Then I walked out into an eerily dark airport to try to find my bag and, as I struggled with my heavy suitcase walking to the car rental, my cousin Marjorie and her husband, Scott, found me: There was a 6 p.m. curfew in place, and it was almost 5 p.m. On the way to their apartment, my phone rang — a miracle to Scott and Marjorie, who had gotten no cell service since the storm — and on the other end was my Aunt Ayxia, Marjorie’s mom and the first relative from Mayaguez we’d heard from. She asked me to tell her other daughter in Denver that she was OK, and I asked Ayxia about my mom. She hadn’t seen her yet and was talking on a borrowed phone and had to hang up.

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My phone rang a second time 45 minutes later, and it was my mother, calling from another borrowed phone. She sounded shaky but told me that she was OK and that I shouldn’t travel to Puerto Rico to find her. I only had time to tell her that it was too late, and that I would head out west as soon as possible.

It was the last time I heard from her until I got to Mayaguez, days later.

At Marjorie and Scott's apartment building, they explained that they’d had no power since Irma, before Maria, so we'd have to walk up the nine floors, in a dark stairwell, to their place. We talked in the shadow of flashlights that night, snacking on nuts and other small treats we had on hand, as they explained how Maria had battered their apartment for hours. We went to bed just after 10 p.m. but, in spite of my exhaustion, it was hard to sleep amid the deafening buzz of choppers overhead and the diesel generators all around us, cranking away and spewing thick clouds of exhaust into the air.