Chapter 22
On the same day Nidia left Puerto Rico, Dulce woke early with a renewed sense of purpose. She was headed to the Lumineer Hotel in Old San Juan. It was only between ten and fifteen miles away. She could walk.
What was the protocol for leaving an emergency shelter? She didn’t really know anyone. But she wanted to let them know she was leaving. Most everyone was still sleeping, so she moved around quietly. She folded her pissy blanket. It seemed absurd to fold something so funky, but she couldn’t wash it, and it would be rude to just leave it in a rumpled mess.
The only other person who was awake was the man in the kitchen. He was fat and gray-haired, with several tattoos on his arms. He had a slew of cook stoves going, and had a large pot on each one with water to boil for oatmeal.
She asked him for a bottle of water.
“We’ll be distributing water with breakfast,” he told her.
“I’m not staying for breakfast,” she said. “I’m about to leave.”
“Where are you going, mija?” he asked. “It’s not safe out there.”
“I need to get to . . . my family,” she said.
“Why don’t you wait?” he asked. “Talk about it with the site supervisor when she gets up.”
“Everything takes too long,” she said. “By the time breakfast is over, I’ll have lost three hours. I need to go now if I’m gonna make it.”
He shook his head, but he handed her a pair of sixteen-ounce bottles of spring water, and a bag of peanuts, along with a bag of crackers.
“Watch out for downed electrical cables,” he warned. “Don’t touch any wires.”
“I’ll be careful,” Dulce promised.
“And if you reach any intersections that are clear, be sure to look very carefully, because the traffic signals are all out. There have been a lot of accidents.”
“I will,” she promised. “Thank you for your work.”
“But where are you going?” he asked.
“Old San Juan.”
He gave her directions to the Román Baldorioty de Castro Expressway. When she got closer, she would need to find out which of the bridges from Condado or Santurce were open into Old San Juan.
“Should I walk along the actual expressway?” Dulce asked.
“If the roads below are blocked, that’s probably a good idea,” he said. “You should walk on the left side, facing the traffic, so you can see cars coming. From what I hear, they cleared it just enough that vehicles can get through, but driving slow, you know? There’s not much traffic because the businesses and schools are all closed.”
“Can I get there today?” she asked.
“On foot?” he asked. “Not by daylight. And they don’t allow anyone out after curfew. You need to get to another emergency shelter to stop for the night. There’s one at another school about halfway along to Old San Juan.”
“How do I find it?” Dulce asked.
He gave her directions. Her landmark would be the Suárez Canal near the airport.
She thanked him again and began to walk out. She had only gotten a few steps when he told her to wait.
He disappeared into the kitchen, then came out with a battered umbrella that had once been white.
“To protect you from the sun,” he said.
She gave him a hug. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Just be careful out there,” he said.
* * *
The going was slow. She carefully made her way down the street to the expressway. The only clear part was the area she and the crew had cleared the day before.
She was careful to avoid the many hanging wires, as she picked her way around open water, fallen branches and trees, and so much of people’s lives, splayed and sodden on the ground. Family portraits, clothes, dishes, furniture, roofing materials. It was as if someone had poked holes in the roof of someone’s house and used it like a salt shaker, sprinkling their belongings indiscriminately onto the land, like a macabre seasoning.
It took her a half hour just to go a few blocks. At this rate, she’d never get to Old San Juan. She stood at the bottom of the expressway off-ramp and listened for cars. After a few minutes, she heard a single vehicle go by, the engine grumbling in a low gear. Slowly, she walked up the ramp, although it felt terribly wrong.
“Cuidado,” her mother had said every time she was near a street or road. Now she was walking on an expressway.
Like the streets, the expressway was covered with branches and fallen trees. On each side of the expressway, a narrow trail snaked through the debris, just wide enough for a single vehicle.
While keeping out of the way of the cars, she had to climb over the tree trunks, and some of the larger branches. At first, she kicked the smaller branches aside indiscriminately. But later, she began to throw them off onto the shoulder of the road. If she was walking that way anyway, she might as well help clear.
