“If anyone can tame a lion, Olguita, it would be your Mami!” her father whispered to her. Olga beamed and her mother cracked the whip on the ground as she approached the lion, who roared in irritation, pacing before she opened its cage. The crowd held its collective breath as she commanded the majestic beast towards the impossibly small stool. The lion bared its teeth. Olga’s mother cracked her whip again, repeating her command. The big cat hung its head for a moment before he galloped to the stool, assuming an awkward perch. The crowd cheered. Someone handed her mother a torch, which she brandished before the crowd, and the lion met it with a swipe of his large claws before leaning away from the flame. With a flourish, Olga’s mother set a metal ring on fire and the crowd again gasped. She cracked her whip. The lion sat still as a statue, the crowd silent. Waiting. Then, in one movement it leapt from the stool, bounded onto the floor, and jumped through the ring, unscathed. The crowd went wild—people jumped up, including her father—popcorn spilling in the excitement. Her mother commanded the lion back to the stool, approaching the beast with swagger. She winked and offered her hand to the lion, gesturing for it to give its paw. The lion complied, bowing its regal head bashfully. The audience laughed. Now her mother smiled coyly at the crowd, as if to say, watch this. She raised her whip in the air, dancing it over the lion’s head, snapping the fingers of her free hand to the beat of the background music. Slowly the lion rose on its hind legs and, the crowd realized with delight, began moving to Olga’s mother’s beat. The crowd joined in, clapping as the lion danced. Her mother sliced her hand through the air. Stop. And they did. An ooooh of wonder emanated from the crowd. She motioned for the lion to wave. He complied, the audience breaking into a coo of aaaahs. Her mother then began to bow, tipping her hat and turning to address every corner of the audience. Then, just as her show was coming to a close, Olga’s mother snapped her whip one last time, gently, and beckoned the lion to give her a kiss.
It swallowed her whole in one bite.
* * *
OLGA BOLTED UPRIGHT, her mother’s name on her tongue. She checked her phone. It was just before five in the morning. Maria had made landfall in Puerto Rico. She slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Matteo, and scrolled social media as she made her coffee. People, either unable to believe their own eyes or certain that later they would be doubted, were posting videos of the storm’s fury. In one, a woman in Utuado screamed as Maria ripped the roof off her home, in the background the wind knocking the crowns off her royal palms. In another, a family in Humacao cowered together in a bathtub while Maria, with the ferocity of a vengeful lover, pounded their glass patio door determined to make her way in, indifferent to the shattered glass eventually left in her wake. The locations varied—a hotel ballroom in San Juan, a flooded street in Guayama—but the constant of them all? The trembling of the hands wielding the cameras, the physical manifestation of fear across the entirety of the island. The star of the spectacle was the wind, which roared like a menacing vacuum, sucking away leaves, trees, homes, cars, lives. Then Maria ripped down the cell towers, so the videos stopped, but Olga knew the terror had not.
* * *
OLGA HAD ONLY been to Puerto Rico once, for a long weekend back when she was dating Reggie King. Reggie was, in fact, born there, but left when he was two. As a kid he’d gone back to his grandmother’s a couple of times in the summer, when his mom’s hands felt too full. But he’d not been back as an adult and, as he’d kept emphasizing, had not been back rich. He was only a little rich in those days, but it clearly meant something to him to return with his shit in a Louis Vuitton roller instead of a shopping bag, staying in a suite at the Ritz in San Juan instead of a concrete three-room in the campo. While Olga took pleasure in watching him enjoy this, she also couldn’t help but see that, though this was “home,” they didn’t exactly fit in. What Olga had thought of as looking “New York,” she realized, down there, just looked “American.” Her Spanish was wack at its best, so every time they sat down to eat or get a drink the waitstaff would hear one word out of her mouth and switch to English. Reggie loved this, of course, because he delighted in making a big show of speaking Spanish—surprising them that he was one of them and not an African American—and they’d switch right back. She shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that he’d built a house there, because even at the time, he’d enjoyed the trip much more than she did.
What Olga had loved, though, was the music. Everywhere. Salsa, plena, and bomba. They went to a street performance and the circle must have had thirty drummers. The first dancer was a dude so big, Reggie joked that he could have been the reincarnation of the late, great Biggie Smalls. Women, complexions ranging from the inside of an almond to the outside of a coffee bean, each more beautiful than the next, danced in these fantastic white skirts. Teasing the drummers with their fabric and hips. Delighting in their own existence. She felt the beat of the bomba in her chest, bigger than that of her own heart. As big as the whole island.