Then his mother was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. She had always wanted to go to Hawaii, to see the sunrise on Haleakalā, so he took time off to take her. They woke in the middle of the night to drive up the winding road to the top of the volcano where it was as dark and cold as outer space, so high up that clouds embraced them with their cold mist. When the sun rose, revealing the planet around them to be a terrifyingly vast and beautiful space, he looked over and saw his mother was crying. They drove down the volcano in silence, against the bright of the morning. When Matteo saw a pay phone, he pulled over, called his office, and told them that he quit. He moved out of the loft, stopped DJ’ing the parties, and cared for his mother until she died. And then, knowing no other family other than the people on his block, decided to stay.
Olga was touched. And enchanted. As a kid, she’d been embarrassed by the complexity of her family story. The nuance required to understand it escaped most people. By the time she hit high school she felt exhausted of explaining it, and simply resigned herself to not revisiting the past with strangers. But Matteo’s life trajectory, and his openness about it, made her feel a glimmer of possibility that this time she might be understood.
OPEN YOUR EYES
It was her turn.
“By the time I left for college,” Olga started, “Papi was already dead, so he had no opinion, and my mom was gone, so she didn’t have too much say in the matter, but no, she wasn’t happy about me going to that school. Far too bougie for her tastes.”
Sylvia had just poured them their third round of rum. Outside, the sky had turned to twilight and the domino players had moved their game to a back table. Matteo had very carefully avoided asking her any more direct questions, but she felt relaxed and strangely eager to talk about an aspect of her life that rarely saw the light of day.
“I was twelve, almost thirteen when she left us. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say when she didn’t come back, because the truth is, my mom was in and out for as long as I could remember. They joined the Young Lords together, my parents. They had already been together for a minute by then, already activists. My Papi was one of the dudes who took over Brooklyn College. So, joining the Lords was an extension of what they were both already committed to. But my dad was older. He’d already gone to Vietnam. I think by the time the Lords collapsed, he was just tired. Depleted. They had my brother and then me, and he was into being a dad. Wanted to have a normal life. Or normal-ish.
“My mom though? I think she got this early taste of being part of change and couldn’t shake it. She tried teaching, tried to ‘settle down,’ but she was always getting called somewhere—Latin America, South Africa. Always off to a fight; always on the road. They grew apart, he moved out. And then one day she just didn’t come back.”
“Where’d she go? Your mom, I mean,” Matteo asked.
Olga shrugged. “We don’t really know.… Actually, you seem to know your Puerto Rican history. Have you heard of Los Macheteros?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“Let’s just say that they were a group very committed to a free Puerto Rico. More pre-Mecca Malcolm than Martin, if you get my drift?”
“Ahhh,” Matteo said.
“Well, it seems for a time she was in P.R. with them. Then, we’d heard she was in Cuba. My brother, he’s got a friend at the FBI who let him see her file a few years back. The last time someone had seen her she was in Mexico with the fucking Zapatistas. But that was years ago. The only person who probably knows her location with certainty is her best friend Karen, but she’d go to the grave before she shared that information.”
“Hold up,” Matteo now whispered, “are you saying your mother’s a fugitive?”
Olga laughed. “Damn, my mom has even got you whispering! ?Bienvenido a mi vida! She brings out the paranoia in all of us. I swear me and my brother literally have code names for her and shit.” She laughed again. “But seriously, is she a fugitive? I suspect my brother knows more, but honestly? I try not to ask too many questions.”
“Plausible deniability, and all.”
“Exactly!” Olga laughed.
“But you hear from her? You’ve talked to her?” Matteo asked.
“Hear from her? Hell yes. Talk to her? Not quite. She sends these letters. She’s always managed to keep tabs on us, somehow always knows what we’re up to, but we know nothing about her. It’s creepy, frankly. And frustrating. There are ‘Brothers and Sisters in the movement’ that we either don’t or barely know, who know how to reach her. Who pass her letters along. Who’ve probably even seen her, but me and my brother haven’t. Not in over twenty-five years. Isn’t that fucking crazy?” She laughed even though it wasn’t funny.