by Xenia Ruiz
One night, I awoke with a sensation that something, someone was hovering over me. Even though I don’t believe in ghosts, I had heard of people who dreamed of deceased loved ones, so my first thought was that it was Tony. I shot up in bed as my heart fought to jump out of my chest, rubbed my eyes until Eli came into focus. With his newly shaven head, he resembled Tony, but Eli was taller, thinner. Ordinarily, his hobbling gait and cane coming down the basement stairs would have been enough to awaken me, so I must have fallen into a deep sleep.
“What?!” I yelled, frantically.
“Ma …” was all he could say.
I snapped on the lamp and looked at his contorted face. He looked like a little boy again, awakened by a thunderstorm or a bad dream. “Eli. What is it? Are you in pain?”
I lifted the covers and he readily crawled into bed next to me. I pulled him to me in spoon fashion just as I had when he was little, although now his body was too long to fit in the cocoon I formed with my body. But I held on to him tightly as his body shook with sobs. It had been so long since he allowed me to hug him.
“Talk to me, mijo,” I crooned.
He stopped crying long enough to squeeze out, “I can’t,” before his voice broke again. I held him tighter and let him cry for about a half hour or so.
“Ma …” he started again just as I was drifting off to sleep. “I played dead. After he … I got shot, I played dead. Tony came out of Rain’s room when he heard the shooting. I could’ve yelled to warn him, but … There were all these people … bodies on top of me, and somebody started screaming … I heard more shooting above me … on top … Everybody on top of me was dying … so I played dead.”
“Oh, baby. It’s not your fault.”
“I should’ve yelled but I didn’t want to get shot any more. I just kept praying that I didn’t die instead of yelling for Tony to go back.”
He started crying uncontrollably again and all I could do was hold him and repeat over and over, “It wasn’t your fault.”
As his body shook, my own tears fell onto his back. My heart ached for him, all he had gone through and kept inside, for everything he would always remember.
“I miss him so much,” he finally said, his voice congested and shaky.
An avalanche of memories washed over me as I pressed Eli’s body closer. I remembered how I used to tell the boys to love each other after pulling them apart from a fight, their chests heaving, their eyes ablaze with contempt. I thought of how Tony had more than once declared, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” whenever I asked him to keep an eye on Eli. And I remembered them holding hands before pre-adolescence dictated it wasn’t cool, how they would laugh covertly at me when I did something old-fashioned or what they considered “Hispanic,” like when I dressed in eccentric outfits or started speaking Spanish out of the blue.
“I know, mijo. I miss him, too.”
Early the next morning, I awoke to find Eli gone from my side. After checking his room, I found him snoring, the covers around his head like a hajib. I drove to Montrose Harbor, parking outside the barricades that now sealed off the closed beach, not caring if I got a ticket. There were a few runners out, a couple walking their dog. A fresh dusting of snow covered everything and the bitter wind quickly cut off the circulation to my bare hands, head, and ears. My car-length leather jacket and fashionable boots were not sufficient protection, more suited for early fall than midwinter and my teeth were involuntarily chattering, but I ignored them. It was so savagely cold, it hurt to breathe. But looking out across the harbor, for one brief moment, I forgot to breathe and overlooked the freezing temperature. The lake was dazzling, awesome in its simplistic beauty, the waves closest to the shore frozen in midmotion, resembling icebergs like fabulous sculptures only God’s hand was capable of creating. I stood on the top revetment, watching the horizon in muted fascination, trying hard to clear my mind.
For just a little while, I didn’t want to think about anything. Before long, my mind started numbing and I could feel my heartbeat throbbing in my head, which felt too heavy for my neck. I didn’t have my migraine medication with me and this suited me fine. More pain. I wanted to feel as much pain as possible, just on the brink of death. I didn’t want to die; death was too easy.
