that causes such chaos in the body, following a regiment of procedures that, although necessary, seemed brutal and torture-like. The complete havoc it creates on the lives of patients and those they love; what it does to a person’s spirit and psyche—all this was overwhelming for Marisol, of course. But also for me as I tried, as well as I could, to stand with her through that rough period.
I had inspected every inch of that waiting room, so many times. Having absorbed the purposeful sterility of it, having made symbolic acknowledgement of the burning round cell-like ceiling lamps, I felt the loneliness of sitting in interlocking chairs set against white walls, gaining only an occasional sad smile from another person waiting for a loved one to receive the fifteen to thirty minutes of high energy rays to kill rebel cells out to destroy them.
On the last session of her treatment, there were two other visitors in the waiting room. An older woman waiting for her husband who had prostate cancer and someone new, an older gentleman. When these other people got to talking, after seeing them again for a couple of weeks, they wondered why someone as young as I could be there. They were saddened to hear about Marisol, so relatively young, getting breast cancer, about our budding romance being interrupted by the disease. They were short polite conversations—no one wanted to talk much—and anyway, you weren’t there for long.
Toward the end of therapy, I had read everything strewn on the coffee and end tables, so I indulged in the comfort of having the routine run its course. I tried to grade exercises I’d brought, but instead concentrated on the photos of beautiful and serene landscapes carefully placed throughout the room. That last day, I remember focusing on the beach scene, which could have been anywhere on the island: eye-popping turquoise water, oatmeal-colored sand, a barefoot, healthy, tanned couple walking arm in arm.
Marisol was worried about wearing a bathing suit after the surgery. She loved the beach so much and couldn’t stand the idea of not being able to go. She said this although she had only had a lumpectomy, and the cancer had not spread to lymph nodes. But in her mind it was as if the entire breast had been forever damaged. Wearing a swimsuit was foreign, impossible now. She refused to let me see the scar. I tried to talk to her, tried to make her see the bigger picture: she was alive and her prognosis was good. But, no, she had seen the statistics, she said, and they told her that there was a 12% chance of not surviving.
In early June, the biopsy had come back positive; the tumor was malignant. Mari was devastated. The doctors told her it was stage II, a treatable cancer. But the reality was that a knife would cut inside her breast in pursuit of something potentially lethal.
At first she would not accept it. We went to another oncologist who could not believe we were seeking a second opinion on what she termed clear evidence of cancer. She told us to act quickly, now that the tumor was relatively small and the cancer highly treatable. I had to shake Mari out of her stupor. She wanted to put it off, and I kept pushing her. We had a big fight.
“I’ve had enough loss in my life,” I told her. “Please don’t add to it.”
That kind of shook her a bit, and she relented. After surgery, she lost interest in everything. She was so depressed, she gave up her summer class, the money that went with it, along with the vacation she had planned with me to the Dominican Republic.
“You’ll be the first on the list next year,” I told her.
“If I’m still alive,” she snapped back.
Julia’s frequent calls during this period kept me balanced, sane. She had the uncanny ability to call when I was approaching a meltdown. At night, after one of Marisol’s bad days, or struggling with doctors and appointments, or medical bills, she was there to listen to me vent. Her soothing voice told me how proud she was of me, offered help with bills, gave me advice whenever I asked. My mother gave me the boost to get up the next morning and face another day.
And those days living with Marisol were not fun. She would go off on tangents about her contaminated breasts and wondered how she could breastfeed if we ever had children. Out loud, she asked me if I would be disgusted or repulsed at her breast scar.
“I’m in love with you, not your breast.”
“That’s what you say now,” she huffed. “Men are all alike.”
It was July and I was busy teaching the remedial class, which had turned out to be more difficult and challenging than Basic English. Micco had assigned me the late afternoon section, so I could drive Mari to her morning radiation therapy. When I returned from teaching the class, I’d find her with tissues crying in front of a novela. I would turn off the television and suggest running the Jacuzzi, or that I would cook up a favorite dish, without much success. During weekends, she slept late, spent mornings lying around in pajamas. In a way, I was glad that the radiation therapy had begun because it got us out of the house every day. After a therapy session, I planned outings to distract her and make the day pleasurable. She resisted, she just wanted to go home, she would say. The radiation made her tired, and she complained about the skin irritation. She became even more depressed and lost weight.
