I stepped outside for a cigarette. I don’t think I’ve ever had one during the day. I could only smoke when I was out with friends, or during the night. If Mom saw me, she’d hit me so hard I’d hear bells. The sun was tall in the air, and it was trying to burn away every stain from the night before.
Mom had cleaned up the cans and toppled chairs before work. I assume. She was gone, and I didn’t think Papá was home.
That spot on the sidewalk by the garage was still dark with beer. I remember sweeping up glass. I took a drag and walked over to the broom and dustpan leaning against the garage. It was filled with jagged green shards. They looked like candy.
I’m not one to treat my birthday like anything special, but I had been at the bank for a while now, and had never used my sick days. I had never missed a day. But this morning I woke up so sore and ill. Maybe I got my payback. My stomach felt like it was full of sewer water. On account of everything, not just residual booze. That was just a small part, you see. I picked up one of the green shards and put it between my teeth.
~
Mom wanted to have a family party for my birthday this year. It had been a year and ten months since José Luis died, and we had cancelled every celebration since then. No Christmas. No birthdays. They made us sick. I wanted this day to pass with the same small bitterness. Mom said we should do something. 21 is important. Just a few people, please. We deserve a little fun. I agreed.
I told some new friends to come by. My Tia from Arcadia said she’d come too. She had a baby last year that none of us had met yet. I asked Papá if he invited anyone. He was sitting in his big chair in the living room. He said “ No, no lo hice” and looked at some spot on the carpet, a spot he had been examining for months now. I waited, but after a second he looked up at the TV like it was a window, so I left.
Papá didn’t talk to me for the week leading up to it. I knew what he was saying. I thought about cancelling the whole thing. I thought it might be easier to just keep on going the way we had been, but then I caught Mom dancing in the kitchen.
She was dancing to Lauryn Hill. She used to listen to her all the time. She would play Lauryn Hill while she cleaned, and she would kind of murmur the words to herself. I came home from work and heard it seeping out between the front door and the frame. When I walked in, I saw a woman dancing. A woman who looked like the memories I have of my Mom. I watched her move at the knees and elbows, not to the rhythm of music, but to her own. She pushed the broom around with purpose and compassion. I don’t think she even saw me. The last year had turned her into stone. It turned us all into stone. But now she looked like a bird stumbling out of a nest. I couldn’t cancel it.
So some time passed. My birthday came. I lit a Santo candle for my brother. It felt like the right thing to do, I don’t know. People showed up and talking and drinking started. I felt brittle, like anything could break me. But beer has a funny way of changing that. As the night drew on, I could feel a warmth arise in me again. I could hear music in my head. I could smell Luis’ cologne. I could hear his deep scratchy voice, and the safety that always accompanied it. I didn’t miss him. He was right inside of me. Every once in a while I would catch Mom smirking at me. Her eyes were no longer cold. Her cheeks didn’t slide down her face like eroding soil. She could feel him too. She walked over, leaned her head against my shoulder, and said happy birthday. I stood there basking it in with both of them until I saw Papá limp towards us from the living room, a beer of his own in hand.
He leaned hard on the outside door frame. He looked out with hot pupils that he no longer had the capacity to control. He had been in the house doing little things, keeping busy, biding time. He was looking at pictures on the wall. But now he was boiling over. He kept moving his lips, like he was getting ready to say something. Or maybe he was just keeping his mouth wet.
He looked at me with some disappointment—a stare that only parents could perform. I became keenly aware of every secret I was actively hiding. I lowered my beer to down behind my thigh. Mom smiled at him, maybe trying to make him smile too, but he just showed her the same sullied glare. She reached out for his heavy, calloused hand. They walked inside the house. I leaned against the door frame just out of their view.
Something like this has happened about a dozen times in the last year. One of us forgets we are supposed to be mourning, and he reminds us. He never needed to. It’s a fire that never stops. Sometimes it’s only smoldering coals, but it is always burning. Sometimes I’m talking to a classmate after a lecture, and the world seems normal. I can laugh, smile. Make plans for the future. Everything feels normal. Then I remember that José Luis can’t do any of those things. He can’t ever sing Doo-Wop when we all drive to San Diego, or take girls on dates to Piscotty’s, or watch TV with me in the living room on Saturdays . He can’t smile or laugh. He’s a marble plaque now. He’s a piece of stone stuck in the dirt. And for a year I’ve been afraid of being happy, because happiness brings a tidal wave of guilt that crushes my heart like a porcelain mug falling to the concrete. I felt that guilt then, listening to my parents argue during my birthday party.
Papá sounded like he was about to spill over. I could hear choppy, suppressed breathing underneath Mom’s pleas on my behalf. She was asking him to have a nice time, that he should do it for me. I know my father loves me.
He said “ Luis is dead. I don’t understand you. Both of you.”
Mom clenched his forearms and stiffened her face. She said “ Luis died, and he’s gone now, but we’re still here together. All of us. Luis doesn’t want to be a ghost.”
He didn’t speak. I expected an eruption, but I just heard his foot pivot in the carpet. I turned around and leaned my back against the house. I felt the coals glowing red in my stomach. It felt like there was a small sun inside of me.
Then Papá walked out. He was a blur. A tense wake trail him, and it rocked everyone on the patio.
Mom called his name once; “José!” But it bounced off of him.
He chucked his beer bottle at the ground. It made a huge popping noise, followed by the glinting sound of glass shards skidding across concrete. They looked like terrestrial stars in the artificial street light. He stormed into the garage. I heard his car start, then the door open. After that, most people started to leave.
~
The glass was in my teeth, but I wouldn’t touch it with my tongue. I sat there for a second, cigarette burning between my fingers, and thought about my brother. He wasn’t wearing all white. Sunbeams didn’t jut out from behind his head. He was just as I remembered him—or, as much of him as I could still remember. It had been so long.
I heard the screen door to the house open. I spit out the glass. Papá said “ Put that out, it’ll kill you. Do you want to get breakfast?” Sunlight glinted off his dark eyes, and we were both warm. I could feel him from here.
Christian Lincoln 