Fact stymied Olga from answering; it was her mother’s brainwashed friends who told her about her brother. That didn’t change the truth of what they had said; the heartbreak of it. From the day she went into Manhattan to begin high school she’d been navigating worlds that felt foreign to her: her language, her values, her way of seeing people and the world always requiring explanation and context. Only in Brooklyn did she feel at home. Yet year after year she watched this place—as she knew it, as it had been for generations—erode away. Corroded by the very people who, just years before, turned their noses at crossing the bridge. How could she explain to Mabel that each new development, each elegant restaurant and pop-up shop made Olga feel that she herself was disappearing? That she had counted on her brother to be their defender—of Brooklyn, of their culture, of their family—and that he had sold them all out … for cash?
“He’s been taking bribes for votes,” Olga said. “Money from developers. The ones who did Bush Terminal.”
Mabel and Lola seemed taken aback by this, and Olga wondered if it was the money or who the money was from that they were more disturbed by. Certainly, for Olga, it was the money. She’d always envied Prieto’s disinterest in the material, a virtue that cast his character as superior to her own—one that concurrently loved and loathed money and the things it could buy. But, at the end of the day, Matteo was right, and Prieto was just like every other politician.
“Well then,” Lola said, after a pause, “we’re gonna ask about that shit, too! ?Basta ya!”
* * *
IN THE END, Tía Lola decided against inviting their entire family for this exercise, out of concern that people clam up and figuring that if she included Mabel, all the salient details would make the rounds to everyone else within a week anyway. So, Prieto, Lola, Olga, and Mabel gathered around the dining room table at Fifty-third Street with all of the letters their mother had ever sent. Not just to Prieto and Olga, but the ones she’d sent to Papi and Abuelita, too. Letters Olga had never before considered, but whose existence seemed so obvious when her tía laid the small stack of them on the table, and Mabel placed them all in chronological order.
It was a brutal exercise, wrestling with objective reality. To see how their mother had manipulated their lives and their feelings. To see how she attempted to subtly poison the way they saw their aunts and uncles, their cousins, their father, and even, in some instances, their grandmother. All the people who had loved them in her absence. All the people, Olga thought, who loved them without condition. But most of all, to see how their mother tried, year after year, to sow discord and resentments between them.
The letter that hurt the most, though, was one neither of them had seen before. The one their mother had written to their father when she left, the one in which she lamented the lead weight he had become. The one that accused him of having tricked her into thinking their life would be extraordinary only to turn them into “a stereotype of a Puerto Rican family that the younger you would have despised.” Their father had loved them so much, their father who was dope sick and a crackhead, yes, but who still had feelings. Whom she still had no trouble kicking, even when he was down. Their father, who was the reason they existed.
They cried for Papi that night, the two siblings.
When Olga first heard that Prieto had seen their mother in the flesh, had touched her, jealousy consumed her. Another occasion on which he felt the warmth of her sun. But, by the end of the night, depleted but clear headed, she vowed to never think of it again. Their grandmother had been right: she never had the mothering gene.
“The best thing we can do,” Olga said, “is to bury her, like we should have long ago, and move on.”
PRESSER
“I want to start by thanking you all for coming out here today—to my ’hood. To one of our city’s most beautiful parks, Sunset Park. And, most importantly, I want to thank my family—many of whom took the day off from work, which, y’all know, means I’ve got something important to talk about.
“I am here today primarily as a representative of the people of the United States, of New York, and, most specifically and most proudly, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The spot in Brooklyn where you can catch the best view of the city for a quarter of the rent. But I am also here as a man—a Latino man—” Prieto paused here for a breath.
Olga felt Tía Lola pinch her and she realized that she’d been whispering Prieto’s remarks under her breath; she had worked on this introduction with him for so long that she had it memorized. Despite hours of practice and his tremendous anxiety, she was amazed at how the words emanated from his mouth so naturally. It was fine, she thought, that he steady himself here now.