“Why couldn’t the weight come off my thighs and butt?” she asked, as if I’d be stupid enough to answer that.
Even her family could not shake her moods. Marisol’s parents—Don Martín and Doña Caridad—and her siblings, Nicki and Carlos, volunteered to drive Mari to the radiation sessions, but it didn’t make sense. I lived with her in Baná, and they lived in San Juan. Why should they drive back and forth? They visited her when we stayed weekends in Marisol’s condo, or at home in Baná, always bringing food and gifts. That cheered her up a bit, but their leaving then made her sad and despondent. Doña Caridad cried at the end of every visit; to make it worse, Don Martín would reprimand her. Nicki ushered them into the car, rolling her eyes or shaking her head, apologizing for them. You could hear them arguing in the car as they drove away.
Puerto Rican families argued out of love and caring, but it was always loud and animated. Even the most banal discussion required wild hand motions, bodily gesticulations and rising decibels. In my own family it was the norm, and I grew up wanting to retreat somewhere all the time. I grew up avoiding confrontation, avoiding issues, skirting them, not wanting to be bothered. Being an only child helped me create a cocoon, a bubble from which I never needed to answer to other siblings as I isolated myself from my parents.
But I could not run away now. I kept my ground because life without her would be empty. Selfishly, I fought to retain that which made me feel good, and sound, and whole. There was no cocoon to run to, nowhere I could escape without the feeling of abandonment gnawing at my mind and heart. She needed me, and I had to be there for her. I was not going to lose her. But it was tough. Mari was not the best of patients. The door was tempting, such a natural and easy escape. Sometimes she pushed me toward it, when in her worst moments she claimed, always in Spanish, that I was wasting my time with a “vieja ajada, acabada,” an old decrepit woman.
“Ay, vete,” she would say. “Go find that girl with the green eyes.” And she would roll over on her good side and fall asleep.
I had to contain my anger at these outbursts. She was experiencing something difficult, and it wasn’t about my feelings. But I loved her, and yet she didn’t believe me or feel it. As the radiation came to a close, I suggested counseling for her, and she accepted that she needed help. She attended a support group and saw a therapist regularly. Eventually, I saw positive change. She was smiling more. We began making plans again and talking about the future. The intimacy was not there, though. We slept in the same bed, but didn’t even cuddle. She kept her distance, constructed an emotional wall. It was as if the cancer had invaded her, violated her body, and she could not entrust it to anyone because she could not trust it herself. She wasn’t ready to share with anyone what she felt was a body out of control, not even with a person she loved. I would bend over to kiss her cheek goodnight and she would stiffen. “I love you,” I’d say, and sometimes she would grab my hand on her shoulder and hold it tight, a gift.
I could not stay angry at Mari, because her enemy was lethal and destructive. And it did not escape my mind that perhaps her health, like that of others, had been compromised by authorities making stupid decisions. That someone or something else had to take the blame for her cancer and that of a growing number of others. Marisol made it a point to tell me not to return to any form of activism, just because of her illness. You don’t argue with a person fighting cancer, but on this issue I was not going to follow her advice. I kept quiet, focusing on her treatment, on her health and well-being.
But watching her go through everything intensified my outrage, double what I felt when I had learned of Rita’s case. It was now personal, and whatever anger I felt at Rita’s ill-timed death, this was too close to home to let it ride. Yes, like on so many issues, when it does hit home, it takes on a terrifying significance that only a numb, heartless and vapid person could neglect. Either that, or a coward. As much as I loved her, Marisol was a coward. She was afraid to fight. Her parents had inculcated into her a complete disregard for politics and anything political. All those years living in Puerto Rico and they still cultivated their exile identity. They were Cuban, first and foremost, and beyond fearing independence like the plague—a recipe for communism Don Martín would often say—they were indifferent to issues confronting the island.
No, Marisol’s position on this was not the north star. I humored her and, in between driving her to her appointments and attending to her needs at home, I re-initiated talks with the Congreso. To their credit, Felipe and Samuel met with me again; they could have dismissed me with disdain, but didn’t. I met them for breakfast at a bakery in town, and they greeted me with stern and doubtful faces and refused my offer to buy them coffee. I explained my desire to continue with the efforts we had previously started. They both looked at each other and then at me.
