Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (A Sal and Gabi Novel)

by Carlos Hernandez

  I leaped into their midst. As I stalked around them, creaking and bouncing, staring at them from creepy stooped angles, they begged me to go away. I goat-hopped back to center stage and shouted:

  “Did you not hear my words before?

  One day, you’ll die, forevermore!

  So laugh no more. Prepare to cry.

  For someday each of you must die.”

  And I laughed for all my evil worth.

  Until I was rudely interrupted by a girl whose poofy hair gleamed with flags-of-the-world barrettes. She marched right up to me, stomped her foot, and said:

  “You’re such a jerk, Death. Get a life!

  You’re like my kitchen’s dullest knife.”

  “I’m like a dull knife?” I said, sounding hurt and picking my way over to her. “I don’t get it.”

  Gabi was all too happy to explain:

  “A dull knife will not slice, but slip,

  and cut you when you lose your grip!

  You’re using fear to make life dull,

  to kill the brain inside the skull,

  before we’ve died! That’s premature.

  Your words are, therefore, cow manure!”

  Gabi had to take two bows to get the crowd to quiet down. I stood fuming and making threatening gestures with my spear, waiting for my chance to speak. Once I could be heard, I circled Gabi and delivered my lines:

  “Ye haughty girl, thy clever tongue

  means nothing when the day is done!

  My victory is guaranteed!

  You might as well, right now, concede!

  For there’s no power, trick, or art,

  that can delay my poisoned dart!”

  Boos from the audience. I hissed back.

  “That’s a nice spear you got there, Death,” said Gabi.

  “Oh, you think so? Yeah, I really like it. It’s really good at killing!”

  “But it looks so heavy! It must be a bummer to carry around all day.”

  “It’s light as a feather,” I said, handing the spear to Gabi. “See?”

  “Oh!” she said, thrusting it a few times. “It is light!”

  And then she stabbed Death in the face.

  And Death’s face exploded.

  Specifically, the overinflated black balloon, over which I had put the bauta mask, and which had been floating in the hood of the cloak where a human head would normally go, popped. Gabi had pierced it with the tiny pin we had stuck at the end of the prop spear.

  The crowd couldn’t believe it when the bauta mask tumbled to the floor. The cloak’s hood, now with nothing to hold it up, fell against the shoulders of Death and the top of my actual head.

  I paused for effect, letting the audience digest what they had seen, as they laughed and tittered and whispered among themselves. Then, mockingly, I laid into Gabi.

  “Ye foolish girl! I am not dead,

  though you have murdered my own head!

  At killing, only I am skilled.

  Without my help, I can’t be killed!”

  “Really?” said Gabi, hand on her chin. “So, the dart doesn’t do the actual killing? That’s fascinating!”

  “You think so?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Gabi, making big eyes at Death. “You have such an interesting line of work, Death!”

  “Well, it pays the bills…” I said modestly.

  “It must take an extraordinary amount of talent, doing what you do.”

  I did an aw shucks kick. “Well, yes, it takes a little practice.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “I have to say the name of the person who needs killing in a rhyme I make up myself.”

  “Oh,” said Gabi, winking and tapping a finger against her temple. “So, let’s say my name was, oh, I don’t know, Death. How would you kill me?”

  “Easy. I would say a rhyme like:

  ‘Dear Death, you’re life is done. Oh well!

  It’s time to send you down to’—hey, wait a minute!”

  I waited for the audience to stop cracking up before I delivered my next lines.

  “You can’t fool me! I’m much too fast!

  This little prank will be your last!”

  I strode over to her in a frightening, galloping rush. Gabi covered her face with her hands melodramatically. Walking slowly now, I led her to the opening in the curtain, “faced” her (even though the Death costume had no head anymore) and said:

  “Your time is ended on this Earth,

  And gone is all your worldly worth.

  I’ll take you now beyond this veil,

  and leave the audience to wail.”

  Meek, now, and defeated-looking, Gabi nodded assent, but quickly added,

  “Oh Death, I know now I must die.

  But please, Death, let me say good-bye.”

  “Make it quick,” I answered grumpily.

