He held up his hand.
“Our Lord and Savior demands a sacrifice! Sacrifice your favorite television programs.”
“Chingado,” Big Angel said, looking around at his family. “There goes Ice Road Truckers.”
They strangled on laughter. Little Angel had to lean on his big sister’s shoulder.
“Shh!” she and César said.
MaryLú was still a good Catholic girl. Sort of. She covered her mouth with her hankie and guffawed. “You’re bad,” she whispered.
Minnie sat behind Little Angel. “Daddy, for the win,” she said.
He looked back at her, and the look in his eyes said: He always wins. And her look said: You know it.
“Amen,” the priest finally choked out, and he flew through the fake-satin curtain beside the altar.
Big Angel said, “Now the family will speak for itself.”
Nobody was ready to give a eulogy, but el patriarca had commanded them. One by one, they came forward and spoke what poetry each could muster. He sat with his hands folded over his tiny belly, nodding and smiling and laughing, but he never wept.
* * *
3:00 p.m.
“Oh, my mother,” Big Angel said.
He had failed her. He knew he had. He had failed in so many ways, at so many things. Mother, Father, Mazatlán and the Bent family, Braulio, Yndio. But it had taken a while to get control of the ship. There had been mistakes. Captains are not born, he told himself, they are made. He wasn’t yet convinced, however.
But Mother. He felt that she had not respected his beloved Perla, and he had let her fade into the background of his life. He liked to think that a Mexican mother would respect a man who stood by his wife; he didn’t count on the rules set by this Mexican mother. No dissention, ever. No disobedience. So they had been cordial with each other. Still, when she came for a visit, she would have some terrorist act in her bag of tricks. She would wander into the kitchen and somehow get into the cabinets so she could say in a conversationally mild tone, “You’d think these pots and pans would be brighter. Maybe they’re old, not just dingy.” Or a helpful note that Perla should scrub coffee cups, not merely rinse them.
Big Angel had not physically cuddled his mother like his brother César had. Hell, even Little Angel had hugged her more than he had. César ended up sleeping on her couch after each marriage ended. She had still done his laundry and packed him lunches for work.
Every son, he told himself, will suffer after his mother has gone and he realizes how little he thanked her.
“I am nobody special,” he said. “Just a husband, a father. A working man. I wanted to change the world.”
There was no one there.
* * *
Big Angel was turning seventy. It seemed very old to him. At the same time, it felt far too young. He had not intended to leave the party so soon. “I have tried to be good,” he told his invisible interviewer.
His mother had made it to the edge of one hundred. He had thought he’d at least make it that far. In his mind, he was still a kid, yearning for laughter and a good book, adventures and one more albóndigas soup cooked by Perla. He wished he had gone to college. He wished he had seen Paris. He wished he had taken the time for a Caribbean cruise, because he secretly wanted to snorkel, and once he got well, he would go do that. He was still planning to go see Seattle. See what kind of life his baby brother had. He suddenly realized he hadn’t even gone to the north side of San Diego, to La Jolla, where all the rich gringos went to get suntans and diamonds. He wished he had walked on the beach. Why did he not have sand dollars and shells? A sand dollar suddenly seemed like a very fine thing to have. And he had forgotten to go to Disneyland. He sat back in shock: he had been too busy to even go to the zoo. He could have smacked his own forehead. He didn’t care about lions, tigers. He wanted to see a rhinoceros. He resolved to ask Minnie to buy him a good rhino figure. Then wondered where he should put it. By the bed. Damned right. He was a rhino. He’d charge at death and knock the hell out of it. Lalo had tattoos—maybe he’d get one too. When he got better.
People filed out. Cousins hugging cousins. Big abrazos.
