Chapter 38
Just like when we’d first arrived, the seats at the dining table were reserved for the guests of honor. I was seated in my usual high-back wooden chair with the yellow cushion, with Alex on one side and Vince on the other (he and my uncle got back from the bar about five minutes before dinner, with alcohol radiating from their pores). Lilly was seated across from me, flanked with her parents on one side and her grandparents on the other.
Everyone else ate either with their plate poised on their lap or seated at the kitchen table. From the way people kept approaching Alex and me, one could have thought we were the bride and groom at our wedding reception. The whole soirée seemed like a lot of trouble for nothing. My aunt had cooked enough food to feed half the island and before dinner had started, a group of relatives pushed back the furniture in the living room, turning the area into an impromptu dance floor. Now, with drinks in hand, they swiveled their hips and shuffled their feet like they were in the Quinceañera tent. That was something I would never, ever, see in my parents’ house; my mom would be too worried about damaging her hardwood floors.
“Mariana, this is the most I’ve ever seen you eat,” Vince whispered.
My plate was filled with Spanish rice, chicken and sweet plantains, and I had a bowl of asopao. There was an entire pig on the table that I refused to look at, which my aunt and uncle found hysterical. I had nothing against eating meat, but seeing the “meat” in its animal form was a bit much. It was like picking a lobster out of a tank. It was one thing to have a lobster tail placed before you—it was dead already, you couldn’t stop that—but it was quite another to be responsible for ordering the murder of that specific lobster.
“Does this mean that Mom won’t have to force you to eat roast beef when we get home?” Vince teased, raising his eyebrows.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You’re not a big eater?” Alex asked.
“I eat enough.”
“Oh, please! My grandmother’s been making you a plain chicken breast almost every night since you got here!” Lilly mocked from across the table.
“That’s not entirely true,” I mumbled. I had begun to expand my taste buds in recent days. “I ate at your Quinceañera.”
“Yeah, one night,” Lilly huffed. “Other than that, you complain about how the food’s so different here. Because back in Spring Mills . . .” Lilly mimicked in a high-pitched tone, mocking my voice.
“I don’t sound like that.”
“Sure you do,” said Vince, joining the fun.
“Whatever, Vi-cen-tay,” I snipped.
“Yup, that’s my name.”
“Please, you’re such a poser.”
“I am not! Just because I like it here—”
“I like it here!” I interjected.
It was the first time I had said it out loud. Sometime during the past few weeks, my mood had changed. Sure, I wasn’t about to give up my cell phone, my queen-size bed or my unlimited spending cash any time soon, but even without all that stuff, this life had begun to fit. I now could see myself here, with these people, in this culture—in my culture.
“Sure you like it here now.” Vince stared directly at Alex as he said that.
“Don’t start,Vince,” I spat under my breath.
Vince and I fought all the time. It wasn’t something I was ashamed of, but it also wasn’t something I wanted to share with a guy I was still trying to impress. If I threw verbal jabs at my brother, Alex could think I was mean or immature.
“Sorry about that,” I whispered to Alex.
“It’s okay, I fight with my sisters, too,” he replied, as he lifted a plantain to his mouth.
“You have sisters?”
“Three of them, all younger.”
“Wow, that’s gotta make the bathroom situation interesting.”
Alex chuckled. “Well, my dad and I are outnumbered. We’re lucky if we can pee in the morning.” His dimples flashed as he took another bite of his food. “So how much longer are you gonna be here?”
“Three and a half weeks.”
“You must miss home,” he said plainly.
“I do, but I’m getting used to it here,” I answered, my eyes smiling.
“Yeah right!” Lilly shouted.“I seem to remember you being a mess not that long ago because you missed your friend’s party.”
“She has a point,”Vince added.
I was getting the distinct impression that Lilly was angry with me. It’s not like she was shooting me snotty looks or cursing me out. It was more like up until dinner she was utterly avoiding me. Even after Alex arrived, she didn’t talk to either of us. And since we’d started eating, she had done nothing but subtly attack the tiniest comments I made. She was undermining me in a way that only a girl could, in a way Emily or Madison would, only I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to upset her.
“Lilly, of course I’m homesick. I’ve never been this far from home before.”
“That’s understandable.” Alex reached his hand under the table and squeezed my thigh. Blood rushed to my cheeks and I saw Lilly’s gaze instantly follow to where Alex’s hand was concealed. She rolled her eyes.
