She couldn’t stop laughing and once she said it aloud, her brother found the humor in it, too, and soon enough both were giggling.
“I was thinking of how sad Papi’s end made me. Mami told me to walk away from it, to try to forget the person he’d become—”
“Yeah,” Olga said, “she told me that shit, too.”
“And I tried, but you can’t forget, right? You shouldn’t forget—it was part of his life. Anyway, I was thinking about Lourdes and how if this shit did kill me, I wanted to go out strong. So her memory of me would be as good if not better than the father she’s had up till now.
“This trip made me realize how much I have to do with myself. For my daughter, for our family. But also, right now, for our people, Olga. I decided when I was down there that no matter how the test came back, I was gonna buck up and keep going. Better than before. I’m fired up. They are going to let Puerto Rico wither away, unless we fight.”
His words watered a seed of worry already planted in Olga’s mind.
“Prieto, we’ve got to talk. About Mami. Karen reached out while you were away. Mami is in P.R. She’s safe, but she’s there.”
Prieto did not even look surprised. “I know.”
“You do?”
“Well, I should say, I didn’t know, I suspected. There’s a group down on the island I’d heard some rumors about. Liberation radicals. Sort of had her written all over it.”
There was a pause before he asked, a little desperately, “Did she say anything about me? Karen, I mean.”
“No,” Olga lied again, this seeming easier than involving him in the truth. “It was a very quick conversation.”
They stayed up for hours, drinking together, remembering their father, talking about Prieto’s next steps for his medical health, his trip to Puerto Rico. Finally, when they were both a little drunk, Olga confronted the elephant in the room.
“When are you gonna tell Lourdes?” This was, essentially, the same as asking when he was going to go public, because they couldn’t ask Lourdes to not tell her mother and, Olga knew, once this was out beyond the two of them, and maybe Titi Lola, it was just a matter of time before it came out.
“I, uh, haven’t decided yet.”
“I’ve thought a lot about this and if you want a chance at keeping your seat, you have to come clean about everything, right away. You will garner a lot of sympathy, and then you’ll have till the mid-term to be able to establish yourself as more than the guy who’d been in the closet with HIV.”
Her brother was quiet for a moment.
“But what if it doesn’t go that way?” he asked. “What if it becomes a controversy and I need to step down? I can’t leave my seat. Not right now. Not with this president and not with what I saw down in P.R. I’ve got to get back down there. I can’t have this as a distraction.”
* * *
HER BROTHER’S DIAGNOSIS shook her core. The rational part of her knew he’d live a long, wonderful life. But she was feeling far from rational and she couldn’t stop imagining the worst. A life without her brother felt unbearable. Rootless. Recognizing this, though, only made Olga more aware of how rudderless her existence already was. Her brother, who even now, in the face of this illness, was directed by a larger purpose: his fight for others. It provided him a beacon, a way to redirect himself. Olga felt she had been paddling for years in no discernable direction except away from her fear of not being enough.
As a child, when people found out that Olga had been “left,” she could see how quickly she was recast as a victim in their eyes. She felt their pity and it made her feel broken. Damaged. Her grandmother astutely observed that any foible or stumble at school would be attributed, with an air of inevitability, as the ramifications of her being “parentless.” Any success Olga found would be attributed, with an air of disbelief, to her “resilience.” Very early on, Olga and her grandmother calculated that, if given the choice between the two, Olga’s easiest path was to be a success.
This strategy worked well initially: do well in school, excel at a talent, look pretty, make people laugh, solve problems for yourself, don’t trouble anyone, when possible be helpful. Success, then, looked as simple as escape: from the chaos her parents had left in their wake, towards “opportunity.” After high school, though, with her grandmother ill-equipped to guide her through the new terrain of the Ivy League, the goal began to be less clear, her toolbox less adequate. As a result, Olga fumbled in the dark, trying to adhere to a path that led to a fuzzy destination known simply as “success.” In college, she became convinced that meant affirmation by institutional powers. After college, celebrity and its proximity were what she thought she should be striving for. Only in adulthood did she ascertain that no, it was money that would inoculate her from feeling less than.