  Gabi turned toward the audience with a sad but brave smile on her face. This would definitely have been a spotlight moment if the cafeteria had owned one.

  “Good people, sorry, I must go.

  Death is the end of every show.

  But here’s the trick: We are not dead!

  Not yet. Don’t act like it! Instead,

  enjoy each moment to the max!

  Someday you’re gonna die? Relax!

  When that day comes, it comes. Till then,

  rejoice in life, time and again.

  For if you follow my advice,

  not only will your days be nice,

  but you’ll discover all your fear

  of dying—”

  And here, Gabi grabbed Death’s cloak and yanked it and tossed it to the ground. There was no boy beneath it wearing stilts. There was nothing in it at all.

  “—will just disappear.”

  “THAT WAS A GREAT show,” said American Stepmom. She was driving Papi and me home from the hospital as day changed to night. “I still can’t believe how great a show that was.”

  Papi twisted around to address me from the shotgun seat. “Mijo, believe me when I tell you. You are going to be a star. If not today, if not tomorrow, someday very soon you are going to change the world. What a show!”

  “What was your favorite part?” American Stepmom asked Papi.

  “The ending, of course!” he said to me. “When you exited the costume—and you were so sneaky! No one saw anything! You exited the costume, and then Gabi threw Death to the floor, and that last line: ‘will just disappear’! It was so perfect! I mean, I knew that’s why the tent poles were there, to hold the costume up after you snuck out of it and hid behind the curtain, but, I mean, it was so perfect!”

  “It’s nice when a trick goes off the way you pictured it in your head,” I agreed.

  “Okay, mijo, you listen to me,” said Papi. “You are very good at picturing things in your head. You can work a problem out like no one I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve met some pretty smart people. You have a gift. And there are going to be a lot of people in this life who will try to hold you back because they won’t have your imagination. But you don’t listen to them, okay? You hear me? You trust that big beautiful brain of yours, okay?” And then he grabbed for me and scruffed my hair and kind of batted me around like a bear play-fighting with his cub.

  “Okay, okay!” I said.

  Papi faced forward again. We came to a red light. “What was your favorite part, Lucy?”

  American Stepmom thought for a moment. I saw her smile through the rearview mirror. “My favorite part was how Gabi’s family reacted. Did you see them?”

  “Oh yes,” said Papi, his voice suddenly a little hoarse. “Those poor people.”

  “Oh, the way they hoisted you and Gabi on their shoulders, Sal. And the way they cried with joy. Men, women, robots, everyone, just so happy for you.”

  “They kept telling me ‘thank you!’” I said. “But they were the ones who helped me.”

  “You helped them more than you know, sweetheart. You gave them a story full of hope.�
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  “And magic,” added Papi.

  “And something to hold on to, when their hearts are so broken they don’t know what to think anymore. You gave them something beautiful to think about. It’s just about the greatest gift you can give anybody.” American Stepmom, crying now, said, “Petunia, take over.”

  Petunia is the name of her car. Petunia said, “Okay. I’m driving now. By the way, you have one new message. Shall I play it for you?”

  “It’s probably from Aventura,” said American Stepmom, instantly cheered up by the idea.

  “What a talented young woman she is, too,” said Papi. “I think Culeco’s cornered the market on all the bright young talent in Miami.”

  “When you and Gabi work up your act,” added American Stepmom, “you should hire her as your costume designer. Okay, Petunia, play the message.”

  Petunia obeyed.

  When the very short message had been played, American Stepmom said quietly, “I’m driving now, Petunia.”

  “Okay,” said Petunia, “you’re driving.”

  Then American Stepmom made an illegal U-turn and broke the speed limit all the way back to the hospital.

  Once we got to the NICU, it didn’t take us five minutes to put together the story, even though it came to us in broken pieces from one sniffling Gabi dad to the next. Ignacio’s immune system was shutting down for good. It might take a day, several hours, or a few minutes. But definitely soon. This was it.

  The Gabi dads stood around, mostly quietly, taking turns crying and comforting each other. I heard a little whispered Spanglish, an occasional sob, but the loudest noise in the NICU waiting room came out of the filter. It exhaled sanitized air like a grumpy giant.