He was taking inventory—in his mind, a spreadsheet: he repented of one sin per day, and he moved it to the other column marked PAID. On this day he repented that he had ever loved eating sea turtle soup. Sopa de caguama, how rich it was. With lime and cilantro, fresh rolled corn tortillas with salt in them to catch a bit of broth, and some chile. He didn’t like chile, really, but his father had taught him a man ate chile until he broke out in a sweat. It was supposed to prevent cancer. Old Don Antonio had sneezed every time he ate it—sneezed until he turned purple. But he went back for more. Suffering had been his religion. Big Angel shook his head. But his tongue wiggled from just thinking of that soup. Now all he really wanted was to simply swim with the turtles and beg their forgiveness for finding their flippers so delicious for so long.
“Lotta troubles,” he said. “Y muchos cabrones.”
He observed them all from the short watchtower of his chair.
There were days when he could not recall any sins at all. On these days, he thought he might be through with all his transgressions. Clear. But he was a smart man—too smart to fall for his own tricks. There was always another sin drifting in the shadows, waiting to alight and sting the heart.
When Minnie stopped to check on him, he said: “Mija—a rhino has such thick skin, mosquitoes and flies can’t bite him. They bend their beaks on him.”
“How nice,” she said.
* * *
3:30 p.m.
Home for a minute. He had to get his diaper changed before the burial. Poor Minnie, he thought. Having to deal with that. But you do what you have to do. It’s family, pues.
His friend Dave had given him a nice little set of three moleskin notebooks and had told him to write his gratitude in them.
“Gratitude for what?”
“That’s up to you. I can’t tell you what to be grateful for.”
“This is silly.”
“Dare to be silly. You take yourself too seriously anyway.”
“Gratitude?”
“Try it. Gratitude is prayer. You could always use more prayers.”
“Liking mangos and papayas is a prayer?”
“It all depends on you, Angel. Do you mean it? Will you miss it?”
“Claro que sí.”
“Well, then. Besides, what’s wrong with doing something silly to make yourself happy?”
The notebooks had a title: My Silly Prayers. He kept one in his shirt pocket, when he was wearing a shirt with a pocket. Or he kept it tucked under his left buttock in bed or in his wheelchair. He terrorized his daughter with his demands for a steady stream of blue G-2 pens. He refused to write with anything else. Those were the pens he had used at work, and those were the pens he used now.
mangos
was the first entry. And then:
(dave you idiot)
in case his friend ever saw it.
marriage
family
walking
working
books
eating
cilantro
That surprised him. He didn’t know where it came from. Cilantro? he thought. Then:
my baby brother
Every day, he found his gratitudes more ridiculous. But they were many, and they reproduced like desert wildflowers after rain. He could not stop himself; his daughter had to buy him a second, then a third, set of tiny notebooks.
wildflowers after rain
the heart breaks open and little bright seeds fall out
Before that, he hadn’t realized he was a poet, among his many other attributes.
* * *
He missed sex, even masturbating. All he could hold now was a soft tenderness that filled him with despair. He had been famous in his bedroom for volume, trajectory, and distance. And these things had faded until even the branch itself faltered and nothing could come from h
im again.
“Ay, chiquito!” Perla cried when they made love. “Eres tremendo!”
He remembered brown nipples—they floated through his days like strange shadows of delicious little birds that he could not touch. Almost buttery against his tongue. His fingers and palms felt cinnamon bellies and backs even as his hands lay at rest on his quilt. He tasted the sea inside his lover. And her milk.
He missed walking, missed his restless flirtations with Perla’s sisters, though he felt repentant about that part. La Gloriosa, especially. Good God—even now, she could stop a truck with a flash of her leg. He hadn’t felt a stirring in his palo for ages, but just thinking of La Gloriosa in a colorful dress and some dangerous heels made him remember the swell and pulse of the branch. For a moment, he believed he had been cured and it would bloom. He shook his head ruefully.
Walking, he told himself. Focus on the subject at hand! Strolling in the park, walking to McDonald’s, holding hands with Perla and perambulating along Playas de Tijuana, watching the Border Patrol helicopters just north of the rusting border wall, eating fish tacos in the stands by the seaside bullring. The ease and pump of his strong body. Comfortable shoes.
