“Damn, son. That’s how it is?” Tony called out. “You got all these cousins up in here, and nobody takes us to shit! How you know I don’t want to go to one of your fancy parties in the Hamptons?”
“Tony,” Prieto called out, as he threw a steak on the fire, the flame jumping in the air. “Do you want to come out to the Hamptons to my fundraiser?”
“Fuck no, Prieto. You know I get carsick on long rides. It’s just nice to be asked, is all.”
NOVENAS
As was her ritual on every visit home, at a quarter to five Olga snuck into her brother’s room. She held her breath, and with eyes closed, slid open his closet door, dreading what she might not find there. She exhaled relief immediately, goose bumps rising on her forearms. She could feel its presence without needing to see it: her grandmother’s altar. She marveled at its sameness after all these years, an anchor of constancy amid a torrent of change. When Prieto took over the house, and in turn, Abuelita’s room, Olga’s only request was that he leave the altar. It lived atop a small milk crate covered with a white lace doily, Nuestra Se?ora de la Caridad del Cobre presiding over empty velas, the faint remnants of red, pink, yellow, and white wax still evident in the glass cases. Around them, photos of Olga’s mother and grandfather, her father’s mass card, a bottle of Bacardi, a small statue of St. Anthony, and a photo of Abuelita placed there by Olga herself. Around the Virgin hung four rosaries, and Olga reached now for the black one—obsidian, or so she was told, years and years ago. She stuck it in her jeans’ pocket and closed the closet door.
“I’m going to the store!” she called out to no one in particular, and made her way up Fifth Avenue to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where she slipped into the tenth pew from the front on the left-hand side of the lower level, the bronze plaque on the bench inscribed with the name Isabel Alicea Ortiz. How many Saturdays had she come and sat in this very spot with her grandmother? It was impossible to count, but enough that when she died, one of Olga’s first acts was to claim the pew—Abuelita’s pew—to be marked with her name in perpetuity.
This was their space, her and her grandmother’s. In a house full of people, lives crowded with crisis and defined by chaos, this ritual, this place, belonged to the two of them alone. Olga’s parents did not forbid her and Prieto from doing much, with the exception of going to church. Their parents felt, generally, that religion was a bourgeois tool for inuring the proletariat to their exploitation, and more specifically, that the Catholic church was the devil’s handmaiden, having played such a prominent role in the colonization of Black and Brown people all over the world. Her mother and father were so vociferous about this, so relentless in their critique, that Olga’s grandmother moved her altar into her closet, simply to avoid having to hear the two of them go on and on. After Olga’s mother left, Abuelita kept it there out of habit. Olga loved the altar. The mystery of it was especially delightful to her, but also the ritual of the prayers, the lighting of the candles. Abuelita would often catch her in the doorway, spying on her grandmother as she knelt and said the rosary. One day she called her over and taught her granddaughter the prayers—the Hail Mary, the Our Father. They were the first and only things Olga could say with confidence in Spanish.
Her grandmother didn’t intend to defy Olga’s parents’ wishes, not overtly. Olga had a curiosity and her grandmother had a faith. Or at the very least, superstition. One Saturday afternoon, when Olga was maybe six or seven, she and Abuelita were running errands when her grandmother looked at her watch and became stressed. Abuelita had long gone to Saturday evening mass, dating back to her days at the factory. Sunday was her only day off back then, her only day to sleep, even if it was just until seven o’clock. So, she would leave work and go to vigil mass, to pray for her job, her children, the roof over their heads. Then she would come home and see her whole family together, with so much food on the table, in a house that against all odds belonged to them. To Abuelita, the two things were connected. The health of her household tied to her appearance at Saturday evening mass. If it didn’t help anything, Abuelita would tell Olga, it certainly didn’t hurt anything, either. And so, on this particular Saturday, pressed for time and unsure if Lola was home to watch Olga, she turned to her grandchild and, in a conversation that Olga remembered vividly, asked her if she knew what a secret was. Secrets, her grandmother said, had a bad reputation, like their neighbor, Constantina. Yes, lots of men did come visit Constantina while her husband was away as a Marine reservist, but she also fed many of the stray cats and dogs in the neighborhood and never bragged about it, so she wasn’t all bad. That was how secrets were; you heard more about their bad aspects than their good. Going to church with Abuelita was a good kind of secret. Did Olga think she could keep a good kind of secret? She nodded, vigorously, yes.