The Color of Dying

by Carlos Colon

Rippey picks up Othello and hands him over to Stefanie, who places him on her lap. “What’s the matter, baby” she coos. Othello spots me. The anomaly from outside is now hovering in their living room. It’s more than the little guy can handle; he frantically leaps from Stefanie’s lap with a maniacal yelp, and dashes for the kitchen. “Oh my God,” gasps Stefanie.

  “What the hell?” says Rippey, following the cat, who wedges himself between the toaster and the cookie jar on the granite kitchen counter. “Come on, buddy. Get down from there,” says Rippey.

  Othello protests with an unearthly meow that even creeps me out. And I’m a dead guy.

  Figuring the kitty’s safe indoors, Rippey shrugs it off and rejoins Stefanie on the couch.

  Here comes that knife in the gut again as he puts his arm around her and she customarily leans her head against his shoulder. Later they will climb into bed and she will sleep with her head again on his shoulder, just as she did with me during the seventeen years of our marriage.

  During the early years of my disappearance I watched Stefanie sleep alone in the bedroom that I once shared with her, knowing that I couldn’t join her and lie together in the spoon position the way we did for so many years. Instead I’d come up close and study her face, trying to read what was on her mind. Darkness had settled in under her eyes. Wrinkles had formed. They came from the strain of raising two children whose father not only died, but died in the bed of another woman. Not able to sense my non-breathing presence, as far as Stefanie was concerned, she was alone. Both of us were. Alone in the same room but in two separate worlds.

  I should head back. It’s getting late and I gotta make a stop before calling it a night.

  #

  It looks like the University Medical Center’s O+ blood supply is a little lower than usual. Must be a lot of activity of late—even by Newark’s standards.

  Working here as a uniformed night shift security guard gives me the convenience of tapping into the blood supply on occasions like tonight where I need to compensate for Vernon’s leukemia-tainted feeding. By sticking to the more common blood types, I feel a little less shitty about what I’m doing, a nagging, moral compass that most of my kind don’t have to deal with. They wouldn’t even think twice about guzzling down some AB-. But then again they wouldn’t be skirting from feeding off live humans by going into the blood bank either.

  It’s my night off so rather than get caught up in any unnecessary chit-chat I roamed the halls unseen, though that can be draining when lacking a good feeding. As a security guard, I have the keys that allow me access to go where I please. Letting myself into the blood bank, I leave the lights off even if I’m cloaked from human eyesight. No sense in taking any chances.

  Normally I’d pocket a few pints and take them home to enjoy during ESPN Sportscenter. Tonight, though, I’m thinking I need to take in a whole ten pints. The problem is that I’m pretty sure ten packets of plasma floating in the hospital corridors might get a little bit of attention.

  If I were home right now, I’d be in the kitchen reaching for a can of Dos Equis in the fridge. Instead I’m pulling a packet of O+ from the hospital blood supply. That cancerous blood that I have in my system is playing games with my head. Rather than waiting ‘til I get home, I’ll puncture a hole in the edge with the pointed end of one my pearly’s.

  If I had a straw, I’d probably look like these kids today that suck from those packets they’ve been selling in the supermarket for the last twenty years that are 99% sugar and 1% juice.

  The blood is cold, thick. It goes down nice and smoothly like a refreshing glass of tomato juice. My reflection on the refrigerator’s glass door as it swings shut—it serves as an unfriendly reminder, one of the many cruelties of my curse that clings like a bad case of herpes. My projection to those around me is the handsome Nicky (if I may say so myself) that died twenty-seven years ago. To me that face is a memory from photographs. On the occasions when my projection is not present, like when I’m feeding or when my emotions take over, the only version I get to see of myself is that of my death face—the face that belongs six feet under. Dried, chalky grey-white flesh with cracked, darkened eyes and large black eyeballs floating in a blood-red pool where the whites should be. Not exactly the pretty face you see on those TV vampires that are always falling in love with the perky-titted cheerleader. It’s also the last face seen by someone unlucky enough to be around when one of us needs a feeding.

  Shit! Our hearing is extra-sensitive. I can be at the other end of Jersey in Atlantic City and still hear a Giants fan farting in the bathroom at MetLife Stadium. How did I not hear her coming?

