[Issue 2024.69]

‘Terranueva’, Katie Kopajtic

Art © 2024 Melkorka

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Even with a healthy brain, Marisol would not have recognized her old neighborhood. Turf grass yawned from the wrought iron gate to the ocean, crisscrossed with glittering quartz pathways that led to identical cream condos. She stared at The Ritz Bungalow #4 (‘Pearl’), supposing that the concrete walls, at least, hadn’t changed.

She grabbed the handle of her roller suitcase, glancing at the hot pink note taped to it. Her handwriting shouted at her:

YOU HAVE DEMENTIA
NADINE’S DEAD
FIND RAQUEL

---

Humidity hugged her like a sweaty friend. Marisol wheeled the suitcase into her old living room and promptly left it there, following a hot breeze to the beach. She planted herself square in the shade of a palm tree and frowned.

Pockets of froth swirled in tide pools, clumps of seaweed gathered around a rock jetty. The ocean sprayed against sharp rocks as usual, but the playa felt disabled, turned off; no reggaeton bumped, no prosecco corks popped. A few Americans lounged quietly on hotel chairs, sacrificing milk skin to the equatorial sun.

Marisol’s eyelids closed like heavy curtains. She would make peace with her estranged niece, in time. Long flights were tough on old bones.

A black dog scuttled by, whipping sand across Marisol’s mouth with his skinny mutt tail. He bounded toward a curling wave, lapped at the foam a few times, and loped back to Marisol. His neck was naked. A beach patroller, boricua like Marisol (if she could call herself that), whipped his head in the dog’s direction. Instinctively, Marisol gripped the dog’s scruff. Puerto Rico had strict rules regarding stray dogs and rusty cars: they weren’t allowed within twenty miles of the coastal roads. American tourists did not like to be reminded of poverty. You had one chance to drive your beater into the mountains or else it was impounded. Dogs were euthanized upon capture.

Marisol accepted this as a sign from the Universe; Raquel lived in the mountains with the strays. She jutted her chin at the watchful guard and waggled her index finger at him.

“Listen, sato,” she whispered, “You’re with me now. Just don’t get too attached.”

Marisol beckoned to the stray and led him to the bungalow, keeping her fingers extended toward the top of his head like she was casting a leash spell. She named him Buey and hosed him down, then brought him a carton of sausages and toast from the hotel breakfast bar. While he ate in quick, staccato bites, she braided a collar out of a silk pashmina scarf. Fluffy and shining, with a pink and gold accent setting off his black fur, Buey looked like a first-class pet. No cop would stop them on their way to the mountains, and he played the part well as they left the condo, jauntily trotting by her side. Her eyes misted at the car charging consoles with their globular energy tanks and center charging prong. Nadine, her late wife, had a habit of pointing out boob shapes in the wild.

As the driverless sedan’s door slid open, Buey flashed a snaggletooth smile and hopped in the back seat, like he had done it a hundred times. Marisol buried the thought of a previous owner abandoning him, and entered the memory tag [Me+Raquel,Dorado] into the Alz Kapsule app on her phone. The neural implant was supposed to augment what her hippocampus could no longer produce using a cache of cloud-stored media. Marisol shut her eyes. When the app chose to perform, which it often did not, it was like on-demand dreaming. After a minute of looking at the squiggly lines behind her eyelids, she muttered “Piece of shit,” and typed “Raquel Oblan” into her email inbox. The old fashioned way worked: a GoFundMe email surfaced, thanking her for a donation to a farm restoration project. She punched [Finca Terranueva] into the console navigation, and settled into the leather seat as the autocar drifted silently out of The Ritz Bungalow Complex.

You could always tell which towns were more important to the 53rd State’s government by the roads, where smooth black pavement crumbled to faded streets littered with craters and potholes. As the autocar exited the maintained highway, she lowered the windows, buzzing with nerves as they ascended a narrowing street into a thick forest.

