14. El Jíbaro de Puerto Rico #3
My entire body is shaking with anger. I can’t believe any of this is real. Inside the casita anger doesn’t subside, and I shout again, “It’s against the law to display the flag of Puerto Rico in Puerto Rico!?” I stomp my feet on the floor so hard this time that the entire house shakes.
Abuelo raises a hand to his chest. “I’m so sorry, Victoria.” He’s crying now.
“Where is it?” I run over to the few wooden shelves in the living room.
I scan across statues of saints: Our Lady of Providence, Saint Joseph, Saint Anthony, Saint James.
Beneath them is a shelf where Abuelo keeps other things, magazines and books, pamphlets and prayer cards.
I come across three books I hadn’t seen before.
The Spirits Book
The Gospel According to Spiritism
The Book on Mediums
All written by a man named Allan Kardec.
My fingers pause, scanning the shelves. “What are these?” I turn around to see Abuelo folding his hands in front of him.
He looks to the door and says, “We don’t have much time, but it’s important that you know all this.
” He’s facing me now. “Allan Kardec was an author and educator. His books, his teachings came to Puerto Rico from France, many years ago. The 1850s. He developed a science called spiritism. A process for the living to communicate with the dead. The first séance happened in San Juan around that very same time when Kardec’s teachings made their way here.
At first it was a system used mostly by the wealthy.
And the spiritists here were good people.
They founded hospitals, promoted literacy, fought against the death penalty, and pushed for better social conditions.
Then the practice spread throughout the island and made its way here, to the culture of the jíbaros. But here we call it espiritismo.”
I cross my arms, shake my head, and say, “Jíbaros.” I know that’s what they all—the people who come from wealth—call us.
The owners of the sugar mills and coffee plantations…
they like to call us that to insult us. The rich want to remind us that we’re poor, that they think we’re unworthy.
It’s the rich who continue hurting and harming the poor over and over again, and I guess Abuelo is right.
Wealthy people must be so deeply unhappy if they find satisfaction in relentlessly hurting those with less.
As if Abuelo knows exactly what I’m thinking, he says, “We’re not peasants.” He points over at the Sleeping Giant. “We live here among gods.”
I straighten myself up. “The misa, it came from these books?” I motion to the shelves.
“Yes, but some customs we take from Catholicism, some we take from the Tainos, and some we take from the cultura of the jíbaro.”
The room tilts, as if the ground itself no longer knows what it is.
I blink, trying to catch up. My heart is racing, not from fear, but feeling like everything I thought I knew might be wrong.
I don’t understand any of this. Why was he telling me all this now?
I feel so lost. My hand reaches for my stomach, feeling as if I’m going to throw up, but I can’t recall the last time I’d eaten.
“When I find our flag, I’m hanging it back up!”
He opens his mouth to say something but pauses when we both hear the slow rumble of an automobile making its way toward us.
“Victoria,” he pleads. “If the police see it, they can enter our home. They can seize our property. They can arrest us.”
The automobile slows, pulling up alongside our house, its tires settling on the grass just outside. It is shiny and black and new. We hear as the rumble of the engine silences when the car is turned off.
There is no more time to discuss this, at least not right now, and I feel so defeated.
What more does America want from us? They took our land.
They took our language. They’ve now taken our right to display our own flag.
They’ve taken our hope that Puerto Rico can decide for itself whether it wishes to remain a part of the United States or become free.
It’s our island. This is our home. How can we not determine how it is we want to live?
Abuelo’s voice is low and full of pain. “This is what it means to be conquered, Victoria. This is what colonizers do. But we’re not giving up.
We will find another way.” He reaches for his nice hat, not the pava.
A fedora Papi had gifted him. It is cream with a satiny black ribbon.
“They’re here,” he says and steps outside.
I lean against the doorframe and watch as Abuelo greets the woman who emerges from the driver’s-side door.
She is wearing a white dress, too, with a white jacket and large buttons.
Her dark hair is short, just above her shoulders and styled in big curls.
I hadn’t seen this fashion before, any of it.
People in San Juan seemed so modern. The passenger door opens, drawing my attention.
A boy climbs out wearing black slacks and a neatly pressed white short-sleeve button-up shirt.
His fair hair is combed flat, and his green eyes glance around, quiet and solemn.
