Page 126 of No Greater Oblivion

“Si compartimos nuestras vidas, nuestras alegrías, nuestra felicidad, ¿por qué no también nuestro dolor? ¿Por qué tienes que cargar eso sola si me tienes a mí?”

“I don’t understand⁠—”

“Yes you do,” I tell her. “In fact, I think you understand a lot more than you let on.”

She drops her head and stares at her palms. “It’s not on purpose. Sometimes it just gets all jumbled up in my head.”

“You were fluent when you were little. What happened?”

Dahlia hesitates before answering. “My father never wanted to move to New York. He was a year out from graduating when my Mom found out she was pregnant with me. Her dream was always to live here and so she gave him an ultimatum—he could either stay on the island or go with her, but she was leaving either way.”

“That doesn’t sound very fair.”

She shakes her head. “Mom grew up in extreme poverty…she wanted better for me. For Papi, the island was home. It was paradise. For her, it represented all the insecurity she struggled with in childhood. I understand why she left.”

“What happened after?”

“He followed her and they got married. From what I remember, it was hard for him. He didn’t speak English so he couldn’t enroll in any colleges here and he had a pregnant wife to take care of. A family friend helped him get a job in construction and as far as I know, that’s what he’s been doing ever since.”

“What was their marriage like?”

“Passionate. Tumultuous. Sometimes they were happy and other times, it was chaos. My father followed wherever there was work. I remember one year he spent an entire summer in Texas working and spent almost an entire paycheck on a flight home for my birthday. He was here less than twenty-four hours before he had to leave again.” She wraps her arms around her legs and rests her chin on her knees. “All the traveling made Mom jealous. He had a bit of a wandering eye but I don’t think he acted on it. They never legally divorced but they were on and off for years. The fighting worsened as I got older.

“I was ten years old when it happened. I always knew when Papi was about to leave for a trip because he’d do it at night. He’d come into my room, kiss me, and then close the door behind me. Mom hated it because she knew I needed the light from the hallway to sleep but the hall closet was across from my bedroom. Papi knew if my door was open, that I’d hear him getting his suitcase from the top shelf.

“The way they fought that night…my God, it was awful. I don’t think I even remembered how awful it was until just now. They said such horrible things to each other. I cried all night under the covers and prayed for it to be over. Finally, the apartment door slammed shut and I knew he was gone. Not gone forever, though. I still expected him to call, to come back eventually. Days turned to weeks turned to months. On my birthday that year, I waited for him to show up but he never did.

“Time continued to pass. I was devastated. Heartbroken. So much so that I think even my mother had reached a point of no return with him. A year later when he returned, she didn’t welcome him back into the house. At least, not to live. He was allowed to see me in the mornings before school and he came over in the evenings for dinner. Nothing was the same. I was so angry with him. I wanted him to feel as alone and isolated as I had the entire year he was gone so I iced him out the only way I knew how; I turned language into a weapon I could use against him. Papi only ever spoke to me in Spanish because he never learned to master English—not really. He could get by on the basics but that was it.

“I spoke English all the time and when he spoke to me, I’d pretend I didn’t understand. At first, he found it annoying. I think he thought I was going through a phase—Papi had always been very insistent on teaching me about our culture and our history. Mom wanted to raise an American daughter but Papi focused on raising a Puerto Rican one. They were very different that way; neither of them agreed on identity and cultural expression. So I thought the best way to hurt him was to reject him and the things he taught me. No more Spanish music, Spanish books, or Spanish news. But then, everything changed.

“Years passed and I wasn’t pretending anymore. Papi’s visits became less frequent. He came less often and for shorter periods of time. All we did was fight in a language neither of us could understand. I was really starting to forget. Whenever he spoke to me, it all just turned into a mess of words and sounds in my head that I couldn’t translate anymore. The distance I put between us made us hate each other. He was no longer the same father I had in childhood and I wasn’t his little girl anymore. We became strangers.

“Mom died a few months before I turned fifteen and our relationship had taken a turn for the worst. Most of my teen years were hell. It simmered down a little bit after the whole thing with Peter and I had my abortion. I thought things were getting better between us until I turned eighteen. Not long after, he packed his bags, left a note on the counter, and I haven’t seen him since.”

She turns to hide her face but I reach out and cup her cheek. Dahlia closes her eyes in an attempt to hide the hurt behind them. When a tear slips past, I brush it away as if it never fell in the first place.

“You have no idea how lucky you are to have the family you have. To never know what it’s like to truly be alone. All I do is wait for the people around me to abandon me again. I wait for Karina to decide Brent is more important than me and the day she never calls back. I wait for my friendship with Lyss to crash and burn again. I wait for you,” she says quietly. “I wait for the inevitable. Nothing good in my life has ever lasted very long and this relationship is no exception. I push it back, I ignore the voices, my instincts. I keep them at bay for as long as I can but it’s always there…ticking like a time bomb ready to go off.”

“Are you so confident things won’t work out between us?”

“I don’t know.”

Dahlia pulls away from me and rests her head against the window, transfixed once more by the sight of falling snow.

“Ask me again in a year from now.”

31

KARINA

Dahlia

The Past

New York City

Ioften think that if given the chance to choose between dreams and practicality, Karina might’ve chosen a pair of dance slippers over a career in academia.