“Mami, I never took a dime from the Selbys. That, I want you to know. But they did blackmail me; I did make votes—many votes—that advanced their interests, all to the harm of Sunset Park, to the harm of Brooklyn. But no one asked me to vote a particular way on PROMESA. That was the best choice on the table. The Selbys are interested in Puerto Rico, they like PROMESA, for obvious reasons … but more importantly—”
“So you admit it.”
“Don’t you even care what they were blackmailing me about?”
“Please tell me it’s about something more interesting than you fucking boys.”
Prieto stared at her, dumbstruck.
“It’s no secret, Prieto. I’ve known since you were six years old. A mother always knows.”
His entire body tensed itself as if bracing for a blow, but it had already landed. His pulse quickened and he could feel his hurt morphing into rage. Not towards her, but with himself. For having kept himself, and his life, in a box that he thought she would find pleasing for so long. He wanted to see what could puncture her. What, if anything, could elicit an emotion.
“I have HIV, Mami.”
“Weak, like your father,” she said, shaking her head. “I had always worried that you got this from him.…”
“Got what? Being gay? Disease? What the fuck are you talking about?”
She looked impatient with him. “No, Prieto, your weakness of character. Your inability to sublimate your personal satisfactions in order to live your full potential.”
He was consumed with a desire to shake her. To rattle her until something resembling a mother came out.
“‘Your full potential’！ Spare me the hypocrisy, Mami. Me. My sister. Fuck, even Tirso out there. The only ‘potential’ you care about is that which potentially benefits your agenda. You and Nick Selby are cut from the same fucking cloth. Everything you’ve built you’ve done by exploiting the needs of those around you.” He found himself so frustrated, he got the courage to ask what he never thought he could. “All these years away from us. You don’t even care about us as people. Why did you even have us?”
This question stopped Blanca in her tracks. Her posture slackened and she sat back down and looked him in the eye.
“Because your father wanted a family so badly, and at the time, I was very in love.”
“And then?”
“And then I realized love, that kind of love, would not change the world.”
Her words cut through his anger. He sighed and with his breath he released something he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in: a fantasy. Some mythic, emotional reunion with a version of his mother that had lived, tucked deep in his imagination.
“I knew no one would understand,” she continued. “But to be honest, no one’s ever really understood. My whole life I felt my skin was too small for what I knew was possible for me. I spent years fighting my way off of this narrow path laid out for me—as a woman, as a Boricua. And yet, despite all my efforts, there I was. In exactly the life I’d been so desperate to avoid. I felt I was choking in Brooklyn, choking trying to compress myself into that life. I knew what everyone would think. What kind of woman leaves her family? But to me, what I did was an act of love. For what I believed I could do here, in Puerto Rico, but also for myself.”
She was softer now, her voice gone quiet. A quiet covered them for a moment.
“Why did you want to see me?” he asked.
“To tell you to leave us alone; this island isn’t yours, we don’t need your help.”
“Who are you to say this isn’t mine? This is as much my homeland as it is yours.”
“Ay, but it isn’t. It’s barely my island, but what I didn’t give to you and your sister, I’ve given to mi orgullo. To this place. What we’re doing here? We’re creating a model for what will ultimately liberate Puerto Rico.”
“Communism,” Prieto stated.
“Hardly,” she scoffed. “I greatly admired Ojeda Ríos, but I quickly saw that he didn’t have enough strategy. In Cuba, for all my idealization of Castro as a younger woman, I found too much ego. Too much hierarchy. No, it was when I traveled to the Zapatistas that I found our answer: a society led by community need. Unbeholden or dependent upon government, completely without hierarchy—”
“But they still have a leader. You are still a leader.”
“I provide creative direction. But this is what will finally liberate Puerto Rico.”