I shrugged my shoulders as if to ask, “What?” But she ignored me.
“If I moved to the East Coast, I’m sure I’d miss home too,” Alex said.
“Do you wanna move?” I asked, slightly shocked
I couldn’t comprehend how people had the strength to move so far away. If my parents moved from Philly to Jersey, I’d throw a fit. But my dad had done it and so did a lot of Alex’s relatives, so I guess the idea didn’t seem that foreign to him.
“I’ve thought about going to college there after I graduate next year. My goal is to be the first in my family to get a degree.”
“My dad was the first in our family to go to college. Well, actually his brothers went to college first, but he was still the first generation.”
“It’s weird that your dad grew up here, and now here you are. You’re so different. Not in a bad way, but for being only one generation removed, you’re very . . . American.” He looked at his plate as he said that.
He was right. And I had thought about it a lot since I’d come to Puerto Rico. This is where my dad was from—this exotic, tropical, Spanish-speaking mountain town. And now he’s a suit-wearing corporate executive in a major U.S. city living in a fancy suburb and speaking without a hint of an accent. I wondered if he missed home, or if he’d stopped considering this his home a long time ago. If I left Spring Mills, would I eventually stop feeling connected to it? That was hard to imagine, but so was spending the rest of my life speaking a different language. My dad did it. And because he did, I am who I am. My grandparents’ decision to take that leap across the ocean to seek a better life radically changed the future for the rest of us. If they had made a different choice, a safer choice, I wouldn’t be here or, at the very least, I wouldn’t be who I am. I could be Lilly, or some variation of her, in some alternate reality where I called Utuado my home.
“It’s strange,” I answered, trying to figure out a way to voice what I was thinking. “To think that my dad lived here. He’s changed so much. Like you said, not in a bad way, but in a way that’s very different from this place.”
“Does he talk about Utuado a lot?” Alex had completely stopped eating and from the level of his intensity, I sensed he was serious about traveling to the States. He wasn’t asking me for information about my father, he was asking to get a picture of what his life could be like if he followed my dad’s example.
“No, never,” I answered honestly.
“Does he speak Spanish?”
“Not since my grandparents died. But he listens to Spanish music.”
“I’m sorry about your grandparents.”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t know your grandparents died,” Lilly stated softly. Apparently she had been listening to our conversation.
She turned her head toward my Uncle Miguel, who from the looks of it had cleared his plate long ago. He was leaning back on the hind legs of his chair drinking a dark brown liquid from a short glass. Lilly rattled off in Spanish to her grandfather, and I could make out that she was inquiring about my “abue-los,” or grandparents. Uncle Miguel looked at me before he responded and then uttered something I didn’t understand.
“What did he say?” I asked after she finished her conversation.
“Nothing, just that he knew your grandfather had died. Your dad wrote them after the funeral.”
“After the funeral? Wait. Uncle Miguel wasn’t invited to his own brother’s funeral?” I asked, my jaw falling.Vince dropped his fork.
“No, it doesn’t sound like it,” Lilly said, shaking her head.
My parents, my mother especially, thrived on etiquette. She stressed over which name came first when addressing a married couple on the outer envelope of an invitation. She would never forget to invite my grandfather’s brother to his funeral. That had to be a mistake.
I turned to Vince, my eyebrows crumpled as if to ask, “Did you know anything about this?” Vince shook his head, “no.”
“I’m sure it was nothing,” Alex stated. “Probably just a mix-up.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I shook my head in wonderment.
“So, colleges. Where do you want to go?” Alex asked, changing the subject. “Because I hear all the good schools are in the Northeast. That’s where you’re from, verdad?”
“Sí,” I stated, my Spanish squeaking through as my mind still grappled with the previous conversation.
“The University of Pennsylvania—that’s in Philadelphia?”
“Yeah, but I doubt I’ll go there. It’s too close to home.”
“Why, Alex? You thinking of moving closer to Mariana?” Lilly butted in, her tone biting.
“No, I was just trying to get a sense of what things are like there,” he mumbled.
“Sure you are.”
“Do you want to go to school in the States?” I asked Lilly.
“Maybe. But I won’t just be following some guy,” she choked, staring at Alex.
I let the innuendo drop. I didn’t want to fight with Lilly over nothing. And for some reason, I was no longer in a very good mood.