“You’re starting to sound like Peter with the wolf,” Felipe said.
Samuel found this amusing and nodded. But he dropped the smile and stared at me as if studying me. “You know what saddens me, compañero?” He didn’t wait for any type of answer. “How our people sit around and watch others suffer until the problem affects them personally.”
Felipe stuck out his lips and nodded.
“Then it becomes the most important issue on the planet.”
I nodded, feeling ashamed. Everything he was saying was true, but it sounded harsher, more truthful in Spanish.
“I’m really sorry about Marisol,” he said.
I tensed up. He gestured to the man behind the counter for a coffee. Felipe took out a cigarette and lit up.
“But,” he continued, in a deliberate, painfully slow tone, articulating every word, as if this were a lesson, “you have come around, and that’s what’s important.”
“How do we know he’s serious this time, Samuel?” asked Felipe, flicking ashes on the floor.
“Look, look in his eyes,” he said, stirring his coffee, pointing to me with pursed lips like Puerto Ricans are wont to do. “They have the fire of a man fighting for something that matters to him.”
I stared back at him, upset at how casually he was reading me.
He sipped his coffee, shook his head. “René, I’m not the enemy.”
I exhaled, sat back on my chair. “You’re right,” I said, and extended my hand, which he grabbed at the wrist, making me do the same.
That Saturday morning we talked for hours, making plans, considering strategy, writing down an outline of what needed to be done. Felipe wanted to enlist help from the local PIP party. I questioned whether it was wise to bring in partisan politics, and Samuel answered that the PIP was the only party genuinely interested in environmental issues.
“If they want to make it political, that’s not important. But they have the machinery useful for getting media attention.”
That’s what they wanted, to make it a media event to embarrass the university and generally shed some light on the problem.
We planned to disseminate the information we had to the media, organize the various groups and start a series of meetings and rallies to protest the university’s inaction and demand answers. Felipe would focus on the community, Samuel on the Congreso and I would work on the students and faculty. This was hard work, the hardest I had ever done in my life, especially because it was here on the island.
“Brother, this is a colony full of colonized minds. It’s difficult to move people to action,” Samuel advised me so I wouldn’t get discouraged.
“Puerto Ricans are obsessed with having fun and spending money,” chimed in Felipe.
And they were right. The faculty seemed so stubbornly opposed to doing anything. Everyone was wrapped up in his or her individual world, his or her career, family. What made it even more difficult was that it was summer and, to reach professors, in many cases I had to go to their homes at times when they were not off on vacation somewhere.
There wasn’t any proven correlation between the cancer cases and what the Army had deemed HTRW buried under our feet. This was the standard response, and I had to explain that we wanted an independent study done to verify that one way or another. We deserved answers because possibly our health was at stake. Marisol’s case gave me some cred with some of the faculty. She was popular, and colleagues by now knew we were an item. Perhaps they felt sorry for us, who knows. But after a few weeks of constant agitation, some began to commit themselves and, at a minimum, sign the petition we were circulating that demanded an independent study to determine the extent of the health hazards, if any.
The student leadership was made up of highly motivated and politicized young people, but we all knew that the students in general were going to be a hard sell. If professors were oblivious or indifferent, how much more would students be? I contacted the student leaders living in Baná, and they managed to get hundreds of signatures on the petition from people in the community. They promised a good turnout from young people in the area for the scheduled rallies.
Foley showed up to the first faculty meeting, a good turnout considering that it was July. I was so tired and at times felt myself nodding out as others spoke. Caring for Marisol at home was exhausting, and the last week of remedial classes was draining. Just trying to make the monotonous exercises engaging and fun every day was in itself tedious and demanding, but in the final week we also had to test the students and assess the progress of the entire group. But I was proud at the turnout for the first meeting. People were becoming alarmed, especially those who had no idea of the clean-up or about the radioactive material buried so close to where they worked. The apparent cover-up was what riled people the most, and their responses addressed that, directly and bitterly. No one wants to feel used and lied to.
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.”