Nueva Betica
Establishing Nation
Ander Suarez
10th of September 2024
Alfonso looked at me a bit disappointed but at peace. From the drama when I told him that I want to break up about six months ago, and his tears, now this all was closer to just say goodbye to a friend. Too bad I had to go through some disappointments, some heartbreaks and some crises of jealousy, but in the end, as much as I tried my best to make it up with my work in Cumana, when the school year started, I just felt I couldn’t do it all anymore. I really hoped it would be just a stepping stone for my return to Rio Verde, but it seemed that this summer, nothing worked at all for me. I wanted to transfer to Rio Verde, then I got into a terrible argument with the principal at the school I worked for in Cumana, calling me an ungrateful bastard for leaving so early after she tenured me, and pretty much made it clear to me: either leave or she’ll make sure it will be hell on earth for me. Everything got worse when my transfer to Rio Verde didn’t get through, but as I wanted to escape Cumana, I looked at other schools and to my own chagrin the only sane option that was not a town or a village lost in the dense selva, was coming back home, to San Sebastian, the capital of the State of Apure, where I was born.
Alfonso smirked seeing me taking my time as I took my luggage from the trunk of his Hartnett car. “You talked so much of Rio Verde, it’s kind of funny seeing you taking a plane back to Apure,” he said. I rolled my eyes. A part of me knew he never forgave me for breaking up with him, even if a few weeks later we started talking again. He tried to win me back, but I was adamant and, in the end, he understood it, so we ended getting friendlier. Still, his quips from time to time show that he was a bit bitter. I shrugged. “It is what it is. Rio Verde gave me the best 6 years of my life, but at least, I survived 19 in San Sebastian, so I think I can go through a few more now,” I say. He smiled and then shook his head. “What about the 4 years in Cumana?” he asked. “They were nice,” I say. I didn’t know what else to say, even if I cringed at my very own response. Alfonso just smirked.
“Okay, criollo, you go back home. In case you want to return, I will be waiting for you,” he said and closed off the trunk. I gave him one last hug and then I turned my back, dragging my luggage into the airport terminal. He didn’t follow me. There were no pseudo-romantic goodbyes before security or anything like that. If anything, I felt like a disappointment. I couldn’t rise up to his exigencies and now, I feel like a failure, returning back to my parents. So many years in which I hyped and loved the idea of leaving the northern coast for the southern littoral, leaving San Sebastian for Rio Verde, living in the best city this country could offer, and in the end, it lasted only for a few years, before I ended up nearby, in Cumana, and now, even worse, I return home defeated. I fucked it up with Alfonso, I fucked it up with the school that gave me tenure, I fucked it up with Rio Verde.
It was in the early afternoon, but I woke up at about four, because I couldn’t sleep and, in the morning, I was just nervously re-checking all my luggage to be sure I didn’t leave behind anything I held dear and I gave stuff that I couldn’t carry around to friends or neighbors. I was tired and exhausted but a part of me wasn’t sure if this was because of the sleepless night, the stress from the past weeks or just because Alfonso was just… Alfonso. I checked in my bag and went quickly past security, despite the long line. I moved to the internal flight gates, so I didn’t go through customs, nor duty free shops, nor the food court. It was much calmer and quieter than the other side.
I spent the next hour, up until the boarding started, just browsing the internet on my phone, messaging my sister, Lucia, who said she will come and get me from the airport, and also called my father, Arón, who was as always at El Patio, and chatted with him. He did ask me if I talked to mother, to my surprise. I didn’t. I’m not sure she knows I’m coming, but being a superintendent on human resources of the San Sebastian Sector 4 School District, I imagine she saw my name on all the lists of transfers and new employees and whatever, but she didn’t say anything.
As the plane finally left, I was looking at the city of Cumana, which, despite its nearly ten million inhabitants, was feeling quite small from the air, as we were gaining height, I just left my mind wander. Alfonso called me criollo. It was a term in Nueva Betica used for white people, coming from the white Azilians that colonized the area and their descendants. My family came to Nueva Betica from Yorck and Ostmark, back in the 1940s. My grandparents on the father’s side were from Yorck, the ones from my mother’s side from Ostmark. They grew up in a Nueva Betica that was just ending the nation’s greatest social experiment, the so-called Bronze Race. Set up during the military dictatorship of General Anthonio Bustamante, this social policy was meant to force the nation to go past its racial barriers, and mix together the blacks, the whites, the mulattos, the mestizos and the natives together. The system survived up until the 1960s, with the latter years being more of a voluntary system where interracial couples received bonuses from the state, up until it was abolished all together at the end of the decade. What this created was a mulatto and mestizo majority, which in the census was still called the bronze race, and very few fringes of other races. Only more recently, with further immigration from Gallo-Germania and Toyou, there are rising numbers of Whites and Asians.
