Sharon’s mission to Puerto Rico

Sharon’s mission to Puerto Rico is an urgent effort to reopen the question of Victoria Rogers’s identification of Fonny, who is imprisoned in New York. Sharon travels to find Victoria and asks Pietro Alvarez to help reach her, carrying a photograph of Fonny as evidence she hopes will prompt reconsideration. The mission brings her face to face with both the limits of persuasion and the human cost of pursuing the case: she leaves Victoria’s dwelling without an answer and returns to a failed attempt to meet Pietro.

Purpose and Urgency

Sharon arrives on an evening flight with a precise awareness of how much money she has and how quickly she must act. The trip is therefore shaped by more than distance: every delay consumes resources while time continues to weigh on the effort to free Fonny. She brings only a small overnight bag, avoiding a wait for luggage, and carries the address of a small hotel in San Juan that Hayward has reserved for her. These practical details establish a mission planned around speed and limited means rather than a leisurely visit.

After landing, Sharon crosses the field among hundreds of other passengers. The night sky and the air recall Birmingham, a place she has not seen in a long time. The brief memory connects her journey to an earlier home without changing its immediate purpose: she has come to pursue a case that has placed her future son-in-law in prison. Her movement from the plane to the hotel and then to the meeting with Pietro is governed by the same pressure to use each opportunity quickly.

Seeking Pietro Alvarez

At the club, Sharon initially tells the staff that she is early for a meeting because her intended flight was overbooked and she had to take an earlier one. She asks to be seated out of the way, then identifies her business more directly: she is waiting for Pietro Alvarez and gives her name as Mrs. Rivers, from New York. Seated against a wall, she orders a screwdriver. The small, managed exchange gives her a place from which to wait, but the meeting requires her to explain why she has come.

When she speaks to Pietro, Sharon clarifies that she wants to see Victoria, not merely meet him. She identifies herself as the mother-in-law-to-be of the man Victoria has accused of rape and says that Fonny is in prison in New York. Pietro responds by praising Fonny as a son-in-law, but that response does not itself offer assistance. Sharon has made the stakes explicit: the accusation is not an abstract matter to her, because the imprisoned man is to marry her daughter.

Sharon asks Pietro to take a photograph home to Victoria and urge her to examine it carefully. She appeals to him as a man who might understand what another man knows, while stating her belief that Victoria was raped but that Fonny did not rape her. She also asks Pietro to call her the next day and gives him her hotel name and telephone number. He studies the number and the photograph, then pushes both back toward her and leaves. His refusal closes the route Sharon had hoped would lead to Victoria through him, but it does not end the mission; the next morning she goes in person.

Finding Victoria

Jaime is ready on time, and by nine thirty he has brought Sharon to the favella. He knows roughly where the particular dwelling is, though he is uncertain whether he knows Victoria herself. Hayward had warned Sharon that the place would be difficult to describe and that she might not want to try afterward. The settlement stands beside a garbage dump under an otherwise bright sky, with dwellings built in varied ways and children throughout. Jaime accompanies Sharon as her protector, though he is uneasy about the errand. The setting makes the distance between a hotel appointment and the conditions of Victoria’s life part of the encounter rather than a detail Sharon can ignore.

At the dwelling, Victoria first tries to end the visit by saying she has work to do and does not know any Mrs. Rogers. She points out that there are many places in the settlement, implying that Sharon could search for a long time. Sharon does not accept the denial as an end to the conversation. She says she has a photograph of Victoria and brings it out. As Victoria moves toward the door, Sharon moves away from it and into the room. Victoria objects that Sharon is not a North American lady; Sharon’s presence and the photograph have made clear that the visitor has come prepared to challenge the attempt to send her away.

Victoria asks Sharon to leave, and Sharon sees that she is trembling and close to tears. Sharon answers by naming her purpose plainly: she is trying to get a man out of prison, that man is going to marry her daughter, and he did not rape Victoria. She takes out the photograph of herself with Fonny and asks Victoria to look at it. The picture is not presented as proof of what happened at the assault; it makes Fonny visible as a young man connected to a family and a future, rather than only as the accused person in a case.

Confrontation and Outcome

When Victoria says that Sharon is a mother, Sharon changes the way she addresses her. She speaks to Victoria as a daughter and as a woman, acknowledging that terrible things happen and that people can do terrible things. She warns that Victoria must answer for lies, and stresses that Fonny is twenty-two, wants to marry her daughter, and is Black. Sharon then identifies the central dispute as she understands it: Victoria saw Fonny in a police lineup, and that was the first and only time she saw him. Victoria counters that she did see him. The exchange leaves the crucial question contested; the evidence of this encounter does not establish that Victoria withdraws or revises her identification.

Sharon touches the crucifix as she appeals to Victoria in the name of God. Victoria screams, breaks away, and runs through the open door, demanding that Sharon leave. Doors open and people gather. An older woman takes Victoria into her arms as Victoria weeps, then leads her away. The people in the corridor stare at Sharon, who has no words that can resolve the scene. Carrying her handbag and the photograph of Fonny and Tish, she makes her way down the stairs and out to the street. Jaime opens the taxi door, and he drives her away without speaking. The mission has brought Sharon to Victoria, but not to an agreement or a usable statement.

That evening, Sharon goes to the club again. The doorman tells her that Pietro will not be there, that there are no tables for single women, and that the club is full. The sequence ends with her efforts to reach him still blocked and Victoria’s response unresolved. Sharon has made the accusation’s personal stakes unmistakable and has confronted the witness directly, yet neither encounter secures the reconsideration she sought. The mission’s significance lies in that difficult gap between speaking for Fonny and being able to change the course of his case.