The car handled a hairpin turn, and then lurched to a stop. Blocking their path was an ancient, red Toyota Camry. The door opened to a young woman with a face dotted by a trail of frog footprints. “Doña,” she shouted. “We’re not open for visits today. Go back to the coast.”

“I’m looking for my niece,” Marisol said. “Raquel Oblan. Do you know her?”

The woman’s eyebrows shot to her forehead. “Do you?”

Marisol hesitated. She knew the teenager, but who was Raquel as a middle-aged woman?

“I’m teasing. I’ll take you to her. Send that car back to its teta; you don’t want to pay if it can’t handle a pothole.” Marisol obeyed, sliding into the Camry with an ecstatic Buey, who seemed right at home on the velour seats.

The temperature dropped as they plateaued to a row of square houses sitting atop a coffee bean farm. Marisol hummed appreciatively at the scent of frying fish. “Bacalaitos?” she asked.

“Yes, but no bacalao. We make it with mullet, or eel. Whatever we catch in the river.” The woman parked the car and opened the door for Buey, sliding off his makeshift collar. He bounded toward the fish fry without a backwards glance. “There’s Raquel.” The tattooed guard pointed at a woman seated on a porch in a camper’s chair, squinting at the car. Had she not identified her, Marisol would have kept searching. This woman had broad shoulders and a head of thick silver curls. She wore a simple black dress and sandals. Her hawkish brow was furrowed.

“Flora, what’s this?” she demanded.

Marisol slid out of the passenger seat and stood to face her.

“Who are you?”

Marisol lifted her sunglasses and winced at the light, before shielding her eyes again. Raquel turned to the young woman. “Thank you. Please return to your post.”

Flora nodded and hopped back into the Camry. Raquel waited for it to peel away before turning to Marisol. “Tía?”

“Hi, Raquel.” She smiled awkwardly as embarrassment flushed her neck. The vacuum of her memory pressed panic into her lungs; she hadn’t considered that in order to make peace, she might have to remember why they fell out.

Pity softened her niece’s appraisal as she glanced at the blue veins running over the old woman’s swollen knuckles, her soft stomach pushing against her linen dress. Raquel closed the distance with a hug, kissing each of Marisol’s cheeks with the side of her mouth. With a hand on her waist she waved to the small house and asked, “Do you want some coffee?”

The cottage was dim and breezy, a single story of stone walls with square windows. Jars of dried beans in a spectrum of colors covered the kitchen counter. A distressed wooden table sat in a corner nook, its centerpiece a tin bowl holding a mountain of spotted yellow mangoes. Raquel gestured for Marisol to sit, and busied herself with a coffee percolator.

“Are you off the grid?” Marisol asked, scooting into a chair.

“We run on solar and a small ration of gas,” Raquel said to the stove. “Getting independent of the electricity monopoly was the key to our revolution.”

“Revolution?”

Once the percolator began to hiss, Raquel turned to Marisol. She hugged herself as she spoke. “Terranueva is just one part of a cooperative jibaro network. No export, no import. We farm to feed ourselves. The coasts leave us alone; we leave them alone. For the most part.”

“You go for schools, hospitals?”

“No, we have our own. I mean like, one time this influencer gringa kept trying to fly a drone over the sacred batu field. So we offered her drugged pitorro and when she woke she found that her drone had been ‘disassembled by iguanas.’ She believed us when we told her they collected shiny things. Sugar?”

“One scoop, please.” After a moment of clinking, Raquel set a small ceramic cup in front of Marisol and slid into the chair across from her. Sunlight illuminated the frown lines framing her full lips.

“We expected a slap on the wrist from the tourist board, but—nothing,” she continued. “As long as the government makes their coastal profits, us mountain peasants do not exist. Salúd.”