The umbrella was a godsend. Two of the ribs were broken, but it shaded her head, and that was what mattered. The day began to heat up, and by noon it was blazing. She had eaten the crackers for breakfast. Around one PM, she ate the peanuts. She drank the water slowly, and peed a couple of times on the side of the road.
She only saw a few people over the sides of the expressway, and they were all out of earshot. In the distance, she could occasionally see movement, either individuals or small groups. But mostly she saw wreckage everywhere, particularly trees.
By late afternoon, she had finally crossed over the canal near the airport. Through the chain-link fence, she could see much more activity. Only a few planes in sight, but crews with equipment were clearing the runways of branches and debris.
Her shadow was long across the quiet expressway by the time she had passed the gas station and found the right off-ramp. Her feet hurt in the too-big shoes. She was famished with all the exercise and so little food. She drank the last of the water and hoped there would be more at the rescue center.
* * *
She tried to follow the directions the man at the shelter had given her, but the streets between the expressway and the school were completely flooded. Dulce had to walk through waist-deep water.
“You okay?” a trio of teens called to her from an inflatable raft.
“I’m trying to get to the shelter,” she said.
“We’re going that way,” one of them said. “We can take you.” They were two boys and a girl. One of the boys’ arms was in a makeshift sling.
It took some maneuvering, but eventually, they got Dulce into the raft without tipping it over.
They exchanged news. Apparently, the US president was finally supposed to visit. Or so they had heard from a friend of a friend, who had heard it on the radio. None of them were particularly hopeful that he would do much to help.
By the time she appeared at the door of the high school, it was starting to get dark.
“We just finished dinner,” the woman said. “I’ll see if I can still get you a plate.”
“Finished?” Dulce asked. It was barely evening.
“We have to work with the sunlight,” the woman said.
Dulce recalled that the other school had skylights in both the kitchen and the auditorium. This one didn’t have much natural light, and it was far dimmer inside.
Instead of rice and beans, they had cooked a huge quantity of pasta with a thin tomato sauce. She ate the small portion and drank another twenty ounces of water. It gave her the illusion that her belly was fuller. Not exactly full, more of a sloshing feeling inside.
She waited in line for the bathroom for nearly an hour. After she used it, her belly felt empty again and she was totally exhausted. Her body craved meat or beans and rice or even nuts—some sort of protein. But the rations of the day had been exhausted.
One of the people staffing the place found a cot for her. By then it was nearly dark, and—despite her still-hungry belly—she crashed hard, her body totally drained from the heat and the hours of walking.
* * *
In the middle of the night, Dulce woke to hear an older man yelling.
“Her oxygen machine isn’t working!”
“The generator is still running,” Dulce heard a woman with an American accent. She must be one of the volunteers from the US.
“But the power isn’t working,” the man said, his voice increasingly panicked.
“Could it be the machine?” the woman’s voice asked.
“It’s practically new,” he said.
Suddenly, there was a flashlight beam bobbing. “Double check that the machine is on and the power supply is properly connected,” the woman said. “I’m going to check the extension cord.”
There was a second flicker of light, and Dulce could see a beam shining on a pair of extension cords, taped to the floor with perpendicular strips of tape, like a railroad track.
Other people were stirring awake. A child nearby started to whine.
“Everything’s okay,” the woman with the flashlight said. “Go back to sleep, everybody. We’re just fixing a little problem here.”
“It’s not a little problem,” the frantic man said, his voice loud and strained. “I’ve checked the machine, and the power supply. Everything’s fine on this end. But the power isn’t coming in.”
“Just hold on, sir, okay?”
“How am I supposed to hold on?” he demanded. “My wife needs oxygen or she could die.”
Several people stood up and offered to help.
“Please,” the woman said. “Go back to sleep. I just need to . . . excuse me . . .” she pushed past several people offering assistance.
Ahead, dimly illuminated in the periphery of the flashlight beam, a mother and her young son headed to the bathroom. The boy stumbled on his way in.
