Angels And Bad Men

By: David H
(© 2011-2012 by the author)
Editor: Ken King

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

Chapter 10
“Fuegos artificiales (Fireworks)” 

After spending the evening fending off undersexed gay men at the bar, we returned to Titi’s house to find everyone already asleep.  The next morning came far too quickly, though, and it was my turn to suffer through Heidi and Justin as I tried futilely to sleep just a few minutes longer.

The day was certainly going to be exciting, as we were traveling east, toward one of the nicest places on earth:  Fajardo, the city where Titi and Mom had grown up.  By nine, all of our clothes and belongings were packed into the van that Dad picked up earlier at a little car rental place down the street from Titi’s house. 

By ten, Dad and Parker departed for the airport to pick up relatives that were flying in from the mainland for just long enough to celebrate the holiday with family.  Two of Titi’s daughters, Maria and Daniela, were flying in from Miami.  Rebeca, her other daughter, was driving from her home in Mayagüez, with our cousin Andrés, a son that belonged to one of Mom’s brothers, Tío Don Juan Antonio, a name that he insisted that we use “out of respect for his position in the family.”  The plan was that we would all meet at Titi’s house and then drive toward Uela’s house.  Uela was the name that Parker had given to our maternal grandmother years before I was even a twinkle in my father’s eyes.

By eleven, Dad returned with the primas.  It was such a happy reunion as my mother responded to all her names: Olga, Mom, Titi, and Nani.

By noon, we departed San Juan to drive through the country en route to our grandmother’s house.  The arrangements were as weird as they could possibly be.  Dad, Mom, Titi, and the grandchildren rode in Rebeca’s SUV; my brothers, me, Daniela, and María were in the van; Carmen, Armando, Andrés, and Rebeca were in Titi’s car.  The entire time we drove, Justin talked to Carter on his cell phone.  I left him alone, but the cousins (the female ones that is), all ragged the youngest person in the van about it.

“Can I help it that I want to talk to my man?” Justin asked after he’d had enough.

“What’s his name?” María jokingly asked.

“Carter,” Justin answered.

“Put it on speakerphone,” María commanded.

“Are you there?” Justin asked after asking Carter to hold on for the briefest of seconds.

“Yeah,” Carter said.

“Hey.  I’m María, Justin’s cousin.”

“Hi, María.”

“You sound hot!” she joked with Justin more than anything.  Carter chuckled.

“I’m gonna start calling you Mary if you don’t stop,” Justin warned.

“Ay!  Puto primo!” María joked with Justin.  She then grinned slyly and started a sing-song, “JUSTIN AND CARTER, SITTING IN A TREE…”

“K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” the rest of joined in.

“My family is crazy!” Justin joked as we all laughed hysterically.

After driving for hours, we at last arrived in Fajardo.  We meandered through the streets until we came to Uela’s house.  By the time all three cars pulled into the yard, Tío Pedro, the cooler of my Mom’s brothers, was already standing outside with Edgardo and Álvaro, his other sons, enjoying Cuba Libres in an area of the porch that was shaded from the blistering afternoon sun.  As the first vehicle doors began to shut, the front door of Uela’s house opened and then shut back quickly.

Emerging from the building like a wasp from a nest was the short little brown woman who’d been the fountain that gave my aunts their strength and my father a few lessons in patience.  Uela was a force with which to be reckoned, a force which bound our family together despite the fact that there were some of us with lighter skin than others and some of us who voted more liberally than others.  She hugged each of us, called us all by name, and asked each of us a question that made us all feel special.

I stood toward the back of the crowd waiting my turn to talk to Uela, much as if she were a queen and I was a subject awaiting Royal audience.  Being that I was by far the tallest of her grandchildren, she would always walk up to me, extend her pointing finger and motion for me to come down to her level so that she could get “un abrazo bueno,” a good hug.

That day was no exception.  The little fat, brown woman motioned for me to bend over as she gave me a hug.  As she pulled away, I could tell she was about to ask me something when she noticed the scar above my eye.

“¿Qué es esto?” she asked, pointing and inquiring.

“Mama… tuvo un accidente,” Mom answered upon noticing what it was.  I thought for a second about how Titi never asked about it; none of the cousins had asked about it.  The silence meant that they knew about what had happened, either from my mother or Armando. 

Uela knew that Mom was lying, but she didn’t say anything.  Instead, she just smiled, almost as if she were saying that she was glad that I was, at least physically, fine.  After that, she turned to my father and started giving him instructions about what to do to help Pedro prepare for the roasting of the young pig that had been delivered that day.  She took the babies into the house; the rest of us eventually made our way in.  Tío Pedro anointed Álvaro as his successor at the bar.

