“I must go, Señor Trujillo,” was all Étie could muster.
“Su padre está en el General del Hospital que está en Avenida Ortega Y Gasset Ensanche La Fe.”
“Sí, señor,” Étie managed to say, containing the quiver in his voice. “I know where it is.”
“Then you will go?”
“Adios, Señor Trujillo.”
Étie turned off his phone and placed it back on the nightstand. He wiped away that errant tear that had trickled down his cheek. Looking down, he turned to me and then his gaze slowly rose and met mine. Our eyes spoke what words, at that great and fragile moment, couldn’t. And then he finally spoke.
“He call me señorita, sissy, faggala, that man who call himself my father.” Étie repeated to me what he had said during our very first meal together, when we were getting to know each other, even before we’d declared our love. He had said this to me back then in words spoken with a fierce indifference, almost proudly. But not now. Not now. His words were sad and resigned in spite of the valiance he so desperately tried to mask them with. “He beat me daily, he put me out of la casa when I only fifteen. He care only that I should die, Jesse. And so now I care only same for him.”
“Don’t say that, Étie,” I begged softly.
“And why not?” he asked, wide eyes fighting to keep from crying more. “It is truth.”
Truth.
That is what I had to realize and understand. Truth. His truth. Étienne’s truth. I needed to desperately understand his truth so that I would know, could know, how to give him what he needed from me.
I needed to understand his pain, a pain that was his and his alone, a pain intensified by a lifetime of despair and alienation from flesh of his flesh, from his father.
I don’t know which devastates most, losing a father whose kind, gentle and unconditional love made life without him a near unbearable loss? Or losing a father whose distance, rebuke and disdain could create an emptiness, a coldness, that could transmogrify even one as loving as my Étie into defensive stone. Broken to heal stronger, burned tough against emotional and physical brutality, steely forged and iron shielded.
I still don’t know. Perhaps I’ll never know. For as much as I love Étie, I could never be Étie. I could never be in his skin, carry his heart that pounded and ached in ways only he could fully know. That I understood, because no one will ever know the ritual mourning that visits me constantly. Touching my late father’s picture that sits on my mantle is torture I must endure each day. I wake knowing that his generous smile, his encouraging words, his sorely missed off-key singing are the cruel and abiding reminders of what I’ve lost. That is what I must live without, what I must selfishly grapple with until my own dying day. It is the cruel, abiding, yet ultimately satisfactory legacy of a full and loving life that curses and blesses all at once.
That I even selfishly fathom my own emotional dilemma in the face of my baby’s pain is something perhaps I should be ashamed of. But it is a shame I cannot help and for which I claim full blame.
But seeing and feeling what my Étie was going through rendered me helpless, introspective and self-examining.
And yet I did assume that there is a special strength that exists within a man like him, unscathed by a lifetime of parental rejection.
But is indeed that man, that child, unscathed? I was beginning to understand the answer to that question was a painful and resounding no. I was beginning to understand in all of this that perhaps losing a father in life is so much more devastating than losing a father to death. His loss was so much greater than mine. The man I loved more than life itself had suffered a loss I could never completely understand the sting of.
Fight it though he tried, Étie began to cry again, right there in my embrace, in a way I’ve never seen him cry before. He was beginning to cry for that great loss of his, and for what I believed he was beginning to allow himself to feel within the inner softness of that hardened fragile heart. For in spite of all the hate he called to arms against his dying father, he was still that little boy, wounded, not hateful, who longed deep down inside for what he’d never had, yet finally had to admit was what he’d always wanted—his father’s love.
I didn’t think at that moment I was wrong in my assessment. To this day I don’t think what I saw in his eyes, what I felt in my arms, was incorrect. I believe I knew, as clearly as I knew how much I loved Étie and he me.
And so I held him and he cried freely. I held him in my arms knowing what I didn’t fully understand, understanding what little I knew. He was about to become a fatherless child; something I knew a little about. And he needed me. That I knew completely.
Chapter Fourteen
In the year we had been together, Étie and I had visited what came to be known as our escape many, many times. The small, secluded, black-rock white-sand piece of beach hidden beneath El Malecón, the hustling, bustling waterfront boulevard that was the western entrance to Santo Domingo’s picturesque Colonial Zone, was a place very special to us. It was a small tucked-away cove that gathered a tiny piece of sea into a warm and gentle pool, a small patch of land dotted with gothic Gethsemane-like trees, bent and twisted, that listened to, were transfixed by and swayed with the capricious songs of tropical breezes.
There Étie as a child escaped his father’s abuse and anger and swam all day. As a homeless teen, he slept there under a watchful moon and ate from mango and coconut palm trees. He stripped naked and washed the clothes off his back and bathed and baptized his slight and boyish body in the clean blue sea.
It was there the young adult Étie took me on the day of our very first photo shoot. It was what he introduced me to when I asked if he knew of someplace that spoke of paradise.
And he was right. The location, like the images of him captured by my camera, was indelible in its simple but haunting beauty, this place he had taken no one else to.