Alfonso called me criollo. I was one of the about 20% of Natalian whites. He was part of the about 65% Bronze majority. If anything, despite probably the authoritarian policy of forcing the mixed-race families, it created what many people and fashion magazines describe as the most handsome people in the world and despite the allegedly harmonizing and uniformizing policy, it created much diversity in itself. White passing people with afro hair, olive skinned people with dark blonde hair, and everything in between. Wade had wavy hair but darker skin and deep black eyes. I felt he was the epitome of what the ideal Neobético should be. As much as he always wanted to play the tough guy, he was deeply sensitive, even if he had a way of mostly thinking only of himself and pushing down the concerns and aspirations of others.
I didn’t imagine the break up would affect him. It happened late in the spring. For some time, I was weary of everything he did. For the last year I agreed to open up the relationship to his request. He was fucking around, but I just couldn’t do it and it hurt me every time he was going out and was telling me he goes to meet with someone. This situation made me feel that I have no future in Cumana without him and if he was caring more of his open status of the relationship than the relationship itself, I started to return to a previous dream of mine, moving to Rio Verde, because I started to see the relationship dying. I just got tenured the year before so that meant I could transfer without exams, but the principal of the school in Cumana found out about my plans and got extremely annoyed that she tenured me only to leave, so she just made sure I had no future there anyway, and when I didn’t pass the 2nd interview in Rio Verde, I knew I was finished, as all my world collapsed. Rio Verde was dead; the relationship was just a continuous heartbreak; and Cumana was no safe home for me professionally.
That is when I decided to just rip off the band aid, and told Alfonso that I can’t continue that, and I gave him an ultimatum, about either ending this open experiment or just finishing it forever. He replied saying that if I end it because I’m jealous, the relationship can’t continue anyway because I will always be suspicious of him cheating even if he would try to be monogamous. He then gave me a speech on why humans shouldn’t be monogamous because it’s a social construct and in response I told him to save it up for someone willing to listen, because for me it was over. From there, only tears followed and my only salvation came from my dad and my sister, who told me to man up and come back to San Sebastian. With all of that, here I was. I applied to transfer to Instituto San Juan, which was funnily the school I graduated from and I was quickly accepted. I do think that there were two elements in my quick approval, namely the fact that some of the teachers and even the principal, were still the same from ten years ago when I graduated and secondly, the name Suarez carried some weight in the San Sebastian’s School District because of my annoying mother.
I don’t know how much I just absently daydreamt as the plane flew over the Cabo and Apure states, or if I even fell asleep per se, but I was startled when the pilots announcing the descent to San Sebastian. I looked out the window and I could see the coast and a huge river delta, with I recognized as the Rio Blanco, with the city being more to the west of it, along the coast. In about twenty minutes the plane landed. The flight lasted about two hours and a half, but the change of atmosphere on the tropical northern coast was something completely different. Cumana’s air was soupy and felt hard to breath, with overcast clouds, high temperatures and high humidity. Here, it was similar, but just the breeze from the sea made everything nice and balmy, while the shining sun gave me a boost of energy. This made me think, I wasn’t really sure if it was just the weather or me feeling better leaving the Cumana crap behind. We’ll see if Apure keeps itself nice for me enough to maybe permanentize this or still keep the Rio Verde dream alive. I took my luggage from the band inside the terminal and went outside.
“Ander!” Lucia said, greeting me with a hug, as she saw me. She took me and looked at me from head to toes. “Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed. “Lucia!” I said but then I observed that she was looking at me with critical eyes. “What?!” I asked, irritated. “Nothing. It’s just… weird,” she commented. I just shrugged, annoyed. “You must be a mess. The last time you went out with these types of oversized T-shirts, instead of more slim fitted ones was when you were depressed in high school. Jesus, Cumana fucked you up…” she said. I was wearing an olive-green T-shirt that was a more oversized fit, which I bought some time ago mistakenly. I saw the medium size and went for it, but then I started loving the thicker and nice material, so I kept it. “Or more like Alfonso fucked me up,” I said but then I regretted it when Lucia immediately gave me an impish smirk, which made me know that she was ready to throw a bomb. “Or didn’t fuck you enough,” she said, poking me with her elbow. I just rolled my eyes.
