— Let her take it out.
— Don’t you dare. You already stabbed me.
— Gimme my dart.
— Momma. Momma. What do I do? Auuu!
I dropped my head back, looked up at the twinkling stars circling my head, and howled from the pain — Auuuu. Auuuu. But the saltiest little stars stung my eyes on the eve of my brother’s death. They say, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about it, but I can speak from my own experience, that sometimes you can feel grief before it actually comes — a black omen like the bat dream. My boots were muddied, and I was exhausted from having climbed a hill, even more exhausted from having uprooted an enormous cross with my bare hands and having to carry the weight of the cross down the hill, lay it down, and feel relieved. It was a great weight off my shoulders to take the cross down with its weight weighing on me and feeling the anguish of having to bring it all the way down and lay it to rest on the ground. Then I saw two snakes twisting and turning inside my brother’s fish tank, and that’s when Pilo told me he was going to uncover the tank.
— Don’t you dare. You’ll regret it.
Ignoring my warning, he lifted the lid, and out of the fish tank sprang the serpents and slithered under my brother’s bed. I cried:
— Who died? Please, Papa, tell me who died.
My father looked me straight in the eye and said:
— If you want to know what love is, have a son. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.
My brother died that morning. Like that. In a fit of convulsions, fending off death with his fists. Control freak, control, his fist first, in control, his heart bumping out, out, out. His eyes rolling around, ball points — did they know where they were going — they were looking — scaredy-cat — all around. Is this happening to me? Now? Ashamed. Am I dying? His eyeball rolling, upside down. His teeth, his cheeks — earthquake — calm, calm down, it’s all going to pass soon. It’s all going down soon and, and you’ll be Alright. And Alright came freezing his feet — frozen dead — my brother — beastly dead, dead like Dulci.
Cata cata cata plum.
Plum.
Plum.
And still, after all this time, I walk the streets with the wind in my face, feeling the chill of the weather and of death, searching for some trace of my brother’s face in every man’s face to see if I’ll ever see it again. It’s a disappearance.
— And Doña Juanita never appeared to you?
— I couldn’t understand why my cousins, Maruja, the Banker, and Kía, the Happy Widow, had called me to a meeting. What do these pencil pushers want from me? They, on one side of the conference table armed with sharpened pencils and legal pads, and I, on the other side, antsy and empty handed. Between us were my grandmother’s jewels, glimmering under florescent bulbs.
— We’ve called you to this meeting to inform you that you had no right.
— Now that she is dead, they belong to us.
— By right of blood.
— She was our grandmother too.
— No point in defending yourself now.
There was no testament stating the jewels were mine. When Granma died, my mother handed me a Kleenex scrunched in a ball. I opened it and found the jewels wrapped in a note:
— To my favorite granddaughter.
Distressed, I watched each of my cousins scribbling notes while they explained their points of view.
— She spent it all on you.
— It was unfair.
— She made both of us suffer.
— The tables have turned.
And just as the two shrews were about to grab my inheritance, they looked at me horrified. I saw that my hands were no longer my hands. Now they were covered with varicose veins, and my fingernails were polished red, and my knuckles and joints were wrinkled, and my fingers were fat, freckled, and gnarled, and my grip was as strong as iron — hands of an old woman — a prophet — and suddenly I realized that my hands had become my grandmother’s hands.
— Don’t let them snatch away what belongs to you.
I screamed in a voice that wasn’t my own. It was my grandmother’s voice. Just when I thought the furies had defeated me, the mother of all furies, my grandmother, sent them running scared, without saying goodbye, leaving my precious stones on the table, sparkling and untouched. Now listen, come up here.
— Where? On your back?
— Damn, I take a breath of fresh air and feel fine. I swear. I’m not ready for another tragedy, really, who’s ever ready for a tragedy. I grasp, for heaven’s sake, to be caressed by your benevolent you, to be loved so, so much. Oh, I breathe suspicion — my grandmother taught me to suspect — always suspect, even of the sun — she used to tell me — if you’re satisfied, something must be wrong. I’m so comfortable in bed I don’t even want to get dressed to go outside. I click on the TV, content to watch nothing. I read so much. I’m bored to death by Ibsen. Do I act upon the reading? Act upon the character? What fills my brain? Cotton balls and snowballs. Plus the flu, antibiotics, soup, and no exercise. And yet my appetite is here — do I dare to snack? Do I deserve to nap? Everybody dies. Even the ones who accomplish nothing. Do I deserve? Here comes my guilt. For niente a fare. Not for acting an injustice. It’s not an ethical dilemma. It’s a vital existential problem. Indulging my being in waves of distractions. The hot and lazy weather. As if it mattered whether it was day or night. If I don’t wake up — the consciousness of my being alive — time goes by, merry go lucky, quick, a coffee, quick, I have to work, but it’s too hot, and you come and go in the lazy swelter like a train bringing me shoes, seductions, smiles, gossip, temptations, beauty, your sweet face glowing, my Circe, indulging me to forget my mission. What mission? I had it. Now the day pains me and drives me crazy, this railroad inside my house. Thinking about 10 years ago, it will be 10 years since my last work. What have I done in 10 years? When I write checks I do not know 10 years have passed. I write 1983, 1984 because I’m stuck in:
— What do you mean here? Too many nouns. I would take out the ghosts because they have nothing to do with clowns or buffoons.
One life, one work. Work on my present. Do the experiences I live each day, are they — am I — experiencing something that I can feel 10 years have passed? Apart from changing the names of my friends. The problems are the same — nasty, grimy streets, repeating themselves, the same buildings crumbling, the same Broadway shows, movies ad infinitum, parties ad nauseam. You working ad infinitum, me trapped in the house — doing nothing—niente a fare, reading, rocking — what is this word, what is this world — even my nasty moods, the river, the city — and Woody Allen repeating himself — doesn’t he get tired of doing year after year the same old scene.
— Marcello put it aptly. Crisis of inspiration. And what if what you already did is forgotten by you? Even by you?
— It worries me. I don’t feel anything. Touch it. Squeeze my temples. Energize me like Jabi used to.
— Harder?
— Don’t crush my skull. Focus my energies like this.
— Look. Look. That’s the expression of intensity we’re looking for. A hideous pout.
— Don’t you see, when I was at my best, maybe I didn’t look nice, but my head was in top shape. Touch it, right here. Knock it.
— Like knuckles on a door.