Juliet Takes a Breath (14 page)

“Listen, we grew up together and I never heard you talking about no Lolita Lebrón. How was I supposed to know? It's not like she's related to us and Harlowe didn't tell me anything. I found this name in her pile of names, so like be easy.”

Ava half-sighed. “Juju, if you weren't my cousin, if you were some clueless
blanquita
, I'd have so much disdain for you right now. But since you're my blood, I'll forgive you. Lolita Lebrón was only the illest Puerto Rican freedom fighter
nacionalista
. She, like, tried to blow up Congress in the ‘50's.”

“Word? How do you know about her and I don't?”

“
Nena
, I'm on my ethnic studies grind. That's why you should come visit me. I'm out of school until August. You know you want to sit on this balcony with me, smoke some trees, take the boat out, discuss the global impact of colonization and the merits of deviant sexuality.”

“So many merits. All of that sounds good, Ava, but this internship goes until a week before school starts. I'm in Portland until then, but girl, if I could, I would.”

“Aight, but I miss you, and if you hit any more roadblocks with the ladies on those magic scraps of paper, you call me, okay? Call me anyway. I love you.”

“Love you too. Oh and, yo, I have so much period stuff to talk to you about.” I said, a little too loudly in the middle of the library.

“Period stuff?” Ava asked. “You know I fucking love period stuff.”

“Word, we'll talk soon.”

Ava made me smile big. She was cool, so damn cool, and her heart was open to me. Our relationship was solid in that cousins kind of way. If I ever needed her, I know she'd be there, but we were missing that regular closeness. When did she get so with it? How was she able to just drop colonization into conversation like that? I fucking loved her. Any other time and I'd be on the first plane to Miami. But I felt needed here; Harlowe needed me. My purpose was so clear. I mean, not like it hadn't always been clear. Mom and Dad have asked only three things from me: get good grades, do as they say, and have faith in the Lord. I've always done those three things. Studying hard, receiving A's, and being obedient to them and God have been my way of thanking them and respecting their work ethic. As their first-born daughter, I never had much say in the matter. Get good grades or else! Worship God or go to Hell. Do as we say or suffer the consequences. What the consequence would be, I was too scared to ever find out. But this internship gave me a different purpose. I chose this. I reached out to Harlowe. I asked. I wanted. I received.

Still, the idea of going to visit Ava and Titi Penny tempted me. Ava, the rebel, the brown goddess, the beautiful one, the one who received full scholarships to all the colleges she applied to, the one who wore black lipstick and fishnet stockings to temple. And Titi Penny, my secret favorite Titi, encouraged her and allowed all of it while still maintaining this standard of excellence that both of them subscribed too. I'd spent many nights listening to both trains rumbling by and my parents' Christian music while wishing I was Titi Penny's daughter, that Ava and I were sisters, that I was somewhere else.

But this wasn't the right time to go on a trip to Miami. I was already somewhere beautiful and weird. I had a mission and nothing was going to distract me. Nothing.

Kira was at the information desk. She signed me up for a library card and helped me find the library's sole copy of
The
Ladies Gallery
. I sat in a cubicle, fully immersed, swallowing images of a strong Puerto Rican woman and her fight for liberation all told through the eyes of her granddaughter. I felt like a granddaughter too. Seated at the foot of a rocking chair, taking in a story of the life someone's grandmother once lived. The weight of Lebrón's legacy rested heavy, tumor-like, on the life of her granddaughter. In fact, right from the beginning, Irene Vilar admitted that she'd tried to kill herself and was in a mental institution. The genetic legacy steeped in acts of aggression against an oppressive super power afforded no other way to deal.

But I took pride in Lolita Lebrón's bold moves; nobody stopped her from walking into the U.S. House of Representatives and busting shots in the name of Puerto Rican nationalism. It was 1954 and the U.S. government was treating Puerto Rico like its own private island: gouging it for sugar, using its shores for military purposes, and passing laws that made it illegal to display Puerto Rican flags or to fight for Puerto Rico's independence from the United States.