Lucia was 31, and she was 2 years older than me. She had black hair, but she always dyed it blonde, tanned skin, because she made a habit of always keeping the weekend mornings free so she can go to the beach. She had a style of being nasty and caustic to everyone with three exceptions, papa, me and our youngest sister, Ana. At times I was the target of her ironies too, but she was very protective of me and she always know everything about me, because in the family she was the only I came out too.
“So, how do you feel coming back?” she asked and I just rolled my eyes as I was dragging my luggage. “A bit weird. I feel a bit like I’m returning like an ungrateful prodigal son. Spent so much time talking about the good life in Rio Verde and came back fucking it all” I said. “Eh, sometimes plans don’t pan out. Maybe that route was blocked and you just needed to step back and reconsider your options,” she said. We went to her car, a red ENA hatchback and I put my luggage in her trunk.
She started driving after paying the parking fee at the airport, as I continued to tell her the whole story of my last summer in Cumana and the entire drama from scratch. She went on the Autopista 7 which entered San Sebastian from the east, as the airport was situated on the coast, about 15 kilometers from the city. We passed through Bucaramanga, a small fishing village made out of white painted wooden houses, before entering San Sebastian. The city had about 4 million inhabitants. Its downtown was centered around the Rambla, a nice area with high rises right in front of a huge beach with golden sand with pink hues that was unique to the area. Around the high density downtown that had some buildings that went as high was 30 floors, there was a medium density area with buildings of about 4-5 floors and in rest, a sea of suburban development. The city was thriving as tourists were coming and people were moving in, but also, one could see the Sylvanian influence in it, as in many areas in the center you could see the huge parking lots that showed the car culture and dependence the Neobéticos were slowly importing.
“I somehow feel both mom and dad will comment a lot on my return,” I commented on the subject of my return as a potential failure and she just shook her head. “Nah, pa missed you dearly. You know how he is, all emotional. He’ll probably even cry when he sees you, so you should be ready for that,” she said as she started driving. “Mom is just herself…” she muttered. “You know how our parents are. Mom will be only your boss, and dad has all the familial energy,” she continued and I just nodded.
“Yeah, she will be just annoying,” I said and she nodded again, continuing down on through the city center through Avenida Santa Cruz. “Look, I know it sounds bad, but it could be worse. She could be one of these types that will ask of you even more, just because she is your mother, at least we can chill knowing that she is just married to the job and leaves us alone,” Lucia said. This normally should make someone sad, but I got used to it. Father didn’t until very late. I remember in high school, when mother became the principal of Instituto San Juan, where I was studying, before becoming superintendent of the School District, she just changed. She became just extremely absent at home and it seemed like she abandoned her family for the job. She argued daily with father, and in the end, she moved away, closer to the school. After the separation, things got better and she was still present in our lives. Me and Lucia remained with father, while Ana stayed with mother. In time, both of them found someone else to live with and that is when they divorced.
“How is father with Amelia?” I asked Lucia. “Good. Amelia administers the Hostal Manglares and pa serves and manages the El Patio. They are quite okay. They seem to be making a good team,” Lucia explained. Arón Suarez, our father, inherited from his father the building where we grew up in. In the coastal sector of the city, in the western end, stood the Alameda neighborhood, which was a planned community from the 1960s, where there were terraced buildings of about three stories, with commercial spaces on the ground levels and two apartments on the other two levels. With its nice architecture, dominated by midcentury modernism, its parks and closeness to the coast, Alameda became a high-end neighborhood where many were visiting and hoping to move into, while tourists too were flooding it. They kept some apartments for the family, and with the rest they transformed into the Hostal Manglares, or the Mangrove Inn, which was mostly just a series of apartments for rent, while downstairs they set up the El Patio, meaning the Terrace, a bar that attracted many beach goers, because you literally just had to cross the road and a green space and you were on the beach. Not so nice as the one at the Rambla, but still.
“Ay, Ander!” Amelia all but shouted as she saw us coming out of the car. She was out for a cigarette, which usually means that she was annoyed or angry at something. Considering it seemed that the bar was filled to the brim, she probably was just overwhelmed for a bit and wanted to relax. “You just know mom won’t hug you like this,” Lucia commented as Amelia was all over me, hugging and smothering me. “Ay, Lucia… No need to be nasty… but you’re right too,” Amelia said. “How have you been, tío?” she asked but before allowing me to answer, she turned to Lucia. “Be a dear, Lucita. Can take you his luggage in his apartment? He’s probably starving,” Amelia said. Lucia rolled her eyes. “Of course. I just needed a reminder of who is the favorite of the Suarez kids,” Lucia commented, waving us off and going. Amelia rolled her eyes and just mimicked disapproval, but then turned back to me. “Everything good?” she asked.
