City of God. Gil Cuadros
My father sighed, uninterested. I pretended to be appropriately mournful since I’d never seen a dead body before. It lay in its open coffin, a spotlight illuminating his pasty face, like a stage actor, I thought. My mother huffed, “It makes me sick, you can hear her going on and on.”
My father said, hot-tempered, “She has a right to her grief.”
My mother turned into quick anger, “You know what I mean, Danny. You heard what my mother said.”
Exasperated, my father whispered sideways, “You have no proof.”
“The bruises, Danny, the bruises,” my mother near spat till my father said, “Shh!” In the quiet before the wake, I could easily make out Evelyn’s wails. They were the kind of wails that could be mistaken for laughing, as if this were all a joke and my great-grandfather would pop up then and yell, “We pulled a fast one on all of you!”
I thumbed through the small book given to me as I had entered the mortuary, How to say the Rosary Apostolic and Other Indulgences. Grandma Mickey said it was a gift for me: “The mysteries are great and powerful for the devout; the joyful, sorrowful and glorious acts of Jesus purify our sins.” It was pretty boring stuff, fifteen Our Fathers and one hundred and fifty Hail Marys. The pictures made it seem more exciting.
After the wake, uncles, aunts, grandparents and children waited on the steps of the mortuary, leaning against the colonnades. An aunt kicked a strip of no-slip on a step with the point of her shoe, her husband held his jacket over his arm, his short-sleeved shirt exposing his various tattoos of roses and crosses. Another man with a full black mustache that covered his mouth’s expression spoke with him. Aunt Mary had been hastily escorted out by her youngest daughter. Evelyn stood by the coffin long after everyone had left. “Nearly threw herself on top,” an uncle said. Everyone had moved their cars so they blocked all the exits, the headlights aimed for the front door, the marble walls, the angels and muscular men along the frieze. Ruben called out, “She’s coming.”
When Evelyn walked outside all the car lights’ high beams were turned on. The women and men stepped away from their cars, toward Evelyn. They began yelling, “Get out of here! We know you did it. You murdered Papa. Sick, sick, sick!” Evelyn had been covering her eyes, trying to see, to adjust. She wore an open black crocheted top and the headlights bore through to flesh, bounced off the black Qiana dress as if it were made of white.
She started to scream, to reason, “I didn’t do it.” I wondered why she didn’t just run or why one of my uncles didn’t put a stop to this, their barrel chests filled with breath, their shirts almost too tight, their top buttons aching to pop. But they wouldn’t. She tried to block her eyes with her hands, shaking her head, “He always shitted on himself.” Horns blared, hands heavy on steering wheels; my brother leaned on ours from the back seat, our father having rushed us in early. My Grandmother Mikala walked up to Evelyn and began to slap her, nails curled to puncture, looking fierce. Evelyn defended herself, thrust herself like a cat, wild and rare, on top of my grandmother; both fell dangerously down the steps, backs, spines, shoulder blades hitting the corners. People rushed in like a mob, women pulling her hair, kicking Evelyn in the stomach, the ass, her breast. The men tried, some laughing, to extract their wives from the brawl. My brother and I jumped up and down in the back seat, acted as if we could feel the blows or were giving them, vocalized the sound of each good hit, “uhh, opff.” We watched as Dad returned with my mother, who was nearly scratching his eyes out, saying loudly, “That bitch.”
My father hastily drove away to his mother’s house, it now fully night. My mother told me to forget what had happened, that it wasn’t a good thing, that she was already feeling ashamed, her voice quiet and firm. She thought that maybe I should pray. My little brother was asleep already, his straight black hair next to my thigh. I rolled the window down slightly, letting the air rush in. I could barely hear the radio, a scatter of signals. I stared outside, wondered if my family would ever turn on me, where would I go, who would I love. The long farm roads leading back greeted my thoughts, the rows of grapevines, tomato furrows, cotton, all lined up in parallel paths ending on the horizon, designed like manifest destiny. Lit by my father’s high beams, still ignited, I watched as we passed a scarecrow off the road, dry weeds for hair, a flimsy brown dress, a stake skewered up through the body, arms stretched open as if ready to embrace.
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