by Obed Silva
But Rocío had grown up on me. She was no longer that little girl to whom all those years ago I’d made a promise I wouldn’t keep. Because after that day when I met her, I’d only see the little girl one other time, and it’d be from the passenger seat of my uncle Chuy’s truck. Driving through the streets of El Cerro on our way to his house one sunny afternoon, I caught her through the corner of my eye, walking on the sidewalk with a two-liter soda and a small bag of chips. As we zoomed past her, I turned back and watched her until she became small in the distance and eventually got lost in a whirl of dirt and black exhaust smoke. Seeing that something had caught my attention, I remember my tío Chuy asking me, “What is it?” And though I thought, It’s the little girl who was at my dad’s house with the ugly bike the other day, to my uncle, I said: “Nothing. Just thought I saw someone I knew.”
* * *
“How old is she now?” I ask Aarón.
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen! Son of a bitch! I’m getting fucking old!” I run my hands over my face with urgency as if afraid it might melt away any second. Time is suddenly precious to me again. I’m caught in between youth and death.
That day at my father’s house, Rocío had been only days away from her twelfth birthday: a sprouting flower with no signs of spring. Now, spring had come and gone and behind had left this beautiful rose.
“She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Aarón says.
“Está hermosa,” I reply.
And I’m shamefully laughing inside, because I’m suddenly thinking I should’ve bought her that fucking bike.
* * *
Estrellita and Alady are quick to greet me. “¡Tío! ¡Tío! You’re here!” the two bellow excitedly as they run up to me and drop their little heads on my lap. Being just as excited to see them, I wrap my arms around their tiny bodies and bend forward to give them each a kiss on the back of the head. They smell like peaches. But when I tell them so, they quickly perk up and correct me. “¡No, no olemos a durazno, olemos a fresa!”
“Okay, then strawberries it is,” I tell them while playfully pinching their rosy cheeks and making a grin. As I’m doing this, Lucy comes from behind them to greet me as well.
“Hola, Obed. ¿Cómo estás?” she says in her soft voice.
“I’m well,” I say to her in my drunk one. “I couldn’t be better. Can’t you tell?
“Pues sí,” she says, clutching her hands in front of her.
“And you—how are you, Lucy?”
“Pues bien también.”
“Que bueno. I’m glad to hear that. Well is always good.” And looking at the girl standing quietly behind her, I say: “And this, who is this with you?”
“My friend Rocío. ¿No te recuerdas de ella?”
Right before I answer, I check myself and pretend to search my memory bank for her name. “Do I remember her?” I ask myself aloud while clutching my chin and staring into the stranger’s eyes—they’re waiting on me, pleading to me to remember. “But of course I do. How could I ever forget little Rocío? I believe I still owe her a bike—no?” Everyone laughs, including Aarón, who looks at me like I’m one great big asshole.
Up close Rocío is more beautiful than I first perceived her to be. Her skin is pink and creamy and her face unblemished. Her eyes are dark brown and her eyelashes thick and long, like her silky black hair, which she wears pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyebrows are as dark black as her hair and are precisely plucked—not too thick, not too thin. All in place. I admire it: the passion in the care, the delicacy in the presentation, the effort in the gracefulness. I’m staring at godly perfection on this ghostly night. I’m a madman in love with youth—with life all over again. There is hope after all, I say to myself, even in the shittiest of places. I’m drunk. I’m drunk.
“Hola, Rocío,” I say to her while again staring stupidly into her eyes.
“Hola, Obed,” she replies softly, cool, composed, as if unmoved by my broken promise.
Turning my attention back to my two nieces who are still on my lap and yanking at my shirtsleeves and backpack straps, I say to her, “You grew up on me, and fast. Eres toda una mujer.”
I kiss my nieces again and continue to pinch their cheeks. They giggle and I do, too.
“Pues sí, pasan rápido los años,” Rocío says.