  Through the see-through walls of Ignacio’s room, I watched Ms. Reál, her eyes as pink as sick tomatoes, cradling tiny little Iggy in her arms. Her wet cheeks gleamed.

  She wasn’t wearing a mask or gloves. I guess, at the end, those things don’t really matter anymore.

  Ignacio was wrapped so snugly in a white sheet that only a little of his red-and-brown face was visible. He didn’t move at all. His incubator gaped open like a treasure chest that had already been plundered.

  Gabi was in the room, too. She sat on the bed, kicking her feet in a way that reminded me of Principal Torres on the stage. For the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t have any barrettes in her hair. It puffed straight out in every direction. She looked like a brunette dandelion.

  The second she saw me, she ran to the glass and impatiently waved for me to come in. I made Okay, okay! hands at her, and walked to the door. She opened it and shut it behind me.

  As I passed her, I read her T-shirt. “OUR DEAD ARE NEVER DEAD TO US UNTIL WE HAVE FORGOTTEN THEM.”—GEORGE ELIOT.

  I kissed Ms. Reál on each wet cheek before sitting on the bed with Gabi. “Oh,” Ms. Reál said, starting to cry again. “Thank you for coming back. I’m so sorry. You have school tomorrow! You’re so kind. Oh, my son. Mi hijito, Sal. No es fácil, mijo. It’s God’s will, I know. Qué sea la voluntad de Dios.”

  “It’s not God’s will!” yelled Gabi. Her legs swung more fiercely.

  Ms. Reál looked at her daughter with more kindness than I thought a face could show. Then she turned all that compassion onto me and said, “I lost my faith for a while, too. But I got it back. Do you know how I got it back?”

  “How?”

  She lowered her head and raised Ignacio until their noses touched. “I figured out the most important thing I’ve ever figured out. That God is just another word for ‘goodness.’ Every time we do a good thing, God grows. Inside us. Right here.” She freed a hand long enough to beat her chest three times.

  Gabi bunched the bedsheet in her fists. But then she let it go, smoothed it with both hands, and, all traces of anger gone now, hopped off the bed and approached her mama. “Mama,” she said, with a cake-and-ice-cream smile, “would it be okay if I said good-bye to Ignacio now? Alone?”

  Ms. Reál was so surprised by Gabi’s question that she started to cry: just one fat, fast tear that fell off her face like an overripe orange.

  But after a big breath, she said, “Oh, mijita, ¿cómo que no? Say good-bye to your hermanito.”

  She gently, slowly transferred Ignacio into his big sister’s arms, laid a big kiss on both of her children’s foreheads, and touched my head in blessing on the way out. I turned to follow her.

  “Not you, Sal!” said Gabi with her patented whisper-yell. “You, I need. We have work to do.”

  I turned back to Gabi. She was staring fiercely at Ignacio, rocking him slowly, shaking her head, as if saying No, no! to some repeated question.

  I waited until I heard the door shut behind me. “Work?” I asked.

  “You know exactly what I mean. Do not play stupid with me at a time like this. Just do it!”

  I stepped closer to her so we could speak more softly to each other. “Exactly what do you want me to do, Gabi?”

  Gabi didn’t feel like speaking softly just then. “Fix this!”

  “How?”

  She became confused. “You know. Do your…thing.”

  “That’s just it. I have no idea what I’m doing. You know I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  Her face collapsed. “Just this one time, Sal. Just this once. This is too terrible. It can’t be bad, to save a baby. Save my baby brother, Sal.”

  I wanted to yell, but I turned to look at the many moms and dads outside this see-through room to calm myself down. Several of them stared back.

  I said to Gabi, as evenly as a teacher, “You’re not getting it, Gabi. I can’t even save my own mami. I have been trying for years. My own mami.”

  “But you’re so much better now,” she begged. “You know so much more. Remember how you switched the wall in the gym? No calamitrons!”

  “So what do you want me to do, Gabi? Switch your brother for a healthy Iggy in another universe?”

  She dropped her chin. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “But they’re two different people! All you’d be doing is sending your own flesh and blood to another universe, and bringing in a different baby to live with you.”

