This was the moment, Dick realized in the car ride home, when his answer should have been different. He should have said anything but what came out of his mouth next, but he didn’t.
“I only see what you present.”
“Richard,” she said, with remarkable calm, “and I mean this very sincerely. Please get in this car and go home and fuck yourself.”
OCTOBER 2006
October 5, 2006
Querida Olga,
When I was a girl, my father told me that I’d been named for Blanca Canales, the revolutionary, and that she was the one who gave me my fighting spirit. So, when I was pregnant with you, your father and I put together a list of names that would instill you with the spirit of your ancestors as well. It was your Papi who suggested we name you for Olga Garriga, who was born in Brooklyn like you, but dedicated her life to liberating la Matria. She had the wisdom to understand that as long as the people on the island were bound by colonial rule, no Puerto Rican anywhere in the States would be a truly equal citizen. I liked this choice because Olga Garriga could have had an easy life, blending in as a New Yorker, meeting a man, raising children to think that they, too, were American. But instead, she chose the hard path, because that was the right path.
Still, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think of another famous Boricua named Olga. One much less admirable. And this gave me pause.
When we were young, me and your Papi used to visit his old friends in Loisaida, where he’d grown up. That area was full of artists, writers, poets. All Boricuas. All into uplifting our people. One night, we heard this Brother perform this poem, and it broke my heart. In his verses I heard my family’s life. They were characters—Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel—but as far as I was concerned he could have named them Isabel, Richie, JoJo, and Lola, because he—Pedro Pietri—captured my family. All of them chasing an impossible dream: to be accepted by a nation that viewed them with contempt. So willing—eager, almost—to shed our rich culture for the cheap thrill of being seen as “American.” Thinking that if one day they accumulated enough stuff, if they learned to act the right way, they could wipe the “Spic” off of them and be seen as “the same.” And because of course white America will never see them as equal, they die owning lots of things, but having lost themselves.
So, although I admired Olga Garriga greatly, there was a part of me that worried this name might be inauspicious. That instead of imbuing in you the spirit of a fighter, it would render you like the other Olga. The one whose obituary had already been written: destined to spend her life chasing a love she’d never fully have.
I hear from my friends that you are on a reality television show now working for rich white people. Planning parties for them. Like a secretary. Or, maybe worse, a maid! Someone sent me the tape and I almost don’t want to watch. Is this a business? Is this a job? Or are you trying to be famous? Because the world needs to see another Latina girl sweeping the dust from white people’s feet? I’m struggling to understand how this happened and what about this path was appealing to you.
Your father was beaten and put in jail to raise his people up. I gave up my life and family to liberate the oppressed. Even your brother has committed himself to this cause. It’s hard for me to understand how you’ve wandered so far astray. When you see your brother out there, fighting for his people, while you flail your arms to get a few dollars and a little bit of attention, how do you feel?
Mija, it’s not too late to choose which Olga’s path to follow.
Pa’lante,
Mami
SEPTEMBER 2017
THE LIFT
“Thanks for coming back,” Olga said to her brother as she climbed into his truck.
He barely waited a beat before he pulled right back onto the Montauk Highway. Olga hadn’t even asked him to come up the driveway; she met him out by the side of the road, just near the Blumenthal estate.
“Listen, sis, I’m not sure why you couldn’t call a fucking Uber, but I’m your brother, so you call, and I guess I come? Even when I’m already thirty minutes out of this fucking—holy shit! Olga! Olga, have you been fucking crying?”
The late evening sun, blindingly bright, had illuminated the saline outlines of dried tears just beyond the rims of Olga’s gold-edged Ray-Bans.
“Cry!” she said, looking straight ahead. “Cry? Prieto, I didn’t cry when we put our grandmother in the ground, you think I’m gonna cry because of this fucking pendejo? I was bored waiting for your ass, so I smoked a little weed with the valets.”