They met in the waiting room of her gynecologist’s office. CNN played on a TV in the corner of the room, alerting anyone paying attention that the lights were out again in Puerto Rico, though anyone paying attention knew that had been inevitable.
“This will be worse than Katrina,” Prieto said.
She nodded. “Louisiana’s a state.”
The hurricane had only amplified Olga’s discomfort at withholding their mother’s whereabouts, yet she couldn’t bring herself to add to her brother’s already full plate of troubles. She had nothing to offer but worry, and he had enough of that already. No sooner was Prieto’s blood drawn than his phone rang. It was the governor’s office. They were trying to negotiate a trip down as soon as Friday, to bring supplies, assess the damage, and see what state-level relief they could provide. They wanted Prieto on the plane, and he was eager to help. He was then engulfed in triage—with his staff, with his colleagues, with his contacts. She could hear him: sourcing water, medicine, batteries, flashlights, radios. Their preparations made her anxious. They were looking for things she couldn’t believe FEMA hadn’t put in place. It disturbed her that people might be dependent on an ad-hoc goods drive being run on Prieto’s cell phone from her OBGYN’s office.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, BACK at her house, the news showed an aerial of the island in darkness and predicted it would be months—maybe years—before they had power again. By the light of the next day, more videos emerged: collapsed roads, flooded homes, mudslides. Tears came to her eyes. She could not stop watching. She remembered doing this after 9/11, too. Her grandmother told her to go out, get away from the news, but she couldn’t. The bodies jumping from the building then, the people moated by floodwater now. This could only get worse.
Olga’s breakup with Dick had only one true lingering effect—she’d lost any and all enthusiasm for her career, recognizing, she supposed, that his comment would not have stung so acutely had she not, in some part, agreed with him. Maria served as the perfect excuse to ditch work and wallow in televised misery. For the next few days, while her brother was servicing the actual people, Olga was on her sofa, observing, in slow motion, all the ways in which the island was now truly fucked. There was no power, there was no water, the sun was back out and people were hot. Sick people didn’t have medicine. Food was spoiling. People would go hungry. People would panic.
In all of the hours of footage that Olga viewed, she could count the number of times she saw a soldier or federal officer. Where were they? Online, the president was busying himself with the patriotism of professional athletes and rallying crowds around a pedophile. It took his political opponent to remind him, on social media no less, that there was an entire Navy vessel intended for supporting crises like this, if only he would deploy it. Towns were trapped within themselves—roads cut off by downed trees or power lines, or the roads themselves simply having disappeared. Buckling under the weight of floodwaters after so many decades of neglect by the government. Yet how did Olga know this? The news crews, with their helicopters, managed to get into each nook and cranny of the island, which somehow FEMA hadn’t managed to do. As one day turned into two into three and four, in each town you would hear the same refrain: We need help, where is the help? We are American.
“They’re going to let them die,” she finally said to Matteo on Saturday evening, three days after Maria left. “It’s impressive.”
“What is?”
“They’ve figured out how to commit genocide without getting their hands dirty.”
“Babe,” Matteo said cautiously. “We have got to get you out of this apartment.”
Earlier that day he had, in fact, gotten her out of the apartment and it hadn’t gone very well. Matteo convinced her to walk to the Atlantic Center to buy supplies to send down, but when she looked at the needs list and found herself filling their wagon with diapers, baby wipes, and formula, she burst into tears in the middle of the store. The phantom cries of babies waiting for formula and clean diapers were ringing in her ears, knowing that no one in charge cared if and when they received them.
“White babies would have had diapers yesterday!” she cried.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Matteo said, trying to console her.
“She’s right though,” a Black woman pushing a cart past them offered. “The government’s never in a hurry to help anybody like us, so it’s on us to help each other.”