When in Puerto Plata...

Chapter 1

As Daniela reached the altar she wearily crossed herself. Forty-eight hours before she
had been at work organizing a new exhibit at the MoMA, now she was at her abuela's
funeral in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Her New York self would have laughed at
her Dominicana self here in a church, she had little use for religion but the whole family
had been called suddenly to DR, the motherland, with the passing of their matriarch.

The whole flight she had felt halfway between sobbing and stony indifference. Perhaps
it was the minute Catholic in her but she suddenly felt incrediably guilty that the last
time she had seen abuela they had argued.

It had been about her singledom as usual. At the time she had actually been dating a very
suave African man, actually from Africa, her friends had teased her she had Obama-
fever for her interest in men actually born in Africa. But abuela was having none of it.
Even though Daniela had the chocolate skin of her mother and abuela was hardly fair
skinned herself, her abuela still came from the generation that feared the far away
African past of the island. She had spent most of her life under Trujillo and not suffered
as some being an attractive young woman married to a minor army officer. That family
legacy was the sort of thing most of Daniela's generation was ashamed of, after all, how
could someone with Obama-fever be proud of her family's ties to the, admittedly, US-
supported dictator of the past? But neighbors had come forward to bare witness that her
abuelo hadn't been all that bad, in fact, he had helped the neighborhood make it through
tough times. So instead, the family had chosen to ignore the past.

What abuela had never been willing to ignore however, was that Daniela was single and
nearing thirty. Hadn't she herself been married at twenty and by Daniela's age produced
three or four children (the count varied, Daniela had noticed long ago, depending on
what sort of point she was trying to make). The last time she had talked to abuela they
had both been drinking and abuela started spouting racist propaganda from her
childhood about black skinned people, included quite a few non sequiters about
Haitians. It had all ended with abuela telling her she must be frigid because she couldn't
get a hot blooded Latino man to look at her.

Daniela had left and found herself a hotel room at a nearby resort and not spoken to
abuela since. And now, she could only think her thoughts to abuela, hope that maybe
there was a heaven and abuela could hear her saying she was sorry to have been so
upset. OK, she wasn't entirely sorry-- Damn, a mosquito bit her in the muggy church and
she quickly crossed herself again and said, "I really really am sorry, abuela...and Lord,
for having ignored you as well." And she tried to make herself think pious thoughts.