Patricia Engel - The Veins of the Ocean

On the last night of the year, Nesto pops open a bottle of rum inside the cottage, spilling a few drops behind my front door for Elegguá, who he says lives behind hinges, and more drops in every corner of the cottage, in remembrance of the ancestors.

I follow him out to the beach behind my cottage and sit on the sand as he steps to the water’s edge, looking to the sky, palms up, asking for the blessing of the Great One, recognizing the dead who accompany him, known and unknown, the camaché, and looks down at his feet, asking Elegguá, who controls the flow of aché, to guard his health and for his specific request, the same thing he always asks for: to bring his family across the Straits to be with him and to intercede on his behalf to Obatalá, creator of mankind, and his wife Yemayá, mother of the ocean that separates him from his children.

Then Nesto reaches down to the white cloth at his feet where he’s spread out pieces of watermelon, berries, and coffee beans, picks them up, carries them to the water’s edge, and places them in the ocean. Rather than push the offering up to the sand, the tide takes it out with the current.

When he returns to my side on the beach, we take turns sipping from the bottle and he tells me that since he received his green card almost two years ago, he’s started the paperwork to bring his kids over to be with him. But after waiting a year for their appointment to get their tarjeta blanca exit permit to leave the country, they’ve been denied and told to make another appointment, which they did, for the first available opening, three years from now. Even paying secret fees and bribes has only managed to bump the appointment up from three years to two.

Nesto gulps the rum. I’ve never seen him drink like this. He complains every other Caribbean rum tastes like candied piss compared to Havana Club, but that doesn’t stop him from swallowing more and closing his eyes, and, as if he’s forgotten I’m beside him, he whispers to the sky, “I don’t know how much longer I can live like this.”

It’s not yet midnight but we can already hear firecrackers in the distance. The Broken Coconut put out word that they’re launching fireworks from a barge offshore. I thought maybe Nesto would want to go see the display, but he said he just wants to be with the ocean tonight, and with me, if I don’t mind.

He hands me the bottle and I take a few sips. I hold the rum in my mouth for a few seconds before letting it slide down, stinging my throat.

“What about you, Reina? Isn’t there anything you want to ask for?”

“Ask who?”

He touches the sand and kisses his fingers before saying, “Olódumare.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“God. The supreme one. Owner of the day and night.”

“I know you believe in that stuff, Nesto. But I don’t.”

“You don’t need to believe to ask.”

“Then I would be a hypocrite.”

“No, you would be honest.”

“I’ve learned asking for things doesn’t work. You have to just accept what’s given to you. Make the best of it.”

“You don’t believe in praying for things?”

I shake my head.

“You know, there was a time when all the birds of the world had feathers but no wings. They lived on the ground and leopards would come and eat them. The surviving birds prayed to Elegguá, asking him to find a way to protect them from the leopards. So Elegguá spread the birds’ feathers and gave them wings with which to fly away from all the creatures that wanted to eat them.”

“I don’t need wings.”

“I am sure there are other things you need. The only way to get what we want from life is to ask for it.”

I smile but I can see it isn’t enough for him; he wants me to say I’m willing to believe one can petition the sky and the sea and be heard.

Instead I say, “I believe there is what happens and what doesn’t happen. Hoping or praying won’t change that.”

“If that were true, I wouldn’t be here. I’d still be stuck on that island.”

“Nesto, if there were such a thing as answered prayers, I’m the one who wouldn’t be here.”

“There are worse places you could be.”

“If my prayers had been heard back when I used to say them, life wouldn’t have taken the turns it did. I wouldn’t have had to come here. I’d be somewhere else living some other life.”

I mean that I would be with my brother, but Nesto takes it differently.

“You would be living somewhere with a wonderful husband and many children.”

“Maybe.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I don’t want things the way other people do. I just take what I have, what’s already in front of me.”

“It’s good to want things, Reina. We have to want things or we’ll die.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What makes you get out of the bed every morning?”

“The fact that being awake is better than being asleep.”

“Why is that?”

“I dream too much.”

“Your dreams are messages. They are telling you to pay attention to the world around you.”

“Nesto. You have all the answers.”

“Just look out there at the sea. We can’t see below the surface but that doesn’t mean that there’s not a whole world under the current.”

“If we go for a swim we’ll see it.”

“No, we’ll see just a small piece of it. And you don’t have to see all of it, so immense it’s beyond our comprehension. You just have to know it’s there. It’s the same with everything else. If you take a chance believing, you’ll see what can happen.”

I consider telling him I once had faith. I was, for a brief time, a young girl who prayed and believed in the unseen, perhaps as much as he does, but it all fell away from me.

Instead, I shove him gently.

“You live in your world. I’ll live in mine.”

He stands up quickly and stretches his hand out to me to pull me to my feet as well.

“What is it?”

“Come on,” he says “We have to bring in this new year with happiness, not with such gloomy talk. It’s bad luck.”

“What are we going to do?” I’m standing in front of him now, still holding his hand, which he holds up, putting his other hand on my waist.

“We’re going to dance.”

He starts swaying gently, guiding me with his hands and steps, following the slow rhythm of the tide washing up the shore just inches away, and he adds his voice to it, humming the tune to “Lágrimas negras,” which he once told me was his mother’s favorite bolero. With each step he leads me a bit closer to the surf, until the cold foam covers our toes and then reaches above our ankles. He’s close enough for me to feel his warm breath pass my cheek, but his body is far, his long arms between us. I step in closer, without thinking much about it, but he steps back, and I try it again, and again he steps back.

“It’s not so bad where you ended up, Reina, is it?”

“No. It’s not.”

I lean my face forward to kiss him, but he pulls back before my lips reach his, though he never stops dancing.

“What are you doing?” I say, because he says nothing.

“I’m dancing with you.”

“You don’t want to kiss me.”

“I do.”

“But you won’t.”

He drops my hands and steps away, leaving me alone with my feet in the water.

He turns his back to me to face the moon behind us.

“Lolo invited me out on his boat tomorrow. Do you want to come?”

I walk up on the beach and sit on a mound of sand a few feet from him.

“Okay.”

“I’ll sleep here tonight, if you don’t mind.”

“No problem.”

He walks up to the cottage but I remain behind on the beach, digging my feet into the sand.