Olga noticed her cart was also filled with the random needs of disaster victims.
“？Puertorrique?a?” Olga asked.
“Girl, I don’t need to be Puerto Rican to want to help out. That’s the problem right now. People think they’re only responsible for people exactly like them. I don’t feel that way. They left my people to die after Katrina. It’s the same. Like I said, it’s on us to help each other.” And the woman, and her cart, kept it moving.
* * *
ON SUNDAY, SHE found herself hunkered down at Matteo’s, planted firmly on the couch. Matteo hadn’t convinced her to go out so much as to switch locations, and they were now, at Olga’s insistence, watching the news at Matteo’s.
“Look at that,” he said. “These homies are like, ‘Fuck the government, we’re gonna take this shit into our own hands.’”
On the TV screen, Olga saw them, the men and women with machetes, hacking away at the fallen trees and clearing their own roads. She could see that a few of them—the ones organizing the others—wore black bandanas over their faces. All you could see were their eyes. On another channel, a group had gathered around a single small solar lamp—a woman with a hot burner salvaged rice and beans and managed to cook for the entire neighborhood. Then another clip: in a town plaza, among the still fallen branches, a bomba circle had formed, and, taking a break from waiting for gas and waiting for water, people had stopped to dance. In her chest she felt a pride well up, a pride connected to an ancient something programmed to survive. For the first time in days, she felt something other than a deep, endless well of sadness.
* * *
HER PHONE BUZZED. It was Reggie.
“？Pa’lante!”
And she knew her mother had stared Maria down.
ALWAYS KEEP GOING
The Friday after Maria passed, the New York gubernatorial delegation made their way to San Juan. As their plane began its descent, Prieto glanced out the window and gasped. The island, normally a slab of lush malachite floating in a clear aquamarine sea, was now a brown scab in a gray shadowy abyss. The trees were stripped raw, the foliage victim of Maria’s rage. He felt his heart rip a bit, imagining nature’s arduous journey to restore color to the island. It was only when he landed that he understood the practical implications of the island’s lost verdure. Without the shades of the palms and cool green of the hibiscus plants, the sun burned the earth and the people trying to salvage themselves under its rays.
* * *
THE FIRST TIME Prieto had gone to Puerto Rico was for the national convention of his fraternity back when he was an undergrad. It was the mid-’90s and an infusion of capital from mainland businesses had caused San Juan and the environs to boom. There was a banquet for the three hundred or so brothers who had gathered from cities up and down the East Coast. They were greeted by scions of local industry: pharmaceutical company heads talking about job creation by and for Puerto Ricans, hoteliers discussing the ability of tourism to unify the diaspora. The keynote was the newly installed governor, the same man whose son was governor now. He gave a sweeping speech about the next phase of Borinquen and how privatization of the island’s municipalities would pave the path to Puerto Rican statehood.
Prieto remembered lapping it up at the time—giving the guy a standing ovation and waiting, eagerly, to shake his hand and take a photo afterwards. He had no idea that in three short years President Clinton would end the tax incentives that had brought those companies there in the first place, and that along with the tax breaks would go the jobs. He didn’t yet understand that American companies weren’t motivated to create meaningful work for anyone anymore, least of all Puerto Ricans. Since then, each time Prieto returned to the island—and over his years as a New York public servant, his trips were many—he noticed that San Juan was a little less shiny, the sense of possibility less ebullient, than what he’d seen that first trip.
On that first trip, Prieto had wandered off from the convention group and made his way to an address in La Perla, right on the water in Viejo San Juan. His Spanish, clumsy back then, helped him make his way through the narrow streets. On arriving, he could hear a mom yelling at her kid about cleaning up after themselves. He knocked, unsure if his language skills were good enough to explain what had brought him here: that his father, Juan Acevedo, had once lived at this house before he left for Nueva York. He’d brought a photo of his pop—in his military uniform—just to see if that might spark a memory or recollection and if he might still have family around. It didn’t. But the woman, Magdalena, was so touched by this poor Nuyorican so interested in meeting his family that she wouldn’t let him go without feeding him and introducing him to her children and neighbors. After they ate, she took him to meet every Acevedo that she knew in the area, just in case his father’s name and story meant anything to them.