Realm of the Rover: 2012

(This is a memoir. I wrote it for a contest and it was rejected. Hope you like it.)

Johnny Thunders said it right.

“You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory”.

It was July the 15^th, anniversary of the rocker’s death. I was at my job, at an internet radio station, when I got the call. I had to stop the show abruptly. My brother was already in the car with my mother when she picked me up and we drove to my grandmother’s house, where all her family lives, except her, who moved out when she married my father.

I asked her what the matter was.

“Your uncle called,” she answered. “He said your aunt got worse.”

I did not answer, but looked at my jeans, a lively magenta t-shirt I was wearing, and a belt made out of colorful bottle tops. Deep inside, I had the certainty I was inadequately dressed for what was to come.

When we entered my aunt’s apartment, in a building next to Grandma’s house, my eldest cousin was there, with her father, the second uncle, a man who had been skeptical when my aunt had been diagnosed with fatal colon cancer. He had always said he didn’t believe doctors were damning my aunt to death: that they weren’t God. He didn’t even stop to think they could be prophets.

My grandmother was there too. The stillness gave away what was going on. My aunt had an empty look, directed towards the ceiling, and her mouth was half-open.

My mother knelt by the side of the bed and started weeping.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come here sooner…” she assured, between sobs.

“Nobody saw her when she died,” my uncle, the one that was there, answered. “She died early in the morning.”

The rest of my cousins were going in. Some of them were crying. My aunt’s son was there. He had been regarded as some kind of ungrateful son, Camus’ Stranger, by my uncles, who claimed they never saw him cry during his mother’s sickness. I saw him crying after my brother cried. After I cried. Saw him, even if to this day nobody believes me. They had a reason not to believe me. They asked him how come he hadn’t noticed his mother was dead.

He said he had walked by her room that morning, thought she was asleep, and pulled the covers closer around her.

My uncle, her husband, was the one who got there at the end. I don’t remember the looks on everybody’s faces when he got there. My eyes were fixed on him.

He looked as if he didn’t know what was going on.

“Why weren’t you here,” my mother spoke then. It was not even a question.

“I had to go to work,” was his shaky answer.

Silence.

“She told me not to go,” he said then, looking at the bed, where my aunt lay. “She told me not to leave. I told her I had to go to work. She wanted me to stay. I said I’d be back early. Then she just let out a sigh, a deep sigh… I think those were her last words.”

I don’t remember if anyone said anything about him leaving, about him going off with that certainty, the certainty that his wife was dead, without even looking back. The room was slowly getting crowded and the air felt heavy. I went out to the living room and I didn’t count time as it went by.

I must have half-woken up when someone said la hermanita was arriving.

La hermanita. The “little sister”. A pet name given for a Christian woman whose job is to go from house to house, trying to convert you. “Sister”, as if she was a nun; “little”, to denote familiarity, as if it was nice to see her. La hermanita is a woman with fake nails so long I wonder when she has time to glue them to her actual nails. She once prayed for me. She prayed that God would turn to flesh and blood the part of my heart that had hardened and turned into stone. I had turned it into stone myself, after my mother’s cancer had gone by, and after they said there was nothing to be done regarding my aunt.

I kept on listening to Johnny Thunders in my head.

La hermanita prayed. For everyone in the room. She then sat with my brother and me at the living room for a few minutes. She reminded us that my aunt was with God now. As if we had been little children at Sunday school. I don’t remember what she said later, but it had to do with eternal happiness and grace.

She then asked us if we believed in God.

My brother is an atheist, and I remember I wanted to hear what he would say. I was half-expecting him to say no and was half-expecting la hermanita to damn him to hell right then and there. He didn’t say anything. I answered because the silence was choking me; because I wanted to say something like Right now, I’m not sure I do.

Instead, I just said: “Sometimes.”

La hermanita then left. She said she would help my grandmother prepare coffee for the people who would surely be arriving soon after hearing the news. To the wake. I had never been in one before.

Tears seemed to have stopped by then. My uncle suggested we play a song from my aunt’s favorite band, Grand Funk Railroad. I thought about “I’m Your Captain”, with its nostalgic outro: the sound of the sea, violins on the background, and Mark Farner singing, perhaps sadly, an unchanging, indefinite verse: “I’m getting closer to my home”. What home? Not a home the listener knew; deep inside I thought my aunt knew then.