I couldn’t agree more. I want to tell her this, but I’m slowly fading out. I’m clearly in this moment and then I’m not. Something’s happened from the time Danny left to get more beer to this moment when I’m talking with Rocío and missing my youth. Estrellita and Alady are laughing and jumping up and down in front of me. Aarón is still at my side and I’m listening to Lucy continue to say something I don’t register. I gotta go and I gotta go quick because somehow I realize that I’m already gone. The madness has arrived and the drunk man has no clue; the drunk man has no sense.
13
For a few minutes that seemed like seconds it’d gotten dark, and when the lights came back on I was once again inside the funeral parlor, hanging over my dead father’s casket.
I’m shit-faced now.
My father, on the other hand, hasn’t changed a bit. He’s still stiff and in the same angelic position he’d been in when I last saw him. “Still trying to fool the world, eh, Pops? Well, you can try and fool the world all you want, but you ain’t fooling me. I’m your boy. Your drunken piece-of-shit boy who does as you did: drink, motherfucker, drink! So far apart, yet so alike, blood is a motherfucker! God makes no mistakes, you can be sure of that.” Tap. Tap. “Who put this fucking glass back over you? Motherfuckers mustn’t want anybody to touch that ugly fucking face of yours. I’m drunk, Pops, drunk—¡bien pedo! ¡Hasta la chingada! But you know how it goes, you understand, when nothing else, have a beer, or two, or three—fuck it, drink as much as the heart desires! Isn’t that what you used to say? Drink—drink until we die! ¡Hasta la muerte! Hurrah! Hurrah! Time to shine, Daddy-O! Like a lonely star in the vast and black sky. We’re all lonely. Every one of us. Lonely and drunk. Just the way you left us. The whole lot of us. Pieces of shit all. And shedding tears for the worthless, the meaningless piece of shit that you were. Because you left nothing. Nothing worth fucking repeating. Nothing worth fucking holding on to. Nothing worth the shit. ¡Mierda todo! ¡Todo mierda! ¡Como lo quiso, Juan, el pinche Pito Pérez, el pinche Papá Juan!”
I’m cursing my father directly to his face. But I don’t cry. Can’t cry. All I can do is smile. I am one big, drooling, sloppy smile—firme fucking smile.
* * *
Alady and Estrellita appear at my side. For a moment all they do is look up at me with curious eyes, as if wondering why I’m so happy. And then, unexpectedly (as children tend to do things), Estrellita, getting on her tiptoes and extending her neck trying desperately to see inside the casket, pulls at my shirtsleeve and says, “Quiero ver a mi papá.” And although her words and actions are, in this moment, teaching me what unconditional love looks like, I’m not quick to oblige her. For a moment I let her struggle to get her eyes over the top edge of the casket, just enough to get a glimpse of the dead man. She puts all her weight on her tiptoes and pulls herself up with her fingertips, which she uses to cling to the casket’s edge. She presses so hard on it that I can see the blood rushing away from her hands. Soon Alady is doing the same. The two go up and down like pistons on a well-greased engine, but no matter how much they try to get their little noses over the casket’s edge, they just aren’t tall enough. There’s no way they’re going to be able to see their papá without my help. So when they give up on their efforts and turn to me with exhausted expressions on their angelic brown faces and Estrellita tells me again that she wants to see her papá, I give her a conceding smile, point inside the casket, and say, “Which papá? This papá? You want to see El Papá?” And without saying another word, she promptly nods her head.
“Well, come on then, come see El Papá,” I say to her while hooking my hand beneath her armpit and bringing her up onto my lap. And bec
ause one child always follows the other, I pick up Alady and sit her on my lap, too.
“Look, there’s El Papá,” I say to the two as they stare into the casket with eyes that have never seen death before tonight. They peer into it as if peering into an empty tunnel. There’s wonderment and curiosity in their eyes, and, to my surprise, no fear. The two place their hands over the glass and gracefully move them around in circles. Then they begin to lightly tap it. “Shhh, you’re going to wake him up,” I tell them, “and it’s not time for him to wake up. He must sleep for a long time, a very long time.” After I say this, they both look at me and giggle, because they know that I’m being silly. They know that I’m lying. They know these things because they know that El Papá, their papá, is dead and is never going to wake up again.