“Yeah, I was just thinking how much I missed the island,” I said. “Yeah, we all need some time off, and I think you learned a lot in the south, but life is best at home, and home is where life is lived at its best, and that is here,” she said as she all but pushed me inside. Amelia was an interesting woman. She was an Afro-Neobética in her early 60s, whose family came from the fringes of the border with Muntíca, so they escaped the whole Bronze Race social experiment. One needed to always pay attention to what she was saying, because she was quite chaotic in her way of taking and has a peculiar accent. With us, she knew that we understood her, but with tourists it was harder. Sometimes she talks only in deep accents when tourists annoy her.
“Arón! Look who I found on the streets!” She all but shouted when we entered, making the people look at us, but in the generalized activity, the spotlight was on us just for a fraction of a second, before everyone just returned to their food, their drinks, their stories, and more importantly, the football match, as there was a friendly game between the national teams of Nueva Betica and Josepania. “Ay, son!” Aron said as he left the bar to the annoyance of some people there, to come and hug me. He was a big man, a bit taller than me, in his mid-60s, a bit scrawny, at times friendly, at times extremely acid in his responses, at time sarcastic, but when it was about his children, he always was emotional up to tears for everything. I imagine that when we were babies, even seeing us blink would have made him all emotional. Of course, as always with him, the hug was long and it ended with his teary eyes.
“God, I missed you so much,” he said. “I’m so happy that you decided to come back. How was the capital?” he added. It wasn’t like I left to live with uncontacted tribes… I had telephone and surprisingly even internet connection. Cumana wasn’t as bad as I liked to present it being all dramatic, but he did love hearing stories from me and my sisters, even if that meant we retold them again and again. In the same way, he loved to tell stories of his travels across Muntica, Josepania and Sylvania. He pushed me to the bar, and before I even managed to say anything, Amelia came with two plates with vegetable fritters for me and Lucia when she came back down.
“It was… something… To be honest, at this very moment, I’m just happy I’m back,” I said and I could already see him beaming with joy as he heard it. We talked some more until Lucia returned back to the El Patio.
“So what’s the plan for the future?” she asked me as she started eating and Aron offered her a beer, but she rejected it for a no alcohol one. “I’m driving back home,” she explained. “Nothing special,” I said after she received her new beer. “Just start the school year at San Juan, try to survive mother and see where it goes,” I say. “What about you? You don’t stay here?” I then asked her and she shook her head proudly. “Nah, I flew the nest. Got an apartment in the Valle, up north, quite nice, much bigger and much cheaper than here in Alameda or the coast in general,” she said.
“What about… what’s his name… Tulio?” I asked, referencing to her boyfriend for some time ago, remembering that she barely mentioned him recently. “It’s over. The idiot wanted a mother more than a girlfriend or a wife. If anything, I’d rather babysit my children, not a husband too. He just got annoying, saying that I don’t listen to his needs and what can I say… he can clean his underpants too, doesn’t need me to wash his clothes and cook him food when I spend so much time anyway at work,” she explained. We did talk and eat for some more, but as it was getting late, she said she will go home. That was when I observed I was extremely exhausted and I decided to go to sleep.
I went outside El Patio and then entered the building through the entry underneath the neon sign of the Hostal. Amelia gave me the key to apartment number 2. There were eight apartments, one was used by father and Amelia, that was the three-bedroom apartment that was our old family home. Number two was a studio apartment on the same level. There were two more studios for touristy short term rentals and on the floor above there were three more apartments used for tourists and a studio that was empty as they were looking for long term tenants too for it. This was a regulation from the town hall regarding this type of inns, that forced hosts to receive people looking for long term accommodation too.
As I entered the apartment, I could see father and Amelia moved all my stuff from the family apartment here and they did their best to set everything up, which I really loved. When you entered, you entered a small hallway, with two closets, one with clothes, the other with maintenance stuff like the washing machine, the mop, the vacuum, detergents and others, and from it you either entered the kitchen, the bathroom and the room, which had a sofa bed, a desk, and a big bookstand that I had my room, which integrated in the middle the TV. It was the first time I entered the apartment, but to be honest, it really felt homely and familiar. I needed just 10 minutes to set up the bed, take off my street clothes, take a shower, brush my teeth and then I collapsed, falling asleep nearly instantly.