The woman with the flashlight turned the beam toward them. Dulce could see the torn tape and the kink in the extension cord.
“I found it!” the woman said. “Please, everyone, back to bed.”
She came over and knelt down near the bathroom door, shining the beam on the connection between two extension cords. She pressed them more closely together.
There was a sharp cry from the man. “It’s working!”
A few people applauded.
Soon, there was a young man kneeling next to the woman with the flashlight. He had a roll of tape and they were more firmly securing the cords.
* * *
Chicago.
The following morning, as Dulce was waking up, she kept hearing one word that didn’t belong: Chicago.
She sat up on her cot and saw people walking by with bottles of water. One woman had three bottles.
As she wandered over to the kitchen area, she kept hearing the word Chicago. At the food line, she saw a woman handing out bottles freely.
“We got water?” Dulce asked.
“From Chicago,” the woman said. “It’s a miracle.”
As Dulce drank, the woman told her the whole story. For some reason, FEMA and the US government supplies weren’t getting delivered. But some Puerto Ricans in Chicago had raised a ton of money and sent a plane load of supplies on a United Airlines flight they’d secured.
Dulce smiled. Today was going to be a good day, she decided. The day would end with her getting safely to the Lumineer Hotel. Because they day had begun with her drinking miracle water from Chicago.
* * *
She waited until after breakfast to head out, as she wanted to be sure she had as much food as possible. Beside her was a woman trying to get her kids to eat more slowly.
“Not so fast,” she said. “You’ll give yourselves a stomach ache.”
At the next table over, the man from the middle of the night was retelling the story of his wife’s oxygen crisis. His voice was jovial now, and he made fun of his earlier panic, his tablemates laughing along.
* * *
After breakfast, there was no one to bid goodbye before she headed out with a bag of skittles in the tiny pocket of her shorts. She had a thirty-two-ounce bottle of filtered water in one hand and the battered umbrella in the other.
Her feet hurt. She was developing blisters. She regretted having given herself that pedicure. Right about now, she needed all the tough skin she could get.
She sat down on the cement and pulled the rags out from the toes of the shoes and tied them around her feet like makeshift socks. It helped with the blisters, but now the shoes were too big and kept flopping and falling off.
She grabbed a branch and pulled off several leaves, stuffing them in the front of the shoes. They wouldn’t last more than a day, but if there was anything in abundance right now, it was fallen branches and foliage.
She tried walking on the expressway, but there was a bit more traffic on this section, and she almost got hit.
She doubled back and walked along the road for a while, but then she got to a place that was flooded and impassable. She had to retrace her steps, but then she got lost.
She would need to ask someone. As she got further into a residential area, there was more noise. The occasional engine that might be a car or more likely a scooter or motorcycle, which could cut through the smaller open spaces on the roads.
She passed a crew that was working on one of the major roads to remove trees and branches. A truck with chains was attempting to pull a huge tree out of the road. Another man had a chainsaw, and was chopping up trunks and large branches, while a crew of others chopped with machetes and cleared the small pieces away.
There were about a dozen of them, and when she walked by with the bottle of water, they all asked for a drink. She poured it carefully into each of their mouths. By the time they had all had a mouthful, the bottle was only a quarter full.
She asked them how she could get to Old San Juan. They said that the road was impassable, and told here where to cross over the expressway to get on the side of the airport. All the supplies were coming in that way, so the clearest roads led in and out of there.
* * *
Two hours later, as Dulce passed the airport, she could see a spot where a massive tree had fallen on the chain link fence. It was leaning down at a forty-five-degree angle. Finally, a fallen tree that might actually work in her favor.
Dulce looked around the part of the airport she could see. Nothing going on at this end, but the work crew had definitely said that the relief supplies were coming in through the San Juan airport. If she showed up here, she would eventually be able to find the area where they had the food and water they were distributing.
At the top of the fencing was barbed wire, but the fallen tree was taller than the fence, so she had a safe path to scale the tree and then climb down the branches that led to the ground.
