With her evocative storytelling, Melissa Coss Aquino turns a story about two cousin-turned-sisters dealing drugs into a character study. Carmen & Grace: A Novel about two Bronx-born Puerto Rican women, Carmen, and her cousin, Grace, who are deep in the city’s drug trafficking business. Using their dual points of view, Aquino takes readers through their days after the leader of their empire, Doña Durka, is killed.
The novel weaves emotional tension, the complexities of family, and the looming threat of danger not only to delve into their lives as dealers, but to examine the circumstances that pushed them towards it.
The book alternates between their points of view, starting with Carmen. When we meet her, she appears to be locked up somewhere, meaning something’s gone awry. Then we go back to the past, where the rest of her section takes place. She introduces us with, “Where I’m from, there’s a million ways to fall out of grace and into trouble; but once in there is no way out but through”, instantly setting the tone and establishing her main conflict. Carmen is pregnant and no longer feels secure being part of their drug ring. On one hand, she wants out to keep her baby and relationship safe, especially after the violent death of Doña Durka, the woman all the way at the top. On the other hand, Carmen knows that her cousin, Grace, wouldn’t want her to leave the crew. She’s been in that dilemma for years, which she notes at Durka’s funeral: “I was always saving a little piece of the before Doña Durka dream life of Carmen and Grace. When [she] died, it rose to claim me again…”. The two of them grew up together and came into the business together, so it only makes sense that they’d want to be with each other through it all.
There’s a lot of tension between them as Carmen puts off telling Grace about the baby, so much so that Grace ends up finding out on her own, saying, “You turned out to be a real weak link and a super fake bitch. You lucky we go so way back”. An interesting aspect of their relationship is how assertive Grace is compared to Carmen. She’s the one in charge, of course, but she’s still more assertive and blunt, and not only to Carmen. Since she was closer to Doña Durka, her death does affect Grace’s emotional state more, but she tends to come off as rude. When reading both of their points of view, it’s clear that they both act selfishly, usually against the other’s wishes, and feel like the other is gradually slipping away. As the story progresses, we learn more about Grace’s upbringing and how she and Carmen end up where they are, adding an extra layer to their dynamic.
Throughout the novel, there’s a recurring theme of motherhood that often gets tied to the characters’ spirituality, specifically Doña Durka. There are multiple references to Yemaya – the ocean goddess of Afro-Caribbean religions, Oya – the Yoruba goddess of wind and storms, Maa Durga – the Hindu goddess of protection and motherhood, and the Virgin Mary, all goddesses that Durka worshipped. Grace even names her crew the “Daughters of Durka,” or D.O.D., referring to the Daughters of Mary. As established earlier, Grace was very close with Doña Durka, who also considered her a daughter, even telling Grace when they first meet,
“Yo sé lo que es vivir sin madre. Pero tú tienes una madre en mí."
Motherhood means different things to Carmen and Grace. Even before getting to Grace’s first section, we learn about the neglect they faced from their own mothers, who also got into drugs. As Carmen tries to prepare herself for motherhood in her current environment, Grace continues with business as usual. But despite her attitude to Carmen’s secrecy and hopes of leaving, their sisterhood still means the most to Grace, even if she expresses it in odd ways. When she learns that Carmen and her boyfriend are getting married in secret, she decides to organize a private wedding ceremony for her, Carmen, and the other girls on Orchard Beach, complete with white skirts and matching rings. She tells them, “Mothers have been stolen from us or us from them, but we can reclaim the one that belongs to all of us. It is a bond deeper than marriage, and we commit to loyalty, honor, and love”.
While this may be a way for Grace to maintain control at a time when she’s still grieving, it’s also her way of emotionally and physically linking them all together – not just as daughters, or even wives or mothers, but as sisters. It’s a bond beyond marriage, and between only them.
Once we reach Grace’s perspective, the narrative jumps all the way back to the beginning when she was fourteen years old. She meets Doña Durka’s son, Toro, who’s in his twenties or thirties, who quickly captures her attention. He’d been looking for her mother but found her instead. Intrigued by her intelligence, he takes her to meet his mother, and they wait until she’s of age to initiate her into their business. Even back then, Carmen was less enthused about it when she was roped in, but for Grace, a word that came up a few times was possible. It was more possible for her to have a future unlike her mother’s; possible to allow herself the security Doña Durka and Toro gave her. There isn’t even an argument for her loss of innocence, as is the case for many vulnerable young girls, which she mentions: “…there was that nagging feeling I carried of never having been pure to begin with, so having nothing to protect”.
Compared to Carmen’s point of view, Grace doesn’t give off that curt attitude and hearing her side of things with the events leading up to them gives much-needed clarity that we wouldn’t see with a singular perspective. She had reasons for doing what she did, even if they ended up costing her, Carmen, and the rest of the D.O.D. After she learned of Durka’s death, the only mother she grew to love, she began to lose herself. Everything felt like a slight: Carmen’s hesitancy, Toro’s accusations, and even the fact that Doña Durka was killed at Orchard Beach, the place she often went, and it reached a boiling point. After the story’s explosive climax, Carmen and Grace have to reckon with their roles in everything. A lot of the relationships they built had to end, and the two of them inevitably part. Happy endings aren’t common in a business like theirs, and they know that. It’s as Grace puts it after things have quieted down: “Good or bad, [Doña Durka] taught me to make things happen and not just to let things happen to me. It doesn’t mean we got it right, it only means we fucking tried”.
Melissa Coss Aquino is a Puerto Rican writer and professor from the Bronx, NY. For more about her work, see: http://www.melissacossaquino.com/about.html
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