The Death of My Father the Pope

by Obed Silva

  For whom do the bells toll?

  For the dead man!

  And amongst whom will he be buried?

  The low and wretched!

  And shall he spend eternity with the saved,

  Or with the damned?

  That is a question for God!

  So we shall say a prayer for him,

  In which case, God might be merciful in all his glory.

  * * *

  Poverty, like expendios and liquor stores, is everywhere in Chihuahua. For although since the early 2000s a lot of narcos and rich people from other states have started to buy land on both sides of el periferico [Chihuahua’s version of a freeway], on which they’ve built United States–style homes adjacent to United States–brand stores like Walmart and Home Depot and fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, Chihuahua remains mostly a poor city. The poor are everywhere, whether on the streets begging for money or in United States–owned maquiladoras working their lives away for “una mierda,” as my father would say. And as much as the government would like to put a happy gringo face on it by letting a lot of United States businesses set up all over the city, the fact of the matter is that there is no salvation in sight for Chihuahua’s lowest class. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And unlike in the United States, where the lines between the lower, middle, and upper classes are seemingly blurred by endless credit and just as endless debt at every level, in Chihuahua, like in most, if not all of Mexico’s states, the gap between the poor and the rich is as wide as the Grand fucking Canyon. The fact that it’s there is as evident as its drug and cartel problem. Part of why it’s so evident is because in Chihuahua, there’s no real middle class, no bridge between the rich and poor. People either have or they don’t.

  * * *

  We begin the procession from the parlor to the cemetery at ten a.m. Driving behind the hearse are Aarón, myself, and everybody else we’re carrying in the bed of the truck. Chihuahua’s hot and dusty and I’m already sweating profusely. What a fucked-up day to have a funeral, especially in a sad town like this, I complain to myself. There are no green trees anywhere, only dry roods with bullet holes and the names of lovers etched into them. And in Chihuahua, especially in barrios like the one where my father lived, grass is rare. There are no green lawns for Pedro’s or Juan’s landscaping crew from Anaheim Hills or Santa Ana to mow here. ¡No, señor! Here one must make do with dirt. Every yard is made of dirt and so are many of the streets; and what is not made of dirt has dirt on it: dirt, dirt, dirt. This is why I hate wearing good or clean clothes when I’m in Chihuahua, because by the end of the day my clothes, especially my shoes (which I don’t even walk in because I just can’t fucking walk) and even my face are flecked with dirt.

  The hearse is white, the color of purity and one that is usually reserved for children. But not on this day. On this day this white hearse carries a sinner who never got to know redemption, a sinner who raised hell to the end.

  “Why white?” I ask Aarón.

  “I don’t know, maybe that’s the only one they had.”

  Yes. Or like my father, the organizers of the funeral, too, wanted to fool the world, hoping that the people would say: “Look! There goes Juanito in that white hearse, on his way to heaven, I’m sure!”

  Or not.

  * * *

  “Le tengo miedo a mi jefe, / Deseando que nunca regrese…” I’m startled by the music. I hadn’t realized Aarón had pushed a CD into the stereo. I recognize the beat and the lyrics; they’re from “La Novela” by Akwid, an L.A.-based Chicano rap duo who rap mostly in Spanish.

  “This was my dad’s song,” Aarón tells me, looking at me curiously to see if I recognize the irony. “He used to say that it was about him.” The volume is turned all the way up and I can barely hear what Aarón’s saying.

  “I know,” I yell back at him. “I remember him playing it the last time I was here.”

  Aarón nods and we both fall silent to listen to the rest of the song. I look back at the people in the bed of the truck and their quiet and seemingly motionless dispositions tell me that they’re doing the same. It’s as if we’re all in agreement that the song should be played and that its lyrics deserve uninterrupted attention.

  The song is a riff on “Dos Monedas.” Sampling its original instrumentals and chorus, the rappers describe how a family is forced to live at the mercy of an alcoholic patriarch. Singing it through the perspective of a son, the rappers describe the world my father created within the walls of his home. There’s no peace for the son and his brothers, who are constantly walking on eggshells to avoid a beating from their father. The son notes how his mother cries when she sees how her kids suffer. The glow in her eyes is the only life she has left. On Sundays when they go to church, he watches as she prays, knowing what she’s praying for. There’s something there that they all know but that none have the courage to speak of. May God help them because their faith is running out. Their father, instead of helping, is out getting drunk. Monday through Friday, it’s always the same shit; it’s always them having to face the enemy. And so the son spends his days in the street to avoid “todo lo malo.” He hangs with his friends who he believes might be suffering the same fate in their own homes; but afraid they might laugh at him, he doesn’t let them know anything.

  The song’s uncanny affinity to the way my father had been gives me the chills. And as we drive behind the hearse through the dry streets of Chihuahua, we play it full blast. “That’s right,” I’m saying to myself, “let the world hear the truth about our father; let them know what kind of man we’re burying today.” “Mi jefe convirtió el canton en un infierno,” the duo sings and I think of poets: The drunk man is the story that never was; a poem without meter; prose without punctuation; a dead world; a sea of tears; rage in a sunflower; darkness in a star; the bitter taste of surrender. The drunk man is a father.

