Amor and Summer Secrets

By the time I emerged from the bathroom, Vince’s eyes looked like he was on a mission from God. The minute he saw me, he rapidly lifted his duffle bag from the white tiled floor and spun around with determination.

“The baggage claim is this way.” He pointed to a sign clearly translated in English. “Alonzo should be there by now. At least that’s what Dad said.”

Alonzo Santiago was our father’s first cousin, which I’m pretty sure made him our second cousin. We actually met him once twelve years ago when he vacationed on the East Coast. My family took him to the Jersey shore, thinking that since he was from the islands, he must be a big fan of beaches. However, the minute the native Puerto Rican dipped his big toe in our ice-cold Atlantic waters, he ran screaming back to his towel. According to my mother, Alonzo spent the rest of the day asking my father, in Spanish, exactly what was appealing about soaking yourself in a murky freezing ocean and why in the world so many people were there. If the day was like any other day at the shore, I’m guessing that every inch of coastline was covered with a beach chair, towel or umbrella.

However, I barely remember him. I was only four years old at the time. Dad showed us pictures of the visit a few days ago. I still wasn’t speaking to my father, so I couldn’t voice my initial reaction, which was that Alonzo looked a lot more Puerto Rican than my father. Alonzo appeared young in the photos, in his twenties at most, with tan skin, black hair and black bushy eyebrows. Being as though he was the only relative currently in Puerto Rico who had actually previously met me and my brother, it was determined that he would greet us at the airport. Of course, he hadn’t seen us in more than a decade, so I had no idea how the man was going to pick us out of a crowd.

I struggled to keep up with my brother as he sped through the airport. For a kid who had never left the States and had very limited exposure to airports (his only other flights were our family vacations to Disney World), he seemed to be developing a rather rapid sense of direction.

I, on the other hand, did not share his traveler’s instincts. The entire airport looked like a Sudoku puzzle. Everything from the people to the shops to the vending machines to the never-ending maze of corridors seemed amazing. It just reinforced my feeling that I didn’t belong. If I had traveled alone, I was pretty sure that I’d be wandering around aimlessly for hours mumbling to myself and sobbing quietly.

Once we located the baggage claim, it took another thirty minutes for our luggage to come down the belt (so glad we rushed). We headed through the exit onto the sidewalk where passengers were inevitably greeted by friends, relatives, chauffeurs or no one.

“You realize we don’t even know what this ‘Alonzo’ person looks like, right?” I pointed out as I dragged my black rolling suitcase (which was almost as tall as I was) and lugged the bags on my throbbing shoulders. I was sweating under my terry cloth clothes and the smack of humidity from the tropical air wasn’t helping.

“Well, if he hasn’t changed at all in the past twelve years, then I think I know what he looks like,” Vince said.

We stared at the hordes of strangers chatting in Spanish. Not a single face looked familiar.

“How the heck are we going to find him?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

Out of desperation, I scanned the names the chauffeurs had scribbled on their white cardboard signs: Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Smith. My gaze slid from sign to sign until I finally clapped eyes with my own name: Mariana and Vincent Ruíz.

“There! Over there!” I yelled, pointing at a fair-skinned man with white hair dressed in green plaid shorts and a white golf shirt.

“They sent a driver?”Vince asked as he held my arm and guided me through the crowds.

A few paces out, the man realized we were headed straight for him and smiled. “Mariana? Vicente?” he asked.

I barely understood the pronunciation of my own name. He called me, “MARI-AAAHNA.” And my brother went from being Vince to “VICENTAY.”We had been on the island for about an hour and already my sense of self was being stripped.

“We’re looking for Alonzo,” Vince stated cautiously, glaring sideways at the man.

“Sí. Sí. Alonzo,” he said, patting his chest.

In a matter of seconds, the youthful dark-haired Latino I remembered from photos became a white-haired golfer who looked more British than he did Puerto Rican. I could only imagine how different we must look to him—we had both grown at least two feet since he last saw us.

Alonzo quickly grabbed the bags off my shoulders, giving me a sense of relief I hadn’t felt since before I was ordered to take this trip, and led us toward his car. Walking behind him, pulling my gigantic suitcase, I realized just how tight his plaid shorts were. They were practically glued to his bony butt (not that I was looking, well not like that). I just wasn’t sure if he had outgrown his clothes or if tight male shorts were in fashion in Puerto Rico. Either way, it fit with the curly gray chest hair protruding from his unbuttoned collar.

Alonzo stopped at a dark green sedan, opened the trunk, and the three of us worked together to hoist our heavy bags inside.

“We’re going to Utuado, right?” I asked as I opened the rear passenger door and plopped down, exhausted.

Vince clicked his seat belt secure in the front seat (I gave him shotgun because I had no desire to be stuck entertaining this stranger for the duration of our ride), and Alonzo turned on the ignition.

“Sí. Utuado,” he said, reversing out of his parking space.

“How . . . far . . . away . . . is . . . it?” I asked, speaking slowly and loudly like he was hearing impaired. I wasn’t sure why I thought that would help.

“¿Como?” he asked, twisting his neck to glance back at me.

“Utuado, how far away is it?”

“Sí. Utuado,” he said.

“Uh, Mariana, I don’t think he speaks English,”Vince said softly, turning to give me his wide-eyed, this-person-is-crazy look.

“Okay, then.”

I thought for a few moments. I couldn’t seem to remember the word for “far” but I knew “close” was “cerca,” so I formulated the best Spanish translation I could manage.

“¿Dónde está Utuado? ¿Es cerca de aquí?”

Alonzo rapidly mumbled off a half dozen sentences in response that I couldn’t even begin to understand, but I was pretty sure I caught the phrase, “dos horas,” which meant two hours. I took that to mean we had a long car ride ahead of us.