Suddenly I felt weak and began to sway on my feet, so I slipped to the ground and sat down. I realized I hadn’t eaten the day before and couldn’t remember when I had, only that I had drank coffee.
A memory crept into my mind, of the winter when I was ten, playing in the snow with Maya and my father as my mother watched us from the window. I had been so excited about making a snowman with the fresh wet snow that I hadn’t bothered to put on my boots. Even when I couldn’t feel my feet, I kept playing until my mother had to drag me indoors. When I pulled off my gym shoes and socks, my feet were red and painful, the air making the pain worse. I didn’t start crying until my mother placed my feet into a bucket of warm water, which felt like a million pins stabbing me. My parents thought I was exaggerating but they didn’t realize I had early frostbite until they took me to the hospital. Later that night, after my mother had safely tucked me into bed, and kissed my bandaged feet, I had a dream that the doctors had cut off my feet. I woke up screaming.
The memory of that night was so vivid, I could still hear my screams. Then I realized that I was screaming. At first, I cried sounds of bilingual frustration, “AHHH!” and “AYYY!” Then I yelled to drown out a plane flying overhead, so I could be heard in the heavens above. I screamed until my voice gave out and my throat was hoarse and raw. Suddenly, I realized I had forgotten to visit my mother’s grave on her birthday, hadn’t thought of her in a long time. Would Tony also “slip” my mind in a few years? The thought made me cry out harder.
Looking out across the lake, I remembered the day Tony had asked, “Is that heaven, Mommy? Is that where we go when we die?” I could hear his animated voice in the wind, could see his cherub face, too serious for a four-year-old. I tried to remember what my reply had been. Had I said, “I think so,” or “You’re never going to die, baby”! I couldn’t remember.
I knew my face, hands, and feet were on the verge of frostbite, vibrating with hypothermia. But it felt justified, the ultimate punishment for finally succumbing to my temptations while my sons were under attack. I imagined someone finding me frozen solid in a sitting position like an archaeological discovery.
God never gives you more than you can bear. I had been hearing that saying all my life.
“I can’t bear this, Lord, I can’t,” I said, my voice inaudible and ragged.
I didn’t want to understand my son’s death, or accept it, I just wanted the pain to be over, once and for all. Maybe one day I would find peace with the fact that Tony was chosen because he was the saved one. Perhaps Eli was left behind in order to provide him with another chance to give his life to the Lord. If it had been the other way around, if Eli had died, I had to believe Tony’s somber demeanor would have made it more difficult to handle his younger brother’s death. And then I heard my Father’s voice: He’s going to be alright He’s with Me.
“You’re going to be alright,” I heard the voice say louder, a voice that was gentle and tranquil, a voice that belonged to a nurse. Dazed and cold, I couldn’t turn around right away. At first I thought I was hearing voices because I had heard that that’s what happened when one went into shock. Then I knew it was God, that it had to be God talking to me. I knew many people didn’t believe hearing God’s voice was possible, and immediately labeled you crazy, a Jesus freak, a fanatic. But He talked to people all the time, through others, through signs. I heard the same voice again, louder, a voice that filled my body with warmth and comfort like a moving gospel song that gave me chills.
“I said, ‘are you alright’?” the voice asked, and I realized I had misunderstood the first time.
Shivering, I turned and saw a woman in a sweat suit, running shoes, mittens, and a hat—all in white. The first thing I thought was, You’re not
supposed to wear white after Labor Day.
“Do you need help?” Before I could answer, she crouched down to my level, her strange muted eyes benevolent, full of concern. She handed me her mittens. When I didn’t take them, she slipped them on to my hands as I watched like a child who didn’t yet know how to tie her shoes. Then she put her skullcap over my head. I felt God’s presence in her, His fatherly hands trying to heal my wounds, mend my heart.
“No,” I said, finding my voice, though it was barely there. “I’m alright.”
