The Islands by Dionne Irving

Author:Dionne Irving
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781646220670
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2022-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

There were about fifteen people in the living room the night of el Día de los Reyes Magos. Papa pushed the couch back against the wall, even though there wasn’t any dancing yet. Music filled the room—45s that Tío Sergio had sent from Brazil spun on the record player.

Mama stood in the corner, supporting herself on the edge of the pushed-away couch, her red linen dress hanging on her like it was for sale in a store instead of on a person. She had combed her hair, but her eyes were still the color of Pilar’s imaginary canal and her cheekbones jutted out. She sent Pilar back and forth between the kitchen and the living room for trays of tajadas and canastitas filled with ceviche. The abuelita was in the kitchen washing and drying glasses, refilling trays, and checking on food in the oven.

More and more people filled the house. Pilar stopped once during one of her trips back and forth and did a little shimmy to “El Tamborito” in the center of the floor, flipping up the stiff crinoline underneath her pink cotton dress as all the grown-ups laughed. Once her trays were empty, she looked for Marco and found him sitting on the back steps petting Pablito. She sat down next to him, stuffing sticky, sweet tajadas into her mouth.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, her mouth full.

“Just looking at the stars,” he said.

He got up from the stoop. In the faint he light, Pilar saw the cut on his face.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Marco said. “Get back inside before Mama catches you eating yourself sick.”

Pilar went back into the kitchen and the abuelita filled up another tray. Pilar was about to head into the living room when she heard the needle yanked violently off the record player.

When she went out into the living room, Señor Delgado stood in the middle of the room, panting and red-faced.

“Those damned Americans have used our flag to wipe their asses,” he said.

Señor Delagado taught English at the Instituto, and Marco was in his class. Señor Delgado was a good friend of her parents and had been at their house many times, but Pilar had never seen him like this. Papa wrapped his arm around the señor.

“It’s okay. Sit down, have something to drink.”

Her father motioned to her mother, who ducked into the kitchen. Señor Delgado sat down in a chair and her mother returned an instant later with a glass of water. He took a long drink and his Adam’s apple bobbed as the water slid down his throat.

“What happened, hermano?” Señor Riveras finally called out.

“Our students,” Delgado said, panting. “They went over there peacefully. They tried to raise our flags next to theirs. Tried do to what Kennedy promised.”

His forehead was wet and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief.

“Those barbarians surrounded those boys—those children singing their damn anthem—and then dragged them from the pole. The paper said it was the other kids. But it wasn’t the teenagers who dragged them.

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