The Death of My Father the Pope

by Obed Silva

  Splash! My father has found his target: a bent-over body hiding silently behind an old junked car raised on cinder blocks. “Ahhh!” the body cries out as it extends itself back to life. “You got me, Juanillo!” the body screams as it runs away, looking down at its now-drenched clothes. He’s one of a countless number of the neighborhood boys who’ve joined together to accomplish one thing on this day: to get my father—un Juan—wet.

  From the moment they’d first laid eyes on my father, this band of brothers had issued their attack, launching water balloons our way from every direction. He and I had been walking back home from the store with a couple of Cokes and bologna sandwiches when the first water grenade landed at our feet. Caught by surprise, my father and I looked at each other and then at our surroundings. What our eyes captured was a group of boys—some fully clothed and others shirtless and barefooted—posted at different points of the barrio heavily armed with water balloons of different colors, ready to catapult them our way.

  “Órale, hijo, ya estuvo,” my father calmly said, leaning in to my ear. And before he could say anything else, one of the boys yelled for his entire squadron to attack and the balloons began to land on us like rain.

  “¡Un Juan! ¡Un Juan!” was all we could hear from the mob as we gripped our sodas and sandwiches and hurriedly made our way toward the front door of my father’s house. “¡Van a ver, cabrones! You’re going to get it!” my father laughingly yelled back at them while protecting his face with his raised arm. But his defense, like mine, was useless; because by the time we reached the door of the house and made it inside, the two of us were completely soaked, and our sandwiches, which had turned into sponges, were falling apart.

  Safely inside the house, my father and I laughed hysterically as we removed our shirts. “It’s on, son. They got us and now we have to get them back,” my father said as he walked to the backyard. And curious as to what he had planned, I followed him. Out back he pulled out a yeso-speckled bucket full of tools from inside a heavily dented and also yeso-speckled wheelbarrow. As he dumped all the tools onto the ground, he said, “It’s war with these cabrones! They messed with the wrong Juanes!”

  It caught me by surprise. He had used the plural form of his name. Up until that point, it hadn’t hit me that I, too, was a Juan.

  * * *

  Everyone is teary-eyed, some are even weeping, including Cecilia. She’s looking at me while wiping tears away. Probably wondering how the man in the box could be the same man we’re telling such stories about.

  “He loved us all,” Danny says.

  “Con todo su corazón, hijo,” Cokis says. She’s crying, too.

  And it’s fucking dark. Time has passed and we’ve made no note of it. And I want to say something because I’m afraid we might be out of beer again. I look around and notice that all the caguama bottles are carefully placed on the floor against the wall in a perfect queue, each completely empty. I also notice that most of the people who were not part of our little circle are gone. Only a scattered few remain standing and talking in front of the funeral parlor’s doors or sitting on the curb, all mostly young people unwilling to bid farewell to the night.

  “¿Qué horas son?” I ask anyone who will answer.

  “Three o’clock,” Víctor-Manuel says, looking at the invisible watch on his wrist.

  “Not true,” Cokis quickly interjects, looking at her own real watch and wagging her finger at him. “It’s barely eleven thirty.”

  “Oh, really?” says Víctor-Manuel, tapping his wrist. “Then it’s also time for me to get a new watch.”

  “Pinche loco,” says Axcel, and we all laugh.

  “I’m not crazy. What, you don’t like my watch?” continues Víctor-Manuel with his act. “I bought it in El Centro from a little Tarahumara girl.”

  “Oh yeah, and how much did you pay for it?” Axcel asks him, playing along.

  “¡Mil pesos!”

  “¡Mil pesos!” Aarón cuts in. “No seas mamón. When have you ever had mil pesos?”

  “Well, right before I bought this watch of course!” Víctor-Manuel says, raising his bent wrist into the air.

  We’re all laughing again. It’s what we needed to escape the gloom we’d been creating moments before. But even as I find myself laughing along, my mind remains consumed with the dilemma that is now upon us. Familiar with the laws that govern the sale of alcohol in Chihuahua, I’m well aware of the fact that, being the time that it is, we are way past the last call for alcohol, and if the party is to continue, then something must be done, and soon.