Slowly, my body warmed up as heat flowed into my extremities and through my head like new blood from a transfusion. On the outside, I trembled, colder than February, but inside I was warmer than August. With the woman’s help, I got up and walked sluggishly back to my car, anxious to turn on the heat. I was eager to get home, to Eli, my son who awaited me.
CHAPTER 24
ADAM
LONG BEFORE MY father got sick, I had accepted the fact that death was as natural as life. When I was eight, my favorite older cousin, Steve, died suddenly on the football field of an undetected congenital heart defect. Four years later, my grandfather was killed in a car accident. And when I was fourteen, my mother’s only sister, Violeta, who had been unable to conceive, finally became pregnant at age forty only to die in childbirth, something I thought had gone out with polio and scarlet fever. Death was something that came suddenly, angry like a fist, silent like the night. It could happen to anyone, any time. No one was immune.
It wasn’t until my father’s death that I was a witness to how calculating and cruel dying could be. I watched my father disintegrate from a two-hundred-pound retired navy man and police sergeant to a one-hundred-twenty-pound skeleton. One day the doctors told my mother there was nothing more they could do for my father and sent him home to die. The rest, my mother said, was up to God.
In a way, I always knew that some day I would make peace with my demons—or rather the one demon that had dogged me for almost twenty years. Only I always thought I would be older, in my fifties or sixties, wiser and docile, the anger finally gone out of me like air from a flat tire. I figured I would be more optimistic, closer to the end of my life, when the things that had mattered when I was young and foolish no longer held any value. I would be able to look back on his memory and see him, not as a stereotypical man, aka a dog, but a real man, a human being with faults, born to err. And I would be able to forgive him, finally.
And so, on a very sunny and frigid March day, I walked over the dead grass of St. Michael’s Cemetery, past monuments, tombstones, and markers that men erected in honor of the dead, much like the material possessions they coveted in life. Only the stone and marble blocks with all their fancy proverbs and epitaphs meant nothing to the dead, only to the living.
Two years ago, my life was divided into “before” and “after.” Before cancer and after cancer. Now, it was “the first time” and “the second time,” and I hoped, the last time. I remembered thinking how invincible I felt after surviving the first time, how I feared nothing after enduring cancer. Now, I took it back. I had always feared its return. And now that it had, the possibility of my dying scared me to the point where I found myself praying not only at night, but throughout the day, more times than the most devout Muslim who prayed five times a day. Did God listen to the prayers of sinners? I wondered.
That morning when my mother called to ask me if I wanted to visit my father’s grave, I gave her the same answer I had given her for the last nineteen years: No, ma’am. It wasn’t his anniversary and I didn’t understand why she was going, but I didn’t ask. She was silent for a moment, and I waited for her usual line of questioning, expecting her to plead with me given my current circumstances, but she simply replied, “Alright, Love,” and hung up. She went alone, according to my sister.
I followed the directions I had received from the cemetery office and found his gravesite in the veterans’ section without any problem. The closer I got, the slower I walked, not only with reluctance, but with fatigue. All morning long and on the drive to the cemetery, I kept reminding myself of all the things I wasn’t going to do: talk to him, say a prayer, cry.
But as soon as I saw his name—Nelson Charles Black—followed by his birth and death dates, and the inscription: Beloved Son, Husband, and Father, my eyes started tearing and I had to choke back a sob. I tightened my jaw and squeezed the bridge of my nose where a permanent bump now resided, thanks to Brandon Cho, and momentarily regained my composure. Self-consciously, I looked around the cemetery, grateful I was alone. On his grave, there was a small bouquet of carnations, undoubtedly left by my mother. Although we didn’t talk about it, I knew Jade visited his grave the most, not only on his death anniversary, but on his birthday, Father’s Day, and the patriotic holidays. Quite unexpectedly, I felt guilty for coming empty-handed, but the feeling passed just as quickly as it had appeared.
