Chapter 47
The house was packed with people. Once again, relatives drove in from all over the island to join the Ruíz-Sanchez festivities. Only instead of celebrating my arrival, they were celebrating that of my parents.
After three days of worry-induced stomachaches, I told Vince the truth. He didn’t take it nearly as hard as I did. Hearing it from me took away some of the shock factor. Apparently, I was a better messenger than Ricardo, the drunken barfly. Plus,Vince said he had always noticed the way that our uncles treated our grandfather, and that he had assumed our father didn’t grow up in a very happy home—happy children visit their parents more than three times a year, especially when they live less than an hour away. We agreed that our Uncles Diego and Roberto knew the truth, but neither of us were certain about the real question: did our father?
I looked at my watch.We’d find out soon. My “tia” would be here any minute.
While I realized Teresa was born into our family—just like I was—and that she had done nothing wrong, I still had a hard time calling her my aunt. It was too weird. I preferred “tia,” it was at least foreign and removed—just like her.
“So, what are you going to say to this chick?” Lilly asked, as she brushed her hair.
I rolled my head toward her and shrugged. I had been getting ready for more than thirty minutes and I hadn’t gotten farther than putting the clothes on my back. My head was on overload and my body in slow-mo.
“What? Was I not supposed to ask? I mean, it’s the obvious question,” she noted, as she pulled her red hair into a high ponytail.
“I have no idea what I’m gonna say,” I muttered, as I slipped my feet into a pair of flip-flops. “Technically, I’ve already spoken to her. The ice is broken. I insulted her child. But now, she knows that I know. And my father’s going to be here and he has no idea . . .”
“So you’re just gonna ambush your dad? Is that the plan?”
The girl was blunt.
I sighed and tossed my head back.
“I don’t know yet. I couldn’t tell him over the phone. How do you have that conversation? ‘Hi, Dad, it’s Mariana. I met your long-lost bastard sister. Want to check her out while you’re here?’ I just didn’t see that playing out well.”
I rubbed my temples. My head had been pounding for days now. I was exhausted.
“Well, maybe you should just let him meet her. Maybe he’ll figure it out for himself, like twins separated at birth. . . .”
“Yeah, I doubt it.”
“You never know.” Lilly sat on her bed and fastened the straps of her strappy heels. “Anyway, when’s Alex getting here?”
“Any minute.”
Alex had been glued to my hip for the past three days, trying to make up for lost time. He was already starting to talk about not wanting me to leave, even though I still had another week left (of course, I’d be with my parents, but still). I liked that he was going to miss me, because I knew I’d miss him, too. Part of me wanted to take him with me.
“Yeah, well you should have heard the riot act Alex read me the other day. He went all psycho over what I did.”
“Can you blame him?”
“Nah, not really,” she conceded, then took a long pause, staring at her feet. “You know, I never really like-liked him, right?”
I said nothing; in fact, I held my breath. Lilly and I had let our entire situation drop given the severity of my current family problems. I needed her more than I needed to deal with her issues surrounding Alex. I really didn’t want to disturb that balance.
“I just saw my friends falling all over you and . . .”
“Over me? Are you kidding?” I asked, snapping my head toward her.
“Mariana, they didn’t stop talking to you every moment you were around and—”
“You’re nuts! You are certifiably insane. Lilly, they are all in love with you!” I shouted, looking at her with amazement.
“No, they’re not!”
“Oh, my God! They practically trip over themselves to see who gets to stand closer to you or sit next to you.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is! If you could have seen the way they looked at you at your Quinceañera. Some of them actually had drool coming out of their mouths.”
“Oh, please.” She shook her head and a lull fell over the conversation. I sat on the bed beside her. “Look,” she said, “I never liked Alex in that way. But seeing how much he liked you, made me wonder why he never liked me that much. I mean, it’s not like I wanted him to, I just, I just wanted him to want to. It’s retarded. . . .”
“I know what you’re saying.” I nodded.
“It’s just, I have all these guy ‘friends,’ ” she said with a sarcastic tone. “And maybe they want to kiss me, or whatever, but that’s it. None of them want to be my boyfriend, or at least not like Alex wanted to be with you. For God’s sake, he was talking about moving to Philly after knowing you for, like, two weeks!”
“First off, he didn’t mean it that way. If he goes to college in the States, I’m sure it’ll have nothing to do with me. And second, you’re the one pushing these guys away. Lilly, they’re all about you, but you string them along and act too cool. How can any of these guys think that you really like him when there are fifty other guys waiting in the wings? You’re the reason you don’t have a boyfriend,” I stated plainly.
Lilly twisted her head toward me. “Wow, that was deep. Are you always that deep?”
“I watch a lot of Oprah.”
“I can tell, it’s paying off. Now if you could only apply that to your family situation . . .”
“I know, seriously.”
Just then, I heard a loud chatter of excitement erupt in the living room. The front door opened. Even on a tropical island, I could recognize the sound of my father’s footsteps.
“They’re here,” Lilly said, patting my leg. “You ready for this?”
“No.”
She laughed. “Well, you better get ready.”
Only I knew that was impossible.
I knew when I walked out into that living room, my parents were expecting to see the same girl who’d left Philadelphia for the summer. Only, ever since the Quinceañera, I felt like I had changed—the clothes, the food, the language, the boyfriend. I stood now in Lilly’s bedroom, in a tank top and denim skirt, depressed at the thought of leaving this world behind. My brother was right when he predicted on the plane that I’d be crying when I left. But now I had more tears to add to the mix. I had grown up more in this past week than I had the entire fifteen years preceding it.Yet, somehow I had to find a way to waltz into that living room and look at my parents the same way I had before all of this happened, before the truth came out.
How was I going to tell them?
My father had no idea he was about to learn that everything his parents ever told him, all the reasons they gave for leaving Puerto Rico, all the stories they told about wanting to give him and his brothers a better life, all of those were lies. He was going to learn that his father cheated on his mother, that he had an illegitimate sister to add to his conservative Catholic family. And he was going to hear all of this from me. I was so scared that he would resent me. I’d be ruining the perfect image of courage and sacrifice that he had of his family.
I didn’t know if I could do it, if I could take all of that away from him.
Lilly babbled in the background as my mind raced. I stared at my reflection in her full-length mirror.
Wouldn’t I want to know if I had another sibling out there? Wouldn’t I want to know who that person was? Shouldn’t that decision be mine to make?
My mind drifted to my grandparents, the way my grandfather looked while he was lying in the hospital with tubes coming out of his nose. He knew he was dying, we all did. And I cried by his bedside. So did my father. And here he had another child, a daughter (his only daughter), and she wasn’t there with him. Did he even think of her in those last moments? Did he regret abandoning her, not getting to know her? Did he think of telling us the truth?
He’d spent most of his life hiding this secret, both my grandparents did. They left their entire lives behind—their family, their friends, their culture—all to keep this hidden. And it worked. They took it to their graves.
Now, was it really up to me to unbury it?