He utterly missed his unbroken body.
Somehow Perla knew when he was thinking these things. Especially when he thought about women. So he cleared his mind. He had been the first in the familia to use computers, and he told himself now: Reboot. Reboot, cabrón. Control-Alt-Delete. Absolutely, Delete.
“Es muy sexy, mi Angel,” Perla often announced when they were all gathered.
It was hard to feel sexy with all his bones turning to chalk and his legs aching day and night. Wearing a diaper. His brave daughter asked him often, “Daddy, did you pee-pee yet?” Jesus Christ. Sorry, Lord. But how did he get smaller than she was?
being taller than my kids
Big Angel had always been their leader. Since Don Antonio had abandoned them to starve in La Paz, his siblings had looked to him as their father figure. And now he was his own daughter’s baby. Now she put baby powder on his nalgas. This felt like one of the corny jokes he loved to tell when they were all together.
“You all right, Daddy?” she said.
“I’ll never be all right again.”
He stared for long stretches, and though she knew there was a lot going on inside him, she had no idea how much.
Minerva—she hated that name. But her homegirls right away had changed it to Minnie, which became La Minnie Mouse. Made it easy to buy her Christmas presents—she had quite a collection. Minnies and Mickeys. Plushies and plastic, hoodies and pillows.
He gestured for two of the gathered peewees to come to him. Grandkids, he thought. Maybe great-grandkids. There were always a couple of them around. His children had all had children, and those children were having children. His nieces and nephews even had children.
They crowded around his chair.
“Yeah, Pops?”
“When I was in the hospital the last time,” he said in his delightfully accented English, modeled on Ricardo Montalbán. (Because the peewees could only say “taco” and “tortilla” in Spanish, he spoke English.) “Do you know what happened?”
“No, Pops.”
“There was a guy, a very sick guy.”
“Sicker’n you, Pops?”
“Ay sí. So sick they had to cut off half of him.”
“Gross!”
“Yeah. They cut off the guy’s whole left side!”
“What? Like, everything, Pops?”
“Todo. His left arm, his left leg, his left ear. His left nalga.”
The kids shouted—they valued random butt references.
“But guess what?”
“What, Pops?”
“He’s all right now!”
They didn’t get it.
Here Comes the Rain Again
4:00 p.m.
hot showers
driving
Perla pulling up her stockings
eggs frying in hot lard
tortillas—corn not flour!
Steve McQueen
Lalo came for him.
“Nice and clean,” Big Angel said. “Feeling fresh.” He spoke English to his boy. He felt great. He tucked his little book under himself. He was going to beat this. “I am alive.”
“Right on.”
Lalo had changed out of his uniform. He wasn’t going to admit to anyone that it was too tight. And he knew he looked fine in his best suit. His only suit. Big Angel had taken him to the mall and found him a dark blue two-piece with a thin chalk pinstripe. White shirt with a maroon tie. Black wing tips.
Minnie had gone ahead with Perla and Little Angel, who had waited for them in the parking lot. One more day, Big Angel thought as Lalo wheeled him across the tarmac and onto the cemetery grass. One more day to go. Till the pachanga.
“Careful, Son.”
“Gotcha, Pops.”
“Don’t dump me out.”
“That would be funny, though.”
“Have you no respect?”
“Nothin’ but! Respect for the OG!”
“OG. Does that mean ‘old geezer’?”
“Funny, Pops!”
“I know. Hurry.”
* * *
The hell was Pops in such a hurry for? Lalo thought the old man needed a major chill pill, like soon. Dude, what’s the rush? If Lalo was heading for the grave, he’d drag his feet, fire up a few blunts, kick back, and ease into it. Well, that’s what he was doing now, because where else was everybody going? Freakin’ hole in the dirt. Make it muy suave, homie—ain’t no race, so slow your pace.