That he shared it with me from the very beginning touched me so and made me realize the significance of it and us.
And so, that afternoon, after that fateful call from Señor Trujillo, with all that Étie was feeling, with all that we were feeling, he asked me, “Can we go to our escape?”
“Anything you want, my sweet.”
The water was calm and warm that day. We floated effortlessly upon its stillness, our baggy trunks bubbled with air pockets, soft midday sunlight shining overhead, until Étie, suddenly out of nowhere, dived on top of me, tackled me, wrestled my old ass playfully into the shallow waters, disturbing them gleefully.
But I gave as good as I got, grabbed him and tossed him like a beach ball. Two squealing kids were we, tossing and tumbling and splashing each other. I then chased him back to shore and wrestled him down, our soaked and sand-caked bodies tangled and spinning onto the thin floral blanket we’d borrowed from the resort. We were laughing again—silly, giggly, childlike laughter.
Huffing and puffing and famished, we then tore into the fish sandwiches and Coca-Colas we’d purchased from a vendor’s cart on El Malecón above, gobbled and drank them down then devoured gluttonously the ripe papaya we’d gotten from a nearby street market.
We plopped cross-legged across from each other, punched and teased and tickled each other. We were prankster schoolboys, having stuffed ourselves with food, drink and sugary goodies, out on a lark, fearlessly foolish under the bright smiling sun.
It was as if Señor Trujillo’s phone call had never happened, though both of us, I was sure, had a strange awareness of something hanging in the air, invisible but above and around our rejuvenated joy.
Yes, there it was. And as our playfulness calmed down to a meditative resolve, along with the gentle breeze rustling through fruit-bearing trees and the mellow ebb and flow of waves to shore and the distant chorus of songbirds we began to hear it. Our hearts.
I slowly looked up at Étie. He was staring out across the sea. His eyes squinted ever so slightly, not so much at the delicate noonday sun above, but at the sight of something ahead
of us, something vague and distant, a tiny ship perhaps, something nearly invisible, barely perceptible out on the far horizon.
“Papi?” he asked in a winsome whisper.
“Yes, my sweet?”
“Tell me…”
“Tell you what, my sweet?”
He turned to me and looked wide-eyed into my eyes.
“What is it like?”
“What is what like?”
“What is it like to have a father?”
The question took my breath away. I was at first at a loss for words. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer him. Although I was aware of the blessing my father’s presence in my life had been, had his presence been so rich that the lack of want hadn’t created an appreciation for such nourishment that only the starving could know? Had I, all these years, taken my state of grace and good fortune for granted? Was the question really what was it like not to have a father? What was it like to know and feel what Étie knew and felt?
“Tell me more about su padre,” he said, pulling me out of this moment of distant self-examination, of forgivable self-centeredness.
“My father?” I asked, searching, fumbling.
“Yes.”
I was suddenly surprised and then I was sadly not. The slippery slope I was about to traverse loomed precariously ahead of me, causing me to sweat as I was about to take that first treacherous step toward a co-signature of Étie’s silent rage and unintended setup. He did not need to hear more reasons for hating his father through my gushing words of love for mine.
Or did he?
The comparison could only justify his rejection of Señor Trujillo’s plea for tolerance, compassion and forgiveness.
Is that what he needed? Justification? Was that what I needed to provide him with?
Recollections of my idyllic life with my daddy, stories Étie had already heard over and over and over again, could only serve to harden him further toward the daddy he didn’t have, toward a hate he was still too good and decent to genuinely claim.
That is what I thought. Perhaps I was wrong. It was the chance I had to take. And so, against my better judgment, but with faith in his greater good, I began.
“What more would you like to know?” I asked.
“All.”
“All?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s see. What can I tell you that I haven’t told you already?”
“Anything is good. What you have not said. What you have already said before. It is all good.”
I searched his eyes and saw his need and forged ahead.
“He was my hero,” I managed to say, carefully, ill-equipped to stifle the emotion in my voice. “He was my father and he was my hero.”
I talked about the very first Christmas I could remember, when I was only four or five, when my brother Craig was going through what my parents called “the terrible twos” and Andre was just a baby in a crib. My sisters Desiree, Niecey and Frankie hadn’t been born yet. In fact, I don’t believe they were even thoughts except to me, who, for some inexplicable reason, wanted a little sister as much as I wanted a Barbie doll. Back then it was just my mom and us guys—my brothers, my daddy and me—and it seemed as if my mom really had her hands full, although she didn’t seem to mind.
Meeting Santa at the May Company in the Fox Hills Mall and, on Christmas morning, getting the bike with training wheels, the baseball bat and catcher’s mitt I’d asked for more than made up for the Barbie I wanted but didn’t get. Daddy said he’d put in a good word to Santa, tell him what a good boy I was. Daddy’s taste was as good as his heart was soft.
I told Étie about Daddy putting that new coat around my mom’s shoulders that warm and sunny Southern California Christmas morning and putting a sparkly necklace around her neck. And then kissing her neck where her new necklace hung, and then kissing her face and her lips and calling her bebe in a sort of deep and secretive voice he only used when he called her bebe, and then slow-dancing her around the Christmas tree while he sang along with Nat King Cole, who sang The Christmas Song from the stereo.