It was “Bad Time” the one that blared out of the speakers. I entered my aunt’s room and looked at her, at her body that had been gnawed down to the bone, at her sickly skin. My mother had tied a bandage around her head so her mouth was not half-open anymore, but in place.

I then noticed my brother and all my cousins were there, except the eldest one. And my uncle, her husband, was there too. He was carrying a stool and a bag. He then asked us to stand at both sides of the bed: my brother and I on the right, my other cousins, siblings, on the left. We obeyed in a zombie-like way.

He took our picture. Our picture. Us standing at the sides, and Aunt, dead, in the middle, in her bed.

He then took another one, without us. And another one. He even moved the stool, looking, it seemed, for an angle. By then, I was already regretting what I had done. What we had done. But I hadn’t been thinking. I had just obeyed him because he was the widower. I hadn’t thought about the bag and the stool. When another picture was taken, I thought I wouldn’t be surprised if next thing would be us trying to get her into a coffin made out from the trees outside the house and if somebody drove a nail through her face accidentally like it happened to Faulkner’s Addie.

Spongebob was on when me and my brother entered the dining room. There were also dishes with warm soup and croquettes, leftovers of the food that had been eaten the previous day. My stomach felt funny and I thought I was going to throw up, but when I started eating I realized just how hungry I was. Two opposite forces were warring inside my guts, but they were buried underneath a pile of food.

When I left the dining room, there was trouble brewing already. My uncles were very angry. My aunt’s husband had not had the funeral arrangements ready, as he had always insisted he had, when my aunt was still alive, but dying at her bed. He had assured her everything was under control; now, it seemed, there was not even a decent coffin.

I didn’t want them to fight. Yet, I knew that if they did, there was not much I would be able to do about it, so I went to the living room. It had already been cleared, so the coffin would be placed there. And, in the middle of the room, my eldest cousin was making a cross out of flour, with flowers on top. It’s a ritual that says the spirit of the dead person rests there until los nueve días, the nine days dedicated to the rosary after a death have passed; then, the cross is lifted and the soul can leave, in peace. I had never seen one in my life. I watched as my cousin piled the flour carefully, molding it, until it became a white cross with pale flowers decorating it.

She had just finished when my youngest uncle got in. He had just come back from his job—he works outside the city, watching over construction workers. He became very pale when he saw the deserted living room, with the cross there, as if it had been the sole evidence of a crime.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” he asked, as well.

As a rumble of explanations rang from many voices that had been complaining in the yard and were now gathered at the living room, I was afraid he would collapse—but, fortunately, that didn’t happen, so I went out to the yard. Relatives had started arriving, with huge wreaths made of flowers. They left them by the door, which was now open, perennially open. I wondered what crossed the minds of the passersby when they walked next to it, their gaze wandered inadvertently to the open, illuminated door, and saw the wreaths. That had happened to me. I had been the passerby, though.

The coffin arrived then, and Aunt in it. It was a plain black coffin. My mother was angry at it, too. She said her sister would have wanted a white coffin, and that it was all her husband’s fault for not having the arrangements made when they should have been. But there was nothing to be done after that. Aunt was placed inside the coffin and people got in line to see her and say the last goodbye to her.

I remember I did, but that I didn’t cry until someone played another of her favorite songs, Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me”. And, even then, I didn’t cry a lot.

All of a sudden, the yard was crowded, and I saw a family my family knows: they’re doctors, we’re pretty close, and they have helped my grandma once or twice. In fact, they checked my Aunt’s tumor when she had been healthier, and they were the ones that had already warned us there was nothing to be done, a conclusion my uncles had denied, even spurned.

Now they were there, with their daughter, a girl my brother’s age. She was dressed as a mourning supermodel, her skinny black jeans and dark coat dominating her attire. I looked at myself in shame, at my jeans and magenta shirt I had not taken off. For a second I thought perhaps I should have gotten some extra clothes when we went back home, instead of a jacket. And, when she started crying and I couldn’t, I felt there was a sort of mistake. I knew she was crying because she was reminded of her grandmother who had died too, but it still didn’t feel right. I should have been the one dressed in black skinny jeans crying my heart out, not her.

The wake faded out inside the paper cups filled with coffee and the animated talking of the people who were around, including the family of my cousin’s former girlfriend. The girl had wanted to say goodbye to her former mother-in-law. My eldest cousin whispered in my ear: “What’s this bitch doing here?”

