The Death of My Father the Pope

by Obed Silva

  In 2011 my cousins the twins—Uriel and Ulises—were both assassinated in Chihuahua five months apart: Ulises on April 29 and Uriel on September 18. Like many young men, they had gotten pulled into the drug business, joining one of Mexico’s more dangerous cartels. Ulises’s death was pretty straightforward: while protecting a part of his “plaza,” members of a rival cartel drove up on him and his bodyguard and started shooting at them from inside a truck with assault rifles. Ulises was hit in one ankle and managed to get away with his bodyguard, who led him to a safe location. Story goes that after the ambulance picked him up, he called his brother Uriel and told him what had happened, and upon hearing about the incident, Uriel, able to foresee that things were going to get worse, urged Ulises to get out of the ambulance and instead find a safe place to hide. Ulises, however, didn’t listen and let himself be taken to the hospital, where only a few minutes after being admitted, two masked men entered and found him hiding in a bathroom. There, as he huddled in the corner of a bathroom stall, they shot him multiple times. He never had a chance.

  Uriel, only a few months after burying his twin brother, would be shot multiple times as well while working the expendio he owned. Why he was murdered remains unclear. Some say that it was related to his brother’s death, while others believe he was simply a victim of a robbery gone wrong, which is hard to believe considering that no money was taken from his person or the cash register. Whatever the case, like his brother, he became just another victim of Mexico’s gun violence. The two are buried side by side in a small rancho two hours away from the city. A headstone in the shape of a flame marks each of their graves.

  21

  Chihuahua is one huge desert, and its summers are hot and dry. We’ve been driving now for an hour, and the heat is starting to get to me. “Where’s this fucking cemetery?” I ask Aarón in frustration. “Can’t this motherfucker go any faster?” But Aarón remains calm and laughs it off. The kid’s cool cruising with his big brother and happy to be listening to music that reminds him of his dead father. He smiles at me and says, “Ya mero llegamos.”

  I wonder about him, about what he’s feeling. Is he sad? Is he angry? Does he miss his father? I haven’t seen him cry, and he has a gorgeous smile. He seems happy, strong. But how happy, and how strong? I see him so focused on what’s in front of him and I wonder: Who is this kid? How does he suffer so gallantly? I’m a rock, a stone, I can’t suffer for my father; but he, does he not have the right to weep publicly for his father? Why must he be a gentleman? Why must he swallow his sorrow? “Los hombres no lloran,” was one of my father’s favorite things to say. “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,” he’d impress upon us. Tears were not his style, and he didn’t want them to be our style either. Is this what Aarón remembers?

  At eighteen he looks like a fully grown man. A short and very thin one, but nevertheless—a man. He does everything every grown man in Mexico is expected to do: work, drive, drink, have sex, and now he’s burying his father. On top of that, he’s leading the pack of mourners. He’s a spotless boy, a loyal son! And he’s it now. He’s the one. Fate’s choice. The youngest of all of our father’s children. Through him, the memory of Juan Silva will live on most. He knows what to do. He won’t disappoint.

  “I’m going to stop and get some beer,” he says, veering off the highway and away from the procession. We pull into an expendio. Danny pulls in next to us. The procession continues on its five-miles-per-hour course to the cemetery. “¿Quieres algo?” Aarón asks me.

  “Just water,” I tell him. He walks into the store and Danny walks in behind him. Nobody else follows. I take this opportunity to look out at the procession as it continues to move past us. I notice that every vehicle in the line is old and busted in more ways than one. They’re all dirty and have fucked-up paint jobs. There are cars, trucks, vans, and they’re all from the last century—literally. But I’m impressed by the number of them. I count twenty-two vehicles in all, and in every one of them a band of wretched spirits. “There goes my father’s world, his tribe, the miserable folk, the rabble, los pobres he always proudly talked about.”

  In Chihuahua, such a scene has become the norm, part of the everyday of things. The extraordinary occurs only when a rich person dies or a big narco. Only then is there something to see: all-new cars with their dark-tinted windows rolled all the way up, some even bulletproof. Only if my father had been rich—only then, his people wouldn’t have to sweat so much and hang their babies out of their cars’ windows. The last vehicle in the procession is a blue early ’90s Chrysler minivan. Its paint’s peeling and most of the body’s covered in dirt. Both the front windows are rolled down and the sliding side door is completely open. There’s about ten people bunched up inside: men, women, and children. A little boy and girl are sitting on the edge of the open space with their little legs and feet dangling in the air. They look right at me as they go by. I smile and wave at them and they return the gesture.