  11

  Irony sometimes resembles absurdity. Nowhere is this more true than in Chihuahua’s ley seca—dry law: prohibition. Because although Chihuahua’s a state in which you can’t go more than a block or two without passing an expendio (mini-mart that specializes in selling beer) or licorería (liquor store that specializes in selling wine and hard liquor), it has strict laws that regulate times and days when alcohol can and cannot be sold.

  Every night at ten o’clock expendios, licorerías, and all other stores that deal in the drink must lock up their coolers. Additionally, every time government elections come around on July 4, the sale of alcohol is suspended twenty-four hours before voting begins until twelve hours after it ends, or until the following day. Anyone caught violating this law is subject to seventy-two hours’ jail time. The government does this to prevent disorder while this most democratic of processes is taking place; and also to make sure that every citizen who votes does so sober. Can’t have a ballot intended for el PRIista (member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party) going to el PANista (member of the National Action Party) because Juan Doe was too drunk to know what name on the ballot he was checking.

  But how effective are these precautionary measures?

  Let’s see. Before every election day, every newspaper in the state prints a front-page reminder of the upcoming day of ley seca to keep drunks from showing up to their preferred beer and liquor depot only to find it either closed or restricted from selling alcoholic beverages. Yet what ends up happening is not that the drunks take heed of the law and go a day and some hours without drinking because they respect it, or because they realize that in a matter of hours they, too, with the rest of the citizenry, will be voting for their favored politician and therefore will have to stay sober. No. Instead, what ends up happening is—yes, you guessed it, a furious frenzy of stockpiling. As happens during the seventh-inning stretch at a U.S. professional baseball game when almost everyone gets up to use the bathroom and to get their last beers, suddenly every drunk in the state is on a rampage to fill his hands, pockets, coolers, refrigerators, and cabinets with as much beer and liquor as possible. The disorder the government is attempting to prevent from manifesting on Election Day takes place on the day before ley seca goes into action. This is Chihuahua’s version of the United States’ Black Friday on steroids. Because while on Black Friday the frenzy of mostly middle- and working-class persons out for a big sale on mostly clothes and appliances tends to die down by ten in the morning—at the latest, noon—the frenzy of mostly overeager alcoholic men out for anything that’ll get them drunk on the day before ley seca lasts until every beer-and-liquor-selling store either closes or runs out of product.

  Ley seca frightens the alcoholic. It’s a disruption to his life, an infringement on his right to be drunk. “What do you mean you’re going to stop selling beer for a couple of days because of elections?” he doth protest. “Fuck the elections! They’re all a bunch of crooks anyways—¡puro pinche ratero!” To the alcoholic Chihuahuense there is no difference between el PRIista and el PANista when it comes to the state’s halt on the sale of alcohol; because although both el PRIista and el PANista shit on different sides of the aisle, to the alcoholic, they’re both still shitting on not only his right but also his need to get shit-faced.

  * * *

  Trucks and cars of all makes, models, and years are left unattended, idling in the middle of streets while the
ir drivers run into expendios and liquorerías carrying cream-colored plastic cartons with the Carta Blanca insignia stamped on their sides, filled with either twenty-four twelve-ounce or twelve thirty- two-ounce envases (recyclable bottles). (In Chihuahua, as well as in every other state in Mexico, people still turn in their envases upon purchasing new bottled beverages; this exempts them from having to pay the few extra pesos for the bottle, too.) On some streets traffic is backed up for blocks. Honking and engine revving are accompanied by an endless “chinga-tu-madre” and middle finger. And you can always count on a few good fistfights because every alcoholic must fend for himself. There is no love for one’s brother here, or mercy or pity, only chaos and insatiable thirst. Every capricious man is as responsible for his own welfare as he is for his own brown envase.