At the top of the tree, she looked around. She had entered on the far end of the airport from the terminals, and there was no one around here, but she saw some activity in the distance. She carefully climbed down from the tree. The ground was covered with debris like the rest of the island, but the wide, treeless tarmac meant that there were far fewer branches, foliage, and fallen trunks than she had seen most places.
But the lack of trees also meant lack of shade. She crossed over to the closed hangar buildings, her arm fatigued from holding up the broken umbrella.
* * *
By the time she had crossed to the busier side of the airport, she was especially exhausted, and slightly faint. So when the truck being loaded full of dead bodies first came into view, she thought she was seeing things. Dulce blinked and rubbed her eyes.
She was walking in between two hangar buildings. There was a narrow strip of shade back here, out of view of the road.
Two men were pulling a tarp off the back of a flatbed truck. The men reached in to take out the cargo. At first she thought they were long sacks of food. Maybe rice or beans, but then an arm swung down from one of the sacks.
Her eyes were vaguely focused in the distance. And what had been an ordinary, daily sight—men unloading a truck—became something surreal, macabre. Dulce shrank back toward the hangar, and stared. The men were loading corpses from the flatbed into a much larger truck.
Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. As Dulce walked toward the apparition, she expected it would somehow dissipate, but instead it became clearer.
Yes.
Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. They were definitely loading bodies. By this time, she was close enough to see which looked thicker, thinner, male, female.
They were loading into a larger truck that was connected to a rumbling generator. Was the big truck refrigerated?
Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.
She had counted thirty-five before she was stopped by a US soldier, who pushed a hand hard in her chest.
“This is a secured area. No civilians allowed,” he barked in English.
“I—” Dulce said. “I heard I could get supplies here.” She looked around. “Water or maybe some food.”
“You were misinformed,” he snapped.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ll leave right away.”
“How did you even get in?” he asked.
“There’s a fallen tree on the fence, maybe a mile back,” she said.
He shook his head. “Not for long. And you won’t be leaving the same way you came in,” he said. “You’ll have a military escort out of here.”
“I came from a shelter,” Dulce said. “I don’t exactly know the way back.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Look, I’m not fucking stupid. You’re obviously a journalist.”
Dulce dropped her eyes. “Okay, you caught me,” she said, thinking quickly. “I’m staying at the Lumineer Hotel.”
* * *
For several hours, she sat on a bench outside one of the empty hangars. She couldn’t see much of what was happening, but at least it was in the shade.
“Excuse me,” she said to the man who had stopped her. “Can I get a bottle of water, please?”
“I told you,” he said. “This isn’t a distribution center.”
“Come on,” another military guy said. “The last thing we need is some journalist dying of heat exhaustion on our watch.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” said the man who had stopped her. “You deal with it.”
The good cop military guy came over with a bottle of water.
“Am I being detained?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Dulce drank the water as her anxiety rose. She didn’t see anyone for another hour or so.
Then one of the trucks moved, and she had a better view of what was going on around her. She saw military trucks, a few large semis with giant shipping containers on them, and lots of military personnel sort of standing around.
Occasionally, she’d hear their laughter or playful shouts.
What the hell were they doing so leisurely?
Another truck pulled up and blocked her view, and the driver and passenger got out. She called to them, but they ignored her.
The spot where they had her sitting was between the hangar and several trucks. Had they forgotten about her? Should she could crawl out underneath one of the trucks? She was thinking about it.
Finally, the bad cop came within earshot.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Am I being detained?”
“Not that I know of,” he said with a sneer. “Should we be detaining you? Are you confessing something?”
“No,” Dulce said quickly. “But you said you needed to escort me out of the airport, and I’ve been waiting for hours.”
“Oh I’m sorry,” he said, his tone saturated with contempt. “Is your military escort moving slowly? Your transportation is such a high priority in this total disaster.”