  I have never seen a thirteen-year-old with a scarier face than Gabi Reál at that moment. “But my parents wouldn’t know that. They would think it was a miracle. They would think Iggy was cured. They’d be happy.”

  She was on the edge, beyond tears, her whole body shaking. But I’d been on that edge before, five years ago in a hospital with Mami. I knew what Gabi needed was a calm, sensible voice to remind her who she was. “Look at Iggy,” I said softly. “The baby in your arms? He’s one of a kind. There is no Iggy in the multiverse quite like him.”

  That’s all it took. She looked at Iggy, and rocked him, and held him fiercely to her chest, and her resistance broke like a dam. She almost couldn’t speak for weeping. “I know, Sal. I know. I know I know I know. Rarrh!”

  “I know, too,” I said. And then, the way a hot shower on a cold day can bring you back to life, an idea warmed me all over. “Wait a second. No, I don’t. I don’t know. What do I know? There is so much to know. We should go find out!”

  Gabi, lovingly rocking her dying brother, watched me carefully. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re looking for a solution to our problem, right? Maybe we can’t find it here, Gabi. But maybe it’s just in the next universe over.”

  “That—” She wanted to argue. But I could see her mind changing between sentences. “That’s true, actually.”

  “It’s a big multiverse out there,” I urged.

  “We can just look,” said Gabi, getting excited. Iggy, maybe catching a little of her excitement, yawned and kicked a little. “There’s no harm in looking, right? No rip, no calamitrons, right?”

  “No calamitrons,” I agreed. “Not if we just look.”

  “So let’s look. Let’s look!”

  “But it might not work, Gabi.” I chewed my tears and swallowed them. No
time to cry now. “You’ll be so heartbroken if it doesn’t work. I should know. I’m still heartbroken. My mami died, and my heart has never healed.”

  Gabi came close enough for Iggy’s hand to touch my arm. “Sal, how much worse would you have felt if you hadn’t done everything in your power to save your mama?”

  She was right. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try to find a way to save Iggy.

  So I relaxed. All the way.

  “WHAT’S HAPPENING?” ASKED Gabi.

  “Everything,” I answered, relaxing and relaxing. “Everything at once.”

  I wasn’t trying to be mysterious. Everything that could happen really was happening, all around us, all at the same time. Ignacio died in Gabi’s arms. And then he was fine, sleeping sweetly as Gabi cradled him, black hair peeking out from his swaddling. Then a different Gabi was cradling him, and then another and another, all with different barrettes: hot-air balloons, the entire periodic table, the word “love” in different languages, female superheroes. And then Ignacio was back in the incubator, and Ms. Reál and four Gabi dads watched him, sick with worry. Doctors and nurses appeared and disappeared, sticking Ignacio with syringes or more IVs in his tiny, bruised body. And then the room was lightless and empty, had been for a long time, no machines turned on, no sign of any of us.

  Jump again: It was daytime, and the room had turned freezing cold, and sometimes I was in the room and sometimes I wasn’t, and then a nurse I’d never met and would never see again noticed Gabi and me through the cling-wrap barrier between universes and was about to scream right before I moved us along. Transparent people vanished like ghosts and were replaced by others who burst to life in the room like a flame on a match. And then a baby girl was fighting for her life in the incubator, and the people in the room were her family—not Gabi’s, not mine— and it was someone else’s story altogether.

  “I don’t understand,” said Gabi.

  “Deep breath,” I said. “Things will slow down if we relax.”

  Gabi sucked in air, let it out. The room started to change more slowly. We watched some Gabi dads weep when they received bad news then—poof!—laugh for joy at good news. Ms. Reál wailed and Ms. Reál rejoiced and Ms. Reál put on a brave face as she comforted other Gabi dads and Ms. Reál thanked God in heaven for saving her son. Some Gabis wept into their hands and other rejoiced, more grateful than they’d ever been in their entire lives. We saw all sorts of Sals, too, and Papis and American Stepmoms, and lots of people we would never know but who somewhere, sometime, were part of Ignacio’s life and, sometimes, death.