The Accidental Native Read Online Free

“It’s the guest house,” Don Marco informed me, giving me the keys. I thanked him and extended my hand. He hugged me.
    â€œBienvenido,” he said. Julia hugged me too, and I draped my arms around her.
    â€œI can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered, embracing me harder as if to make sure. She kissed my cheek and looked like she was going to cry, but she wiped the lipstick off with spit and patted my chest. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
    They sped off, Julia waving her arm out of the window. She wanted to stay and help me unpack, invited me to dinner. But the sudden maternal outpouring put me off. Too soon, I thought.
    When I entered the house, I noticed the television. Someone else would have looked for the remote. Instead, I turned it around, making the screen face the wall. Then I sat down.
    On any trip, I move to other business, start unpacking or just plop on the bed. But I was in Baná, my parents’ hometown, where every sense would have elicited a vibrant memory with every morning, each rainfall, any walk into town, had they attained their dream of returning. I threw myself back on the bed and closed my eyes.
    â€œCome with us,” my parents had begged. We had not taken a trip together in a while. They handed me the brochure and I contemplated it, knowing I would not go. Milk and Honey Israel Tours, it said. “Experience Israel in a unique way you will never forget.” Late in life, my parents had become more serious about religion—the apprehension of approaching retirement, I guess. We were in such different places. I had lost my religion a long time ago and with certainty knew that it would not be rekindled or rediscovered, especially not with some cheesy tour of the Holy Land. I gave back the brochure, which contained an itinerary of various spiritual and sacred landmarks.
    One evening when they were still on their trip, the news came on. I watched scenes of screaming people, the disembodied correspondent with hurried stricken voice reporting as officials wearinggreen vinyl ponchos pushed onlookers away and attempted to drag bodies from smoking, scarred vehicles. A shot repeated over and over of a white rosary atop a pool of blood.
    I paced the apartment, nauseous, my heart racing, holding my hand to my forehead, not knowing what to do. I hoped my parents were not involved. But then the news trickled in: The Popular Democratic Jihad taking responsibility for the attack … three simultaneous car bombings in the city of Jerusalem … detonated in heavy traffic … 32 dead … 117 wounded … a tourist bus partially blown up by one of the suicide car bombers … a religious group from the United States on pilgrimage to the Holy Land among the dead and wounded … one of the worst terrorist attacks in that troubled part of the world.
    Late that night, a young low-level official from the State Department confirmed my fears. I sat dazed, the cell phone clutched in my hand. The silence in the apartment eerie, taunting me toward reflection. My mouth dry, heartburn and anger rising in my chest. Anger and hatred for Israelis and Palestinians alike. With a wrenching wail, I hurled the phone across the room and it smashed against a lithograph of Puerto Rican patriot Albizu Campos waving an angry fist. A gift from them, now shattered, too.
    I lay down recalling moments with my parents, trying hard to recall their voices, becoming frustrated I could not faithfully conjure them—having to accept the significance of their loss.
I’m all alone, I thought
. The thought paralyzed me, exhausted me, until I fell into a light sleep on the couch, the ongoing news bulletins streaming from a neighbor’s apartment, my machine taking a steady string of messages from family, friends; only to wake to the door opening and Erin’s scented body running to me, crying “Oh, baby, sweet baby, I heard.”

Three
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    The doorbell