Marisol nodded and sipped the strong coffee, which agitated her mounting anxiety. The elephant in the room seemed to be balancing on her shoulders. Just as her lips were forming the words I’m sorry for whatever happened between us, a white-hot tendril of pain whipped across her skull.

“Ah!” The hot beverage stung her hand as she knocked the cup askew, gripping the table for purchase; the implant was glitching, finally sending her the requested memory. The kitchen spun until she was in the dream, kneeling next to a lush garden outside of their beach bungalow. She held a flute of prosecco in her left hand and her iPhone in her right, recording an Instagram story of a giggling, five year old Raquel. A heavily made-up woman carrying a beach bag noticed them and smiled, her earrings flashing light as she squealed, “Muñequita” and then, “How old is your daughter?” The soft ground suddenly hardened under Marisol’s knees, turning cold; she had collapsed on the tile floor. A few mangoes lay by her head.

“Tía?” Raquel crouched behind her. “Are you okay?” She hooked a strong arm across Marisol’s back, helped her back into the chair and waited.

“I’m sorry.” Marisol gave a feeble laugh. “We can farm on Mars but we can’t cure Alzheimer’s.”

There was a pause, in which Marisol expected Raquel to chuckle and say, “Isn’t that right!” but she did not. Marisol suddenly recalled (and felt triumphant for it) that Raquel had the maddening personality trait of being a silent listener. She continued. “My revolutionary treatment. It backfired.”

Raquel stared. “Treatment?”

“I got the Kapsule implant. For cheap. Beta tester.” Raquel pinched the bridge of her nose. Marisol continued. “Nadine passed, and then I got the diagnosis. I figured, why not? It is supposed to work as a memory organizer but it makes them worse. I can’t even remember, with you, I mean…” She trailed off, hoping against reality that Raquel would jump in.

Raquel only said, “I’m sorry.”

A few platitudes auditioned for the spotlight in Marisol’s mind, including: What can you do. It is what it is. Can’t turn back time. She went with, “I figure I’ll know when it’s time to pull my plug.”

Raquel’s unibrow unraveled. “What?!”

“I understand how severe that sounds but yes,” she jittered, passing the cup between her hands, “and I knew that I needed to come here, to see you. I owe you an apology, Raquel, but I don’t know what for. I feel the demons of guilt gnawing, but I don’t know why they torture me.”

Raquel snorted. “Los demonios? You sound like your priest abuelo.”

She made a dramatic sign of the cross, and at Marisol’s hesitant smile, slapped the table. “It’s a joke, Tía.”

Both women dissolved into laughter, shoulders shaking identically.

Wiping her eyes, Raquel said wetly, “My fucking god, Tía. What do you really want from me?”

“Forgiveness. A pretty place to die.”

“Carajo.”

“Enserio. It’s happening. And I don’t want to be alone.”

Raquel’s eyes shone. “Come with me, you fool.”

Marisol spent the rest of the afternoon walking with her niece, who pointed out the landmarks in their commune: the school, the trading stalls, the Taino batu field where ceremonies were held. In the distance she spotted a group of women rehearsing plena. “That’s my wife,” Raquel pointed to a woman with a honey brown ponytail, leading the call-and-repeat chants with a drum between her knees.

“How did you meet?”

“Hurricane Zelda. I saw this gal in cut off shorts and a t-shirt directing traffic at a dead stoplight. The intersection was huge and chaotic, because it led to a bank and a gas station. So, you know, people acting desperate. She was so calm. Stopping machismos in giant trucks from bullying the lines, helping the little cars get through. Up to her ankles in water that looked and smelled like diarrhea. She was radiant.” Raquel paused. “I parked my car on the shoulder and joined her.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“Yeah, well… Zelda was manageable. That fucker Bram took our beaches.”

Marisol looked at her feet. The destruction left by those back to back hurricanes allowed the government to gentrify the coasts to a ubiquitous affluence. When the Ritz Carlton swooped in to buy the family beach condo, Marisol didn’t fight it.

