Page 121 of No Greater Oblivion

I spin around, and Emilce rushes into the room with a baby carrier.

“I swear to God, I blink and she’s gone. Where was she hiding?”

“Right here. She fell asleep.”

Alejandro helps Emilce put Mia into her carrier. Brent enters the room with a handful of wires in his hand and Lettie close behind, carrying a dusty box she must’ve brought down from the attic.

“All right, I think I can get the VHS to work.”

Lettie excitedly holds up the box. “We have home movies!”

Oh God…not the home movies.

On cue, Karina and Diego enter the room. “You went up into the attic?”

“Oh, I didn’t, this is vintage Jacques Fath.” She juts her chin in Brent’s direction. “He did.”

“Since you went missing for the last hour.” Brent’s words are tinged with irritation. “Where were you?”

She smooths a hand over her hair, melting the snowflakes caught in the dark strands. “I took a walk.”

His gaze flickers to Diego standing behind her but Diego barrels into the room, keen on distracting everyone. “I don’t think any of us are drunk enough to watch home videos. Someone get the rum and a couple of tumblers⁠—”

Karina turns on her heels. “There’s coquito in the fridge.”

I make to go after her but Brent beats me to it. My aunt walks in and notices the VHS is working which stalls my plans to go investigate. “Oh, you found them!”

She and Lettie sit on the rug and unpack the tapes. They line them up in rows on the coffee table until my aunt finds the one she was looking for. “This is from the first Christmas we spent at Marcia’s.”

“Tia, please?” I shift uncomfortably. “Do we have to?”

“Afraid we’ll find something in the family archive?” Alejandro asks. “Any deep, dark secrets you want to tell me now?”

“Yes. I’m actually a brunette.”

Alejandro surprises me. Laugher tumbles from his lips so freely and without restraint that I’m compelled to look at Diego, the two of us exchanging looks in light of his brother’s suspicious behavior. Or maybe it isn’t suspicious. Maybe Alejandro so rarely experiences joy that when he does, it comes as a shock to all of us.

I can’t help but wonder what life would be like—who he would be—if things were different. The thought makes me ache in places I didn’t know could feel pain.

The television sparks to life with a twinkle and a glisten and Tia Paula clasps her hands. “It works!”

“The VHS player that’s older than me?” Karina re-enters the room with a tray of plastic cups and Brent is close behind, expression taut but otherwise blank.

“I need to go get the photo albums!”

My aunt leaps to her feet and runs upstairs. Karina hands out coquito and Alejandro drags me over to the sofa, forcing me to sit and watch so I can get into the Christmas spirit.

Twinkling lights and red and gold ornaments come into view as the camera moves down the length of the tree from angel topper to velvet skirt. Dozens of neatly wrapped gifts are stuffed under the tree, some of them small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand and others big enough to fit a toddler. The camera pans out and the rest of the apartment comes into view.

Twenty-years and nothing has changed. The apartment at Marcia’s looks the same as it did in my childhood. Old but loved and warm.

At that point, we had been living there for almost a year and it was our first Christmas there. There are scuffs on the walls and floors, picture frames filled with smiling people, and little knick-knacks on the tables. The couch is covered in plastic, the coffee table with doilies, and wrapping paper litters the floor. An old television with an antenna sticking out from the top is muted in the background while Christmas music plays on a radio which twenty years ago, looks older than I am now. As the camera moves, I catch a glimpse of the news channel NY1 and the date at the bottom—it’s Christmas day of 2003.

“Gabriela, por acá.”

“Oh!”

The camera spins around and a man sits on a love seat with his head bowed and his shoulders slumped forward. Whatever he’s holding is hidden by the coffee table but before he can lift it, the camera person is distracted by a hurricane coming from the right.