By the time darkness settled over that part of the island, most of the people there were at least a little drunk.  I was still sober, as was Laura, who’d stayed clear-headed so as to make sure that the children didn’t get hurt or anything.  We put them to bed at around eight, just as the adult party was getting started in earnest.

After talking to one of my cousins and getting from him a little something from his stash, I walked down toward the water from my grandmother’s house.  Uelo, our grandfather, had always kept a little shed right on the water, next to a pier that he and my uncles had built years before when they first bought the house.  Inside there was a little flat bottom boat and a kayak that was large enough to support two people.  He used to tell us about how he would take Uela out on a clear night into the laguna and they would neck and make out.  Uelo used to joke about that being the way that Titi came into the world.

Under the guise of night, I slipped to the little building and pulled the kayak and an oar from its dry dock.  I left my shoes on the pier as I climbed into the kayak and headed down a little stream toward the laguna.

It was dark, and it was also quiet.  All the tours that are brought out to the laguna had ended hours before, and I knew that at that late hour I would be free to just sit beneath the stars and enjoy a smoke and immerse myself in the peace and quiet.  I moved myself right into the middle of the laguna, the bioluminescent algae lighting in the wake of the small boat.

In the middle of the dark lagoon, I was there alone.  The only sounds that could be heard were the sounds of the water washing against the boat and the coquí singing in the distance.  The little frogs’ song, combined with all the sounds of Puerto Rican nature, were enough to bring even the strongest of people to their knees.  I lit up the joint and proceeded to smoke myself into oblivion.  When the joint was gone, I just lay back on the boat and looked up into the darkness of night.  

The rhythm of everything almost put me to sleep.  I was at peace; I was away from the world that I knew intimately, at least for a little while.  I thought about the thesis for a few minutes, but it wasn’t anything substantial.  The title that I’d thought up on the spur of the moment the night before seemed to be sticking out in my mind.  I thought about how I would describe myself.  Part of me wanted to make myself big and strong, but then, part of me wanted to make myself weak and defenseless.  Both of those descriptions felt somehow accurate, at least in that moment.  Physically, I wasn’t too bad; however, my mind had convinced me over the past few months that I was indeed weak.

“I’ll call myself David,” I said to no one, pronouncing the name in Spanish.

As I continued to sit there and think in the solitude of that place, I heard someone approaching in the distance.  It didn’t matter who it was, as I simply assumed it was a member of my family.  The sound got closer and closer with every second until at last I saw the edge of the boat.  I turned to see Justin using two oars to drive the boat through the calm water.  Sitting on the back of the boat was my grandmother, as aged as she was, looking up toward the sky.

“Hey,” I said to both of them as Justin grabbed the edge of the kayak to stop both of our boats from drifting too far apart from one another with the movement of the water.

“Mijo,” Uela started.  “You just missed some action.”  Her English was thickly accented, but it was very clear and understandable.  With us, she always tended to speak English, even though we were all bilingual from birth.  Perhaps it was because we were raised on the mainland and were half-gringo.

“I did?” I asked.

“Yes.  Your uncle Toño,” she started, referring to Juan Antonio, the uncle that none of us liked, “was talking about how the gays are going to be the death of Western society.”

“Oh?”

“Your name was brought up,” she explained as Justin sat there quietly.  “Your mother… my oldest child… listened for a little while, but then she started getting upset.  I listened as he talked about how the gays were going to get some type of special protection, and that they shouldn’t because gay people should all be beat until some senses were put into their head.”  Uela stopped for a second.  She was choosing her words carefully, as she always did when she wanted to say something important in English and make sure that she was clearly understood.  She did the same thing in Spanish.  “Your uncle started talking about this one time when a guy… empezó a colquetear …with him.  He said that he hit the man so hard that the guy started bleeding from his eye.”

I looked at Justin, who was visually affirming her story.  “He did that?” I asked, knowing he was an asshole but never imagining that any member of my family would do something akin to that kind of violence.

She shook her head.  “Your mother started crying, so I went outside to get your father.  By the time I returned, your mother had had enough of him and his trash talking, and she had her finger in his face as she told him what had happened to you.  I heard the last part of it all, about how the man had hit you and left you to bleed in the parking lot at your house at college.”

“Ay, Dios,” I said as I could see my mother doing that.

“He said something about how if he found you, he would do the same thing again, and your Dad got into it all, saying that Toño would never lay a hand on one of his children, or he would face the consequences.”  Uela stopped.

“At that point,” Justin chimed in, “Parker and I had come into the house and heard what was going on.”

“And?”

“Basically, I told him that if he did anything to you, he’d also have to do it to me.  Parker said that he wasn’t gay, but that he’d have to beat him down, too.  It was cool, Parker was flexing his chest and arms at Tío,” Justin said as he impersonated Parker’s action.