There was gossip like that, some tears that had given way to laughter, a disco song on the stereo because nobody had bothered to change the record. So, when my father (who had gotten there after the wake had started) said we were going home and that my mother was staying, I agreed. We would be there the next morning, after all.

We woke up late next morning. As far as I was concerned, the wake was still going on. Dad said we didn’t need to be there early—Mom had called him: her and Aunt’s widower had taken my aunt to the crematorium. They would be back with the ashes later.

We had breakfast at a restaurant. However, even though I only had chicken soup and a quesadilla, I felt full. It felt as if the cooking oil was sticking to the quesadilla, and it just remained there after I had bitten it, coating my tongue.

The feeling hadn’t gone away when we reached Grandma’s house once again. However, now there were empty beer bottles lined near the door.

“It’s not a wake anymore,” my Dad concluded after only a glimpse, and he was right.

My eldest cousin was slumped on a couch that had been dragged to the yard so that visitors could sleep on it. She was talking with two of my cousins my brother and I seldom see, because they live in Cuernavaca, outside the city. My cousin sees them frequently because she visits Cuernavaca a lot. So, when they saw us, they immediately engaged us in conversation. You could tell they were happy to see my brother and me, in spite of everything, so I figured having a good time with them wouldn’t hurt.

That was, until my eldest cousin asked us if we wanted to go for gomichelas.

I felt strange when she said that. It just didn’t feel right. Gomichelas are this Mexican invention where people put gummy candy inside your beer. They say it tastes good: I have never tried it. And I was not in the mood to do so. However, everyone said Yes, got up, and followed my eldest cousin. And there, all of a sudden, I felt afraid of being alone. There, at the supposed wake, with people who were having a beer too. It wasn’t that much of a big deal. But I ended up following them.

My cousin stopped in front of a place that looked certainly illegal: the building was ratty and derelict, and through a cracked, half-open dirty window, you could see a messy room and a board with several names, both men and women, written on it, and marks. They indicated how many times the girl or guy in question had won a drinking contest. There was a girl who seemed to be the heaviest drinker of all. I looked away from it and to messy writing scrawled on one of the walls where the paint was falling. It read Yes we’re open.

My brother and my cousins asked for any kind of exotic beer combinations, including the gummy one. I asked for an apple-flavored beer. It tasted as if someone had dropped a big glass of apple juice inside a pint. I walked back, drinking from my huge paper cup, wondering if we would meet a policeman who would warn us about drinking in the streets. Then I thought the police surely knew about that place, and I felt stupid. And I felt stupider when I got back and the first thing I saw was my father, looking at me as I took a drink from a beer I wasn’t even enjoying. My face gave it away. So I just got rid of it.

Just a moment later, my mother was back, with the ashes. They were inside a cubic, golden urn with a silver cross. It was the urn that was allowed to be taken on a plane, for my aunt had asked to have her ashes taken to Paris, so we could scatter them over Les Champs-Elysées. I had talked about that last wish of my aunt’s to my friend Caroline, who was visiting France then. She wrote my aunt’s name, Marcela, on a cardboard and took a picture of it next to L’Arc de Triomphe. I cried when I saw the picture. It made me feel going to Paris was not a wish from my aunt, but an oath from me to her.

An oath that stayed with me as the nine days of the rosary rolled by. Less people than the ones at the wake would meet at my grandma’s house, including us, and sit inside, while praying and singing. However, when the prayers were over, all of them would go out towards a table where steaming mugs of coffee and assorted pastries would be waiting for them. They didn’t just take one. They almost jumped over the table, as in a hurry to eat everything that had been laid before them. They would take, for example, a bunch of madeleines, eat some, wrap more of them up in a napkin, and go away with them.

I watched them do that, and didn’t know what to think. I thought about them, all inside the living room. I never went inside the living room because I don’t know how to pray, but I could hear them, singing with utmost devotion:

Señor, has mirado a mis ojos. Sonriendo, has dicho mi nombre. En la arena, he dejado mi barca. Junto a ti buscaré otro mar.

Lord, you have looked into my eyes. Smiling, you have called out my name. I have left my boat at the sand. I’ll look for another sea at your side.