  * * *

  I had it in me once to hurt my father, to break his face and to inflict upon him as much bodily pain as possible without killing him, and I acted on it. I’d been playing it out all day in my head. When he comes home drunk, I’m going to take him for a ride. I’m going to tell him that I know a place with the best tortas and ask him to come with me, that it’ll be my treat. I waited outside the house and told no one about my intentions, not even my brothers. I was determined and didn’t want anyone talking me out of it. It had to be done. It was time. The Devil was stirring inside of me and I couldn’t shake him. I drank a couple caguamas while I replayed the scene over and over in my head. It’ll work. He’ll never see it coming: le voy a partir su puta madre.

  * * *

  He was walking down the slope, happily singing along to a ballad playing in his head—and he was completely drunk. Looked like a little boy the way he kicked stones as he walked toward me. I could’ve decided right then not to go through with my plan. It was like looking at innocence. But my boiling blood didn’t allow me to forgive. I felt hot seeing him take wonder in the sport of children. Adrenaline moved through me like electricity. I ground my teeth, shook my shoulders and tightened my chest; I brought my hands together and clasped them in front of me. I felt like a criminal all over again. I could see the violence ahead, and I laughed at my stupid father who had no clue what awaited him. “Look at you, you fucking fool kicking rocks,” the Devil whispered in the wind. “Hope you’ve had a good night so far because the rest of it is going to hurt, and bad. Come, Father. Come toward me.”

  “Qué onda, hijo, were you waiting for me?” he asked me when he got close. The tone of his voice was low, and sad, like someone had already hurt him. I didn’t respond.

  He leaned in and wrapped his arms around me tightly. He smelled of drink and dirt, of pure misery. He kissed me at the base of my head, then moved his hand over it as if dusting away all prints of his kiss. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder and let it rest there for a moment. Every second it was there weighed on me like a lifetime. I couldn’t bring mysel
f to embrace the tenderness this action attempted to convey. Under the dark sky and brilliance of the moon, I envisioned the claw of a dragon that could rip me apart at any moment.

  “Well, were you or not?” he then said to me, taking a step back and looking into my eyes, his voice slightly elevated this time.

  “Yes, I was,” I said to him in a vapid tone.

  “You were, really?” he said to me with a clumsy show of surprise.

  And surprised by his surprise, I was moved to take the Devil by the tail and swing him around: “Yes. I couldn’t wait to see you.”

  “You see. I knew you loved me.”

  “I always have.”

  “Because you’re a good son, and a good son always loves his father.”

  “Sure.”

  “And a good son never judges his father, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you’re a good son, right?”

  “Get the fuck out of here!” I told him, having swung the Devil long enough. “What do you think I am? You’re drunk and you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

  His face turned to stone. Then his eyelids dropped and his body began to palpitate and totter as if something fought to escape him. This sudden change in my disposition had startled him, and he was having difficulty keeping his composure. The scene evoked sympathy. I was looking at a man who resembled a dying animal. But I fought it off. On this night there could be no room in my heart. I had to stand firm and stick to my plan. My heart had to remain cold—a mold of ice; so I reminded myself that no war had ever been won by one side being sympathetic. The enemy had to be looked upon as other than human. So I told myself that my father was not a man, but a rabid dog that needed to be put down.

  My father, taking two steps back, brought his arms up high at his sides, the streetlight glowing behind him: The image of the crucifixion. In that position, with both hands dangling at his wrists, he said: “You crucify me, son. Your words are the nails that pierce my hands and the dagger that cuts into me.” Then, unable to hold that position for any longer than it took for him to utter those words, he stumbled to one side and almost fell before catching his footing again.

  “You see, what’d I tell you—you’re drunk!” I said to him, watching him bring himself up. And instantly my father went from playing Jesus on the cross to the monster he was more familiar as.

  “¡Y qué, güey?” he screamed at me with rage. “¿Qué te importa?” I could feel the anger in his words, and it made me happy, glad that I hadn’t given in to sympathy earlier. I’d been right all along: he wasn’t worth it, and here he was proving it to me. “What’s it to you what I do?” he continued. “This is me. Don’t act like you don’t know. There’s nothing new here. Or what, you think just because you come here things are going to be different? Well they’re not. Because I live here—we live here. When you go back to California, everything’s going to go back to the way it’s always been. La misma mierda seguirá y yo seguiré siendo el rey.”

  My father laughed and foamed at the mouth, showed off his repugnance with pride. The man I’d been waiting for all day was now clumsily stumbling before me in the light of the moon. So I laughed with him and said, “That’s right, that’s how I like you—ugly. And that’s how I love you, even uglier. But come now, güey, let’s not fight. Let’s be happy and enjoy this night under this dark sky. Are you hungry?”

  I was quick to defuse the situation, and he was quick to fall into my trap.