  Aarón walks out of the store clutching two Carta Blanca caguamas and Danny a couple of large paper bags and sodas. I wonder what Aarón plans on doing with the caguamas. Is he going to open them now or are they for later? I hope they’re for later because I don’t feel like drinking this early. Before walking to his car, Danny walks up to my window, hands me a bottle of water and offers me a bag of chips. “No, thanks,” I tell him. “Water’s good for now.” Meanwhile, Aarón’s placing the two caguamas behind his side of the seat. I don’t ask him anything about them and he says nothing about them to me. No one in the back asks either, which only makes me more curious about when he plans on drinking them. Still, I avoid the topic. As far as I’m concerned, he could leave them back there forever, because I really have no desire to even taste a beer in this moment—or to drink one later in the day, either. I’m constipated and beginning to feel discomfort in my stomach. Aarón gets in the truck, cranks the ignition, and within seconds we’re back behind the white hearse, once again leading the procession. I open my water and take a drink. Its coldness moves down my throat and into my stomach. It’s refreshing, but I’m still hating the day.

  Eventually we turn off the highway and onto a long stretch of dirt road. It’s dusty and bumpy. And though we’re moving even slower than before, nothing prevents the dust from kicking up and getting all over us. I’d roll up my window but it’s just too damn hot. I imagine myself being back home and driving around Orange County streets in my semi-new, air-conditioned car. But because this isn’t Kansas anymore, dirt and dust it will be until we reach the cemetery, which, as my bad luck would have it, is at the very end of the road, and it will be at least another twenty minutes before we reach it. It’s far, seemingly endless. An endless fucking road of dirt, rocks, and large holes. My pretty Mexico, when will you pave all your roads? Can’t you see the inconvenience they cause to visitors from el otro lado like me? And why does this fucking cemetery have to be so far? I ask Aarón this last question. “Was there no other cemetery that was closer?”

  “No, this is it,” he says, unmoved by my complaining. “This is where my grandma’s buried, too.”

  Of course this is it. Where else would anyone put a cemetery for people like my father and his mother if not as far as possible from the main populated areas of Chihuahua? The poor and the destitute are always pushed to the margins of every society, and Chihuahuense society is no exception.

  We finally come up to a steel gate between two long adobe walls splattered with white paint and the word CEMENTERIO painted on them in large black letters. On one side of the gate there’s also a small kiosk-looking room from which an old man comes out, dragging his right leg and cheerfully saying to the driver of the hearse, “Hola, ¿cómo están?” He uses the plural form of the Spanish “you,” which makes me wonder to whom else besides the driver he could be talking to. As far as I know, it’s only him inside of the hearse, him and of course my father. But my father’s dead and I figure he must know this. Funny how so many times the wrong way we use words goe
s unnoticed. But I digress. Because after greeting the driver of the hearse, the man walks up to Aarón’s window to tell us that we can’t bring the cars into the cemetery.

  Fuck that, I immediately think to myself, I ain’t pushing over all that dirt. And I’m about to tell the man this, but before I say anything Aarón informs him about my situation. “But my brother’s in a wheelchair. He can’t go over all that dirt.”

  The old man ducks and looks observingly at me through the window. “Really?” he says. “He looks fine.”

  “Really,” Aarón assures him. “Look, his chair’s in the back.”

  The old man takes a step back, sees the chair among the passengers, and says, “Okay, then go ahead. Come right in, but only this car. Everyone else has to park their cars out here and walk in.” Fuck it. Cool with me. The old man opens the gate and waves us in, and as we follow closely behind the hearse the rest of the mourners walk beside and behind us.

