The Neck

        Abuelita says she’s being haunted. 

Mami says she’s sick, that the move from Adjuntas left a hollow in her. Homesickness. Dramatics. When Abuelita leaves our mail in the fridge, damp and sticky beside spoiled milk and a half-carton of huevos, Tío Ale calls her una loca. Says we should have left her by the farms and the forests where the Sleeping Giant could keep her company, the silhouette of a mountain shadowing their childhood home.     

Tío Ale can be a jerk like that, but he pays the rent on the apartment we all share, so Mami doesn’t talk back much. Since she speaks the best English, she handles everything else. It was his place first, even if it’s cluttered now with all the cousins and Mami’s taste in mismatched chairs pulled from sidewalks. It smells sometimes like the old farms, Tío Ale says, how they stunk of sulfur and rubber by the time he had to leave the island. Less sugar. More steam. I try to remember what it smelled like before the factories, but I don’t remember much about Puerto Rico.     

Mami lights candles to combat the city smells that come in through the windows, and the apartment fills with artificial coconut. I watch her gut the fridge, scrape a sponge down its insides, two-stepping to merengue and trying to salvage whatever food is just good enough to eat tomorrow. She knots the trash and tosses it by the back door.     

In the evening, when the moon is barely seeping through our kitchen windows, the black bag is rummaged through. I notice Abuelita, stiff on the sofa, and she’s got this look in her eye. A look, like when our dumb dog Chuleta thinks he hears the mail     man. A straightening of the back, a breathlessness.     

“Them,” she says to me. “Them. They want me back.”     

I don’t ask her who and I don’t ask her where. And most importantly, I don’t tell Mami.

*

In Adjuntas, a town nestled in the cool mountains, Abuelita lived in a big home. It had seven bedrooms, one for each of her children, and a tiny ranch cuddling the back with three chubby chickens named Jorge. Jorge One was the first to go, half starved, a cluck stuck in the old wooden fence his namesake built ten years prior. Jorge Two, with her speckled feathers and poofy white fro, had picked herself nude. Jorge three, Abuelita’s favorite, was the last to die–when she snapped his neck for pollo guisado. I did him a favor, she still says, I put him out of his grief.     

That’s when Mami sent for her and told us she was staying, that our Abue was reaching that age and there wasn’t no one on the island to take her around. No more children, no husband, no chickens to talk to in the mornings. It made the most sense, Mami had said with a hiccup, to bring her here with us. It didn’t make much sense to me. We don’t have chickens in Newark, New Jersey. We don’t have forests, either, not really much trees at all. No waterfalls, no coffee farms, no houses painted green. Outside smells of gasoline and sewage, which Tío Ale says is thanks to the Neck, the neighborhood with all the smoking towers. Not much of anything, but we have public transportation, street-long hospitals, and Raúl Dávila.     

When I ask Abuelita about Adjuntas she’s like a painter; her arms dance in circles while she speaks. For the first time, I can see the island in color: sunny oranges, unripe banana plants with their fleshy necks and green outstretched claws, homes painted crimson and coral. When she reminisces, it almost feels like I am, too. Most days she says it smells of coffee and the beefy sweetness of pastelón. Since it’s so tall, there are no beaches in Adjuntas, instead freezing scattered charcos nestled between rocks and cliffs, where Abuelita first learned to swim and first learned to drown, and where she met her first husband.     

“You never told me that story,” Mami says, sweeping dust bunnies out the back door.     

In this one, Abuelita’s fourteen and sinking to the bottom of Charco El Ataúd, the coffin pool, in a heavy wool bathing suit with an ivory skirt trim. She describes feeling full and devoid at the same time, like there’s cinder making a bed in her unfed stomach.     

“I forgot until now. So long ago.” She shrugs.     

*

I learn to brew her coffee the way she likes with beans she tucked into her suitcase. She tells me stories about the island, about her oldest friend Yaritza, with her slack jaw and hair down her back, about how cold it gets up that high in her pueblo. After a few days of leftover take-out, Abuelita tries to make pasteles, delicately folding them in banana leaves, water bubbling on the stove.     