His left forearm itched like a bitch. His newest tat: an image of his dad in better days, with that old-school Mexican mustache. It said POPS 4EVER. Cost him $260 in San Ysidro. He wanted to scratch it, but he didn’t want it to bleed into his new threads.
Lalo was the last of the boys. Life had taken the others. One was here—close to where Grandma was going to rest. It made him feel weepy. Damn, Braulio, he thought. The blood stayed on the sidewalk for days—turned brown. It was like some dead lake. He and his homies stood beside it, staring, staring, crying, vowing payback. Flies got at it when it turned to pudding in the sun.
How come nobody thought to rinse it off? Flies—man, he hated flies. Iraq was full of goddamn flies. There, blood got into the dirt, though. Puddles didn’t last long. Soaked through the dust and gravel. You could see it, like some shadow, but what you could really do was smell it.
He shook his head.
After the pudding dried, wasps came and tweaked out all over it, shaking and nibbling bits of crust off the edges of the stain. Braulio. It all blended with combat in his mind. His leg scar was burning. He wondered if his own blood was still in the dirt back there or if some dog had dug it up and licked it clean.
And his other brother, his big brother, had gone away and didn’t care to come back for a visit. Yndio. Yeah, okay, your loss. Culero.
He pushed his dad along. “I’m the good son, Pops,” he said.
Big Angel reached his hand as far over his head as he could, and Lalo gave him a soft five, sliding his fingers off his dad’s.
“Thank you, mijo,” Pops said.
Big Angel was negotiating with God: Give me one more birthday and I’ll make it good. Nobody’s ever going to forget the day. They’ll be thinking about you forever, God. All those miracles you do. Right? Like me. Like giving me one more day. You got this, God. You can do this.
His mind burned with random glory. Sunsets over La Paz. The shadows in a ruined Mexican cathedral after the workers had shoveled out the dead pigeons and dung. The infinity of folded shadows between his wife’s thighs. The whale he saw in the Sea of Cortez, rising from the water and hanging there in shattered glass skirts of sea water as if the air itself held its impossible bulk aloft, and flying fish as tiny and white as parakeets passing under its arched belly and vanishing in foam.
He looked up. It was still raining. Perla hated rain,
but Big Angel knew a signal when he saw it. New life coming. Life carries on. He arched one of those brows at the Lord.
Ahead, Little Angel held an umbrella over Perla. She leaned on him as they walked across the wet grass. He didn’t fool Big Angel. He knew his baby brother had always been attracted to his wife. Who wasn’t? He wondered if, on one of those party nights, when the tequila was flowing…But, no. No way. Why get suspicious now?
Perla and Little Angel veered to the side, aiming, he knew, for Braulio’s grave. But she never made it there. As he expected, she started to collapse. In ten years she had never made it all the way across that lawn. Little Angel held her up and semi-dragged her toward the correct burial. Her wails were small across the space, and muffled. It disturbed him as if he were having some terrible dream. He turned his head, took in the vista—tombs, statues, trees, rain—then looked back at his wife and baby brother.
She had shrunk too. Just like Big Angel had. All short now. Poor Flaca, in her black dress and shawl. Her skin was still beautifully brown, though—too brown for the taste of his own mother. Mamá América had preferred paler hues. But he and Perla had earned their splotches and scars and moles and wrinkles. Her legs were veiny and bowed, but he knew damn well Little Angel had admired those legs when Perla was in her prime. So had his other brother. So had his father. But she had remained his. And he admired her exactly as she was.
She’d had to teach him where to put his tongue when they were young, but once he knew, he never missed.
“I win,” he said.
The only other umbrella they could find in the house during their mad scramble to the funeral was a silly child’s parasol. Big Angel popped it open. He tried to ignore the picture he must make as he squinted out from under the pink Hello Kitty. There was just a bit of mistiness in the air, really. Evanescent and funeral appropriate.