  Cemeteries are always creepy, at least to me, but nowhere are they creepier than in Mexico. In this one, for example, there are stone and wooden crosses everywhere, and concrete slabs of various sizes. Dried-up flowers and decaying statues of saints adorn almost every grave, from La Virgen María—the general favorite—to San Martín de Porres (my personal favorite because he’s a negrito like me) and San Judas Tadeo and even La Santa Muerte (which is the favorite among the narcos). There are no manicured lawns in this cemetery, only dirt and weeds. And no trees, only an endless view of erected crosses and slabs of concrete with the names of the dead either painted or engraved on them, and most of them in bad condition.

  We stop before two freshly dug grave sites; a mound of dirt lies next to each one. Everyone gathers around the hearse and Aarón asks me if I want to get out. “Yes,” I say to him, though I really just want to stay in the car—hell, I really just want to be somewhere else. It’s already too hot and there’s dirt everywhere, and I hate having to push my wheelchair over dirt. It gets all over my hands and eventually all over my clothes. And when I wear black the dirt stands out. And on this day I’m wearing black jeans. And I still can’t get the fact that I’m constipated out of my head. But who would understand my plight? So while my father’s getting pulled out of the hearse, Aarón is setting my wheelchair between me and the open passenger door.

  There’s a quiet storm. People are once again beginning to cry as they gather around the coffin. I don’t get close to it. I stay by the truck and look on. “You don’t want to see him?” Aarón says to me. “They’re going to open the casket again so we can see him.”

  No, I don’t want to see him again. What for? In what way could my father have changed since the night before or since earlier that morning at the funeral home? He’s still dead and in the same position with the same fucking face, and he’s still going to the same fucking place.

  I shake my head.

  “You sure?” Aarón asks me again.

  “I’m fine here,” I say. “You go.” He does. He walks away and disappears into the crowd. A few times I’m able to see his little dark brown bald head pop up and glance at me as if to make sure that I’m still here. He isn’t the only one who does this. Others look up or back at me and stare with wonder, each one seemingly wanting to ask me the same question: “Don’t you want to see your father one last time?”

  NO!

  Time is dragging and the heat is doing a number on me and my black jeans are getting covered in dust, just as I’d predicted. I want my father to be buried already. I see no sense in prolonging the inevitable, plus, still feeling the effects of the hangover from the night before and worrying about my guts, I want nothing more than to return to the house, make an attempt at taking a shit again, and then go back to sleep. Be done with it already, I keep wanting to tell everybody, bury him already and wipe your fucking tears!

  It’s something like a dream, like a surreal world in which I don’t belong. The cemetery’s playing tricks on me and the people are putting on a spectacle. I’ve never seen anything like it before. What is this place and why does it feel so normal? My father has walked me through it before, shown me how life can be ridiculous, shown me how even a moment like this can be meaningless, how empty even cries can be, even for a dead man. “From the moment you take your first breath, you’re already dying,” my father used to say, “and life isn’t all it’s cut out to be.” And after taking a deep breath, he’d sing: “No vale nada la vida, / La vida no vale nada,” one of his favorites by José Alfredo Jiménez. Something that had always sounded like gibberish when coming from the mouth of a drunk is now making all the sense in the world to me. I understand it all now.

  I keep looking at the trash that’s everywhere and wondering where it comes from and why no one bothers to pick it up. Wrappers of every kind, empty potato chip bags, pieces of paper and plastic bags, empty soda cans and beer bottles and even dirty diapers are scattered all over the place. Not one tomb is too sacred not to be marked by trash.

  And as I continue to scan the cemetery with my eyes, I come across the unexpected: Rocío. There she is again, looking more beautiful and more out of place than yesterday. In her aqua top and light-brown sandals, she looks more like she should be at the beach. She’s among the crowd, next to my sister Axcel and Danny’s wife, Lucy, and when I spot her I realize that she’s looking right at me. The sun is in her eyes and she’s squinting, and when she sees me look at her, she smiles. Then I smile. Then I wave from my chest, then she waves from her waist. And behind her, far back away from where we all are, another woman catches my attention. She’s tall, slender, and beautiful. And she’s dressed the way one expects people to dress at a funeral, and not like any of us are dressed now. She has on a long, fitted black dress that comes down to her calves, and she’s wearing black high heels. I wonder if dirt has gotten into them. Can’t be comfortable, I think, and she’s got it worse than I do with my black pants. She also has on dark black sunglasses and her hair is done up in a stylish bun. I don’t remember her being at the wake. I’m certain I would have seen her, and I’m certain I would have remembered her. Because I appreciate her, the respect she brings to my father’s funeral, the elegance and formality she evokes, even as a yellow plastic bag blows right by her. I’d later learn, from Aarón, that the woman was our uncle Trini’s ex-wife. And while the ex- would make sense to me, the ever-having-been-his-wife part would not.