“Lo quiero tocar,” Estrellita says, and then Alady says the same thing.
“You want to touch him?” I repeat after them.
“¡Sí! ¡Sí! ¡Sí!”
“Okay, then, touch him you shall. Are you sure, though, you might wake him up and then he’s going to be mad, and you know how he gets when he’s mad. Roar!” I gnarl at them while tickling their bellies. The two giggle and bounce on my lap.
I bring each one down gently and they stand quietly away from the casket as I once again remove the plexiglass, all the while hoping I don’t drop the fucking thing in front of them or break it over the old man. (People shouldn’t handle big pieces of glass, even plexiglass, when drunk; it’s not safe, especially around children.) But I manage. I get it down safely and again place it upright against the casket, and this time without cutting myself.
“All right, who’s first?” I ask, and Estrellita is quickly climbing up my leg. But there’s no way I’m going to be able to have them touch the old man one at a time, because as soon as I sit Estrellita on my lap, Alady is right there begging for me to lift her up, too. So up she comes as well to touch her papá.
This time, in addition to curiosity, upon seeing their papá’s corpse without the plexiglass over it, their faces bear a splash of excitement: the plastic covering has been torn off the box and they’re now able to touch the product inside, which they do, eagerly. The two reach in and grab at his face and body. Estrellita, who’s sitting on my left leg and therefore closer to the corpse’s face, is able to reach it without a problem; she touches its cheeks and squeezes its nose and pulls on its right ear. “He can’t feel it,” she comments while looking back at me.
“Nope, he sure can’t,” I tell her.
Meanwhile, Alady pounds on her abuelo’s chest with her little fists and pulls at the end of his shirtsleeve. “He doesn’t move,” she says, also while looking back at me.
“Nope, he sure doesn’t. But don’t worry, he knows you’re here playing with him.”
“¿De veras?” the two reply with surprise.
“Yes, really. And do you know why?”
“¿Por qué?”
“Because from where he’s at, he can see everything. He can see the three of us now looking at him and touching his face and body, and he likes it.”
“¿Cómo Diosito?” Estrellita, who’s as bright as her name, says, making equals of her very dead abuelo and her very omnipresent God. To her, dead people equal heaven and heaven equals God; and if God can see everything from heaven, then, logically, every dead person in the history of the world can see everything and everyone from heaven, too—just like God.
If only I could’ve made this deductive leap; if only I could’ve been so pure; if only; if only; if only; then saying goodbye to this man would not have been so easy.
* * *
“Obed! Obed!” Aarón is at the door calling me. “Danny’s back with the beer.”
“Great! I’m coming.”
I tell Estrellita and Alady that they need to say goodbye to their papá because it’s time to go.
“Ba-bye, papá,” the two quietly say to the corpse and wave their little hands at it as I bring them down from my lap. As I grab the plexiglass to put it back where it belongs, the two scurry out yelling, “We touched our papá, we touched our papá in his box!”
I don’t say anything more to my father after I’m left alone with him again. I just carefully place the plexiglass over him again and silently roll away. This is it. Never will I see my father again.
* * *
I don’t remember getting back to the circle.
With one hand I’m holding an almost-full caguama and with the other I’m receiving a pint of mescal from someone who’s handing it to me. I don’t know who it is. I can’t see clearly. The world’s a blur. My brothers and sisters are all around me and someone’s snapping pictures. Everyone’s laughing and talking loudly, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. I’m drunk. They’re drunk. We’re all drunk. The world is drunk.
Black Out.
INTERMISSION
YA ’STUVO. SE LO ACABÓ EL TRAGO.