She grumbles to herself, “Just can’t get it right. Something missing.”     

Abuelita ransacks the cabinets.     

I ignore her, too focused on my hands. I knead grated yautía and pumpkin, but I can’t get it to blend how she wants. Beneath my fingers is a dull grey and sandstone. I knead harder; I want it to be vibrant like Abuelita’s. I want the orange fiery and alive. I barely hear her controlled panic until she’s panting. She doesn’t even notice her own sweat. She doesn’t notice, either, when the flame rises, nor when the giant pot overflows with foam.     

The hot water splashes on the checkered tile and I spring back. It sprays Abuelita’s leg, scaring off the dog. She yelps and quickly kills the gas, confused face, like usual. For a moment she blames me, arguing, and says I wasn’t looking. I should’ve been looking.

“After the water?” I ask her, my chest hot and tight like the stewed air.     

“For the duendes,” she insists.     

“Abuelita, the what?” I snap. I can’t help it, but then I feel like Tío Ale, and the anxiety in my chest avalanches to my tummy. Sheepish, I place a bag of frozen peas on her tender skin. Crumbs of food from my hands stick to the icy plastic. She puts her soft, ribbed palms to mine.

“For them, chula. They are here. Can’t you see?”

     I pout, and look up at the heap of pumpkin on the counter, pale. I don’t see a thing, but I hear Tío Ale in my head. Una loca, he says, and I feel ashamed either way. We don’t have time. I clean the water off the floor before Mami gets home. Abuelita wraps the food. I scuttle the heavy pot to the sink. As I’m scrubbing, something slim and green is stuck to the metal. I pull at it, and it tears and bends, soggy from the water. A thin scrap of a leaf, like one you track in on your shoes.     

“Abuelita, did you step in the pot?” I joke, but when I look back, she’s wiping the counters and mumbling in Spanish.     

Her grey hair wisps from the crisp breeze of the window.     

It’s winter in the Neck. Only dead, snowy trees on sidewalk corners. In my fingers, a vivid, glowing green. I shiver, then ask her to close the crack.

*

The kitchen is traceless when Mami and Tía Julieta get home from the jobs Tío Ale got them sewing garments. We mop the tile so no one knows Abuelita wasn’t watching the stove, so she doesn’t get in any more trouble, but we can’t hide the rash on her calf. No more secrets, Mami makes me promise, so before bed I ask her about duendes.     

“Mischevous little elves,” she says playfully, stealing laundry from my floor. “They live in the forests. They’re guardians, protecting nature, I think.”

“Protecting nature…from what?”     

“From people. Well, bad people, people who disrespect it, or abandon it. You know, sometimes, they sneak into houses, and clip off naughty toes!”     

She jolts and tickles my feet peeking from the blanket. I jerk and shrink, pull my sheets close. When Mami frowns, I know that wasn’t what she expected.

“Why? Someone having nightmares?” she asks.     

“Sort of.” I think of Abuelita. It’s not a lie.     

“They’re not all bad, mija. They can be guides, too, for lost travelers.” Mami’s voice softens, her thick eyebrows stitching together. “But they’re not real, so no worries, k? Son solo cuentos. Island bla bla bla.” She bounces fingers off her thumb like a tiny mouth.     

“Go to sleep.”     

I try, I really do. And by the weekend, I almost forget. 

*

Lately, the house feels smaller, what with my siblings and Tío Ale’s kids and Tía Julieta, who’s been odd ever since the riots. That’s what made the last family that lived here move to the burbs, like most of the other white families in the area.     

Mami tells the grandchildren that Abuelita’s homesick. She’s not adjusting to the city; her memory is selective. We’ll have to make her a Jersey girl, she jokes, buy her a pair of go-gos and drive her down the shore. We never go to the shore. I’ve never even been to the water. She tells us to be gentle with her so she doesn’t get angry, but I hear what she tells my eldest cousin later, to watch her around the house, that the doctor says it’s gonna get worse.