“And then there were Harry’s Open Pit and Golden Bird,” I said suddenly, my eyes beaming at the sweet memory, the recollection of the smells dizzying me.
“What is that?”
“Harry’s Open Pit and Golden Bird?”
“Yes.”
“The best barbecue and fried chicken places in the world,” I declared. “Every other week, on his payday, Daddy would call my mother up from work and ask her what he should stop and get for dinner. It was always either Harry’s Open Pit barbecue or Golden Bird chicken.
“And then on those Friday nights, we’d sit in the middle of the living room floor like we were on a picnic in Griffith Park and we’d chow down as if it was the last meal we’d have in the world.
“Then after that we’d play Monopoly or Scrabble or Chinese Checkers or all of them. And Daddy would sing and we’d laugh at his singing and he wouldn’t care that we laughed at his singing ’cause he would just keep on singing like he had ten Grammys, and we’d be falling out until we laughed ourselves silly.
“It was always like that, even after my sisters were born. Lots of crazy laughter and music and food and staying up late on Friday nights until us kids would fall asleep in the middle of the living room floor. Mom and Daddy would gently cart us away in shifts to bed and tuck us in and kiss us good night, even when we were already asleep and snoring. I remember, even while I was asleep. It was like a dream, being carried up to bed by Daddy, being tucked in, him kissing me on the forehead and him whispering to me ‘Night, sport. Love ya, boy.’ And I could hear him singing, even in my dreams, and when he sang to me in my sleep, he sounded really good, like he really did have ten Grammys.”
“Su padre sound like angel.”
“Yes he was. Yes he is.”
“Not like mine.”
I didn’t know what to say, how to respond, and my awkward silence spoke volumes about my unsettling ambivalence. I couldn’t deny my father’s goodness, nor could I confirm Étie’s father’s lack thereof.
“See?” Étie finally said.
“What?” I responded defensively.
“Even you must say to yourself that what that man who calls himself my father did to me make him evil.”
“I can’t say that, baby. I don’t know him.”
“You do not believe what I have told you?”
“Yes, I do. But I don’t know him. I don’t know the man well enough to call him evil.”
“You have missed nothing in not knowing him.”
“The things he did to you were wrong, baby. I believe that from the bottom of my heart. And it hurts me to know that he hurt you. But who knows why he would hurt you like that?”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Because he is motherfucking Satan.”
“Is he?”
“You just don’t know him, Papi.”
“You’re right. I don’t. Do you?”
“What?”
“Do you know him?”
“I know him well enough to know what he is, Papi, and to know what he is not. He no like angel. That is truth. He talk to me like dirt, he beat me, he throw me out of house, out into street.”
Only his bitter resolve defied the tears that trembled his voice, tears that threatened to spill again. The moments that followed were his. A lifetime of despair had earned him that.
“Papi?” he finally said, wrapping my arm around him, warming himself in my embrace.
“Yes, my sweet?
“Why you think that man so bad?”
“Is he really as bad as you think he is, Étie?” I really wanted to know. I really wanted him to know.
“He is much worse, Papi.”
“Then I don’t know.”
“And I do not know also.”
“So why don’t you ask him?”
“No.”
“Then how will you ever know?”
“I know in my heart.
”
“But what about his?”
“I do not understand.”
“Do you know what’s in his heart?”
“Hatred. That is what is in his heart. Hatred for me.”
“And what’s in your heart for him?”
“Hatred too. I hate him like he hate me.”
“Is that the reason why you hate him? Because he hates you?”
“Yes!”
“But what if he doesn’t hate you?”
“I know. He hate me.”
“Then why would he ask you to forgive him?”
“Because he is dying.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know.”
“You know for sure.”
“I believe it be so.”
“But what if he’s truly sorry?”
“He no truly sorry. He is scared of eternal fire.”
“But what if you’re wrong?”
“I am not wrong, Papi.”
“You’re human, my sweet. You could be wrong. We all could be wrong. We’re human. There’s always something we’re wrong about. We’re never right about everything. Sometimes it helps to check to make sure we are not wrong.”
“I no wrong about him.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. I just know.”
“Well, there’s one way you could be sure.”
“How?”
“By asking him.”
“I no need ask him nada!”
“If he dies before you ask him, you’ll never know for sure.”
“Fucking son of a bitch.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh no, Papi. Not you. Him!”
“So make the fucking son of a bitch say it to your face.”
* * * * *
That night we went to bed early. We lay in each other’s arms in a calming silence. We didn’t say good night, for we knew that we weren’t ready to sleep. We were ready for this, holding each other, understanding each other, savoring our words to each other, appreciating each other. We were ready for the hum of gentle waves flowing and ebbing right outside our window, serenading our sweet repose. The moment was serene and tranquil with the deep love we shared, and neither one of us wanted to lose this feeling to slumber.
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