B Y CAI MANOOGIAN
We aren’t in Puerto Rico anymore. And we have already ventured out of Florida. Mukunda and I spent barely two months there in Gurukula (a Hindu school), until now—it is summer time.
We have taken a Ferry to The Dominican Republic, where we are meeting my father’s side of the family in Yamasa. There is a village of them. It is the same tropical setting, but the people are darker and the way they speak their Spanish is slightly different. When I ask my father about this later, he says he’s surprised that I took notice of the dialect at such a young age.
He picks me up, walking over to his mother’s, my grandmother’s house. She’s a puny woman, with wrinkled skin that’s as light as mine. Her name’s Margarita. She smiles, kissing me twice, on each side of my cheek.
“Ay! Que bonita, que linda tu niña, Inez!” She proclaims, lifting me out of my father’s arms and twirling me around. She’s strong for someone who looks so frail.
“¿Te acuerdas de mí, niña?” Do you remember me? She asks.
“Perdón…no…”
I shake my head, whispering meekly. She laughs, kisses me more and puts me down, sensing my discomfort at the unfamiliarity. She tells me to go play with the rest of my cousins. I smile and nod, stepping out of the doorway. As I look back, I see my father’s cheeks. They are glistening with joyful tears, and his teeth are spread into a white beam as he embraces and lifts his mother off the ground. I find myself wondering if Papa was so happy to see her, why would he ever leave?
The air is hot and heavy, oozing over my skin. It has been about three and a half months since we’ve been here, but the heat on this day is unbearable. I wander across the village to the local shop. They have tasty homemade half frozen chocolate bars from backyard cocoa trees— and their Coke cans aren’t cans, but tall glass bottles with nifty caps. I buy both. I meander around, still meeting cousins, aunts, and uncles that I never knew existed. But for some reason they know of me. They know my name and how old I am. I am embarrassed by my ignorance of who they are. Though they do not seem notice, or if they do, they don’t care.
Mukunda finds me amidst a crowd of family members. He apologizes to them as he grabs my hand and pulls me away.
“Where have you been?” He hisses. He is holding my wrist, walking faster, dragging me along. I try to unhinge myself from his grasp but it doesn’t work. In response to my struggling he pulls me with more strength. I lurch forward, falling over and onto my face.
“Get up!”
I am confused, and decide to wipe the dirt out of my eyes before I ask him why he’s so angry.
“Why are you so angry?”
“Because,” he says, in an even more furious tone, “we’re leaving.”
“What? Already? Why? Where?” I feel my face distorting into sadness.
“I don’t know. But we’re staying in a hotel for two days. We’re leaving by plane.”
“Where are we going?”
“Back to Puerto Rico. Would you get up? Ma and Papa and I have been looking for you all day.”
“Ugh.” I say standing up. “I don’t get it…why—”
“Shut up, let’s go.”
We arrive at a pink hotel. Coconut trees are sprinkled evenly on the beach behind it. I am leaning my head on the car’s windowsill. I have refused to talk to my parents on the ride there, for I found that my mother had given most of my stuff to my female cousins without my knowledge or consent, and my father knew but of course did nothing about it. The car reaches to a stop. I get out, slamming the door, walking towards the beach. No one says anything to stop me.
The waves are smooth, salty and sparkling azure. The sand is as white as the thin clouds spread above me. I wiggle my toes into the sea’s foam, watching the local boys jump off the distant coral reefs and into the crashing, blue surf.
I will miss this place, I think as I tilt my head upwards. I will miss diving with the boys. I will miss the homemade chocolate, the sweet coconut milk that my uncles would climb trees for, the friendly smiles and their darker skin. The thick, curled way they spoke their language.
My thought process is stopped when I sense the sand being moved behind my own feet.
I don’t need to look back to know who it’s being moved by. He leans his elbow on my shoulder, nudging me a bit.
“Don’t be so sad,” he says.
“I’m not… I’m not crying this time— I’m not going to cry ever.”
“We’ll be able to come back.”
“Hm,” I say, to show that I’m listening.
“When we’re older…When we’re older we’ll be able to do anything.”
