“Really? What would give you that idea?”
Agent Bonilla proceeded to walk Prieto through the path of Auntie Karen’s life, which had many “common bonds” with his mother’s, and yet no direct ties. Not that Bonilla could find. Karen had come from a tame, middle-class family, was radicalized in college, joined the Black Panthers, and defended her own self in court on a false terrorism charge. She, like his mother and father, was involved in the CUNY protests. She, like his mother, eventually became an academic. She’d then lived with a man for a time in Liberia, where she published subversive poems of sex and rebellion under a nom de plume. She never married, never had children. Instead she became a public advocate for jailed veterans of the movement whom she considered to be political prisoners. She was an early public supporter of Black Lives Matter and other activist groups and a private cooperator with more fringe political movements.
What Bonilla didn’t know, and of course Prieto did, was that Karen’s connection to his mother and radicalization predated all of these things. In an effort to tame her daughter’s rebellious streak, Abuelita had sent Blanca to an all-girls Catholic high school. “？Y instead?” Abuelita would lament. “What happened? She met La Karen.” Always the Karen, as though she was a force and not a person. Ironically, Karen had landed at the Catholic school for similar reasons as his mother. Her older brother was a Black Nationalist and her parents hoped the nuns might inoculate Karen from this same leftist path. Instead, she and Prieto’s mother found each other among, as his mother would say, “a sea of white girls with bleach blond hair” and bonded over their mutual awareness of systemic inequities. Karen would get books from her brother—The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Black Skin, White Masks—and share them with Blanca, who, in turn, would come home and proselytize to her siblings and mother. Karen joined the Panthers, while Prieto’s parents joined the Lords. But even as the movements faded, as his parents’ marriage fell apart, his mother’s bond with Karen never waned. When his mother left, to his grandmother’s chagrin, only La Karen knew exactly where she’d fled, and only La Karen had a direct channel of communication to her. If the worms came from Karen Price, it was only because she was serving as proxy for Prieto’s own mother. To let him know she saw him as a traitor.
“We don’t have any direct links to her and the Macheteros your mother was involved in,” Bonilla was now saying, “but that would definitely be something up her alley.”
“Interesting.”
“And you’ve got no idea why she would send something like this to you now?”
“No. None whatsoever.”
“Kooky old hippies,” Bonilla declared. “Who knows what sets them off. They don’t like the way you vote on some bill or another, and the next thing you know…”
Bonilla laughed and Prieto made sure to join him.
“We’ll keep an eye on it,” Bonilla added, and Prieto just sipped his drink.
* * *
WHEN HE GOT back to New York, Prieto decided to get to the bottom of things. His mother couldn’t just hide from him this way. He needed a chance to explain himself, to make things right. Aunt Karen did not keep a phone, so he decided to pay her a visit. He didn’t know how serious Bonilla was about keeping an eye on things, but he took no chances. He donned his Yankee cap, shorts, and a tee, parked his car in a garage downtown, and hopped on the subway, to make the long journey up to Harlem. Because Prieto rarely rode the New York City subway, he found it pleasant. In D.C. he couldn’t walk into a restaurant or store without being recognized from TV, so his ability to slip into anonymity despite his close proximity to others was relaxing. So relaxing, he missed his stop and ended up taking a meandering walk through North Harlem. He hadn’t walked these streets since he was a kid, when his parents would bring him along for a political meeting or for his mother to visit with Karen. He was shocked at how, just like his own borough, everything seemed so metallic and new. The streets were filled with parents—white parents. Pushing strollers in and out of luxury condos. Up and down steps of brownstones. When he got to Karen’s building, a place he hadn’t been in years, his hand instinctively went to her buzzer. Muscle memory. She asked who it was through the intercom. He announced himself and waited for her to buzz him inside, but the buzz never came. He was sure it was her; he had recognized her voice. He rang again, and again. He became frustrated, but also nervous. He thought of the box of worms. His aunt had known him since he was born; she couldn’t possibly ignore him. Perhaps she just couldn’t hear him through the intercom. It was the end of a warm, late summer day; her windows were open. He stood on her stoop and bellowed up.