Squatting down with my elbows on my knees, I tried hard to think of something to say. Mama told me that when the other woman found out about her, she refused to let her children visit my father, their father, in the hospital during his illness. It was Mama who called to tell the woman about his death and the funeral arrangements, and it was Mama who made amends. Now, I wondered if “his other kids,” as Jade referred to them, visited his grave. Before that day, I hardly thought of them at all.
There was a time when I didn’t hate him, and I tried to concentrate and build on that. I tried to remember the happy times, the family things we did together, the nights I’d wait up for him when he was on second shift, before I knew about his other life. Still no words came. I then tried to think of an appropriate prayer and the only one that came to mind was Psalm 23, which I had memorized for a Sunday school competition years ago.
“The Lord is my Shepard, I shall not want …” I began, my voice a monotone.
Before he died, my father accepted Christ as his savior. I was there when it happened, in the living room, which had been converted into his temporary bedroom, complete with hospital bed, IV, and the shark cartilage pills he was convinced were going to cure him. I listened as my mother’s pastor asked him to repeat the words that transformed him from sinner to saint, “Lord Jesus, I repent of my sins. I believe You died for my sins. I ask You to come into my heart. I make You my Lord and Savior.” My father could barely speak, and each syllable was an effort in itself. I had expected some miraculous vision, some kind of change to come over his face, like peace, something immediate and different. I had expected him to be saved from death, to live. But afterward, my father looked the same, pallid and pain-stricken, and a week later, he died.
“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.’” The words were coming back to me as a matter of course as if they were something I said every day. And then before I could get to the end, my voice broke and tears were blinding me.
“Stop!” I cried out, straightening up quickly and covering my eyes with the heels of my hands. Incensed and embarrassed, I pressed down with all my might until I could see the colors of the rainbow in geometric designs behind my lids, trying to force the tears back from wherever they came. But they seeped around the edges, forcing me to acknowledge their existence.
More than anything I wanted to curse him, but what came out of my mouth was the complete opposite. “God!” I dropped down to my knees, still shielding my eyes, trying to keep my emotions intact and hidden inside.
At that moment I began to see things clearly for the first time in my life, past the black and white, past the shades of gray. For almost twenty years I had stayed away, determined to prove that the seventeen years he had been my father had meant nothing after learning about his other family, determined to believe that it didn’t matter whether I ever forgave him. I had awakened that morning with no intention of coming to the cemetery. And yet, here I was. The only explanation was one word: God. God had led me to this place on this day.
As my body
shook silently with years of pent-up lamentation, I uttered the words I had pushed deep within me years ago, the words my father, my true Father, had been waiting to hear: “I forgive you.”
Things were different the second time. It was hard enough recovering from the orchiectomy, but then during my second cycle of chemotherapy, the unexpected happened. I began to lose my hair, which had survived the first time. The first time, I had attributed its endurance to my strong, resilient African roots. This time around, one day while greasing my scalp, I noticed that as I parted my hair, knotted coils began to fall out easily. A couple of days later, a simple touch yielded more strands. I didn’t care so much at first because I had plenty of hair to spare, but it physically hurt. It was as if every single hair were attached by a needle into my scalp, and any touch, any contact like laying on the pillow, felt like the needles were pricking my head. The pain convinced me that my hair was connected to the rest of me like a limb; once it was gone, it would never come back. If it couldn’t survive, how could I?
By the second weekend, I was able to pull whole locks with a simple tug, leaving sporadic patches on my head like a really bad haircut. Dr. Desai said it was a good sign, proof that the drugs were killing the cancer. Looking in the mirror was agony. When I brushed my teeth, I kept the medicine cabinet open. Dr. Desai gently suggested I shave my head. I refused.
Every few days, my mother experimented with different kinds of oils: olive, coconut, and carrot, which she massaged into my scalp twice a day. Nothing worked. I started wearing a bandana. Luciano brought me a beret, which I wore on top of the bandana, making me look rather cool, like some throwback revolutionary.