  And hope is never lost, because even when all is said and done and every expendio and licorería has shut its doors or stopped selling alcohol for the day, there are always las clandestinas: clandestine beers and other alcoholic beverages sold on the black market.

  I was fourteen when I first heard the word clandestinas. I’d been out drinking past midnight with my cousins the twins (my mother’s older sister Guadalupe’s sons, who also lived in Chihuahua at the time) and some of their friends when one of them suggested we go for “unas clandestinas.” In Spanish every noun is either masculine or feminine, and many feminine nouns end with a. So naturally, when I heard the phrase “unas clandestinas,” my young brain automatically associated it with prostitution. Thus my response to my companions was: “That sounds like a great idea, but shouldn’t we get condoms first?”

  How was I supposed to know my cousin had been referring to illicitly sold beer? If at that age my English was terrible, my Spanish was worse.

  Today clandestinas are still big business. As soon as the legit businesses like expendios and licorerías stop selling beer, Chihuahua’s modern-day speakeasies open for business. But unlike the speakeasies that flourished in the United States during Prohibition, where people would have to walk down a dark alley and then down concrete steps to get to the back door of a commercial business’s basement that had been turned into an underground nightclub or bar, these speakeasies are more conveniently located in the humble homes of some of Chihuahua’s lower-class citizens. Where there’s hunger there’s hustle, and in Chihuahua there’s a lot of hunger. When I was out with my cousins and their friends, we didn’t have to go a block to get clandestinas, nor any other time I’d been in Chihuahua and found myself out of beer and thirsting for more way past last call. There was always at least one house on every block that engaged in this after-hours profession. All one had to do was quietly creep up—with envase or envases in hand—to the home’s main window, give it a few light taps, wait for it to be cracked open, and hear the low voice on the other side say, “¿Qué vas a llevar?”—what would you like?

  So when the laughter subsided and I turned to Danny and asked him if he could get more caguamas, he knew exactly where to go.

  “¿Cuántas?” he said.

  “Another five,” I told him, handing him another wad of green bills.

  Run along, little brother, the night is still young and there is still lots more drinking to do.

  12

  There she is again. She’s coming up the street alongside another girl and two children. I’m able to make out her slender figure as the four bodies casually pass beneath the glow of a streetlight; and again I wonder who she is and what she’s doing coming back here. Did she know my father, or was she simply somebody’s friend?

  I pull Aarón close to me and whisper into his ear, “Who’s that … the girl in the red coming this way with the other girl and the two kids?”

  My brother laughs and shakes his head. “That’s Rocío,” he says. “Lucy’s friend. And that’s Lucy with her. Don’t you recognize them?”

  I’m drunk, so no.

  But now that he’s mentioned it, I do recognize Lucy, Danny’s wife, and even the two little girls: one is Estrellita, Axcel’s daughter, and the other Alady, Danny and Lucy’s older daughter, both my nieces. But I still don’t recognize the girl with them, the one Aarón called Rocío.

  “Rocío,” I quietly mutter, trying to remember. I even squint and rub my eyes as I stare out at her. Still nothing. The image of the beautiful girl who’s quickly advancing and whose face I can now see clearly doesn’t register in my mind. Frustrated, I look up at my brother and say her name one more time: “Rocío?”

  “¡Sí—Ro-cí-o!” he says firmly, impatiently stressing each syllable of her name as if teaching a child how to pronounce it for the first time. “That’s her,” he says after. “Don’t you remember how you promised her a bike for her birthday?”

  I’m drunk, so no.

  “A bike for her birthday?” I repeat after him, confused, pondering the absurdity of the idea of me having promised this girl, whom I don’t recognize and who’s getting closer to us with every step she takes, a bike for her birthday.

  “Sí,” Aarón adds with a tinge of annoyance in his voice. And for the few seconds that follow, our exchange goes like this:

  “¡No mames, güey!”

  “¡No mamo, güey!”

  “I promised her a bike, really?”

  “Sí.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “De veras.”

  “A real fucking bike?”

  “I think so. Why would you promise her a fake one?”

  “You see … you are fucking with me.”