  “Eres cabrón, hijo, como tu papá. And I know that when you say that you love me, you really mean it. You just like to hurt me. Pero esta suave, bien suave, because I love you, too—y un chingo!” And again my father, no longer on the defensive, placed his arm around me. And again for the few seconds that I let him stand there with his arm hanging from my shoulder, all I could think about was my plan. The more I smelled him and the more I felt his oppressive breath on my face, the more I wanted to hurt him, the more I wanted him to feel pain, real pain, like the pain I was feeling and that was causing me to want to rip him apart.

  “So, ¿qué? Are you hungry?” I eventually said to him again while slowly releasing myself from his grasp.

  “Sí, hijo, I am.”

  “Then let’s go eat. I know where they sell the best tortas in Chihuahua, better than the ones they sell at El Cubano. But it’s pretty far, en La Infona. You mind the drive?”

  “Claro que no, hijo. I’ll go wherever you take me. You’re my son, and what pleases you, pleases me. I have faith in you.”

  La Infona is short for La Infonavit Libertad, a colonia on the other side of the city. It’s where my tía Lupe (my mother’s sister) once lived and where I’d stay for part of the summers when I’d come to Chihuahua as a child and teenager. And because there wasn’t a moment that I didn’t spend with my cousins Uriel and Ulises (the twins) running around this colonia during these summers, I was familiar with all its ins and outs. Knew every block and corner and the types of people I could expect to find there. Because although La Infona, during the ’80s and ’90s, was made up of mostly honest, hardworking, lower-middle-class people—by Mexico’s standards—it was also known to have its bad elements, and unfortunately, my cousins comprised a large part of those elements. Since an early age they’d been known to be troublemakers. And as leaders of one of the neighborhood gangs, los cuates—as they were known—had quite a following. Their gang had over fifty members and I knew every single one of them by name. And although los cuates had long ago moved to the States, I knew that in La Infona I could still find some of their old associates who’d be willing to break a face for me if I asked them to. It’d be simply a matter of doing me a favor.

  I hopped into the driver side of the Jeep and my father, after putting my wheelchair in the back, hopped into the passenger side. We were ready to go. But before we began our journey across town we stopped at an expendio right when it was about to close at ten and picked up two caguamas for the road. My father popped the two open and handed me one. It was going to be a twenty-minute drive and I needed something to keep me from going back on what I’d already set into motion. It often happens that too much thought deters the mind from action. A lot never gets done because of this. And I needed to act, to stay in character, and only another caguama was going to allow me to do this. To stop now would’ve meant surrendering to the enemy. At this moment every sympathetic thought and feeling I could have had for the man sitting next to me on this drive to madness was no good to me. Fuck what’s rational and fuck everything that ends in love! Beer and violence are the only answers tonight. An eye for an eye and a fist for a fist. So I drank my caguama and I drank it quickly. By the time we arrived at La Infona, I was at the end of my caguama. I took the last swig and tossed the empty bottle over my shoulder onto the back seat. My father still had half of his left; I guess he didn’t realize it would be his last for the night.

  “We’re almost there,” I said to my father as I turned into one of the colonia’s tight streets. The street was dark, but there were still groups of people communing outside their homes. I made a few turns here and there, looking for familiar faces. At one point, upon noticing how intently I was looking at the faces we were driving past, my father asked if I knew where I was going. “Yes,” I assured him. “It’s on one of these streets, you’ll see.” I was right. Because after a couple more turns, I came across four recognizable faces. The four young men were sitting on the tailgate of a small white pickup truck with a couple of young women. They were all drinking and having a good time. Empty caguama bottles rested at their feet and two of the men had one in their hand. This is going to be easy, I was thinking at this point, they’re already drunk and won’t have a problem doing me this favor. That there was a taco and torta stand with all its lights lit up right across from where they were having their celebration also made me think that my plan couldn’t be coming together any more perfectly. There was an old woman and two young men working the stand asando carne, toasting bolillo
s and heating up tortillas. I could see the smoke pouring out from inside and filling the air. Perfect.

  “Orale, güey, we’re here,” I said to my father, who was sucking down the rest of his caguama, as I drove past the tailgate party and the taco stand. Then, after making a U-turn a few yards away, I drove back and parked the Jeep next to the stand. “Time to eat,” I said to him as I shut off the ignition and looked toward the faces I recognized to see if they recognized me. They didn’t. At least not while I was still in the car. They kept drinking, talking, laughing, and paying no mind to the persons who’d just parked opposite them on the other side of the street.

  When my father got my chair out from the back of the Jeep and brought it to me, I told him to go order while I said hi to some old friends I’d just recognized. “Get me a carne asada torta with everything,” I told him, handing him money. And without showing any interest in what I’d just said to him, he took the pesos from my hand, crumpled them in his fist, and without a care in the world walked over to the stand while I rolled toward the tailgate party. Knowing that I’d spent a lot of time in this area with my cousins during earlier years, my father had no reason to question me. For all he knew I was just going to say hi to some old friends I’d only recognized from long ago and then meet back up with him at the stand.