Dulce felt like someone was blowing up a balloon inside her chest. She wanted to defend herself, to say she had never asked for any fucking escort, but she kept quiet.
“Well?” he asked, baiting her.
Dulce just blinked up at him.
He turned and stalked away. “Fucking entitled Puerto Ricans,” he muttered quite audibly.
* * *
Half an hour later, the good cop came by.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Do you have any idea when I can leave? I never asked for an escort out. I’m glad to leave anytime.”
“You need an escort for safety issues,” he said. “And we don’t have extra personnel or vehicles to send. But a patrol goes out after curfew. I assume they’ll send you along with them.”
Dulce nodded. “Thank you so much.” The last thing she wanted was to be stuck on a makeshift military base after dark.
* * *
Around seven PM, the good cop came back and walked her across the dark tarmac to a waiting jeep. The driver was a pale military guy with a sour expression. Dulce tensed at the sight of him. There was no record of her in their custody. He could take her anywhere. Do anything to her. These US military guys would rape the women in their own units, let alone the random Dominican chicks they caught in the wrong places.
She was about to say something to the good cop, but what? Make him take her name? Demand some kind of reassurance of safe passage? But as she climbed into the back of the jeep, she saw that the driver’s partner was a woman. She thanked the good cop and her new escorts and they headed out.
* * *
From what she could see in the headlight beams, they drove through a ruined city.
At one point, she realized where she was, riding along Doctor Ashford Avenue. They drove slowly, because the traffic signals were all out, passing the wrecked upscale bars where she had gone, the ravaged Cartier jewelers across from the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. This road in the heart of the neighborhood had been her playground for so many weeks. Most of it was shut down. So many buildings damaged.
At one intersection, they stopped to let several military trucks pass along the cross street. In the jeep’s headlights, Dulce could see one of the dress boutiques she had visited with Phillip. The display window was smashed now, the plywood hanging askew. The empty mannequin inside was naked and fallen, one leg laying beside her on the waterlogged boutique floor.
* * *
Two hours later, the jeep pulled up in front of the Lumineer in Old San Juan. She walked carefully across the cobalt blue bricks to the hotel’s front door. Inside, the lobby was illuminated with utility lamps clamped precariously on to various fixtures. Reporters were charging their phones and camera equipment in a bay of outlets, and all the cords were connected to a rattling generator.
The lobby was large, but everyone who was talking on a cell was clustered over at one end where, presumably, the signal was better.
Dulce stepped forward to plug in her phone.
“Sorry, this is for press only,” the woman said in English. “Do you have credentials?”
“I’m not—” Dulce began.
“Are you an interview subject?” the woman asked. “Are you supposed to be meeting someone?”
“Zavier Mendoza,” Dulce said, recalling his last name from his business card. “From El Planeta.”
“I know him,” she said. “El Planeta? He’s here freelancing with the New York Times. But he’s out in the field. You can wait here, but the outlets are only for reporters.”
Dulce sat down on one of the plush sofas on the no-signal side of the room. She had stayed at the Lumineer with one of her dates. Will? Gil? He was a businessman from the Midwest.
“Yulin-Cruz is about to speak,” one reporter yelled, and everyone seemed to jump up to go out to see the mayor of San Juan.
Several of them left half-eaten plates of food.
Dulce walked over and discreetly consolidated beans, rice, and bread into a single plate. Then she drew herself back into the shadows to eat it. The beans were cold. The rice was hard. The bread was soggy. And it was the best food she’d ever tasted.
* * *
The next thing she knew, someone was tapping her shoulder and calling her name. She stirred and felt the velvet sofa under her cheek. She blinked her eyes open to see Zavier looking down at her.
“Dulce,” he said, his face blazing with a grin. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Slowly, she sat up and he pulled her into a hug. She let herself sink into his chest. He was slender, but solid, and she could feel the power of his care for her. She felt a lump in her throat, but wouldn’t let herself cry.
“I’m fine,” she said in Spanish. “I’m just ready to get out of here. To get back to New York as soon as I can.”