Alfonso looked at me a bit disappointed but at peace. From the drama when I told him that I want to break up about six months ago, and his tears, now this all was closer to just say goodbye to a friend. Too bad I had to go through some disappointments, some heartbreaks and some crises of jealousy, but in the end, as much as I tried my best to make it up with my work in Cumana, when the school year started, I just felt I couldn’t do it all anymore. I really hoped it would be just a stepping stone for my return to Rio Verde, but it seemed that this summer, nothing worked at all for me. I wanted to transfer to Rio Verde, then I got into a terrible argument with the principal at the school I worked for in Cumana, calling me an ungrateful bastard for leaving so early after she tenured me, and pretty much made it clear to me: either leave or she’ll make sure it will be hell on earth for me. Everything got worse when my transfer to Rio Verde didn’t get through, but as I wanted to escape Cumana, I looked at other schools and to my own chagrin the only sane option that was not a town or a village lost in the dense selva, was coming back home, to San Sebastian, the capital of the State of Apure, where I was born.
Alfonso smirked seeing me taking my time as I took my luggage from the trunk of his Hartnett car. “You talked so much of Rio Verde, it’s kind of funny seeing you taking a plane back to Apure,” he said. I rolled my eyes. A part of me knew he never forgave me for breaking up with him, even if a few weeks later we started talking again. He tried to win me back, but I was adamant and, in the end, he understood it, so we ended getting friendlier. Still, his quips from time to time show that he was a bit bitter. I shrugged. “It is what it is. Rio Verde gave me the best 6 years of my life, but at least, I survived 19 in San Sebastian, so I think I can go through a few more now,” I say. He smiled and then shook his head. “What about the 4 years in Cumana?” he asked. “They were nice,” I say. I didn’t know what else to say, even if I cringed at my very own response. Alfonso just smirked.
“Okay, criollo, you go back home. In case you want to return, I will be waiting for you,” he said and closed off the trunk. I gave him one last hug and then I turned my back, dragging my luggage into the airport terminal. He didn’t follow me. There were no pseudo-romantic goodbyes before security or anything like that. If anything, I felt like a disappointment. I couldn’t rise up to his exigencies and now, I feel like a failure, returning back to my parents. So many years in which I hyped and loved the idea of leaving the northern coast for the southern littoral, leaving San Sebastian for Rio Verde, living in the best city this country could offer, and in the end, it lasted only for a few years, before I ended up nearby, in Cumana, and now, even worse, I return home defeated. I fucked it up with Alfonso, I fucked it up with the school that gave me tenure, I fucked it up with Rio Verde.
It was in the early afternoon, but I woke up at about four, because I couldn’t sleep and, in the morning, I was just nervously re-checking all my luggage to be sure I didn’t leave behind anything I held dear and I gave stuff that I couldn’t carry around to friends or neighbors. I was tired and exhausted but a part of me wasn’t sure if this was because of the sleepless night, the stress from the past weeks or just because Alfonso was just… Alfonso. I checked in my bag and went quickly past security, despite the long line. I moved to the internal flight gates, so I didn’t go through customs, nor duty free shops, nor the food court. It was much calmer and quieter than the other side.
I spent the next hour, up until the boarding started, just browsing the internet on my phone, messaging my sister, Lucia, who said she will come and get me from the airport, and also called my father, Arón, who was as always at El Patio, and chatted with him. He did ask me if I talked to mother, to my surprise. I didn’t. I’m not sure she knows I’m coming, but being a superintendent on human resources of the San Sebastian Sector 4 School District, I imagine she saw my name on all the lists of transfers and new employees and whatever, but she didn’t say anything.
As the plane finally left, I was looking at the city of Cumana, which, despite its nearly ten million inhabitants, was feeling quite small from the air, as we were gaining height, I just left my mind wander. Alfonso called me criollo. It was a term in Nueva Betica used for white people, coming from the white Azilians that colonized the area and their descendants. My family came to Nueva Betica from Yorck and Ostmark, back in the 1940s. My grandparents on the father’s side were from Yorck, the ones from my mother’s side from Ostmark. They grew up in a Nueva Betica that was just ending the nation’s greatest social experiment, the so-called Bronze Race. Set up during the military dictatorship of General Anthonio Bustamante, this social policy was meant to force the nation to go past its racial barriers, and mix together the blacks, the whites, the mulattos, the mestizos and the natives together. The system survived up until the 1960s, with the latter years being more of a voluntary system where interracial couples received bonuses from the state, up until it was abolished all together at the end of the decade. What this created was a mulatto and mestizo majority, which in the census was still called the bronze race, and very few fringes of other races. Only more recently, with further immigration from Gallo-Germania and Toyou, there are rising numbers of Whites and Asians.