“How did you and Nadine meet?”

“Tinder.”

Raquel snorted.

They trotted through the field, weaving between ancient ceiba and mahogany trees until they reached a slope of tropical underbrush. At the border, Raquel opened a window between two waxy plantain leaves, and pointed. “Down there is our rio.” The river was wide, with a few pockets of turquoise where the sun streamed light into the shallows. “Pretty enough for you?”

After the tour, Raquel dropped her off in a rocking chair on the back porch with a view of the coffee trees and brought her a fried fish patty and mashed plantains. Tired, her belly full, Marisol started to doze. In that liminal space she could feel the Kapsule like a charged pellet in her lobes, buzzing and failing to align the puzzle of her past.

---

“Coqui? Coqui?”

Marisol shivered.

“Coqui? Coqui?”

“Shut up…” Marisol had forgotten how piercing those little tree frogs could be.

“Coqui? Coqui?”

She grunted; her body felt so stiff in the chair. She stomped her feet to get some warmth in her legs, startling a black dog who was sleeping by her feet.

Quick footsteps rounded the corner of the deck. “You’re up,” Raquel said, her face pale. “You make dinosaur noises when you sleep. Like there’s a claw gripping your throat.”

“My Raquel. Tell me what I did to you.”

Raquel blinked. “Fine.” She retreated into the house for a minute and returned holding two glasses of milky liquid.

“The spiked pitorro?” Marisol asked, taking a cup as Raquel took the rocker next to hers.

“That’s an oxymoron. Salúd.”

“Salúd.” Marisol sipped the alcohol, wincing as the coconut-flavored ethanol burnt her nostrils.

Raquel threw the drink back without expression, licked her lips and said blankly, “At my father’s funeral, you told me I was a wild child. You actually called me a salvaje. And then you fucked off to California.”

Marisol dropped her forehead into her hands, but forced her gaze back on Raquel’s. She felt her eyes wobble but staved off the emotion; this wasn’t about her. “I am so sorry.”

“You were right. I was all over the place. But I hated you for a long time.”

Marisol nodded, letting her hand drift toward the younger woman. As their skin touched, their chins quivered in the same way, and they averted their gaze to the purpling sky. A chorus of crickets had joined the tree frogs when Raquel finally spoke.

“There’s room for you here. And it isn’t charity. You’re going to pick beans. Thirty sackfuls, for every year that you didn’t call me.”

“You didn’t call me!” Marisol quipped, blinking back tears.

“You’re the auntie!”

“You went off social media.”

“You sold the house.”

Marisol sobered. “I stayed there last night. The concrete hasn’t changed.”

Raquel scoffed. “That’s something.”

The rocking chair creaked as Marisol slowed her movement, reaching for comfort in the dog’s fur. She looked at his chocolate eyes instead of Raquel’s. “You don’t deserve to help me with the bathroom.”

A callused palm rested on her shoulder. “We live by our rules here. When you’re ready to let go, we’ll help you make that journey.”

Bittersweet tears dripped freely onto the dog’s head, who placed his chin between his paws and released a tired sigh. Marisol wiped her eyes and said wetly, “Under these circumstances, I accept your invitation.”

“Tía.”

“Si, mi amor.”

“What’s with the dog?”

Marisol stared at him. “He isn’t yours?”

Raquel’s frown lines deepened. Marisol’s heart sank; she knew that look.

“Did I—”

“You know—” Raquel cut her off, forcing a smile. “I think I’ve seen him around the farm.” She nodded curtly.

Marisol beheld the view. Atop a sloping field of coffee trees, dense, fluffy clouds hovered around a distant mountain’s peak. Lit by a last ray of sunset, the tip looked like a green iceberg jutting from a pink, fluffy ocean.

It would be as pretty as the first time she saw it, every time she saw it, until the woman with the silver curls led her to the river.

© 2024 Katie Kopajtic

[Issue 2024.69]

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