“It’s easier for press to get in and out,” he said. “If you want to assist me for a few days, we’ll probably be able to get you out.”
“Of course,” Dulce said. “How can I help?”
“Tomorrow, you can join me in going around doing interviews,” Zavier said. “But right now, I need to go file a story.”
“Okay,” Dulce said. “Uh, should I meet you here in the morning?”
“Yeah,” Zavier said. “Where are you staying?”
“Well, uh,” Dulce began. “I was staying in a shelter—”
“Oh shit,” Zavier said. “I wasn’t thinking. Did you—”
“My place got flooded,” Dulce said. “I lost all my stuff. I can’t go back.”
“Of course,” Zavier said. “You can stay with us.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, we have a suite. Sort of sleeping in shifts, but mostly people are out in the field twenty-four seven. I’ve been going for three days straight—just napping on the fly—so I’m definitely crashing tonight, but there’s plenty of room for you. Come on, you can rest while I file this story.”
“I haven’t had any access to news beyond the grapevine,” she said. “How bad is it?”
“Most of the island still has no power or running water,” Zavier said. “The president finally made a visit yesterday. It was a total circus around here.”
“Sorry not sorry I missed it,” Dulce said.
Zavier’s attention was caught by a tall, black man with graying hair who walked in the front door.
“There’s our medic,” he said. “Do you need to get checked out for anything?”
“I’m fine,” Dulce said.
“It’s free,” Zavier said. “We call him Obamacare because he actually looks like Obama.”
Dulce laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with me that a night of sleep won’t fix.”
“What am I thinking?” Zavier said. “You must be exhausted. Before we go up, are you sure you’re not hungry? This is it for food. No room service.”
“What?” Dulce asked in mock outrage. “No room service? What kind of dump is this?” She spun on her heel as if she were going to storm out.
“Please señora,” Zavier said. “I assure you, our five-to-a-room accommodations are very cozy.”
Dulce scoffed. “Señor, I’m used to sleeping one hundred to a room. Plus, I hear you don’t have any cots or even floor blankets.”
“No, señora, but we do have mattresses,” he said.
“Probably with the dreaded box springs,” she said.
“I’m afraid so,” he said.
“I suppose I’ll have to accept that the García family has come down in the world,” she said.
“Are you Dulce García of the Washington Heights Garcías?” he asked in mock admiration.
“Yes, but don’t tell your society columnist,” she said. “I’m slumming it.”
He laughed and put on a headlamp. “Let me show you to your room, señora.”
The two of them took the stairs up to the third floor.
Inside the room, he sat down at the small desk and turned on a camping lantern.
“Make yourself at home. You want to take a shower? It’s gotta be short. Five minutes. No hot water.”
“That sounds amazing,” Dulce said. “Do you, maybe have a pair of sweats I could borrow or something?”
He looked from her body to his. He had broad shoulders, but a slender build overall. His shirts wouldn’t fit over her full bust, and his pants certainly wouldn’t fit over her hips and ass.
“You know,” he said. “I’m gonna raid my boy’s clothes. I think they’ll fit better.”
He gave her a t-shirt that said EL BOOGIE DOWN and a pair of clean boxers that would fit a much larger man.
Dulce thanked him and disappeared into the bathroom.
From the light of the lantern in the main room, she could see the bathroom would only be illuminated by a seven-day candle, sitting on the sink, which she lit.
She closed the door and turned on the shower. The water was lukewarm, and she stepped in fully clothed.
Grabbing the liquid soap, she lathered over her clothes, then peeled them off and rinsed them, one by one, washing her underwear last. Then she washed her hair and leaned back, rinsing her hair and letting the spray run over her face.
By the time she turned off the water, it had been about six minutes. She wrung out her hair and clothes, and hung them on the shower rod, then dried off and put on the clean clothes.
When she came out, Zavier was on the computer at the desk and didn’t even look up.
When she lay down on the bed, the press of the soft, dry mattress against her back was so heavenly, that sleep washed over her like a sudden wave.