Alfonso called me criollo. I was one of the about 20% of Natalian whites. He was part of the about 65% Bronze majority. If anything, despite probably the authoritarian policy of forcing the mixed-race families, it created what many people and fashion magazines describe as the most handsome people in the world and despite the allegedly harmonizing and uniformizing policy, it created much diversity in itself. White passing people with afro hair, olive skinned people with dark blonde hair, and everything in between. Wade had wavy hair but darker skin and deep black eyes. I felt he was the epitome of what the ideal Neobético should be. As much as he always wanted to play the tough guy, he was deeply sensitive, even if he had a way of mostly thinking only of himself and pushing down the concerns and aspirations of others.
I didn’t imagine the break up would affect him. It happened late in the spring. For some time, I was weary of everything he did. For the last year I agreed to open up the relationship to his request. He was fucking around, but I just couldn’t do it and it hurt me every time he was going out and was telling me he goes to meet with someone. This situation made me feel that I have no future in Cumana without him and if he was caring more of his open status of the relationship than the relationship itself, I started to return to a previous dream of mine, moving to Rio Verde, because I started to see the relationship dying. I just got tenured the year before so that meant I could transfer without exams, but the principal of the school in Cumana found out about my plans and got extremely annoyed that she tenured me only to leave, so she just made sure I had no future there anyway, and when I didn’t pass the 2nd interview in Rio Verde, I knew I was finished, as all my world collapsed. Rio Verde was dead; the relationship was just a continuous heartbreak; and Cumana was no safe home for me professionally.
That is when I decided to just rip off the band aid, and told Alfonso that I can’t continue that, and I gave him an ultimatum, about either ending this open experiment or just finishing it forever. He replied saying that if I end it because I’m jealous, the relationship can’t continue anyway because I will always be suspicious of him cheating even if he would try to be monogamous. He then gave me a speech on why humans shouldn’t be monogamous because it’s a social construct and in response I told him to save it up for someone willing to listen, because for me it was over. From there, only tears followed and my only salvation came from my dad and my sister, who told me to man up and come back to San Sebastian. With all of that, here I was. I applied to transfer to Instituto San Juan, which was funnily the school I graduated from and I was quickly accepted. I do think that there were two elements in my quick approval, namely the fact that some of the teachers and even the principal, were still the same from ten years ago when I graduated and secondly, the name Suarez carried some weight in the San Sebastian’s School District because of my annoying mother.
I don’t know how much I just absently daydreamt as the plane flew over the Cabo and Apure states, or if I even fell asleep per se, but I was startled when the pilots announcing the descent to San Sebastian. I looked out the window and I could see the coast and a huge river delta, with I recognized as the Rio Blanco, with the city being more to the west of it, along the coast. In about twenty minutes the plane landed. The flight lasted about two hours and a half, but the change of atmosphere on the tropical northern coast was something completely different. Cumana’s air was soupy and felt hard to breath, with overcast clouds, high temperatures and high humidity. Here, it was similar, but just the breeze from the sea made everything nice and balmy, while the shining sun gave me a boost of energy. This made me think, I wasn’t really sure if it was just the weather or me feeling better leaving the Cumana crap behind. We’ll see if Apure keeps itself nice for me enough to maybe permanentize this or still keep the Rio Verde dream alive. I took my luggage from the band inside the terminal and went outside.
“Ander!” Lucia said, greeting me with a hug, as she saw me. She took me and looked at me from head to toes. “Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed. “Lucia!” I said but then I observed that she was looking at me with critical eyes. “What?!” I asked, irritated. “Nothing. It’s just… weird,” she commented. I just shrugged, annoyed. “You must be a mess. The last time you went out with these types of oversized T-shirts, instead of more slim fitted ones was when you were depressed in high school. Jesus, Cumana fucked you up…” she said. I was wearing an olive-green T-shirt that was a more oversized fit, which I bought some time ago mistakenly. I saw the medium size and went for it, but then I started loving the thicker and nice material, so I kept it. “Or more like Alfonso fucked me up,” I said but then I regretted it when Lucia immediately gave me an impish smirk, which made me know that she was ready to throw a bomb. “Or didn’t fuck you enough,” she said, poking me with her elbow. I just rolled my eyes.