  The piercing scream from behind almost sends the packet of O+ splattering onto the floor. It’s Juanita from the Environmental Services night crew. The poor cleaning woman was just exposed to something too unimaginable to process—unless she’s accustomed to seeing cadaverous night-walkers raiding the hospital blood supply.

  “Juanita, calm down.” I gotta bring her down, reassure her. “It’s me, Georgie,” the name I answer to these days. As a little inside joke for my own amusement I go by Jórge Sangría. But since no one can say Jórge correctly (it’s hor-heh, not hor-gay, you dumb fucks) everyone calls me Georgie.

  “Georgie?” She gasps through trembling lips.

  “Yes, Juanita, it’s me.” I gotta work fast. “Listen, any second now someone’s going to come running over here wondering what happened. You’re going to tell them you thought you saw a mouse or a prowler. Whatever, I don’t care. As long as you don’t say you saw me. You are going to totally forget that I was here.”

  Here comes the cavalry.

  “Juanita, what’s wrong?” It’s Jimmy, one of the other third shift security guards. Sometimes he works with me, other nights we alternate.

  “Oh no, I’m sorry Jimmy. I thought I saw something. I’m not sure. I don’t know. I got scared. But it’s okay. There’s nothing.” She’s so frazzled that her effort to feign calm is nowhere near convincing. Jimmy’s not even close to being fooled.

  And now here comes the crowd. Fiona, the cleaning staff supervisor, Jose, the other security guard, Gladys from Admitting, and the supervising nurse, Taqualla.

  Jimmy’s quick to take control. “Okay everybody, just stay out here.” He’s going to scope the room out. “What did you see in there?” he asks Juanita.

  “I don’t know. I was confused.” She knows she screamed. She’s still shaking but she can’t remember why. Mind control is a beautiful thing.

  Jimmy steps inside, not realizing he’s walking past the colleague he’s always inviting out for a beer to watch the Knicks. I always turn him down. I can’t stand basketball.

  Jimmy flicks on the light and sees nothing out of the ordinary. Everything inside appears as it should. If I would have dropped that packet of blood, poor Juanita would have had some ‘splaining to do. As it is, Jimmy’s satisfied enough to turn off the light and step back out into the hallway shaking his head. “Juanita, you sure you didn’t see anything?” he asks her while locking the door to the blood bank.

  Juanita’s now more embarrassed than spooked. “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Then why’d you scream like that?”

  “I don’t know, Jimmy. I’m sorry. I’m just nervous.”

  “Nervous? Why?” Stop being a pain in the ass, Jimmy. Let it go.

  Juanita just wants to get her shift over and done with. “It’s okay, Jimmy. You can go back. I’ll be okay.”

  The security camera in the hallway has got Jimmy’s attention. “Are you sure?” he asks Juanita. He’s probably going to check the tapes. I got some erasing to do. The hallway camera will show a floating set of keys unlocking the door to the blood bank. It will then open and close by itself. And though I never turned on the lights inside the room, there should enough coming from the fridge to show a packet of blood making its way out before disappearing into the darkness. I better get to those tapes before Jimmy. These days, shit like that can go viral.

 
3

  For the past couple of decades, the beauty of the Bronx has been buried under overbearing rusted signage, littered sidewalks and hip-hop thugs in pants hanging midway down their asses. Call me old school but I never considered the upper half of my boxers the most appealing part of my wardrobe.

  In the early ‘60’s, before its eventual deterioration, my beloved hometown still had some decorum and a mother could let her children accompany her to the bodega without hearing shit and motherfucker being flipped back and forth in loud casual conversation (I know, I should talk). Crime in our neighborhoods also hadn’t risen to the barbaric levels that it would in the following years. Of course there were places to avoid, just like anywhere else, but when I was twelve, I was able to go wherever I wanted without being bothered. Mami and Papi didn’t even give a second thought to letting me and my five-year-old sister Dani go to the playground at the Joyce Kilmer Park, across the street, unsupervised. They were comfortable enough to put me in charge of watching her with them peeking out periodically from the windows of our apartment.