  * * *

  There is no priest and there are no prayers, just final goodbyes and glances. This is where it all ends for my father, and soon the casket will shut for the last time. Like the shadow that casts itself over the city as the sun begins to set, a shadow is cast over my father’s face before the lid completely shuts. To the side, my brothers, sister Axcel, and Cokis wrap themselves in each other’s arms. My sister Cecilia, on the other side, stands alone with her hands clutched in front of her and her white skin turning red in the sun. All this time she’s been unwanted by this side of her family for something she had no fault in, and now here she is, wanting to share in their misery. She stands like a lonesome dove in the desert, thirsty and eager to fly with a murder of crows. I wonder what must be going through her head, seeing what’s all around her. It’s a thing of beauty, ain’t it, sis, this creation of our father’s? It’s all his doing, his work, his magnum opus. Your father was the pope, didn’t you know, and everything he did was holy. This is why they cry for him, this is why they mourn his death.

  One boy in particular is crying more than anyone else. He’s one of my uncle Trini’s sons, David. “¡Tio! ¡Tio! ¡Por qué? Why?” he keeps shouting while sprawling his upper body over the casket. It’s a sad and terrible thing to see, and to hear his cries is even worse, like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard. They make me cringe. But the whole thing confuses me. I question his outpouring of painful sentiments. Not even my brothers are expressing their pain the way he is. Had he really been that close to my father that he’d suffer so much for his passing? David, I knew, had in fact crossed with the Devil an
d made tracks beneath a poisoned moon. He’d drunk from the fountain of sorrows and partaken in the dark celebrations of my father and uncle—his father. I witnessed it once, and it felt like I was seeing one of the worst sins committed by men.

  My father had purchased a small adobe shack only a few blocks from the house where he lived with his family. This, I was told by Cokis, he’d done so that he could have somewhere to go when she’d kicked him out for any of the many reasons she’d become accustomed to kicking him out for. This was to be his doghouse, a place for him to dwell in his misery alone. I was surprised when I first heard about this “otra casa,” as my brothers, sister Axcel, and Cokis came to call it.

  From the outside, the house looked like a shithole. It was built in what seemed like a sinkhole on a dirt street on the side of a hill. Only the top part above its one front window and its roof were visible from the street. You had to walk down a number of steps and past a huge tree, whose branches and leaves helped conceal most of it, to get to it. This being the case, I never got closer than the street. It wasn’t ADA approved. But I pulled up in front of it a couple times with Aarón to look for our father. Aarón would get out and go to the door to call for him while I waited patiently in the car. And every time our father would come out looking like shit from head to toe. His pupils would be dilated, his skin would be pale and thin, and his breath would reek of alcohol. He’d look like a fucking zombie coming out of a cave, and I’d tell him this to his face, after which he’d laugh uncomfortably and tell me that I was crazy, that I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. “Estás loco,” he’d say. “I’m no zombie. I’m your father, tu papá.” Then he’d reach in through the window, wrap his arms around my neck, and kiss me on the forehead. And in case I misunderstood what it was he did in that house, he’d make it clear to me that he and his friends were only there drinking and playing poker, and that was all. But that was never all. Something else was always going on, and that something else was cocaine and other drugs. “So you mean to tell me that with only beer you’re able to stay up and play poker all night, and with nothing else?” I’d ask him. And “¡Sí, sí, sí!” he’d assure me over and over. But my father hadn’t been fooling anybody, especially his sons who’d come to know him too well, who’d come to recognize all of his lies. Alcohol alone doesn’t dilate your pupils or weaken you and turn your flesh pale, nor does it make you grind your teeth obsessively and lick and bite your lips just the same. I’ve seen this man before. Hell, I’ve been this man before; but in darkness where no one could see me, and in silence where no one could hear me. I’d been my father’s son. I knew what went on in that shitty house: junkies dressed as relics turned in there to tune out the world outside.