I wondered about all the women who ate the cakes and drank the coffee voraciously, even if they were my relatives. Were they really thinking about the Lord at the beach, taking them beyond the horizon, with my aunt waiting there? Or were they just pretending in order to have a right to a coffee mug and cake?

Perhaps those events were the ones that made me stay outside the living room, talking with other people. I was not praying, but I felt sincere. I thought my aunt wouldn’t have liked to have anybody thinking about food when the rosary was supposed to be for her.

And perhaps it was my “sincerity” the one that made me skip one of the nine days. My friend Isabel texted me, asking if I could meet her for lunch.

I don’t know, I texted back. My aunt died and we are on the nine days after the wake.

Were you very close to your aunt? she answered.

I should have deleted her number right then and there. Of course I was. She didn’t even said she was sorry. It was as if she was expecting me to say no.

So I went to have lunch with her.

We ate at a pizza place in front of her house. She talked about her boyfriend, his job, how they were doing. She also told me about how she was going on a diet. We finished our pizza and I went to her flat because I had nothing else to do.

She hadn’t told me she was sorry.

We spent the next hour looking at a Facebook profile of some girl Isabel used to be friends with. She wanted to know if she had stolen another girl’s boyfriend. We finally saw it had been so, and Isabel seemed rather enthusiastic with her discovery. I didn’t really care.

She then asked me if I wanted to laugh. I said I did. She put on some episodes of Modern Family, and cracked up every time Sofia Vergara said something in her bad English. I couldn’t laugh; not like her. She hadn’t said she was sorry. She just kept on laughing at the show.

Then, my friend Veronica arrived.

She didn’t ask what I was doing there. She just sat down and kept on watching the TV with us. However, when the show ended, she started talking about some girl who had gotten a European boyfriend. We ended up staring at the computer’s screen again: there was a girl with a very handsome boy who I thought was Dutch, perhaps because he was wearing one of those I AMsterdam t-shirts. My friends drooled at the prospect of a wedding for a while, and then asked me why I didn’t have a European boyfriend. They assured me I’d had time to get one, since I was no longer in college and jobless. They didn’t seem to care about the fact I had no money to catch a flight to Europe. Or the fact that my aunt had been dying for months, so there was really no chance of traveling, with my mother taking care of her and all…

They didn’t seem to care: they just kept on chatting animatedly. There were no “sorry”, and then, right then, I had the feeling I was trapped inside a bubble, a bubble of death, and that my friends were outside, oblivious to what was going on inside my little world: they were in a place where girls got married with boys who were not Dutch, who stole boyfriends and watched Modern Family, and life went on, spinning around me. Caroline had taken a look inside my bubble, known what was there. But they didn’t know, and they didn’t want to look.

So my mind traveled inside the bubble to the people that were there, sharing it with me. I thought about my mother, telling people I had been reading the Bible to Aunt the night before she died.

She was mistaken.

I had been writing. I had wanted to write a poem to her, but couldn’t. My verses were hideous, melodramatic. The Bible was open, next to me, but I didn’t want to read. Everybody said she liked it, but how could they know? Aunt couldn’t even talk by then.

I ended up looking at a small picture of Marc Bolan, the dead rocker, Aunt had on her wall. I had scanned it for her because she loved him. I then spoke to her:

“You don’t really like it here, do you?” I said.

Of course she couldn’t answer. I wasn’t expecting her to.

My rhetorical question was followed by a: “You know, God should really do you a favor. You deserve some rest. You deserve to be happy. I’m just going to ask a favor from you. Say hello to Marc Bolan when you get there.”

She had listened. She had understood. Life had understood. Heaven had understood.

The world couldn’t understand.

I remained there, inside my bubble, intact, thinking about how Johnny Thunders had been right, and wondering if Aunt would forgive me for not having attended her rosary that day—even though, perhaps, she had. Because I had not read the Bible to her. Because I had not drunk that apple-flavored beer. Because I had not sung something to her while thinking about cake.

But the world kept on turning, and I stayed in my bubble, wondering if she had spoken with Marc Bolan. And if he, after all, had said hello.

Realm of the Rover

martes, 18 de septiembre de 2012

Kaprova Street. Prague. 2011. 11 am.

viernes, 20 de abril de 2012

Say Hello to Marc Bolan

viernes, 27 de enero de 2012

Letter from the Other Side of the River

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