Lucia was 31, and she was 2 years older than me. She had black hair, but she always dyed it blonde, tanned skin, because she made a habit of always keeping the weekend mornings free so she can go to the beach. She had a style of being nasty and caustic to everyone with three exceptions, papa, me and our youngest sister, Ana. At times I was the target of her ironies too, but she was very protective of me and she always know everything about me, because in the family she was the only I came out too.
“So, how do you feel coming back?” she asked and I just rolled my eyes as I was dragging my luggage. “A bit weird. I feel a bit like I’m returning like an ungrateful prodigal son. Spent so much time talking about the good life in Rio Verde and came back fucking it all” I said. “Eh, sometimes plans don’t pan out. Maybe that route was blocked and you just needed to step back and reconsider your options,” she said. We went to her car, a red ENA hatchback and I put my luggage in her trunk.
She started driving after paying the parking fee at the airport, as I continued to tell her the whole story of my last summer in Cumana and the entire drama from scratch. She went on the Autopista 7 which entered San Sebastian from the east, as the airport was situated on the coast, about 15 kilometers from the city. We passed through Bucaramanga, a small fishing village made out of white painted wooden houses, before entering San Sebastian. The city had about 4 million inhabitants. Its downtown was centered around the Rambla, a nice area with high rises right in front of a huge beach with golden sand with pink hues that was unique to the area. Around the high density downtown that had some buildings that went as high was 30 floors, there was a medium density area with buildings of about 4-5 floors and in rest, a sea of suburban development. The city was thriving as tourists were coming and people were moving in, but also, one could see the Sylvanian influence in it, as in many areas in the center you could see the huge parking lots that showed the car culture and dependence the Neobéticos were slowly importing.
“I somehow feel both mom and dad will comment a lot on my return,” I commented on the subject of my return as a potential failure and she just shook her head. “Nah, pa missed you dearly. You know how he is, all emotional. He’ll probably even cry when he sees you, so you should be ready for that,” she said as she started driving. “Mom is just herself…” she muttered. “You know how our parents are. Mom will be only your boss, and dad has all the familial energy,” she continued and I just nodded.
“Yeah, she will be just annoying,” I said and she nodded again, continuing down on through the city center through Avenida Santa Cruz. “Look, I know it sounds bad, but it could be worse. She could be one of these types that will ask of you even more, just because she is your mother, at least we can chill knowing that she is just married to the job and leaves us alone,” Lucia said. This normally should make someone sad, but I got used to it. Father didn’t until very late. I remember in high school, when mother became the principal of Instituto San Juan, where I was studying, before becoming superintendent of the School District, she just changed. She became just extremely absent at home and it seemed like she abandoned her family for the job. She argued daily with father, and in the end, she moved away, closer to the school. After the separation, things got better and she was still present in our lives. Me and Lucia remained with father, while Ana stayed with mother. In time, both of them found someone else to live with and that is when they divorced.
“How is father with Amelia?” I asked Lucia. “Good. Amelia administers the Hostal Manglares and pa serves and manages the El Patio. They are quite okay. They seem to be making a good team,” Lucia explained. Arón Suarez, our father, inherited from his father the building where we grew up in. In the coastal sector of the city, in the western end, stood the Alameda neighborhood, which was a planned community from the 1960s, where there were terraced buildings of about three stories, with commercial spaces on the ground levels and two apartments on the other two levels. With its nice architecture, dominated by midcentury modernism, its parks and closeness to the coast, Alameda became a high-end neighborhood where many were visiting and hoping to move into, while tourists too were flooding it. They kept some apartments for the family, and with the rest they transformed into the Hostal Manglares, or the Mangrove Inn, which was mostly just a series of apartments for rent, while downstairs they set up the El Patio, meaning the Terrace, a bar that attracted many beach goers, because you literally just had to cross the road and a green space and you were on the beach. Not so nice as the one at the Rambla, but still.
“Ay, Ander!” Amelia all but shouted as she saw us coming out of the car. She was out for a cigarette, which usually means that she was annoyed or angry at something. Considering it seemed that the bar was filled to the brim, she probably was just overwhelmed for a bit and wanted to relax. “You just know mom won’t hug you like this,” Lucia commented as Amelia was all over me, hugging and smothering me. “Ay, Lucia… No need to be nasty… but you’re right too,” Amelia said. “How have you been, tío?” she asked but before allowing me to answer, she turned to Lucia. “Be a dear, Lucita. Can take you his luggage in his apartment? He’s probably starving,” Amelia said. Lucia rolled her eyes. “Of course. I just needed a reminder of who is the favorite of the Suarez kids,” Lucia commented, waving us off and going. Amelia rolled her eyes and just mimicked disapproval, but then turned back to me. “Everything good?” she asked.