Apparently, the U.S. didn't ask the people of Puerto Rico if they wanted to be a protectorate or not; they didn't ask the people anything. They just swooped in and took control after the Spanish American War. Lolita wasn't having any of it. She was a
nacionalista
on the island and when she moved to the U.S. in the late 1930's, she saw how her people were being discriminated against and how they were pushed into obscene poverty. Lolita Lebrón took an order from Pedro Albizu Campos, leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, and made sure it succeeded. She led the coup d'état into the House of Representatives. She fired the first shots. She shouted ¡
Viva Puerto Rico Libre!

My United States did this to Puerto Rico? The country I pledged allegiance to all through school, this country that fought itself to end slavery, this country where allegedly anyone could just pull themselves up out of poverty and make something of themselves; this country decimated an entire island? And I thought banana republics were the worst of it. How could I not know this history? How could I walk around my block with a
boriqua
bandana wrapped around my head or march down Fifth Avenue next to the Goya float in the Puerto Rican Day Parade but not have even one clue that people were imprisoned and killed because they rallied against the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico?

How did I know about Walter Mercado and Jennifer Lopez but know nothing of Lolita Lebrón? We watched
West Side Story
every Thanksgiving, rooted for the Sharks and cried for Maria's heartbreak and grieved with her. Our identity as Puerto Ricans was tied into a movie where both lead actors was white. My parents didn't tell me that either. I had to find out on AMC that Natalie Wood was white and I cried like a bitch that day. I felt robbed of something, as if a lie had been woven into the narrative of my Nuyorican identity. Why was a musical more important to have on a loop in our home but not an act of bravery in the name of a free Puerto Rico? Maybe America just swallowed all of us, including our histories, and spat out whatever it wanted us to remember in the form of something flashy, cinematic, and full of catchy songs. And the rest of us, without that firsthand knowledge of civil unrest and political acts of disobedience, just inhaled what they gave us.

I read and took notes on Lolita Lebrón's life, not paying any attention to the people milling about the library. I didn't even think about Kira. I wrote and read until my knuckles ached. The questions in my head didn't give me any sort of break. Did my parents know about her? They had to, right? Why didn't they ever tell me? Why was everyone on some, “Don't tell Juliet about life shit?” I would have traded everything I knew about Abraham fucking Lincoln or Jesus turning water into wine for one afternoon of Lolita with my mom and dad. How could they leave this stuff out? What kind of Puerto Ricans did they want me and Lil' Melvin to be?

A part of me wanted to get on the phone with my parents, stomp around the library and interrogate them. But that's what I did with Lainie and it all blew up in my face. We still hadn't talked to each other since our Banana Republic fight. To go through all of that with my parents seemed stupid. Besides, the absolute last thing I wanted to do was make things more awkward, to feel even more distance between us. I'd rather sit tight in emotional purgatory than dive right into the fiery pits of hell and question my parents' motives behind our upbringing. Maybe I was just punking out. Either way, I wasn't making any sudden movements in their direction. The letter I wrote to my mom was out in the world and going to be delivered soon. I didn't want to fight with her while I was trying to make up with her. I counted to ten in my head and continued reading.

When they arrested Lolita Lebrón after her attack on the House of Representatives, she's quoted as saying, “
Yo no vine a matar a nadie, yo vine a morir por Puerto Rico
.” Even with my limited ability to read Spanish, I got it. “I didn't come here to kill anyone. I came here to die for Puerto Rico.” I wrote her words down in my purple composition notebook and wondered how they'd look tattooed across my chest. What did it feel like to be so committed to something that you'd die for it? I didn't feel that way that about anything. Not about being gay or trying to become a feminist, nothing. Maybe that was the difference between me and Ava or me and Lainie or me and everyone else. Did everyone else have that type of purpose in their lives?

A note from above fell into the pages of
The Ladies Gallery
. I looked up in time to watch Kira turn the corner walking past with a pushcart.

Hi, I have cookies. Meet me on the front steps in 10? -K

I read Kira's note a few times. A flush of heat passed through my body. Cookies. She had cookies and she was going to share them with me. Lolita who? What? I jumped up, stashed the book on Lolita in my bag, checked my fly to make sure my pants were zipped—nothing embarrassing was allowed to happen. I hadn't had a damn cookie since I left the Bronx and landed in healthy vegan Portland with Harlowe who wasn't exactly the baking type. I walked towards the front, saw the steps through the window, got nervous, and dodged left into the bathroom. Overthinking. So much overthinking. My breasts started to sweat, the skin above my lip started to sweat. Oh, God. Was meeting a girl for cookies a date? Did I have to inform Lainie? Had I already taken too long? I checked my watch. Eight minutes left. Maybe it was just a totally normal, friend-like cookie sharing situation and in that case, I was just wasting valuable cookie-eating time. Deep breaths.