He spots me right away in the doorway, raises a hand, and says: “Hello?”
Mrs. Rosario shoots him a confused look and then says, “Jonathan?”
Abuelo takes Mrs. Rosario’s arm and escorts her along the grassy path.
“That’s my granddaughter, Victoria,” my abuelo says, but the woman continues staring at her son. Her face isn’t mad or sad, just astonished, like sometimes people’s faces appear during the misa.
Inside, Abuelo offers the woman coffee, and she smiles and accepts.
Her eyes look up, inspecting the tin roof overhead. “How long have you lived here?”
Abuelo happily says, “My entire life. My father, too, and his father.”
“It is beautiful here,” she says, looking out the window. “It’s so green, and flowers just grow everywhere. It’s magical.”
Abuelo begins to tell her about all the plants that grow here: coconut palm, philodendron, aloe, passion fruit, more.
Jonathan takes a seat beside me on the sofa. As his mother sips her coffee, nodding along to Abuelo as he tells her about the house, she stares at her son.
“How old are you?” Jonathan asks me.
“Fourteen.”
“You?”
“Seventeen.”
Abuelo glances over at me above his coffee mug, and I can feel myself blush. Jonathan is much older than me and so very different. He lives in another world entirely. He might as well live on the moon.
It makes me think of the legend of Guanina, the Taino princess who falls in love with Don Cristóbal de Sotomayor, a Spanish conquistador who came to conquer and colonize.
They, too, were from different worlds. Guanina’s brother, Guaybana, the chief of the Tainos, hated Sotomayor and all the conquistadors, and so Guaybana killed Sotomayor in an ambush.
When Guanina learned of this, she rushed to Sotomayor’s side and tried to revive him with kisses.
When the Taino elders learned of this and went to retrieve Guanina, they found her dead, her head resting on Sotomayor’s chest. The lovers were buried together beneath a giant ceiba tree.
It’s said that immediately after their burial red hibiscus and white lilies sprouted.
On nights when the moon is full, and the nights are embraced with a cool breeze from the ocean, it’s said the shadows of Guanina and Sotomayor can be seen standing side by side beneath that very ceiba tree.
“Victoria? Are you here?”
I feel my stomach drop. “Yes.” I smile, embarrassed.
“Mrs. Rosario asked to hear some folk stories. I told her how you enjoy them.”
I stand and smooth out the skirt of my dress. “Scary ones?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Rosario says, but she is looking at Abuelo when she says this.
I glance down at my shoes and stand with my arms at my sides.
“There are stories of people who see flickering lights from lanterns all along the mountain at night. They move like fireflies. Some people claim those lights come from the lanterns of ghosts who tripped and fell over the side of the mountain and died.
“Other people say that in the moonlight, you can spot bloodied torsos and severed heads or amputated arms moving quietly along the road. These are the body parts of people who died in these accidents who are making their way home. Some stories also say that trees cast shadows of Los Ahorcados—men, women, and children who were hanged there. These were often Black and Taino slaves who were hanged for trying to rebel or escape…”
Mrs. Rosario gives a stiff smile and sets her coffee cup down abruptly. Liquid splashes on the surface of the counter. Abuelo quickly moves to clean up the mess and tells her not to worry at all.
“Thank you,” she says to him. “And thank you for those very scary folk stories,” she says, but her words are directed only to Abuelo. It is then that I spot real fear in her eyes.
I know these are called folk stories, but many are real stories that have been passed down about things people have seen and heard. Awful things have happened on this island, and we remember them. Sometimes we call them legends or myths, but maybe it’d be better just to describe them as true.
Some of them I’ve read in books. Some of them were told to me by Mami and Papi or Abuelo, and some of these stories I can’t remember where I gathered them from; it’s like they were whispered to me in the wind.
I sit back down beside Jonathan. He places a hand on top of mine, but I can’t feel it. I’m just so nervous with meeting him and his mother and the questions they may want to ask.
I hear a rush of wind and the shifting of palm leaves outside. I see now Abuelo and Mrs. Rosario are finishing their coffee. The space is so small that I can hear them clearly, talking about poetry and books.
Jonathan motions with his eyes to the white table we’ve set up in the middle of the living room for the misa.
“Is it scary?”
“No.” I look at the table and chairs. “It just is.”