  Papi made a decent buck at a small clothing factory in the garment district. He came to the states after graduating high school in Puerto Rico, bringing no work experience but a decent head for numbers. The company’s owner, Walter Reinhardt, quickly noticed Papi’s affinity and took a liking to him, eventually pulling Papi out of the warehouse and putting him in charge of bookkeeping.

  We were doing well. The building we lived in was on Walton Avenue near the Grand Concourse, which is a wide major boulevard not unlike Park Avenue. It was one of the nicer places to live in the Bronx, and while the residents in our area were not as well off as those living in Manhattan, they were comfortable and white enough to wonder how this Puerto Rican family became their neighbors. Eventually los blancos grew to recognize us as a hard-working respectable Christian family and their concerns began to subside, even if la señora played that Latin music too loud on the hi-fi.

  With Papi making enough money to meet our modest expenses, Mami was able to be a stay-at-home mom raising me and Dani. Every night Papi would come home to a happy family eagerly awaiting his arrival before sitting down for some arróz con gandules y chuleta. On Sunday nights like every American family, we sat in the living room watching the Ed Sullivan show (Papi swore the Beatles were maricóns). During the week my mother would walk us to school in the morning while Papi would take the subway to work. On Saturdays we would either go to the movies, take a family trip into the city, or maybe visit some relatives. Sometimes after work my father would join me and Dani at the playground, throwing a ball around a little bit with me and push Dani a couple of times on the swings. We would all then go upstairs together for supper.

  In the pictures I saw from before I was born, Mami was pretty and surprisingly petite. I say surprisingly because by the time I was ten years old, Mami was anything but petite. It might have to do with the fact that she was an amazing cook and her own biggest fan. She was short, just under five feet, but she looked like a woman that never lost her pregnancy weight—that is, if she were carrying a linebacker. It didn’t bother Papi, though. He was still as much in love with her as he was when he first met her in the city. Flowers every Friday, snuggles in the kitchen, and from the noises coming from their bedroom, I’m surprised that I only ended up with one little sister.

  #

  On Monday, May 9 1964 I was thirteen years old and it was a time when I’d get funny little feelings inside my pants when in visual range of a pretty girl. That afternoon, there was a group of Catholic school girls from Christ the King fawning over a portable record player while listening to the latest Beatles LP. I was a couple of yards away shooting hoops at the basketball court but I don’t think I made even one shot. The girls were wearing those Catholic schoolgirl uniforms that seemed to have been designed by sexual deviants. I wasn’t able to take my eyes off their legs.

  Dani was over at the sliding pond playing with one of those light marble-colored inflated balls that they sell in those bins at the supermarket. She was throwing the ball up the slide and catching it on the way down. When it bounced away from her towards the entrance of the playground, I’d tell her to wait and let me get it but she would have none of that.

  “I’m not a baby,” she’d say, running after it on her own.

  I had to be firm with her. “Stop!” The street was only a few steps away from the park entrance. There was no reason to take any unnecessary risks, especially since the ball sometimes went under the parked cars outside the playground.

  Unfortunately for us men, sometimes the female anatomy can be a cruel distraction because at one moment, much to my visual delight, the pretty ladies started shaking their little asses and squealing as George Harrison rang out the opening chords to Fab Four’s latest release.

  I stopped dribbling.

  The basketball, that is. My mouth was still dribbling. The lovely lasses then looked over my way and then started giggling the way girls do when they want to make you feel like a wart on a flea’s ass. Sheepishly, I averted their eyes the way a baserunner would avoid his managers after being picked off of first base. I resumed dribbling; The basketball, that is. My mouth was dribbling all along.

  Humbly landing back on solid ground, my attention was drawn back to Dani, whose ball was once again bouncing past the park entrance. I called out right away. “Okay Dani, I got it.”

  “No, I’ll get it,” she contested.

  “No Dani, wait!”

  The ball rolled out onto the sidewalk, wedging itself between a car bumper and the curb underneath. Behind the fence was a tree, which partially obstructed Dani’s view of the sidewalk. Otherwise she might have seen that a few feet away, a man was walking a hulking, 120 pound German Shepherd.

  Like many little girls that age tend to be, Dani was thick-headed and liked to pretend that she was tough and independent. But also just like other little girls, Dani had her share of irrational fears. One of them was dogs.