Tío Ale jokes that if she wanted a hike, there’s one toward the bus stop. She lets him speak stupid, Mami says, because he’s the baby.     

I think Abuelita considers it, the hike, because when I make her next coffee, which I still haven’t gotten the perfect shade of chocolate, I find her peering out at the busy street.     

“It’s really hot,” I warn her as she cradles the mug, closing her eyes while inhaling. I’m not allowed to drink the coffee, but I like that the smell takes over with warmth and wood. Abuelita’s old home was probably filled with it.

I leave fingerprints on the window pane and we watch our neighbors shuffle into a rusty, dented Ford. I want to tell her it’s not so bad, that the buildings look worse in our old neighborhood, ashy and abandoned. Least the corner store here’s still open.     

Instead, I ask her about the island.

“In Adjuntas, everything grows,” she says. “Todo vive.”     

I try to imagine it: everything, alive.     

The skinny yagrumo macho, leafy head like a palm stretched upward, with its silver underbelly shimmering in the wind. Fresh picked wild guava, invisible in Abuelita’s cupped hand as she pretends to bite one, but I can almost see the faint yellow flesh, taste the tanginess from Abuelita’s silly scrunched lips.     

“But not just fruit,” she adds. “Copper. Silver. Gold.” My eyes widen, thinking of treasure chests and shine, but I lose her just then. I watch her wither back to the window, her lips still twisted pink. I don’t push it. I guess remembering can be sour, too.     

*

The apartment is loudest before dinner. All us kids play hide and seek behind chunky furniture and in tiny closets. Chuleta’s like a car horn, giddy at the endless legs passing by. Tía Julieta switches the radio news to bomba, swaying and ignoring Mami’s gossip about the trimmers from work. Since the riots, Tía Julieta goes to work and comes home, her fingers red and tense from tugging threads. I don’t remember much about her boyfriend besides his funeral. It had an open casket     –     as a statement, Tía Julieta said. I can’t say what of; Mami wouldn’t let me look. It was sad because they seemed happy, even though he didn’t speak any Spanish. I think they just liked to sit beside each other.     

“It’ll be better, soon,” Tío Ale had told us. “We been organizing, and I voted for Gibson.”

Mami agreed that Abuelita will get used to it.     

When the house comes alive before dinner, Abuelita, draped in her long robe, sits alone. 

*

I’m tasting Mami’s rice when the door swings open with a cold flood. Tío Ale slams it hard behind him waving a ripped, wet envelope. They’re reaping the Rambler on Monday, he says, because Abuelita opened the car bills and left them in a drawer, unpaid. It’s a junky beater, but Tío Ale needs it to get to the factory.

“No? I have never seen those,” she defends. “Me, no.” But Mami and Tío Ale are looking at her crazy, at each other.     

I feed what’s left on my plate to the dog and tuck around the corner, turn the TV on low enough to still listen.     

“I’ll fix it,” Tío Ale yells, “before they take you away next!”     

I flinch. He’s big angry. Says from the neck up, she’s a mess. Abuelita’s angry, too. I swear I hear the wind swat beneath her arms, can see her loose skin swinging. She’s shouting, and her Spanish staggers, something about the trees, something about them coming for her. Ruining things on purpose. I suck in, my stomach tucking, like I could disappear.     

Mami tells the grandchildren that Abuelita’s getting older, and that sometimes when you get older you get tired, and sometimes when you get tired you forget things. Like leaving the dog outside after a walk, or not locking the front door mid-winter, or making twenty-two follow up calls to the doctor–but never saying a peep. Them, I think. And then find it hard to sleep.

*

I get up early now like Abuelita, who isn’t allowed to make her own breakfast anymore, who sits in her rocker by the TV watching commercials she can’t understand. The house is quiet and chilly, the rising sun is pissing off the snow. From the kitchen, a thin light sneaks through.     