The mirror reflected someone stressed out, too chubby in some parts, hair too frizzy around the edges. I hadn't done my eyebrows in two weeks. The cute librarian wanted to hang out with
me
? I wiped the sweat off my breasts and neck. I splashed some water on my face, slicked back my baby hairs. I could do this. I could eat cookies with Kira. I pushed the door to the bathroom open and made my way to the front. She sat on the top step. Next to her was a tin box overflowing with chocolate chip cookies. My fucking favorite. She waved me over. Two halves of one cookie in her hand, she offered me one. I accepted and sat besides her. We ate in silence, glancing at each other, and tried to hide shy smiles. Her black boots came up to her knees. I stared at the gold buckles that crossed them at the ankles. In two bites, Kira's half was gone. She broke another cookie in half and offered it to me.

“I bake things. Cookies mostly. It's weird, but I can't trust people who don't eat sweets.”

The edges of her lips curled against her teeth when she spoke. Bottom lip pierced, I wanted to kiss her.

“Me neither. I don't trust people who can't share, so thank you,” I replied, trying not to die of nerves. Eye contact was officially happening between us. I shifted a little closer to the tin box.

“You're welcome,” Kira said, wiping cookie crumbs off her lips, accidentally smudging her plum lipstick. “I walked past you twice, and it's okay that you didn't notice but it made me wonder what you were reading because, like, I've been reading all day and it hasn't stopped me from noticing you.”

The amount of butterflies flapping inside of me was immeasurable. Like, hella immeasurable.

“
The Ladies Gallery
. It's a memoir about a woman named Lolita Lebrón. Long story short, she shot up Congress in the ‘50's all in the name of Puerto Rican nationalism. I've spent most of the afternoon wondering why my parents never told me about her. Then a sweet girl dropped a note on my lap and I almost hid in the bathroom forever because she offered me cookies.”

“I'm glad you made it out of the bathroom. And to be fair, I had three heart attacks before I dropped the note. I want to know more about your research and the woman who blew up Congress. And about you.”

“More about me?” I asked.

“Yes, you. But my break's almost over.” Kira said. She slid her long black hair over her shoulder in one slow movement. “Maybe I could give you a lift later or walk you somewhere?”

She stood up. So did I. We were inches apart; no room to run. She smiled at me, a dimple in one cheek the size of a dime. Something I could press a finger into or my lips against.

“Um sure, either. A lift home or you could walk me across the street to the bus stop.” Could she tell that I was about to geek out? That if she reached for me I'd let her get it right here on these steps or melt into a giant puddle.

“I'll see you outside on the front steps after closing. Glad you liked the cookies,” she said. Kira picked up her tin and headed inside. She disappeared through the entrance doors. I still had half a cookie in my hand and plenty of time to freak out before the library closed.

I don't remember walking back into the library. All I remember is how warm I felt, how it'd been awhile since someone noticed me the way Kira did. In the Bronx, I was used to men catcalling me on the street or cornering me in the bodega. Unwanted attention pushed upon me or demanded of me. And at school, I pursued Lainie. I put the effort into being sweet and finding ways to talk to her. But Kira, this girl from the library, she sought me out. She thought I was cute. She wanted to get to know me better. Kira. I wrote her name in the margin of my notebook. The cookies were damn good too. I'd go on another cookie date with her any day of the week.

Back in the library, I attempted to pull myself together. I still had work to do. I couldn't find any other books on Lolita Lebrón. I even asked Kira to help and we didn't find any. But we did find some books about Puerto Rico during her time as an activist, before the attack on Congress. In those books, the focus was on the men leading the revolution. Anything about Lebrón was at most a paragraph and often just a footnote. She wasn't alone in her ambush of Congress. There were men with her. Nothing about her or the attack was as substantial or as interesting as
The Ladies Gallery.
The research kept me busy for a few more hours. It made me forget my nerves about Kira and my anguish over the silence between Lainie and me.