  Dani happily skipped past the park entrance and the obtrusive tree to get her ball. Startled by her sudden presence, and perhaps with intentions of defending his master, the dog lunged aggressively towards Dani with a rabid bark that was clearly unnegotiable. The owner commanded the dog to stop and was able hold him back, but Dani was so frightened by the growling beast that she ran screaming between the parked cars, out into the street.

  “DANI, NO!”

  The sound of the screeching tires echoed through the entire neighborhood as the driver slammed on his brakes. I turned away covering my face. For a split second, with the exception of a surprisingly appropriately placed shout by Paul McCartney, there was a pause of paralyzed silence. The essentially happy pop record then took a suddenly dark tone, reverberating in the stillness of the street. To this day I still can’t listen to those mop-topped motherfuckers.

  Even the dog ceased to bark. It was as if he realized what had just occurred.

  The silence didn’t last long.

  First came the screams of the horrified girls from Christ the King. Then came the cries from the other neighborhood women as they ran towards the scene of the accident. A crowd formed on the street as the driver tentatively opened his car. He never made it out of his seat. Holding on to the door of his 1962 Chevy to keep himself from collapsing, he heaved on to the street as his knees violently buckled. Somehow he didn’t collapse on to the concrete.

  The German Shepherd and his owner? As the crowd around Dani grew, they mysteriously broke away unnoticed.

  I couldn’t move nor make a sound. I was paralyzed. A damaged and devastated scream was building up inside of me that wanted to come out but it couldn’t. I’m not even sure I was breathing at the moment.

  Our senses as humans have a way of leaving permanent impressions. For example, there are sights, sounds, and scents that you can always associate with an experience from the past. The next sound that I heard while my mind was still trying to wrap itself around what had just happened, was one that I wil
l always associate with death; the scream of my mother from our window across the street. Since that horrible afternoon I have seen lots of death, much of it by my own hand. But to this day, I have never again heard a sound as awful as that. Nor do I want to.

  Despite Mami’s crippling hysteria, she somehow made it down to the street, breaking through the crowd to see her daughter. Me? I still hadn’t moved. I was trembling at the same spot where I was when the car struck my little sister. Mami then must have asked where I was because a couple of women in the crowd reluctantly turned towards me, with fear of what might happen next. Their fear was just. Mami sprang up and stormed in my direction with a ferocity that would normally have sent me running. And I did want to. Instinctively, that’s what my mind was telling me to do. My legs were not listening.

  “Hijo de puta! Maricón! Te máto, maricón. Te máto.” They were words that no child should ever hear from his mother, words that reeked of hatred. This was not my mother. It was a woman that I did not recognize. Surely this wasn’t the woman that cradled me and comforted me in her arms in my younger years.

  Run Nicky.

  The legs were still not cooperating.

  Say something dammit!

  Cry, scream, defend yourself!

  I couldn’t even open my mouth to form a word or make a sound. Except for the involuntary shaking, I was completely still. Was it fear? Was it shock? I didn’t know. I still don’t. I was numb, unable to feel anything. Until that first fist crashed against my chin.

  “Hijo de puta! I told you to watch her!” The blows felt like sledgehammers. “You were supposed to watch her! You were supposed to watch your little sister!” Dutifully, I took every hit until the neighbors realized the type of massacre that was developing in front of them. Once they did they quickly jumped in and pulled her away.

  Somehow my legs didn’t give out. I did. I was out on my feet, drifting away, distancing myself from the horror that had just occurred. When Mami was separated from me, I fell from the radar. No one showed any concern in seeing if I was okay. The attention went solely to my mother. Not a second thought went to the pre-teen child that just witnessed his sister’s death and was assaulted by his own mother. Eventually one woman did turn away from the focus of everyone else’s attention and looked back towards me. It finally dawned upon her that someone else was suffering. A boy, standing alone, just a few feet away, expressionless, suspended in another dimension away from this horrifying tragedy. Only the urine that soaked his pants served as possible acknowledgment that part of the child was hovering within range of reality. Sympathetic as she might have been. The woman never came over. It probably would have been an unpopular move. I was public enemy number one.