“Did you leave the fridge open, Abuelita?” I call softly to her.     

“Them,” is all she says. I’m used to it now, so I walk to close the door. The kitchen smells of mossy spring and dirt. The fridge creeks closed from my push, and then I’m all alone, except for the chittering. A low titter, like sharing secrets. My shoulders stiffen. It’s faint like a mouse, so I decide it’s a mouse, and I always leave the mice to Mami. I turn quickly and head back upstairs.     

I’m two steps up when I see it again, yellow sneaking into dusty blue dawn. Tiny shadows emerge from behind the old refrigerator door. My chest whirls, but I make sense of it.

“Chuleta’s in the fridge.” I stutter through thumping heartbeats. My jaw tightens. Abuelita doesn’t flinch.

“Them, chula,” she says.     

I retrace my steps in a tiptoe, food trapped high in my throat. When I see it all, a mess of miniature intruders ransacking the fridge, time swishes and stirs. My head rushes with heat, but I don’t have time to think, because Abuelita’s already attacking. We fight together: I slam the neck of a pale, short demon with a heavy lower drawer. Abuelita, behind me, tries to trap another in a plastic grocery bag. They are skinny, with wiry beards and wide, glossy eyes and their ears stretch, point, hang, with mouths protruding. Their long fingers curve like rivers, nails chipped and reaching toward us.

“Duendes!” I shout to Abuelita, who handles them stoically.     

She has one by the neck, trying to crack it like a tragic bird. Duendes, except they’re not how Mami describes. They’re little maniacs, reeking of wood rot, and laughing at us, even as we kick them. I watch them creep into the shadows. I look at Abuelita with wide, glossy eyes.     

They disappear like rodents–but not before running between my feet. The kitchen floor is cold. It’s like slipping on black ice.     

While on my back, Abuelita paces toward me. I know that look. She’s speaking racecar Spanish, and I can’t keep up. I try rubbing my eyes until the mess in the kitchen clears. It doesn’t work.

“We need to find someone, to get the duendes. We need to leave Plaza Pública, we need to go up.”     

I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I can see the island. I remember her stories, see the colors tucked into her wrinkled, hickory skin. With a huff, she peeks past the blinds, catching snaps of snow and brick and smoke. She trickles backwards.

“Where is the giant?”

“The giant? Like, the mountain?” I ask her, resting on my elbows. As we speak, we seesaw into a nauseating sickness. My legs curl closer, a memory making her way to me.

“Little girl, where are your parents?”

“Mami is…upstairs, sleeping.”

Abuelita faces the ceiling. The swinging fan buzzes loud.     

“Are you Yaritza’s girl?”     

“What do you mean?” I catch my breath, confused. I know dread. How it feels when outside is caught on fire. When there’s glass in the street. When life feels like it’s crumbling around you, brick by loaded, thrown brick. I want to cry, but when I scrub my palm across my cheek, I’m already crying. Above me, Abuelita’s pacing. She’s growing frustrated, I can tell, like when she and Tío Ale are fighting.

“Child, please,” her voice is firm, “who is your mommy?” 

*

I feel it then. The charco. The weight of invisible water. Abuelita at fourteen, drowning. Inside me, a thick stone, pushing me to the ground. But my head, my head is weightless–floating. Near my feet is a long, dingy nail with drying blood, curvy like a root. I reach for it, but I don’t know who’ll believe me, or if it’s too late. What will Mami say about the duendes? What nature, anyway, are they trying to protect? We don’t have forests in Newark, New Jersey. We don’t have sleeping giants or bottomless natural pools. Abuelita leans and puts her hand against mine. Together we cradle the red root and a weird, secret history.     

“Them. They want it back? All of it…everything?”

I scan her eyes, looking for the past, her island. The state of her now, her frail fingers and frosted expression. I almost hate the duendes, almost, but then I see it, too. Everything, alive. Forest green, river turquoise, deep brown earth. I would want it back, too.