“Then Juan Andrés,” Uela referred to my cousin, my uncle’s son, “came up and out of the closet, too.”

“Andrés is gay?” I asked, surprised by the revelation, as he’d always seemed macho and such.  Perhaps it was living with my uncle for most of his life that had made him that way.

“Yeah,” Justin answered.

“Well.  He went toward your cousin.  I thought I was going to have to call the police,” she explained, “but your brothers stepped in and said that nothing would happen to him while they were around.  I am very proud of both of them for that, defending family like they did.  So, your uncle left and everyone started looking for you, because we realized we hadn’t seen you in a while.  We were worried that you’d gotten upset by everything and left.  Álvaro and Edgardo said that you had gotten… something… and had taken the kayak out to the laguna.”  She looked me directly in the face.  “So, I asked Justin to bring me out here.”

I smiled a little bit at my grandmother as she reached over from her boat and put her hand on my head, running her wrinkly brown thumb over the scar above my left eye.  “I wanted to tell you three things.  First, I will always love you.  You will always be one of my favorite grandchildren, along with the rest of them.  Second, when I asked your mother if you knew who’d done this, she said yes.  You CANNOT let him get away with this.  You HAVE to make sure that he knows what he did and will have to deal with it for the rest of his life, if for no other reason that you, too, will be dealing with this for the rest of your life.  Finally...” she started as she took her hand and wrapped me on the back of the head and then put her pointer finger in my face, “if you don’t stop with smoking that shit, you are going to end up no better than that man.  Plus, if you want to find a quality man, you don’t need to always be smelling like… like… hierba!  Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, politely and meekly.

“Good!  Now, if you want, you can come back to the house with us, or we can leave you out here by yourself.”

“I should probably come back to the house,” I answered.

“Good!  Justin.  Hold on to Ryan’s kayak,” Uela said as she started to stand.

“Uela!  What are you doing?”

“I’m getting in Ryan’s boat,” she answered Justin’s question as she reached over and grabbed hold.  Like a pro, she came over into the kayak and sat on the end opposite me.

“Uela!  You’re loca,” Justin and I both said, almost at the same time.

“Bah!  Where do you think your mother and Titi get it from?” she asked rhetorically.  I smiled as Justin merely shook his head and laughed a little.

It was just a little while before we pulled up to the pier just outside Uela’s house.  The party had obviously started up again, as everyone was outside drinking and joking.  Mom walked down to the pier as we climbed out and then helped Uela out of the kayak.

“Mom!  Your mother is nuts!” Justin said.  “She went from my boat to Ryan’s as we sat in the middle of the laguna.”

“Where do you think I get my locura from, Kid?” Mom joked as Uela laughed a little.

Justin and Uela walked back toward the house.  “That woman is amazing,” I stated as Mom and I walked.

“She is,” Mom answered.  “So, your brother finally came out.”

“I heard.  Everybody okay with it?”

“Yeah.  We all knew a long time ago,” she answered, as if it were nothing.  “Just like with you!”

“Yeah,” I said, recalling the afternoon in her classroom when she’d told me that it was okay to just come on out of the closet, that she would still love me, regardless.  “I also heard what all happened with the tío.”

“I will rip his heart out if I ever see him again,” Mom said, ending the sentence in a tone that I’d learned over the years meant it was the end of the conversation.

A while later, well after eleven, well after Juan Antonio and his wife Sandra had left the house in disgust, Tío Pedro pulled out a duffel bag and invited everyone to go with him to the beach.  Given that the girls were asleep, Uela stayed behind to make sure that everything was okay with them.  The rest of us, though, the family, all the cousins, Titi, Tío Pedro, us… everybody… went out to the beach just a few blocks from Titi’s house and assembled in an area where other families weren’t crowded around.  Pedro had prepared little bags for all of those in my generation, and we started opening them to see what was inside.  In mine, there was a roman candle, a packet of bottle rockets, and purple sparklers.

At the stroke of midnight, we started lighting that shit up.  Most of us were either drunk (or in my case, high), but that didn’t stop us from enjoying not only our display, but also the displays of the groups around us, who were probably also drunk and/or high.

As our collective shows lit the sky and night, I began to think again about things, much as I’d done on the plane two days before.  It seemed almost surreal that I was even there to share that moment with people that loved me unconditionally.  Rather than crying and getting emotional, however, I laughed.  I enjoyed myself.  I savored the moment for what it was—a moment in my life that would never be repeated but that I would completely cherish for all time. 

At the end of the night, Pedro had us all stumble around and clean up the trash we’d left there.  Pedro, like most Puerto Ricans, was religious about cleaning the beach, preserving it for the generations that would follow ours.  

To be continued...

Posted: 01/20/12