  “I’m not. I’m telling you the truth. You really did promise her a bike.”

  “Okay then, what kind of bike did I promise her?”

  “No, ¿pues yo que sé? You never mentioned that part. Maybe a small bike. She was little before.”

  Finally, after we both break into laughter after this last jab from Aarón and he finally realizes that he isn’t going to get any further with me unless he provides more details, he says: “Mira, one of the last times you were here, you told her that if she got As in all her classes at school that you would bring her a bike from the United States the next time you came.” And suddenly, I know exactly who Rocío is. The memory of the moment when I’d made her this fantastic promise is quickly coming back to me, providing me with one of the soberest instances I’d have throughout the rest of the night. I could see it all so very clearly now.

  I’d met the little girl at my father’s house. She’d been there with her older sister visiting Lucy, and she’d come riding on an old beat-up bicycle; one so demoralized that the foam cushion and vinyl covering of its metal seat had been completely torn off and it had also been missing a pedal. At one time its mostly rust-covered metal frame could’ve been pink or red, but most of the paint that remained was faded. I remembered that when I saw it leaning against the wall, sustaining itself upright by the tip of the wasted rubber handle that barely gripped the wall’s stucco, I’d laughed at its mournful condition. “Look at this piece of shit,” I remember saying to Aarón, who’d been standing next to me at the time the same way he’s standing next to me now. “I feel sorry for the poor kid who owns it.” And when Aarón told me that it belonged to the little girl who’d been sitting on the couch between Lucy and her friend and whom I’d passed on my way out without noticing, driven by the sudden desire to repair such a misfortune, I went back into the house to meet her. I wanted to meet the Don Quixote who rode up and down the streets of El Cerro de la Cruz on this Rocinante.

  “You have a beautiful bike,” I said to the little girl after introducing myself to her and her sister. She blushed and curled herself into a ball of embarrassment with her hands tucked tensely under her bottom; then she lowered her head and with only her eyeballs looked around to her sister, to Lucy, and to Aarón, hoping to find the meaning of my words in their faces. But their faces betrayed her inquiring eyes; because all they offered up were silent stares that said they, too, didn’t know what I meant by them. Thus, it quickly occurred to me that given the o
bvious condition of the bicycle, my words could’ve only been interpreted by everyone in the room, including the little girl, as cruel. Cruelty, however, hadn’t been my intention. Because although the bicycle, when viewed as a mere object, was a pitiful sight, when viewed in this case in relation to the little girl who was blushing bashfully before me, it was something to admire. It was the pure and uncorrupted face of childhood poverty, of blissful ignorance; the reason why the meek shall inherit the earth; because the little girl knew no better, only that this bike she rode on belonged to her and that it was more than most kids she knew had or would ever have. Sweetness was in her heart and in her eyes, and in either there weren’t any complaints. “Really,” I went on, “it says a lot about you: que ves lo maravilloso en todo. You have what none of us have anymore, eyes that only see beautiful.”

  The little girl smiled shyly and said, “Gracias.” Everybody else, though, looked at me like I was full of shit, which was fine with me, because maybe I was; for sometimes even the man who’s full of shit is full of shit only because he wishes things were different. And if I promised her a bike that day, it was only because in the moment I’d been completely overcome by the desire to fill her heart with hope: a hope that only a stranger from el otro lado could provide a poor child like her. Because while to her and the others in the room the fifty to one hundred dollars I’d spend purchasing the damn thing from a Walmart or swap meet was considered a fortune, to me it was what I’d usually spend on a night of drinking—it was nothing. Knowing this brought the philanthropist out in me, and I told myself that the next time I’d come to Chihuahua I’d bring this little girl the raddest little bike she’d ever seen. It’d be pink all over and have the most comfortable seat her bottom had ever felt. And she’d ride through all of El Cerro de la Cruz with her head held high and her long black hair blowing in the wind, and she’d be the envy of all the other wretched children from the neighborhood. She’d be amazing in all of their eyes: the little girl who had it all.