“Yeah, I was just thinking how much I missed the island,” I said. “Yeah, we all need some time off, and I think you learned a lot in the south, but life is best at home, and home is where life is lived at its best, and that is here,” she said as she all but pushed me inside. Amelia was an interesting woman. She was an Afro-Neobética in her early 60s, whose family came from the fringes of the border with Muntíca, so they escaped the whole Bronze Race social experiment. One needed to always pay attention to what she was saying, because she was quite chaotic in her way of taking and has a peculiar accent. With us, she knew that we understood her, but with tourists it was harder. Sometimes she talks only in deep accents when tourists annoy her.
“Arón! Look who I found on the streets!” She all but shouted when we entered, making the people look at us, but in the generalized activity, the spotlight was on us just for a fraction of a second, before everyone just returned to their food, their drinks, their stories, and more importantly, the football match, as there was a friendly game between the national teams of Nueva Betica and Josepania. “Ay, son!” Aron said as he left the bar to the annoyance of some people there, to come and hug me. He was a big man, a bit taller than me, in his mid-60s, a bit scrawny, at times friendly, at times extremely acid in his responses, at time sarcastic, but when it was about his children, he always was emotional up to tears for everything. I imagine that when we were babies, even seeing us blink would have made him all emotional. Of course, as always with him, the hug was long and it ended with his teary eyes.
“God, I missed you so much,” he said. “I’m so happy that you decided to come back. How was the capital?” he added. It wasn’t like I left to live with uncontacted tribes… I had telephone and surprisingly even internet connection. Cumana wasn’t as bad as I liked to present it being all dramatic, but he did love hearing stories from me and my sisters, even if that meant we retold them again and again. In the same way, he loved to tell stories of his travels across Muntica, Josepania and Sylvania. He pushed me to the bar, and before I even managed to say anything, Amelia came with two plates with vegetable fritters for me and Lucia when she came back down.
“It was… something… To be honest, at this very moment, I’m just happy I’m back,” I said and I could already see him beaming with joy as he heard it. We talked some more until Lucia returned back to the El Patio.
“So what’s the plan for the future?” she asked me as she started eating and Aron offered her a beer, but she rejected it for a no alcohol one. “I’m driving back home,” she explained. “Nothing special,” I said after she received her new beer. “Just start the school year at San Juan, try to survive mother and see where it goes,” I say. “What about you? You don’t stay here?” I then asked her and she shook her head proudly. “Nah, I flew the nest. Got an apartment in the Valle, up north, quite nice, much bigger and much cheaper than here in Alameda or the coast in general,” she said.
“What about… what’s his name… Tulio?” I asked, referencing to her boyfriend for some time ago, remembering that she barely mentioned him recently. “It’s over. The idiot wanted a mother more than a girlfriend or a wife. If anything, I’d rather babysit my children, not a husband too. He just got annoying, saying that I don’t listen to his needs and what can I say… he can clean his underpants too, doesn’t need me to wash his clothes and cook him food when I spend so much time anyway at work,” she explained. We did talk and eat for some more, but as it was getting late, she said she will go home. That was when I observed I was extremely exhausted and I decided to go to sleep.
I went outside El Patio and then entered the building through the entry underneath the neon sign of the Hostal. Amelia gave me the key to apartment number 2. There were eight apartments, one was used by father and Amelia, that was the three-bedroom apartment that was our old family home. Number two was a studio apartment on the same level. There were two more studios for touristy short term rentals and on the floor above there were three more apartments used for tourists and a studio that was empty as they were looking for long term tenants too for it. This was a regulation from the town hall regarding this type of inns, that forced hosts to receive people looking for long term accommodation too.
As I entered the apartment, I could see father and Amelia moved all my stuff from the family apartment here and they did their best to set everything up, which I really loved. When you entered, you entered a small hallway, with two closets, one with clothes, the other with maintenance stuff like the washing machine, the mop, the vacuum, detergents and others, and from it you either entered the kitchen, the bathroom and the room, which had a sofa bed, a desk, and a big bookstand that I had my room, which integrated in the middle the TV. It was the first time I entered the apartment, but to be honest, it really felt homely and familiar. I needed just 10 minutes to set up the bed, take off my street clothes, take a shower, brush my teeth and then I collapsed, falling asleep nearly instantly.
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