—VÍCTOR-MANUEL
14
NOVEMBER 11, 2011
You get tired of the same ol’ shit. Nothing ever changes. Then the body calls. Because it can’t stop. Becomes restless. The mind follows. Says that it needs it: Come on, one more time, there’s nothing else, not even life. Then you try to measure the bad with the good. But there is no good. Ever. It’s all bad. Always. And nothing matters anymore. Let us drink, for tomorrow we die! Everybody drinks; everybody disappears. Was my father a good man? Am I a good man? When drunk, it doesn’t matter anymore: all is equal; all is lost forever! It’s a sickening thing, like the image of a god that doesn’t care. Every Silva must make his grave and fill it.
* * *
It’s 2:06 a.m., and I’m taking the last drag from the last cigarette I’ll smoke before going to bed when the phone rings. And because I know who’s calling and why, I hurriedly flick the cigarette butt and roll past the front door toward the phone. Too late. I missed her call; but before I can return it, she calls again. I answer.
“¿Bueno?”
“Ya se nos fue.”
It’s Veronica, and she’s informing me of what could not be put off for any longer.
“He’s dead?”
“Sí.”
Pause.
“He died at 1:48 a.m.”
My tío Mundo died on his bed in his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico, surrounded by his closest family—all Silvas. Hours before he died his liver and kidneys had stopped working, leaving him only with a few last breaths and heartbeats. On the night of November 10, a Thursday, while on most American news stations and radio shows, people speculated on what November 11, 2011, would bring to those who believe in silly superstitions, my tío Mundo was fighting for his life at a hospital he’d been admitted to after having spent much of the morning and day vomiting and shitting blood. And on November 11, a day on which nothing spectacular happened and on which every baby born was being celebrated for nothing other than having come into this world, the hospital sent my tío Mundo back to his home because there was nothing more they could do to save his life. Mundo was in God’s hands now.
At home he quickly worsened and became unconscious. His spirit had escaped him and he was reduced to nothing more than a breathing body.
Goodbye, fellow spirit
And farewell;
May you find your place
In the vast abyss
Of
Memory,
And say hello to my father for me—
It’s saddest when a death comes as no surprise.
* * *
Mundo had started drinking again. According to my cousin Víctor-Manuel, whom I spoke with over the phone a couple days after Mundo was cremated, he’d tried hard to abstain from drinking since my father’s passing, but in the end the urge had finally consumed him. “He just couldn’t stay away from it. He had to drink,” said Víctor-Manuel. “He would drink and then stop and then drink again. But this time there wouldn’t be an again. Ya ’stuvo. Se lo acabó el trago.”
Mundo died on a Saturday and was vi
ewed at his home the following Monday. I wasn’t there. I thought about going, but in the end decided not to. I used work as an excuse. I didn’t feel like reliving my father’s funeral all over again, exchanging sorrows with the remaining Silvas, who, according to my sister Cecilia, with the exception of my tío Polo, who’d been deported back to Mexico months earlier, were all present. “They were all there,” she said as she described the scene over the phone the day after, “and they were all drinking, even my tía Lupe, though not as much as the rest. And they all took it pretty hard, just like Dad’s death. But his kids took it the hardest, especially Adriana. At random moments she would cry out for her dad in Spanish. Her mom, Marcella, tended the kitchen most of the night. Lots of friends and family brought food. And it was very crowded, because he (Mundo) had a tiny two-bedroom house. His sons Jr. and Anthony drank straight from the bottle all night and had everyone singing at times in honor of their dad. Unfortunately, the toilet got clogged early in the night so everyone had to piss outside. My uncle Manuel and someone else tried to fix it for hours. But I’m not sure if they ever succeeded. Between breaks they would take hits from a joint that Adriana’s boyfriend, Jesús, provided, which was cool because it helped kill the smell of shit. And all his kids spoke. Tía Lupe did, too, along with a couple of his friends from the neighborhood who also played their guitars and sang songs for the family. No one got crazy while I was there though, or that I heard of after. And Adriana said she paid for all of the arrangements because his other five kids didn’t want to pitch in because of hard feelings.”