Excerpt from Chimera

You see a memory.

You don’t remember the exact circumstances of the memory—someone you knew had died, perhaps? You think that your mother had received the news on the phone, because you feel like you remember—you remember being in bed, your eyes snapping open, and fear seizing you as you caught the sound of your mother crying in the living room. You were paralyzed for a moment. You were only a kid, after all. But once your nervousness became too much to bear, you got out of bed and walked to the living room as quietly as you could.

Your mother had stopped crying by that point. The next part of the memory is gone, but you remember something a bit later. You remember sitting at the dining room table with her, framed by white walls. In the memory, she’s responding to some forgotten fragment of your conversation. “Ay,” she whispers, rubbing her arms to ward off a chill, “it was horrible when your great-grandfather died.”

You look at her, an old fear creeping up your stomach and into your heart.

“He was never good to us—he wasn’t like how Grandma is with you, Valentín. None of Grandma’s family was, but when he was dying, he kept asking and begging Grandma’s sisters to bring me to him, and Grandma and I felt we had to go. We flew back to Puerto Rico,” she says, almost coughing her r’s in a way you could never quite imitate, “and we made it in time—we saw him right before he died. The night he passed, Valentín, I had such horrible dreams of him. It was so real—I saw him lying in his coffin, and I heard him say to me, ‘Ay, Ema, tell them to stop, please, tell them to stop hurting me! Ema, I’m not happy here, please, tell them!’ And he kept repeating himself, saying how he was suffering, saying he wasn’t happy there, but I didn’t know what to do.”

She pauses, and you ask, “Did Grandma dream about him?”

Your mother shakes her head, slowly. “I was scared to ask her—I didn’t want to tell her about my dream. But I had the same dream the next night, and the night after that. On that night, the third night, I think, of seeing the same thing, Grandma heard me call out in my sleep. She ran into my room, asking me, ‘What happened, what happened?’ I was so scared, all I could say was that Abuelo wouldn’t leave me alone. And, Valentín, your grandma knew exactly what to do. She stood over me, and she shouted in Spanish, ‘You leave her alone! How dare you—what has she done wrong? You didn’t want anything to do with her in life, so leave her alone in death!’ And then she went to the phone, to call her sisters, and she demanded to know if they were praying for him. Because, listen, Valentín, in Puerto Rico, when someone dies, we pray for them for nine nights. We pray for them to find peace after death.”

This made sense to you—it fit into your world of votive candles, of crucifixes, of devotions to the heart of the Virgin Mary. But one question occurs to you, so you ask, “Did you see Grandma’s dad because nobody was praying for him?”

Your mother nods, then gently brushes a strand of your curly hair away from your forehead. “Yes, and this is why you always have to pray for people for nine nights after they die, Valentín. It’s called the novena, and you always, always pray for your family when they die. Promise me you’ll remember?”

You look at her and say, “I promise.” You promised—you remember that moment clearly, and you remember that she continued her story afterwards.

“What was I saying—about the call? After your grandma yelled at her dad’s spirit, she went to the kitchen, to the phone, to call her sisters. And, Valentín, she yelled at her sisters like I’ve never heard her yell, saying, ‘How could you? How could you not pray for him? How could you be so cold?’ And she demanded that they pray for him for the next nine nights, so he could pass in peace and leave me alone. And, after that night, I never saw him again.”

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Puerto Rico was your mother’s island. You visited San Juan and Ponce as a kid, staying with her side of the family, with her dad and his second wife, whenever you did. It was Ponce that you liked best—not only was it your mom’s hometown, you liked the idea of your last name, de León, combining with Ponce to complete the name of the Spanish adventurer Juan Ponce de León. You were a kid, and you hardly knew what Spain even was, let alone the concept of colonialism. To you, Puerto Rico was kind of an adventure—your grandparents would take you to beaches and parks and caves and coves, and sometimes your parents would come along. And even when they did, your grandfather would insist on driving you all around the island, and you’d squish in the back, between your mom and dad, caught in the crossfire of four native Spanish speakers. You didn’t speak Spanish, but that didn’t bother you. It was comforting—it was a language you were raised around, the language spoken to cousins that weren’t technically your cousins, family friends whose names you never could remember, and old people your parents chatted with in stores. It was familiar to you—you knew it, even if you couldn’t speak it.