Preface: Ana and the Light

Decided to pick this up again over my week off, just to see if it would come to me again. Here's a new revised preface. More to come...

It's the worst day of a woman's life when she loses her mother.

That's what the flight attendant had said before gently patting the top of Ana's hand as she returned her boarding pass. Through the noise, Ana hadn't heard her correctly but forced a smile in thanks assuming she had said something wishing her a pleasant trip.

But standing in the quiet of the jet way, it came to her.

She cringed at the idea of the ladies pinning their heads together, discussing the fleeting sadness they felt for her. She hated she had to admit why she was flying home to begin with, but it was the only way they would give her a seat on such short notice. 

Now in her seat, Ana pushed her bag beneath the chair in front of her before resting her head along the cold frame of the plane. From her window, a sea of broken concrete tarmac stretched before her and Boston. It’ll be a week at most, she tried to soothe herself. She closed her eyes, feeling the tired creases around her eyes settle and imagined how wonderful it would be to run her legs between the sterilized sheets of her own bed. To throw the covers over her head if only to escape the gravity her world, as she knew it now….

“Permesso, seńora.”

Ana opened her eyes quickly, meeting those of an older gentleman whose girth was permitting him from fitting comfortably in the middle seat. Sitting erect, she pushed her petite frame closer to the domed walls, smiling gently as to grant a clear pass.

“Gracias, mil gracias.” He whistled through the gap in his teeth, finally settling into his seat before retrieving a yellowed handkerchief from an equally yellowed guayabera. She exhaled gently, her body slumping back into the cheap leather seat as her gaze returned once again out the window. Had she remembered to deadbolt the backdoor, too? Would Frank remember to give Mucha her medicine, whatever the hell it was for. It seemed the cat had more prescriptions than her these days. What was the name of mamí’s lawyer, she couldn’t remember now. Florres? Lugo?

“Y ústed, seńora. A dondé vas?” She heard him speaking again and knew it was directed to her, but she wasn’t ready to do this yet. He smelled too much like her: a combination of hand rolled cigarillos, rose water and mountain grown coffee. She smiled weakly keeping her eyes trained on the wing’s sun-crazed grey paint and shook her head.

“No español, no.” She hoped her slight Massachusetts accent was convincing enough.

“Ah, I see. You’re taking a vacation then, miss?” He tried again, his English a challenge but well practiced enough.

“Something like that.” She twirled the slight turquoise ring around her left pinky mindlessly.

“And have you been to our beautiful island before, miss? They say she’s enchanted, have you heard?”

Ana looked at him now, really looked at him. She watched his haphazard smile push the fat of his cheeks up, nearly blocking his dark brown eyes from view. She followed the slow forming line of sweat along his neat hairline before returning his gaze but nothing more. She had never met this man in her life and this would most likely be their only encounter as were most interactions while traveling limited to the frame of few hours it took to arrive to one’s final destination. So who would she choose to be? A young elegant woman of few words? The brash Puerto Rican woman her mother often goaded her to become? Or something less desirable than the two?

“I have,” she said quietly and carefully. “Fortunately for me, I was never enchanted enough to return again until now when forced.”

She watched his reaction. His smile dropped slightly before disappeared completely and he turned to face the seat in front of him, the conversation now abruptly ended.

It seemed that no matter her intention, Ana was always best at choosing the later. She felt a momentary tug as the plane jolted from the gate and began its slow trudge to the runway.

In a few short hours she would home again. A place she had sworn never to return to again until the day her mother had died. A promise she made at 17 and that she had kept these 13 years. She admitted in that moment she thought 13 years wasn’t enough, she had expected mamí to live well in to her 80s as her abuela had. But now as the jet shook fiercely as it gained speed, it seemed the past she had grown so graceful at alluding was now upon her at 500 miles an hour and there was no turning back.

She closed her eyes, steeling herself for the pain that would soon be upon her.