Anita Nadal (Photo by Jay Paul)
Anita Nadal is sitting across from me at a coffee shop near her VCU office, talking about the heartbreak.
No, not the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria that destroyed her island, her beloved Puerto Rico, and left her without contact with her sister for 30 days. “No internet, no cell, nothing,” she says. “In this day and age, it’s so terrifying.”
And no, not the terror that remained long after the hurricane made landfall, as the vortex of wind and water hovered over the island like a dark and menacing cloud for more than 15 hours, forcing her extended family into a corner of their house, huddling for comfort.
The assistant professor of Spanish is talking, rather, about the crushing nonresponse of the presidential administration to the tragedy in the days immediately after the hurricane made landfall.
About the polls that showed 46 percent of Americans had no idea that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.
Her eyes are wet and pleading as she takes my hand into hers and grips it, hard.
“To know that you don’t matter. That no one cares. That your own government doesn’t care.”
She makes no effort to lower her voice out of concern for others in the shop — as if to make it known to all within earshot just what her family, her people, went through.
It’s been a year since Maria hit, but in many ways the tragedy for Nadal is ongoing. Its aftermath continues to define and shape her existence, reinforcing for her just how tenuous and precious this life is, and how our days are held together by dualities. Her family, her ancestral home, has been devastated, and she has been made witness to how little her citizenship matters. At the same time, her activist spirit has never been stronger, and she has experienced as never before the immense kindness of strangers in her adopted hometown.
Over iced coffees she insists on buying (“in my country, that’s how we do it, we take care of people”), she speaks to me about the moment she’d made contact, finally, with her sister — the immense relief and joy she felt, the intense and aching gratitude, the tears that would not stop coming.
But as the reality of her sister’s circumstance became clearer to her, that initial feeling of relief and joy gave way to a whole host of complicated emotions, all of which, she tells me, only seemed to pull her toward paralysis. She was desperate to help, to take action — something, anything, that she could use to funnel her anger and sadness toward some purpose.
She learned quickly that she was not alone in her rage and bewilderment, that others in the Puerto Rican community were feeling the exact same things.
Which was, yes, deeply comforting, but also deeply disheartening. So much pain and despair — and these were not the people who had suffered; these were the people who knew people who had suffered.
A network quickly formed among the Puerto Rican community in and around Richmond, people peppering one another with the same urgent questions: How’s your family doing? Are you able to get water to them? Are you able to get supplies to them?
The support group quickly morphed into a relief organization.
As negligent as the administration had been in providing aid and offering sympathy, it was the opposite response, Nadal says, in the VCU community. Donations poured in to their makeshift operation. The engineering school, the medical school, the School of World Studies all gave. Students and faculty gave. The Puerto Rican Bakery in Colonial Heights gave. A Fort Lee soldier gifted them a $7,000 shipping container.
“It became my mission, and others’ too, to fill it up,” says Nadal of that massive, life-affirming box.
She woke up each morning inspired, clear of purpose and with an excess of energy. At the same time, now that she could communicate again with her sister, she was barraged almost daily with how insignificant their contribution was in the face of overwhelming need.
“Every day people were dying. Every day. They couldn’t get medicine. Older folks were sick and ailing and desperate. People were being buried in their back yards.”
Having been involved in community service in the city for more than a decade, it was inevitable that Nadal would emerge as one of the faces of the local relief movement. Two months after the hurricane, she was invited to address the Virginia General Assembly.
To be able to speak out for her people and raise awareness for the cause was a rare and beautiful opportunity, she says. At the same time, she was met with the same ignorance that had pained her in the days after Maria hit.
“Isn’t Puerto Rico another country?” a member of the General Assembly asked her.
She tried hard not to respond with simple vitriol.
Directing her words at me now, as if I were the ignorant politico, she says: “I’m a U.S. citizen! My father was in the Air Force for 28 years! It took months for the government to respond, and people are still without electricity! Still, a year later!”
A Puerto Rican flag hangs on a building in San Juan. Fuerza may be translated as "force," "strength" or "power." (Photo courtesy Anita Nadal)
A month ago, she returned to the island for the first time since Maria.
Seeing the three cruise ships moored in San Juan harbor was heartening. But for every encouraging sight, there was an equal, and perhaps more profound, discouragement, like the refrigerated 18-wheelers in San Juan used to store bodies. Some blocks were returning to normal; others still resembled a war zone.
Death and life, together.
In her year of aftermath, a year of ignorance and inspiration, it’s only fitting.
She shows me the piece of jewelry she brought back from her visit, a charm she wears on her wrist, close to her pulse — a small, silver frog, el coqui, the official mascot of Puerto Rico.
Her eyes fill with tears as she recalls the song of the coqui, the song of happier times.
Pain and joy.
Loss and redemption.
She has a new lesson to impart to her students, beyond conjugation and gendered pronouns: “This is life.”
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