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He asked me to cry with him, but his sadness was his and I couldn’t steal it.
In a version of events, I called her beforehand. In another, the one I like to believe, she knew to be at the airport because she knows how to love me the best.
It could’ve been years or minutes since Santiago’s death, or three months like my mother said. I didn’t know or care, but I wanted to argue, my voice a sturdy vibration I was pleased to exercise.
“Mi niña, this grief is ours. Mine, Joseph’s, even Jackie’s. Right, Jackie?” Jackie nodded, wiped her wet hands on her apron, and squeezed my other hand. “Let us carry this with you.”
Their names floated in my mind, familiar but not quite material; a name would conjure a voice, a unibrow, a pair of shockingly ugly shoes, but none a full human.
Like Santiago
Santiago said God found it rude when people spoke with their mouths full, but he shouldn’t worry because God wasn’t looking over us. “God is supposed to look over all of us,” Joseph explained. But Santiago said no, God chooses who he cares for, and he hadn’t chosen us.
I felt alone, perfectly alone. So alone I felt divine. Divine like a lonely god unfathomable to anybody but herself. Perhaps I could believe in Santiago’s God, a God who existed but had chosen not to look over me.
“Crows come to feed off my grief.”
“I’d rather struggle here, be a pauper, let the house crumble around me, and die with it.”
Your father and I built this house, our dream house. Each room, each detail, ours. You grew up here. This house is our family.” “Our family is our family. Not the house.”
After Santiago, I expected to gnarl too. I wanted my grief, but instead I was left with a horrible nothingness, and I got really scared. But then I realized fear was a thing I could feel, and I clung to it. I was afraid of my loneliness. I was afraid I would never have anyone to love again. I blamed you for it. For leaving. I was angry. Furious. And then I had two emotions. Fear and anger. The anger helped me wake up in the mornings and eat and clean the house and wash myself. The anger even distracted me long enough that I would forget my loneliness, and sometimes, in short bursts, I even
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wished Carmina was home and someone bathed her like she had bathed me, waiting for her with an open towel in which she nestled and went to sleep, safe and happy.
Wouldn’t that have been a groundbreaking discovery, someone bringing a creature to life solely with their own grief and a prodigious unwillingness to let go?
“A few scratches. Sometimes he forgets how sharp his claws and teeth are. But I like that about him. Like he’s indestructible.”
thought her house was invincible.
“Faking it until it becomes real.” “I’ve been doing it too, you know? I’m working. I’m smiling. I’m out here caring for Monstrilio. And sometimes, it does seem like it’s real, like I can actually be this person.” He pushed strands of hair behind his ears. “It just feels like I should be doing something else.” “Like what?” “Crying.” “Then cry.” “I’ve cried myself out.” “I’d say.” “Shouldn’t I be holed up in a dark room somewhere with a scraggly beard, dirty and insane?”
“A lung. He has only one.”
Uncle celebrated the part of M that was most monstrous, a belief in a pure freedom.
